This Week In Rant for 8/10/11: Odds and Endings

So in a bid to artificially inflate my post count break up these increasingly-long weekly post a little, I'm going to split up the usual Best Of post into three parts: the "little" spiel that normally goes up top here getting its own post, the main Best Of the week post that it was originally meant to be, and finally the Best of the Rest reviews, which are what I started the post to avoid doing in the first place because now I feel bad about not mentioning some books. Just goes to show how bad I am at long-term planning.

Starting At The End

So if every week has some kind of running theme I can pull out of it, the impending relaunch of the DCU has made the entire month of August feel like there's been a running theme of books coming to their end. And, given the staggered nature of three-through-six issue story arcs coming out, every week something is coming to an end, but I can't remember anytime so many major titles have reached their end within so tight a time-frame. Even if we remember most (mrr) of these books are coming back next month, the whole comic zeitgeist feels permeated with a sense of finality. The endings of other books, not even remotely related to DC's relaunch, feels more impactful just because its all hitting in the middle of this massive fall-off of titles.

Last week, my pull saw the end of two books facing vastly different fates: Gail Simone's Secret Six and the current run of Jonah Hex. The former went out, deservedly, with a bang, but left some glimmer of hope for continuation, even if its continuity has been warped and reshaped like Playdough in the interim. Hex on the other hand, by virtue of its nature to stay further disconnected from the greater DCU, did not have the same sense of concluding things. It was, however still laid out in such a way that it  could serve perfectly well as a last issue without putting any kind of cap on things. It, like seemingly the Batman and Lantern books will be, is going to be able to start back up in September without missing a beat regardless of the new quota of making all the books, even the fringe titles like All-Star Westerns, actively connected to the publisher's shared continuity. Especially since the creative team is not being particularly shook up, with Palmiotti and Gray still handling the writing.

Batgirl #24, cover art by Dustin Nguyen

This week, I picked up two more books cut down to make way for the DCnU, Batgirl #24 and Detective Comics #881, Detective Comic's first last issue ever since it started back in 1937. Batgirl sees the end of Stephanie Brown's tenure as the character, with the Simone-penned Batgirl next month putting a de-wheelchaired Barbara Gordon back in the costume. Bryan Q. Miller has done an excellent job on this series, taking a character who probably wasn't the handled the greatest over the years, and proving the adage that there aren't any bad characters, just ones who haven't found the right writer yet. Miller put twenty-three of the most fun Bat-books in years out on the shelves, and he wraps it up with this one, a pitch-perfect issue and a wonderful, touching good-bye to the character. And as sad as I am to see this incarnation of the series and the character go, I can't read that last page without smiling.

Detective Comics, on the other hand, is about as tonally different from Batgirl as you can get. Wrapping up the hanging threads Snyder has been working on since taking over the title. It is a strong, classic Batman tale mixing the superheroics and detective work that Detective Comics at its best has always utilized, but in a lot of ways placed secondary to the family drama and turmoil the Gordons find themselves going through. Like Hex, though, while it is a good wrap to this particular story, it doesn't feel in any way like this is a last issue. This could make any changes that do occur in the shuffle that much more abrupt, or if the changes are negligible making the whole relaunch/renumbering feel that much more pointless.

Hellboy: The Fury #3, written by Mike Mignola, art by Duncan
Fegredo, colors by Dave Stewart, letters by Clem Robins

Outside of DC, the other big ending this week was obvious Hellboy. Both Hellboy's three-part The Fury and B.P.R.D.'s Hell On Earth: Monsters came to a close, and within the former we see the end of Hellboy's seventeen-year macro-arc, facing down the very end of the world we've been teased about since the series began. It's hard to say Hellboy or BPRD ever truly ends, as each arc builds off the previous and sets up the next all while being its own stand-alone story, and Fury is truly no different as it ends with a teaser for next year's Hellboy series; somewhat negating the impact of the final scenes here but in no way taking away from the series itself. The only thing I really noticed was, with all the hype Dark Horse and the blogs were putting on The Fury, Monsters seemed to slide by relatively unmentioned. Which is a shame, because this is a good bridge series (and Crook's ability to draw expressions in particular has completely won me over at this point, the man can draw a smirk). And with my attention mostly directed towards Hellboy, the ending here came entirely out of left field, and was very impactful, especially with no clue as to how permanent its going to be.

Girls, Girls, Girls

B.P.R.D.: Hell On Earth: Monsters #2, written by Mike Mignola and John
Arcudi, art by Tyler Crook, colors by Dave Stewart, lettering by Clem Robins

This is obviously not a new topic, but certainly one that also got a fire lit under its ass by the frenzy surrounding DC and their handling of the relaunch and is spreading out to other areas of the comic consciousness, is women in comics, both characters and creators. As such, this week's pull had its fair share to chime in on about the subject, for better or worse (but for once mostly better, I think). In the above-mentioned comics alone, Monsters focused almost entirely on Liz Sherman kicking some ass, and when it wasn't it shifted over to Kate Corrigan for a couple of scenes, who has always been two of my favorite characters in comcis regardless of gender.

Over on Batgirl and Detective Comics, we got to see two of the women to wear the cowl have their proper send-offs from the current status quo, including a trip through Stephanie's subconscious and Barbara having the chance to play horror-movie heroine when kidnapped by a serial killer.

Batgirl #24, written by Bryan Q. Miller, art by Pere Pérez,
colors by Guy Major, letters by Dave Sharpe

Also from DC, the Batman 80-Page Giant special had a short Catwoman story that I loved, and also featured Renee Montoya's Question, a great and greatly-underused character, in a Riddler story, which is delightfully fun in concept but can't say I quite enjoyed the execution. On the other hand, it also features a Zsasz story about a doctor at Arkham who falls in love with her patient and adopts their psychosis to impress them. Which is, what, the fifth, sixth time they've done that premise? They've done it with just the Joker at least twice, and this was easily one of the clumsiest handling of an already-weak plot.

Marvel had the potential to do something with their Ghost Rider book, as the current host of the Spirit of Vengeance is a woman, but as of yet they haven't done much with her, depicted more as a tool than a character, and despite his depowered status, the book has so far still mainly focused on Johnny Blaze. I'm starting to get worried the new host is merely a gimmick for this first arc instead of a viable character in her own right. I'll wait until its actually over to pass judgement, but if this is just a vehicle to get the fire back in Johnny, I'll be more than a bit disappointed.

Spider-Island: Cloak and Dagger #1, written by Nick Spencer, art
by Emma Ríos, colors by Javier Rodriguez, letters by Joe Caramagna

Where Marvel did get things right, however, is the new Cloak and Dagger. I'm going to be discussing this one at length in the next post, but needless to say this is a book featuring main characters who are a) a woman, b) a minority character and, most importantly, c) not written like these two things matter in defining who these characters are. These are two characters who have endured for years but never truly caught on, and here, with Nick Spencer doing possibly the best job of writing them to date and Emma Ríos providing some absolutely stunning work with the art, this book is in danger of getting lost in the Event shuffle. Don't let the Spider-Island banner turn you off; at least so far as we've seen in the series, you can pick up and enjoy this without any prior knowledge of Spider-Island, or even Cloak and Dagger themselves, as their recap is deftly covered, mostly in one amazing two-page spread and gotten out of the way immediately to jump into the story. As Spencer himself has said, speak with your dollars and pick this up. Whether you're concerned with the issue of racial and gender representation in comics and their creators, or you're completely ambivalent and just concerned with picking up a great book, this is the one to get.