Amused in Review

Happy New Year! (GMT, that is).

I haven't had time to compose a best-of-1997 list yet, so that will have to wait. In the meanwhile, let's look at some more comics from prior weeks (this week's comics won't arrive unti Friday, because of the holidays last week. Get it? Got it? Good.)

Ellis, anyone?

Stormwatch #3
by Warren Ellis and Oscar Jiminez & Michael Ryan
Rating: Keen.

This is the third issue of the re-numbered, but not re-booted Stormwatch, and it's just as good as the stuff that Ellis was doing prior to the re-boot, the stuff that nobody was ordering, despite it selling out across the country. So what does that say about the longevity of this title? Beats me, but it would be a shame for this to get cancelled, because when it comes to the kind of goverment-as-conspiracy-of-paranoids that seems to be all the rage these days (particularly in Image books), there's nobody who does it better than Warren Ellis. Why he could be the paranoid-conspiracy theorists poster-child, if that sot wasn't already taken by Oliver Stone. In this issue one of the super-secret evil American intelligence agencies has decided to seal off the Lousiana town of Pavane and conduct illegal biological weapons experiments. Stormwatch catches on, and decides to stop them, but cannot do so legally under its charter without the Americans calling them in--or can it?

Transmetropolitan #6
by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson and Rodney Ramos
Rating: Neat-O.

Spider Jerusalem, the gonzo-reporter hero of Transmetropolitan takes on organized religion in this issue, and if his version of reportage seems to rely more heavily on screaming rants and smacking people around, it's still pretty funny. This comic gives off the kind of gleeful rage that some of Harlan Ellison's columns on television used to (not that Ellison is no longer capable of gleeful rage, but that he seldom writes columns anymore). Some of the background sight-gags are hilarious (I particularly like the "Politicians use the express line" sign over the gates of Hell, and The Church of Ennis--now there's an in joke). That he takes a little time to slag the UFO cultists, in a kind of drive-by derision, doesn't hurt either. I highly recommend this book.

As I write this it's New Year's day. I rang in the New Year watching My Man Godfrey...and people say that I don't know how to party. Hah! In New York they had one of the coldest New Year's Eves ever, with wind-chill factor of -10 in Times Square; here in Orange County, I spent most of today lounging around the pool, reading a Robert Crais novel. Which brings me to the subject of today's column:

The Monkey's Raincoat
by Robert Crais

Lullaby Town
by Robert Crais

Stalking the Angel
by Robert Crais

Free Fall
by Robert Crais

Robert Crais writes about the private-eye Elvis Cole, who lives and works in LA. Cole is a Viet Nam vet, who likes to quote Jiminy Cricket and admires Peter Pan. He's determined not to give up what's left of the innocence of childhood--which is pretty hard task, given his profession. His partner is the nearly-invisible, monosyllabic Joe Pike (who lists his profession as "mercenary").
     These books are obviously heavily influenced by Robert Parker's Spenser, in little things like the loving description of foods prepared and eaten (although that lets up in the later novels), through the more substantial teaming of the soft-touch Cole and the hard-case Pike (Hawk), to the major ethical theme of the stories, which is always that Cole works towards his client's whole welfare (except when the client turns out to be a scumbag, in which case he aways finds someone--such as the client's abused daughter--to whom he shifts his loyalties), not just solving the particular case, and when he commits himself, he commits himself totally. Of course, both Cole and Spenser inherit that ethos from an earlier hard-boiled private eye who walked these mean streets of LA, but was not himself mean...Phillip Marlowe.
     The writing, and the dialogue are crisp, and sometimes Cole is almost as funny as he thinks he is. The plotting is usually fairly intricate, which makes it all the more a shame when the last minute snag in the plan that Cole conceives to get his client out of whatever mess he or she's gotten into blows up, and the thing turns into a blood-bath (but that does give Pike his opportunity to shine).
     All in all, I would have to rate Elvis Cole as one of the most enjoyable fictional private eyes to have been created in the past few years, and recommend Robert Crais' work highly.

Now that this week's comics are here, let's take a look at a couple:

Pinky and the Brain #20
by Various writers and artists
Rating: Keen.

The problem with Pinky and the Brain, the comic book, is that while the writers do have a sense of humor that is very similar to the writers of the shows (for all I know, they may be the writers of the shows), for some reason they seem to feel much more need to vary the formula than in the shows, and this inevitably weakens the story. Take the opening of the story "Mice in Pink"--a Men in Black parody; the story begins with Pinky and the Brain in lab-coats, listening with bored expressions to headsets, in front of electronic equipment scaled to their size, while outside there are a number of radio telescopes. The caption: "S.E.T.T.I.E. (Subjugate the Earth by Trying to Talk to Intelligent Extraterrestrials) Radar Tracking Station: Acme Labs California." Not a great gag, and not an improvement over the standard opening in their cage. Pinky and the Brain have a set formula, much like the Road Runner and Coyote, and a good deal of the internal tension is generated by the need to surprise and amuse the audience even though in theory the audience knows exactly what's coming next. If you have to mess with the formula (for instance, by making the mice quasi-official employees of Acme Labs with little lab coats and equipment, instead of laboratory animals), then you remove some of the skeleton on which the comedy hangs, and the result is flabbier comedy.

Patty Cake #2
by Scott Roberts
Rating: Neat-O.

Patty Cake, on the other hand, always knows exactly what it's doing. This is one of my favorite comics, because Scott Roberts can look at the life of a child--the bad and embarrasing parts as well as the cute and cuddly parts--without flinching, and without distancing us from the child. He always manages to remind me of how much fun it was to be a kid, while simultaneously knowing that I'd never want to relive the experience. A wonderful, wonderful book. And check out the charming Mark (Akiko) Crilley illlustration on the inside back cover.

Continuing our look at this week's comics, we have:

Deadpool #13
by Kelly & Woods
Rating: So-so.

I started reading this comic on Mary McCool's recommendation, because of the romance between Wade Wilson (Deadpool) and wosserface from the X-Men, Siryn, so let's just say that I don't like the way this is heading, okay? I'm not at all interested in the "ooh, isn't he bad!" villain T-Totaler, or whatever his name is. I'll give this another issue or so to shape up, then I'm outta here.

Supreme #55
by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse, and Al Gordon
Rating: Keen.

"Possibly the most controversial story you'll read all year!" screams the cover. Yeah, right. That the South winning the Civil War would have been a bad thing is controversial? Other than that hype, and that it seems contrived that the only thing that the League of Infinity can think to do to rectify the situation is to connive in the murder of the former League member/villain, this was a pretty decent issue. This is the Superman comic that DC should be publishing.

It's manga-mania day at Amused in Review, so let's get to it.

No Need for Tenchi, Part Four #1
by Hitoshi Okuda
published by Viz, black and white, $2.95
rating: Keen.

Tenchi is one of those manga titles that's really only for the fans of the videos. It's not that the comics aren't good--they often are--but that they really give the reader no clue who all the characters running about are, or how they relate to eachother. Take the current issue: A character named Minagi, piloting her spaceship, hails another spaceship, piloted by another young woman, named Asahi. Asahi mistakes Minagi for the space-pirate Ryoko, and flees. Minagi, hoping to clear up the misunderstanding, pursues, and Asahi, more in terror than ever, flees faster. The whole thing is pretty funny--if you know that Minagi is a clone of the space-pirate Ryoko (minus the personality) who is one of the main characters in the series. VIZ does its best by printing little capsule descriptions of some of the characters on the inside front page (in this issue they do feature Minagi, and her ship Hanase, and explain that she's a clone of Ryoko, but don't say who Ryoko is), but I have to wonder if this is really adequate.

Drakuun: The Revenge of Gustav, #5 of 6
by Johji Manabe
published by Dark Horse, black and white, $2.95
rating: Keen

One of the annoying things about Dark Horse's manga series, although I'm sure that the economic reasons for doing so are sound, is the way that they break up what was a continuous series in Japan into a series of mini-series. Thus we have D:tRoG #5 of 6, which is just a chunk out of the middle of the larger Drakuun series. At least Dark Horse seems to have given up its nasty trick of skipping parts of the series. In this issue, the princess Drakuun rescues her companions from Gustav's slave-mines.

Eat-Man #5
by Akihito Yoshitomi
published by Viz, black and white, $2.95
rating: So-so.

Nicely illustrated, but otherwise pointless story of a man with the unusual power of being able to eat any weapon or device piece-by-piece, and the cause it to assemble itself out of his hand.

More manga-mania today, as we look at some of the recent comics by the goddess of manga, Rumiko Takahashi:

Inu-Yasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale #9
by Rumiko Takahashi
published by Viz, b&w, $3.25
rating: Neat-O.

This is the story of thouroughly modern Japanese high-school girl Kagome, who doesn't even believe her grandfather's tales of ghosts and demons, but who fell into an empty well in the shrine behind her house, and found herself in feudal-era Japan, where it turns out that she--as the decendant of the priestess of the shrine--is carrying a magical gem of immense power. The local demons, including the half-demon Inu-Yasha, want the gem to increase their power. Through one thing and another, the gem gets shattered and its pieces scattered across the land. Kagome and Inu-Yasha end up as reluctant partners (it helps that the dog-boy Inu-Yasha gets stuck in a collar which make him obey Kagome's commands like "Sit"), trying to recover the shards of the jewel before the other demons do.
     This series is somewhere between Takahashi's romantic comedies (Ranma 1/2 or Maison Ikkoku) and her horror stories (Mermaid's Tears, Mermaid's Scar, and so forth) in tone. There are jokes and silly moments, there are certain hints of a possible future romance, but there are also scenes of bloody death and horror--although since I find blood a lot easier to take in black-and-white, it doesn't particularly gross me out.
     In the current issue, Inu-Yasha has been tracked down by his evil (or more evil, whatever) half-brother, who needs him to find the secret of their father's burial-place and their father's magic sword.

Maison Ikkoku Part Seven #6
by Rumiko Takahashi
published by Viz, b&w, $3.25
rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

Argh! This is quite possibly my favorite comic, and it's driving me crazy. The long, long courtship of widow Kyoko Otanashi by the now recently graduated student Yusaku Godai is finally coming to a conclusion. Kyoko is finally going to choose between penniless and indecisive Godai and handsome, assured, rich tennis coach Shun Mitaka...and every issue Takahashi manages to thwart the reader's desire to see them finally get together, and turn up the tension another notch.
     In this issue, Kyoko has gone on a trip to try and clear her feelings and make up her mind to marry Mitaka. She thinks, mistakenly, that Godai has given up on her, which should make her choice easy, but for some reason (You're in love with Godai, can't you see that?) she's confused and in conflict. She half-wishes that Godai would try to follow her--which he does, but through one stroke of ill-luck after another, whenever he almost catches up to her on her journey something happens and he just misses her. She keeps getting glimpses of him, but thinking it's her imagination. Finally, finally, finally, he does catch up to her--and then chickens out when it comes to telling her the reason he followed her, and pretends it was a coincidence that they ran into eachother. I feel like gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair when I read this comic sometimes, I really do.
     Of course, I recommend this comic--it's utterly and completely wonderful. My only reservation is that now is no time to hop on. If you're interested, you should start in the beginning--easy enough to do, with the trade paperbacks readily available in better book stores and comics shops everywhere (and through clicking on the bookstore link on this page).

There must be some mistake. I visited Microsoft's home page today, and the banner announced that Internet Explorer 4.0 was now available free for Macintoshes. Yet just last week, the good folks at Microsoft were swearing before a Federal judge that Internet Explorer 4.0 was an integral part of Windows '95, and couldn't be separated from the core of the operating system. Do you suppose that installing IE 4.0 on a Mac will turn it into a Win 95 machine? Do you suppose that Microsoft will go back to the judge and say, "Oops, it turns out it's a seperate product after all?"

Meanwhile, on the review front, I've been watching some fan-subs that a friend of mine from Hong Kong loaned me. Fan-subs, for those of you who've never encountered them, are video tapes of television shows (in this case Japanese animation) that have been subtitled into another language (in this case English) by fans of the show for other fans who aren't native speakers. It's a lot of work, and a labor of love for the fans, the majority of whom are scrupulous about not charging money for their efforts, never fan-subbing something which is in commercial release in the target language, and removing their subs from circulation when a series comes into commercial release. The corporations that actually own the shows turn a blind eye toward fan-subs, apparently reasoning that it serves to both test and build a market for particular series, as long as the fans-subs don't stray into piracy by going commercial. (If you see subtitled shows for sale at cons, those guys are pirates--and what they're probably selling is a third or fourth generation copy of a fan-sub, at that.)
    At any rate, what I've been watching over the holiday season is a show called Marmalade Boy, which is a high school soap opera about a girl named Miki and a boy named Yuu, whose respective parents meet on a cruise-ship, and decide to divorce, swap partners, remarry....and then all live together in one house. Miki is appalled by her parents' and step-parents' cavalier attitude toward the whole arrangement, and her new step-brother (two ways at once) is merely bemused. Of course, what eventually happens is that Miki falls in love with Yuu, and vice-versa. But that's not complicated enough, of course, so before they get together, they have to deal with: Ginta, Miki's childhood friend who wants to be her boyfriend; Arimi, Yuu's former girlfriend; Ginta's pesky cousin who's chased Arimi since they both were kids; Meiko, Miki's best friend who's in love with their homeroom teacher; Miwa, the class president who Miki at one point thinks is Yuu's boyfriend; and about a half-dozen more characters who are all pursuing Miki, Yuu, or eachother.
    It's real edge-of-your seat, tear-jerker stuff, and I just eat it up. I'm up to episode about 54 out of 76, and I'll be sorry when it's all over. I have no idea whether this will ever be officially released in America, either on TV or direct to video--I think it could be a big hit on American TV if they didn't screw it up in the dub (of course, I always think they screw it up in the dub--that's one of the reasons I'm learning Japanese), but I think American TV execs would have a problem with some of the content. There's no nudity, or even a suggestion of lasciviousness--the show is about squeaky clean romanticized love, with characters kissing being a big payoff after a multi-episode build-up, but there are things like the love between the fifteen-year-old Meiko and the twenty-something (I'd guess) teacher, which even though never consummated, would probably flip out parents groups completely.
    Anyway, if you ever have a chance to watch it (perhaps you know someone who's in the fan-sub community, or know someone who knows someone...) I can't recommend it too highly. Next to Ranma 1/2 and Maison Ikkoku it's one of my favorite shows in any language.

One of my favorite cartoonists, Joshua Quagmire, creator of Cutey Bunny, has a really neat Cutey Bunny calendar for the month of January. I have it as my wall-paper even now. It's available on the CompuServe Alternative Comics forum, in the Quagmire library section. I believe it's set up so that "guests" (that is non-CSI members) can download it. Check it out.

Meanwhile, on the reviewing front we have:

Superman (Mis)Adventures #17
by Chris Duffy, Neil Vokes, and Terry Austin
published by DC, color, $1.95
rating: Keen.

This was a somewhat predictable story, centered on Jimmy Olsen trying to make like a big-shot while showing a new accident-prone intern around Metropolis, and hoping to bag a good photo of Superman. Meanwhile Superman has his hands full trying to stop a gun-nut with a flying fortress that appears to be made out of flubber. (Don't ask.) The art is by the always excellent Neil Vokes (gee, I miss his work on Ninjak. I miss Ninjak, for that matter), who does perhaps the best animated-style Superman I've seen yet; it definitely brings the story up a notch.

Ka-Zar #11
by Mark Waid & Andy Kubert
published by Marvel, color, $1.99
rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

Mark Waid is rapidly establishing himself as not just a kick-ass character writer and walking encyclopedia, but also King of the Cliffhangers. He seems to be playing a game of "Can you top this?" with himself every month, and the effect is a dizzying sense of speed and excitement that's missing from most supposedly action-oriented comics these days. Kubert's no slouch at providing the illustrations, either. All-in-all I'll be sorry when Mark leaves this comic, even though it's (if I understand correctly) to launch a second Captain America title.

More on this week's comics:

Cavewoman: Missing Link #2
by Bradley Walton and Jim Schumaker
published by Basement Comics, black and white, $2.95
rating: So-so.

This is a spin-off of the Budd Root's Cavewoman series, and like most spin-offs (spins-off?), it somehow fails to capture the spark of the original. The art (particularly the dinosaurs) isn't as detailed and energetic. For $2.95 it just isn't sufficient for me.

Gunsmith Cats: Goldie vs. Misty #3 of 7
by Kenichi Sonoda
published by Dark Horse, black & white, $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

Despite being a much faster read than Cavewoman: Missing Link, this was much more satisfying. I've often thought that of the people currently working in action-adventure comics, the only ones who really manage to pack the visceral excitement of a big-budget Hollywood action picture into the comic form are Mark Waid and Ron Garney on Captain America, and Kenichi Sonoda on Gunsmith Cats. When Sonoda draws motion, things really seem to move and have weight. Cars tilt as they corner (with appropriate screeching sound-effects), guns (almost obsessively detailed) ratchet and recoil...this would make a great live-action series, except that it would almost be redundant.

Today we'll wrap up this week's comics (this was a light week for me).

Replacement God #4
by Zander Cannon
published by Image, black and white, $2.95
rating: Keen

I don't know. I used to enjoy the heck out of this (and I still enjoy the heck out of the Knute's Escapes back-up feature), but the past couple of issues have left me feeling rather lost. I mean, I've been reading it all along, since back when it was published by Amaze Ink, but I have no idea who the character who's the new God of Death is--I should know, I suppose, but I don't. I can't even really remember how Knute got himself in the situation we find him in at the beginning of this issue.
    I think one problem that I have with the book is that prior to Knute escaping the castle, he was ingenious and dynamic, with a never-say-die attitude that took him through something over three hundred failed escape attempts (and this version of Knute is still visible in Knute's Escapes), but since then he has become almost entirely passive, being pushed around helplessly from one event to another. To me that makes him a much less interesting and sympathetic protagonist; I really think that he needs to do something to take charge of his life, or at least make the attempt. Otherwise I may just give up on this book.

Stevie Bear #8
by Ken Harrison
published by Belfax Studios, black and white, $2.95
rating: So-so.

This is another black & white independent that started with great promise, but lately has been dragging. The major problem with this book, at least to me, is that there are only twenty pages of story--and three of those are nigh unreadable text. I say nigh unreadable because a) the type-face is too light for me to read comfortably and b) as good a cartoonist as Ken Harrison is (and I think he's very good), and as funny as some of his dialogue is, as a writer of prose he needs a lot of practice. What usually happens is that I end up skimming, or skipping entirely, the text piece, only to find out later that some important plot development was buried in it. I'm not sure why the text pieces are there (to reduce the work-load as far as art? To cram more plot in than would comfortably fit otherwise?), but I resent them in what is a short enough book as it is.
   On the other hand, I do still like the characters and the artwork, so I'm likely to give this a few more issues--perhaps to the end of the current story-line--before I chuck it over.

Let's look at:

The Strange Files of Fremont Jones
by Dianne Day
Bantam, $4.99
rating: Neat-O.

Caroline Fremont Jones is a young lady from Boston, who in 1905 decides to seek her independence and fortune by moving (without letting her father and new step-mother know) to San Francisco and setting herself up as a typist. She drops the Caroline, and calls herself Fremont Jones. It is while she's engaged in her new occupation that she becomes involved with mysterious Chinatown tongs, possible Russian spies, and a paranoid (or is he?) author styling himself Edgar Allen Partridge who claims that his bizarre stories of werewolves, witches, and demonic possession are all true.
     Fremont Jones is an engaging character, and the period-feel of San Francisco just prior to the great quake is interesting and enjoyable. The mysteries are almost incidental (just as well, because they rely slightly heavily more on coincidence and Fremont's over-active imagination than brillliant detective-work). All in all, I recommend this, and plan to read the sequel, Fire and Fog, as soon as I can clear some of the backlog of books stacked up around here..

Saturday I went to see Titanic, and I liked it a lot. Certain parts of it weren't particularly plausible, but I suppose that in some respects, few of the survivors stories are all that plausible, since survival was in itself a minor miracle. What the movie does do, however, is to give a very good feel for the sheer size of the ship, and the magnitude of the disaster, in a way that totally separates it from being just another disaster flick along the lines of The Poseidon Adventure or any of the recent spate of special-effects extravaganzas such as Volcano (gotta admit, though, that living in LA, the ad-line "The Coast is toast" has a certain kick); for me, it had a heavy emotional impact, and a real sense of tragedy that can be hard to achieve when the outcome is known in advance. Much has been made of the cost of the movie, and the studio vows that it will never make such an expensive movie again if it can help it, but at least in Titanic (again separating it from many of its big-budget bretheren), the special effects were used to good purpose: there's almost no sense of any of the shots being done for the sake of "Gosh, wow, look what we can do!"
     My companions thought that the love story on which the narration hangs went totally over the top, and tended to drag the movie down, but sloppy sentimentalist that I am, I ate it up. I think that divorced from the rest of the film, the love story part of it would have made a decent story in its own right (and given the overall length of Titanic, that probably could have been done).
     Highly recommended, in fact, I may just go see it again, if I can find another group of friends who haven't seen it...

The other night I was flipping through the channels when I stumbled across one of my favorite movies of all time (which I notice I forgot to include in the page of my favorites), Destry Rides Again, so of course I had to sit down and watch it. Destry Rides Again is, at least in my opinion, the greatest Western ever filmed. There are those who would say that honor goes to something like Stagecoach, or The Searchers, or even The Magnificent Seven (although why one would want to watch that instead of The Seven Samurai, I don't know, myself). What can I say? They're wrong.
     Destry Rides Again stars a young Jimmy Stewart, Marlene Dietrich (as Frenchie, the bar-room singer), and a host of my favorite character actors, including Billy Gilbert (as the bar-keep Loupgerou "I keep setting them up, and you keep drinking them down; I keep setting them up, and you keep drinking them down. This is getting monotonous!") and Mischa Auer (as the Russian cowboy-wannabe everyone calls Callahan after his first wife's husband). Stewart plays young Tom Destry, Jr. son of the late Tom Destry, the rootin'est, tootin'est, six-gun shootin'est lawman that ever rode the West. When the evil land-baron Kent (Brian Donleavy) and the corrupt mayor have Sherrif Keogh of the little town of Bottleneck killed, and replace him with Tom Destry's former side-kick Washington Dimmsdale, now the town drunk, Wash calls in Tom Destry, expecting someone cut in his father's image. What he gets is Jimmy Stewart at his most soft-spoken and folksy (every incident reminds him of a story that happened to a friend of his), a man who doesn't carry guns because he doesn't believe in them ("My father was wearing his guns when he was killed--shot in the back. They didn't do him much good, now did they?"). Wash is going to give up in despair and send young Tom back, but Tom has other plans--he doesn't believe in guns, but he believes in Law & Order...on his terms, where you don't make martyrs out of cheap little crooks by engaging them in gunfights. The story of how he wins over the people of Bottleneck, and Frenchie, but finally has to strap on his guns again is one I can watch again and again and again. And, unlike many of my otherwise favorite movies (e.g. the Marx Brothers' films), the movie doesn't stop dead when the obligatory musical numbers come on--in fact Dietrich's spirited (and often parodied) rendition of such ditties as "Little Joe" ("Little Joe, Little Joe, why whatever became of him I don't know. Well, he sure did like his liquor, and it would have got his ticker, but the sherrif he was quicker....YAHOO!"), "See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have", "That Look That Leaves Me Weak", knocks the socks of similar efforts in lesser films. In fact, the studio received soemthing like 17,000 letters inquirring asking about the music to Destry Rides Again (more than all but one other film, the name of which escapes me at the moment, in studio history).
     If you've never seen Destry Rides Again, you owe it to yourself to go rent it on video. There's never been any Western to match it, and there probably never will be. YAHOO!

Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series is one of my favorites among recent SF&F (my favorite is probably Terry Pratchett's Discworld-- the only one I buy in hardback because I can't wait the six months or so for the paperback to come out). The series is about the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, brilliant but physically handicapped member of the aristocracy of Barrayar--a somewhat backward planet that has within living memory reclaimed its sovereignty from the expansionist Cetagandan empire. His dwarfish stature and fragile bones are the legacy of a terrorist nerve-gas attack on his mother while his father was Regent of Barrayar. Unfortunately for Miles, not only does this leave him at a physical disadvantage, but due to Barrayar's backwards attitudes towards "mutants" he is often the object of fear and derision, and veiled and not-so-veiled assumptions that whatever he has achieved is the result of pure nepotism. Small wonder, then, that when early in his career (having washed out of the entrance exams for the Barrayaran Imperial Military Service Academy by breaking both his legs attempting to run the obstacle course) he more-or-less by accident fast-talks his way into the command of a group of space-going mercenaries under the invented persona of Admiral Miles Naismith (his mother's maiden name), and having parlayed that role into admission to the Academy and eventually active duty in Barrayar's Intelligence Corps, he clings to that role, and to the people who accept him as Admiral Naismith based on his manifest talents, with a fierceness that borders on desperation.
    The most recent paperback (not counting a repackaging of some of the earlier books into an omnibus edition) is Memory, in which Miles, terrified of losing his career because of medical problems, does something very foolish...and sinks his career anyway. Bujold's talent for making Miles a very sympathetic character, even when wallowing in self-pity, is extraordinary, and in some ways actually makes this a hard book to read, at least in the beginning. I ended up feeling so badly for Miles that I almost didn't finish, which would have been a mistake, for with the help of his friends, and a given a problem to solve in helping his former boss and mentor, who seems to be losing his mind to an Alzheimer's-like syndrome, Miles starts to recover, and resolves things in true Miles fashion.
    One of the things that I most admire about Lois McMaster Bujold's writing is that she's not afraid to take chances with her characters. It's easy for writers, particularly of popular series, to get stuck in a rut, with every story ending with things returned to status-quo-ante; the writer who is willing to change things, and take the series in a new direction, is comparatively rare, and I think Lois McMaster Bujold does an outstanding job.

One of the traditional signs of the new year is the appearance of lists; something about starting a fresh calendar triggers the retrospective and prospective list-maker in many of us. I still haven't gotten around to combing through my comics for the best of last year, but I thought I'd share some of my hopes for the new year with you all.

Creators whose work I would like to see more of in 1998 (pay attention, publishers--if you want more of my money, these are people you should be thinking about hiring):

Writers

Tony Isabella. I would love to read any series by Tony, but I'd particularly like it if he were given free rein on any of the big-name DC characters who seem to me to be drifting from one stupid event to another, devoid of any heart, passion, or moral compass. It's gotten to the point where, except for a couple of odd-ball projects like Young Heroes in Love, I can't even read DC anymore.

Robert L. Washington III. I was disappointed to learn that Kurt Busiek was leaving Ninjak, until I learned that Robert Washington was taking it on--then I was disappointed all over again when they cancelled the title. I loved his Static, and I'd really like to see him get the opportunity to deal with this kind of material again.

Jeff Lang. Okay, disclaimer time: Unlike the above two, whom I have never met, Jeff is a friend of mine, so I may be biased. I may be, but I'm not. Jeff is a damned good writer, and Roadways, as well as his Nanny Kate pieces in Negative Burn stand witness to that. I'm hoping that his recent Grendel Tales trilogy The Devil's Apprentice (pretty much the only Grendel story I've ever really liked) will get him some of the recognition he deserves.

I was going to say Mark Evanier, but now that Groo's coming back, I'm satisfied.

I'd also list Len Strazewski, but as I understand it he's pretty much given up on writing for comics.

More creators whose work I would like to see more of in 1998 (pay attention, publishers--if you want more of my money, these are people you should be thinking about hiring):

Artists

Neil Vokes - Neil's been one of my favorites since I saw the (vastly under-rated) Jonny Demon mini-series that he and Kurt Busiek did; his recent work on the ill-fated Ninjak, and on Superman Adventures (the only Superman book I can read regularly--but that's a column for another day) was even better.

Steve Lieber - The problem I have with Steve's work--the only problem I have with Steve's work--is that except when he's paired up with Jeff Lang (e.g. Grendel Tales: The Devil's Apprentice), he's working on projects that have no appeal to me (or to anyone else, for that matter, e.g. Hawkman). I would love to be able to get a monthly dose of his artwork, but writer-fixated as I am, that means pairing him with a writer whose work I can read month-in and month-out.

This week's reading:

Akiko #21
by Mark Crilley
published by Sirius, b&w, $2.50
rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

My, my, my, how the time flies. It's hard to believe that Akiko has already reached issue 21, and shows no sign of flagging. Akiko is an absolute delight, and is on my short list of candidates for best American comic-book--it's one of the few comics I can think of that consistently, issue after issue, accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, with no false notes or hesitations. Every issue, from front cover through the main story, to the letters page, back up story, and on out the back cover, is all of a piece, and absolutely brilliant.
     This issue is narrated by Spuckler (for those of you who aren't yet readers of Akiko [shame on you!], Spuckler is, well let's let Mark Crilley describe him: "Spuckler Boach is the most heroic of Akiko's friends from the planet Smoo: always dashing in to save the day, heedless of impossible odds, fearless in the face of certain doom." The characters are currently sitting around in a field, swapping stories (the last two issues were Mr. Beeba's turn), and now it's Spuckler's turn to tell a tale, which is 100% pure Spuck. I think I read this about three times straight through before I turned to the next comic in my pile.

Bone #30
by Jeff Smith
published by Cartoon Books, b&w, $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

After what seemed like a long, dry stretch stuck in the town of Barrel Haven watching Phoney manipulate the townspeople, and Thorn fall apart, the story is finally moving again, and in the direction of excitement (with a leavening of humor) that made me fall in love with Bone in the first place. Hair's-breadth escapes and baby possums! Yeah! That's what the story needed! I'm finally really looking forward to the next issue again, and it feels good.

First we'll have a pop quiz, and then on to some miscellaneous stuff.

POP QUIZ TIME!

1. If you were Jughead and you craved a hamburger, where would you head?

2. If you were a Panda, what horrible pun would you be abetting by bursting an inflated paper bag behind Ranma Saotome's head?

3. If you were Reuben Flagg, what noise would tell you that someone had just fired off some Somnambutol (TM)?

4. If you were "Eyes" Eisenstein, what song would haunt your nightmares?

5. If you were Woozy Winks, and you, Etta Candy, and "Doiby" Dickles were at the Sidekicks Club for your regular Monday night poker game, a call from Jim Corrigan would mean that who was going to be late?

6. If you were Smith Brown Jones, alien accountant, phoning home to remind your partner to feed your cat,to whom would you be talking?

BONUS QUESTION:
7. If you had just moved to ASTRO CITY in Vol 2 #1, then who might you have taken your kids to see play on the Esplanade the previous Fourth of July?

I'll post the answers tomorrow.

If you haven't seen Tony Isabella's column for yesterday, you should check it out--it was originally published in the Comics Buyer's Guide #1249 (the October 24, 1997) issue, and contains the results of the survey that he did in cyber-space of readers' choices for creative teams on Marvel comics (assuming that Marvel stripped back to only certain comics (e.g. only one X-Men Book), and revived others (e.g. Nick Fury: Agent of Shield, Patsy Walker, Two-Gun Kid). Along with the results he includes his own choices and commentary. BTW, if you're wondering who the wacko is who picked Rumiko Takahashi for Millie the Model, and Kenichi Sonoda for Nick Fury: Agent of Shield...that would be me. I admit that Takahashi would be kind of a stretch for Millie, but I don't really have a feel for what it ought to be about; on the other hand, anyone who's ever read Gunsmith Cats or Riding Bean should know precisely what makes Sonoda a perfect fit for the high-tech, hi-action spy adventure Nick Fury.

Finally, we have a review for today:

Transmetropolitan #7
by Warren Ellis, Darrick Robertson, and Rodney Ramos
pub. DC (Helix), color, $2.50
rating: Neat-O.

I think this is the first time since issue #1 that this really strikes me as a science-fiction comic, and not an urban rant with with near-future parodic window dressing. I'm a big fan of real science fiction. By "real" I intend to make a distinction between fiction set in the future that makes some attempt to work through some of the consequences of the differences that it assumes between the present and the future, and fiction that while nominally set in the future is actually just a present-day or historical story with some window-dressing. Star Wars, for example, is not actual science fiction by this standard, since you could substitute a fantasy setting with castles and dragons, or the American old West, without really changing anything. Star Trek is real sf, because (even when poorly done) it makes some attempt to work out the plausible consequences, at least for the duration of a particular episode, of some of the technology or cultural differences that are created.
     By this yardstick, Transmet #1 was real sf, because of some of the things that it tosses out about, for instance, the middle-class raiding the garbage of the poor, since the "makers" that create all their goods need raw materials, and only the poor still throw anything out (they don't have makers to feed it to, and the rich have self-contained makers that have a virtually endless supply of hyper-dense material to work from). Besides being an amusing idea, that took some thought. On the other hand, the stuff in the next couple of issues about the people transforming themselves into Roswell-style aliens through plastic surgery, and the confrontation between the followers of the half-baked messiah and the law-and-order government is yesterday's news. Self-mutilation wasn't the particular bag of David Koresh and co., but it could just as well have been for the purposes of a story. I don't think I need to elaborate on where the "Spider Watches TV" and "Spider Beats Up the Evangelists" issues fit in the scheme of things.
     So, Transmet #7 is finally back in the realm of spinning scenarios, and it is good. The idea of downloading ones consciousness into a computer system is old hat, but the play between Spider's reaction to it and his assistant Channon's is meaty stuff--both reactions are very human, both represent coherent philosophical stances on what it means to be alive and to be human, and neither is presented as a straw man. If any of you have read it, and have an opinion about whether you agree with Spider or with Channon, I'd be interested in hearing it.

See you tomorrow!

Review:

The Invincible Iron Man #2
by Kurt Busiek, and Sean Chen
pub. Marvel, color, $1.99
rating: Neat-O.

While so far this isn't quite as good as I had hoped it would be (my hopes where Kurt Busiek's work is concerned are admittedly slightly over-inflated), it's quite good. Good enough, for instance, to have me reading and caring about Iron Man for the first time in...gah, almost twenty years, I suppose. I think that the last time I read Iron Man, the Dreadnoughts (which he encounters at the end of this issue) were just being introduced. What can I say, it's a trip down memory lane.
     In fact, I think that if this book has an identifiable flaw, it's that Kurt seems a little too eager to tie the current story lines into the previous continuity; I think that, having decided that he was not going to reboot the series, he wants to establish clearly and immediately that this is a direct continuation of the pre-Heroes Reborn title (although what happened to the Tony Stark is replaced by the 19-year-old Tony Stark story that was, I think, the last thing going on in this title prior to the Great Experiment, I don't know). Now, don't get me wrong--I'm all for keeping the established continuity, at least as much of it as will fit given the inevitable contradictions that accumulate from so many writers over so much time, but it may be...I don't know...just a bit too much, too soon. I'd sort have liked to have had an issue or two centered around Stark setting up the new business and re-establishing himself with the supporting cast before jetting off to Switzerland to play in the snow with the goofy Seige Engineers (C'mon, energy weapons in the shape of crossbows, just because they're engineered in Switzerland? Give me a break. Next we'll see Frenchmen throwing high-tech croissants) with the Dreadnoughts coming up next issue.
     Oh, well, that's just a quibble, and I know it. Overall, I'm pretty darned pleased to be able to add this to my monthly pull list, and look forward to more.

Answers to the Pop quiz:

1. If you were Jughead and you craved a hamburger, where would you head?
Pop's Choklit Shop, c.f. Archie Comics

2. If you were a Panda, what horrible pun would you be abetting by bursting an inflated paper bag behind Ranma Saotome's head?
"I'm Ranma's Pop! Get it?"--c.f. Ranma 1/2, Vol 1, p.183

3. If you were Reuben Flagg, what noise would tell you that someone had just fired off some Somnambutol (TM)?
POP-a-OOOOOOM-Mow! Mow!--c.f. American Flagg!

4. If you were "Eyes" Eisenstein, what song would haunt your nightmares?
Pop Goes the Weasel--c.f. Astro City, Vol I #3

5. If you were Woozy Winks, and you, Etta Candy, and "Doiby" Dickles were at the Sidekicks Club for your regular Monday night poker game, a call from Jim Corrigan would mean that who was going to be late?
Percival Popp, Super-Cop--c.f. The Spectre

6. If you were Smith Brown Jones, alien accountant, phoning home to remind your partner to feed your cat,to whom would you be talking?
P.O.P.S.--c.f. Smith, Brown, Jones: Alien Accountant

BONUS QUESTION:
7. If you had just moved to ASTRO CITY in Vol 2 #1, then who might you have taken your kids to see play on the Esplanade the previous Fourth of July?
The Boston Pops

I know you're out there; I can see you clicking. (Unless that's just web-spiders crawling along...) I may be spoiled by the instantaneous and abundant feedback I get on Compuserve, but I've received remarkably little feedback on this website (you can tell, because I'm remarking on it). So far I've gotten one, count them one, letter--granted it was from world-famous letterhack Carl Pietrantonio, so it certainly counts for something--plus the two generous mentions on in Tony Isabella's Online Tips. If you have questions or comments, let's hear them. Did you like the quiz? Would you like to see more of that sort of thing? Are there particular comics that you would like to see me review?

Today we'll take a look at:

Thunderbolts #12
by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley
pub. Marvel, color, $2.99 (double-sized)
Rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

If I sometimes have overly optimistic expectations of comics written by Kurt Busiek, it's because of comics like this one (and Astro City, and Ninjak, and...) Just when I thought that Kurt couldn't possibly top himself in terms of the "My gosh! What's gonna happen next?!" factor, he hands us something like this. This was just an amazing issue, from start to finish, and neatly rounds off the first story arc. I was one of the people who was completely suckered by the first issue--I had no idea that the Thunderbolts were the Masters of Evil, and I was floored. Ever since then I've been marvelling at how Kurt managed to keep all the plates in the air, as Zemo got closer to his goal, the Thunderbolts got sucked farther and farther into living the roles they were playing, suspicions among certain of the remaining heroes mounted, until it seemed like it was going to be a neck-and-neck race to disaster. Of course it was going to blow up at some point, but how? Were any of the Thunderbolts going to try to go straight, and who? Would Zemo lose control, or would the returning heroes expose the frauds? And how would Thunderbolts the title continue once the scam was blown? I trusted Kurt would have an answer, but I couldn't for the life of me guess what it would be...and here we are at issue 12, with Zemo defeated...and I still don't have a clue what's going to happen next. In an age when most super-hero comics seem like a broken record (I wonder how long it will be before that simile becomes incomprehensible?), and even the best of them only offer a new take on an old idea, or a well-crafted retelling of a familiar tale, Kurt Busiek's Thunderbolts continues to surprise and delight.

One of my current favorite mystery series is Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian mysteries. They are invariably holiday themed (although it's not really an intrusive gimmick in that while they take place around a particular holiday, the mysteries themselves seldom more than tangentially related to the particular holiday), and often set in or around Philadelphia, where I lived for three years. The hero is Gregor Demarkian, retired founder of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit, and described by the fictional version of the Philadelphia Inquirer as "The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot", a description which embarasses him on a number of levels. One of the things that I like most about Jane Haddam's characters is that they actually have a number of levels on which it's possible to be embarrassed; indeed, I would be perfectly willing to read a Gregor Demarkian novel without a mystery in it at all. Simply reading about Demarkian, his neighbors, and his lady friend Bennis Hannaford would be sufficient.
     The first book in the series is

Not a Creature Was Stirring
by Jane Haddam
pub. Bantam, (c) 1990 This book introduces Gregor Demarkian at loose ends. He's retired from 20 years in the FBI, where he was the head of the Behavioral Sciences Department, charged with tracking and capturing serial killers; his beloved wife Barbara died two years previously after a long battle with cancer. He's moved back to Cavanaugh Street, the poor Philadelphia neighborhood in which he grew up, and is somewhat disoriented by the fact that while it is (somewhat surprisingly) still an Armenian neighborhood, it is now an upscale Armenian neighborhood. "He'd been ready to find Cavanaugh street changed into a Hispanic neighborhood. He'd been prepared to accept it as a battleground for teenage gangs, a strip for prostitutes, a drug bazaar, a burned-out hulk. He'd steeled himself against just about anything, except the sight of Lida Kazanjian Arkmanian in a three-quarter-length chinchilla coat."
     Demarkian then meets one of the characters who will become a regular in the series, Father Tibor of the local Armenian church, who tells him of a peculiar proposition. Robert Hannaford, patriarch of one of the wealthy old Main Line families, a cruel and unpleasant man, has offered the church $100,000 for aid to the Armenian refugees, in return for a favor. The favor is that Father Tibor will persuade the famous detective Gregor Demarkian to go and have dinner with Hannaford in Hannaford's fortress-like mansion, Engine House. Of course, this being a murder mystery, Gregor Demarkian keeps his appointment, only to find that Hannaford has been murdered, and all of his adult children, home for the holiday, have good reason to do it.
     I've re-read most of the books in the series several times (and in fact, having picked up Not a Creature Was Stirring in order to write this review, have found myself sucked into reading it again), and strongly recommend it to mystery fans everywhere. The hardback is out of print, but the paperback is available from Amazon.com and ships in two to three days.

Thanks to those of you who dropped me a line after my plaintive plea for feedback. Thanks especially to Dave Tallan (co-publisher of Galaxion from Helikon Press) for letting me know via E-mail that he'd responded on the Feedback page--once I was sure that somebody had used that I was able to figure out that I was doing something wrong in accessing the feedback, and once I had done that I found a number of responses that I had missed. To show my appreciation, I went out and bought issue numbers 4 and 5 of Galaxion, which I'll review later this week. And, yes, Russell, anyone who reads the page because I sat them down at my computer and called it up for them is chopped liver.

Animaniacs #35
by various
pub. DC, color, $1.95
rating: Keen

I don't usually buy Animaniacs, since, unlike Pinky and the Brain, I don't think that the comic usually quite hits the humor of the cartoon. I couldn't resist the Freakazoid guest appearance, though, and it paid off. Actually, the story "Tour de Freak" (written by Jennifer Moore and Sean Carolan, pencilled by Leonardo Batic) worked better as a Freakazoid story than it did as a Warner Bros. and their sister Dot. Dot spends way too much time drooling over Freakazoid, but Freakazoid, Cosgrove, and particularly the Lobe all seem right on the money. I'd buy a Freakazoid comic in a New York second.
     The second story, "Move it or Lose it" (written by Bill Matheny, pencilled by Horacio Saavedra) demonstrates nothing more than that Bill Matheny has no idea what makes Slappy Squirrel funny. Let me offer the following pointer: The aggressor is the villain. If Slappy moves in with Walter Wolf, and he tries to do her in, then he's the villain, and what she does in retaliation is funny (or at least it could be). If he tries to get away from her, and she dynamites him, then she's the villain. Not funny.

     As for the final story, "Doctor Boo" (a Chicken Boo as Doctor Who story), I've never found Chicken Boo funny, even in the cartoon. It's possible that if people do find Boo funny, they might find this funny. They probably won't find the mis-registered coloring much more readable than I did, though.

Super Information Hijinks: Reality Check #8
by Rosearik Rikki Simons & Tavisha Wolfgarth
pub. Sirius, color (lots and lots of it), $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

After a six-month gap, I think I can be forgiven in wondering if this comic had been cancelled. Fortunately, it's not, and it's as cute as ever. I particularly like the introduction in this issue of Mr. Bunwah, Virtual Pet Gone Horribly Wrong (as his business-card states); I'm not as sure that I'm thrilled with the introduction of Catreece's sister, Mimi. One thing that I've always liked about the portrayal of Catreece is that despite her humanoid appearance (and ability to talk) when in the Virtual Reality environment, she's always been very much a cat. Mimi, in contrast, doesn't seem like much of a cat at all, except when she's arguing with Catreece. Her easy familiarity with the human perspective on things, and her ability as a programmer makes Catreece's ditziness seem less like an alien mind-set and priorities and more like, well, ditziness.
    I also think that Rosearik has taken the artwork as far as computer rendering and color can comfortably go, and beyond. The 3D modelling in this issue didn't really do anything for me--I prefer Tavisha's illustrations; just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should.
     On the other hand, I still thought that reading this was a blast. My cat, Machiavelli, seemed to like it, too. Or at least, he lay on my chest as I read it and didn't try to chew on the pages. I hope they can stick with the new bi-monthly schedule.

JLA: Year One (Earth Zero) #3
by Waid, Augustyn, and Kitson
DC, color, $1.95
rating: Neat-O.

There's a lot to like in this issue, from T.O. Morrow's first attempt to build a super-human to take out the nascent Justice League, to J'onn J'onnz's joke on the rest of the team, to the way that Hal and Barry work as a team, to, well, you get the picture. Where it starts to lose me, however, is when the strings to current continuity start to show--Aquaman as "a very angry man", who is labeled a superhero just by being seen with the Flash. Okay, you're probably tired of hearing me whine that this isn't my Aquaman, so I won't say it. What I will say is that this isn't a character I like, or like reading about. There's a good reason that I don't read the Peter David version of Aquaman (I mean, besides the fact that I've never liked more than an issue or two of any Peter David comic), and I'd rather not read about the younger version of the same jerk. I've given up completely on all of DC's current superhero comics (except Flash and Young Heroes in Love), so reminding me of what it is I dislike about those comics is not the way to my heart. That's a pretty downbeat way of looking at a comic that basically I really enjoy, and give my second-highest rating, but it's a particular source of irritation to me. If it wasn't for Batman and Robin Adventures (or whatever it's being changed into), Superman Adventures, and the excellent The Batman Adventures: The Lost Years, I'd think it was the characters, and that it was just that my tastes had changed, but no--these are still the best dang archetypes in the whole of super-herodom, it's just that the current writers haven't a clue what to do with them. Well, assuming that I'm part of the their target audience--a pretty big assumption, I grant, but judging by sales figures, whatever audience they think they're targeting isn't buying it either.
    Ah, I'm just in a grumpy mood: I need more sleep. Buy this book, it's good.

No Need For Tenchi Part 4 #2
by Hitoshi Okuda
Viz, b&w, $2.95
rating: Keen

I forget from issue to issue what exactly is supposed to be going on here (although this issue thankfully contains a bit of a recap), but since I primarily read it for the character interaction, it's not a big problem. In fact, I would probably rate this comic higher than I do, if I wasn't convinced that you have to have seen at least some of the videos in order to have any appreciation of it.

Drakuun: The Revenge of Gustav #6 of 6
by Johji Manabe
Dark Horse, b&w, $2.95
rating: Keen

Dark Horse labeling this #6 of 6 doesn't, of course, change the fact that this issue resolves nothing, and in fact ends in mid-battle. I haven't any idea who they think they're fooling. Do retailers actually up their orders on the first of each of the so-called mini-series? Do readers actually think that #1 of whatever is supposed to be a good jumping-on point? Oh, well.
     That being said, this was a pretty good issue, full of tension and excitement, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this is resolved.

Galaxion #4 & #5
by Tara Jenkins
Helikon Comics, b&w, $2.75
Rating: Keen.

Interesting science-fiction story, pleasantly illustrated in a style vaguely reminiscent of Wandering Star by way of Starblazers, or vice versa. The premise is that the starship Galaxion, only the third hyper-jump capable ship ever built, has landed in what seems to be an alternate universe after its first jump. On the nearby Earthlike planet they discover the wreckage of the Hiawatha, the first jump ship that mysteriously disappeared years previously. One thing that is never explained (at least in these two issues) is why exactly after the first of these large, expensive ships vanishes, and the second ship returns crippled, the authorities insist on building a third, and why do so many otherwise bright people sign on as crew? Or is that like asking why women kept marrying Henry VIII?
    The mood is very Trek-esque, which could be good or bad, depending on your feelings about Trek. On the one hand, it makes for a very familiar-feeling vision of the future; on the other hand...it makes for a very familiar-feeling vision of the future. I expect that fans of the Star Trek franchise, particularly of Voyager, will eat it up. If that seems like damning it with faint praise, let me make it clear that I think that this is clearly better than 90% of the ST:NG, DS-9, or Voyager shows that I've happened to see. Just about every character that we're introduced to in these issues strikes me as realistic, human, and potentially someone I'd like to read about.
    The only real problem I have with these books is keeping the characters straight. Despite the fact that Tara Jenkins draws them with distinctive faces, with all of them but one wearing the same uniform (well, they away-team wear a darker color, unless that's a lighting effect), and with there being so many of them, I found myself having to constantly refer back to the "Cheat Sheet" on the inside cover. The Cheat Sheet is nice, but it's not a substitute for being able to recognize the characters in context. I really think that the books would read a lot easier if the characters addressed eachother by name more often, and there was a greater variation in the uniforms.
    If you'd like to take a look at Galaxion for yourself, the first issue is available online at http://www.interlog.com/~dtallan/galaxion.

Astro City #12
by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson
Image, color, $2.50
rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

Astro City is easily the best super-hero comic coming out today, bar none, and this issue is a clear demonstration of why that is so, as Kurt Busiek turns what could have been a straightforward and entertaining enough tale of time-travel into a meditation on conflicting duties. In this case, the encounter with the twisted parodies of Jack-in-the-box that claim to be his future sons that occured last issue, spur Jack to consider the duty he owes his unborn son versus the duty he owes to society, and how his father (who was Jack-in-the-box before him) chose, and how it affected his life. And, in masterful Kurt Busiek fashion, he manages to resolve it in a way that is surprising (at least to me), while not being in the way slightest trite or pat. Jack's choice is a hard one, and it may have hard consequences, but it has a chance of working out, for Jack, his wife and baby, for the society he serves, and for his successor. And after all, there's always hope. Well, there is.

Captain America #3
by Mark Waid and Ron Garney
Marvel, color, $1.99
rating: Neat-O.

Having called Astro City "clearly the best super-hero comic book being published, bar none" yesterday, what does that leave Captain America? Well, I guess being clearly the second-best super-hero comic being published, bar none, isn't too bad. This was actually kind of an off issue for Waid and Garney, in that it was merely great, and not mind-blowing. The whole fight through the Smithsonian, while a neat idea, was a little too--I don't know--stagy for me. It was a cool enough idea, without the added somewhat silly conceit that the Hydra agents would booby-trap the various exhibits with traps that kept to the theme of the exhibit (the Chicago Fire shoots flames, the Great San Francisco Quake collapses in rubble, and so on). The new "Supreme Hydra" is, I think, the first one ever to display any sense of humor, even if it is pretty sick and sophomoric (if that isn't redundant)--I hope that he's not going to end up the perennial enemy of this series: Cap deserves someone better, with more gravitas. Still, for rollicking-rock-em-sock-em action, this comic absolutely cannot be beat.

Avengers #2
by Kurt Busiek and George Perez
Marvel, color, $1.99
Rating: Neat-O.

Much like in issue #1, this issue seems more like a prelude to the series than the start of it. Stage one (last issue), gather all the candidates for the new team. Stage two (this issue), start exploring what it means to be an Avenger, to the team and to the individual. Stage three (presumably next issue), see who makes the cut. Now, there is some truly excellent character examination/definition work going on here, for all the "Snap out of it! Remember who you are!" cliche: Captain America being the first to shake off Morgan le Fay's spell, his turning immediately to Hawkeye as the obvious next candidate, establishing both the one of the central components of Hawkeye's personality (according to Kurt, anyway) and Hawkeye's appreciation of Cap's recognition of that; Hawkeye's dead on assessment of Tony Stark's being too into "the whole lord of the manor" thing to be able to shake his new spurious role. I could go on, but you get the point. There is a whole lot of work being done here to quickly establish the key elements of the character's personalities after years and years of many of the characters being little more than names and costumes to push around as plot devices, or if not quite so bad as that, at the very least suffering several changes of direction under different writers and editors. It's a necessary step, and Kurt does a lot to integrate it into the story and make it fun, but it still gives me rather the feeling of an overture...until the very last page.
     The curtain is up.
     "On with the show, this is it!"