Aug 1st RoundUp

posted by JediSheltie @ 7:40 PM

Well, in light of the founder horning in on my “action,” literally, I'll toss out my thoughts on the whole fill-in thing by pulling up Action from last month along with my reasonably common take on the Maid of Might.

Supergirl 20

Friggin' finally. Though I still think Sean McKeever will take over on this title, at least new author Tony Bedard is getting us a little more towards a superhero comic. In fact, punches are thrown in the real world, not an kind of imaginary hallucinogenic fake test world. Anyway, I digress. Kelley is gone and it looks like the scales are tipping back towards pasty white guy from teenage girl. Being a pasty white guy, I'm pleased.

This is not to say I wasn't slightly concerned. The upshot of the grueling mess we just left behind was Kara's brief reconciliation with Clark. I was thinking that was really great timing to be dumping the whole "oopsie" with Air Force One. Turns out this was handled fairly masterfully by Bedard's script, where in lessons are learned in the field and not merely preached by a stuffy ole "big brother". That's a role that Clark is always in danger of filling in this title, and it's good he's managed to avoid it so long.

Picking up where the last issue of Amazon's Attack left off, Kara and Cassie (Wonder Girl) learn that the nuances of wartime relations are bit beyond their earnest efforts to stop the conflict. Certainly reasonable to assume that 2 teenage girls might think the idea of kidnapping the President of the United States to take him to parlay with the foe (to whom they have a certain sympathy). We've already learned the Amazons intervene in their attempt, and their kidnapping mission turns into a rescue mission as Air Force One goes down.

Kara flies off, heading back to the war zone that is Washington DC, particularly mortified at what happened. She quickly finds herself in the thick of battle with a very large, very magical ogre. (I wonder if the ogres are female too? I mean, that would be kind of hypocritical if all the Amazons' little battle beasts weren't girls too, right?) She receives both help and some enlightenment from a local man who is engaged in a civilian rescue. His connections to someone who might have just died on Air Force One give him a strong reason to doubt Kara's actions.

As the dust clears, Kara's a little older and a lot wiser. Bedard manages to cram more "development" into a single issue than Kelly did for six or seven. I mentioned I was highly psyched about Renato Guedes having art chores, and he did not disappoint. Beautiful renderings of both expression and action from cover to cover. Guedes allows Kara to "bulk up" a little from past artists' renderings. He captures the emotions she experiences, from anger and frustration to remorse and sorrow, beautifully.

This is a good new start. Bedard's Kara comes off as a well-rounded character. She is young and learning, and not so completely self-possessed and petulant as she has been. She'll carry this memory with her through her super heroine career and be the better for it.

Action 852

After Tygrrius' vitriolic rant about this issue, I suppose I'll chip in with my accurately appraised 2 cents. My experience is a bit different from his, in that Action is the sole comic to which he subscribes on a monthly basis. Hopefully you can, as I do, sympathize with the fact that he signed on to Action expecting one thing, and has, very surely, been given another- a variety of different "anothers," in fact.

Though I'm no fan of them, I've reached a kind of "zen" about comic delays. It's a dirty fact of life about the industry as a whole, and neither of the big 2 are immune from it. Ultimately, I just have to roll with it. In certain (okay, most) circumstances, I buy comics because I consider them to be the "official" record of what the "real" character is doing. Thus, I want to know what Superman is up to these days, so I buy Superman comics.

That means I'm not really prone to the whole "drop because story/art sucks, there's too much delay, I don't like the creative direction, etc. etc. etc." excuses.

As Action is Tygrrius' only comic, and he signed on specifically expecting at least a years worth of Superman stories from the Johns/Donner creative team, then he has a right to feel pissed off. He sure hasn't gotten what he bargained for.

I will pick one nit with his accusations. The nature of the Jimmy Olsen stories as "event tie-in" is true, but the back-up stories themselves weren't planned from anything I've seen. Thanks to a certain guy who shall remain nameless (Adam Kubert), the flagship of DC Comics has been lagging a bit in the ole issue number department. This is basically an attempt to get the numbers back to where they should be. Yes, they used it as excuse to run a Countdown tie-in, but it could have been anything, not just this so called “marketing stunt.”

Hey... I work in marketing...

It seems the initial plan was to have Johns/Donner/Kubert team turning out 1 issue a month for at least a year, just like Tygrrius expected and signed on for. That just didn't happen, so the fill-ins arrive, because Action needs to keep the numbers up.

So, we have an issue where Jimmy Olsen, who has now has the ability to randomly manifest the various and sundry random powers he was granted throughout the Silver Age, develops his new "Mr. Action" personae. We also learn how Jimmy came about his signal watch in a flashback sequence. Busiek's script stood up, even though it's primarily a Jimmy Olsen story. I credit his writing skills with keeping me even slightly interested in the character. Art, as Tygrrius pointed out, was not particularly grand. This guy is no Renato Guedes, basically.

I'd bump most of his grades up by 3 or 4 for this issue, except art, in my "zen" state of mind.