This Week's Comics

I bought four comics this week, so I might as well tell people about them.

First up,

Avengers: The Initiative # 1

(No Pic Available--Look at Marvel.com because I can't save it)

This story was originally going to be a mini-series and has now become an on-going. Overall though, is it good enough for that to happen? Probably not. The art was enjoyable at times, but also horrible to look at. Add to that the story is poor. I read it, and was glad to be done reading it. Why does War Machine look so lame? The colorist though, of this series, is great! I love them, and they give what the story and pencils are lacking. At that I can also say the Inker was good, even though what they inked was cruddy.

52 Week Forty-Eight

Another week. This time we get the update on the Question/Batwoman situation as we see the new Question appear on the scene to save Gotham? They never really said if the situation was over. Writing was good as always. Art was really bad. I know this has been going on 48 weeks and the artists are always changing, but this has got to be the first week in all 48 where I just have to say the art is terrible. The only good page was when we see the Question in all their glory for the first time ever. That should be good artwise, and it was, so thanks for that. Coming up soon is the World War III event in Week Fifty, and then it all ends in 52, so that's less than a month away. I can't believe it's been a year. I think this marks the year anniversary of when I returned to collecting comics.

Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America

Wolverine--Denial

How does the Marvel Universe respond to the death of Cap? Through the 5 stages of grieving. First up is Denial, and the character in spotlight is Wolverine and his response to the death. Jeph Loeb writes, and as we learn here, the only good story Jeph Loeb can write is Batman: Husk, and the first volume of Superman: For Tomorrow (Was that him? I can't recall. Maybe it was just a book Jim Lee worked on.) I was highly anticipating this issue, but instead what I get is a story much longer than it really had to be, with characters whose reason to be there had to be explained more than once (basically Wolverine had to keep convincing some of the characters why he need them there, and this goes for more than one character.) Also, Wolverine couldn't just break in? He could get up there in no time to see the body. Why he had to involve Doc Strange makes no sense. Also, he brings Daredevil with him as a human lie detector, when he can do that all on his own using his nose. There was no reason for Daredevil. Wolverine knows how to see through BS. The art was good. It is good because Lenil did not have to draw women, because he sucks at that in all books aside from Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk apparently. Love the art and the color though. And ink.

At least I got the cool cover this time...

Lastly,

Justice League of America # 7

Finally this arc comes to a close. I hate Meltzer. I do. I hate the writer. He is trying something new here and doing the usual team-building exercise in reverse. This is what New Avengers did, and it worked there. Why people keep saying he is the first to do it is BS. Anyway, no one liked New Avengers, but I did. JLA is bad. It is clunky, hard to follow in narrative, and the reason for that is too many characters. But that's odd, JLA is a book that needs many characters. He puts way too many narrative boxes together hoping our minds can handle the thousand different colors I saw in the book. We all know he ran out of colours to use for corresponding characters. How many shades are there? Meltzer and Benes will find them!

Anyway, this book must have been missing a page because at one point it makes no sense. This happens at the same time as a pull-out page of art. First of all, charging me $3.50 instead of the usual $2.99 sucked, and I have this lame fold-out to blame. Waste of money. Anyway, I also had the deilenma of choosing only one of the covers. The above picture is the two covers together, but cut in the middle of Batman and choose the left side and that is the cover I got.

So, all I learned this week is that Marvel and DC love shipping team-books with covers that are too big to fit the whole team so they make two and then make you choose which you want because like you have money to get both. That, and DC sucked this week, while Marvel is borderline thanks to the cool artwork. Still, that JLA cover is cool...So they both get equal win today.