"Post No. 547"

Sum Stuff I've picked up recently:

Superman (DC) #679 (10/08). How I missed as many as ten issues (the last I'd read was #669) is beyond me, but this issue pretty much had it all, from the Alex Ross cover, to Superman battling an old Jack Kirby creation, "Atlas" (who first appeared way back in 1st. Issue Special #1 in 1975). Supes pretty much gets his ass kicked by Atlas, and Supergirl tries to help only to get knocked silly by some beam of energy from outer space, and then, the kicker with a surprize app. by...??? Can't give that away, but the clue is, "What is white, has four feet and a red cape"? Really good read! I wanna see what happens in #680!

Fantastic Four (Marvel) #559 (09/08) had its usual excellance by the Millar-Hitch-Currie team and it features a new version of "The Defenders" who end up capturing both Dr. Doom as well as The Human Torch. For what reason is yet to be revealed, but believe me; they've got the "power source" to pull it off as one concludes the reading of this issue. I enjoy this Marvel title very much, but I do wish they'd give the stories a little more meat as they seem to read too quickly (but, maybe that's just because they're really good!)

Futurama (Bongo) #38 (late 2008) features Lela, Fry and Bender crashing on an alien planet full of computer geeks and Lela taking over as the geeks's Queen, parodying such things as jungle girl stories, "Ka-Zar" and even "Iron Man". This is always a worthwhile title and reads much like watching an animated adventure.

Justice League of America (DC) #24 continues the JLA's battle against "Amazo", some good use of "Zantanna", the return of "The Red Tornado" (again), and even the quest to figure out why both "The Vixon" and "Animal Man's" powers have gone a bit wacky here of late. Just the usual very good issue.

The Hulk Chronicles (Marvel) #2(11/08) continues to reprint the best Hulk storyline in the past 40 years with a retelling of The Incredible Hulk V2 #107 and World War Hulk #1. And for those who never read these original issues, it goes such as this: Reed Richards, Black Bolt, Doctor Strange and Iron Man get together and decide that Hulk is too dangerous a being and teleport him to another planet, where with his strength, he becomes that planet's ruler and falls in love, only to have it blown to crap by Richards et all, killing Hulk's queen, and now Hulky is really pissed and comes back to Earth to really raise some Hell. (It ain't yo mama's Hulk.) This resulted in probably as many cross-overs and spin-off titles as Marvel's "Civil War", but it was much better, and if you don't want to go to all the trouble looking for the enormous amounts of tie-ins to this storyline, there's a slew of TPBs that reprints it all.

And, in back issues, I recently got hold of issues #'s 208, 210-212, 217 & 218 of DC's The Flash V2, which I already had a TPB which reprinted the story from 207-211, 213-217, but it was actually the two issues in this run that were skipped over in the reprinted format which impressed me the most, which were #'s 212 & 218 (pictured above). These gave updated origins of such Flash villians as "The Mirror Master II", and "Heat Wave".

Both villians end up joining a government organization to battle crime and be the "good guys" for a change. One of them double-crosses the feds. The stories in each of these issues surpasses the quality in the main storyline that surrounded or predated them. It just shows that, sometimes, a good villian is better than a good hero, especially when it comes to "why" they became as they did.

Finally..."it's been said" that I only give at least a "good"review to the comics I list here. That's probably true since I always buy comics that I know I'll enjoy. I mean...why waste time on crappy comics? And brother, I've read a LOT crappy comics! But believe me; IF I read something I don't think is worth your time and bucks, I'll be the first to tell you about it.