Argo City

Okay, we'll start off with a Bat block. Since I rarely ever get Bat titles anymore this was a weird month with the impulse buying.
Superman Batman has been a regular pull for me, but that's because of the Superman part of the title and not the Batman part. It manages to be excellent as always, with more than a little JLA creeping in. Funny how they show up more in here this month that they do in their own title.

Batman : The Man who laughs is yet another Dark Knight spin off, specifically a spin off of Year One (which was a spin off of Dark Knight). It's better than most. Certainly better than Year Three. Still it lacks the essential grittiness that Miller's series had. Interesting enough to pick up though.

I almost passed on Detective this month because of the goofy cover. I'm not sure why I picked it up but I'm glad I did. The story with Ras Al Gul is so well handled I may go back and look at the rest of it. Ras is a character that when handled well, can be a huge global level threat. When handled badly...he's just silly...and for the most part he's been handled badly in recent years. Nice to see this is the exception. Robin and Nightwing both appear, something I'm always glad to see. We need more Robin in Batman comics. There has been such a drive to develop the character in his own right that we are now beginning to forget that he still IS the latter part of "Batman and...." His own title is still going strong, though just a little too similar to stories past. The current arc reminds me too much of when he first met the Spoiler; coincidental (but I'm pretty certain not intentional) since I suspect she's about to make a return to the series. Oh and the scene with Robin balancing on top of the huge ball is GREAT. "Believe it or not, I've trained for this; and I made fun of Bruce for this part of my training...."

I'm still pleased with Spidey, and I saw something interesting in the eyes of Harry Osborne this month. I'm really wondering where they are going to go here. It's a relatively slow start, but not so slow that I'm bored. Oh well. Two weeks till the next issue.

I'm an idiot. I didn't figure out who the Baby's mother was until this issue...
The Punisher is a hard series to follow. I don't know if it's the violence or the quality of violence. It's not as comic booky here. Still , I can't put this series down.. it has a terrible beauty to it. Frank's description of fatherhood gives me something to think about as I cope with my own three month old.

I did go back and search out all of the issues of Salvation Run after it began to intrude on JLA. I'm glad I did. This series is GOOD. Still brighter than the old Suicide Squad, it has a very similar feel, not surprising when you throw a bunch of Supervillians together. Get this for the characterization of Lex Luthor if nothing else. The writer has it dead on. His Lex is quite derivative of Smallville, and that’s no bad thing. Charming, intelligent and a brilliant tactician, he's going to build his own army out here in the wilds, I just know it. More on this later.

Freddy Vs Jason vs Ash, and Finally Freddy has a chance to shine! It's still WAY to focused on Jason but with the Necronomicon giving Freddy the ability to hit the dream world and the real world, watch out. I can see now this wouldn’t have really worked as a movie. It’s way to silly.

Finally, What If : the Civil War version. I don’t like the whole Civil War series, anymore than I like the various sundry Crisis going on in the DCU. This is a nice encapsulation of what could have happened though. I think I could have enjoyed the whole thing if It had been done like this. What if Cap was the one Superhumans registered too, he’d be the only one knowing the identities and training them. A brilliant divergence. On the other hand what if it had been completely a government op, with Shield at the helm. A terrifying divergence... This may be the best title I read this week.

One last note, Doctor Who Classics. Pass. This is a reprint of…well, how do I explain this? The stories originally were printed in the Doctor Who magazine, t hen reprinted by Marvel for the Doctor Who comic in the US. Reprinted again in England as Doctor Who color classics, then recently (last year or two) collected and reprinted again in trade from.
How many times can you reprint these stories?? Especially when they are so bad? They’ve been recolored to bring them up to modern standards but these are still terrible stories, and they don’t get better for a while. At least not until the end of the 4th Doctor’s run. I’m not even posting a pic here.