Yesterday Was Wednesday ... and that meant new comics!

So here's what interested me from the comic shelves yesterday . . .

Oooo, scary . . .

Surprised that Aquaman was on my list? You wouldn't be if you read my initial thoughts on DC Comics going back and starting over all their series. Aquaman is one of my favorite characters and I'm glad to see him get a bit of a new life.

But after reading the second chapter, does this look like this series can float? (Sorry . . .) The answer is yes. I enjoyed it. The threat that was briefly introduced last issue (to make room for introducing the main character) is front and center in this issue.

The one thing I'm waiting for, though, is a character arc. I'm not seeing where the character of Aquaman is going or growing yet. I just don't know what's at stake for the character. The plot of the story should reflect and push the growth of the character. That doesn't mean it won't happen, because this is a weakness of any serialized storytelling, as chapter builds on chapter.

The other problem I had? This was SHORT! Twenty pages for $2.99.

So I'm intrigued and interested and ready for chapter 3.

Oh, and look into the eyes of the creature on that cover . . . do you see it? Yes . . . it's issue #1's cover! Apparently, creatures from the Trench are reading DC's new 52 as well . . .

See that ring on his hand? I got one with my purchase of this book! Of course, the rings don't actually appear INSIDE the book. Guess they needed to put it on the cover for the promotion to make sense . . .

Last week was ALL Legion of Super-heroes. You can read my thoughts about it here. And when I picked them up last week, I thought those three series (yes, there are three series about these character: two ongoing, as part of DC Comics' New 52, and one mini-series crossover with Star Trek -- yes, I don't understand it either and after reading the first issue I still don't understand it, but it's there) were it. Well, turns out there's a fourth series -- a mini-series that will explore and explain the origins of the Legion of Super-heroes.

I'm hoping that it will explain everything I need to know to really be able to understand and follow the Legion of Super-heroes, but so far not so much. This story felt choppy and again, I can't help feeling that it has fallen prey to the "twenty pages of a longer story at a time" weakness.

But it does have some interesting elements -- the science fiction universe that is home to a legion of super-heroes premise is infecting me, I think.

Still, I feel that this one will be better if read as a whole story instead of chopped up into chapters.

I'm a casual fan of the Western and it's tropes. I've worked on a couple westerns in the past, and I read them occasionally, and enjoy a good Western movie. So All Star Western piqued my interest, but enough for me to buy it until I started hearing good things about it.

By then it was too late. The New 52 was sold out.

However, as I mentioned in an earlier post about the New 52, this month when each second issue arrives on shelves, reprints of the first issue are also being sold. Yesterday, All Star Western #2 came out . . . so I thought I'd give the first two issues a look.

First, these books were littered with references to modern day superheroes. It takes place in the 1800's, but the story itself focuses on bounty hunter Jonah Hex arriving in Gotham City to track down a serial killer. The mayor of Gotham City? Mayor Cobblepot (an ancestor of the Penguin). One of the city's wealthy elite? Alan Wayne. Issue 2 references a "Crime Bible", something I heard about in some mini-series or other a couple years ago. Hex's city slicker helper in Gotham? Amedeus Arkham, a psychologist (if not the founder of Arkham Asylum -- I don't know the Batman lore well enough -- than an ancestor of the founder).

It's a tense, gritty, violent book. Prostitutes are the killer's targets. Issue 2 features a bloody shoot out.

The art is highly stylized, though, and I don't find myself taking time to really absorb artwork unless it is really, really good, but here I did find myself looking at the bold line work.

It's a $3.99 book, unlike most of the other New 52 books. And it has a longer page count. Issue 1 was a longer first chapter, all Jonah Hex. Twenty-eight pages of story. Issue 2 had a twenty page Jonah Hex story continuing from issue 1, and an eight page El Diablo story.

El Diablo, also known as Lazarus Lane. (Any relation to Lois Lane? Can't help wondering.) It's an "Indian curse"/"zombie" story about Lane, who, when unconscious, has some sort of dark spirit that takes the physical form of a whip wielding Zorro clone? I don't understand, but since I'll probably be getting #3 to get the next chapter in Jonah Hex's story I may be finding out more.

Also this week:

Haven't read this yet, but it's a bunch (100 pages worth!) of short Jack Kirby stories from the beginning of his career. I love reading these kind of books. And I can't sing the praises of DC Comics Presents 100 Page Spectaculars enough!

And my kids LOVE the Smurf comics. More than the cartoons!

The movie, you ask? What movie? There's no Smurfs movie . . .

~ Ben

DC's New 52? Giving comics & characters a facelift . . .

Well, DC is in month two of their "new 52" initiative, in which they have completely, only not really, rebooted their entire universe to start over at the beginning.

Unless the character was popular. In which case, they aren't starting over from the beginning and instead they are continuing with their popular elements.

So Superman? Starting over from the beginning. Green Lantern? They just finished an epic storyline with him, so that still happened. Same with Batman.

I find it interesting how they are trying to make things less confusing by making things more confusing . . . but, snark aside, this really seems to be a good thing.

First, comic shops are having a hard time keeping titles on the shelves. Orders for the second month of the New 52 saw their second issues in the top one hundred sales rankings, side by side with REPRINTS of their first issues.

Second, it seems that people are mainly buying them to READ, not to COLLECT. I'm not sure if this is industry wide, but the owners of BuyMeToys.com, my local shop, said that unlike other "events", people are buying one copy of the books. For reading, it seems.

Third, some of the characters were in need of a little more than a facelift. There comes a time when trying to cover up aging results in something like you'd find in Terry Gilliam's Brazil:

No one really wants their heroes to look like this, even metaphorically, do they?

Besides, Superman has a movie coming out and he needs to be more hip and happenin'. While I don't agree with some of what they're doing to update the characters, the truth is every single one of these books is more accessible. Mostly.

Fourth, Aquaman! Yes, I know, with that one word I have destroyed ALL credibility. But it's good to see Aquaman in his own book. And I'm buying it. For a few issues, anyway.

The first issue of Aquaman illustrates exactly what DC is trying to do. In trying to pull in new audiences, but satisfy old audiences, they start a new storyline with new enemies.

At the same time, Geoff Johns tells a story that introduces the character nicely, and sets up his place in the DC universe. It's a little bit tongue in cheek, wink and nod, but all the things that people make fun of the character for are addressed.

It's a low key issue, meant to bring everyone up to speed enough so that when the story really gets going, readers care about the character. Whether this succeeds or not is up to the reader, of course, but I felt like it succeeded. I want to see where this goes, so I'll be buying the next two issues to see if I like where it's going. It was a good start.

I only bought two other comics from the new 52. People who know me should not be surprised that I bought Aquaman. And I mentioned in my digital comics post that I had bought the Justice League #1 that came with the print comic and the download code for the digital copy.

What I didn't mention was that I wasn't all that impressed with the actual comic. It was serviceable, but it was meant to be a "how we met" story, and how do Batman and Superman meet? Well, they fight, of course!

I won't be buying any more Justice League. As impressed as I was with Geoff Johns' writing in Aquaman and other books I've read of his, this didn't do anything for me. I get that the book is a "how they met" thing, but I'd rather the book had opened with the team together and looked back at the other stuff over time. This is a team book, and at the end of the first chapter there's still no team, just the cliched "heroes meet, there's a misunderstanding, so they fight". I mean, honestly, this plot is the reason I don't like romantic comedies.

If Aquaman comes as no surprise to people who know me, Swamp Thing should do the same.

I love swamp monsters.

Especially in well made movies and comics.

Now, first off, let me say: I have never, ever seen a good swamp monster movie. "Creature from the Black Lagoon is as close as I've gotten, and that doesn't count.

But there have been some very good swamp monster comics. What makes a good swamp monster comic? Interesting characters doing interesting things that involve a swamp creature of some sort. (This is the same criteria I use for swamp monster movies . . .)

So is this a good one? I don't know. Why? Because I had no idea what was going on. For a comic that was supposed to be an accessible story, I found myself really, really confused. I felt like I was coming into the middle of the story. I don't like giving bad reviews, so I'm just going to leave it at this: issue one and two left me cold, and I'm going to give it one more issue. I don't expect everything to be explained in a story, but I would like to have some idea of what's going on. This book seemed to tie into plot lines from before the "new 52" relaunch, which I am not familiar with.

I almost picked up Animal Man, but flipping through it I was reminded of '90's Vertigo comics. That's not a knock. I really, really liked '90's Vertigo comics. But it's not for me right now.

There is a western title coming out, from the team behind Jonah Hex. When the second issue comes out at the end of the month, so will a reprint of the first issue. I plan to buy both, give those a try.

The bottom line: the new 52 has a wide variety of different titles and styles. If you want to get in on the ground floor, this is the time to do it. Most of the titles have first and second issues in comic shops now, or first and second issues available through the Comixology app. I was skeptical, but DC seems to have hit the right notes.

~ Ben