What I Bought 10/5/2010 - Part 1

Comics. I'm not sure why it took them the better part of the week to travel less than 150 miles, but at least they did arrive. I was about to go nuts waiting for them to show up. Now I can stay as nuts as I am normally. Hooray! Not everything showed up, including Batman Beyond #4 and Black Cat #3, but I'll get 'em next time. I've enough to keep me occupied for a bit.

Atlas #5 - Another volume of Atlas comes to a close. Jimmy, Bob, and Ken manage to talk their way out of a beating from suspicious Avengers of another world. 3-D Man and the rest of the team catch up to them as they continue on their way to the Echo World, and there's some sharing of emotions and discussion of how they fit together as a group, which was sweet. When they reach the Echo World, they're even more powerful than usual, but they also learn why the inhabitants of that world are so big on controlling them to cause conflict and strife. Jimmy wants a solution where the Echo Worlders can live peacefully, without needing to mess with his Earth or that other one, and there's fortunately one available. Atlas heads back to their world, and 3-D Man agrees to join the group full-time, which is swell.

That was a pretty good job bringing the current storyline to a close, considering more threads probably had to be tied up than Jeff Parker might have liked. The prose pages were a surprise. Don't know if those were planned ahead of time, or a concession to completing the story in the pages allotted. As I was reading it, I found myself trying to picture how Gabriel Hardman might have illustrated it. There were three different artists on the issue, with Ramon Rosanas handling the first part, Hardman the third, and apparently Jeff Parker himself drew the middle section. I didn't realize Parker was that good of an artist. it's interesting there aren't any of what I'd typically think of as panel borders, as Parker opted for a sort of glowing fuzziness to separate different images. But that works, since Atlas is in a realm of the mind anyway. The surroundings can change in an instant, without noticeable transition, so more distinct boundaries wouldn't necessarily fit.

I'd been lukewarm on this volume, but I think this issue tied things together really well, and was probably my favorite issue so far. Which is naturally when the book would, isn't it.

Avengers and the Infinity Gauntlet #2 - Hey, Ron Lim's drawing Thanos on this cover! Now it really does feel like a mini-series from Marvel with the word "Infinity" in the title!

The team designated to find what caused half the people in the universe to disappear hopes into U.S. Ace's space rig, and off they go, bickering all the way. They come across some Kree and Skrull warships, each blaming the other for half their people disappearing. Then both sides decide to blame the Earthlings. Fine, see if Earth lends you Nova to save your butts the next time Annihilus decides to destroy your empires, bug-eyes, green-blooded, alien jerks. The rig is running low on fuel, so they have to refill at Ace's parents' interstellar truck stop, where they are attacked by Baron von Zeppelin and his Space Zeppelin, which the team must defeat before they can depart. Meanwhile, Thanos is just chilling out on some deserted alien world, enjoying the view.

There are so many bits in this issue I love, and not just the existence of a Space Zeppelin. The argument over "shotgun", what Doom keeps a very horrible place reserved for, that Spidey brought a space helmet with him, what with their going into space and all. Spider-Man's constant teasing of Wolverine, who clearly feels out of place in outer space, Hulk's attempts to navigate, and. . . there was a lot of stuff, OK? I laughed and/or smiled on practically every page, which is good. I'm glad I decided to take a chance on this, so big ups to Brian Clevinger, Lee Black, and Brian Churilla. Curse you Lee Black. If your first name was Brian, I could have just said "big ups to the Brians"! I like Churilla's alien gas station patrons. They look like something from those old monster comics Kirby and Ditko used to draw.

Darkwing Duck #4 - Heroes and theme villains escape confinement, attempt team-up to defeated corrupt businessman/cybernetic organism master villain (think Kingpin combined with Ultron). Expository master villain dialogue as to how he took over the city, what he's really after, and why. Heroes take great risks to try and defeat master villain, nearly suffer losses, but they don't, and they affirm their familial bond. All is put to rights, even as other dangerous villains plot in the shadows.

That's enough vagueness. Not sure why I did that. Taurus Bulba was defeated for now, the other villains didn't escape, though I'm sure they'll bust out of jail eventually. Especially Quackerjack, who seems to be veering into "dangerously nuts" territory. Scrooge McDuck shows up, nephews in tow, each in an appropriately colored suit. I especially like his line about not caring how big the meeting is, he's not buying chairs for everyone.

OK, that's it for today. Three more reviews tomorrow.