Friday 5 #1

Welcome, to the first edition of the Friday 5*. This will be a regular feature (or as regular as anything gets around here) at the House of Z, and it'll also give me a chance to catch up on things that have come up that I wish to comment on, but hadn't had the opportunity to over the course of the week. So, with that in mind, lay on, MacDuff!

*Props and apologies, of course, to Tom Spurgeon for taking his idea and putting a slight twist on it...


1. I'm mostly enjoying 52. I like the "anthology" feel of the book, but I had a hard time deciding if I enjoyed the first issue because I didn't really feel like I'd gotten much story. It was only after a 2nd reading that I realized I'd gotten a lot of story, just not all of the same story. I think I (and most of us, frankly) are used to A Plot, some B Plot, and maybe a page or so of C Plot in our books. But since this is a.) a weekly book, and b.) following, at minimum, six main characters, I probably shouldn't expect too much of each character in each issue. So, overall, I'm enjoying what's shown up.

2. Having said that, however, I do have a slight problem with #3. We end #2 with a confrontation between Ralph (I have a hard time calling him Elongated Man anymore, since he doesn't seem to, you know, elongate) and Wonder Girl over the defacement of Sue's grave. There is ABSOLUTELY no sign of either character in #3. Now presumably they'll show up in #4, but I hope I don't have to wait much longer than that to see some resolution to this encounter. Otherwise, I'll be one unhappy cheese.

3. This time of year makes me happy for a couple of reasons: School is almost out, and Comic-Con is fast approaching. As a teacher, I've worked hard all year, trying to get my charges whipped into shape, sometimes despite their every effort to fail. After 180 or so days of that, I'm ready to be done. But there's also a certain satisfaction that comes from watching these kids march across the stage in their caps & gowns and undergo this rite of passage. It smells like...hope.
Comic-Con, on the other hand, is one of my favorite times of the year. It's like Christmas, but without the cold. And the crazy relatives. Although I run into my boys from Epstein's Mother every year, and it seems like My Buddy Rob and I are always dragging some weirdo or other to SDCC (I refuse to call it Comic-Con International: San Diego; to me, it'll always be the San Diego Comic-Con), it's a different kind of crazy. It's the crazy that only comes from someone who shares your passions. I imagine it's what be a Red Sox fan in Boston might be like, if I cared about professional baseball. But I'm off-topic here. My point is that, in the run-up to Comic-Con, Mrs. Z. knows that I get a little goofy. I start poring over my want list, scrawling cryptic notations in the margins to account for additions to the list that have cropped up over the course of the year, muttering to myself, and asking her questions like "Are you sure I can't put my Parobeck Justice Society poster over the mantle?" or "Do you know where I put my last Tom Strong?" Half the time, she doesn't even understand what I'm looking for, but she's very indulgent of this aspect of my life, and I love her dearly for that.

4. Boy, have I missed James Robinson comics. I loved Firearm, which led me to Starman (and thank Buddha for that; talk about a transformative experience!), The Golden Age, and Leave it to Chance. So when I saw he'd be writing Batman and Detective coming out of Infinite Crisis, I was excited, but this story has lived up to my every expectation of Robinson's work. Part 6 (out this week in Batman 653) was an amzing piece of work. Don't believe me? Ask Scipio. He'll tell you.

5. Norm Breyfogle is my favorite Bat-artist. The prevailing theory about artisitic interpretations of long-running characters is that whoever was the Bat- or Super-)artist when you were discovering comics is going to be "your" artist. By that reasoning, Jim Aparo would be mine. And he's REALLY good. Arguably the best. But Breyfogle, who had a sweet run on Detective before moving over to Batman and then Batman: Shadow of the Bat over the course of the late-80s and through the mid-90s or so (I'm going mostly from memory here), had a certain command of angles and shadows that, frankly, no one else has even approached. Batman: Holy Terror remains one of my favorite Batman stories, in large part because of Breyfogle's art. His Batman is more expressive than any other. Of course, as with most things, others will have differing opinions. And they're entitled to them, no matter how wrong they are.