Tom Spurgeon at the Comics Reporter launches Five for Friday, a list-building exercise. This week, it’s “five ongoing series that provide a ‘snapshot of comics right now’.” Here’s my weak stab:

• Astonishing X-Men, Joss Whedon (for the “bring in a celeb from another genre” factor)
• Identity Crisis, Brad Meltzer (for the fanbaiting)
• Land of the Blindfolded (not for its specific artistic merit, but because it’s an interesting emblem of manga’s evolving impact, particularly shojo)
• Street Angel (fan activism at work)
• Queen and Country (from the “real mainstream,” which is an idea that’s growing on me)

Marvel and DC sales figures for September 2004 are up at the Pulse. Both pieces are also posted on Usenet, with extensive discussion threads following.

Dorian at PostmodernBarney has been doing some really entertaining seasonal blogging. He’s looked at horror manga, the trouble with vampires, and Italy’s giallo school of horror cinema.

The V takes a look at something equally horrifying: the Mary Sue! Where did she come from? What does she want? And just how many has Warren Ellis unleashed on the world?

Ed Cunard at the Low Road is looking for suggestions of monthlies to try. I love posts like these, because I always manage to find a handful of titles to try.

The John Byrne Forum isn’t quite sure how to take praise for “the Chief” from Brian Bendis (duly reported in Wizard 158 — Bendis loved the aborted “Dark Scarlet Witch” plot from the end of Byrne’s Avengers West Coast run). For example:

“as soon as i found out what happened in 503, i knew Bendis would find some snarky way to BLAME JB for all this — Avengers Dissed should be the final statement of how Bendis and Brevoort totally lack professionalism and don’t belong in the industry, but sadly, it won’t be.”

The thread contains spoilers, including the preview pages that were posted at Pop Culture Shock.

Okay, off to find out why I’m not pinging.

Street Angel is one of the freshest, most exciting comics I’ve read in ages. It’s funny, sad, absurd, gritty, exciting, sly, smart, and reckless. That it can balance all these qualities without turning into tonal slurry must count as some kind of miracle.

The miracle workers in this instance are writers Brian Maruca and Jim Rugg (who also provides pencils). With a minimum of fuss, they’ve created a vivid fictional world in the slums of Angel City. Wilkesborough is your basic dead end. Opportunity is practically a fiction, unless you’re dealing drugs or have joined the ubiquitous legion of ninjas that roam the streets. Angel City’s mayor would carpet bomb the place if he came up with a decent enough excuse.

Fortunately, Wilkesborough is the stomping ground of Jesse Sanchez, a homeless eighth-grader who uses martial arts prowess, her skateboard, and a no-nonsense attitude to keep things under control. There isn’t any dividing line between Jesse and Street Angel; it’s not so much a secret identity as it is a nickname, and there isn’t anything singularly noble about her. She doesn’t seem to have any illusions about changing the world; she’s just trying to make life suck a bit less than it might otherwise.

It’s interesting to see the bits Street Angel borrows from other comics. The hero with the terrible personal life is an old standard, but Jesse’s personal circumstances make Peter Parker look like a whiner. She’s a homeless orphan, and she’d probably kill for the problems most super-heroes have. Despite her circumstances, she still tries to go to school when she can, when she isn’t scrounging for food, putting down ninjas, rescuing the mayor’s daughter from an apocalyptic geologist, or teaming up with Jesus. (I mentioned that it was absurd, didn’t I?)

The absurdity is wonderfully playful. There’s none of the curdled cynicism you sometimes see when writers play around with heroic tropes, and the creators here resist the urge to overstate the weirdness. They just present it, which makes it funnier. It also allows the absurdity to support the fictional universe. In a strange way, seeing ninjas play a shirts-and-skins pick-up game of hoops actually manages to ground the story with a pitch-perfect deadpan.

Maruca and Rugg don’t let you forget the realities Jesse’s life, though. They do it subtly and unexpectedly, though, so it doesn’t seem like a Very Special Comic. With brief cuts of Jesse washing dishes, doing homework on a rooftop, or shrugging off slights from people she’s rescued, they inject just enough pathos to the mix without lapsing into “This week on ‘Blossom’…”

Rugg’s art is a real treat, gritty enough but with a real flair for comedy. Little visual non sequiturs help round out the setting and support the world-building (Jesse petting a stray cat, for example). The covers are glorious, probably the best in pamphlets at the moment. Every issue (each a stand-alone story) has plenty of extras, from the traditional, squid-themed inside front cover, the ninja strip on the inside back, and the back-cover homage to other comic styles. (As Rugg said in an interview by Ed Cunard at Comic World News, “The comic’s three bucks each. We’re trying to provide as much entertainment value as we can for that steep price.”)

This is just a wonderfully entertaining comic. It’s filled with unexpected moments, comedy of almost every flavor, and a clear artistic sensibility. Go. Buy. Now.

Tim O’Neil at The Hurting has entered the contest fray with some nifty prizes and a rather unusual set of criteria. He wants to know why you think he’s full of s__t. Craft a compelling argument to that end, and you could win the DC Comics Encyclopedia, a collection of essays by Warren Ellis, or Andi Watson’s Breakfast After Noon compilation. (I don’t know if you really need to think Tim is full of s__t, any more than the contestants on The Apprentice need to be competent businesspeople, but there you go.)

Also, deadlines are looming on the following:

• Ed Cunard’s Salmon Doubts contest at The Low Road
• Shane Bailey’s Walking Dead: Days Gone By contest at Near Mint Heroes
• The Win Scott Pilgrim contest at Peiratikos

Fish… zombies… slackers… s__t-talking… it’s the blogosphere in miniature, plus prizes!

Okay, the Avengers Message Board is at it again, but this time the Avengers 503 spoilers come with corroboration from a couple of different posters. Be warned that spoilers are posted in thread titles, so if you don’t want to know, don’t visit the board. (Links in this entry are to specific threads with spoilers in them.) Here’s a thorough run-down, but it’s in all caps, so keep your eye drops handy. Here’s the corroboration.

Brian Bendis (or BENDIS!) dropped by the Avengers Message Board to debunk the alleged spoilers posted there. At least I think that’s what he did:

“i got a lot of email based on something that was posted here that is no longer here. I didnt see any of what was posted, but i heard about it and a lot of it is made up stuff. not a true spoiler. no one has read 503 yet except tom b.”

Couldn’t be any clearer… or could it?

In other news, Avengers 503 came this close to shipping on time:

“that is is. no big drama. i posted this a month ago. we missed a printing cycle by a day.”

The only question remaining is, do I dare subject myself to a second issue of Wizard in as many months?

My quest for Comics That Make Me Glad I Read Comics is going pretty well. It got a significant boost with the recent purchase of Street Angel 1-3. Boy, do I love this book. It’s precisely the kind of fresh, exciting comic I’ve been looking for. The next issue comes out in December from Slave Labor Graphics, and it’s increasingly obvious that I’m going to have to start using Previews to order books that will never otherwise show up at the shop. This bothers me, because every time I look at an issue of Previews, I can actually hear a healthy, mature tree being ground into pulp.

This actually looks like a pretty good week for both DC and Marvel.

DC offers the second issue of the appealing Adam Strange mini-series, along with Birds of Prey, We3, and two collections of the excellent Sandman Mystery Theater. I’m cautiously optimistic about Kurt Busiek’s run on JLA, even though the art on some of the preview pages has been a bit uninspired. (I also wonder about the wisdom of picking up a plot thread from the JLA/Avengers book, but it could certainly work.)

The Black Widow mini-series continues at Marvel, along with a new issue of Mystique. Hey, it’s Glamorous Women of Espionage Week at the House of Ideas! (If one were inclined, you could throw in Ultimate Elektra and make it “Shady Dames” week or something, but I dropped the mini after the first issue.)

The Avengers Message Board spoiler thread seems to have vanished, apparently due to a lack of spoiler tags and for some mild profanity. I kind of suspected that would happen, so I saved the text of the message. Here’s an invisible version. Click and highlight to see:

***

First of all, [worker] has seen MOST of the pages for Avengers #503, but was not able to see all of them because of the restrictions of [his/her] actual job, AND the order and the (sometimes reverse) way that a number of pages [in the folios] were printed for this issue.

AND, he has ONLY a GENERAL knowledge of the Avengers and Marvel Comics.

[He/She] says…

The Chaos storyline all ties into Chthon’s 4th attempt to return to Earth.
It involves the Scarlet Witch and her attempt to restore her children.
The nether dimension where Chthon resides—after fleeing Earth and (Atum the god-killer?)—was later breached by The Sentry/Void (The Avenger’s GREATEST FOE! bah!) apparently in the Sentry Mini Series. Wanda’s mutant powers have always been bonded with Chthon’s residual energies in Wundagore Mountain and with Chaos magic. Chthon uses the hidden fears, hatreds, etc of Wanda’s closest friends, the Avengers, and allows these inner thoughts to destroy them from within. This includes things like Pym wishing that Hawkeye was dead after sleeping with “his wife,” and, get this, Jocasta to take revenge on Stark, apparently since Jocasta’s brain waves are Janet’s and because of other “mistreatments”? Receptionist? Damn weak.

Guest appearance at the end by…the Void, who, apparently has been the hero all along, and it was The Sentry who was banished to Earth. WTF?

Oh, and that’s not Iron Man in the armor on the preview pages. It’s Magda, Wanda’s mother. I s___ you not! In yet another retelling of Wanda’s origin (it’s all done in the tradition of the Avengers, though!).

I can hardly wait for the next nine days to read this epic.

***

Or, just e-mail me, and I’ll send the text to you. Oh, and apparently the next issue of Wizard spoils the reveal with some preview pages.

Well, maybe. A poster at the Avengers Message Board claims to have seen pages from Avengers #503, and boy, are some of the spoilers bizarre. That doesn’t mean any of them are out of the bounds of possibility, of course. As another poster put it, “It sure does sound like a load of convoluted, platinum-embossed twaddle tho’, wether true or not.”

Click if you dare.

The Pulse wants to know whodunnit or, more specifically, who readers think is the mastermind behind the Identity Crisis crime spree. Some theories, like this one from Jack Norris (named after one of my favorite Defenders supporting characters, perhaps?) comes with a heaping helping of snark:

“My guess is Capt. Boomerang’s never before heard of son. The motivation?, To shock readers and sell comics. And to make long time readers feel like they’ve been reading about a bunch of jerks for all these years.”

Some posters can’t even be bothered to guess, but they still have plenty to say. Take Steve Bunche:

“Rather than giving a toss about the killer’s identity, I’m much more concerned about what this series means for the tone of the DCU. The Justice League are not the Authority and I think this story sets a distasteful precedent; there is a place for violent fascism and sensationalistic content in comics but it truly saddens me to see it coming from the company that one could previously count on for comic book heroes that you’d like for your kids to read about.”

All I can say is, thank heavens there’s a place for violent fascism and sensationalistic content in comics. How else would Mark Millar pay his gambling debts?

But are readers able to make reasonable guesses at who the killer is? sdelmonte doesn’t think so:

“I think that Meltzer has simply not done enough to make it possible to guess. Whatever strengths this comic has – and there are many – one big flaw so far is that there are no real clues as far as I can tell. Everything is a red herring. 5/7th of the way home, and I see nothing that seems to be of any real use… I am concerned that Meltzer, who like many of his peers in the suspense novel industry, is less interested in the mystery than in the effects of the mystery. As a result, he might leave us with an ending as contrived and dimwitted as that in ‘Hush.'”

It’s not all disapproval, though. Take EvilRick:

“While a lot of other series are filled with hype, but not much else, every issue of this series makes me more excited about the next. My wife told me I was literally talking about Identity Crisis # 5 in my sleep last night, so I know I’m going crazy, but the first thing any customer asks when they walk in my store is ‘When is the next issue out?'”

Maybe The Pulse should have asked which innocuous supporting character was going to be offed next.