THE RUNDOWN: Is this a riot or are you just pleased to see me?

1.
Superman: New Krypton Volume 1 features over-the-top, too-florid scripting from James Robinson that calls more attention to him than the stories he’s crafting here, and while I can almost buy into Jimmy Olsen verbally masturbating in his quest to become a writer, but Vigilante saying “History is often but a patina of real come the light of tomorrow” while The Guardian¹ ponders “the glint of [Olsen's] red hair in the morning’s glow” is a bit too close to the purplest of slash fiction prose for my tastes. Johns’s work in this volume continues his very readable take on the DC icon, and while I’m fairly unsure that I need to read about 100,000 Kryptonians who’ve moved to Earth, the setup is interesting enough to keep me going for at least one more volume.

2.
I’m very fond of Fred Chao, so I can’t be remotely fair about the new Johnny Hiro collection. A paean to love, New York City, food, giant monsters, Japanese cinema, hip-ho, and living with cats (among other things), the titular character’s trials and travails are sort of a pitch-perfect example of how to do this sort of thing. One of the reasons I think this comic works for me is that it embraces a lot of things that mean more to me than the Scott Pilgrim NES culture (even if I like Scott and the gang, I was never quite as enamored with River City Ransom as O’Malley was) and I can identify with Johnny and Mayumi. He’s the decent guy who can’t quite make things work like he wants, she’s the just-sweet-enough counterpart who has her own trials and travails, and the surreal misadventures they have just feel like they belong. Get the collection, seriously. You won’t regret it.

3.
I figured out why I enjoy Marvel Adventures: The Avengers so much today: it captures a lot of what I liked about the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League era without mimicking it exactly. The latest issue (no I don’t have it handy, nor do I memorize issue numbers) starts off with the gang at a flea market, just hanging out, before Tigra makes an unfortunate purchasing decision that leads to the whole plot of the piece that involves a genie, three wishes, and Wolverine eating a lot of sausage. As much as I enjoy (and advocate) the pure action mode of superheroics, I find a great deal of joy in moments where the team, be they the Avengers or the Justice League or even the Doom Patrol, are just hanging out, being folk, and Tobin ( as much as Parker, who kicked off the kid-friendly Avengers book) has the perfect ear for dialogue and a way of making those pages never feel wasted. Special note should be taken of Matteo Lolli here. His just-cartoonish-enough art really helps this story move along, and his layouts were both inventive and easy to follow.

4.
If you’ve not read the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic, then you have no excuse, really. Go, grab a nice length of rope, a milkcrate, and find an exposed beam. Surely you can do the math after that.

(Two word review: intimidatingly fantastic.)

5.
The first issue of Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance was exactly what I wanted: pop-savvy, bright, and with just the right amount of metacommentary without going too far into territory covered by The Authority and the like.

¹And don’t get me started on revisiting the “original” Guardian and Cadmus, because I thought Morrison’s take was inventive and had potential while apparently somebody really, really likes masturbating over Jack Kirby’s corpse versus playing with new toys.