{"id":882,"date":"2008-04-03T09:02:30","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T16:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alertnerd.com\/blog\/?p=882"},"modified":"2008-04-03T09:02:30","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T16:02:30","slug":"blah-blah-blah-comics-blah-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=882","title":{"rendered":"Blah Blah Blah Comics Blah (4\/3)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, random notes on last week&#8217;s books. No, not this past Wednesday; the Wednesday BEFORE that. I think. Batman Confidential, Green Lantern, Mighty Avengers, and Project Superpowers (which is way older than last week, I know).<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<strong>Batman Confidential #15<\/strong> is a fine example of a good Batman story. I am an unrepentant fanboy for Batman, and so I find it to be perfectly acceptable in just about every way. After two incredibly shaky storylines, finally there&#8217;s some stability on this title, and I&#8217;m very much looking forward to the next arc as well, pairing Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s just one problem: What the FUCK is up with Jim Gordon&#8217;s hair?<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/alertnerd.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/yhst-23599503122488_1995_237051352.jpg' alt='yhst-23599503122488_1995_237051352.jpg' \/><\/p>\n<p>Is that a bowl cut? Did he go to Great Clips and request the monk special? Is Guy Gardner doing hair design now?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Green Lantern #29<\/strong> covers ground that has not only been done to death in the pages of this series, but has been covered by other series, at other times, in other ways. It&#8217;s just hard to get excited about it, even with Ivan Reis on pencils. It&#8217;s also getting to be a bit annoying that every damn event related to Green Lanterns over who knows HOW long has to relate back to some idea or another from the brain of Geoff Johns&#8211;so now Abin Sur&#8217;s death was caused by a character Johns just invented, as part of finding info on a major storyline Johns will soon write? Please. The first disappointing issue of this book in a long while.<\/p>\n<p>If Brian Bendis sat down and really concentrated, I think he could have made <strong>Mighty Avengers #11<\/strong> a great comic. TAs it is, it feels a bit of a mess, like he cranked out this script just to get it out of the way so he could move on to Secret Invasion stuff. I feel like this second Avengers book knows what it wants to be, but hasn&#8217;t quite achieved it yet. I find myself wishing for some kind of relatively stable art team, and a good long swath of non-event time, so that Bendis can give this title the attention it deserves&#8211;with all the dark manipulations in New Avengers, there&#8217;s ample room for a &#8220;fun&#8221; Avengers book, and this comes close once in a while, but never quite achieves it. Having said that, full props to Bendis for even the attempt on this one&#8211;a storyline that combines the Venom virus, time travel, and Doctor Doom deserves kudos for sheer ambition, if nothing else.<\/p>\n<p>I liked <strong>Project Superpowers #0<\/strong>, but I have no clear idea why. Maybe it was the electric thrill of actually purchasing it from a real brick-and-mortar comic book store, after months of doing my sole funny book buying through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heavyink.com\" target=\"_blank\">an online retailer.<\/a> It&#8217;s gotta be something, because it also annoyed me for the same reason that Alex Ross and Jim Krueger&#8217;s work on Justice annoyed me: It is self-important claptrap with this lofty, almost biblical tone that stories of men in spandex almost never deserve. This time, though, I fell for it. The characters are intriguing, and the hook of the storyline is pretty clever, even if it&#8217;s all delivered in a pretty windbaggy style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, random notes on last week&#8217;s books. No, not this past Wednesday; the Wednesday BEFORE that. I think. Batman Confidential, Green Lantern, Mighty Avengers, and Project Superpowers (which is way older than last week, I know).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}