Slow day at the comics corral.

Hi hi hi! It's a cold and windy day here in Manhattan. Going to the comic book store on Wednesday always helps warm my fuzzy little stuffed heart, tho'!

Today I didn't buy much. There weren't that many new comics out that caught my eye. Ever have one of those weeks? Yep, I realize that in these new-fangled days, if you're not buying Infinite Crisis (and its crossover books) or House of M (and its crossover books) or "The Other" (the crossover books that are crossover books all by themselves), you're plumb out of luck when you go looking for comics at your Local Comic Store (or "LCS" as we bloggers like to call 'em!). Those of you who read this blog (all three of ya!) know already that I'm not that interested in Crisis or House of M and I'm waiting for the trade (the dirtiest words a comics fan can say!) on "The Other," so where does that leave me? It leaves me telling you whether a mere two books are fun or not!

BART SIMPSON #26: This comic is fun...sorta. Frequent readers of Comics Oughta Be Fun ("COBF", pronounced "cobif") know that I generally have two grades for the comics I read: fun and not fun. Well, add to that a brand-new grade of fun...sorta. And it's 'propriate I'm using it on this week's Simpsons comic, because I'd actually been thinking of retiring the Simpsons/Bongo line from the fun/not fun rating system. Why? Because they're nearly always fun...but sometimes they're not perfect. I needed a middle grade for comics that are still plenty fun to read—don't get me wrong—but which aren't exceptionally amazing or fantastic. It's sorta like if Mister Ebert waggled his thumb in the middle instead of thumbs up and thumbs down all the time! Anyway, as usual, this week's Simpsons comic is fun...but it could have been better. The thing I like about Bart Simpson is there's usually a buncha stories; if one's not that great, there might be an even better one later on. I liked the first one best (Bart's treehouse is scheduled for demolition. I wish I had a treehouse!) and it has lots of funny sight gags (but where did Homer's bandages go between pages 7 and 8?). The Maggie dream story was kinda silly more often than it was fun or funny and the "Bart goes on a bath strike" story was something you'd see on any Disney Channel sitcom! It wasn't sharp enough for the Simpsons. That's why this issue gets a grade of fun...sorta.. It's better than a lot of comics, but it's not as good as it could be.


JSA CLASSIFIED #4: This comic is fun. I've never been a huge fan of Power Girl but this whole storyline has been a fun exploration of who she is and what her relationship to the DC Universe is. It has a twist at the end which was fun just for being different than what you usually get in a twist at the end. You know how so many stories are "what you know about Character X is WRONG!"? Well, this one is "what you know about Power Girl is RIGHT!" It restores the simplest, most common explanation for her origin back to comics, and I'm pretty sure I can guess that means (as the 'blogosphere' has been buzzing about for weeks) a return to the multiverse for DC Comics. I'm not certain how i feel about that. I like Earth-2 and multiple earths and crossover stories. But I'm not certain if returning to that will make the comics more accessible, or, most important to me, more fun. I guess we have to wait and see! (I'll have to wait longer than most of you, 'coz buying this title is the closest I'll get to reading Infinite Crisis!) I think the story loses a couple points for 1) having a kinda downbeat splash-page ending (I woulda wrote it different—a little more triumphant, but I'm just a li'l stuffed bull after all), and 2) there's a two-page epilogue that just kills the momentum of the story itself, makes it not complete, and isn't really anything but a teaser for Infinite Crisis. That's why even tho' this book was fun, I can't award it the Bully-approved seal of most fun comic of the week. Nobody gets that. Maybe next week I'll trot it out again.


Oh sure, I know there are plenty of fun comics out there that I didn't pick up. I want the Showcase Presents: Metamorpho book and the new Little Lulu collection. There's a great digest collection of Sgt. Rock stories I woulda bought if I'd saved more dimes. My point is, we live in a day and age of fun comics all around us, folks. But sometimes they are not always the ones that are brand-new on the shelves that week.