Slightly Delayed Reviews

No real reason for not posting reviews on Thursday other than sloth.  Wonderful wonderful sloth.  Hey, it was a nice day for a change.

Batgirl #43

Did I miss an issue or something?  Babs is helping a friend with her wedding, and for some reason, someone is letting tigers loose in tech industries, and killing off wunderkind techie types.  Naturally, this sort of thing catches Barbara's attention.  I mean....Tigers?  Seriously?  Even in Gotham, that is on the weird side. 

So, she goes and tries to figure out who is doing it, and one of her buddies is framed, and apparently she is making goo goo eyes at Batwing, which surprised me, and made me wonder if I had missed an issue or two.  Also she fights a tiger.  I found this to be a stretch of the imagination, since she probably weighs about 120 soaking wet, and is body-slamming a 400 lb tiger around, which does at least scratch her.

A bit. 

And it turns out that the fiancee of her wedding friend is part of an animal rescue group which had liberated some zoo tigers, which have been taken over by the nefarious...Velvet Tiger!  For equally nefarious purposes! 

Does...does the Silver Swan use swans when she attacks Wonder Woman?  Does Batgirl send out swarms of bats?  Well...I think that Batman has on occasion, but still!  I can't help thinking that Squirrel Girl needs to do a crossover and show her how it is all done. 

I like this book, but this was a stretch of the imagination that was a bit too much even for me.

Batman '66, #26

Thank goodness, some gritty realism in a comic book!

Batman and Robin discover the apparent corpse of Louis the Lilac, and instantly realize that someone is Up To No Good.  Naturally, through the judicious search of late night custard shops, they discover the formerly abandoned greenhouses of the Isley family and none other than Poison Ivy herself.  She has been making a living by supplying baddies like Louis with her home-grown and no doubt completely organic, plants, when he welched on her. Well!

So she's decided to strike out on her own, and feeds the dynamic duo to her Jupiter fly trap...Venus being too small to properly awe anyone apparently.  Then she grows a couple of henchmen, and set out on her walking tree, to Catwoman's old night club for a bit of celebration.  Naturally, Batman and Robin get free, and pursue her, and a lovely time is had by all.  Oh, and Louis isn't dead, just in a coma.

This was simply, wonderfully...delightful.

And no tigers.


Justice League of America #3

This is the Bryan Hitch version, not the Geoff John's version, which can be a bit confusing. This is old school JLA, which means that it has Hal being Hal instead of running around in space with long hair and a trenchcoat.  Trust Hal to pick the worst decade ever for a fashion statement.

Anyway, Earth has been taken over by Superman's deity Rao.  Batman suspects that there is a con going on somewhere, as Rao goes around mending all the worlds problems.  Batman is a real pessimist.  Hal is trapped on...old Krypton?  Flash is somewhere else in time too, and Wonder Woman is trapped on Mount Olympus wondering where everyone is.

Also there is a two-page spread...and I use that word advisedly, that makes my previous posting of Hal and Barry spread-eagled look like the Saturday Evening Post!  Those two are...limber!  A switch from Green Lantern behinds, that's for sure!

In a way I am reminded of the semi-recent God/Magog story from the Justice Society, wherein a seemingly benificent God comes to earth and magically makes everything better.  But DC would never repeat a story...would they?

Sinestro #14

That is one swinging cover, with Sinestro with a golden rose in his teeth and his yellow zoot suit and spats. I only wish that the Sinestro Corps dressed like this ALL the time!  They would inspire fear....and Fabulousness!

Anyhoo, Sinestro finds a rather forlorn young woman crashed on a desolate planet and decides she is scary or something and recuits her to the Sinestro Corps.  She's grateful to be rescued, but a bit doubtful about her ability to inspire fear.  Sinesto explains that with those Green Lantern pussies gone, somebody has to take out the intergalactic trash, and then gives her to Soranik, as a partner.

Soranik is a bit on the doubtful side as well, but her new partner has some...interesting abilities.  It's rather fun to see Sinestro trying to police the universe, completely confident that without the Green Lantern Corps, and the Guardians, things will finally get done right. And quite frankly, he's not doing too badly!


Ant-Man #1

The Last Days of Ant-Man, is a bit on the bittersweet side.  The world is coming to an end, and people who know about it, are trying to make their peace with it.  Scott tries to see Cassie, but it doesn't work.  He does have a meeting with Mary Morgenstern, the proprietor of the Valhalla Villas Retirement community, and his sole investor. She's not particularly happy with him, since he's spent all her money and doesn't really have much to show for it. But she hires him to retrieve something for her, which he actually manages to do successfully. It also turns out that she's something of a Cassandra herself, with the gift of prophecy and the problem of nobody believing her. So when she tells Scott that the world is ending, she is correct.


It also turns out that Valhalla Villas is actually a retirement home for old heroes and the occasional old villain.  Scott retrieved an Asgardian relic which restores the youth and vigor for these old heroes for a short period of time...just enough before the world ends, and it is delightful.

Oh and Scott stumbles across the new Beetle, whom he met when he was trying out for the security job with Stark, and they end up sleeping together before the world ends. Oh...Scott.

This was fun, it always is. 

Where Monsters Dwell #4

This is a completely ridiculous book, but man, I do enjoy it so.  The Phantom Eagle is a sleezy, smarmy no-good-nik, but you can't help but feel a little bit sorry for him.  Until he goes out and does something completely horrendous. 

He was about to have his little Eagle cut off by the Amazons, but Clemmie convinces them to simply banish him instead. So, off into the jungle he runs, and naturally meets the pygmies he had screwed over before. They invite him for dinner...as the main course, when dinosaurs come swarming in, and he actually saves their butts with the machine guns on his downed plane.  So then they decide that they all hate the amazons and are going to go off and fight them.

Naturally this doesn't go particularly well for his minute army, but he doesn't care because he's sneaking into their compound to steal the plane parts that he needs.  This...probably won't end particularly well, at least for him, but by cracky, it is a lot of silly silly fun. 

Not a bad week, actually!