Comic book roundup round whatever

This was going to be short because I had to go back to work from lunch but now I am home, my tummy and head hurts, and I feel like doing this. So now all of that is happening. Awesome!

Things read!

DMZ book 7 - This book is good! Really good! Let's put it this way, the book used to be on the instant buy ZOMG so good list. However, book 4 was kinda lack luster, book 5 wasn't very good at all, and 6 reverted to I'm 16 and mad at my mother. Seven though the series recaptures its stride and it seems to be back on track. It had a fantastic little two part story, and a decent 4 part story that advanced the main plot, and a one shot that had the medic girl running around. So first of all it made for quite a meaty read. So I guess ts back to that series for me.

One of the things that really makes this volume stand out from the other two is that Brian Wood really spreads out and gives himself space to let his fantastic prose style run rampant. Prose in comic books is a strange beast, and it is amazing how much information people can pack into a word bubble or a tiny box. Brian Wood is paticularly good at doing this, but for whatever reason he hasn't been doing it recently. Glad to see he is back at it again though. He brilliantly captures the desperate beauty of the warzone and desprite the fact that how hard life is there people make do with the best they can. Still, it is the little side things that make this series sing, I really wish the main story would just go away or something, I dunno. I'm picking this one and the next one up though that is for sure.

Secret Warriors- Its good but it requires more space than I have here really to effectivly talk about it. I mean the man who wrote this book is basicly writting the entire marvel universe, by himself. It seems like as he goes on he is writing more and more. People give him murderous amounts of flack for some of the changes he's been making and for the first time I understand why. He moves around the marvel universe like a kid with hammer. He smashes whatever he wants to and rebuilds from there. Now he is the man directly responciple for me caring about what goes on in the marvel universe again so I cut him mucho slack. But man...MAN I am starting to see where lots of people are coming from. More on that later though.

Road to The Siege- This book is good if you haven't been paying atension to anything that has been happening in the marvel universe at all since the Secret Invasion. Otherwise just grab, Dark Avengers (great read) and The List (I'll get to it next week) and you will know everything you need to. Disapointing. Sometimes these books are really good, like the Road to the Civil War or Road to War of the Kings. They do a great job of catching the reader up on the current events. However, the lead up to the Siege and the events surrounding the Siege are compact enough so that you don't really need a lead in book. The same thing happened with the Accept Change Trade where they introduce the Dark Reign. Strange, in fact I think both trades share a number of stories. I dunno not even worth writing about.

Authority: World's End- After Millar left the Authority it went rocketing down hill at the speed of light. It then crashed into rock bottom, bounced a few times and came skidding to a halt right next to the world's end. Well okay after the world's end. From what I can gather, the carrier crashed into the planet and brought an alternate reality with it. Bad shit y0. I picked it up because Dan Abbet and Andy Landing wrote it and they did a brilliant job with the marvel space stuff. Let me say that again because it is worth emphasizing, they did a fucking brilliant job with the marvel space stuff bringing it from hokey and stupid to some of the most amazing hero comics put out by either Marvel or DC. Seriously, their work is amazing. Then again their work on the Punisher was ultra average so...

Fortunatly, they manage to make the Authority interesting again. A lot has happened to them apparently. The Doctor is no where to be found, and Jenny Quantum is also conspicuously vanished. Still both of these charecters were of only minor concern to me. As is how the world managed to get itself ended. From the looks of things it was the Authority that actually did it so I am down with that. MOVING RIGHT ALONG, what drew me into the story is that it is, for all intentents and purposes, a post apocalyptic story. Apollo and Midnighter are separated, Apollo has to stay up near the sun because of a cloud that is covering the earth and Midnighter? Well you know he can't survive in space, or fly and stuff. So their contact is limited. I always cringe when I see the two of them hit the page, they are comic's premire gay duo and I am always terrified that some writer will not be able to handle it, or fucking it up somehow. Ellis for example largely ignored their homosexuality. Okay ignored is the wrong word. Rather the two of them were gay, but nothing special was really ever done about it. Suprisingly enough it was Mark Millar who took their relationship and made it special. I really like that. I mean the two of them share some really wonderful moments throughout Millar's run and it genuinely makes me happy to see them together.

Abett and Landing really manage to knock it out of the park though. Holy crap the moments they spend together, while brief is just so amazingly sweet that it is worth the ticket price just for those couple of pages alone. When he wants to talk the Midnighter sends up a balloon. You really just have to see it, it just so stupidly tender and they really get the idea of love pulling through the apocalypse. Its a good statement.

I am greatly looking forward to the next volume which comes out in March. As a result I began poking around the Authority trades to see if there was anything else worth reading. Apparently Brubaker did a run! YAY and it looks solid so I'll be getting that because he is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers.

So I'll be looking into that pronto. Poking around it looks as if the Authority runs haven't been as dire as I thought, moar investigation is in order.