Hey, Look! Comics!

I haven’t been reading a lot of comics since the divorce.  I started cutting into my backlog last week, though, and I’m glad I did because I’m missing out on some great stuff.

Some highlights (including some stuff that isn’t new):

Incredible Hercules: If you’re not already reading Herc, I really suggest you try it out.  The current “Love and War” arc manages to be goofy on the surface, mythic at its core and ties into a larger metaplot that spins out of the criminally under-read Ares mini from a few years back - so it’s really a perfect example of the way the Prince of Power rolls every month.  Marvel’s interpretation of Herc is probably my favorite in all of pop culture, and Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente nail it month after month.  Buddy action comedy done in the mighty Marvel manner.

Uncanny X-Men: Brubaker and Fraction’s new direction for this title is basically perfect; San Francisco is the place for the X-Men, and the duo juggles a big, diverse cast without any major fumbles and manages to make the issue-to-issue plots and character beats interesting.  Uncanny is a slick modernization of the X-Men that everybody fell in love with under Chris Claremont.

Umbrella Academy: Dallas: Gerard Way promised that this issue would have the best comic book fight ever in it, and a bunch of little kids, a giant stone Abraham Lincoln and a giant stone John Wilkes Booth certainly live up to that hype.  It took me until issue #3 to really warm on the previous volume, which I ended up loving, so I’m willing to overlook the lack of a clear throughline right now in turn for the collection of really strong moments that show up in the book.  And the art, of course, is made of awesome.

Batman: The ending of RIP is pretty easy to follow, but doesn’t have the requisite daily value of omgfuckawesome that it should have.  That Joker, Damien and Talia are the characters who get the really rewarding spotlight moments (and not Tim or Dick or whoever else) is kind of unexpected.  I think in the long-run, Morrison will have done a good job of shedding the “My Parents Are Dead” shtick from the character, but we’re only halfway through that particular chrysalis right now.

Secret Wars II: So bad it’s good.

Dynamo 5: Issue #18 has a really good superhero beat-em-up that plays on some existing Faerberverse continuity, and the preceding issue is a surprisingly strong origin story for Maddie.

Atomic Robo: Dogs of War: Nazi-punching at its best.