Reactions: comics round-up

Alright, have a bit of time on my hands today so I decided to get caught up on those new issues I picked up yesterday... Admittedly I'm sort of on a high right now because I just put down a really great issue of Wonder Woman (yes, it was worth waiting for)... so my mood is pretty good right now - the other titles ought to be thankful!

First up is the newest release of Ghost in the Shell in English. Old-hats like myself is remember fondly how confusing Shirow Masamune's masterpiece cyber-punk thriller was the first time they read it. Well, time has aged me and for the most part, I look at Shirow's narrative a little differently now. Either that or Frederick L Shodt's translations have become much smoother. The foot-notes are much quicker to digest than before (and funnier too). The artwork unfortunately seems to be frozen in time and has not evolved - I blame that on the actual time of production tho. These are "lost chapters" published many moons ago in its native Japan. I'm loving it though. It's an all-new story and well, we've been waiting ages for material about Section 9's exploits.

What? You didn't think I forgot, did you? Supergirl sure too its sweet time getting its feet wet and finding itself. Trouble is, it was caught launching last year in the midst of the Infinite Crisis event and then blown sky high thanks to the wake of that event (it participated in the "One Year Later" deal where everything skipped forward in narrative. Worked for some DCU titles... didn't work so well for others. In this title we spent a lot of time fumbling around with what should've been a tie-in with the "Legion" title but never really addressed that. And then a couple of stand-alone issues (which for the most part have been excellent. This pulls a Tarantino-esque non-linear plot but ends up with with a wacky cliff-hanger. And everything was going swell up until that last page... *sigh* At least we got to see hot bodies in bathing suits. If nothing else, the cheesecake was alright (and is it just me or do I smell shades of Danger Girl in the designs?

Ah yes, the grand finale to volume 2 of the Fathom series. Y'know, it actually did it well. Plenty of closure. Not sure if it was worth the wait tho. After 11 issues, I never really warmed up to Turnbull's art. Say what you will about Turner's incorrect anatomy, but he did faces well. Turnbull's faces... not so much. I mean, he's alright, but he hasn't really captured the sensual lines that make up the characters who populate the Fathom universe. The plot... well, the bad guys got what was coming to them. And Aspen and her boyfriend go off to live happily ever after. Which is in itself a good thing because despite being predictable, at least, didn't piss me off in the end.

And finally, I get to the issue that prompted this post. Y'know, I haven't warmed up at all to this idea of a bi-monthly release schedule - it makes the series feel very disconnected. In fact, when I saw this cover on the stands, I almost didn't get it because I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the previous issues. But the saga continues as Diana debates over whether or not to retake the mantle of Wonder Woman from her protege, Donna Troy (currently moonlighting in the WW get-up). The story raises some very interesting soul-searching questions: what is the significance of the Wonder Woman, does mankind need a hero as such? And what about the person-on-the-street? Who is their champion in tough times? Do these people need a super-hero at all? The Dodsons provide a fantastic issue as always - Diana looks great even out of that crazy WW costume and in more conventional business attire. Plus we've got plenty of badguys and guest-stars. And then there's the villainous mastermind behind the attacks in the first few issues revealed. Oooh... the plot thickens. I'm loving it.