Stuff I Read This Week Episode 22 or Help Me, Douchbag Cosplayer....You're My Only Hope.

Green Lantern #23: As much as I find DC's New 52 to be alienating and unreadable, there are some bright spots in this dark, rusted meat locker of a universe that deserve mention. One of them is the Green Lantern stories, but mainly because DC left the continuity relatively untouched in the hard reboot. Since the reboot began, Geoff Johns had been doing double duty in a very Jekyll and Hyde fashion, going between maintaining a tight ship with GL by day and fucking up the Justice League by night. Since he's stepped away from the book he's done well to make the book he's done badly even worse, Robert Venditti has taken the helm to build a new dimension to the mythos.

This issue focuses mainly on Hal personally investigating a murder on Oa from #22, going off alone (true to Hal Jordan form) to find who's responsible. Venditti is at his "A" game in his characterization of the hero, fleshing out his pigheadedness in going off alone and half-cocked, looking for an enemy he knows nothing about. The Surrogates writer appears to have a great understanding of his lead character, giving Hal Jordan a whole new set of problems to deal with by leaving him in charge of the Lantern Corps. I enjoy this step in the "greatest Lantern's" journey because the plots were becoming stale with the same predictable weight of the Guardians' leadership hanging over his head.

Guardians of the Universe: "We know stuff about your enemy that might help you to not die out there, but we won't tell you because it's probably our fault in the first place. Or...you know...because fuck you, that's why."

One thing that cannot afford to slack off is artwork. When you have a comic book about a guy who can create things with a magic wishing ring, visuals have to be on point at all times. Fortunately, Billy Tan kicks here. The action beats are brilliantly drawn, letting the fights jump straight off the page. Not only do Hal's constructs look impressive, but they also give us a couple of imaginative feats I don't think I've ever seen before.

Bottom Line: Whether you like Geoff Johns work or not, he made a lasting impact on Green Lantern. That's a tough act to follow and Robert Venditti is handling the responsibility pretty well so far. 9 out of 10.

Kick-Ass 3 #2: In my last review, I was pretty clear on my feelings that the Kick-Ass saga's death is both necessary and welcome much like season three of Heroes. The second issue of the final chapter makes the reason pretty evident. Mark Millar makes no secret of his love for deconstructing superheroes under "real world" circumstances. However, with this book, it seems that his big picture mutates in such a way, each chapter becomes, in a way, unrecognizable from one story to the next.


The first theme of the first one was "Anyone who thinks they can fight crime in real life is pretty stupid and they'd probably die." In Kick-Ass 2, Millar's prevailing point was that cosplayers are delusional losers. Now, it seems clear that Millar's heroes (really, the villains, too) are held up as totems of "jerk culture" in comics. And the problem is the same as it was before: Good guy or bad guy....nobody in this book is a terribly good person. The issue focuses a lot on the building comeuppance of Chris Genovese aka Red Mist, who evolved into an extinction level asshole in the first two books. Also, we get a look at Chris' mother, seemingly as much a victim (unintended as it may be) of her son's crimes as those he had murdered. It does a pretty good job of pondering what it would be like for a supervillain's family if everyone knew their relation. How could Doctor Doom's mother ever leave the house with the whole world knowing their offspring had just vaporized Buckingham Palace? Would Bullseye's sister even be able to make it to the mailbox in the morning without a victim's angry father waiting with a sniper rifle in hand?

Meanwhile, Kick-Ass himself becomes the less interesting character to follow as he tries to rally his halfhearted troops, Justice Forever, to put a fright into the organized crime (which seems, by the way, completely unfazed by these people living out their comic book fantasies) of the city Batman: Year One style. Commonly, it is an endearing trait when the hero stays the course in his mission to make his protectorate a better place. The Dark Knight trilogy saw Bruce Wayne's parents killed, the love of his life blown to Hell, his partner in justice scarred and corrupted by the Joker, his back broken, thrown into a hole left to crawl his way out and stabbed in the gut by his rebound girlfriend. And he never gave up. And he was rewarded for it. Kick-Ass, however, seems to be on a far less fruitful quest that isn't necessarily for social change so much as it is for personal validation. Proving that one man can make a difference seems to not be as important as proving to himself that he's not just some jackass cosplayer.

Bottom Line: I've never read a comic in which I kinda wanted everyone to lose. 7 out of 10.

Stuff I Read This Week Episode 16 or Cautionary Tales for Fanboys and Crazy People....

Kick-Ass 3 #1: Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Kick-Ass needs to die. I'm not quite talking about the character. I mean this story needs to be drowned in the bathtub quickly. The thing that's wrong with everything after the first Kick Ass is that writing satire is like telling a joke. The only real rule is to just tell the joke. Don't explain it. Once you have to explain the joke, it's immediately not funny anymore. When you get bogged down on explaining satire, it becomes obvious you're trying to say something about something.

This story was awesome when Mark Millar simply saying "A guy trying to be Batman in real life would either be dead or in the ICU in a day." It's become painfully obvious that, in its evolution, this series has become a platform for Millar to shoot fanboys in the kneecaps. In parts 1 and 2, at least our protagonists were likeable. In this issue, we get Dave Lizewski standing over his parents' graves in what should have been a sobering reflective moment of character development. Instead, he and his friend are musing about how must look awesome like Batman did. Taking brooding pictures by a family member's tombstone because he thinks it looks badass doesn't make your character relatable or realistic. It makes him an extinction-level asshole. The big upside to this book is, as usual, John Romita Jr.'s artwork, offering the right amount of levity to serious moments and awkwardness to funnier moments. Ultimately, time will tell whether or not Millar can bring closure to something that's really already run its course.

Bottom Line: One part entertaining....two parts beating a dead horse. 7 out of 10.


Daredevil: End of Days #8: Considering the fact that David Mack retweeted and reposted my review of this book last month (No, I'm NEVER going to stop talking about that...deal with it, humans...), I considered the idea that the cool thing to do would be to not review the finale, that it would be like the hero in a movie who kisses the girl, says goodbye and walks away without looking back. But I'm a writer, a blogger and a comic book nerd which is, more or less, a willing forfeit of the chance to be cool. No need to break tradition now.

There are more great things to say about End of Days than there are adjectives meandering about  the English language. It could be argued that the much sought meaning of the word "mapone" came across as slightly anti climactic, but with a book like this, the last thing readers deserved was something they actually expected. Besides, much like in life, the destination wasn't nearly as important as the journey that brought us there. It could be argued (and it almost certainly is) that this miniseries ended on more of a bang than a whimper, but this series ended in a way many superhero titles wouldn't dare to: with a prevailing sense of finality. With many of Marvel's "The End" future vision concepts, although they stay somewhat true to the essence of the highlighted protagonist, at times, they have a tendency to feel dated depending on the changes that character endures. With End of Days, we are offered a story that manages to offer closure while preserving the hard truths that we've come to know of a hero who concerns himself very little with the traditional tropes of heroism when it comes to justice. No matter what crossovers and costume changes may come from other writers over the years, this book makes a timeless, definitive statement about who Daredevil is even if it's not always a trite one.

We see cast of characters who have been as much a part of defining who this character is than the character himself saying goodbye in their own ways, some of which are clear even if they're not reflected through dialogue or action beats. Having said that, one of this issue's biggest weaknesses is the absence of journalist Ben Urich's internal narrative that has been the perfect voice to carry us through this semi-dystopic wasteland of an eulogy to the Man Without Fear. Still, no matter what point of view they offer us, Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack's voices are like old friends taking you for a drive through that part of town you grew up in, showing you how it's changed as well as how it hasn't and never will. And after reviewing two other issues of this book, there is virtually nothing left to say about the top shelf artwork from Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz. Rarely is there a comic where any given panel or page, if left by itself, could be a poster or printed on a t-shirt. There are no artists better suited to help tell a story like this. If they taught comic books in high school, rest assured that Daredevil: End of Days would be required reading.

Bottom Line: This book raised the bar for comics like a school bully playing "keep away" with your lunchbox. 9.5 out of 10.