Quick Hits From the Past Two Weeks
December 30th, 2007 by david brothers | Tags: Batman, Colored Commentary, DC comics-The Birds of Prey, and specifically Misfit, pretty much murder a few hundred people in Metropolis and the only punishment they get is a stern talking to by Superman? Whaaat?
Do you know what happens if I am playing with a gun and I shoot someone in the face? Prison.
What happened to Sean McKeever? His DC work has been mediocre at best and this issue of BoP made them crazy unlikeable.
“He doesn’t know. He wasn’t there.” Psh, Misfit pressed a button and killed a few hundred people. What’s to know, other than “Don’t press buttons in giant murder machines?”
-Is it just me, or was Ultimate Spider-Man 117 the best issue of the series yet? It hit on basically every single point. Wow. The last few pages were spot on characterization and really very touching.
Between this, the past couple arcs of New Avengers, and the Tony Stark scene in the latest Mighty Avengers, Bendis is back to hitting on all cylinders.
-On the same note– I liked the end of OMD, but I don’t have time to get into the whys and wherefores of it right now. I don’t like that the marriage is gone and the execution thereof, but honestly Spider-Man has been in a rut for a good while now and this seems like a proper shot in the arm.
I love love love that they gave back exactly what Spidey has always needed: a supporting cast. For the past few years he has had MJ, Aunt May, and his own guilt for a supporting cast. Now? Now he’s got his best friend back.
I can get behind that.
And honestly, I kind of feel like Joe Q has the biggest nuts in the world now.
-We’re gonna get 36 (at least, I’m not sure how they’re handling five week months) issues of ASM in 2008. That makes ASM 600 arriving in 2009. Boy oh boy, I wonder what’s going to happen in that issue…
-Brubaker’s Captain America and Ennis’s Punisher are still pretty much reviewproof. The quality has kept up, the action keeps escalating, and you can’t really say much beyond “Yep. Still great.”
-That BoP story is so stupid, seriously.
-Resurrection of R’as al Ghul was terrible. What a bad ending. “Welp, he’s back, banned from Nanda Parbat, and WHOOPS HE ESCAPED AGAIN oh and he had a son and a father”
-Morrison’s first issue of Batman, post RoRaG? Wonderful. It finally feels like his run is coming together.
-I kind of feel like Redman’s Red Gone Wild was overlooked this year. Reggie Noble is back to being dope again.
-There is a Whole Foods down on Haight with an homage/reinterpretation of the cover of Intimates #3 painted on the metal grate that comes down when it’s closed. Awesome.
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Where does it show Misfit pushing the button to make the robot blow up? I see her punch out Tabby. I see her mention “hey a button”. I see Oracle say “Don’t touch the button!” Then robot blows up, Superman comes along and acts like a sanctimonious prick and flies off. Guess he was too busy hanging out with Dark Mr Miracle to protect his own damn city from a bady guy he could have handled in about 4 seconds. I mean I agree the issue was ass. Just for different reasons…
*Thinks about latest BMB Avengers books*
Yeah. I’m just gonna leave it at strongly disagree. And I’ve yet to read one of his Ult.SM books that didn’t dissapoint. But then I’ve been that way regarding most of the Ult. universe for awhile now. They’re like watching those 90s X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons where your only investment is to see who gets adapted over from the “real” universe this week…
And gave BACK his supporting cast? HE HAD A SUPPORTING CAST. A school full of students. Friends. Allies. All shoved to the side while he joined the Avengers, then the Rebel Avengers and then Secret Ninja Avengers. All of which MAKE NO SENSE now thats he’s 14 again or whatever he’s supposed to be. And resurrecting Harry? WHY? His death had MEANING! Theres a difference between having a Giant Pair and being too damn stubborn to admit you’re pushing crap on the public…
Lurker: Showing a panel where Misfit pressed the button was just about the only way it could have been made any clearer that Misfit did in fact press the button. It’s a simple case of cause and effect. Tabby didn’t have the intention of dying, was aiming to kill a specific group of people and there’s no point in building a giant robot if all you’re going to do with it is blow it up, so we can assume that the robot was not in fact meant to blow up. The panel right before the one where the robot starts blowing up has Misfit talking about that button, saying she has a good feeling about that button, looking at that button and reaching out towards that button with her finger. You can see the glass covering over the button is more than halfway raised. Huntress even tries to stop her. Right after that panel the robot suddenly starts to blow up. Combine that with the cover of the issue showing a sad (guilty?) looking Misfit, on her knees, with dust blowing from her hands with an angry Superman superimposed behind her. Unless this is intentionally supposed to fake out the reader (and not the characters), which would be hilariously cheap, and I don’t think McKeever is that unprofessional. Face it, Misfit has become a homicidal version of Dee Dee from Dexter’s Laboratory.
Like Hoatz says, it’s pretty much crystal clear that Misfit hit the button. The art shows her going for it, she’s been disobeying orders for the past few pages, and she’s talking about the button as if it’s a good thing. A few pages later, a few hundred people are dead and Zinda is playing self-righteous.
Superman wasn’t being a “sanctimonious prick.” He was a dude who had a group of people screw up and kill a few hundred people in a city that he has sworn to protect. If anything, he was way more merciful than he should’ve been.
And Spidey didn’t have a supporting cast. A school full of students and random teachers aren’t a supporting cast– they’re a plot device. Something to bring out when necessary for the story. How many of them kept on past the first couple of stories in JMS/JRjr’s run? Who was left from the Jenkins run on Peter Parker and Spectacular? Not the big Australian guy, nor any of his neighbors. Even comatose Flash Thompson was MIA until David brought him back for the sake of having him bully Peter again.
Ultimate Spider-Man has been one of those books that has actually done the revamping of normal characters properly, rather than shoe-horning it in like in Ultimate X-Men. This latest arc had nothing at all to do with that, either.
And was that really the only reason you watched the ’90s X-Men and Spider-Man toons? Did you watch them while they were airing, or after they had already gone off the air?
I watched the 90s toons when they originally aired. As for the button, I say Misfit could look guilty and crushed because she left Tabby behind to die. MUCH LIKE when she lost her family to a fire. And the robot wasn’t MEANT to blow up? So? Lots of things aren’t MEANT to blow up…
And I’m sorry but Superman’s little speech SO comes off as sanctimonious after more than a DECADE of comics featuring competant Oracle being the goto person for every damn Justice Leaguer and solo hero on the planet…
Lurker: So why do you think the damn robot blew up then?
It was built by a crazy teen-ager?
Re: Spiderman’s supporting cast – So why couldn’t a writer just introduce a supporting cast? I don’t buy that justification at all.
Jamaal: Writers have introduced supporting casts– they never stick for a variety of reasons. We’ve had two different casts introduced or featured since the JMS/Jenkins era. They were dropped shortly in.
I don’t like that he has a supporting cast again. I like that they’re pushing his supporting cast again. JJJ, Robbie, Betty, Liz, Flash, Harry, all those guys. I’ll agree that there was an easier and better written way to bring all this back, but this is a side effect of the story that I enjoy. I’m not saying that I’m RAH RAH RAH OMD WAS GREAT, because honestly the only part of it I enjoyed were like the last half of the last issue, but I think that the positive outcomes are ones that are necessary.
Spider-Man has, or had, the hands-down best supporting cast ever. Superman, Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern– all their casts pale to what Stan and Steve and John built up to torment Peter Parker.
Part of the promise of Brand New Day is that these characters are going to come back in a big way, just like how another part of the promise is all new villains for the first few months. That’s what I can get behind. It’s also clear that the marriage stuff isn’t over, if only from MJ whispering in Mephisto’s ear and the fact that the hero made a deal with the devil.
On another way of looking at it– “It happened. What good are we going to get out of it?”
LurkerWithout: The truck was not built by Tabby. She was intending to purchase it and ended up stealing it when the Birds were forced to intercede early. SHe mentions that the “truck is protected against the decay,” so she knows exactly what she’s doing.
Superman is sanctimonious because a previously reliable person screwed up huge? A vet should know better. She made a rookie mistake when she is exactly the person who shouldn’t be making those mistakes.
Oracle has every hero in her rolodex. There’s three earth-based Green Lanterns and a grip of people who could’ve handled it better than some maladjusted orphan teleporting in and randomly pressing buttons.
You’re jumping through hoops to excuse the Birds and Misfit, when everything in the book says that they screwed up huge, despite the weak talking-to that they got.
On McKeever:
Yeah, his DC work has been pretty disappointing. Not bad, but not really good either. Still, you have to remember he is completely unfamiliar with the characters. He barely even read DC prior to getting the contract. Is that an excuse? Not really, but it’s worth thinking about.