Young Justice #12

I didn't see anything in the promo materials about Mike Grell's Warlord appearing in Young Justice #12, but hey, we know how these things work. If there's going to be a Warlord crossover in #13, you can bet that there will be a quick peek before that issue--and there was, in Young Justice #11--and if there's a quick peek in #11, you can bet that there will be a bigger peek in #12. So I picked up #12.

And? There were FOUR Warlord pages, including this lovely double page spread (which looks a lot better than this, so go out and buy the issue for yourself). 

And it ain't Mike Grell...though he will be around next issue in some capacity, at least...but those were four good pages. I'm looking forward to going whole hog on this.

Meanwhile, the other 18 pages? Well...they were okay. Ish. Bendis seems to think that realistic dialogue primarily means characters interrupting each other, and I find that really irritating, but overall I'd have to say that my antipathy for Brian Bendis is slackening these days. I still wish that he wasn't writing Legion of Super-Heroes, because I don't think he fits that book at all, but his writing on Young Justice is pretty okay, especially in terms of plot. So okay that I actually found myself fondling a collected edition of his first six issue arc while I was in The Great Escape today, wherein the young heroes visit Amethyst's Gemworld. But they only had the hardback, and that was a little too pricey for me. So we'll see how that goes.

Also on this week's buy list were two Vault Comics productions:

Relics of Youth #4, which featured 28 pages and a wraparound cover...and no ads. And it was good stuff, too. I am hoping that this title keeps going for awhile.

Also picked up The Plot #4, which was truly interesting and even trulier creepy. It reminds me a little bit of the best Swamp-Thing issues...more in a Len Wein way than in an Alan Moore way. I'm liking this book a lot.

And I have to say, if you're not picking up a few Vault titles, you're really missing out on some good stuff. I'm currently buying more of their titles than any other publisher:

Black Stars Above

Heist, Or How to Steal a Planet

Money Shot

The Necromancer's Map

The Plot

Relics of Youth

And I am very fond of most of them--1, 3, 4, and 5--

and like the other two quite a bit. Enough to keep on buying them. At full price yet. There aren't a whole hell of a lot of other books that fall into that category these days.

In fact, even though I've been enjoying IDW's new Usagi Yojimbo...and their Star Trek: Year 5, too...I buy both of them a month late when the ComiXology price goes down to $1.99 per issue. So there's that.

Vault Comics, man. Get on board.

The other book I bought this week was The Clock #1 from Image Comics. I hadn't heard anything about this title and only picked it up because I like to have a look at new comics, but it was easy to see right off the bat that this wasn't a "normal" book, so I kept looking. And then I saw that the art was by Colleen Doran, and that was all I needed. Interesting premise. There's a new, virulent form of cancer that is threatening to kill a huge number of people across the world, and Our Hero is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I don't know if I'll keep up with the title...almost certainly not at the $3.99 level...but I am kind of interested in seeing where this thing goes. And I do like to support Not Normal books.