This & Last Week's Comics: November 12th and 19th, 2021

Didn't make it to The Great Escape last week...and there was a bit of a shipping calamity this week, so only new DC books made it to the stands. But since I was a week behind, I ended up getting what for me was a pretty good haul. To wit:

Action Comics #1036

Regarding the Matter of Oswald's Body #1

Static: Season One #4

Suicide Squad #9

I also thought pretty hard about some other books, including What's the Furthest Place From Here? #1--which looked like a hell of a deal (60 pages for $4.99)...but I had a walk-through and decided that it wasn't for me. To be honest, it looked kind of semi-professional in terms of the art. And I'm kind of tired of the old post-apocalypse schtick. So I left it for somebody else. 

Also thought pretty hard about The Thing #1...especially when I saw that Walter Mosley was the writer...but I looked through it and didn't think it looked like anything new, and then I realized that I actually didn't know who the hell Walter Mosley was (I had managed to conflate him with Ernest J. Gaines ...who just died two weeks ago, I'm sorry to say). And I looked high and low for Mamo #5, but it was not to be found. I thought it was due out last week, so it's possible that it sold out. But I'm sure I'll find it next week or so. And of course, I'm assuming that Hoopla will have it up soon (since they have #1 through #4 up right now). Lastly, I looked to see if Clans of Belari was available. But there weren't any issues on the stands, and I couldn't get to the back issues because the store employees were scrambling to get the new non-DC issues out (they had just arrived an hour before due to some problems at Diamond), and they had blocked off the back issues with their work. The first Clans of Belari trade paperback is due out February 22, 2022, though, and I'm sure the library will help me out with that. Right?

As for this Action Comics #1,036.... What was it that The League of Comic Book Geeks said about this book? Ahem..."...the biggest Superman event since the Death and Return of Superman begins HERE!" Well. I suppose that could be true. And certainly this was a competently done comic book with some interesting bits here and there. (To wit: Superman has lost some of his powers, and two other characters, Enchantress and Manchester Black, have been using their powers to disguise that fact. So Supes is seriously underpowered...even grey at the temples...and about to face off against Warworld (!). As for the aforementioned Enchantress and Manchester Black...they and some other characters--O.M.A.C. (who is quite different from the Jack Kirby version of the character), Lightray (ditto), Apollo, Midnighter, and Steel (now a female)--are accompanying Superman. And they're aboard a spaceship as they journey to Warworld (!), so either Superman has lost the power to travel through space or else he's being sociable. At any rate, I don't know any of these other characters, but the cover says they're from a group called The Authority, I don't know this group, but it looks like (1) it was a Wildstorm thing, (2) created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, and (3) actually it looks like only some of the aforementioned characters were ever in The Authority. So I don't actually know what's going on there. At any rate... this is obviously just the set-up for a big saga, so I think I'll come back for the next issue. I do like checking in on Action Comics every once in awhile...especially given that it's the longest running American comic book around. (I also like to dip into Detective Comics every now and then, but lately they've been doing long running things that are also crossover-ish, and I don't want to be in the middle of things in either sense of the words. P.S. The colorist on this issue of Action really should go back to colorist school. It is so garish that it makes me wish I could opt for a black and white version of the book. 

Surprise, surprise, surprise...Ambush Bug is back for Suicide Squad #9. I would have sworn that it was over for The Bug after #8. And it looks like him be back for more, so I guess this title will be on my buy list for awhile yet. As for this issue...well it was pretty much the same old same old except for A. Bug, but his little interjections--mostly meta-comments--were good enough to make it a worthwhile read. 

Regarding the Matter of Oswald's Body #1 probably gets an award for the longest comic book title ever. Other than that...(1) it had a super cool cover:

That alone is probably worth the $3.99 cover price. Unfortunately, the rest of the comic...30 pages, by the way, which is quite a good deal...didn't do much for me. Even the art...which is by the same guy who did that beautiful cover (Luca Casalanguida)...didn't do much for me. I think part of the problem there was the color, which obscured many of the good qualities of Casalanguida's linework. It would have been much better to release this book in black and white. And the story...well, it was all set-up, and  it was the kind of set-up you've seen many a time before: mysterious guy shows up in people's lives and recruits them for a project To Be Named Later. It's possible that Issue #2 will lead us into a thrilling story about the exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald...but I don't think I'll be there for it. Unless it has a really cool cover, of course. Oh, P.S. some of the 30 story pages were given over to text, but even so there are 26 pages of story / art, so yes, it is a good deal on that end of things. 

Static: Season One #4 I didn't really mean to save the best for last, but that's the way it played out. Also as it played out, this wasn't really the best this week. Or maybe it was, but it wasn't nearly as good as last month's issue was. For one thing, the art looks substantially different. Which is strange, since the art team--Pencils by ChrisCross, Inks & Colors by Nikolas Draper-Ivey--is the same as it was in the previous issues. But this time around it looks stiff...as if the art had been left in the freezer too long and lost its elasticity. And the story...well, it was okay. But it really just felt like Another Comic Book. No way I'm abandoning this book, but I just wanted to say that if this was Your first issue, don't let it be your last. Consider this to be a moment of taking in breath before the Grand Finale of the last two issues of Season One.

Also, I finally re-re-read John  Porcellino's Perfect Example--which I checked out of the library September 7th and just kept renewing until the dread 0 Renewals showed up and the final due date was a few days away. Not for lack of desire to read it for the third time...there's just so many other things I'm anxious to read. But last night I sat down and read straight through until I was finished, and it reminded me of why I love John Porcellino's work...and made me want to read the other books that I have on hand. And since they were on hand, I went ahead and pulled out The Hospital Suite and knocked that back. Wow. What a fantastic read that was. I now not only want to go back and read all of my other JP books, I also want to go online and buy the ones that I haven't yet acquired. So I think I'm going to do that.