GREEN LANTERN #64

This is part one in the "War of the Green Lanterns" arc. I'll admit it: I don't like Green Lantern very much, although I do love most of what Geoff Johns writes (his stint on Adventure Comics and Action Comics were both great). The reason I'm not a fan of this character is that it's beyond silly. I can't even say that it appeals to kids because it's complex and confusing. In this issue, Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, is hanging out with all of his villains. They end up facing Lyssa Drak, who rules The Book of the Black, which is a giant, evil book that attempts to suck them in. Yes, it's super stupid. Meanwhile, the blue dwarfs that run Oa end up getting possessed by various evil entities. In "Blackest Night" these blue dudes were also the first to be corrupted...so should they really still be the ones in charge? Parallax, an evil creature thing, takes over the Central Battery and then some of the good guys try to arrest Hal Jordan. It still surprises me that this is going to be a movie. How can they possibly make this comprehensible? The art by Doug Mahnke is detailed and not-bad and the colors are vibrant...but the underlying story is just plain laughable. I'm really not sure if this type of a world can ever be thrilling or engrossing. Green Lantern is just a book I guess I'll never understand. *1/2

FEAR ITSELF PROLOGUE: BOOK OF THE SKULL

Remember last year when Brian Bendis was promoting the big Marvel event "Siege" and he said that this was going to be the last big Marvel event for awhile? Well a year later and we're already into "Fear Itself," Marvel's new event. I'll be honest: I think Marvel has better books than D.C. but for some reason I've never bothered to read Marvel's event mini-series. "Civil War," "Siege," and "Secret Invasion" just did not interest me at all. Ed Brubaker wrote this prologue and he used to be a great writer (his run on Captain America has gotten boring, his Secret Avengers stint sucked, and his new Incognito series isn't half as good as the first series) so I thought I'd see what this was all about. After reading this set-up issue I'm guessing that "Fear Itself" will deal with Sin, the Red Skull's daughter, taking over the world. In this issue, Sin and Baron Zemo go to a hidden bunker to find a Thor-esque hammer. What this hammer does has yet to be revealed, but to get it they have to read some incantation from a book made out of Antlantean flesh. The book jumps back in time to when Captain America and Bucky battled the Red Skull while he was setting up his hidden bunker. We also get to see Captain America and Bucky vs. a Yetti creature. Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds. The art by Scott Eaton is very sloppy and the writing is swift but same-old. Whether or not this event turns out to be awesome is up in the air, but they do have Stuart Immonen drawing it and Matt Fraction writing it so at least the potential for greatness is there. As for this prologue? It's silly but it's at least entertaining. Maybe I'll actually read a Marvel event series for once. **

VENOM #1

This is a solid first issue, but I really dislike the premise behind it. One of my favorite storylines in comic books is the birth of Venom, the alien symbiote that came back to Earth with Spider-man after he was battling out in the cosmos during Secret Wars. The alien symbiote eventually attached itself to Eddie Brock and a great villain was born (and Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen's awesome art certainly helped). Decades later and the U.S. Government has the alien symbiote and they're attaching it to special soldiers to help during big missions. This series follows Flash Thompson as Venom as he fights bad guys while struggling with the weight of it all. The art by Tony Moore is incredibly detailed and vibrant and it's certainly the best thing about this book. Writer Rick Remender has one cool idea: a Pumpkinhead villain that cooks the brains of his enemies. The premise, though, is a flawed one. Venom was a great villain. He seemed like he was a lot of fun to draw and it showed. Now he's neutered and thus boring. Yes, it's been two decades of Venom as a bad guy. Marvel does have to evolve to prevent stagnation, but Venom as a good guy does not work at all. I'm guessing this will all lead to a return of the villanious Venom...but this sidetrack is dead on arrival. **

SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE

Last year, with great fanfare, writer J. Michael Straczynski came to DC Comics and took over Superman and Wonder Woman. After a few issues of lackluster interest he was taken off the books, his future plots given to other writers to finish. The reason that DC gave for the shocking news was that his new hardcover graphic novel, Superman: Earth One, was such a blockbuster in the sales department that Straczynski would immediately go to work writing another hardcover graphic novel and not mess around with petty monthly books. I read the first few issues in his short Superman and Wonder Woman runs and they were pretty awful. Superman: Earth One, though, is a terrific read. It tells the origin of Clark Kent in an alternate Earth, although it's not really that different at all. Clark grows up in Smallville, heads to Metropolis, writes for the newspaper, meets Lois Lane, faces an alien menace, and eventually reveals that he's Superman to the world. The origin story of how his planet Krypton is destroyed is changed a little bit, but it's mostly just a typical Superman origin story minus Lex Luthor. The art by Shane Davis is awesome stuff, albeit he's better working on small panels. His splash pages are terrible for some reason. Davis reminds me of Rob Liefeld, which a lot of people hate, but I've always loved his bombastic style. This is super entertaining stuff, and it's too bad they didn't just run this as a four part monthly in Superman. We would have been spared that forgettable "Grounded" storyline where Superman walks nonchalantly across America. Ugh. ***

X'ED OUT

Charles Burns is famous. If he wasn't, I doubt that this book would have ever seen the light of day. X'ed Out is writer/artist Burns' newest graphic novel, albeit only part one of a supposed longer tale. You might know Burns from his awesome 2005 graphic novel, Black Hole, but you've definitely seen his art somewhere. His images are iconic and look like nothing else out there. This newest book makes no sense though, and feels more like a jumbled mess of random ideas than a cohesive narrative. The main character is a typical Burns outsider/artist that lives with his mom, falls in love with a girl that takes photographs of herself in bondage, and enjoys blueberry Pop Tarts. He has a bandage on his head and at night he dreams that he enters a strange world with lizard people in suits and pig-faced dudes without shirts that eat omelets. In this odd, dream world the creatures take a new queen and send her to The Hive. Did the main character have an accident? Brain surgery? Is this dream world real or just his imagination? What's up with his cigarette-smoking father? How does his new girlfriend fit into all of this? What happened to her? The book is gorgeous but short. I read it in about twenty minutes. It ends abruptly and there are too many questions left unanswered. If this is simply part one then why only release this aspect of it and not wait until it's completed? It's weird, yes, but almost weird just to be weird. It's dark and depressing, almost suffocatingly so. This is too bad, as Burns is a great artist. If he wasn't famous this would probably be stuffed in an attic box somewhere collecting dust. *1/2