What I Bought 5/21/08

So I was all set to start buying Birds of Prey today. I figured it's Tony Bedard on a team book, I like Tony Bedard's run on Exiles, worth a shot, right? Just to be safe, I looked through it in the store first. Oh great, it involves Grant Morrison's brilliant reimagining of the New Gods. The one from his Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle mini-series? As I do not care about that in any way shape or form, I'll just wait until next month to try Birds of Prey. Why am I telling you this, instead of talking about what I did purchase? Well, I needed an opening paragraph. You know how I generally don't want to just dive right in.

Batman & the Outsiders #7 - I agree with Brian Cronin. It's more fun if you imagine those folks are making funny faces at Metamorpho, rather than being weirdos trying to get him. Diamond never did ship Ken any more of last month's issue, but that's OK, because I'm going to treat it as an experiment. Let's see how easily I could follow what was happening based on where #5 ended, and based on what of #6 was posted on scans daily. It'll be fun.

OK, Batman brought part of the tech staff to his cave, Batgirl is sneaking around a, I'm thinking Chinese, military base, with what appears to be Katana's sword. OK, I remember seeing scans of the team getting shot down and mostly captured. Metamorpho is being chased around a space station by blank-eyes people speaking in some language I can almost make out the words of. I remember hearing about this too. Rex gets into some trouble and barely escapes before wasting away. Huh, I didn't know Metamorpho's powers worked that way. Geo-Force lands on a U.S. naval ship in the Pacific, and blows any hope this mission had of being covert by outright saying he was on a covert mission. Cripes Brion, I see why people don't like you. And Batman plans to rescue his team, but something is about to happen to them, so he better hurry.

I think I was able to follow that pretty well. I forgot the team stopped over at their base to pick up Grace before they went to China, but other than that no issues. So that's either good on Dixon for making it easy to follow, or it means the book is moving slowly enough you don't miss much in a given issue. You decide! Carlos Rodriguez is the artist on this issue, and his style seems similar to Julian Lopez, but I think that's the inker and the colorist, who are still the same. Or perhaps the two pencilers are from a similar school of art? I think Rodriguez prefers shadows more, though, and tends to exaggerate expressions to achieve effect, especially with Batgirl's mask and Metamorpho. He definitely seems to make Metamorpho look more inhuman. It was a pretty good issue, if a bit sparse.

X-Factor #31 - I can't tell if that's rubble under the sign, or skulls. Mutant Town is burning down, burning down, burning down. X-Factor is trying to stop it, by any means. Revive Taylor, have Rictor hack the system, catch Arcade and make him undo it. By the by, I think Raimondi is basing Arcade on someone. Robin Williams? Someone else? Either way, I like his little trick. It made me laugh. So nobody outside Mutant Town can get in to help, so it's all up to X-Factor.

So Siryn saves a struggling comedian, because the vaguely familiar, extremely shadowy audience wouldn't. Monet saves people who contend they don't need X-Factor, and Jamie saves an elderly man. Then things take a turn for the better. Then, if Val Cooper's final statement of the issue is any indication, they prepare to take a turn for the worse.

I'm not sure about this issue. X-Factor appears to have had some small victories, but in the larger scheme I don't think they did too well. Which is probably the point. There's just something unsatisfying to me about the issue, but I can't put my finger on it.