What I Bought 1/19/2011

I turned the heat off in the house last night because I kept smelling smoke every time it kicked on. Turned out it was just from the grilling the neighbors were doing, but better to be cold than immolated on a pyre of my own foolishness. Was that last line a bit much? It sounded good, but it's overstating things a tad. I know, hyperbole on the Internet, unheard of.

Avengers Academy #8 - This month, the video of The Hood attacking Tigra in her home makes it to the Internet, and the cadets see it. Which forces Tigra to deal with it again, and she tries to do so in a way that works for her, and sends a good message to the students, as well as other people. Too bad half the kids weren't paying attention, and decide to track down Mr. Parker Robbins, and give him a dose of his own medicine, including recording it and posting the video online. Which gets those 3 expelled. Well then.

Three things. One, I could have done without ever being reminded of that time where the Hood pistol-whipped Tigra and she screamed a lot. In fact, I'd pretty much forgotten about it, I don't think it even registered when I thought about how she was part of the cast of this title. I know it did happen, and fairly recently, and there's been fallout from it (her hunting down the Hood's crew) but I'd opted to exclude it from my personal Tigra continuity, so it wasn't a topic I wanted to revisit.

Second, expelling the students seems unwise. The whole point of the Academy was they're worried these kids will become villains, and they want to discourage that. So they kick them out at the first sign villainous tactics seem appealing to the students? I get that if the kids don't want help, then you can't help them, but I think they need more discussion of what they did than getting yelled at once about it.

Third, Mike McKone draws a lot of characters so they're looking at the reader. Especially characters in the background. Maybe it's supposed to represent them not knowing where to look, but it's not about the reader being the person they're addressing, not all the time anyway. When Tigra expels them on the last page, Veil's looking up, at us, when our viewpoint is from the ceiling. It gets distracting after awhile.

Darkwing Duck #8 - Diego Jourdan with the Batman and the Mad Monk reference! Which was Matt Wagner doing a reference to that really early Batman story, and it's probably that story Jourdan is referencing, but I couldn't recall the issue number, so I went with the one I did know. I like the mechanical hounds. Nice touch.

Let's see. Quiverwing Duck is rounding up variant Darkwings left and right. Darkwarrior Duck (who is a Dark Knight Returns reference I'm guessing) makes vague, ominous mention of future events. Quiverwing helps free the other Darkwings from Magica's control, just about the time Paddywhack merges with NegaDuck to feed off his fears and become more powerful. Which leads to lots of Darkwings versus giant NegaPaddyDuckWhack? By the time all is said and done, Paddywhack's sealed up again, Magica's fled, the other Darkwings are back where they belong, and Negaduck's going to present a very different threat in the future.

Ian Brill did an excellent job wrapping this story line up, because he didn't tie it all up neatly. He left certain things open for future stories, set up some others (I expect Quackerjack to make a big push for respect soon), dropped a few hints for the reader to ponder, and Darkwing's still facing an uphill struggle. The public may actually distrust him more now than they did when the first few alternate Darkwings showed up to cause mayhem. As for James Silvani, I like to think he's having a lot of fun drawing this, because he's going to town with it. About every possible version of Darkwing you can think of, he drew. We had Doctor Who Darkwing and Optimus Prime Darkwing in the first 2 panels! The expressions on the character's faces, especially the increasingly Negative NegaDuck's were outstanding.