Labor of Love: Comics I Read

Since no one cares about comics I read (except me) why not put them on a day when no one will read them?  Makes perfect sense.

With the new Dr. Strange movie, there were some comics on Amazon Prime Reading that I eventually got to reading around 4th of July.

Dr. Strange:  Across the Universe:  Or, Dr. Strange in Spaaaaaaaace!  Marvel has this thing where if they run out of ideas for characters, they shoot them into space.  The Hulk, Venom, Iron Man, and Bucky Barnes are just a few who've done this.  And now Dr. Strange!  After losing his magic, Tony Stark gives Strange a ship to go into space to look for magic.  He is almost immediately captured but meets an "arcanologist" who helps him find magical artifacts, including the Time Stone.  They rescue a dwarf who I think was probably the Peter Dinklage character in Infinity War who helps Dr. Strange make a bunch of magic weapons.  It was pretty fun with some nicely done art.  The sci-fi touches make it a little more interesting to someone like me who is not really a fan of Strange. (4/5)

Dr. Strange:  God of Lies:  After losing the contest to be "Sorcerer Supreme," Dr. Strange is replaced by...Loki!  While Strange seeks to reclaim his title, Loki tries to unlock a room in the Sanctum Santorum that he thinks must have ultimate power or something.  There are some twists that make the story pretty good, but the art is that really bare, rough style that I don't like because it looks like a rushed artist turned in his/her sketches. (2.5/5)

Dr. Strange: Surgeon Supreme:  Apparently at some point in recent history Strange fixed his hands so he can do surgery again.  Which he does but most of this still focuses on his other job as someone is stealing stuff from his "sanctum machina" or forge where he makes magic weapons.  With some help he finds the culprits.  The story was OK but the art was real comic strip funnies quality.  Meh. (2/5) 

And with the She-Hulk show they had a couple of volumes of comics to read:

She-Hulk by Dan Slott, Vol 1:  This volume from 2004-2005 is probably fairly relevant to the TV series as it involves Jennifer Walters joining a law firm that practices "superhuman law."  She has to take on cases involving superheroes, villains, ghosts, and aliens.  At one point she even becomes a "Magistrati" or a judge on universal issues.  A particularly funny issue has Jen representing Spider-Man in a suit against J Jonah Jameson that goes awry when Peter Parker also becomes involved; it was perhaps a forerunner to Slott's epic run on Spider-Man.  The art usually wasn't very good:  primitive and inconsistent from one frame to the next.  One particularly weird issue taking place at the TVA later featured in the Loki TV show changed artists from one page to the next for some reason; I think it might have been an issue #100 or something like that.  If you can stomach the art the rest is good. (3/5)

She-Hulk by Charles Soule Vol 1:  This is from almost a decade after the previous entry.  It's one of those stories Marvel likes to do with its characters.  After an origin, maybe a death/retirement, and revival, they either shoot the character into space or have them open a new business.  This is the latter.  (They've done the same with Daredevil, Ant-Man, Peter Parker, Bucky Barnes, and Kate Bishop among others.)  After quitting her big law firm job, Jennifer Walters starts her own firm and represents Dr. Doom's son and looks into a strange file called the "blue file."  The story is ok but the art is awful.  I don't know why Marvel employs "artists" who can't seem to draw better than sketches or even maintain consistent appearances from one page to the next.  There are two different crappy artists, one for the first 3 issues and an even worse one for the next two.  The latter at one point has She-Hulk with short hair and the very next page her hair is long enough to be in a bun.  This is "professional" craftsmanship?  Ugh. (2.5/5)

And now other stuff!

DCeased: Dead Planet:  The sequel to the DCeased series where Darkseid unleashed a virus that made most of Earth into zombies, including all the major heroes.  Some survivors fled to a new planet.  Five years later Superman (Jon Kent), Batman (Damian Wayne), Green Lantern (Black Canary), Flash (Wally West), Wonder Woman (formerly Wonder Girl), and Green Arrow (still Oliver Queen) get a distress signal from the dead planet and go back.  They hook up with John Constantine, Zatanna, Swamp Thing, and some others and find a way to save the planet. It was not too dark or depressing as this time our heroes get to win--mostly.  It would have been nice if there were more of a bridge between the two series to see more of how Jon and Damian step into their new roles and stuff but what characterization there was worked pretty well.  The art is pretty typical DC stuff, which is less crude-looking than those Marvel comics I read.  There is room for a sequel with zombie Darkseid and original Superman still out there and in July, DC announced an 8-issue series to conclude the story. (3/5)

Shazam: The Seven Magic Lands:  It's kind of weird reading this because it was written by Geoff Johns in 2018, before the 2019 movie that was largely based on Johns's post-New 52 origin of "Shazam" (formerly the original Captain Marvel) and Billy Batson.  Yet reading this in 2022, it feels like it could be a sequel to that movie because it has pretty much the same setting and characters.  When this begins, Billy has become Shazam and shared the power with his 5 foster siblings.  They explore the "Rock of Eternity" where their power came from.  Doors to other magic lands have suddenly opened.  They go first to "Funland" which like Pleasure Island in Pinnochio seems like a really awesome amusement park and yet it's hiding a dark secret that's a little less weird than kids turning into donkeys.  The other lands don't get quite as much exploration.  This is actually 12 issues but it really could have been twice that at least to really get into these other lands and some of the adventures they have after Sivana and Mr. Mind are defeated.  But mostly if you like the movie then you'd like this book, which again feels like a continuation even though it predates that. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  Superboy-Prime of Johns's event "Infinite Crisis" appears in this, which maybe was an attempt to explain where he'd been for 10 years or so.)

Die, Volume 3:  I've read the first two volumes which are a grim and gritty reboot of that old Dungeons & Dragons TV series where a bunch of kids were sucked into the game world.  In this case the kids escaped and then years later were pulled back in as adults.  This volume moves a lot of stuff on the board and gets most of the characters back together for the big finale that goes through a dungeon.  It was OK but again just one of those volumes where pieces are moving so by itself isn't that interesting. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The character Ash was a man in the real world but is a girl in the game world and even has a son now and yet we never really seem to deal with any of the issues I have to deal with in hundreds of gender swap stories.  What's up with that?!)

Die, Volume 4:  So after two volumes of mostly side quests, we finally get back to the main story, which is how these people who were pulled into the game world as teenagers, escaped, and were brought back 25 years later, can escape again.  They have to go to the center of a dungeon, the entrance to which is through the eye of a giant Lovecraft--as in the actual guy.  And from that point there's not a lot of fighting but a lot of secrets are revealed and the least heroic character has to make a heroic sacrifice.  And finally we get into a little bit of stuff with the gender swapped character!  Not a lot, just enough to discuss "gender fluidity" and that basically his/her friend created the game so he/she could explore this issue.  Even if I didn't entirely get everything in the ending, it was still pretty good.  Really though I think this whole thing could have been just 12 issues and still wrapped it all up neatly.  I mean all the Game of Thrones-ish stuff in volume 3 was in the end a lot of vamping. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  At the end of the volume there's an ad for a role-playing game based on the story.  It probably won't suck you into a world of swords and sorcery...)

Kick-Ass: The Dave Lizewski Years Volume 1:  I'll talk more about this later in how it compares to the movie.  To sum up, the first 2/3 is largely the same and then they go in different directions.  This features a lot of the same potty-mouthed humor, blood, and gore as the movies--if not more so.  If you enjoy that sort of thing it's a lot of fun.  I know John Romita Jr is a legend in the industry and so was his father, but a problem I had with the art is the tween/teen characters more often look like little kids or little people than 12-to-17-year-olds.  That is a problem in comics in general I think when focusing on young characters.  It's sort of the opposite problem of TV and movies where you have older actors playing teens. (3/5)

Hit Girl, aka The Dave Lizewski Years Volume 2:  This miniseries about Hit Girl basically bridges the gap between Kick-Ass 1 and Kick-Ass 2.  Mindy McReady was abducted by her crazy dad and trained to become a brutal, bloodthirsty vigilante.  But now she's home and trying to live a normal life, but it sucks so she goes out killing gangsters.  Meanwhile Red Mist, a would-be hero-turned-villain, realizes that all that training guys like Bruce Wayne does is a lot better when you can do it in a montage or just fast-forward from the start to the finish.  So screw that, he'll just pay people to do his dirty work. Anyway, again there's the same potty humor, blood, and gore and artwork that always makes the kids look weird. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Most of the material in this was worked into the movie Kick-Ass 2, albeit more streamlined.) 

Jupiter's Circle, Vol 1:  I got this in a Humble Bundle a while back with some other Mark Millar comics, including the two Kick-Ass ones above.  I'm not sure if this was a prequel or actually the start of the Jupiter's series.  Basically it's 1959 and this group of superheroes have personal problems.  One is gay but has to hide it, another dumps his wife for a sidekick half his age, and one takes the girlfriend of another, prompting him to quit.  It's not bad but dull if you've already read Watchmen, The Boys, and so on.  I described it as Watchmen meets DC's New Frontier with some of George RR Martin's Wild Cards thrown in.  If you watched the show on Netflix and stuff then I guess this helps to fill in the background. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  While this is actually called Jupiter's Legacy Vol 1, the issues are Jupiter's Circle #1-6.  I would assume there was some rebranding there with the Netflix show and all that.  From what Amazon shows, the actual Legacy series starts with Volume 3.  SMH.  Check out the covers from Goodreads and you can see they have the same graphic but different titles.)

Superman Smashes the Klan:  I think this was an expanded remake of an old comic.  Taking place in 1946, a Chinese family moves into a neighborhood and is soon terrorized by the Knights of the Fiery Kross.  (Because even though we use "Klan" in the title apparently we couldn't use the actual Ku Klux Klan in the story?  Were they going to sue for defamation?)  Superman intervenes but finds that it's not as easy as breaking up a bank robbery.  At the same time, Superman is exposed to Kryptonite and starts hallucinating his alien parents, who urge him to unlock some powers he hasn't used like flying and X-ray vision.  Which is a clever way of transitioning from the original Superman to the more modern version.  It's a good story with an important message.  And it's about as subtle as Superman's costume.  But maybe that's what we need these days when right-wingnuts are trying to drag us back to the "good old days" when people could be openly racist like in this story. There were a few anachronisms like when one kids greets Lois with "Ms. Lane" despite that "Ms." wasn't really a thing until the 60s or 70s.  (4/5) (Fun Facts:  I got this from Vine about 3 years ago and it was just sitting on my shelf until there was a power outage and I was looking for a paperback to read.  Since it's from Vine, about 2/3 of the book is finished but the last 1/3 is mostly black-and-white with the artwork not inked or colored.)