A year ago I talked to David Brothers about an idea I had for the site. I had tried writing reviews of weekly releases before, but I never got into it. There were a couple reasons and they’re both about redundancies. I can tell you about how great the latest issue of Captain America is, but so will every other site. There are so many other comic sites that will give better reviews of new stuff that I don’t know why anyone would give a damn what I have to say among all that. Then there’s the fact that comic quality doesn’t change so often within the series’ run. If I tell you that Captain America is great one month, chances are it’s going to be just as good the next. Why waste my breath? If I want to give you my opinions, I want it to at least be interesting and hopefully unique.

I thought back to the first issue of the Agents of Atlas miniseries from several years back. The general response of people who read it and tried to push it was to point out that there’s a scene where a 1950’s robot runs down a hallway while carrying a talking gorilla and that gorilla is firing four uzis with his hands and feet. I figured that maybe that could be the unique way to cover the comics of the week. I’d settle on one panel that really pushes what the comic is about, more than often more than the cover does. It’s no longer so much a review as it is giving you a gist on what we all read. At the same time, I would make sure not to have any major spoilers. If the comic has Wolverine beat up Daken in the climax, then I won’t show it. I will, on the other hand, show them about to fight it out.

If anything, it was also an excuse to keep me from straying from doing anything for the site too long at a time. I’d have a deadline of some point every Sunday and I’ve been pretty good on that. I’ve only delayed two weeks and those were because of a lengthy power outage and the loss of my computer.

I didn’t know if it would work, but David said to go for it. Now it’s been a year and I thought it would be fun to do an extra installment in a retrospective form. The idea was to pick one of my favorite panels from the previous 52 weeks, but with the challenge of not double-dipping from the same title at any point. Here we go!

Adventure Comics #4
Geoff Johns, Sterling Gates and Jerry Ordway

Amazing Spider-Man #617
Joe Kelly, Max Fiumara and Javier Pulido

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So many times, when I read Secret Six, I wonder why on earth I’m reading that kind of book.  This is not a slam of Secret Six, which has a devoted following and has been a consistently good book.  It’s just that, from the start, it’s been the kind of book that just isn’t for me.  It’s got torture, murder, despair, tragedy, and a bunch of people being mean to each other for kicks.  Every single story arc has the Six turning on each other in some way or another.  It never, ever fails.  I should not be liking it.

And yet I do.  Part of it is the creative stories and the constant quips, courtesy of Gail Simone.  The book is also loaded with multi-dimensional, smart, fun, and different female characters.  Pretty much all of them manage the difficult trick, in fiction, of being female but acting human.  No dumb blondes, no mindless seductresses, no personality-less token tough girls, just a bunch of nutty characters, just like the men.

Most of all, though, I like Secret Six because it’s a team book in which the team very clearly cares about each other.  And I like it because it’s not a generic ‘caring’ the way most team books do it.  The Six don’t get along, they don’t understand each other, and they don’t understand reality outside of their insane world.  They do, however, want to make each other happy, and when they try, it leads to wonderful moments.  One of those moments is in Secret Six #25. 

Black Alice is a teenage girl who can steal anyone’s powers by looking into their eyes.  One day she used her powers on her father.  Shortly afterwards, her father got cancer.  She joins the Six to make money in order to treat him, even though she’s clearly out of her depth.

Floyd Lawton is Deadshot, a member of the Six, and a character who was obviously created back when Floyd was a common name.  He, along with the rest of the Six, hears about this in one of the issues.  Not much is made of this.  In issue #25, he goes to Alice’s father’s doctor, and threatens him with a gun until the man tells him all about the case.  When the doctor confirms that Alice was probably the cause of her father’s cancer, Floyd picks up the phone and tells the doctor that he will call Alice and tell her that he knows what caused the cancer and it definitely wasn’t her.  He will also tell her that everything is going to be okay.

There is at least on thing practically wrong with this plan.  Morally, there are many things wrong with it, depending on your particular moral compass.  The point, though, is that Deadshot sees the girl suffering, decides to help, and does it in a crazy way.  David and I have talked before about really good relationships between people who antagonize each other but also love each other – Cassandra and David Cain would be one of those.  The unimaginative writer writes them as at each other’s throats until such time as one of them is about to do something too brutal, at which point they suddenly stop because they care so much about each other.  Secret Six does it right.  It shows a bunch of relationships in which people who are imperfect, trying to help each other in imperfect ways.  It gives you both a warm feeling inside and a better understanding and appreciation for the characters.  I really wish there was more of it, but I love what I’ve got.

–Links! There’s this thing going on that’s kind of a big deal I guess, have you read it? Of course you have. I have more thoughts, specifically on the point of legacy heroes, but I am at work, starving, and trying to bang this post out in ten minutes so I can go and grab some lunch. Hopefully my fellow 4liens aren’t buying several dozen comic books for me to format…

-Comics Alliance: I wrote some stuff. Stuff about Rafael Grampa being dope, One Piece selling 20 milli, Matt Bors going to Afghanistan, the death of Satoshi Kon, Deviant Art beefing with inkers, what it’s like in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the manga industry (slight exaggeration), rappercomics, the ten best Marvel books for November, and influential manga pioneer Moto Hagio. I also talked a little about how the comics industry just needs to get it over with and cheat on retailers with digital comics already. There’s nothing wrong with creeping, and really, digital comics are all about it. Just, y’know, go back behind the bleachers or into the janitor’s closet or something.

–Reading: A lot. I’m getting ready to start banging out reviews of all the books I’ve been reading, so look forward to that. Maybe I’ll group that under a series of posts or something, I dunno. Anyway, I haven’t hit a comic shop since the last time I did one of these, so I barely even know what’s new.

-The Only Amazon I Care About Is .com: I had to order another set of the best pair of headphones I’ve ever used because I messed around and lost an earbud on my bike ride home yesterday and didn’t realize it until I’d gotten home, done some laundry, and then went to plug in my iPod. I read Takehiko Inoue’s Real 7, Kenichi Sonoda’s Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition, Volume 1 over the past couple weeks (among others) and the UPS guy just brought Peyo’s The Smurfs #1: The Purple Smurfs over. I’m pretty excited about The Purple Smurfs, even if they should be black and crass racism turned them purple because what a smurf can’t be black i’ll smurf you up you smurfing–

–Buy Stuff To Keep Us In Hookers and Coke: Pardon my capitalism, and also tell me if this stuff bugs you, but Janelle Monae’s The ArchAndroid (one of the top three albums this year, How I Got Over and Sir Lucious Left Foot…The Son Of Chico Dusty are the other two), UGK’s final record UGK 4 Life, Freddie Gibbs’s Str8 Killa EP, and The Gorillaz’s Demon Days are five bucks this month on AmazonMP3.

Janelle you should know by now, but she’s exactly the kind of Black Future… what, icon? Person? Personality? That I pimped here back in February. Her album is smooth as silk, and I absolutely love the way it’s been mixed. UGK 4 Life is the final UGK album, and I dunno if you’re from the south or not, but UGK is an institution. It can be pretty racist/sexist/violent/etc, but I mean… I grew up on these guys. Gangsta Gibbs is a lot like UGK in a way, but he’s from Gary, Indiana, and one of the few emcees I’ve ever heard that’s clearly profoundly influenced by Tupac without being a wack copycat. But yeah, he can be pretty questionable in terms of content, too. I’m still praying that him and Pill drop an EP stat, though. That would be the gangsterest thing since Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” to JFK. (“Girl, my wife is right here…”)

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David Yesterday: King City 11, Unknown Soldier number whatever it was last week
Estherella: Definitely: Secret Six #25, Maybe: Superman: The Last Family of Krypton #2, Batman Confidential #48 Almost no chance, but perhaps: Red Hood: The Lost Days #4
Super Vok (the best one of the three!): Secret Six #25, Deadpool Pulp, Franken-Castle, Gorilla Man, Hawkeye & Mockingbird, Incredible Hulks, MU vs. Punisher, Taskmaster, Young Allies, Incorruptible, WWE Heroes

Why can’t I work with comics snobs like me who secretly hate all comics? This took forever. And if King City 11 didn’t actually ship this week I am going to cut my own throat and pull my head off on live tv. :negativeman:

Another week of panels is upon us. David only tosses in one panel this time around. I remembered to remind him that one of the guidelines for This Week in Panels is not to put anything from the last page. After all, we don’t want to spoil the entire book for you, nor do I want it to be like one of those comic covers that depicts the very last page. Let’s see what he chose.

Amazing Spider-Man #636
Joe Kelly, Zeb Wells and Michael Lark

GODDAMN IT, MAN! WHAT THE HELL?!

Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #1
Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung

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Art by Jim Calafiore, and I think that this is a fair assessment of the issue and what happened in it. Here is an alternate take on the issue.

4thletter! Fading comic books like bleach since 1983.

Flying solo again this week, so I’ll toss in last week’s Street Fighter II Turbo, since my shop got it in late.

Booster Gold #31
Dan Jurgens

Brightest Day #0
Geoff Johns, Peter J. Tomasi and Fernando Pasarin

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For those who haven’t noticed or forgot, a nasty storm caused me to lose my cable connection last week and rather than wait a day to post TWiP, I made the dumbass decision to add it onto the next week. Apparently I was too busy to notice that this week was a huge one regardless, making this a gigantic update. Welp, let’s get moving.

The A-Team: Shotgun Wedding #1
Joe Carnahan, Tom Waltz, Stephen Mooney

Amazing Spider-Man #624
Mark Waid, Tom Peyer, Paul Azaceta and Javier Rodriguez

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-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music
-Oh snap, comics reviews!
–Batman & Robin #8? Good stuff! Cameron Stewart drew a great fight scene, Grant Morrison writes a fun Batwoman (“I have to die.”) and the British stuff is pretty fun.
-Esther wants Damian to disappear, though. That sucks.
–Amazing Spider-Man #620? Pretty good, with a great Mysterio bit and amazing art from Marcos Martin and Javier Pulido.
–Secret Six #18? Blackest Night crossover, Amanda Waller runs things, and Deadshot shoots dudes.
-Fact: I cannot say “Deadshot” without saying “Deathstroke” first.
-Fact: Deadshot’s miniseries from a while back ruled.
–Jormungand volume 2 from Viz features a child soldier who goes into two separate suicidal rages in this volume, a wacky arms dealer, and the hijinx they get into. David likes it because he probably has a gun fetish. Good stuff!
-See you, space cowboy!

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Absolutely massive set of comics this week. What If: World War Hulk is my pick of the week, even despite the crappy Thor story and the even worse comedy stuff at the end. The main story rocks.

Adventure Comics #5
Geoff Johns, Sterling Gates, Jerry Ordway and Francis Manapul

Batgirl #5
Bryan Q. Miller and Lee Garbett

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Pretty small batch this week. hermanos is busy at that APE thing, so nothing from him. Esther insisted on including the Blue Beetle back-up from Booster Gold #25. Something about the “fangirls running the asylum.”

Batgirl #3
Bryan Q. Miller and Lee Garbett

Booster Gold #25
Dan Jurgens

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