What I Bought 6/22/09

It's another two weeks worth of comics to review! Yippee! It only totals five books! Uh, well, a least it won't be as much work as it usually is.

Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter #1 - Let's see, in this issue Bill and Thor defeat a tidal wave by hitting it really hard, Agent Brand flirts with Bill (Hank McCoy's gonna be jealous), Bill kills a major intergalactic weapons designer, smacks one of Galactus' Heralds around, and destroys the planet Galactus was preparing to eat. Oh stop fretting, the inhabitants had already fled.

This comic has everything I want out of a story starring Beta Ray Bill, except maybe for a little romantic subplot with Sif (I think they're a cute couple), but there's no time for that, even if Sif were around. There are bold pronouncements, massive displays of physical force, imposing enemies, and lots of talk of honor and doing what is right. They even threw in the first appearance of Beta Ray Bill to help justify the price tag. It's Walt Simonson Thor, and you can't go wrong with that. I have to say, if I hadn't looked at the credits, I would never have realized Kano was the artist. Maybe because Beta Ray Bill is a very different character to draw than what Kano illustrated in Immortal Iron Fist, but there are places where his art reminds me a bit of Oeming, and others that remind me of Andrea DiVito (especially parts involving Stardust or Galactus).

Booster Gold #21 - Booster must travel to the Batcave to grab those photos of him trying to stop the Joker, so that no one else learns of his role as Time Stream Protector. Except Dick Grayson Batman is there, and he takes offense to Booster's attempted pilfering. Then the Black beetle shows up, then Grayson vanishes. And in the back-up, Jaime Reyes fights a giant robot and deals with his two best friends having a lovers' spat. Nothing like being in the middle of one of those to make you hope for robot army attacks.

Grayson really seemed to come on strong, didn't he? Bit more aggressive than I'd expect. Sure, Booster appears to be stealing from the Cave, but I'd imagine Batman would have found some way to prevent that if he wasn't OK with Booster being there, right? Booster's a time traveler, you say, but we're talking about Batman, and he supposedly 'always had a plan', so time traveling wouldn't matter, he'd set out the Bat-Anti-Time-Traveler-Spray, and that'd be that. Also, something seemed different about Jurgens' art this month that I can't put my finger on. It has to do with faces, and I'm guessing it's because Norm Rapamund is credited with finished art, but I can't define what it is.

I don't have much to say about the Blue Beetle back-up. It was fine, I didn't feel like the extra dollar was a rip-off, so that's a plus.

Deadpool #11 - What you can't tell from the image I'm using is Deadpool's saying 'You missed', which is a nice touch. Deadpool narrowly avoids being chopped to pieces by some butcher friend of Bullseye. He also gets that arrow out of his brain, and it does start to function properly, eventually. Note that when I say "function properly", I mean by Deadpool's standards. He fights with Bullseye a bit, we see each of them as children, telling the rest of the class what they want to be when they grow up, and by the end, Deadpool appears to have solidly established the upper hand. Good show, Deadpool!

Oh, and Deadpool's brain saves him by reciting a haiku. No, I'm totally serious. I mean, it's a self-conscious haiku, as opposed to the ones that Scipio finds that I assume are not actually written to be haikus, but can be uttered in a haiku way. Still, Deadpool's haiku served as a precognitive warning which saved him from an earth-shattering KABOOM! So yeah, that was cool.

Power Girl #2 - I wound up with the Adam Hughes' cover. I would have preferred the Amanda Conner cover, since it relates to the story, but I didn't specify with my Comic Book Guy, so it's no biggie. As an aside, what percentage of Adam Hughes' commissioned sketches do you think Power Girl comprises? You think he ever says to himself 'Boy, I wish, instead of Power Girl, someone would ask me to draw Night Thrasher for once'? I don't know why I'm wondering about that, but I did, and now my wondering is preserved in all its glory on the Internet. Forever. Or however long things last on the Internet.

Ultra-Humanite wants to put his brain in Power Girl's body. Understandably, Power Girl would like to prevent this. They fight, she wins for awhile, then she kind of screws up and makes fun of U-H for having body image issues, he flips out, and she gets beaten senseless. Oops. See, I think if Power Girl had asked Spider-Man, he would have told her it's better to mock the villains when you aren't within their grasp, so it's harder for them to smack you repeatedly. Oh well, something for her to remember for the future.

Then there's a recapping of Ultra-Humanite's origin, with his freaky-deaky lab assistant, who I guess became that Satanna lady Power Girl and Terra beat up in the Terra mini-series. Anyway, he was sick, but brilliant, they transferred his brain to his current body so he could live, and I guess he's sick of living in a gorilla body. Well, that's understandable, though I'd think it might have been easier to make a clone body to transfer his brain into. Then again, I guess if that were easy, the Brain would have done that years ago. Maybe a nice android body then? Take Red Tornado's. Nobody will miss him.

Street Fighter Legends: Chun-Li #3 - So Shadaloo (that's the bad guys) are planning something. The good guys can't figure out what it is, but are trying hard to correct that. Chun-Li's dad talks to an old associate of his who used to be a killer, but since he dropped out of that profession, he doesn't have an inside track to the underworld anymore. Chun-Li and her partner try stopping some Shadaloo goons from robbing a laundromat, but Chun-Li gets distracted when her partner starts being physicallt aggressive with a wounded suspect, and the other one escapes. Which really seems to be Chun-Li's fault, but her partner apologizes, so whatever. They do figure out what the bad guys' target is, but since the bad guys overhear them figuring that out, it's time for immediate liquidation, sniper-style.

Lest you think it was all police officers running down leads, there was an old man stop a massive guy's punch with a single finger, which also damaged the big guy's arm somehow. And there was a fight scene at a museum unveiling for terracotta warrior statues, because a famous martial arts movie star did the unveiling. Hmm, I wonder if people come up to Jet Li randomly on the street and try to fight him? Tthat would get annoying as hell after awhile, wouldn't it?