Superman

Doomsday Clock: The Final Evisceration

January 1, 2020 // 6 Comments

So I really didn’t want to do this. But somebody told me what happens in Doomsday Clock #12, and it pissed me off so much that I had to go back and finish reading the damn thing. Just so I could hate it intelligently. And, holy crap. HOLY CRAP. It’s even worse than I expected. But before the knives come back out, let’s make this all official and such… Doomsday Clock 9-12 by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank I covered the first eight issues of this travesty in earlier columns, [...]

Going Negative: A Farewell to the Man of Steel

October 1, 2019 // 5 Comments

So I spent some time this weekend getting caught up on some comics I hadn’t gotten around to in the last month, and… I think I’m done with the Superman titles. It was fun when it was just Action Comics and Superman, but now Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane have their own books, and the stories are festooning out into spin-off mini-series, and being impacted by things happening in books I’m not reading and don’t care about, and… To hell with it. I just want a good [...]

Why Think Small? FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!

July 9, 2019 // 1 Comment

So here we are again with another round of new funnybooks. This week, we’ve got our first look at Tom King’s Superman and Greg Rucka’s Lois Lane, and also the latest issue of an on-going favorite… The Green Lantern 9 by Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp I’m starting to feel a bit like a broken record on this book, but the big-picture review for every issue is pretty much the same: It’s tremendously fun to read, owing equal parts to Silver Age insanity, 2000 AD [...]

Horror, Crime, and Spandex: FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!

May 21, 2019 // 1 Comment

So last week, I said I’d catch up on some older reviews this week, unless something amazing came out. Well, nothing amazing hit the stands, really, but SO MANY BOOKS came out that I just decided to cut bait and move on. Seriously, we got new Gideon Falls, Immortal Hulk, Superman, Pearl, Daredevil… and the book we’re going to start out with below. So here we go, with LAST WEEK’S COMICS TODAY! Spider-Man: Life Story 3 by Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley This issue takes [...]

Criminals, Aliens, Barns, and Pygs

January 22, 2019 // 3 Comments

So we’ve got some reviews to catch up on this week, which means… Funnybooks. In Review. Are Go. Batman 62 by Tom King and Mitch Gerads I bought this comic because it was pink. Pink! Inside and out! That’s a bold color choice for a Batman comic, and I thought I should support that. But I also bought it because of Professor Pyg. He’s one of my favorite Batman villains. One of the last truly great Batman villains, I think, to be introduced to date. I like Pyg. He’s [...]

Tales of Gods and Space Cops

November 20, 2018 // 2 Comments

So we’ve managed to get behind a bit on the funnybook reviews of late, what with Halloween and Stan Lee’s passing and all that. And though this breaks with my usual response to that sort of thing, I think I’m just gonna hit the highlights of the last few weeks, starting with two big corporate spandex books that have caught my fancy… Mister Miracle 12 by Tom King and Mitch Gerads The biggest miracle of this book is that it has, more or less, a happy ending. Scott Free [...]

FUNNYBOOK BATTLE: Heroes in Crisis vs Action Comics!

November 6, 2018 // 0 Comments

So it strikes me that there are two dominant strands of super hero writing these days: the Iconic Take, and the Revisionist Approach. I know I’m over-simplifying there, and maybe stating the obvious, too. But I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. With long-running corporate franchise characters, writers tend to either look at what’s made them work in the past and polish it up for a new generation, or they look for conceptual weaknesses and try to explain or retcon [...]

Hell is Other Super Heroes, and Other Uplifting Funnybook Tales

October 2, 2018 // 4 Comments

So we’ve got a big new corporate spandex cross-over to talk about this week, and for once it looks like it might not completely suck! Let’s get right to that, then. FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!! Heroes in Crisis 1 by Tom King and Clay Mann Tom King’s work is very concerned with trauma. Post-Traumatic Stress, in particular, figures prominently in Mister Miracle, and to some extent Omega Men and Batman as well. And that makes sense; considering his military background, I’m [...]

Great Adventures and Grand Designs

July 31, 2018 // 0 Comments

So I’ve got a great big stack of funnybooks sitting here waiting for my attention. Which I suppose means that… CAPSULE REVIEWS ARE GO!! Fantastic Four #1 Preview Spotlight Give-Away Thingie by Dan Slott and Sara Pichelli The new Fantastic Four comic is launching next week, and I’m glad to hear that the book’s coming back. FF is, as I’ve said more than a few times, my favorite super hero comic, so I’m psyched that it’s getting a relaunch. That said, [...]

Something Old, Something New… FUNNYBOOKSINREVIEWAREGO!!

July 17, 2018 // 0 Comments

So our Steve Ditko memorial post last week put us a little behind on the regular funnybook reviews, but it seems to have been rather widely enjoyed, so I suppose that’s okay. Still, though, there’s a lot to talk about. There were new issues of several continuing favorites, but also some new beginnings for old favorites, including a surprising amount of surprisingly interesting corporate spandex. So let’s focus on those new beginnings, starting with (perversely) an [...]