Comics! The Doctor is in!

A slim week for Pepito's stolen comics this week ... although not slim enough to prevent him from sniffing out at least SOME crap! He picked out this new J. Michael Straczynski hack-job 'Bullet Points,' after all ...

.... Still, some of the crap he picked out didn't LOOK like crap on the surface. This is certainly true of the latest 52, which was boring, hyperventilated, and completely unsatisfying.

I've noticed this about '52' - some of the issues (like the last one) work perfectly, managing to deliver an enjoyable comic book while at the same time being part of a much larger storyline. And some of them both don't do that and also suck. This was such an issue.

There's a lot of shouting in it - poor, bereaved Elongated Man gets the vengeance-inflicting powers of the Spectre just long enough to make the soul of his wife's murderer suffer for all e-teerrrrrnity, and Eclipso comes in for a bit, dunno why ...

But the issue wasn't a total loss: it had a wonderful backup feature detailing the origin of Black Canary, with rip-snorting good pencils by the mighty Howard Chaykin. Which made me wistful! Chaykin seems to be 'back' - willing and able to do mainstream comic work ... so why not a mini-series about the original Black Canary, the mother of the current one? That would be Canar-ific!

And even Pepito, with his crap-sense tingling, couldn't pass up the second issue of the great new Doctor Strange mini-series 'The Oath.'

The thing I love about this title is that its writer, Brian Vaughan, is smart enough not to re-invent the wheel. His Stephen Strange is looser and funnier than any previous incarnation (hands-down favorite line of comic book dialogue in 2006 happens in this issue: when confronted with a cadre of killer robots, the good doctor says "By the hoary #%*-ing hosts!" Hee), but he's still the same character Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created decades ago, and for good reason: that character works.

So, no 'he's really an alien' or 'secondary mutations' or any of that nonsense. This is still the man who was a brilliant but arrogant surgeon, who lost the skill of his hands in a car accident, and he learned the mystic arts from the Ancient One. In fact, this issue's best sequence is a flashback showing us just how big a jerk the pre-accident Stephen Strange was.

(and post-accident, as when the recovering Strange says he feels 'like suing whoever made seatbelts too damned uncomfortable for any reasonable man to wear')

Two things are certain about this mini-series: first, it will be collected in a nice trade paperback (so Pepito really shouldn't be buying it, but let's not tell him that)(he won't read it here, since this site has nothing to do with Menudo), and second, it will certainly re-launch a monthly Doctor Strange comic - let's hope the creators of the mini-series stay on board!

Let's finish up with some Doctor Strange trivia, to keep my little marmosets on their toes:

1. The presence of the Night Nurse in this issue raises the question: how many super-heroes have also been practicing members of the medical community? A full list, from memory!

2. In addition to his vast mystic abilities (learned from the Ancient One) and his considerable martial arts abilities (learned from who knows who - there's a great mini-series to be mined from the time when Strange and Mordo were students), Doctor Strange also has one other rather unusual superhero-trait. From memory, no peeking - what is it?

3. The good doctor knows at least one real-world literary giant - who can tell me who it is?

OK ... by the Vapors of Valtorr, by the hosts of Hoggoth, and by the Belches of Beepy, that's all for now!

comics! Doctor Strange and beyond!

The latest little batch of comics to come across our editorial desk here at stevereads comes courtesy of Elmo, not my nemesis Pepito. And what a batch it was! Unlike Pepito, Elmo very seldom buys crap (we'll pass over Agents of Atlas in diplomatic silence).

The latest issue of '52' features more great pencils by Eddy Barrows (hey! let's find a real good writer - I nominate Elmo himself, but I'd be happy to do it if he isn't interested - and match him with Barrows on a re-re-re-launch of the Legion of Super-Heroes! Wouldn't that be FUN?) and more plot-twists than an Irish Catholic Thanksgiving dinner.

The centerpiece of the issue - and the thing I liked the most about it - was the re-introduction of the character Super-Chief (except, of course, for the unbelievably dorky codename). One of the things I'm liking most about '52' is this trend, this introduction or re-introduction not just of makeweight cyphers and minor characters. '52' is introducing a huge number of new characters to the DC universe, and a very large number of them are characters actually worth keeping (unlike the upshot of 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' ... Harbinger, anyone? a guy whose superpower is strategic panicking? Yeesh). The new, superpowered Steel, the huge crowd of new Teen Titans characters, MOST especially Isis (DC, like Marvel, DESPERATELY needs female super-heroes who are genuine heavyweights, power-wise), and now, um, Super-Chief. These are hugely superior to Marvel's bland and utterly forgettable Sentry character, or any of the innumerable new 'more powerful than anybody EVER' energy-casters cropping up regularly in X-Men (the third Summers brother is SO distinctive, and wasn't there a guy whose head was a star?)

Comic companies always seem to be gun-shy of inventing (or resurrecting) characters who are genuine heavyweights - that's why DC's recent re-invigoration of Black Adam has been so completely refreshing, and for me it's the interest that keeps '52' going.

I should stress in the strongest possible terms that NONE of this praise applies to '52's bone-headed, ill-conceived, ill-executed and utterly disasterous re-creation of Batwoman. The Bat-franchise is over-crowded as it is, with Robin, Nightwing, Huntress, Batgirl, Oracle, and fewkin Jason Todd. Adding a Batwoman - with no tragic past, no Bruce Wayne connection, and, above all, no combat training - just to grab a few headlines is a waste of time somebody down the road is going to have to correct. We can only hope the character - lesbian or otherwise - dies a quick death, but I think the opposite is likely ... a monthly title, more disastrous dilution.

We move from '52' to the latest issue of 'Beyond!' - a little series that's turning out to be just fantastic. Its basic premise, although none of the creative folk involved would admit it, is to MAKE GOOD on all the many, many missed opportunities of the original Beyonder storyline.

One of the ways to make this happen - at least, unless you factor in a good writer, as opposed to Jim Shooter, who's only a good writer when he damn well wants to be, which is virtually never - is to limit the cast, and that's what this mini-series does. Our cast is small and wonderfully mixed.

There's Spider-Man, of course, and the new Kraven the Hunter, a gun-happy new character called the Hood, and an altruistic (and certainly doomed) new hero named Gravity, plus Medusa, Henry Pym, Firebird (amazing how even in a small cast, this character is utterly forgettable ... as in, you literally forget that she was there at all; giving her her own book would be hilarious! Nobody would remember buying it or reading it), Venom, and the Wasp.

There's SO much to recommend this series - the new Deathlock, for instance, or the continued badass emphasis on Medusa (talk about heavyweight female characters), or the way this current issue puts Janet Van Dyne's Wasp in unquestioned charge of how the 'team' tactically advances in a crunch situation. This is entirely right and clear in the existing continuity, wherein the Wasp has led the Avengers two or three dozen times and would naturally be the person who'd take military charge of such a heterogeneous group when it's required.

But as good as that issue was, it wasn't the best of the batch Elmo gave - no, top honors go to the first issue of the new Doctor Strange mini-series 'The Oath.' Written by Brian Vaughan and wonderfully drawn by Marcos Martin.

Reading this issue - Doctor Strange's faithful manservant has a rare disease, and the good doctor will stop at nothing to find a cure - brought to my mind how many great memories I have of this character, throughout his various incarnations. Most especially the great run Gene Colan did on the book back in, what? the early 80s? There are few art treats more reliable than Gene Colan inked by Tom Palmer, and their style worked wonderfully for the character (and let's not forget the doctor's er, well-endowed assistant Clea! How many sidekicks have sex with Ben Franklin? I'm guessing just the one).

This mini-series, even on the strength of this first issue alone, deserves a place in those upper ranks. It's full of clever bits and the aforementioned great artwork, but I think the thing I like most about it is Vaughan's choice to make Stephen Strange's MEDICAL background the fulcrum of the story.

The cover of this issue says it's 1 of 5. I don't think I've read SADDER numbers all week. If Marvel had any creative sense (the ultimate 'What If' storyline!), they get this writer and this artist to do a regular monthly series.

Either way, this is certainly one graphic novel I'll happily re-read.