There’s been a bit of a hullabaloo about Alex Ross’s cover for the new issue of JSA #7, featuring Citizen Steel. Let’s take a look at it.

Ooh, I see what the problem is! It’s really, really obvious and sticking out shamelessly!

It’s boring is what the problem is. It’s some dude checking himself out in the mirror after working out, with added Photoshop Blur filters. Yes, Citizen Steel, 8-Minute Abs are working out for you. Great. I flex in the mirror, too, everyone does. It’s a great esteem builder! It is also bland and uninteresting, just like every other cover Ross has done for JSA. It’s always someone standing bathed in light, looking thoughtful or profound.

Let’s talk about an awesome cover– Jock’s cover for Green Arrow Year One.

Here’s another, and another, and a sister and her brother:

In a world where Jock, Brian Wood, Dave Johnson, JH Williams III, and Adam Hughes are delivering awesome covers, month-in month-out, can someone give me one rational reason why we should talk about Alex Ross and his boring and unexciting covers? Marvel got a lot of crap for their “Our Covers Have Nothing to Do With The Book” covers a year or two back, but at least those were done by Adi Granov, JRjr, Mark Bagley, Tim Bradstreet, and a host of other great talents. It wasn’t just a character on a black background because everyone knows that that is boring. “That’s not how we rock in Theodore,” as a wise man Ghostface Killah once said.

Sorry, just wanted to put that out there.

We’re finishing off the trilogy of World Championship Wrestling articles here at 4th Letter, but first I want to talk about blame.

Ever since the moment I picked a couple of these issues up at New York Comic Con, my fellow 4L guys and my comic-reading friends all asked me the same question: why? Why would I do this to myself? Why am I always the guy on this site willingly reading comics I know are going to be lousy? The truth is, it’s all hermanos’ fault.

He and I are similar in terms of comic-reading background. He and I read stuff in the 90’s, only to break away from comics due to the Marvel Cloneslaught disaster. He got back in the game before I did and had more reading experience. He would be the one who would suggest comics that I would eventually follow obsessively. He suggested I read that Deadpool issue where he Shoryukens Kitty Pryde. He told me to read Kingdom Come. He told me that the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League is good stuff. And I won’t even tell you how many times I had to hear him push Flex Mentallo in my direction before I submitted.

A problem arises from that. It gets annoying discussing things when he’s read pretty much everything I’ve read and more. Where’s my upper hand?

So I had to dig deep in the opposite direction. Has hermanos read the comic where Venom fights Carnage inside the internet? What about the one where Skeletor controls Superman’s mind and makes him beat up He-Man? Did he read Super-Villain Team… wait, hold on. Super-Villain Team-Up turned out to be pretty great. But he didn’t read the Tekken comic, did he?! And he’s a better person for it because that thing is a stinking turd on the level of the Doom comic.

But the Tekken comic review will be for another day.

I think I’m just stalling because the cover of issue #9 features the Steiner Brothers with the blurb, “The Steiner Brothers are cruisin’ for a bruisin’! Part 2 of 4!” At least Jesse Ventura is in the upper-corner logo. That’s as good a reason as any to keep moving forward.

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This is a straight up fanboy post, so bear with me. I’ll have actual content later on, hey?

I love the Wildcats and the whole Wildstorm Universe, but no way can I explain why. It just works for me, in no small part because of the Jim Lee connection.

Joe Casey’s run on Wildcats is a personal favorite of mine, with 3.0 being tops in my book. There’s a bit in where Grifter, who was injured in an earlier battle, is training the man he wants to be his replacement. A Grifter II, if you will.

Anyway, there’s a bit of a training montage, which, if you’ve ever seen an action movie, is a staple of the genre. It’s important, and kind of cool to see in a comic. He’s showing him all the basics of, superheroing and being a bad dude. “Remember, the cooler you look, the less likely it is you’ll actually have to shoot.” Check out the bottom. Wisecracking is an important part of superheroics, and of course wisecrackery is a big part of your training. I’d always thought that was a particularly clever bit of writing, with a properly corny one-liner. (I love Die Hard, pardon me.)

I picked up the first WildC.A.T.s trade on the cheap the other day (“because I am a sucker,” is what you all are thinking). Part of the way through the first chapter, I saw a familiar scene.

Oh, Grifter.

I’ll have a post with some actual content (about Superman and fathers again, if things work out right), rather than fanblatherings, later on.

(The first Wildcats trade is really kind of a so-so comic at best, to be honest. I am a sucker, though. I’d probably buy Absolute WildC.A.T.s if they put it out.)

Okay, so the last thing Devin Grayson did on Nightwing was have Dick Grayson propose to Barbara Gordon. I think that was a neat twist and kinda cool. Should they be together? I don’t know, but I am curious!

Then OYL hit and the plot was dropped entirely.

Nightwing Annual #2 hit this week and explained why they aren’t together, in addition to showing some scenes from their past. These include, but are not limited to:
1. Dick Grayson showing up six months after Joker shoots Babs, sleeping with her, and then hitting her with an engangement announcement for his wedding to Starfire the very next morning.
2. Babs going to Dick’s college dorm with flowers shortly after he declares his love for her, only to be meet with Starfire answering his door in panties, a t-shirt, and what I assume is Dick’s letterman’s jacket. They speak, Barb leaves in tears and Kory doesn’t think to tell Dick that one of his best friends just dropped by. PS this is followed by the revelation that Kory was Dick’s first sex partner, as revealed by an insufferably smug Babs Gordon who knows Dick Grayson just that well apparently. Barfo!
3. Babs and Dick being stuck in a safe together by Crazy Quilt of all people, leading to a scene where Dick is trying to hide his bat-erection from Batman.
4. Barbara making the executive decision to cancel her engagement to Dick, despite their twoo wuv (he swears to come back to her and she wears the engagement ring on a necklace) because a) he needs to go off with Batman somewhere and b) she feels that he defines himself by his relationship to others and he needs to find himself before he marries her.
5. Barbara Gordon being a thoroughly unlikeable and heartless person.
6. Dick Grayson being a thoroughly unlikeable and heartless person.
7. Some really awkward dialogue, lovey-dovey and otherwise.

Seriously, this was a bad comic. It was competently written, and I actually really dig the art, but it was bad in a “What were you thinking?” sort of way. Sins Past was bad, and artifically aged Gwen & Norman twins are bad, but this is beyond even that. Every single person comes off as horrible or unlikeable or both. Why should I care about these people?

I don’t even really like Nightwing. I read it because I was interested in that plot about the marriage.

This was like if someone asked me “Hey, what’re some things you don’t particularly care to ever see in a comic?” and then put everything I listed in that comic. It’s gross and not good. I mean, cool, heroes have/should have/do have sex and relationships but for some reason Babs talking to Dick Grayson about losing his virginity to Starfire just comes off mad creepy in that weird nerdy sort of way that comics do so well. I’m not even a prude, man. I own the Bomb Queen trade, I am all about some gratuitous nudity and graphic violence. This, though? This is yuck.

The worst thing is that Nightwing Annual #2, like the similarly useless World War III, feels so editorially mandated that you can picture Dan Didio sitting on your shoulder going “This patches that weird sequence from Tales of Nightwing #209, and this bit means that the guy from Adventures of Superman #132 isn’t in continuity any more, and this close-up shows that there was no penetration in Batman #133 so Robin technically didn’t have sex with his girlfriend…”

Seriously DC, stop with Continuity Patch Comix(TM). They aren’t good. We learned that in the ’90s. I almost wish this story had remained untold, because the reason the two didn’t get married is stupid and now both of them look like jerks because of the reason and the dumb-dumb flashbacks.

And if I never read a book with a Bat-erection in it again, it’ll be too soon.

I’ll talk about some good comics tomorrow. Ones that aren’t gross.

The new solicitations for July are out and Marvel looks to have quite the month. Annihilation 2 begins, Iron Fist takes part in Mortal Kombat for some reason, we get the conclusion to Ash Williams vs. Zombie Sentry, Deadpool and the Great Lakes gang get their own special, Eddie Brock gets his own story arc, Captain America makes friends with Optimus Prime, Namor does his thing and Thor makes his mighty return.

What really gets me excited is this blurb:

GIANT-SIZE MARVEL ADVENTURES THE AVENGERS #1
Written by Jeff Parker
Pencils and Cover by Leonard Kirk
Remember your history-The Avengers didn’t thaw out Captain America, and Kang the Conqueror became Master of the World throughout all time. To make a brighter future, our heroes have to go to the 1950’s and enlist the help of The Agents of ATLAS! Plus extras!

Now that is a comic worth looking at. I’ve already discussed Agents of Atlas here and there. It’s a great miniseries and it’s nice that Marvel looks to be trying to sprinkle their appearances through their various books. Gorilla Man is set to show up in X-Men: First Class, Namora is going to be a player in World War Hulk and now this.

I love how the cover is actually an update of the What If issue that created this “Avengers-before-the-Avengers” concept. Of course, back then, 3-D Man was a member of the team.

If you’re unfamiliar with Marvel Adventures: Avengers, you might be wondering why Storm is there in Thor’s place. Marvel Adventures is like the all-ages version of Ultimates. Instead of grim and gritty, we get a new continuity that has a friendlier, Saturday morning cartoon feel. As kiddy as it sounds, it’s actually pretty high-quality.

The roster is Captain America, Iron Man, Storm, Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine and Giant-Girl (Janet Van Dyne with a more useful gimmick). Yes, each issue is self-contained, but they cluster together to create story arcs. The first issue has them fight Ultron. The second issue has them fight the Leader. The third has them fight Baron Zemo. This all ties together into the fourth issue, where those three villains start up the Masters of Evil.

The second arc focuses on Loki. Somehow they’ve brought Loki in as a major Avenger villain without a single mention of Thor. Even more impressive is that they introduced Juggernaut as a villain without a single connection to Xavier or the X-Men. His new origin is actually really good and they tossed in the option of redemption if they ever want to make him like he is now.

Not to mention that there’s an issue where the team gets transformed into a bunch of MODOCs (C is for Conquest here. That’s good enough for me). Seeing them drive the Leader to tears by making fun of his inferior, “tiny” head is priceless.

I’m a couple issues behind, but damn if this series didn’t surprise me with its fun factor. I haven’t been this pleasantly surprised with a comic since Marvel Megamorphs.

No. Really. Megamorphs was good. I’m serious.

What’re your perfect comics? I’ve got a few. Kraven’s Last Hunt. Flex Mentallo. Daredevil Born Again.

The two most recent (and I referred to these previously as nigh-perfect, but they got an upgrade) are Jacen Burrows and Garth Ennis’s 303 and Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba’s Casanova. They’re both just tightly packed, written, and drawn slices of excellence. Everything about them clicks and they’re both easy reads.

Those are perfect books. On a smaller scale, there are perfect pages.

These are the pages that give you the stupid grin that comics should. They can be full of import and absolutely serious or completely irreverent. Spider-Man’s “I’ll kill you,” after being told that Norman Osborn is going to kill Normie. “The rain on my chest is a baptism” from Dark Knight Returns, along with the mutant fight in the mud.

Little slices of perfection.

Here’s a few of my recent favorites. Two from 303 #03, one from Punisher War Journal #6, and the page from Casanova #1 that sold me on the series. Words by Garth Ennis on the first two and Fraction on the last two. Art by Jacen Burrows (303), Ariel Olivetti (Punisher WJ), and Gabriel Ba (Casanova).

Two soldiers talking about rifles (I particularly love the line about the difference between NATO weapons the AK-47), one soldier marching off into destiny, Frank Castle’s righteous indignation (“We gotta steal a car. I’m going to Mexico and I’m gonna shoot that guy in the face.”), and Casanova Quinn being both irreverent and awesome (“I don’t know– I have weird brain things. Maybe it would work different for you.”)

Good comics.

Chris Wiltz at ImajiMation Studios shot me an email the other day with a link to the Blokhedz animation test that was shown at NYCC ’07.

Check it out here, and check the website at Blokhedz.tv for more info. PopCultureShock has the hi-res trailer, but you’ve got to reg to download it, I do believe.

Hot stuff.

If you’ve spent more than two minutes at this site, you may have noticed that it absolutely blows to navigate through. You want to look for that time I ranted about Wolverine? Check Google, because chasing through the archives will probably take you two hours.

That’s at an end… hopefully. I finally put in a Table of Contents page. You can see it under “Pages” on the right side of the screen. Here we have a majority of the 4L articles, split up into little groups. And a big group for David’s articles, the show-off. Plus you can actually get a little blurb about what the article in question is about.

Give it a test drive and tell me if you come across any mistakes.

I really should replace that Green Arrow image with a headshot of Ruin from Superman, but I can’t find a decent enough image of him. Damn me for coming across that arc towards the end.

Let me go ahead and get this out of the way. Gail Simone on Wonder Woman got the same reaction from me that J. Torres doing a fill-in on WW did. None.

I haven’t liked her last year and a half of work or so. Villains United was okay, but I didn’t even finish Secret Six. BoP started off great (that first year or two was stellar), too, but even that feels like it fell off. Gen13 and All-New Atom? No thanks. I don’t know, I think that my tastes are changing or something, but her work just doesn’t click with me like it used to. No slight to her, or at least I hope not, it just ain’t my thing.

It got me thinking, though. Who could get me to read Wonder Woman? I came up with two names who I think would be pretty dope on the book, and both of them are even female-type people!

Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti.

C’mon, don’t even say you wouldn’t read that.

Weezie deserves it. X-Factor, New Mutants, Man of Steel… Steel. She’s paid her dues ten times over. I shouldn’t even need to explain this one. She’s apparently written a WW novel, but I haven’t read it. I think she’d be pretty awesome on the book.

Ann Nocenti wrote some of my favorite Daredevil stories, did a Batman/Poison Ivy book a few years back with John Paul Leon (I think, it may have been John van Fleet?) that was pretty solid. I will love her forever for creating Typhoid Mary, the best she-villain that isn’t named Harley Quinn. (I really, really like Typhoid Mary and Harley.) I think that Nocenti could do a pretty bomb off-kilter WW book and deliver a book that would defy more than a few expectations. Dante’s Inferno ala Diana Prince. Or even something real world and political, she’s good at both kinds.

I may not be excited for Gail on WW, but either of these two would make me jump for joy. Shoot, Weezie is the reason why I’m going to be reading Marvel’s Mystic Arcana when I don’t even really like two of the four characters involved (Scarlet Witch and Black Knight. Magik is generally better as a kid, and Sister Grimm has a dumb codename but is pretty cool.).

Anyway, yeah. Give me Weezie and Ann. I think that they’d be worth it.

Also, c’mon Marvel, reprint this thing already.

From Geoff Johns’s forum:

First things first, I haven’t done any of the fill-ins because, beyond JSoA and GREEN LANTERN, I’ve leaped ahead on ACTION COMICS and am already working on the last half of 2007 and into 2008. Kurt and I are totally in sync and have laid out the plans for 2007 and 2008 and it’s always a pleasure to work with him in the same Superman-verse.

Much like WONDER WOMAN, the last chapter of LAST SON will be in ACTION COMICS ANNUAL #11 later this year when Adam’s finished with it. This, quite frankly, allows us to move ahead and get our work on Action Comics coming out monthly with the stories we want to tell.

Donner and I resume our Action run with Eric Powell’s three issue arc “ESCAPE FROM BIZARRO WORLD” which we’re already working on. I’ve seen the first several pages and Eric is doing fantastic work.

I’ve really been enjoying Action Comics, so it’s nice to see that Last Son will finish and we’ll get some Eric Powell books this year.

However, DC has thoroughly botched two launches through late creators: Action Comics and Wonder Woman.

Last Son was supposed to be six issues long. It was supposed to end this month, or maybe last month. We have seen three parts of it. The bad part is that Last Son was good and supposed to be monthly. I’m sure that the trade will be wonderful.

Wonder Woman is going to have five writers over 13 issues. Allan Heinberg, Will Pfeifer, Jodi Picoult, J. Torres, and Gail Simone. Gail is definitely an improvement, but to be quite honest I don’t know that she’s enough of an improvement. Her latest work has left me kind of unimpressed. I mean, a Barney joke in Gen13? What?

Anyway, this is a textbook example of how to screw up a big-time relaunch.

Small wonder that Marvel is beating the pants off DC in numbers. Eight out of the top ten books are Marvel, with only JLA #6 charting for DC at #6.

Something’s gotta change. DC isn’t working and OYL turned out to be a non-starter.