fajrdrako | Another few comics....

Other comics I read this week:

1602 by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert. Though I love the set-up here - an alternate universe fantasy that has the superheroes of the Marvel universe in Europe in 1602 - I'm not really enjoying the story as much as I want to. Too much of it seems to be revision of Marvel history as we know it, without a very interesting theme or plot. (Basically, the world is ending. Again. And our heroes want to fix things) I wish there were fewer characters, though some of them are really fun - like Sir Nicholas Fury and Javier's Witchbreed (i.e., mutants). I liked the rustic-old-country version of The Thing, but my very favourite is Pietro, running across Europe over and over, pawn of his father and object of desire for King James of England, now in the hands of the Inquisiton.
Uncanny X-Men #437 and #438. UXM #438 has one of the most beautiful covers I've seen in a long time. The story is of a nasty feud in Kentucky, between the Guthrie family and the Cabot family. Paige Guthrie and Angel come to help defend the family, both looking beautiful, while her brother Josh, a winged singer and poet, falls in love with a Cabot girl. The art by Salvador Larroca was so nice I forgave the story for not being about the X-Men. If we're going to feature the Guthries, can't we feature my favourite member of the family, and one of my favourite X-Men, Sam Guthrie? He was disappointingly absent.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #1. Brian Micahel Bendis writes this revision of Fantastic Four history, in which teen-age Reed Richards discovers the Negative Zone while still at school. Abused young genius, this Reed was more like Peter Parker taken to extremes than the adult, mature Reed I always knew and loved. And I mean loved - Reed was my first comic book crush, back when I was ten or eleven. (Nick Fury came next.) I find it difficult to adjust to this young and hapless version of Reed. Maturity was always part of his charm for me.

Superman/Batman #5. I've been loving this comic so far, but issue #5 simply confused me. Just about every hero of the DC universe comes through, until we gt Superman (the future version, I think) about to strangle Lex Luthor. "For years," he thinks, "Luthor and I have fought. My Dad taught me that when the fox is in the chicken house, you have to kill it... unless you plan on losing more chickens."

Better yet, Batman says, "I will not stop you. There are ways we could make it look like an accident. Or better still - as if he'd disappeared without a trace." And Batman thinks, "Whatever evil the Joker has brought to Gotham City, it is dwarfed by what Luthor does to this entire planet. Worse... what he does to Clark." How could I not love that?

Unfortunately, a few good panels does not make a good comic, and the ending in particular just seemed stupid and contrived to me - maybe because I have never liked the DC-universe Lex Luthor in the least, and he's even worse now I love theMichael Rosenbaum version.