Oh, get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about the week in comics.

Seven issues in to an eight-issue series, it would be a little odd to say, “If you haven’t been reading Adam Strange, pick it up!” Unless of course your shop has copies of the previous six issues, which seems pretty unlikely. Otherwise, repent by picking up the trade (should one ever be solicited).

Gotham Central 30 seems to be cribbing even more shamelessly from Silence of the Lambs than they did last time, but since every Flash villain is now a deeply disturbed psychopath instead of a clever, profit-driven gimmick villain, why shouldn’t Dr. Alchemy be allowed to go all “quid pro quo“? Do you hear the lambs, Renee?

If you were misguided enough to pass on Marvel’s She-Hulk during its run as a monthly, you can atone for that by picking up the second collection, Superhuman Law. And if lots of you buy it, it will only help cement the monthly’s return down the road. Don’t make me resort to pleading puppy faces. It’s not pretty.

And that’s looking like it. Whee! Solvency!

While I’ll miss Kevin Melrose’s invaluable blog, Thought Balloons, I’m really looking forward to his offerings on Dark, But Shining, which he describes as “a group blog dedicated to reviews, essays and the like.”

Two of my favorite blogs have new looks. Love Manga has shaken off the Blogger yoke in favor of a nice, new layout. (While you’re there, make sure and read David Taylor’s thoughts on the cover of Shojo Beat.) And comics.212.net has assumed an appealingly springy palate. (There’s also a great entry on the value of negativity.)

Oh, and Spatula Forum has modified the entry procedure for its Jay’s Days Contest. Click here for details.

While there was lots of outdoor activity over the weekend, I’m happy to say it wasn’t all toil. I spent plenty of time sitting on my ass doing inconsequential things.

I went on a mini manga binge, picking up first volumes of Negima and Wallflower. Laden as it is with fan service, I feel like I shouldn’t have enjoyed Negima, but darned if it didn’t sneak under my critical defenses. I’ll have to figure out precisely why that is, won’t I? Wallflower was reasonably entertaining, too, though I can’t say I’ve been sitting on the edge of my chair waiting for the comic bold enough to feature frequent projectile nosebleeds.

Freedom Force vs. the 3rd Reich had completely fallen off my geek radar, so it was nice to see it at the game shop. Unfortunately, I apparently need to download some new video driver thingie for it to play properly, which is kind of annoying. I just want to load the game and play the game, y’know? I don’t feel like I should have to take night courses at ITT Tech to zap super-villains and their henchmen.

Is it just me, or was last night’s Desperate Housewives the weakest episode so far? Almost everyone was just so annoying, particularly Lynette, who has gone from amusingly frazzled to downright unpleasant. (And those kids… god. Enough, already!) I’ve always been very fond of Lesley Ann Warren and her aging-ditz routine, but she didn’t work in this context, and the sooner she leaves, the better. The whole tone of the episode seemed to be off, without sufficient humor or irony to balance out the darker elements. (This excludes the brilliant Harriet Sansom Harris, who brings just the right balance of absurdity and menace to her role. Love her. Oh, and it excludes Marcia Cross, too, because she’s awesome.)

Oh, and I wrote another column.

A meme found at The Low Road. Must… resist… Can’t… resist…

TEN random things about me:

1. I was once one of the best young clarinettists in Ohio. Too bad I hated playing the damned thing.
2. I acted a lot in college, particularly in musicals. That made no sense, as I really can’t sing very well.
3. My first car was one of those Ford Pintos that blew up in a rear-end collision. I can’t remember if my family ever took it in for the recall work.
4. I’m the youngest of seven children.
5. I used to be terrified of dogs, mostly because I had a paper route and there were some territorial little beasts in my neighborhood.
6. My first major in college was secondary education, in spite of the fact that I thought high school was miserable and couldn’t wait to be done with it. I changed my major after my very first classroom observation freshman year.
7. I’m actually an award-winning journalist, though the award came from one of the worst newspaper conglomerates in North America.
8. I make a damned fine molten chocolate cake, and it’s a really easy recipe.
9. I absolutely hate it when people are rude to waiters, cashiers, and bank tellers.
10. I sometimes wonder if I should be alarmed that my chest hair keeps coming in, decades after puberty.

NINE places I’ve visited:

1. New Orleans. Love it.
2. London, while my sister lived there.
3. Paris, during the visit to London, carrying a stroller up and down the subway escalators.
4. The Grand Canyon.
5. Zion National Park, one of my favorite places on earth.
6. Las Vegas, which is the right kind of tacky, for my money.
7. Orlando, which is the wrong kind of tacky, for my money.
8. Key West, where they just don’t give a damn, bless them.
9. Chicago, though not for a comics convention, thankfully.

EIGHT things I want to achieve in life:

1. To help my pets live as long and happy a life as possible.
2. To publish a series of smutty, gay romance novels under an assumed name.
3. To figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
4. To reconcile my need for financial security with my lack of ambition.
5. To soften my judgemental streak a bit.
6. To take an intensive culinary course somewhere cool, like Tuscany.
7. To expand my musical horizons.
8. To develop better goal-setting skills.

SEVEN ways to win my heart:

1. Tell me I’m funny.
2. Get stupid over your pets.
3. Make me laugh.
4. Know where to get really good Thai food.
5. Have an opinion on which recording of Follies is better.
6. Like walking.
7. Confess to your underlying misanthropy.

SIX things I believe:

1. Pre-packed peanut butter sandwiches are a sign of the end times.
2. Hummers (the cars) are ridiculous.
3. Commercials in movie theatres are an appalling intrusion.
4. People are generally annoying.
5. West Virginia should be more walkable.
6. When you’re on vacation, you should do something you wouldn’t normally do every day.

FIVE things I’m afraid of:

1. Heights.
2. The Bush administration.
3. Driving in Massachusetts.
4. Knives.
5. Popular teens.

FOUR of my favorite things:

1. Dogs.
2. Cats.
3. Travel.
4. Books.

THREE things I do every day:

1. Take care of my pets.
2. Watch TV.
3. Tell my partner I love him.

TWO things I’m not trying to do right now:

1. Get too annoyed by work.
2. Eat everything I see.

ONE person I want to see right now:

1. My nephew. The cool one.

I just don’t feel like thinking about comics today. It’s too pretty out, and I had too much fun out in the yard. So, without further ado, here are Ten Things Dave Likes About Gardening:

1. I would rather spend three hours sweating in the hot sun than five minutes at the gym.
2. Strange and unexpected things happen. Volunteer plants show up from seeds that self-sowed last year. Flowers hybridize.
3. It’s the only purpose that makes a trip to Lowe’s tolerable.
4. It gives me an excuse to buy more books and magazines about gardening.
5. The dogs always feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment, even though they usually just sit under a tree and watch us. I’m not going to contradict them, though.
6. More plants in the yard equal more birds. More birds in the yard equal kitties sitting at windows trying to look menacing. Kitties (ours, at least) trying to look menacing equal hilarity.
7. It gives me a chance to become better acquainted with neighbor dogs out for walks. Once I was planting bulbs and Sarah from down the street, who looks like a German shepherd shrunk to the size of a Chihuahua, climbed into my lap. I think dogs instinctively like people better when we’re sweaty and dirty.
8. It helps me shed the winter chunk, which is always at its peak right around now.
9. Conversely, working in the yard for a long time always makes us feel justified in having something really junky for dinner.
10. It’s an essentially optimistic act, and those are always nice.

O’Grady, one of my favorite shows, is finally back with some new episodes on The N. (It airs at 9:30 p.m. EST.)

For those of you who haven’t seen it, it takes place in a town where random, quasi-supernatural effects make high school even more of a burden than it normally is. Some memorable episodes have featured short-term memory loss, visible (and painfully honest) thought balloons, and random manetization.

As funny as the situations are, they wouldn’t hold up nearly as well without the endearing characters, terrific voice work, and conversational, almost improvisational scripts. It’s from some of the same people who created the equally hilarious Home Movies, which can be seen in Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim line-up.

Watching O’Grady does kind of make me crave TiVo, though, as I would really love to zap many of The N’s millions of commercials out of existence forever and ever.

H at The Comic Treadmill offers up a spirited defense of The Flash and, by extension, the writing of Geoff Johns:

“Although I’m capable of understanding that there can be differences of opinion on writers, I can’t fathom how someone who otherwise likes super hero comics could have such a strong negative feeling about Johns.”

I initially enjoyed a lot of Johns’ work on titles like The Flash, Hawkman and JSA, but it’s been a case of diminishing returns over the last year or two. I think I can put it down to what I find to be a discordant approach to storytelling, mixing an unflinchingly nostalgic vibe with excessive violence and depressing plot twists.

It’s clear that Johns loves superheroes and superhero comics, so I certainly can’t accuse him of the tinny insincerity that nags at me in the work of, say, Judd Winick and Mark Millar. But I think his work, like that of Devin Grayson, almost veers into the realm of fan fiction. I’m reminded of one of Lea Hernandez’s ways to hurt comics:

“When you think ‘by fans, for fans’ is a big old RUN AWAY SCREAMING signal: you’re hurting comics.”

And that’s the point I’ve reached with Johns. He seems like a hell of a nice guy, and he’s genuinely enthusiastic about the genre, but his work just isn’t to my liking.

All things being a matter of taste, I can’t really take issue with much of what H is saying in this piece. The work of a given writer either works for you, or it doesn’t. But there is one thing H cites as a strength of Johns (his handling of the Rogues) that I really have to disagree with:

“Once again, in the course of one issue, Heat Wave is another character that Johns has rescued from second-string “bwah-ha-ha” status and made into a formidable menace.”

I don’t know if Johns is so much making them “formidable menaces” as he’s making them “uniformly unstable and brutal.” Johns seems to feel the need to make all of the Rogues suffer from some profound emotional disturbance and to suggest that they always have. There’s nothing inherently wrong with giving clever gimmick villains some depth (like John Ostrander did routinely in Suicide Squad and Kurt Busiek did with Thunderbolts), but Johns seems to have mistaken cookie-cutter instability for layers. (It’s kind of like when Peter David made Genis insane in Captain Marvel. Genis was still the least interesting character in the book, complete unpredictability aside.) By the time all is said and done, Flash will need to open up his own Arkham Asylum for all of these vicious nut jobs.

It all makes me wonder about the use of “dark” as a descriptor for comics. More and more, it’s being used as a synonym for “depressing,” and that’s legitimate enough as usage goes. But it’s not the only application of the term, and it certainly isn’t my favorite. I’ve enjoyed plenty of “dark” comics over the years, and I continue to do so. (I would classify Gotham Central, Sleeper, Fallen Angel, much of Ed Brubaker’s Catwoman and perhaps his Captain America, early bits of Brian Bendis’ Daredevil, Alias, Manhunter, and several others to fall into the “dark” category.)

But while all of those comics have or had sustained undertones of menace and settings and characters that lent themselves to darker material, they’re all dark in the sense that they take a more challenging, complex approach to a world of violence and threat. There’s nothing particularly mature or innovative about the way Johns or much of the rest of DC’s stable of writers are making their comics darker. They’re just wedging in miscarriages and insanity and brutality and whatever else without really placing them in any kind of logical context or with any kind of tonal fit. It sticks out like a sore thumb, more like shock for its own sake than part of a sustained narrative.

Speaking of Flash villains and insanity, if anyone is feeling nostalgic for The Silence of the Lambs, check out the preview pages for the next Gotham Central, which lifts a Clarice/Lecter exchange whole. What’s that about?

Yes, I am looking forward to Seven Soldiers Zatanna 1. Why do you ask? I’ve been enjoying these books so far, but this is the first one where I’m already fond of the lead character. I’ve liked Z since she joined the Justice League way back in the 160s. (That costume with the elf boots and the ponytail, though… honestly. DC had a chance to feature two fishnets-wearing heroines in one book and they biffed it.) I had a lot of fun catching up with some of her early appearances in JLA: Zatanna’s Search. And one of my favorite comics has to be Paul Dini’s Zatanna: Everyday Magic. For previews of Ryan Sook’s lovely art, click here.

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a nice week at the comics shop, with a good mix of material. (For my tastes, at least.)

I’ll probably get the second half of DC The New Frontier at some point. I liked the first, though I don’t feel any particular urgency to finish it. Still, it’s on the “to buy sometime” list.

The Comics Journal 267 arrives with a look at the late, great Will Eisner.

Dan Slott and Paul Pelletier join forces to ruthlessly mock the Marvel Universe (I hope) in the first issue of G.L.A. (Preview pages here.) After She-Hulk and Spider-Man/Human Torch, I’ll try pretty much anything Dan Slott writes.

At long last, the second half of “Kindaichi the Killer” (Kindaichi Case Files Vol. 11) arrives from Tokyopop.

In other news, The Comics Shrew made an excellent point in the comments section of a recent posting about Manhunter:

“DC is stacking the deck against the title by not releasing a trade until September/October 2005, closer to when a second collection should have been due. I’ve said elsewhere: considering how many of the recent crop of new titles — Bloodhound, the Monolith, Firestorm, etc. — are failing or have fallen, perhaps DC should do with the main imprint what they do with Vertigo and Wildstorm and issue taster-sized trades of the first arc. I’ve gotten several folks into Books of Magick and Ex Machina that way.”

I can’t argue with the wisdom of that. I felt the same way when Marvel took so long to put out a She-Hulk trade, when the book’s one- and two-issue arcs would have made it easy to put out a collection quickly and take advantage of critical buzz. Loss leaders, people. They make sense.

Spatula Forum wants to give you some copies of Jay’s Days in the Jay’s Days Most Embarassing Moments Contest. Having routinely humiliated myself since I’ve been old enough to speak, I really might have a shot at this one. (Deadline is April 15.)

The good folks at Comic Book Galaxy are holding their very own Super-F*cking Contest, in collaboration with Top Shelf and cartoonist James Kolchalka. (Deadline is April 30.)

At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon takes a very insightful look at “death-driven limited series” and their various implications. If you can stand one more review of Countdown (presuming you’ve already read Paul O’Brien’s), stop by The Shrew Review.

Brian Cronin’s masochism bubbles to the surface again at Comics Should Be Good, as he offers another opportunity for you to decide what he reads next. He’s totally serious, too. He’s even read the That’s So Raven cine-manga. Hard. Core. (Brian does take all the fun out of it by having fairly eclectic tastes in comics to begin with, so it’s not like you can make him weep bitter tears of manly frustration by making him read Paradise Kiss. Killjoy.)

Johanna Draper Carlson has details on Squiddy Awards voting at Cognitive Dissonance.

And last, but not least, I’m not the only one who thinks Manhunter deserves better sales. Gail Simone likes it, too. And if you can’t trust Gail, who can you trust?

When two companies love each other very much, they celebrate their union with a merger. Viz and ShoPro Entertainment have joined in mergermonial bliss to form Viz Media. The details are here.

In other Viz Media news that doesn’t involve the obscuring of what may or may not be considered naughty bits, you can now subscribe to Shojo Beat and its companion newsletter here.

Two Davids (we are legion) offer up some nice manga reviews. David Taylor at Love Manga looks at Doubt!!, Dead End, and The Tarot Cafe. At Yet Another Comics Blog, Dave Carter offers side-by-side comments on two Shonen Jump titles, The Prince of Tennis and the splendid Hikaru No Go. In non-David manga criticism news, Johanna Draper Carlson has updated the Othello page with notes on the third volume at Comics Worth Reading.

By now, I’d meant to have read the first volumes of Tramps Like Us and Wallflower, but I got distracted by prose, specifically Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, by Ruth Reichl. I really enjoyed Reichl’s other books, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples, and G&S continues the trend. It covers her time as restaurant critic for The New York Times, and it’s very difficult to put down.

In this week’s Flipped, I’m apparently fixated on nipples. Be afraid.