Man, that is a dated reference. How many of you remember “Gotta be da shoes?” Oh Spike Lee, what are you doing now? This is what Buffy and Matrix references are going to be like five years from now.

I honestly believe that if you were to put Gambit and Wolverine together as a duo, you’d have an unstoppable engine of destruction that would burn through everything in its way.

Add Jubilee and I would read this book. You could have Rogue and Yet Another of Wolverine’s Ex-girlfriends guest star every couple of issues for some good old fashioned soap opera drama.

I would call it “Gambit and Wolverine Make Fools of the Marvel Universe: Featuring Jubilee.” It will sell millions.

Speaking of selling, here’s what I’m picking up from the comic shop today, assuming that everything makes it in. My commentary is in paratheses.

52 WEEK #14 (I’m hooked, what can I say. They’re screwing with the heroes in a way that makes for good reading.)
ANNIHILATION #1 (the lead-in miniseries were quite good, so definitely getting this.)
BEYOND #2 (OF 6) (Sleeper hit, you mark my words. The first issue was excellent.)
FIRESTORM THE NUCLEAR MAN #28 (One of DC’s best titles, hands down.)
MAN CALLED KEV #2 (OF 5)
MARVEL ZOMBIES HC
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #5 (Pretty interesting story so far, and I hear Jubes is going to be in an upcoming issue!)
ULTIMATE GALACTUS BOOK 3 EXTINCTION TP (Gotta complete the set, and I loved the art.)

This is a pretty light week for me. Only six monthlies. I’m thinking of getting the X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl TP, if only for the awesome art. It had a good story, too, so it may be worth the 14 bones.

Next week is going to be serious business for me. I’m getting Batman Animated, Absolute Dark Knight, and Absolute Hush. I love behind the scenes stuff, so Batman Animated is a shoe-in. Frank Miller and Jim Lee are consistently in my personal top five artists list, so their work in Absolute format at 37% off is a steal. I didn’t much like the story in Hush, but I cannot argue with Lee’s artwork, as if my complete and utter infatuation with early ’90s X-Men didn’t tell you that. I even desperately want this book, X-Men/Ghost Rider: Brood Trouble in the Big Easy. I will eventually own every Jim Lee X-trade. I think I’m only short two right now.

(I think I need an intervention, but these books are such a simple pleasure. There’s a great bit where Gambit, Psylocke, and Jubes are tied up on Mojoworld. Mojo is blah blah blogging about how he wants to record X-Men fighting other X-Men. “As if ya don’t get enough footage o’ that?!” Jubilee responds. “Jubilation,” says Psylocke. Jubilee mutters, “why does everyone say my name like it means “shut up?”. How can you not love that? More later.)

I absolutely (see what I did there?) love Dark Knight Returns and Dark Knight Strikes Again (a better love letter to the silver age than anything alex ross has come up with), so Absolute Dark Knight is tops.

Also in that top 5 list are Quitely, Romita Jr, Bagley, Romita Sr, Sienkiewicz, David Mack, Tom Grummett, Mike Wieringo, and a bunch of others. As an English major, I am incapable of counting properly.

What’re you getting? This week’s list is located here.

(This is a rewritten message board post from Something Awful’s Batman’s Shameful Secret. It was good, so I dragged it from the depths and rewrote it.)

“Why I Like All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder”
by little david brothers, age 22

Both All-Star Superman and All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder are takes on classic heroes that feature full creative freedom. It’s a chance for these guys to tell the Bats/Supes story they wanted to tell and how they wanted.

The Miller/Lee Batman is different from the Loeb/Sale, Loeb/Lee, Azzarello/Risso, Brubaker/McDaniel, Dixon/Grummett Batman, but it is still recognizably Batman. It’s Batman spun for self-conscious comedy. It’s a guy in a batsuit who isn’t crazy, I don’t think, but would like for people to think that he’s crazy, so he acts crazy. “I ate rats BY CHOICE SO HE BETTER EAT RATS TOO!” That’s hilarious. He’s trying so hard to be a hardcase that everyone around him, or at least Alfred (who’s known him for years and is probably tired of his self-important crap) to Dick Grayson (who has known him for maybe six hours and sees right through his self-important crap) knows that he’s putting on a show. Grayson mentions the fact that he can tell that Bats is putting on an Eastwood. Batman is a ridiculous concept when you think too hard about it, but it’s also an awesome one that much of America (even the non-comics reading folks) have loved since childhood, and that’s what I get from this book. “Batman is a crazy idea, pure empowerment fantasy… but doesn’t it rock?”

(“how cool is that?”)

Plus, you know, giant robot dinosaurs, and I am certain that Bruce Wayne also has a giant robot saddle when he has to hop on and ride around Gotham. “C’MON, CRIMINALS! SIC SEMPER TYRANNOSAURUS YOU COWARDS!” (Robin only gets a robot velociraptor on a leash.)

All-Star Supes is just as “stupid.” Superman overdoses on solar radiation, so he’s dying, but he’s also gifted with tremendous strength at the same time. Modern day interpretation? It’s about the fear of death and what makes a man human. However, it’s also every stupid Silver Age story in one. it’s got Superman robots, chess pieces shaped like Superman’s friends, the Fortress of Solitude with the intergalactic zoo, Superman making dresses, future Supermen, keys that probably weigh enough to punch right through the Earth and out the other side, technobabble, journeys to the center of the Earth to visit the Dino-czar, Cat grant eyeing up people’s crotches, Lois Lane with powers… it’s the same thing as All-Star Bats. “Here are all these crazy impossible ideas… robo-dinosaurs, journeys to the center of the Earth… aren’t they wonderful?!”

Then again, this may just be me. I read these books and it’s like I’m reading comics back when I was ten years old and Jim Lee was the biggest guy in comics. The All-Star books are big, stupid, and loud. I’ve enjoyed every issue of both All-Star books greatly, not in the least because Miller, Lee, Morrison, and Quitely are four of my most favorite creators. They’re fun titles that I enjoy reading, and would like to see them collected in extremely handsome hardcovers five years from now when they finally put out issue 12 of both series.

I also like Dark Knight Strikes Again. Once I find time (that’s a ha-ha, good buddy) I may do a few entries on some of my favorite Miller work that’s not DKR (DKSA, 300, The Big Fat Kill). It’s all a matter of time.

Here’s another angle by one Geoff Klock, wherein the author uses fancy words like “grotesque.”

Batman should be dark.

“But David!” I hear you saying. “You hate dark, angsty Batman! He’s been horribly done in the past few years!”

This is true, but hear me out.
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I love Marvel. I have ever since the beginning. I still own the first two comics I ever read. Amazing Spider-Man numbers 316 and 317, the second story involving Venom, I believe. It was a David Michelinie/Todd McFarlane joint. FOOM, Merry Marvel Marching Society, Marvel Zombie, you name it, I was it in an unofficial way because I was little and had no money. This stands to this day. Most of the DC books I read are published by Wildstorm.

There’s a lot of things I like about Marvel (Spider-Man). High on that list (after Spider-Man) is their trade policy. Is there a miniseries coming up soon that you want to check out, but you’d rather read it all in one chunk for better enjoyment? Grab the trade that’s gonna hit somewhere between one month and three months after the last issue ships. This is somewhere between two and two billion times better than DC’s trade program, which is “You’ll get the trade when we remember to actually print it.” Identity Crisis, for example, had a year-long wait and was released twice in floppy form before we finally got a trade. Common sense would tell you to strike while the iron is relatively hot and push that trade out there. Marvel does what DC don’t (that pun works a lot better with Sega and Nintendo, I think), though, so it’s all good.
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