Very Bat-heavy segment this week. I will tell you this, one of these panels annoyed the hell out of me.
Riddle me this! Why doesn’t Tony Daniel take photographs of letters and numbers?
Amazing Spider-Man #611
Joe Kelly and Eric Canete
Batgirl #4
Bryan Q. Miller, Tim Levins and Lee Garbett
I’ve started writing for AOL’s Comics Alliance. I’m going to be doing a few pieces a week, as of this week, and you can check out my posts here. So far, I’ve written about Astro boy vs Pluto and done a brief history bit on the pulps, with an eye toward DC’s Batman/Doc Savage Special.
Bookmark it, RSS it, do whatever the kids do these days. Twitter it, I guess. Put it on Friendster or AOL Chat or whatever.
Let’s start this review with a look at Batgirl #7. What’s that you say? It’s only issue four? I don’t care. We need to look at this awesomeness.
Now, to issue four.
Time for another installment of TWiP. Or should we call it ThWiP? That makes it a comic pun. Whatever. Reader Solenna had us include a panel of Psylocke #1 to show that according to her, the comic can be summed up with “sphere boobs”.
Batman Confidential #36
Royal McGraw and Marcos Marz
The Boys #36
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson
Okay, and this Chad fellow, too. For those of you unwilling to scroll down two entries, I’ll re-post David’s entry in full:
Chad Nevett on New Avengers #58:
Yeah, here’s the thing: not killing bad guys doesn’t make you better than them, it makes you a fucking pussy. It makes you responsible for everything negative they do after that point. No grey areas, no moral questions, no debates about what’s heroic and what’s not. […] I hate superhero comics for pretending that letting villains live is somehow the morally superior thing to do, because it’s not.
If you listened to the Fourcast! this week, and you should have, you’d know that I agree with every word Chad says. I wanted to have a longer excerpt, but it’s a pretty short review. Go read it.
Chad and David both seem to agree that in comics heroes should be able to occasionally kill villains. I agree, with specific exceptions, with this general idea.
Where we differ crucially is what ‘killing’ means. To quote Chad:
Should they kill every mugger ala the Punisher? No. Should they kill Norman Osborn when the chance arises? Um, yeah.
‘Killing’ someone encompases a variety of different concepts, from pre-planned murder to accidental manslaughter to legitimate self-defense. I think that, if the situation were to arise in which a hero had to kill a villain in order to save the life of that villain’s intended victim, they should, morally, kill the villain. That’s killing someone.
Killing Norman Osborn, or the Joker, or whoever else, when ‘the chance arises’ is not just killing someone. That’s an execution. There is a very distinct meaning to that, and there are very different consequences for it. Read the rest of this entry �
Key words: Dustin Nguyen, Halloween short story, Batman, Geto Boys.
Click or be turned into a pillar of salt.
For reference:
The video scared the life out of me as a kid.
More artists should do this. Someone turn Ghostface’s “Run” into a comic strip, please.
This is a different kind of Continuity Off, as Esther and I break down six plot twists and turns that we’ve enjoyed over the years. 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental is our theme music, of course, and here’s a few of the stories we’re going to ruin for you:
-The Last Days of Ted Kord
-The last great X-Men tale (New X-Men, if you disagree you are objectively wrong)
-The connection between Hitman and Punisher
-Batman buying girlfriends
-The Death of Jack Murdock
-Superboy Prime punches.
Listen carefully.
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To make up for last week’s lackluster batch, we’ve returned with more substance this time.
Amazing Spider-Man #609
Marc Guggenheim, Marco Checchetto and Luke Ross
Azrael #1
Fabian Nicieza and Ramon Bachs
Remember when JLA was a good comic book? Me too. Exhibit A:
We’ve got a You Made Me Read This that’s five months in the making! Esther’s read Batman Year 100, and we have a nice discussion about it for around half an hour. We go over what makes Batman Batman, belly button physics, dentures and lisps, and plenty of other bits. After we discuss our favorite incarnations or styles of Batman, 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental plays and we go on our way.
The Batman “Dick, was I a good father?” scene is this one:
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