Once again, I’ve shamelessly abused the power of the manga columnist by going on and on and on about how much I love Sgt. Frog. And you know what? I’d do it again. Well, I won’t do it again, at least not in Flipped, because that would be lazy. But anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time must certainly expect regular outbursts of “Gero! Gero! Gero!”
In other Comic World News… um… news, Graeme McMillan provides a frank appraisal of the run so far of New Avengers. Unfettered by seething hatred of Avengers: Disassembled and everything it did to a beloved (if admittedly creaky) franchise, Graeme finds the bold new direction kind of… meh:
“It achieves its aim, definitely, which seems to be purely to sell very well; certainly, there’s nothing within the content of the series that suggests that the all-star line-up of Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man and Wolverine have any reason to team up to fight crime, making it seem all the more obvious that the book’s core cast were decided as cynical sales grab as much as anything else.”
I glanced through the most recent issue at the shop, and I thought Iron Man’s argument in favor of Wolverine’s presence was the most ridiculous, contrived, meta bit of super-hero writing in many a moon. It almost sank to the level of Green Arrow’s puffed-up narration in Identity Crisis.
On another Marvel front, Paul O’Brian looks at the House of M in this week’s X-Axis:
“Anyway, we’re now three issues into the book, and I’m starting to get the sinking feeling that Marvel has rather misjudged things. We’re repeatedly told that this story is, in some way, hugely important and will have lasting effects. It’s good of Marvel to point this out, because god knows you’d never guess from the actual comic.”
To which I say, “More money for manga.”