Of comics

All my reading lately has been comics, a lot of it DC and the rest either webcomics or Transmetropolitan. Some of the stuff I’ve finished so far:

1) Batman – Face the Face:

Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake take a year’s sabbatical to go find themselves after the mess that was Infinite Crisis. Gotham City is left in the capable hands of a now-restored Harvey Dent. The issue here, as with most of anything that features Batman, is trust. And it has Jason Bard who is cool enough to stand up to Batman, sans pants.

2) Identity Crisis:

Deals with the death of cherished ones, the uglier side of superheroes, long-forgotten closeted skeletons and the “memory wipe” that would lead to a lot of the mess that was Infinite Crisis. It is an interesting read about the necessary compromises required of anyone that works in a team, though it does get hamhanded and soap-operatic in places. But that is to be expected with any superhero comic, I guess. I like it best because of the amount of footage Green Arrow gets in it.  He is easily the most approachable, the most liberal superhero in the DC ‘verse that I’ve seen so far.  Also, it has one of the best lead-ins to a comic book yarn. The first issue with its corny love story of the Dibny’s being narrated against the backdrop of a stakeout was great.

3) Batman – Arkham Asylum:

Batman enters an Arkham Asylum that is being held hostage by the Joker and co. The art in this one is bizarre and Lovecraft-ian. The core story here is Batman and the Joker. Batman can be reduced to a hybrid of his two most oft-encountered villains, Joker and Ras al’ghul.

4) Countdown to Mystery

This is another post-Infinite Crisis story that features the new Dr. Fate and the new Eclipso. While the writing isn’t all that great, the way the new Dr. Fate, a shrink who’s fallen on bad times, tries to rationalise all the mystical, otherworldly things like demon hounds, Satan’s offsprings, vision quests, etc. I found entertaining. Eclipso, eh, I never liked the bit where Eclipso posseses Jean Loring (because of Identity Crisis) so can’t say I cared much for that part of this Countdown.

5) Superman – Up, Up and Away

Now, I love Superman stories. When you have a guy who is like unto a God in all things and has had the luxury of a normal childhood (considering the sorrow-ridden upbringings of many others), you can only paint him as being a victim of circumstances, as is always the case with Supes be it in Infinite Crisis, Kingdom Come, Dark Knight, etc. Written by Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek (whose Astro City I’ve already cooed over here), it deals with the year in retirement spent by Superman after Infinite Crisis. It starts with Clark Kent and Lois Lane spending a day in the park watching a retrospective on the life of Superman. It is the story of Clark Kent who has lost his powers and has spent the intervening period being normal like the rest of us. Except being what he is, there is no anguish, no loss, no pain in his lack of super-ness. He becomes a star journalist for the Daily Planet, exposes corruption in the Intergang impressing Perry White, fights the good fight against Lexcorp getting his jaw broken by Luthor, and plays the perfect husband for Lois Lane. This has been a major ‘pull’ to all Superman stories for me, that he is at heart the kind of man everyone will admit is an overall ‘nice guy’, with or without his Kryptonian skin cells.

Which also makes Lex Luthor the perfect arch-nemesis for him. Where Superman is the most powerful man in the world who delights in being human, Luthor is the man who feels himself entitled to wielding power over everyone else. But…I’m sure someone must’ve done a piece on this already, and on that other starker Batman-Joker dialectic.

Apart from the above, it’s been a fairly dull time what with the rains and work. I still have everything except Infinite Crisis left from the reading list I posted a month ago.  All in good time, I suppose.