Make Peace With Your New Gods!

Hmmm...maybe it's only because I expected to utterly despise it, but THE DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #1 by Jim Starlin was actually not too bad. Kinda pricey ($3.50 US), and kinda dependent on the last few NG series (which I skipped) for its continuity--i.e. Highfather is dead and some non-Kirby dude named Takion is in charge of New Genesis, and both Darkseid and Mr. Miracle have mastered the Anti-Life Equation--but I found it to be a lot better than I was expecting. It's not all that consistent with events in the DCU in places like COUNTDOWN, seeing as how the method of the New Gods being dispatched is not the same as it has been in other places (did Lightray really have his heart ripped out? 'Cause I think I'd remember that), and events transpire to ensure that there will soon not be a single happy married couple left in DC Comics before long (I may have said too much). However, some decent Starlin art and vibrant colours by Jeromy Cox, plus a feeling in my gut that Grant Morrison will fix any damage to these characters by the end of FINAL CRISIS, saw me through this all right. Even if Granny Goodness did refer to Darkseid's Elite as a "ROUGE'S gallery". Seriously, this mistake bothers me almost as much as when people write "VIOLA!" instead of "VOILA!", which means I seriously need to chill the fuck out when it comes to grammar and spelling.

I have never in my life listened to a song by My Chemical Romance and I don't really envision a scenario where that is going to change anytime soon, but the band's frontman (I guess? I could be wrong, but I'm too lazy to do a Google search) Gerard Way writes a pretty fun comic book in the form of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY: APOCALYPSE SUITE. Drawn by Gabriel Ba (CASANOVA) and released by Dark Horse (you may have caught your first glimpse of this series in this year's DH Free Comic Book Day offering), it's the story of a group of dysfunctional super-powered orphans brought together by a mysterious millionaire, who reunite in the present day to stop an impending armageddon kicked off by their benefactor's demise. The quirky take on this superteam/messed-up family unit has lots of sly humour and cool ideas, superbly rendered in Ba's Mignolaesque style. Those slick James Jean cover paintings don't hurt, either. Fans of Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL should get a kick out of this.

Man, did JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA go downhill in a hurry, or what? I mean, some (okay, many) would argue that it was downhill to begin with--to say that Brad Meltzer's run on the book met with mixed reviews is to be awfully charitable--but Dwayne McDuffie has quickly turned this book from a series that was kind of boring but filled with nerdy easter eggs and in-jokey character moments into the other kind of bad superhero book--the one where the good guys fight the bad guys, and that's really about it. I know, that's a weird complaint for a capes-and-tights book, but seriously...that's really all that has happened so far. Luthor's Injustice League kidnapped most of the JLA last month, and in this issue, they fight Superman and Black Lightning before kidnapping them, too. Yep. Nothing else to see here, folks, just lots of cheesecakey Ed Benes art (although, to be fair, Joe Benitez's fill-in issue last month was much, much worse). It's the kind of superhero comic that makes me think "Oh yeah, this is why most people are bored stupid by superhero comics!". I mean, come on, we're talking about Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman here...there's not much chance that Luthor and the gang are gonna kill them all. McDuffie somehow made it work on the excellent, much-missed JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED cartoon, but it's just not coming together here, no matter how much he tries to turn the comic into the show (i.e., John Stewart as the team's resident Green Lantern, the team suddenly having shuttlecrafts named Javelins with no explanation). Where did it all go wrong? Fortunately, Mark Waid and George Perez are back with the superfun BRAVE AND THE BOLD #7, which has a great Wonder Woman/Power Girl teamup that somehow sidesteps all the T and A you would expect from that matchup and instead starts off with a bang and continues with its one-off story that is somehow still part of a bigger yarn that you can ignore if you choose to (but when it's this good, why would you want to?).