Sunday, October 28, 2007

Comics of the Week (10/24/07)


Countdown #27 was okay. I realized this week that I have to take this weekly title as if I was reading a novel. There are many storylines going on, thus each one doesn't move much on a week to week basis. I have to look at the broader picture. There also continues to be a lot of preping for other spin-off mini series - again we're seeing the beginnings of Countdown: Arena and Salvation Run in these storylines.

Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime is a one-shot tie-in to the whole Sinestro Corps Wars plot going on in the Green Lantern titles. This one-shot goes over the origins and motivations of Superman-Prime, a character many of us old time readers know as Superboy from Earth-Prime (the parallel Earth where "we" live - that had only one super-hero - a planet that was destroyed when Crisis On Infinite-Earths happened in the mid-80's. It is interesting to see someone so young, with powers potentially greater than Superman, deciding to fight the other fight because the heroes he "read about and believed in" are gone. It is kind of a fitting analogy to how us older readers sometimes feel about modern comics. Some of these characters are not the ones we grew up with. I guess Superman-Prime gives a voice to that frustration.

Teen Titans #52 ticked me off slightly with it's cover. It shows the team fighting Starro the Conqueor in a classic homage to the debut cover of JLA back in the 60's. Many books have done this over the years. No biggie there. So, why am I ticked? The artist couldn't even give a proper "after..." credit on it. It does not credit the original cover artist for the concept, and it does not even quote the right issue (it says "JLA 28" when it should be "B&B 28" - as the JLA debuted in Brave and the Bold #28). As for the rest of the issue, it was okay. Basically a center issue of a multi-part arc with a couple good moments and that's about it. I'm kind of bored with the whole 'Future Titans' angle now.

Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #7 is another fun read in the animated series style. The cover shows the boys of the team surrounded by the warrior Amazon women, very classic sci-fi to be sure. Inside, the book ties in nicely with the Themiscyra concept (aka. Paradise Island for us old school Wonder Woman fans) with a 31st century spin. The villain of the piece makes sense given her potential for longevity of life. A nice, fun issue that tells a story with a beginning, middle and end. If only more comics these days could be like that.

2 comments:

Michael O. said...

Superman-Prime was AWESOME! I'm so loving this war! That's not a sentence you hear people using often, is it? Love getting inside the character's head, loved the reminder of, as you said, those frustrations that were voiced by the those characters during Infinite Crisis that spoke to how many comic readers felt about the shift to darkness in DC (which I think was a direct result of continually getting beat by Marvel all those years, and trying to sync up with the X-Men darker stuff craze). The Prime book was a great and exciting read, I thought, and fit the epic tone of the whole story nicely. This is serious stuff! The DC universe is getting its arse kicked! Mass destruction! Yeah! Glad I'm checking this stuff out.

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