Battlefields #7: Motherland, Part 1 of 3. Written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Russ Braun, colored by Tony Aviña, lettered by Simon Bowland. Cover art by Garry Leach. Read the preview.

Hey, women in comics! People talk about that! Or at least women in superhero comics, which I guess is a little different. This, though, is what we should all be talking about. It’s great. Garth Ennis has taken his War Stories to Dynamite and has managed to keep the quality more or less as high as it was at Vertigo. In Battlefields, each story is three issues long and skips around in the European and Pacific theaters. I reviewed Dear Billy last September.

The third of this current cycle of Battlefields is “Motherland.” It’s the return of the main character from my favorite story from the last book. Anna Borisnova Kharkova is a member of the Night Witches, a group of all-female Soviet bombers in World War II. Read up on them, they’re pretty interesting. In the first book, Anna was a little wet behind the ears. By the time this one comes around, she’s been hardened by battle and seems pretty unhappy with her lot in life. She’s stuck in a situation where she is going to be just one of many soldiers being used for cannon fodder against the Germans. The base she’s operating out of is building up to the Battle of Kursk, for better or for worse. Honestly, judging by the odds, it’s just gonna be for worse.

This is a good one. I’ve read it already and it may end up being my favorite of the latest cycle once again. There’s a couple things that feel a little pat (the plucky girl particularly), but seeing Anna all mean… it works. I’m hooked. Bravo. If you want to get familiar, cop the Battlefields HC. Three stories, nine issues, twenty bones. The individual trades will cost you like ten a piece, so might as well double your dollars for three times the tales.

Also on my list for this week: Amazing Spider-Man #635 (Joe Kelly/Michael Lark), Heralds #4 (Kathryn Immonen/Tonci Zonjic/James Harren/Emma Rios), Joe the Barbarian #6 (Grant Morrison/Sean Murphy), King City #9 (Brandon Graham), and Thunderbolts #145 (Jeff Parker/Kev Walker).

Well. That’s a pretty good looking batch of comics there. I wish that Heralds was all Zonjic, but Harren was okay last time and Emma Rios is pretty talented. And really, when my biggest complaint for the week is “I wish one good artist had done this instead of a few good ones,” hey. That’s a good week.

Big news this week: DC’s joined up with comiXology to push hard on digital comics. Comics Alliance has all the news you need right here, and will have updates throughout the day, including an op-ed from yours truly and an interview with Jim Lee. Here’s the main details.

Digital comics! Time to put up or shut up. How long until I can buy a comic digitally and then grab the trade when that comes out? Someone make that happen. We can do business.

What’re you buying this week? Are you going to take the digital leap on your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch? I tried to check it out last night when it went live, but apparently my poor widdle first-gen iPod Touch isn’t ready for the app. It crashes whenever I try to download. I’ll try again later, since I know several people who have had no trouble at all.

“Yes!  And that somehow our other selves are elsewhere — on some strange world!”

Batman #146 featured Bat-Girl, Robin, and half of Batman and Batwoman sent to other planets.  It’s nice to see that, even split in half, they have spot-on instincts.

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I reread Final Crisis the other day. I like pretty much everyone involved. Grant Morrison and JG Jones did Marvel Boy together, which is excellent all around. Carlos Pacheco is a good artist. Doug Mahnke should be the only person allowed to draw Wonder Woman ever. I had every reason to like the story, but something in the execution didn’t click with me.

Final Crisis feels like less than the sum of its parts. Morrison’s approach made for a dense and layered read, but it never quite comes together to be something worth reading. I can see the effort, but the effort isn’t enough. The “channel-zapping” style was meant to make the reading experience mirror the events in the book. A lot of stuff is going on, and flipping back and forth from scene to scene, each of them getting only a few pages to breathe, which keeps you disoriented and on edge. It kinda works and it kinda doesn’t.

But enough of its faults. Let’s talk about a couple things that worked.

Batman’s goal is to avenge the death of his parents by spending the rest of his life warring on all criminals. Batman, like the Punisher, has his choice of two endings to his story. He can either die on the streets or fight forever, eventually drafting more and more people into his battle. Final Crisis, though, is the last DC Universe story. It’s the story of the time when evil won and good still persevered. Since this is the last story, Batman gets a chance to do the unthinkable. He gets to end his story. He gets to win.

It is a moment that could only happen to Batman here, where all stories are ending. Everything in Batman’s life built toward this moment. Batman comes face-to-face with the personification of evil itself, and that dark god tells him that the only choice is evil. Instead, Batman steals Darkseid’s idea. “A gun and a bullet” changed Batman’s life forever. A gun and a bullet murdered Orion. And then, at the end of the world, a gun and a bullet are going to be used to destroy their master. With a sigh, he accepts that he actually completed his goal. The “Gotcha,” and the smile, that’s just Batman. Batman doesn’t lose.

Everything about the Flash, any of them, in Final Crisis is dead on. The Flash is the best hero in the DC Universe. He’s got the best enemies, best power, and he’s flexible enough to work on both a street level and cosmic level. More than anything else, though, the Flash is a confident hero. They’re consummate professionals, very experienced, and their very power gives them an edge of everything else. It seems like a contradiction, but their superspeed lets them process things faster than any other hero, which means that they are among the few that can afford to take it slow. They should make being a hero look effortless.

Everything in Final Crisis supports that. The Flashes are supremely confident, they know exactly what they need to do, and just how to go about it. When it comes time to save the world, Barry has a plan. “We start with family.” This is what superheroes are about. It’s about having the power to protect your loved ones, even, or maybe especially, when the entire universe is being pulled into oblivion.

The kiss between Barry and Iris is classic comic book storytelling. How do you cure an evil infection? With love. It’s that simple. And after, everything is fine. It’s business as usual. There was never any doubt about the fact that everything would be all right.

amazing spider-man presents black cat #1: words by jen van meter, art by javier pulido, colors by matt hollingsworth, letters by joe caramanga, cover by amanda conner, and cover colors by christina strain.

You know who I love? Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat. Up until her reintroduction in Amazing Spider-Man last year, courtesy of Joe Kelly and Mike McKone, she’d hadn’t had any substantive appearances in a Spider-book in a good long while. She’s been one of my favorite characters since I was a kid, but not for any particular story. She was in my first comic, ASM 316, but all she did there was get dissed by Venom. Not exactly a selling point. But no, I like her because she’s got a great visual, with the white hair, black costume, white gloves and shoes, and tufts of fur. I like her like I like Domino, I think. Her bad luck powers are neat and allow for some fun action, but the real key is that she’s a thief. Heist stories are some of the best stories, and hopefully Van Meter’s story in Black Cat is going to be a good one. I’m feeling optimistic. The team is pretty fantastic all around. Javier Pulido is an astonishingly good artist, Matt Hollingsworth a great colorist, and how crazy is that Amanda Conner cover? Check the preview here. Four bucks is less than optimal, but I’m curious. We’ll see how I feel at the shop.

Looking at the other stuff on my list… this is a surprisingly large week for me. Amazon-wise, Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, Vol. 9 arrived yesterday, Ultimate Spider-Man, Vol. 11 is due in today. 20th Century Boys is kicking up now that Urasawa has gotten around to answering questions, but the last volume definitely had two scenes that featured someone going “Oh no! It’s YOU!” without actually showing us who it is. That was massively frustrating, but hopefully we’ll get to see who it is in this volume? Ult Spidey I preordered when it was cheap, and it completes the last run of Ultimate Spider-Man. After this… I think I’m out. The new stuff isn’t clicking like it should. It has its moments, but not so many that I want to keep buying it monthly. I might check out the first couple trades a few months down the line, see if my opinion changed.

Floppy-wise, I’m looking at Amazing Spider-Man 633 & 634, Atlas 2, Hellblazer 268, Heralds 3, and Unknown Soldier 21. That’s the end of “Shed,” the beginning of “Grim Hunt,” a Jeff Parker/Gabriel Hardman joint, a Shade the Changing Man guest spot, more from the Kathryn Immonen/Tonci Zonjic superstar team, and more from the sadly cancelled book about a lone soldier battling himself and others in Uganda. This is the best week I’ve seen in a good while. I’m juggling a few things, but I figure I’ll have a post on Unknown Soldier up soon. Whether it’ll be about this week’s issue (which is about the life and times of an AK-47) or the series as a whole, I’m not sure.

Other notables: Brightest Day 4 is the first appearance of the new Aqualad, Seven Soldiers of Victory, Book 1 is the first hardcover collection of the fantastic Grant Morrison-led megaseries, and friend of 4l! Ian Brill’s Darkwing Duck launches.

Oh yeah, I did a few movie reviews over at Tucker Stone’s spot. I watched four Akira Kurosawa films at New People here in San Francisco and you guys get to reap the whirlwind.

What’re you buying? What am I missing? What did you like? Check out this week’s books here. Anybody else have characters where they like the idea more than the actual execution on the page? I can’t think of a single great story with Domino, but I like her nonetheless.

The issue starts with Bat-Girl standing on a swinging swing, hitting a man who is on the top of a see-saw, because another man is stuck at the bottom of the see-saw. 

This raises so many questons.

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This week it’s all Batgirls, all the time.  Cut for spoilers.

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batman 700: words by grant morrison, art by frank quitely, tony daniel, andy kubert, and david finch/richard friend.

I was thinking about picking up Batman 700. Morrison hasn’t been hitting for me like he should lately, but Quitely’s always worth a look. I was even willing to look past buying a book with art by Tony Daniel and David Finch, two of my least favorite artists. Except I read the PDF preview on DC’s site after David Uzumeri shot me a link and had all my goodwill sapped right out of me. For five bucks (!) you get eight Tony Daniel pages, nine Andy Kubert pages, six David Finch pages, and somewhere between one and eight Frank Quitely pages, with the difference being made up by the certainly-capable-but-not-Frank-Quitely Scott Kolins. For those of us who went to public school, that’s thirty-one pages for five bucks. Add seven pages of pinups (Shane Davis, Juan Doe, Guillem March, Dustin Nguyen, Tim Sale, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Philip Tan) and a couple pages of Batcave layouts by Freddie Williams II and you’ve got a book I don’t think I want any more. Five bucks? Get real.

Great art + great story = comics worth buying. That’s the rule.

I know I’m picking up Captain America (Ed Brubaker/Butch Guice) and Heralds (Kathryn Immonen/Tonci Zonjic/James Harren). Amazon just emailed me to say that Icon Vol. 2: The Mothership Connection is on the way. That’s a Dwayne McDuffie joint. I’m not sure which artists are involved, because it’s an odd mix of Icon issues. I know the Buck Wild stuff is in there, though, which means we get some Doc Bright. I’m psyched to reread it.

Shame about there not being any other Milestone books on the schedule, though. I’ve got the two Icon volumes, the Brave & the Bold: Milestone book, and the Hardware and Static trades. With the exception of the JLA trades that reintroduced Milestone (which I didn’t buy because every time I look at them I want to fire shots DC’s way) (don’t forget industry rule 4080) I think that I own all of the currently in-print Milestone books. We’re missing Xombi, Blood Syndicate, Shadow Cabinet, Heroes, and a few odd miniseries or one-shots. Wise Son and Milestone Forever. C’est la guerre, I guess.

What’re you folks buying, or not buying, as the case may be? Any trades you wish happened? I’d kill a man dead for Flex Mentallo, and I may be adding “more Milestone trades” to that list.

One Con Glory is nerd romance set over the course of a convention, encompassing the eternal themes of love, self-discovery, and plastic action figures.

The heroine, Julie, is a comics and general nerdery reporter, come to the con in a professional capacity to cover the events and interview the big players.  In an amateur capacity, she’s come to find a Glory Gilmore action figure.  Glory Gilmore is a minor heroine in a minor team, and so Julie has her work cut out for her.

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It’s time to talk about the second half of Mr. T and the T-Force, but first I thought I’d bring up the trading cards. Most issues would come shrink-wrapped with Mr. T and the T-Force cards. They would tend to show either cover art or a choice panel on the front while the back would include a quick explanation of how Mr. T is awesome in the light of his environment and a quote from T himself. Here are a couple of them for you.

Note: Mr. T and the T-Force has zero mention of racism.

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I don’t have a lot of comics this week. Captain America/Black Panther marches on and Thanos Imperative gets going. Check a preview of Thanos Imperative here, and then read my Marvel Cosmic recap. Preview Cap/Panther here.

Also notable is the Kathryn Immonen/Tonci Zonjic joint Heralds. Immonen is a delight (read Hellcat, oh wait, you can’t, because it’s a DM-only trade) and Tonci Zonjic is a dope artist. It’s about the return of Frankie Raye, formerly known as Nova and the only character with a cooler name than “Moses Magnum.” I talked a little about Frankie Raye’s demise a couple years ago.

Not comics: The complete boxed set of The Wire is on sale for like 90 bucks on Amazon. I’ve got one episode left on my rewatch of The Shield, so The Wire is looking mighty tempting. Payday is tomorrow, so dare I risk it?

What comics are you buying and what’d you think of them?