Yay! Shawn Fumo is back and blogging at Worlds Within Worlds! In a nice companion to the manga meme summary at Cognitive Dissonance, he offers up a vote tally from the forums at Anime on DVD.

The Great Curve is a really enjoyable and informative group blog that has interesting and distinctive voices in the chorus. There’s a lot to like, but I particularly appreciated their thorough look at the Travels With Buster flap.

The Legion of Blogging Curmudgeons has expanded with the addition of The Comics Curmudgeon, who reads daily comic strips so we don’t have to. Bless you, Josh! I share his hope for “a great wave of carnage on the comics pages.” Come on, who doesn’t want to see a cage match between Blondie and Dagwood and the Lockhorns? Four go in… two or fewer come out!

So I bought the first volume of Love as a Foreign Language this week. And, dork that I am, I immediately went to the last page and tried to read it backwards. Sigh.

Behavioral glitches aside, I’m finally getting around to sampling more of Oni’s output. I’ll definitely get the next volume of LaaFL, as it’s got me curious about where things are headed. I love the supporting cast and the smaller moments of cultural disconnect. J. Torres does a nice job with the comic potential of alienation, and I really like Derek Kim’s clean, expressive art.

Scandalous was enjoyable if strangely slight. I’ve always been interested by the overlap between celebrity and politics, and the era explored here offers a lot of meaty material. Torres has constructed an interesting snapshot of the Red Scare’s fallout in Hollywood and the power and perils of gossip, but I think the story could have easily been twice as long. Or maybe I just wanted twice as many pages of Scott Chantler’s snappy, stylish illustrations.

I had some misgivings about the first volume of Love Fights, but enough people whose opinions I trust have convinced me to invest in the second. It’s on the way. And February is going to be Bryan Lee O’Malley month, with a re-release of Lost at Sea and the second volume of Scott Pilgrim headed my way.

By the way, does anyone know what’s going on with Everest? I liked the preview that came out on Free Comic Book Day. Did I miss it (likely), or has it been postponed?

Or maybe not. Depends on your perspective, I guess, but two of Marvel’s solicitations give me pause.

First, there’s this little treasure. As much as I love Dan Slott, I’m starting to worry that Marvel is using him as a weird kind of apologist for their big event books. Hate Avengers: Disassembled? You can always read She-Hulk. “Sins Past” has left a bad taste in your mouth? Cleanse your palate with Spider-Man and the Human Torch.

And now, G.L.A., the Great Lakes Avengers. If anyone can get comic mileage out of a throw-away concept from John Byrne while deflating the New Avengers hype, it’s Slott. (Actually, Joe Kelly did a pretty nice job with the G.L.A. during his much-loved run on Deadpool.) But Slott seems to be wedged into a bit of a corner, getting all the “You will create the illusion that Marvel has a sense of humor about itself” books. I love those books, so it isn’t a problem for me. At some point, though, I’d like to see what Slott can do with different types of material.

But wait! Someone is stepping on Slott’s turf! And it’s… Frank Tieri? Wow. I don’t ever remember him trying to write a comic that was intentionally funny. (Okay, I’m wrong: view the results through the eyes of Paul O’Brien here.) But, long before Chuck Austen, Tieri was Marvel’s go-to writer for the laughably bad. Now that Austen has left Marvel behind, will Tieri reclaim the throne?

I can’t quite articulate yet how much I loved We3, so maybe you should go read the excellent and thoughtful reviews posted at Jog – The Blog and The Brill Building. A certain constituency in my household is prepared to talk about the mini-series, though, and the companion animals have written a group letter to Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly:

Dear Sirs:

While we don’t read comics ourselves, we enjoy sitting on or near David while he does. Sure, sometimes they make him irritable, but on balance, it’s a pretty restful activity. Yesterday, he read the third issue of your comic, We3, and we’ve noticed some changes in his behavior.

Restrictions on our activity have become a dim memory. Treats are falling like rain. He even made bacon for the dogs and opened a packet of tuna for the cats. The good kind of tuna. He compulsively fluffs our beds, and he gets misty when the cats run off with a necktie. Our status in the household, never a cause for complaint, has risen to unprecedented levels. Sure, it’s little creepy when he looks meaningfully into our eyes and says, “You know I’d kill to keep you safe and happy, don’t you?” But the sentiment is much appreciated.

In conclusion, please write a sequel at your earliest convenience. We’re living like union bosses here.

Sincerely,

The Curmudgeonly Critters.

(This review contains spoilers.)

I was disappointed in the first issue of the latest launch of Legion of Super-Heroes. I found the tone to be arch and the attempts to convey the coolness of its premise strenuous. The second installment is much more effective, focusing on character while putting the premise into a specific context.

It opens with a small subset of the Legion preventing an assassination of United Planets Delegates. The beats of the mission are fairly standard, with some slightly shrill tension between teen-of-action Karate Kid and the more contemplative Element Lad. This isn’t a problem, as the sequence is window dressing to establish a much more interesting conflict that drives the rest of the story.

Brainiac 5 is frustrated. He uses his massive intellect to meticulously evaluate cause and effect to identify emergencies and prepare his team-mates for action. It’s his thing, and he does it well. Unfortunately, Dream Girl often does precisely the same thing through seemingly effortless intuition. Brainiac bristles at what he sees as the precognitive’s lack of intellectual rigor and flagrant disrespect for the scientific method.

It’s a funny, believable point of contention between two well-developed characters, and it plays nicely into the comic’s A-plot. On Dream Girl’s home world of Naltor, the authorities are inflicting sleep deprivation on their teen-aged citizens. Dream Girl, Brainiac, Karate Kid, and Shadow Lass travel to Naltor to find out why, and Mark Waid takes the opportunity to explore the practicalities and morality of a race that can see the future.

The rigor-versus-intuition argument runs throughout the issue, and Waid manages to strike a balance that highlights the value of each without being too obvious. He also places the larger issues alongside some smart, smaller demonstrations of the practical applications of precognition. I particularly liked the notion of law enforcers concentrating on short-term predictions to give them a combative edge. It makes for some fun sequences, and it helps paint Dream Girl as a formidable heroine who can make varied use of her specific abilities.

That element is critical to a strong Legion title, I think. It’s nice to see Waid articulate the ways individual members contribute. He really seems to have thought out how they’ve been defined by their abilities and cultures. Given the size of the cast, it’s the kind of story construct that could drive the comic for some time without growing stale.

I’m not as enthusiastic about art by Barry Kitson. It’s lovely, but I find it a bit static. He has a very strong hand for composition, but there isn’t much of a sense of motion. It creates the feeling of a sequence of video stills for me. The panels are attractive and polished, but they don’t flow the way I’d like. I also find a lack of variety to characters’ faces and body types, aside from some differences in height and hairstyle. That said the visuals don’t actively detract from the story. They just don’t tell it with the kind of energy and specificity that would really make it jump off of the page.

Still, this issue makes me extremely optimistic about Waid’s work on the title. It’s smart, funny, and imaginative in ways both big and small. I’ll definitely be sticking around.

Unless one is leaving them in the 1950s, apparently.

The United States Secretary of Education has pulled funding from a PBS show for children (Postcards from Buster) for writing an episode that features lesbian characters. PBS has pulled the episode in question.

If you find this revolting, why not drop Secretary Spellings a line? (She’s probably just upset that Spongebob gets his hoyay on in the private sector, and she’s acting out.) Then, you could swing by PBS and express your opinion.

Found via Cognitive Dissonance, here are my current favorite manga titles:

• Case Closed
• Hikaru No Go
• Hot Gimmick
• Imadoki!
• Sgt. Frog

Because I’m a big cheater, I’ll throw in favorites titles that have completed their runs:

• Alice 19th
• Fake

And, since I’ve already abused the meme, I’ll list some runners-up:

• Iron Wok Jan!
• Kindaichi Case Files
• Maison Ikkoku

Looking through this week’s offerings has me hypothesizing:

• In Black Widow 5, Natasha will bitterly decry the subjugation of women as sex objects while she adjusts her thong.
• The second issue of Legion of Super-Heroes will need to go a fairly long way to reverse my initial impression of the series, which I found too meta.
• I’m probably part of a very small minority of readers who hope Mystique will succeed in killing Charles Xavier. Sure, it wouldn’t stick any longer than the next issue of Excalibur, but come on. The man’s track record as an agent of change is pitiful. He’d be much more effective as a martyr than he is with a pulse.
• I’ll buy both the current (55) and previous (54) issues of Ultimate X-Men, because I just now realized it’s being drawn by Stuart Immonen. (I like writer Brian K. Vaughan, too, but I skipped the previous arc because Gambit gives me gas.)
• Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly will probably make me cry with the third issue of We3. I almost always avoid sad stories about animals, but this one snuck through the blockade, and it’s just too good to ignore.

As Rose noted in comments on another post, A.O. Scott of the New York Times has deemed Sideways the most critically over-rated film of the year. I tracked the article down through a search engine at the library (since it’s crossed over into pay-to-view territory at the Times), and it’s interesting reading:

“In ‘Sideways,’ a good many critics see themselves, and it is only natural that we should love what we see. Not that critics are the only ones, by any means, but the affection that we have lavished on this film has the effect of emphasizing the narrowness of its vision, and perhaps our own. It both satirizes and affirms a cherished male fantasy: that however antisocial, self-absorbed and downright unattractive a man may be, he can always be rescued by the love of a good woman. (What’s in it for her is less clear.)”

And, over-rated or not, it did pretty well in this year’s Oscar nominations, announced this morning: best picture, achievement in directing, best supporting actor (Thomas Haden Church), best supporting actress (Virginia Madsen), and best adapted screenplay. Interesting that Paul Giamatti didn’t get a best actor in a leading role nomination, considering how much love he got for the movie. Not surprised that Sandra Oh didn’t, given that her character actually objects to the way she’s treated by the lovable shlubs.

Saturday night’s super-hero toons made me very happy, because I’m an eight-year-old trapped in a near-middle-aged man’s body.

After what seemed like weeks of reruns of the most recent episodes, we got a new outing of Justice League Unlimited. The opening act made me a bit nervous, as it seemed to set up yet another 30 minutes focusing on characters who’ve been around from the beginning (Batman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman). I’m not a big fan of time travel stories, either, nor do I have much taste for DC’s Old West characters, who also appear.

But I ended up liking it a lot. It was more of a caper comedy than a “we must save the future” slog, and the gunslingers all got nice little moments in the spotlight. I also got laughs at things that I’m certain weren’t intentional. (Blame my other half. He walked through the room during an early scene, watched a bit, and said, “Wow, it’s the cowboy fetish episode.”) Thank goodness one of the bandits who donated their outfits to the heroes wore a pants size that would fit so snugly on Wonder Woman. (Tom the Dog raises an interesting question about Batman that I would have considered if I hadn’t been laughing at the chaps and the six-guns-in-one.)

I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying Teen Titans. I thought the first season was pretty mawkish and dull, but it really seems to have hit its stride. This is the conclusion to the “Titans East” story, and it’s carried along by the terrific action sequences. (I can’t think of a super-hero cartoon that’s ever done them better, honestly.) There wasn’t as much of a focus on the guest stars this time around, but as the second half of a two-parter, that can be excused. It was a Cyborg-centric outing, and a pretty darn good one at that. It succeeds where similar character studies have failed on this show by highlighting how the spotlight character interacts with the people around him rather than dwelling too much on his inner angst.

This brings up a counterpoint between the two shows that surprises me. JLU promises a wider look at the DC Universe (or at least the toon equivalent), but I find that TT is much better at delivering it. I’ve been a bit let down by the way JLU has dealt with supporting characters; I get a bit frustrated watching all of these great second-stringers wandering around the satellite or limited to bit parts in big battles. There have been successful exceptions (the episode featuring Zatanna, for instance), but the show hasn’t really hit its stride or lived up to the potential of its cornucopia of characters.

TT seems to make more of a commitment to introducing its supporting characters and guest stars. When Terra or Bumblebee or Aqualad or whoever appears in an episode, you can be reliably certain that they’re going to have some meat added to their bones. This might be because TT has a less ambitious fictional universe and deliberately keeps itself to a smaller scale. It’s probably not a fair comparison, but looking at results in terms of viewing pleasure, TT wins.

Scott at Polite Dissent has posted his own thoughts on the eps. Go take a look.