Great book. George Perez's art is so unique, he's the comics equivalent of a big screen blockbuster. His stuff may look dense and cluttered, but it's really carefully positioned and visually rewarding. I love when he uses the panels themselves as storytelling tricks. And it wouldn't be Perez without his ol' half-a-face bookend sequence:

The story is great too, with Batman and GL (Hal Jordan) stumbling into a murder mystery. The first issue reads very much like a fun buddy picture. Mark Waid pretty much has my dream job, writing good solid dialogue for comics legends.

Green Lantern Corps #10

This is a good example of the only acceptable to way to do multiple artists in a single book (unless you're doing one of those artist jam books that always crop up during major character anniversaries): have one artist do the A story and the other do the B story. I'll take whatever they have to do to get more pages out of Dave 'Watchmen" Gibbons, even if most of his modern work looks like panel tracings of Watchmen. There's just something so clean about his art. My only complaint about GLC is that the book seems determined to make every other Lantern a complete asshole, as seen in this issue with Tanak, who goads on his weaker partner with all the subtlety of an afterschool special.

52 #44 and 45

These are the Black Adam-goes-nuts issues, which you knew was going to happen since about, oh, Week 1. I thought the Black Marvel Family thing was really clever, so I'm marginally sad to see it all end in tears, even if it seems to be Adam's fate to never let a rehabilition stick around for long. He's become one of my favorite villains over the last few years, but I'm a sucker for the Confidently All-Powerful types.

Did this really need to be two, maybe even three, issues though? Black Adam loses everyone close to him, so he goes on a death-and-destruction spree, pissing off Intergang, Checkmate and China in the process. Not a lot of actual story there; but I think all of the resolutions to 52's core storylines have been weirdly handled.

Loved the bit with Sivana at the end. That guy needs more face time.

Justice League of America #6

Man, am I the only comics fan around who just does not care for the Red Tornado? He drags a lot of nostalgia along with him, but other than that, his main job is to explode during every crossover event. I liked the three months of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman talking about possible recruits more than I liked the actual action story that followed it. I still don't get why Dinah and Hal came for Roy rather than Ollie. Not that I wanted Green Arrow on the team, just that the awkward grab for Roy seemed totally without cause. And when did we officially start calling him Red Arrow (as shown on the DC Direct toy ad for the new League figure/statues)?

Shazam: Monster Society of Evil #2

Here's the truth, folks: I don't particularly like Jeff Smith's art. He runs about 50/50 for me. Some of his panels will be great, emotional, legible, and unique... and then the rest will look like a first-year art student who hasn't yet had his anatomy class. I know it is sacrilege to not enjoy the creator of Bone, but there you are. I love when an artist has his own style, but I need that style to be consistent in and of itself. This book is just all over the place, completely off-model when it shouldn't be off-model. John K. would probably adore it.

You don't have to go any further than one page in to see it. Look at the inset of Mary on the interior cover: sassy, non-traditional comics art (more comic strip than comic book), fun, full of personality. Then look directly across the fold at the big center image of the same little girl. Ugly, off-perspective, creepy, over-lined. WTF?

Superman/Batman #32

This has been an interesting story, even if you know it's going to go absolutely nowhere. Somebody has convinced/brainwashed/controlled all of Earth's alien heroes (and villains, I assume) that they need to unite against the Earthlings. Initially, it was an excuse for the creative team to toss out a lot of dopey 1960s concepts like Ultra the Multi-Alien, Jemm Son of Saturn and that stupid one-time sidekick puppyface alien thing whose name escapes me. But it quickly graduated to realizing how many of DC's heroes are born offworlders, and that they are disproportionately powerful. Martian Manhunter. The Hawks. Superman. This issues adds friggin' Power Girl to the brainwashed mass, which stretches the concept far too thin for my liking. OK, she's from Earth-2. What about Wonder Woman then? Themyscira isn't exactly just another Guam, and her animated-god-clay origin ought to qualify her as not being born on Earth.

Great bit with Lobo. As a fan who lived through the Great Loboplosion of the mid-90s, it's hard to imagine I can have any fondness left for the character, especially when he's treated as mainstream DC canon. But I do.

JLA Classified #36

God, what even happened here? There's so many alternate realities populated with identical characters that it's really difficult to pull the story out. I feel like I've been reading this one for months, but the title page says this is only part three. Guh.

This reminds me of an old Justice League story I just read (in one of the Showcase reprint books, so this is a 1960s story) where this guy makes his own universe and his own (identical to ours) Justice League, but runs up against a threat that his League can't handle, so he comes to our universe and duplicates the threat for our League, so he can see what they do to beat it so he can go back and have his fake League beat the enemy that he just faked for our League. With all the duped identical characters you have no idea what in the hell is going on.

Fantastic Four #543

I think I'm down to just the one FF book, now that I finally dropped Ultimate FF.

This is a sneak-up-on-ya anniversary issue; apparently it's been 45 years since the Four's debut. As such, you get two supplemental stories after the main post-Civil War tale. The first is done in a mock Lee and Kirby style and is actually written by Stan Lee himself... which is, incidentally, the only thing good ol' Unca Stan should be writing these days: stuff that mocks his own seminal work. I actually emailed Mark Evanier about this a few years back - why doesn't Stan just retire already? - and Mr. Evanier replied to me personally, saying that Stan doesn't know how to retire. Although being a professional writer, Mark used the word "anathema." Well, if retiring would kill him, then I guess Stan should keep working! (Yes, I know what anathema means.)

Also, whatever Team Allred did to ink and color the Stan Lee story, it is delicately gorgeous. It is so atomically different than anything else you see in comics, it completely grabs you.

The scan-to-web here does not do it justice at all.

As for the other backup piece, it sucks.

As for the Civil War epilogue, it's weird. You mean to tell me that Wolverine and Dr. Doom would participate in a network news interview special on the Fantastic Four? Really?

Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness

The first Marvel Zombies miniseries was so hot that they had to do another one... but did they have to tie it in to a freakin' movie license?

I like Bruce Campbell heaps. I've even reading his second sortabiography at the moment. But this is just bottom-of-the-barrel teamuppery. If that awful ending to the first Zombies mini wasn't enough to murder the concept, consider this one the killstroke.