Comic Reviews Week of 5/13/09

Now the time is here, for bad comics to feel fear.


Black Panther (v5) #4
Written By Reginald Hudlin
Art By Ken Lashley

Okay, so if you're going to plaster images of the new female Black Panther in pretty much every Marvel book, and have her on every cover of this series, then maybe, just maybe, she should be established by issue four. A crazy notion, I know, but it's worth a shot.

And that's not even the worst of the book's problems. First of all, Morlun was a shitty villain in the Spider-Man books, and the day has yet to come when his appearance elicits a reaction other than dread from most comic book readers. So, to bring him into what is already a pretty crappy book? Not a great idea.

This issue also includes T'Challa fighting against Death to...well...not die, it's not very exciting or particularly well-written. If you really like Hudlin's writing, you'll probably like it, but the remaining 99% of comics fans will probably wonder why this series gets to live while other, better comics go to an early grave.



Green Lantern Corps #36
Written By Peter J. Tomasi
Art By Patrick Gleason

I can sum up the main action of this issue thusly:

Sinestro: Soranik, I am your father!
Soranik: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
Sinestro: Search your feelings, you know it to be true!
Soranik: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! So, I assume you want me to turn evil?
Sinestro: What? No, I just wanted to give some exposition.
Soranik: Um....okay?
Sinestro: Outstanding. Well then, I must be on my way.
-Exit Sinestro-

Also, Sinestro at one point busts out an old Latin maxim, which he then translates into English that makes no sense seeing as he's an alien talking to another alien. Yeah, it's kind of nitpicking, but still, it kind of seems like lazy writing combined with pretentiousness. I mean, it's a maxim native to earth, which neither participant in the conversation is from, so why would Sinestro feel the need to say that. Especially since English probably isn't spoken on Korugar, so what we have here is basically a linguistic non-sequitur.

Anyway, the riot featured on the cover is featured for all of two splash pages. On the one hand, it's kind of false advertising, but on the other, this issue is mainly exposition, and not even exciting exposition, and it's hard to make a cover of that.





Ultimate Spider-Man #132
Written By Brian Michael Bendis
Art By Stuart Immonen

Wow, I didn't realize this comic was still around. But here it is, at issue #132, the series that taught us all the true meaning of the word 'decompression.'

At any rate, there's really no reason for Ultimate Spider-Man to exist anymore. I mean, back in the day, Spider-Man had a wife and a fancy job and he wasn't the lovable loser that Marvel assumed everyone wanted him to be. But since One More Day hit, Ultimate Spider-Man is not the unique view of the character it once was, and even though it's been a consistently decent, if not great, title, the rest of the Ultimate line has been deteriorating at an incredible rate. And because of that, Marvel's decided to basically blow the whole thing up and restart a bunch of series. It's not a strategy that seems likely to work, but I suppose it's worth a shot.

But I digress, this state of affairs leaves this issue with the task of selling the idea that there's a world-changing event happening without actually making any forward progress on that story. Given that mandate, this issue is really just marking time, though it's not the creative team's fault, really.

Nano-Micro-Mini-Reviews, so I don't have to think as hard:

Savage She-Hulk #2 (of 4): Considering that the remit for this series was to have two She-Hulks in a cat fight, it's not bad.

Secret Warriors #4: A Bendis comic where nothing happens? No, I simply won't believe it.

Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1 (0f 6): Any comic that only features the titular Young Avengers on the last page of the comic has to be the greatest Young Avengers comic of all-time.

And, because I have too much time on my hands, I would like to present

A Very Special Retraux Revieux

Adventures of the Outsiders #35
Written By Mike W. Barr
Art By Alan Davis and Paul Neary
Cover Date July 1986

Just looking at that cover, you know there's going to be problems.

Anyway, you're probably wondering how this issue came to be, after all, as a side character said in the issue previous to this one:


It turns out that this isn't the real Hitler, but instead a clone, made possible by the scientific efforts of a character that Mike Barr feels compelled to name 'Madame Ovary.' You might accuse him of hacky writing, but after 'The Nuclear Family', 'The Duke of Oil'. and 'The Force of July' it's clear that he was suffering from some sort of undisclosed mental illness that most likely played a role in the creation of this story.

But anyway, the evil Baron Bedlam has managed to clone Hitler, but it's soon become clear that the ol' Fuhrer isn't quite all there. So, the Baron comes up with a cunning plan, to restore Hitler to full strength all he needs to do is put Adolf in his element. How, you might ask? Oh, it's exactly as bad as you think:



But you see, this story isn't really about Hitler coming back from the dead for vengeance, it's really a story about redemption....Hitler's redemption...no, I'm not kidding:

Yes, that's right, cloned Hitler, overcome at the guilt of killing millions of Jews decides to kill himself, which is bad enough, but then Mike Barr tries to twist it into something about there being hope even for the worst of us.