Friday, May 12, 2006

Last Lines (It's Been a While, Hasn't It?)

As per usual, there are spoilers contained below.
The Complete Wynonna Earp, JSA #85, Supergirl #6, Action Comics #838, Superman #652, Infinite Crisis #7, 52 #1, Action Comics #1, and Ion #1

Spoilers here
The Complete Wynonna Earp -- "Adios Trooper. Be seeyin' ya."

I hope we'll see her again. I read the entire trade, and the art was hideous (Joyce Chin, then Pat Lee) in the first few stories, but I liked Wynnona herself enough that it didn't bother me. One of those aggressive, no-nonsense heroes. Kalinara was right, women don't suffer under Beau Smith's pen (his Wonder Woman in Warrior was pretty cool, actually), they get to be leaders and save the day. Now I wish I'd gotten to see him write the more traditionally feminine Ice.

Its a shame that the last story in the book was the one where they finally got a decent artist with talent beyond bad cheesecake.


JSA #85 -- "Alan!"

Alan! Are you healed up enough to join us in solving this problem, or is this last arc of JSA going to be like all the other JSA arcs?


Supergirl #6 -- "Summon your sisters. There's hunting to be done."

This is what they get for dressing up like Kryptonian Gamebirds.


Action Comics #838 -- "I'm -- I'm not-- Not--"

Yes, Clark, you are.


Superman -- "And there's a buzzing in my brain --"

No insights or snarkiness here, I just enjoyed reading that line.


Infinite Crisis #7 -- "And I've gotten out."

Oh please, I know exactly what this means. This means we're going to see him at the end of the year in some huge crossover getting his ass beat down yet again with a HUGE Green Lantern crossover brawl where we find out that Kyle has not been evil (just manipulated/insane) and Prime still busts through the thin green line to be stopped by Superman, Power Girl, Supergirl, all 4 Wonder Women, and, inexplicably, Batman and Co.

But on the bright side, we'll get to see Guy call him whiney again.



52 #1 -- "Are You Ready?"

Sheesh, how cheesily metatextual can you get?


Action Comics #1 (Courtesy of The Superman Chronicles Volume 1) -- "Missed -- Doggone it!"

Those words were spoken by Superman as he lept rooftop to rooftop carrying a traumatized henchman. Then, then issue ended, to be picked up in Action Comics #2. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, the very first Superman story was a two-parter! A cliff-hanger! Take that, Cult of the Single Issue Story-Arc!!


Ion #1 -- "I don't know why you came here, but you're not going to take me."

I thought for a long time about this line (longer than you think, actually, as I managed to get my hands on a black and white preview copy at the end of March). You see, I've railed on Marz's plotting skills, but his strength is normally in dialogue (well, that and completely unintentional symbolism -- I'll tell you all about the triple layers of text I saw in the Fridge scene someday, I promise). This was an awkward line. It seemed rushed, clumsily assembed. It was out of context. He knew exactly why that woman was there. She'd told him. It can't have been that hastily written off, since Kyle says the same line earlier in the... Suddenly the whole book comes together. Of course the line's awkward and out of place, Kyle's not connecting fully with the situation. The boy's no longer living within the borders of reality. When you think about it, the dreamy incomplete art (with a conspicuous lack of visible Green Lantern backside! Hmph!) seems to fit that way. He's losing his mind.

It's about damned time. That kid has been through Hell and back (literally, figuratively, multiple times and on alien planets), he's been thrown into combat with zero training, thrown across the universe without a map, stalked by cheesy Captain Atom villains, on the hitlist of every criminal organization in the freaking universe, manipulated, mind-controlled, had his heart torn out (literally and figuratively), been stabbed in the back (literally and figuratively), kidnapped (many, many times), strapped to tables, tortured, experimented on, rewired, tossed across dimensions, powered up, powered down, powered sideways, powered by a vindictive dead woman ("Not listen to me in the middle of a battle, huh? Well, here, live with a constant reminder of how my death is your fucking fault, Kyle!!"), mentally and emotionally attacked by Giant Yellow Fearbugs (from Outer Spaaaace!!!), forced to deal with Brainiac 2, leered at by Hal Jordan, dated by Donna Troy -- Something's gotta give!

And (*Wicked Cackling*) it has. In no time at all we'll see him locking himself into his studio for ten day binges of coffee and dry kool-aid as he paints Crazy Modern Art that monsters leap out of, people get sucked into, and Brainiac 2 steals to sell at outrageous prices to Green Lanterns who think it's good luck.

As for the why, well, I wouldn't really care, except that I suspect it involves bondage of some sort. He's clearly reliving some horrible trauma that happened right before the first page (Umm... Who had "During the One Year Gap" on the Kyle kidnapping pool?), and he's become some sort of touch freak. There will be much more insanity and destruction before this story-arc ends, glorious insanity and destruction and I'm going to follow Kyle's cute (and hopefully visible next issue) little butt the whole way, baby!

9 comments:

  1. Hey, in Alan's defense, I remember him finally taking out Obsidian in Princes of Darkness, I think it was.

    Okay, it was parenting via beating the evil out of him, but it worked?

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  2. Didn't Peter David do out of control, omni powerful, face made out of a starry mask, completely crazy space hero adventure already?

    and didn't he do it with the much much nicer looking Genis-Vell Captain Marvel?

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  3. With regard to Kyle's last line, I ffigured it meant some organization had put a bounty on his head and he didn't know who or why.

    Yeah, she told him there was a bounty, but Kyle apparently doesn't know why (and neither do I so far), so he means he doen't understand what circumstances brought her here.

    The book left me scratching my head. How long ago was the beatdown he gave to those Lanterns? Two days? A month? A year? I'd kind of like to know, and I don't have a clue.

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  4. Help me out here, because I honestly have no idea what the "buzzing in the brain" line was supposed to me. I just didn't get the meaning...

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  5. I'm certain that has to do with Luthor using the world's supply of Kryptonite to bring up his Kryptonian doomsday (or is it Doomsday?) device.

    Now, whether it's the concentrated Kryptonite being irradiated, or the device getting closer, that's still a mystery.

    Also, what's up with all the electronic equipment breaking down around Clark (his phone, his computer and his signal watch)?

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  6. steven: it must be the return of Electric Superman!

    Oh mna, I hope I'm wrong. And I don't even like Superman.

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  7. I don't know if you're joking, calvinpitt, because, in fact, electronic equipment DID start shorting out around Superman for a few months before he turned Blue.

    And again, the problem wasn't that he went Electric. It's that they didn't do anything particularly interesting with him once he was (with the obvious exception of Grant Morrison, that one time on the moon).

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  8. Mallet -- You have no taste in men.

    Calvin -- If it wasn't an exact repeat of an earlier line, I might buy that. And it was also incongruous before, in the scene with Torquemada. I mean, he must have known why they were there.
    And I think the time mess may be part of the freaky losing-your-mind feeling of the book. It's supposed to be ambiguous right now.

    The Buzz -- That line is followed by a "..." I figured it led into a plot point in the next Action Comics.

    And I don't think there's a chance in hell of Electro-Supes coming back. But I notice the vision and eye powers haven't returned yet.

    And I remember in All-Star Superman #1 Morrison was going to introduce a enw Super-power, which turned out to be a full electrical style discharge from Sueprman's eyes.

    So I wouldn't be surprised to see his vision powers return different now, and the electrical shorts be related.

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