I believe I mentioned before that I used to send private emails to friends reviewing the week's comics. I did it a couple of times here, but it's hard to keep up when, as I've also mentioned, one no longer regularly has anything to buy on Wednesdays. But I have a couple of things to review tonight, so here we go:
Captain America 49. The current series of Cap has been quite a wild ride. For one thing, it's more of a noir/thriller sort of story, very moody and adult. For another, writer Ed Brubaker seems to have decided from issue 1 to start breaking rules and getting the readers to like it. In issue 1, we find the Red Skull, Cap's archenemy, being shot dead, assassinated by a former Soviet general. But wait: the Skull had the Cosmic Cube, the mighty Marvel artifact which grants its wielder any wish, and we eventually find out that the Skull isn't entirely dead... Brubaker was telling us from the very start that something was up. So when Cap's old sidekick Bucky turns up alive, then Cap is killed by a brainwashed Sharon Carter, his longtime girlfriend, well, the longtime reader was inclined to settle in and see how the slick Brubaker made it all come out in the end. In this issue, we rejoin Sharon, recovering from her ordeal at the hands of the Red Skull, trying to put her fragmented memories together. Something is definitely up, something clever. I've been just rolling with the punches for four years now, just enjoying the ride, but this issue I think I finally saw how it will all come out, or at least the general shape of it. For the long-time fan, there's another bonus to Brubaker's opus, which has so far revived the revered and long-dead Bucky and killed the symbol of America and made the reader like both outrageous events: it has been obvious for a long time that Brubaker is echoing Steve Englehart's legendary run on this title way back in the 1970s. That's when I first read and liked Captain America. The parallels have never been stronger than in this issue, when minor characters from Englehart's Cap stories appear and influence the story. What a delightful jaunt. This is perfect serial story-telling, scrupulously loyal to the past continuity but advancing into the future with wild and unpredictable plots.
Captain Britain and MI 13 12. This one might not be the classic for the ages that Captain America is now, but it is certainly a lively and rousing tale. You have to respect any writer that can take a hoary old character like Dracula and make him a fearsome and exciting opponent for the protagonists. Great fun.
The Flash: Rebirth 1. Anyone who's been near comics in the past 20 years knows that Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash, sacrificed himself to save the universe way back in 1986 in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Like Bucky Barnes, above, Barry was long thought to be unresurrectable, sort of the patron saint of the DC universe. But writer Geoff Johns has made a practice of reviving moribund franchises and making them exciting again. He began with the Justice Society of America back in the late 1990s in the JSA title, brought back the disgraced and dead Silver Age Green Lantern a couple of years ago in a wonderful story (although the follow-on series has not been to my taste), and even brought back the old Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes (although the LSH isn't being published right now). Barry has returned, and Johns quickly makes us realize that Barry isn't quite the person we fondly thought he was... and yet does so in a way very firmly rooted in continuity, as some reviewers have delightedly pointed out. I'm not a big Flash fan, although I read it for a long while in the 90s when Mark Waid wrote it, but I'll give this a try to see where Johns is going with it.
Justice Society of America 25. Speaking of Johns, he wraps his long association with JSA titles this month, and also cleans up, or at least resets, the tangled and confused Captain Marvel continuity, which other writers had left in a hash in recent years. From the striking Alex Ross cover through the interior pages by Jerry Ordway, one of my favorite artists, this is a fun and absorbing read. I might be done, however. With Johns gone and my inclination to cut way back on monthly purchases, I will probably wait, read reviews and consider whether to buy this in trade paperback in the future.
Knights of the Dinner Table 149. A reviewer has to strain to say much about this long-running parody of role-playing gamers. Suffice to say that this is good as it always is, but it has some special delights this month, perhaps setting up a special 150th issue.
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