Mortlake on the Schuylkill

— Enjoying Birds Of Prey
Like all of life's essential pleasures, Birds of Prey #98 left me with a satisfied smile on my face. It's all in there: the damn Batgirl (and her "Dark vengeance!" warcry); Josh in his doofus-y splendor; the delightfully murderous Yasemin; and Rhosyn (Rose!) Forrest.

These panels made me laugh out loud:


— Supergirl Gets Better
The creative team working on Supergirl seems to have produced a minor miracle, righting what was until the last two issues a crazily listing ship. The comic is delivering stories of interest, interspersing those narratives with troubling and interesting flashbacks from Carrie ... uh, I mean Kara's Kryptonian past.

Though juxtaposing the Silver Age Kara's sweetness with the modern Supergirl's violent and abusive backstory is a fairly pedestrian move, I'm finding it compelling nonetheless. Having said that, though, I'm hoping that it was her evil father who actually pulled the trigger on the weapon that dealt out the payback to her teasing schoolmates:


— Civil War
Call me a knucklehead, but I'm actually liking Civil War.

Yeah, I know there's no precedent for Reed acting like an Evil Scientist, and Iron Man is so out of control there's no explaining it, now. Their actions and motivations are so clearly out of character, it's not even funny. I'm wagering that this isn't the result of authorial incompetence, and am interested in finding out exactly why they're acting as they are. Having read Wolverine #46, Amazing Spider-Man #535, Captain America #22, and Civil War: Frontline #6, it's clear that there's some kind of prime mover at work behind the scenes. I have no doubt that Reed and Tony's motivations will be explained — though, of course, I'm open to the possibility that what we're told might be, in the end, idiotically lame.

The component of Civil War that has totally drawn me in is that it's basically about personal autonomy and choices, and that a hero making the wrong choice (not registering) is facing a loss of freedom and a forced vacation in the Negative Zone.

With the torture/treatment of detainees, men held indefinitely without charge or trial, (unfortunately) a real issue that has recently been debated in Congress, I'm not bothered by having to face an analogue of it in the series, nor does it strike me as a cheap or simplistic ploy to make the comic relevant.

And, it has to be said, I found Sue Storm's intervention during the battle in CW #4 to be both more dramatic and satisfying than almost anything Wonder Woman was given to do in all of Infinite Crisis.

— Dr. Light
Again, a single panel in JLA justifies the cost of the comic, for me. Marionette's post covers all of the angles on the interesting interaction between Clark, Diana, and Bruce when they discussed Dr. Light's possible membership in JLA #2.

Man, Bruce actually says: "It'll send a message, Clark ... It'll scare them."

Reading this brought a smile to my face, and my thinking mirrorred Marionette's: scare who, exactly, and why?

— A Weird Convergence
Thanks to Pip the Troll's appearance in She Hulk #12,

and Ragdoll's channelling of Paradaemon in Secret Six #4,

we got two up-the-skirt jokes in a single week!

// posted by Melchior del Darién @ 12:29 AM