Holy new post Batman

My goodness. A month has passed without me posting. Wow. Oops... Not that anyone reads these anyway :D Anywho, I might as well talk about couple of comics while I'm here, and show the quite dodgy line art of the Red Hood as I imagine him in Arkham Asylum.

Batman & Robin
First things first, that most variable and well, quite quite mad writer Grant Morrison's latest writings of the Batverse. What oh what to make of these. Grant always has some great ideas, but is let down by his craziness, stupidity and just mad and mostly nonsensical writing. The Batclone from Blackest Knight. Professor Pyg and his pink iPod dance. Damian Wayne. Flamingo. Whatever happened to Bruce's profile/where is he now/what's Hush doing/what do the public think of Bruce etc. Damian Wayne.
Now, I know I said that last one twice, but I'm sure we all agree the only person who should be allowed to write Damian is Bryan Q Millar.

Kick-Ass
I haven't spoken about this at all yet, because it's hard for me to say anything but I want to see this now. Trailers look awesome, comic was awesome, it's funny, graphic and it's written by Mark Millar. Nothing else to add really :D

The Veritable Army of Green Hornet comics
These are coming out from Dynamite, who I'd never heard of before, about a character I knew nothing about. But then I saw the covers and who was writing them: Alex Ross on some of the covers, Kevin Smith on the main line, Matt Wagner on Year One. That's some good names right there. They're actually quite interesting, though it seems Green Hornet doesn't have any major villains, which is always a problem. Sometimes this is nice though, but it does seem he mostly fights faceless mob goons and mob families, which is something that has been done ALOT before...

Blackest Night and Brightest Day
I'm sure we'll all exhausted by Blackest Night now, it's dragged on a little too long, the main issues haven't really moved anywhere and there's been too many formulaic plots in the extra tie ins. If it had just been Blackest Night, GLC and Green Lantern, with one or two extra comics it would be much better. But I'm a bit fed of up it, though the story is good, art's mostly good, there's just been too much of it. I mean, it's been going on since September.
And it leads straight in to Brightest Day, no respite whatsoever. Here's hoping it focuses less on the Flashes, and more on, say, I don't know, Aquaman. The original and best. And none of this stupid stuff they're doing to Green Arrow and Roy. Let's have Aquaman booting the old one up his arse, bringing the glory of Atlantis back, being pissed off because Tempest is dead, rejoining the Justice League, and making himself a more landbased character, with lots of intercontinental politics, environmental protests and that kindof thing. Seriously, there's so many stories that can be told, let's start cranking em out and having ourselves a ball with our favourite Atlantean.

The Losers
I just got the combined volumes 1 and 2 the other week, and it is sweet. Andy Diggle and Jock, one of the best writer/artist teams there is, telling a pretty cool A-Team esque story. I enjoyed, it's funny, good story and the art is good (save for the bit by the other guy who I can't remember atm for issues 7&8 - I think, might've been 8&9. Can't remember and too lazy to go and grab it to check :D). Movie looks good too, with alot of things from the comic included. Looks to be another good un'

Runaways
I've had a brief flickthrough of both Rock Zombies and Homeschooling in the shop, and I know I'm going to buy them at some point, along with the Civil War and Secret Invasion Young Avenger tie-ins, because I really like the Runaways themselves, but urgh. The issues do not look that good, sound pretty rubbish, and well, I don't like Kathryn Immonen. She's butchered Pixie in her own series, so I don't whether I'm going to like it, and the summary of the issues doesn't sound too good. And when I've got those four collected editions, it seems as if that'll be the last of me buying Runaways for quite a while, as we wait for Marvel to finish 'retooling' them...

Red Hood
The basic lineart of my design for Jason Todd as the Red Hood in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Obviously I'll be redoing this on the computer when I get a chance, but as of right now I don't have the proper tools to do this at home, only at work...

One (yes, ONE) review

And guess what - it's not even a new comic. Well, it is. Sortof. Just not from this week. Or last week. Might not be from the week before either. I can't remember. Anyway, yes. A review! At long last. I did call this site Highly Irregular Comic Reviews for this very reason though ;) - some times I just get very busy, or get very tired, etc etc. So yeah, it's been both for a while. Job takes alot out of me, have been to the theater (seeing Jersey Boys), to music gigs (seeing Europe), the cinema (seeing Princess and the Frog), been on dodgems and went bowling with work (yeah, when we want a break, we go on dodgems. I jest. We've only been once). And that's just been in the last week and a half, so yeah...

Anyway, on to the comic review - it's Pixie Strikes Back! part 1 of 4. It's written by Kathryn Immonen (who I've never heard of before), drawn by Sara Pichelli (again, never heard of), coloured by Christina Strain (third times the charm of not having heard of her), and lettered by Dave Sharpe (who I have heard of actually). So yeah...

The story itself is quite confusing, having lept into it half way through it seems. For some reason they're in a high school populated with demons (brilliantly hid I might add ) thinking their not mutants. I think... While Anole and Rockslide continue to antagonize each other and have all the fun and comedy while exploring the inner workings of the female bathrooms. I do like whenever they appear, because they just have a great dynamic, and actually can show off other points if Marvel ever bothered to (like, you know, how the X-Men are actually soldiers and Xavier has just been training them to fight with their powers, which is one of the major reasons I don't like the X-Men). Them and Pixie should be on all X-Teams :D

The third part of the story concerns Megan's mother, who is quite the irritating bitch. She immediately is hostile, and is just, well, to put it mildly: the Damian of the Marvel universe in an adult female body. And she gets violent to, so no defence from me about how she's just a concerned mother. The main story I just don't get at the moment, it'll be explained in latter issues, but right now it's just confusing. Which is a shame, I was looking forward to this one (can anyone guess why?)...

The artwork in this issue is good (quite reminiscent of Skottie Young, who you may or may not be aware that I think is brilliant), and I feel most of the time she gets Pixie dead-on (with none of this classic all women must have a clear outline of boobs at the minimum *cough* whoever drew her a while ago when she was older and taller than she should be), and the colour is mostly good. And they're quite cool casual clothes. Just one minor niggle - what happened to her blue undertop from page 4 onwards? And why does she have some white/blonde streaks in her hair - it does look quite good, but, not her. I was never a fan of having the black in there either, but I suppose it's some form of representation of her lost. You know, subtlety ;) But these are minor niggles...

Anywho, enough rambling from me I suppose. Just one last thing - why does every X-Uniform need yellow on it? And most having those stupid big boots and glove/gauntlet/bracer things... And the current female ones just look stupid as it is...

Oh, and just for the record - well done Marvel on spoiling the fatherhood of Pixie, among other things.

SPOILER

"You can’t pick your parents. And if you could, Pixie certainly wouldn’t have picked Mastermind, the man who turned Jean Grey into the Dark Phoenix. But right now, that’s the least of her problems. A giant demon named Saturnine has been using her Pixie dust to lull her fellow X-Men into submission and it’s worked. Now he’s one step away from all the power he needs to take control of the world. Can the fast-talking Welsh girl with wings possibly stop him?"

I'm meh to Mastermind, so I'm not particularly bothered, and it makes a form of sense regarding her powers. I just don't see why they had to do that. Couldn't she just have the trauma of having her soul partially gone (which I don't really like. It somewhat does symbolise the current age of comics. Nobody is innocent, nobody can ever not have turmoil, nobody can have a happy family. ARGH. Sometimes you just need characters like that without screwing over their entire life. Grumble grumble. I do wonder whose idea this was. I'm betting it was Joe Quasemodo. I know that's not his real name, but sometimes I find high up editors just so infuriating. Grumble grumble)

END SPOILERS

And because I feel like it, I'll also just make a few comments about some of the ads in this issue:

• Super Hero Squad - please, just go away. The Hulk doesn't drive, Iron Man doesn't a fire truck, why is Spider Man driving Optimus Prime? And that's just for starters. ARGH. I hit spinoff toys like this >:(
• X-Men Second Coming - well, Scott's obviously not gonna be the leader, cause he's just an arse who I don't like. Yep, that's my reasoning on that one. Never have liked him, never will. Magneto would be the really controversial choice, and so seems most likely, while Emma is the middle ground viewpoint I suppose, but she's been in the spotlight alot recently, so it would make sense either way for her to have more spotlight or less. But regardless, please, put some clothes on. ARGH
• Fall of the X-Men & Avengers - because we haven't seen the Hulk attack his team-mates before... Repeated plot x 100 = ARGH
• The C2E2 - I hate being in Britain sometimes. I'm missing Alex Ross, Greg Land and Skottie Young, among others. ARGH
• Guardians of the Galaxy - now this looks interesting. Cool pic, and it's written by Dan Abnett. But I won't pick it up, as I don't normally buy Marvel single issues.

Oh, and if anyone could provide me with a concise timeline of the Runaways, that would really help - I've been collecting the collecting editions in various formats, and have got volumes 1-9, and I've really enjoyed em, but there's things missing, like the death of Gert etc... Grumble grumble