What I Read This Week

glamourpuss #2 -- Dave Sim's schitzophrenic juxtaposition of high fashion, subversive satire, and the history of cartooning continues here, with more focus on our de facto star glamourpuss, plus an appearance by her evil twin, Skanko.  Sim's work has never been straight-forward in my experience, but this is really out there, ranging from glamourpuss talking about how a lot of the world's problems could be solved by beautiful women flying into hotspots and staring down the "mama's boys" until they cracked, to Sim examining how everything from the art styles Jack Kirby and Bruce Timm relate back to Terry And The Pirates.  Luckily, just because it's out there doesn't mean it's not good reading.

Futurama Comics #38 -- Trapped on a primitive jungle planet -- the only have dialup, for instance -- Leela becomes the queen of a tribe of nerds who ship books from the Amazon.  Meanwhile, Fry tries to avenge Bender's untimely destruction by wearing his body as a suit of armor in what may be the greatest parody of Tales Of Suspense #39 ever ("Get out of here, you owls!").  Your usual array of wacky Bongo hijinks and comic book riffs, including the blonde muscleman known as 56K-Zar, king of the jungle.

Two-Face: Year One #1 -- Mark Sable and Jesus Saiz team up to explore the early days of ADA Harvey Dent, working to shut down the mob in Gotham City and dodging allegations that he is the Holiday Killer, all while controlling his own inner rage.  I really enjoyed this story (admittedly, I am biased... I mean, Two-Face) because it ties into what has already come before -- namely The Long Halloween -- while still offering a new and different tale of the young and idealistic Dent.  (There's a funny bit which ties directly into a character's murder in Long Halloween which at first seems contradictory, but in the end makes sense.)  If you like Two-Face as a character then you should definitely check this series out -- stinks that we have to wait till September to get the second issue!

Captain Action: First Mission, Last Day -- In the 1960s, a secret government organization is convened to battle the silent alien menace of the Red Crawl -- the ACTION Directorate and their champion, Captain Action!  A "comic novella" (that is, a text story with accompanying illustration) of the original Captain Action, this reads like a Destroyer novel with lots of science fiction overtones.  Nicieza is game here, and his prose has a nice style to it which plants it firmly in the men's adventure genre, as I said.  The illustrations, provided by Ruben Procopio, are nice pinup style pictures, and provide a nice visual aid for some of the more outlandish images Nicieza describes verbally.  While I know that Moonstone is intending on using the young Captain as seen in their #0 issue as the star of their future stories, I would very much like to see more tales like this one featuring the original, "classic" Captain Action as well.  The only major drawback here is some confusing copy-editing problems in the text that really should have been caught in proofreading.  Other than that, very enjoyable.

The Pick Of The Pile is Two-Face: Year One.  Yeah, probably a bit obvious for me, but I really enjoyed that issue, which is saying something considering that all four of these were very, very good comic books.

So what did YOU read this week?