Yo, New York Comic Con comin' up in October, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but Small Press Expo was one of the best comic-cons of all time! One of the best comic-cons of all time! Yep, I had a wonderful time attending last weekend's Small Press Expo in White Flint/Bethesda, Maryland, home of Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, the eastern seaboard's only stealth Target department store (seriously, guys, you know that you can't been seen from the highway?) and the world's seventeenth-worst Chili's restaurant. But most of it, it was, for that weekend, the home of more small comics publishers and creators than you can shake a stick at, if that happens to be your sort of thing. Thank you everyone who was there and who set it all up, and a special Bully tip o' the hoof to our good pal Eden aka Comicsgirl, who did a magnarvelous job in everything she does in the prep for SPX and the accompanying Ignatz Awards. Once again I did not win the Ignatz Award for Cutest Stuffed Animal Blogger. I thought I was a shoo-in with Giraffo out of the running this year now that he has that lucrative job hanging around with Lucy Liu on the set of Elementary, but this year it was not to be. Nevermind. The Ignatz Award is (suitably) a brick, so I just pried one up from the Marriott's sidewalk and took it home. No one will know the difference.
I've made a solemn vow to show off all my SPX loot and tell y'all a bit about it, but for the time being I want to turn the Bully rack-focused eye to peer at Cartozia Tales, the all-ages shared-world fantasy adventure anthology comic that, in this household at least, is fast becoming one of the most Fun Comics of 2013! Editor Isaac Cates, a pal of ol' Bully here as well as swell guy in his own right has put together two (and counting) wonderfully lush issues of Cartozia Tales, with contributions by both big stars and upcoming names in the indie comics world. (We picked up issue #2, just released at SPX, with pieces by Adam Koford and James Kochalka and many others!) It's an anthology with a clever concept: a shared world map divided into nine sections; each issue features a cartoonist telling a story set in that particular region and building the mythology bit by bit. (Here's how the shared storytelling works.) I'm an absolute nut for maps of fictional places, and the Cartozia map (you can see it here) gives the storytellers a delightful and ever-evolving approach to storytelling. (Plus, as my pal Shelly the Otter would like me to point out, there is Minniag the Otter Girl!) There's a lot of great storytelling and cartooning; stories that provoke thrills and giggles as well as provide an intriguing but not overdense ever-growing history of a fantasy land. I'm giving Cartozia Tales two hooves up! Because I only have two and I can't raise more. Unless I lie on my back and take off my shoes.
Also, because I am fond of cutting things out with scissors, I was delighted to pick up Cartozia postcards which starred two of the series' characters...and there are clothes to color and cut out in issue #2! I LOVE PAPER DOLLS AND I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS IT.
Now I know you guys: you're asking: how can I get these fine comics, Bully? Well, you could mosey on over to the Cartozia ordering page and whip yourself up an order for issues #1 and #2, but I'm gonna highly recommend you invest your shekels or quatloos or other forms of universal currency in the Cartozia Kickstarter Campaign, which'll help support the series's upcoming issues, and several levels get you subscriptions to Cartozia Tales in either space-saving PDF format for your newfangled e-readers, or good old-fashioned hold-'em-in-your-hands comics (and CT is beautifully designed and packaged; it's a gorgeous design from stem to stern). Pledging is available at all levels from Dime-Savings Little Stuffed Bull™ to Money-Bin-Diving Duck™. Click this banner to get (kick)starting!:
And I'm tellin' you all this because this is fun comics worthy of your readership and support, and not just because me an' editor Isaac Cates are now good buds and hangin' out at SPX. Shake my hoof, editor-man!
GREATEST HITS #2: This comic is fun. I mentioned in my last review of Vertigo's Greatest Hits that I was impressed David Tischman and Glenn Fabry had taken the concept of "The Beatles as Superheroes" and run with it fancifully and furiously, but it didn't really sink in until this second ish that altho' the inspiration surely is The 
BOOSTER GOLD #13: This comic is sorta fun. I'm not as fond of the post-Geoff Johns/Jeff Katz Booster as I was the original issues (the series was #1 on my "Fun Fifty of 2007 list). Chuck Dixon and now Rick Remender seem to be struggling to make concepts that sound like solid fun come alive on the page. In this issue, Booster and Goldstar chase Starro across time and space, trying to prevent the re-creation of the DC Universe in the image of the evil mind-controlling asteroidean. The concept's solid and the dialogue's fine, but our heroes spend too much time reacting and chasing behind the villain that the plot seems oddly flat and muted. We know Booster will save the day, but we're not seeing a sign of his cleverness here. To be fair, it's a to-be-continued story, so I'm reserving judgment until I see the wrap-up. Remender might just pull a rabbit out of his hat after all. And hey, you can't hate a comic book which features The Best Panel of the Week, a world in which everything is controlled by Starro's starfish, from the President to Oprah and Tom Cruise to starfish-faced Superman helping a starfish-faced little girl by rescuing her starfish-faced cat:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY #1017: This magazine is fun. Hey, that's not a comic! Who cares! This week's EW brings this little stuffed Trekker the first inside look at 2009's big-screen Star Trek movie, with plenty of photos and news behind the screens of J. J. Abrams's revisioning of the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. I love the sneak peek, brief as they are, of the characters and the interiors...I'm no hater lamenting that 
RASL #3: This comic is fun. RASL! It's a candy and a gum! It's also a heckuva fun comic. Let's face it, Jeff Smith coulda followed up Bone with Bone: The Next Generation or Son of Bone or Bone 2: Electric Booglaloo and I woulda happily climbed aboard for another fanciful ride. But just doing something different isn't the sole reason to follow a creator you like: s'gotta be good and compelling too. I'm enjoying RASL quite a bit: Smith's giving us a tension-building world-hopping mystery of an extra-dimensional thief lost between realities. His characters are vibrantly drawn; tho' they may need a bit of fleshing out motivation-wise, it's still early days yet. That's my only quibble about the book: its quarterly schedule leaves a lot of down-time between issues, and this is one of the current books I honestly can't wait to see what happens next.
SIMPSONS COMICS #147: This comic is fun. "Never a disappointment, always a delight" is my usual feeling about Bongo's line of Simpsons comics, and this issue is as almost always, genuinely funny and fast-paced. At the same time it's dense with dialogue and visual and verbal jokes: this is not a comic you whip through in three minutes, and if you are, you're missing lots of the fun. While Lisa conducts a science fair experiment with startling results (could her mother really be someone other than Marge?), Bart and Milhouse challenge each other to stay awake for two weeks. I love me some homer, but it's always a delight when the brightest little Simpson takes the spotlight, and Lisa's tale is well-paced with a funny twist to the ending. And it's a Chuck Dixon comic! Whodathunkit?!? More proof that if you're not reading Simpsons Comics, you're missing out on the most consistently fun four-color experience at your comic book store!
DOCTOR WHO: THE FORGOTTEN #2: This comic is fun. I've praised Rich Morris's wonderful whimsical "The Ten Doctors," his webcomic that's a loving tribute to those great Doctor Who episodes of yesteryear where all the incarnations of our favorite Time Lord are spotlighted in front of the BBC cameras. (
SIMPSONS COMICS #146: This comic is fun. The front cover of Bongo's flagship cheerfully proclaims "A cover so nice we did it twice!" referring to the Separated at Birth nominee 
MARVEL APES #2: This comic is sorta fun. The first issue of this alternate Marvel Universe high adventure (is this Earth-Six-One-Simian?) was amusing, energetic and funny, pretty much right up to its final cliffhanging page. But a dark twist pretty much comes out of nowhere and gets even blacker in the second issue, causing me to sigh and say, "Is there nothing Marvel can't attach the word 'dark' to?" There's a lot of good stuff here: entertaining monkey puns as names for the Earth-Ape heroes, the mystery of Ape X, a likeable and compelling protagonist in the Gibbon, but oh! That twist! [SPOILER WARNING] Ape-Captain America and the Invaders are vampires. They beat Doc Ock to near-death and feast on him, then kill Reed Richards and in a gory, blood-splattered panel, Captain America drinks Reed's blood. Then the vampires plan to invade and feast on the regular human Marvel Earth. Cheese and crackers! This is just another riff on the Marvel Zombies issues of Ultimate Fantastic Four except with less Greg Land. Oh dear. But then why (you're asking me), am I grading this as sorta fun then? Well, take out the dark vampire apes and it is a pretty fun and goofy series with a lot of potential. I'll be checking in on this series to see if the tide turns for a happy ending, and if this ish's cliffhanger means there's a rebellion combing against Cap-Ape and Co. (Also, the "Bonobo-Pen Bulletin" page is pretty funny: I'd pay good money to read a comic starring "Aperaham Lincoln."
GREATEST HITS #1: This comic is fun. The idea's so simple I wonder nobody's thought of it yet: a quartet of British superheroes become the biggest pop stars of the swinging sixties. I remember a letter way, way, way back to Marvel's What If? which proposed a story of "What If the Beatles Had become the Fantastic Four?" (To which the editor jokily but disappointingly dismissed with "You mean they didn't?") Well, this, folks, is that concept at last brought to the comic book pages. Convergent plots from 1966 and 2008 fill in the history with beautiful art by Glenn Fabry. This one's not for all ages (and probably not for a little stuffed bull...I didn't get all the adult jokes!), but as the first in a six-ish limited series, it's a good start for something a wee bit different from Vertigo.
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #16: This comic is fun. I've made no secret of my love for Jeff Parker's various X-Men: First Class series, which are pretty much the sheer definition of fun. It doesn't matter to me that these stories contradict or rewrite some of the carefully spun history of Marvel-Earth: what's important is that this has been consistently the most entertaining X-Series in years. By this issue, #16, Parker's firing on all cylinders with a very delightful tale of Iceman moving out of the X-Mansion in frustration and moving in with Johnny Storm. They're not just roommates, they're teammates, firing crooks with fire and ice! There's a lot of lovely touches in here: Scorpion and the Beetle arguing over their team name, Professor X's self-satisfied smile on assuring the other X-Men that Bobby will be back, and the twist ending that spells an end to the Iceman/Human Torch team-up. Plus, not-yet-dead Gwen Stacy at a pool party. Parker avoids a couple of the clichés of earlier issues (there's no well-meaning but misunderstood monsters in this issue) and Bobby's defection and return is handled with a lighter and more natural touch than the same recent storyline for the Angel. That makes it all the sadder that #16 is the final issue in the series, but never fear, as Iceman himself points out: they'll be back again 
BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM! #2: This comic is fun. I'm in love with Mike Kunkel's gorgeous and unique artwork for this all-ages series, a sequel of sorts to the Jeff Smith Shazam! mini of last year. Kunkel reinvents Black Adam as a school bully (hey! I resent that remark!) intent on capturing Billy and Mary's magic word, getting them in trouble at school and capturing the power of the Seven Deadly Sins. Sounds grim, don't it? Nope, it isn't. It's joyful and expressive and dense (it takes a lot longer to read this "kids" comic than it does most decompressed superhero comics)—there's a lot of meat in this slim $2.25 book. If all Kunkel did was bring his wonderful art style—busy without being crowded, and oh-so-full full of energy—to the page, he'd well deserve praise for giving us a book with a unique new look. That he's melded it with an entertaining and funny storyline and dialogue is even more worthy of applause. This series shows great signs of placing high on my year-end Fun Fifty list, and it woulda been the most fun book of the week, if it had been a week that hadn't included...
ALL STAR SUPERMAN #12: This comic is fun. Thus ends the most picture-perfect dozen issues of Superman since...oh, man, I can't remember when. Like the Twelve Labors of Hercules, Superman series isn't complete until he finishes issue #12, and his tasks on Earth aren't over as long as Luthor rampages free, gorged on the superhuman power of the dead Superman. Did we say dead? Aw, that trick never works. Grant Morrison's dialogue is wonderfully read-out-loud delightful (try it yourself with Luthor's proclamations and see if you don't wind up cackling with glee) and Frank Quitely's art is such a natural fit with Morrison's writing that it's hard to imagine any other team taking over after this storyline. Quitely's style is...look, I can't quite describe in words but let me try. Each panel is set up like a photograph or movie still: there's no cartoon clichés like speed lines or sound effects...but read 'em as sequential art and the movement is so smoothly natural and so intensely commanding that you begin to realize we sometimes take for granted the power and versatility of comic panel art. And his expressions are sublime: check out the surprise of the subway riders as Lex and Superman crash in, Steve Lombard's near-panicked tears trying to revive Clark, or Luthor's time-addled confusion when Kal defeats him using 
FABLES #74: This comic is fun. Well, about this point in a fantasy Vertigo series, you begin to wonder if the series is running down. Not that I've read, but we certainly seem to be moving into Act V here, aren't we? Bill Willingham has thrown us a curveball in the past dozen or so issues with "The Good King" and now halfway through "War and Pieces": the war against the Adversary is going very, very well indeed. There's some nice character work in here and some clever plot devices: using Sleeping Beauty's magical curse as biological warfare is a lovely touch, and who can resist the sight of a rabbit riding a tortoise-mounted machine gun into battle! But the Fables battle has been so relatively easy that I keep on waiting for things to go wrong, for the other glass slipper to drop. Looks like it's coming soon, with the next issue blurb in this one hinting at dark days ahead. Fables is still one of the best and cleverest fantasy comics on the market today, and it's a credit to Willingham and company that the concept is still fresh and a delight six years in. May it never outstay its welcome.
SIMPSONS SUPER SPECTACULAR #7: This comic is fun. I'm hardly ever disappointed by a Bongo Simpsons comic, but I hold Simpsons Super Spectacular to a higher standard: as the Simpson "comic book that parodies comic books," it's got to be both funny on the Simpsons-TV level as well as introducing clever references (without being too obscure) to various comic book series and characters inside the stories. Like most of the issues in this series, it's a fine balance but this one hits it cleanly out of the Springfield Isotopes ball park. There's two stories here: the first is a Bartman tale that places lovable loser Gil in the role of Deadman, trying to help Bart and Milhouse fight crime after his until demise. It hadn't hit me until this issue that the Bartman tales are essentially the Bongo version of Alan Moore's Top Ten series: a town where everyone is a superhero or villain, from Grandpa to Apu, but with larfs: there's at least a couple giggles on each page, and it's a dense read; this isn't a comic you're going to zip through in five minutes. Story number two is my favorite, tho': a Radioactive Man tale that's a loving pastiche of the Mort Weisinger Superman stories, right down to the strange transformations, including a brilliant disturbing-looking version of Radioactive Man drawn in the Swanderson style. My favorite part of this series is that the writers and artists both know and love their source material, but it's not so dense that you must know it inside and out to "get" the story. And say, speaking of dense stories relying on source material...
BATMAN #678: This comic is fun. I'd like to say "Whatever Grant Morrison's on, Mama Bull won't let me take that," but with the newest issue in the "Batman: RIP" storyline, it looks like what Mister Morrison is on is old comics. It's almost impossible to know all the Silver Age references in RIP by itself (
ASTONISHING X-MEN #25: This comic is sorta fun. The comic book known as Joss Whedon's X-Men has come to an end with a big-ass bullet and the departure of Kitty Pryde (for a story cycle or two, at least), so ring up the curtain for Warren Ellis's premiere on the title. There's a lot of clever and fun ideas going on here: a killer who's an artificial mutant (with a nice, Phineas-J.-Whoopee-style lecture by Hank McCoy on what makes a mutant a mutant), the return of Queen Storm to the X-Men, and the lightly humored search by newest Kitty/Jubilee archetype Hisako Ichiki for her codename. The dialogue is fast, clever, and often funny (including The Best Line of the Week: "[Logan] says that if my name's 'Armor' then his name is 'Claws' and Ms. Frost's name is 'Brain' and Rogue's name is 'Suck.'"), and this, even more than the other "reinvented" X-Titles, feels like primal X-Men. So what's the problem—why not full-fledged fun? Main problem: nothing really happens. There's a mystery set up, but there's little to no action in this first chapter, meaning precious little reason for me to pick up issue #26. Sure, it'll probably be better paced in the trade, but give me a reason to buy the book each month, woncha? That and the reversal, yet again, on the X-Men's thinking on costumes and uniforms, leads me to believe that Astonishing's new arc has some promise, but I have to grade this "I" for incomplete.
BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #1: This comic is fun. In the words of Mark Knopfler: "That's the way you do it." I've been a fan of some of DC's all-ages comics, especially Batman Adventures and Justice League Unlimited, but even tho' I'm only six, more recent offerings like Tiny Titans and Superfriends are definitely written for kids and rely just on charm and cuteness to appeal to adults. This new series of Captain Marvel (the real Big Red Cheese) adventures doesn't rely on simple grammar or learning lessons at the end of the story, but instead takes its cue from jeff Smith's Monster Society of Evil comic of last year: with its cute little Mary Marvel, this is a direct sequel. Written and drawn with charm and energy by Mike Kunkel (Herobear and the Kid) in a beautifully colored and shaded style that is absolutely unlike any other superhero comic on the stands. It's funny: Cap learns a lesson from his sister in doing things the easy way when he tries to save a train from disaster, and he takes brotherly revenge by sneakily getting Mary into trouble during a parent/teacher conference in which Captain Marvel is posing as Billy's dad. It's interesting to think about how Captain Marvel has in many ways evolved into a character with intentional kid-appeal—the 1940s version of the character often handled themes and ideas that were more complicated than their competition. Maybe it's the wish-fulfillment of being young and able to turn into a mighty adult hero. Whatever the reason, Kunkel captures it well. His Billy Batson is beautifully drawn, cleverly dialogued, very well-paced (any one of these pages is an excellent textbook for understanding motion and movement from panel to panel), and, like Simpsons Super Spectacular, it's dense: this is no swift five minute read; both adults and kids can read and re-read this again and again. Any quibbles? Well, a reliance on dialogue in the cryptic Monster Society Code in the first few pages might frighten off a newcomer (a handy guide is provided on page one), and no doubt some purists might complain about the new Black Adam (a kid bully, in the not-nice useage of the word). But any comic book that brings such great grins to my little stuffed face—and where Shazam the Wizard reminds me of Asterix's druid Getafix—is a comic book I loudly declare the most fun comic of the week.
NEW AVENGERS #39: This comic is evil. Even if you could get David Mack to put away his &!@#ing tracing paper for one issue, this'd still be an evil comic on all fronts. Dumbass action, liberal gore and blood, pointless sex scene, and absolutely no heroics at all. Plus: a focus on Echo, a character nobody really gives a damn about? Bingo. It's an evil comic all the way around, and the only thing that could make it eviler would be if it were part of a multi-issue mega-storyline. Or wait, it is. EVIL!
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #10: This comic is only half evil. That's because it features Cyclops, the X-Man nobody likes (not even his dead, dead mama), and very little of the rest of the X-Men, especially that delicious little fire-head Marvel Girl. She'll make you wanna do evil things, I'm tellin' ya! But at least this issue features all the X-Men except Cyclops overcome by explosive Mexican diarrhea, so it is somewhat evil. Then again, if I'd published the freakin' thing, I woulda dunked it in germs that would give everybody who touched it explosive diarrhea. BWAH-HA-HA-HA! I'm EVIL!
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #5: This comic is evil. Screwing up fanboys's indexing systems by numbering the comic backwards? That's EVIL. But not as evil as this mean-pirited, bleak and nihilistic (yes—I used the word 'nihilistic'...what's it to you, doughboy?) reboot of the OMAC and Kamandi stories for a new readership for whom, apparently, Kirby is not good enough. That's evil, and I applaud it. Even more evil? The first appearance of 2008's Sensational Evil Character Find, Dog with a Carving Knife.
STAR TREK: NEW FRONTIER #1 This comic is evil. Well, first of all, it's written by Peter David.
THE MIGHTY AVENGERS #11: This comic is only half evil. Here's all the bland Avengers, the ones nobody gives a damn about. Yeah, everybody loves Wonder Man...not! And what's with the cheap-ass thought balloons? A sleazy way to prove that character's not a Skrull? Evil! But by far the most evil bit about the book is that Doctor Doom uses his time machine to get his sweet, sweet lovin' on with Morgana Le Fay. Using a time machine to defeat the Avengers? Pretty wicked. Using his time machine to knock iron boots with a bitchy medieval sorceress? Now that's EVIL!
ALL STAR SUPERMAN #10: This comic is evil. At first glance I was gonna code this comic disgustingly not evil because it's got competent art, innovative writing, clever and original concepts and it celebrates the overall weak goody-goodyness of that namby-pampy Superman. So why am I celebrating it as an evil comic? Because Superman dies. That's right, fanboys, choke on your memorial black Death of Superman armbands, the big blue Boy Scout is worm food! He's pushin' up daisies! He is an ex-Superman. And who is to laud for this evil turn of events? Grant Morrison, of course. All hail to thee, Grant, Son of Morris! All hail for your comic which is EVIL!
COUNTDOWN SPECIAL: ECLIPSO #1: This comic is evil. What's this? A comic featuring one of DC's evilest, more amoral characters? Some blaspheming to attempt to place stories from the Bible within the canonical history of the DC Universe by painting DC villains as the cause? Heads being ripped off, blood spurting, and skulls being vomited? Pretty evil. But not as evil as the existence of this comic book all by itself, in which DC has reprinted three old issues of the Ostrander Eclipso series from the mid-nineties, three books you could find in the quarter bin of the sleaziest comic book shop in the country, and charged five clams for the whole thing. Why, that's brilliant evil, and you know who the sucker is for buying it? You, fanboy! BWAH-HA-HA-HA! That's why COUNTDOWN SPECIAL: BUY SOME OLD CRAPPY ISSUES OF ECLIPSO #1 is the most evil comic of the week! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! EVIL!
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #550: This comic is fun. Oh, Joey Q. is laughing his butt off now, isn't he? 'Coz Amazing Spider-Man has actually turned entertaining, action-packed, and jus' plain fun. (Then again, anything in comparison to "One More Day" would seem fun. A viewing of The Sorrow and the Pity would be a gay romp in the park after "One More Day.") I'm not nuts about Salvador Larroca's slightly-murky, photo-realistic art, and the Jackpot subplot seems unrealistic: there's no way Pete wouldn't recognize MJ is it were here, so despite the anagram-soundin' "Sara Ehret" name, I'm bettin' there's more to the Jackpot mystery than it seems on the surface, tiger. That said, the action is solid, the soap opera compelling, and Spidey is snappier than he has been in several years. Curse you, Quesada! Curse you!
TINY TITANS #1: This comic is sorta fun. I was looking forward to the first of the new batch of DC's comics oriented for kids, and the artwork is charming and innovative: there ain't nothin' cuter than a pint-sized Beast Boy. But I'm not really certain, on reading it, just who this comic is supposed to be for. It's a series of light short comedy stories starring child versions of the Teen Titans. I expected, and hoped, for slightly more involved light comedy adventure stories: the Tiny Titans stopping neighborhood crimes and getting into the sort of adventures Little Lulu or the Little Rascals would. As much of the comedy seems geared for those who know the Titans already (you only giggle if you know that Trigon is Raven's father, f'r instance), it's a very young approach using characters and situations that you'd have to be familiar with the Teen Titans cartoon series to understand. It's utterly cute and charming, and p'raps the only quibble I have with it is that it's a little too young for me. (Even the Superfriends preview seems skewed extremely young.) Try it out on a young kid and I bet you they'll upgrade it to full-fledged fun.
FANTASTIC FOUR #554: This comic is sorta fun. I'm always interested in a good FF first issue: those by Byrne, Simonson, and Waid have signaled the start of solid and entertaining runs that I've loved. So I approach the first ish by Millar, Hitch, and Neary with a good deal of excitement but also a little nervousness: I'm not a big fan of their work on Ultimates in specific or that brand of attempting photo-realistic art in general. But this is a solid start with an intriguing premise and some apt character bits: the final page splash of an Earth and moon under construction had a lovely Slartibartfast at Magrathea vibe to it, the opening time escape from the Old West is frantic and funny (ignore the fact that the Indians seem to be firing not only bullets at the FF but also cartridges), and Reed Richard's lecture to schoolkids about the global economics of paying for an anti-Galactus suit are both laugh-out-loud funny and so absolutely Reed. And it does feature The Best Line of the Week: "Oh God, I've just realized...my little brother's Paris Hilton." So why doesn't this tickle the full Bully fancy? Well, there's a few minor and one major thing problems which knock this new run down a notch. Ben's suggestive come-on to a teacher seemed so risqué I was wondering if Millar had misdialogued the Human Torch instead—and anyway, aren't the Thing and Alicia back together again? (Hmmm, maybe Ben's a Skrull!) I was bothered rather than amused by Reed producing Doombot robots to help around the Baxter Building—come on Reed, this is a deadly villain who has endangered your family multiple times, and more to the point, has terrorized you children. What's next, Annihilus jammies for Franklin? (Hmmm, maybe Reed's a Skrull.) But most of all, with the exception of the opening scene, there's really no action in this issue. The storyline is obviously being written for the trade, but to have a FF issue without an action scene seems muted and dull to me. Don't get me wrong—there's enough in here to be excited and delighted by, and I'm certainly going t5o hang around for the first four-issue opening arc. But Millar is going to have to impress me a lot more in #555-557 to get to pick up the full run.
BLACK PANTHER #34: This comic is fun. I don't normally pick up Black Panther. (I'm still a little miffed I never got a thank-you note from Ororo and T'Challa for the toaster I sent them for their wedding!) This ish, however, caught my interest immediately with its lovely and funky cover of a Pam Grier-inspired Storm. Warning: this scene does not actually appear in the cover, and at its heart it's a pin-up, but it was beautiful and intriguing enough to get me to pick up the issue. Didja hear that, Joey Q.? Comics with intriguing covers that hint at the contents get readers to pick up the issue. 
BOOSTER GOLD #0: This comic is fun. Waaaay back in 1994, DC produced a massive cross-over series entitled "Zero Hour." Every DC Universe comic tied into it, and when the universe was reset at the end of it, we were treated to a "#0" issue of every comic to flash back and fill in the characters' new origins. Some great stuff came out of these zero issues: the revamped and at last continuity-settled Legion of Super-Heroes, the sublime Starman—and now we can add, fourteen freakin' years later, the cleverly numbered Booster Gold #0 tie-in to Zero Hour. Booster and Beetle zip through time to the events of Zero Hour, providing as tidy and neat a tie-in as can be (even Parallax and Extant are along for the ride), but then we revisit Booster's origin in 2462 Metropolis. Booster Gold is shaping up to be much more than merely "Quantum Leap for the DC Universe"—it's clearly not merely a tour of events past and future but also a heckuva funride. I'm sure hoping for a red-skies Crisis crossover somewhere on the horizon for the Blue and the Gold!
FANTASTIC FOUR: THE LOST ADVENTURE: This comic is fun. 1970's Fantastic Four #103 was supposed to be the final issue worked on by Lee and Kirby as a team, but it never quite came together. Marvel substituted another issue and then Stan cut up and redialogued Jack's original artwork for a quite different story printed in FF #108. Many commenters have remarked that the great Lee/Kirby run on Fantastic Four ended with a whimper rather than a bang—in fact, the fun faux-Kirby maxiseries Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Comic Magazine was a 12-issue modern attempt to fill in what might have been the final Lee/Kirby saga with a big, bombastic story that involved the entire cast of the Marvel Universe). The Lost Adventure takes a different approach by reprinting Jack Kirby's original pencils for #103, with an essay and annotations by John Morrow of The Jack Kirby Collector. The original story is then reconstructed using as many penciled pages as could be found, plus new Kirby-esque art by Ron Frenz, to approximate what Lee and Kirby intended for #103, a very human tale of twin brothers, one evil and one good, and how a quest for power brings them into conflict (including a boisterous fight sequence) with the FF. Just for good measure, the complete issue #108 is reprinted so we can see how Jack's pencils were chopped up and repurposed. It's an amazingly detailed and effective look behind the scenes of how Stan 'n' Jack worked, and the reconstructed story is not only fun but also serves to close the curtain on their long run with a quiet but utterly typical FF story. I might make a few quibbles about some of the modern references in the reconstructed story (DSL lines, digital cameras, Doonesbury), but that's all very minor stuff. Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure gives you not only the last great Lee/Kirby saga, it also provides a dynamite look into how stories are made and remade. And the Kirby pencil art alone is worth the price or admission. That's why FANTASTIC FOUR: THE LOST ADVENTURE is the most fun comic of the week.
SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #11: This comic is sorta fun. Ah, so that's what happened to that storyline. The Darwyn Cooke/Tim Sale "Kryptonite" saga from Superman Confidential #1-5 pops up many months laters, more than a year after it started, and in the main book rather than (as in Wonder Woman) an annual. Is this the first time a story has ever been interrupted by so many regular issues? But then, while this raises serious questions about the effectiveness of modern Big Two comic book scheduling, it's irrelevant aside from pointing out that the momentum and energy of this story has been mostly lost during the interruption, and a story I loved has slipped to merely being interesting and okay. Tim Sale's artwork, which I normally praise, seems sketchy, rushed, and rough in this conclusion, especially (perhaps intentionally) in Kal's hallucination sequences. That said, it'll probably read better in one sitting or as a trade, and there's still some lovely, personal moments here between Clark/Supes and Lois, most notably the final page. Six months off didn't help this story, but there's still gems to be found in it.
FUTURAMA COMICS #35: This comic is fun. Speaking of flashing back to previous stories, Futurama is a callback to the animated series episode 
BATMAN #673: This comic is sorta fun. I love you, Grant Morrison. But golly, I really haven't the slightest of what's going on in this book. A dream doesn't make a story, and this seems to be mostly an extended hallucinatory sequence in Bruce's brain following his heart attack (I'm not buying that health twist in Batman, but hey, whatever). Nice vibrant and energetic art by Tony Daniel isn't a great help in following a non-linear, head-trip story, which has something to do with Joe Chill and Bat-Mite. Maybe it'll read better in the trade surrounded by other chapters, and I like the dialogue and art, but for the moment I still feel like I'm not smart enough to be reading Batman.
THE SPIRIT #13: This comic is fun. The post-Darwyn Cooke era begin for The Spirit (or, as I keep thinking the cover logo says, "The Spirito"). Hey, wait a minute, there's actually a Darwyn Cooke cover on this issue, but it's an anthology special with three separate stories by different creators. It's billed as a "Holiday Special," which seems odd to come out a month after Christmas, but it actually contains a Halloween story (crooks dress up as The Spirit) plus one that takes place in the rain and another in the snow. That last, by Gail Simone with Phil Hester and Ande Parks on art, is by far my favorite of the three: dialogue is told almost exclusively in pictograms inside word balloons (only the final panel has a true word it in), and it's both funny (a freezing-cold Spirit in his underwear is chased through a snooty restaurant) and touching (Dolan laments the apparent second death of Denny Colt). Inventive and clever, without being cloying, in a style I bet Will Eisner would have approved of. Although I'm looking forward to Evanier, Aragones, and Ploog as the regular team starting next issue, I'd like to see Gail and Company sink their teeth into a full-length, fully-dialogued Spirit comic.
JACK OF FABLES #19: This comic is fun. "Americana" continues and Bill Willingham and Lilah Sturges squeeze in months of adventure, half-a-dozen destinations and a million and one shady plans by Jack as he, Hillary, Gary, Paul Bunyan, Babe the Little Blue Ox, and a giant cracked egg zip around and about the mythical United States. It doesn't exactly further the storyline tremendously, but it's fun, and that's the most important part, isn't it? In fact, I'll go so far as to name JACK OF FABLES #19 the most fun comic of the week, from its ubiquitous saucy reading line above the cover title to the usual boastful "next issue" plug. Jack's not the only comic book featuring a tiny blue ox with a rich internal fantasy life*, but it's certainly the best.
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #8: This comic is fun. I've been in love with the X-Men since I was a tiny stuffed calf, but that love's been spread among different titles, different creators, and different X-Men teams through certain periods. Right now I'm taking a break from most of the mainstream X-Teams (I do enjoy Astonishing X-Men, but it's really best read in big chunks or in the trade), so that leaves X-Men: First Class as my perennial top X-Title these days. I've heaped enough praise on this book from month to month that you know where I stand: it's fun without being full of angst, even in this month's issue which guest-stars the always gloomy Man-Thing and puts chipper Jean Grey face-to-face with her future, the future we all know from having read Uncanny X-Men #135-137, but which young Jeannie is sensing for the first time. I'm not quite certain weighing this book down with the gloom of the future is something I want to see every month, but it's done in such a light and clever way (the X-Men glimpse alternative future realities when Man-Thing's Everglades Nexus goes haywire) that it hardly seems as heavy as the frequent "Dark Phoenix" references of the mainstream X-Books. Add moments like the delighted glee Cyclops has at the opportunity to pilot a hydrofoil, Angel's encounter with valkyries, and consistently some of the best and cleverest intro/recap pages at Marvel. New (or guest?) artist Eric Nguyen provides suitably creepy swampish atmosphere, and there's a funny one-page Chris Giarrusso "Mini Marvels" strip at the back which ties into an Iron Man gag running in other Marvel magazines. In short, consistently delightful, even with dead Wolverine stinkin' up the place.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #548: This comic is fun. Well, here's the surprise comeback of the year as far as I'm concerned: bitter and tortured "One More Day" leading into an entertaining and energetic Spidey comic book. I picked this ish (and the two weekly issues preceding it) solely because Dan Slott's handling the writing on this story arc—he's a writer who I nearly always enjoy, and he does Spidey well. There's a fun and footloose 1970s Gerry Conway/Ross Andru feel to the entire proceedings: a clever death threat in a poison engineer to target certain DNA, the soap opera aspects of JJJ's heart attack and what Marla's getting up to while he's out of action, a funny and frantic taxi chase...and just what is the mystery with cute Carlie—will she and our hapless Pete become an item? Most of all I applaud the concept of actually having a story arc that ends (even though with weekly publication, it seemed to come to that end fairly fast) at the same time subplots continue from week to week. Since the next arc is not written by Slott, I'm not entirely certain I'll be buying it, but I'm certainly gonna peek at it. I do miss Mary Jane. But the best thing that Marvel can do now is produce entertaining Spidey stories, and with this, they're off to a good start.
DAMAGE CONTROL #1: This comic is fun. Or, as the full actual title in the indicia says "WORLD WAR HULK: AFTERSMASH!: DAMAGE CONTROL". But that's a bit like calling an old friend "Mister." I loved, loved, loved the three original nineties Damage Control miniseries, so picking up this issue this week was a no-brainer. What I hoped for but didn't quite expect was that it'd be a worthy 21s-century successor to the original, one of the cleverest concepts of the Marvel Universe: who picks up and rebuilds after superhero battles? Damage Control, that's who! This one hits all the right notes straight from the first scene, where DC CEO Ann-Marie Hoag negotiates with Tony Stark...and wins. Like the original, it's funny if not necessary laugh-out-loud, but it doesn't sacrifice story for silly jokes. There's an interesting subplot about unregistered superheroes and a dandy cliffhanger when the Thunderbolts show up on the last page to kick ass and check ID. All the original cast are back (even the Damage Control bulldog), and Damage Control creator Dwayne McDuffie scripting, which is good enough news to make me do the happy Bully dance. Damage Control is a three-issue limited series, and I think it works best in small short stories, but I'm hoping that like the original, this'll spin off annual miniseries. And in a week with funny Spider-quips and some thoughtful Jean Grey dialogue, I'm gonna award The Best Line of the Week to the title of this issue, which sums up the way I've been feelin' about the Marvel Universe before Damage Control's return: "Whatever Happened to All the Fun in the World?" Why, it's right here! Right here in a comic about guys who rebuild the shattered Marvel Universe and give us a good laugh. That's why DAMAGE CONTROL #1 is the most fun comic of the week: because if fun isn't what we all need right now, I don't know what we need.
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