What I Read This Week

Graveslinger #4 -- The finale to the first adventure of Frank Timmons, custodian of the undead in the Old West, comes to a close as Frank's metaphysical conflict comes crashing headlong into a more mundane, but just as deadly, skirmish. This issue is pretty much just a running gunfight, along with the ubiquitous (and not entirely unexpected nor unwelcome) set up for a sequel. Sorat's surreal art is a good fit for the bloody action herein, and Denton and Mariotte seem to enjoy writing their anti-hero. The whole thing never gels together all that well, but I guess this is sort of a pilot for the Further Adventures of Frank Timmons, and in that sense I guess some disconnect is expected. Not bad, but overall this series was not as good as I would have hoped.

Project Superpowers #1 -- After the backstory in #0, we're off to a proper start here as the eldery Fighting Yank, now obsessed with both righting the wrong from his past as well as his prophecised demise, travels to the remote East to meet with his old ally, the Green Lama. Jim Krueger (and ostensibly Alex Ross) turns in an interesting premise, and as good a reason to revive these characters as I can think of. What I don't like is the relatively simplistic characterizations of both the Yank and Black Terror we see here. Yank is very one note regarding his evidently soon-to-be-forthcoming death, and Terror seems like bloodthirsty killer who would not have been out of place 15 years ago in an Image comic. This may change, of course, but at first blush his rantings about killing his one-time ally as well as his enemy didn't do it for me. There are some nice touches -- the villain of the piece seems pretty interesting, and the fact that his company is called "Dynamic Forces" is a cute bit as well. Carlos Paul's artwork is unique in-so-far as it doesn't look inked; there is not a lot of linework, giving a sort of "colored over pencils" appearance which makes things look other-worldly. On the whole this was a mixed bag, but I have hopes that the series will improve.

Justice League: The New Frontier Special -- Having never read the original New Frontier, I figured it was only right for me to pick this one up, even with the hefty price tag. And I must say, it was definitely worth the cost. We get three features here, all written by Darwyn Cooke, with retro-style art by Cooke, J. Bone and David Bullock, plus some bonus features in the back. The lead story is a "deleted scene" of sorts from the original, and details the battle between Superman and Batman before they became chums. The second feature stars Robin, The Boy Wonder, as he tackles a case involving a street racing ring that is more than it seems, and ends up getting some scarlet-and-yellow assistance. Rounding out the lineup is a humorous Wonder Woman and Black Canary tale, featuring the two ladies attempting to "enlighten" the patrons at the opening of a new Playboy Club. The bonus material has some character designs and storyboards from the film, and is not too heavy on info but nice nonetheless. Pretty much everything about this comic works: from the intense clash of the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, to the goofy, psuedo-rivalry camraderie of Robin and Kid Flash, to the outright slapstick of Wonder Woman in the Playboy Club, from start to finish this is enjoyable, quality work. Even as someone who was not familiar with the property until a very shot while ago, this is truly a special any DC fan would get a real kick out of.

The Pick of the Pile this week is an obvious one, the New Frontier Special. As I said, even at $4.99, this is chock-full of content, and the vast majority of the content is really stand-out stuff (about the only gripe I have is a story-based decision, and trust me, I have a rant all planned for that already). If you passed on it last week, definitely grab it this week.

So what did YOU read this week?

What I Read This Week

Flash #236 -- Mark Waid's rather short return to the character he made me dig comes to a close here, as "The Wild Wests" wraps up in fairly satisfying form. I liked how the main story eventually connected to the Rogers-scripted/Braithwaite-pencilled backup (which also finishes up here), and Rogers' art remains a great fit for the title. Waid is pretty game here, and shows off his skills at writing the Justice League as well as the Flash-clan. I think that this story would have been better off as a four parter, because the middle chapters seemed a little slow compared to the two ends, but overall I enjoyed it alright, and am looking forward to seeing how new series writer Tom Peyer explores what Waid established. The "Fast Life" shorts have been a lot of fun, so I am a little bummed to see them go, but at least they went out on a high note -- I don't think anyone can really complain about these backups, honestly.

Graveslinger #3 -- The Weird Western gets a little odder this time out, and the first thing you notice is the art. Seems that John Cboins, who handled the first two issues has been replaced Nima Sorat, and the change is pretty drastic. Cboins lonesome pencils were really visually interesting to me, while Sorat uses a lot more color and makes the pages "pop." I like both styles, honestly, so I am not complaining per se, but it was a little jarring. The issue itself is a mixed bag. Jeff Mariotte and Eric Denton are certainly game for writing the Old West, but the proceedings come a little off the rails here as the plot meanders to a fairlynon-Weird range war before the undead pop up on the second to last page. Again, it's not that I didn't like it, but the whole thing is a little lackluster. I strongly suspect that this is do to the serailized format. Now, you know that I am not one to champion this idea, but Graveslinger seems better suited to the collected format (or even an OGN) than to single issues. I am definitely going to re-read the entire series once the fourth and final issue comes out, and test my theory.


No Pick of the Pile this week. Both books were alright, but neither was really standout to me enough to apply the title.

So what did YOU read this week?

What I Read This Week

Annihilation: Conquest #3 -- We're running up to the midway point of these series, which means that the spit really hits the fan here. Our cast of heroes is split up into three groups, and for two of them, war truly is hell. While Quasar and Adam Warlock deal with Ultron's forces in the High Evolutionary's haven, Star-Lord and his team are suddenly in a firefight on Hala. Can Ronan, Wraith, Super-Skrull and Praxagora make enough progress to save the cosmos? Another rock-solid piece of space opera, with DnA's snappy scripting a good match with Tom Raney's "kinda-but-not-really" plasticy pencils. This is truly epic, "widescreen" stuff, but in the true tradition of space opera, it's presented with enough grounding through the beleiveable (and likeable) heroes that the reader doesn't lose the connection. Great escapist fare.

Superman #672 -- Deep inside LuthorCorp's secret Moonbase, the new Insect Queen prepares her army and finalizes her plans to infest Earth. Unfortunately for her, Superman is hot on the trail of Lana Lang, and is bearing down on the Hive. Plus, what is wrong with Chris Kent? Busiek's new take on Insect Queen is interesting. He speech (or should I say "zpeech?") impediment is a little silly, but I like how he sticks to the anthromorphized bugs aspect from the previous issue, and even gives a rationale for how she found Earth, and chose Lana as her new form. It's a little repetitive during the backstory exposition, though, and Lana's responses kept reminding me of Bill Cosby's Noah routine -- "Riiight!" Pete Vale's art is top notch though, handling the mundane and the fantastic equally well, and making the Queen look sexy as well as bizarre at the same time. The Photoshop'ed posters in Chris's room are obvious, but they made me grin so I can't hold that against the art. I think you have to like Busiek's work in general, and it's neo-Bronze Age sensibilities, to really like this title, and I happen to fall into that field.

Drawing From Life #2 -- Jim Valentino's collection of short autobiographical comics returns with eight more original pieces illustrating various points in the creator's life. Jim, or "Kid," as he is called in the strips, explores chasing fads as a junior high school student, dealing with the Denver police, and getting in touch with his "spiritual side -- that is, going to a series of lectures to get a girl's number. Of interest to most comic readers are a trio of tales about the industry: one is a dedication to the late Clay Geerdes, the underground "comix" guru from the 70s, and the other two are both tales of Jim's time with the Image boys -- one set during the infamous 1992 San Diego Comic Con, and one from San Diego this past year when the Founders had their panel. I mark out for Jim Valentino in a way most bloggers reserve for Grant Morrison and Ed Brubaker, so I am definitely the target audience for these stories. The crips black and white printing is very pleasing to the eye and Valentino's work lends itself very well to these sorts of cartooning. Really great sutff, even if most readers will see "Valentino" and be turned off, thinking, "Ugh, he created ShadowHawk."

Transformers: Beast Wars: The Ascending #4 -- It's the final issue of the mini, which of course means it's time foe the Big Fight At The End. But seeing as this is a Transformers miniseries, written by Simon Furman at that, it's time for the Big Fight At The End Where Characters Die Trying To Stop Unicron -- or in this case, at least, his agents. It's familiar ground for Furman, who has been writing this kind of Cybertronian war stuff for decades now. It's a satisfying conclusion to the storylines both on prehistoric Earth as well as Cybertron, but there is little to recommend of this particular issue to anyone who is not already a Transfan. The ending seems to set up a sequel while hinting at stuff we already know happens, if that makes any sense.

Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook #3 -- At the risk of Dave Sim calling me an "emotion-based being," let me tell you a little story. Since this series began being published, I have eagerly waited for the profile of my favorite Predacon who has never had one -- Sky Shadow. A Fuzor (that is, his beast form is two animals merged together -- in this case, an iguana and a dragonfly), he was one of the first Beast Wars toys I ever owned, and he stood on top of my computer monitor for many, many years. He's got a great personality as well -- scheming, duplicitous, gregarious and cruel. So I really wanted to see how Ben Yee and/or Simon Furman would flesh him out. So when I got this comic in my hands, I flipped to the last page to see if he would be covered in this pages. That last profile? Silverbolt. AHHHH! I have to wait another month! Anyway, insanity aside, this one covers a lot of major characters, including Rattrap, Scorponok, Rhinox, Quickstrike, and Bigbot himself, Optimus Primal. One more issue remains, which, one imagines, will contain Sky Shadow! You should already know whether you need to buy this one or not, folks.

The Pick Of The Pile is Drawing From Life, unsurprisingly. A:C continues to be top-shelf type stuff, but I am a sucker for Valentino as well as auto-bio-comix.

So what did YOU read this week?

Indy Cred

I was reading the letter column in Wizard the other day (what? Yeah, I read Wizard, I've been reading it since 1992 -- you got a problem with that?), and a reader raised an interesting point: If you only read Dark Horse and Image, are you an "indy" comics reader?

It's something I have thought about myself a few times. I mean, I read a pair of "small press" comics regularly, but can either Moonstone's The Phantom or Bongo's Futurama Comics truly be considered "indy" comics, what with being licensed and all? The same goes for a lot of the Horse's output: they traditionally and still to this day make a lot of bread off of their licensed comic properties. But they are very often touted as the top dog indy publisher. And what about Image, which remains the poster child for creator owned work, the definition of indy?

The argument is one which works better reversed. Not "what is indy?" but "what is mainstream?" Marvel and DC plainly fit this bill, with their easily recognized armies of superheroes, just waiting for the right screenplay. Archie and his teenaged cohorts, too, is simply classified -- Archie might be a "small press" publisher as far as Diamond is concerned, but a publisher who is found on nearly every checkout line in supermarkets across the country is not indy (and is it just me, or do you also grab the Jughead Double Digest when on a long line at the checkout?). That still leaves a large swath of the comic industry in this country to look at.

The thing about the modern Dark Horse is that while they are still known for their license work -- Star Wars, natch, as well as Conan and Buffy -- which sell a lot of copies and no doubt produce a lot of profit, their catalog also includes a lot of strongly non-mainstream work. Hellboy is the closest thing they have to a mainstream non-licensed product, thanks to the movie, but if you ask a dozen people in the street, maybe two or three would know that Hellboy's a comic book character. Beyond that, it's a weird group of titles which cover a large range -- Umbrella Academy, The Goon, Rex Mundi, Grendel, Apocalypse Nerd and so on. That's pretty solid indy cred right there.

Image is the same way. Their days of mainstream are long gone -- does anyone who jumped on the bandwagon in the mid-90s really still remember or care about Spawn? And the other Image property with any real non-cartoon exposure (Withcblade) isn't even with Image anymore. They still serve as a sort of clearing house for creator-owned work, but even that comes with a catch, since you have to essentially pitch a series still. So Image is like the "mainstream indy" publisher -- like how you can find a sampler CD filled with a dozen "indy rock" bands all signed to one label, and who magically seem to pop up in the denoument's of hour long TV dramas. Not that there's anything wrong with that (other than the music, of course), since Image provides a higher profile for work which might not have gotten any attention otherwise, including Parade (With Fireworks) by Mike Cavallero, Dynamo 5, Mice Templar, Noble Causes, and Invincible. That sounds "indy" to me.

Beyond those two there are plenty of other publishers out there, toiling in relative anominity save for licenses and the occasional breakthrough which grabs headlines over at Newsarama or whatnot. IDW works hard chruning out the Transformers and Star Trek stuff, to the delight of fans, but also has 30 Days of Night; same with Devil's Due and G. I. Joe, responsible for causing no small part of the 80s nostalgia wave. Dynamite has stuff as varied as Battlestar Galactica and the Lone Ranger, and even little Moonstone has Kolchak, Buckaroo Bonzai, and Sherlock Holmes in addition to the Ghost Who Walks. These are certainly indy publishers, but I can't really see these titles as indy comics.

So what's the answer? There isn't one, of course. Indy is in the eye of the beholder. I might call Jim Valentino's Drawing From Life the epitome of indy comics, but Joe Bloggs down the street might consider it utterly corporate. I won't call Transformers: Beast Wars an indy comic because it is a license of the most popular boys toy of the year, but someone else might say "Well, Beast Wars is obscure enough, and the print run is small enough, so it's obviously independant." It's all a matter of taste and what you enjoy reading.

The moral of the story? Read what you like, and don't worry about whether something is "too mainstream" or "off the radar." As long as you think it's worth spending your hard earned money on, that's all that matters.

So what about YOU? What small press or "indy" stuff do you read?

What I Read This Week, Pt. 1

Batman And The Outsiders #2 -- Chuck Dixon throws everything in the blender and spits it back out as he pushes the new Outsiders team in his own direction. Lopez's pencils are nicely matched with an action story, and although there is a weird panel here and there, it's nothing distracting. The script has some abrupt bits -- Catwoman's departure makes sense, but Manhunter's, not so much -- and some weird continuity questions -- do Metamorpho and Katana not know that Bats is Bruce Wayne anymore, or are they playing dumb? -- but the action is good fun and the last page cliffhanger is nice, even if it pushes the title further into "Bat-Book" territory; I'm not overly happy with that as the strength of of the old series in my eyes was that it was not a "Bat-Book." But I'm keeping an open mind to see where things are headed.

Scream #1 -- I picked this up on a whim, mostly because I'm always trying to keep an eye out for new Horror comics if I can find them. This one, with words by Peter David and art breakdowns by Bart Sears (whoa... double 90s flashback) is a play of sorts on the Hulk archetype, with a small man, Danny Duncan, stuck in a meaningless job at the Post Office, returning to work after a stay at a sanitarium. The problem is, he doesn't exactly remember his time there, and weird things continue to happen around him. And where does the savage red monster who seems to show up whenever he is angry fit in? A pretty interesting concept, but overall I wasn't too terribly impressed. Sears' linework is great for the fantasy stuff, but here, rendering the real world, he is out of place. I might get the rest of this series, but right now I am on the fence.

What If? Annihilation -- What happens when last year's two biggest miniseries in the Marvel Universe collide? You get this one-shot, which details the chaos and terror of the Annihilation Wave unleashed on Earth. You know thigns are going to be good when Nova effectively points out how mind-boggling stupid the "Civil War" was in the span of about two panels. Mico Suayan's artwork is dark and harsh, which fits the story but is not pleasing to the eye. I am not sure if he uses the same style over on Moon Knight, but it's better suited to that character than the bright colors of the mainline Marvel crew. David Hine seems to have a real knack for the Watcher, who acts not only as the narrator but has a role in the story as well. In the end, obviously this What If? is just that -- a What If, a possible road which Marvel Editorial could have taken, and it has all of the expected carnage inherent when all bets are off. And yet, it's satisfying at the end, seeing Captain America and Iron Man side by side instead of at each other's throats when the chips are down. Fans of Annihilation will want this, but those happy with the current MU, or with CW in general should avoid this special.

Graveslinger #2 -- Frank Timmons is a strange man in a strange time. And here we learn just why things are as strange as they are, as we get the origin story and background information as to just why there are undead cowboys roaming the prarie and eating people. Cboins art remains obscure and hard to penetrate, but I like it on this title as it mixes the gruesome with the vast (and possibly desolate) in a nice manner. Denton and Mariotte's script, though, is interesting but uninvolving. It's a hard call, because it's partly because Timmons is not really a likeable guy, so hearing his story is not all that exciting for me. The next issue promises a little more action.

Captain America: The Chosen #3-4 -- The mystery of why Captain America is dying -- and why he is appearing to an American soldier in Afghanistan -- deepens here, as Corporal Newman tries to keep his wits and sanity about him in order to rescue the surviving members of his unit. Morrell doesn't seem like a first time comic book scribe. His work in the more pulpy literary fields serves him well as he retells Steve Roger's origin as well as detailing the events leading to his current "one foot in the grave" situation -- and handles it in a way that not only can I buy in a Marvel sense, but considering what we know about the military, I don't really doubt in the real world, either. Par for the course is Mitch Breitweiser, who's pages are super-detailed despite being covered in an inch of grime. While equal parts Cap and War Story, this tips a bit towards the latter, and becomes that much more interesting because of it.

Countdown to Mystery #3 -- The Doctor Fate lead story is a self-contained adventure entitled, humorously, "Self, Contained." When the new bearer of Fate's helmet visits an arcane shop, he is taken to another dimension (kinda), where he must survive the grim and strange world in order to achieve enlightenment from the King and Queen. Gerber and Justiano turn in what seems like a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo at first, but, in a fairly subtle way ties back to Kent V. Nelson's background as well as to the current state of magic in the DCU. Overall a very enjoyable little "done in one." The backup opens with Jeanclipso attacking Jack Ryder, then quickly segues to Plastic Man going toe to toe with Batman. Its not clear what Jeanclipso is doing (though a team of Plastic Man and the Creeper would be hilarious if nothing else), nor what Spectre and Crispus Allen are doing, either. A very strange installment in what has been a strange back-up, but not nearly as bad as I would have predicted based on Jeanclipso being the star.

Heroes For Hire #15 -- With Humbug more bug than man, Coleen and Tarantula imprisoned and tortured, Paladin looking to collect, and the rest of the team in a general sort of "bad way," things do not look good for the HFH. And they get much, much worse. A depressing and distressing comic from start to finish, as the Heroes for Hire are dragged through the mud and left filthy in the inglorious send-off to the series. A complete downer, lacking any of the humor or ironic zaniness which was the hallmark of the title for it's all-too-brief run. It may have been doomed from the start, but like so many other Marvel titles I have read, it deserved a lot better. Supposedly there is more stuff coming for Misty Knight, but it's more World War Hulk nonsense which I won't be reading. Collectors of the series should buy this, but everyone else can and should leave it on the rack.

Flash #234 -- After all the doom and gloom of the What If? and HFH, I open the cover here and am immeditately blown away by the brightness. While Wally is out surveying the damage done to Central City, he discovers a new power connecting him with his kids. Meanwhile, his son Jai is shouldering some very bad news he was not supposed to know. Waid and Williams deliver a clean, solid superhero story, even with some of the heavier elements with Jai which are quite sad. But Waid's exploration of the superhero family is a lot of fun. Same goes for the backup by John Rogers and Doug... let me check... Braithwaite detailing Barry and Iris Allen visiting the alien world from last time. Of note is the return (of sorts) of the Flash Fact!

Futurama Comics #34 -- Welcome to "Planet Michelle!" When Fry discovers that in the 30th Century, he is not only rejected by women, but also by alients, mutants, and gender-confused robots, he seeks solace with a clone of his overbearing ex from the 20th Century, Michelle -- on a planet inhabited only by the two of them! Meanwhile Bender becomes a "date doctor" in order to swindle innocent losers out of as much money as he can. Futurama may have returned to TV screens, but as long as Bongo continues to create quality comics like this, I will support the printed version of the Woooooooorld of Tomorrow!

Iron Man Annual #1 -- Welcome to Madripoor, Mr. Stark! Christos Gage and Harvey Tolibao go all 007 (by way of Albert R. Broccoli moreso than Ian Fleming, but still!) in this 48-page Annual. Tony is joined by SHIELD Agents Senyaka, Jones, and Eaton -- all gorgeous and dangerous, natch -- as he infiltrates Madripoor in an effort to embolden the local resistance to Madame Hydra in order to cause her to be overthrown. The problem is, of course, is that Billionaire Playboy Tony Stark is still known to be Iron Man, and Madame Hydra has taken measures to protect what is hers. This is the kind of story I want to see out of an Annual: a one-off, one-shot story which can be read and enjoyed by regular readers, but can also be skipped if the price is too much or what-have-you. Tolibao's pencils are lush and evocative, and he seems equally adept at drawing technology as he does cheesecake (and beefcake -- there's a loving shot of Tony's undersheath-clad butt at one point) without looking awkward or lurid. Gage shows off more of his neo-Busiek stylings, and together everything just gels.

The Pick of the Pile is What If? I understand that this selection is motivated strongly by my enthusiasm for Annihilation and my lack thereof for what became of Civil War. I think this one-shot provides a little peek into what could have been, and in the end reminds us that whether you like what's going on right now or not, they're all just stories -- and subject to change at any time.

What I Read This Week

JLA Classified #44 -- You ever read a comic book, and, as you're reading it, you are saying to yourself 'Is this a retcon? Because that didn't happen that way... at least I don't think so,' and as you continue to read it, you get more annoyed because the writer "screwed everything up" and all of the references are wrong, but then you get to the end and there's a reason why everything is out of whack? Yeah, that's this mag right here. Featuring a cameo from the Detroit Justice League!

Graveslinger #1 -- The Old West was a strange place, with a mix of world-shaping technologies and just enough mystery left to make one cross themselves before passing a graveyard. So seeing Frank Timmons hunt down the escapees of Gila Flats prison across the desert is not unusual, and maybe, just maybe, it's not too unusual to realize that the men he hunts down have already been executed. Denton and Mariotte's newest spin on the "Weird Western" is an enjoyably low-key read -- something akin to Louis L'Amour mixed with Dean Koontz -- and John Cboins linework is just quirky enough to fit right in. Worth checking out if you like the genre.

Superman #668 -- Yeah, I know, another fill-in/content change from DC. But you know what? At least this time Busiek and company spell it out on the splash page, and, get this, apologize for it. So quitcher cryin' and just enjoy the first part of "The Third Kryptonian." I know I did! Between the interaction of Superman and Chris, Superman and Batman, and Robin and Chris, to the mysterious presence of Kryptonian molecules to the looming alien threat, this is a fun superheroing tale, with nary a trace of angst in sight... just the way I like Big Blue.

Nova #7 -- Annihilation: Conquest can't get here soon enough! It's like the antidote to the rest of the Marvel line. So it's no surprise that this series -- born of the first Annihilation -- is so enjoyable. Here, it's an internal battle as Richard Rider tries to escape the programming the Phalanx have subjected him to. The finale pretty neatly answers my question about what this title would be doing during A:C proper (and is a riff on a direction taken by the old Silver Surfer series about a decade ago). The Human Rocket keeps on shining.

Heroes for Hire #14 -- The Planet Hulk tie-in continues, and honestly has worn out it's welcome. It's hard to fault a tie-in to a one note "event" for being one note, but that's the problem here. Humbug is still all messed up, Col and Chula are in trouble, and the rest of the team is trying to figure out some way to save their friends, if not stop the invasion. It's still solid reading, but the for the love of Hashut let's move on, alright? Either that or bring in Devil Dinosaur again. This may or may not be the second to last issue of the title -- Marvel's certainly not telling us!

X-Men: Die By The Sword #1 -- Sure enough, this shipped before New Excalibur #24, and thus, I have not read it. I will say this, however -- the cover is sweet.

Star Trek Aliens Spotlight: Gorn -- Ahh the Gorn. Long my favorite of the Star Trek aliens, they get little to no attention from the show's lore. Why, I have no idea. But this one-shot is a step in the right direction, as we get to see them in a context besides trying to kill Captain Kirk. Of course, that's not totally absent, as it seems that "Arena" is in fact one of the defining moments for the entire race. Coincidence? Metatextual commentary? I'm not sure. What we have here is a nice enough story about Captain Terrell from Wrath of Khan and Chekov, along with some redshirts, getting stranded on a Gorn world. Overall, I liked it, but I had the same complaint I have with all IDW Trek stories -- 22 pages is good for adapting a half an hour show, not an hour show. Would have been much improved to be double-sized.

The Pick of the Pile is Superman, which holds off a very strong effort from Nova. Chalk it up to Busiek starting a new story as opposed to DnA wrapping one up.

So what did you read this week?

Fair Trade -- The Complete normalman

This is going to be a little convoluted, but I promise it has a point, so stick with me here. When I was a young lad of about the age of 12, there was a company starting up you may have heard of called Image Comics. They got all sorts of press and attention from Wizard and Comic Shop News -- the only sources of info on comics as 12 year old could get -- and us readers were bombarded with ads and hype for the new series. Spawn! Youngblood! WildC.A.T.s! To a lesser extent Savage Dragon and Cyberforce! And something called Wetworks which... well, I won't got there. But there was another title in there which didn't get as much play, and looked somewhat different from it's high-sheen and hatch-marked compatriots.

That series of course was ShadowHawk.

'Hawk was not the greatest comic book ever produced. And it generally gets saddled with the "dog" status of the Image launch titles (sales wise it was, at least). But as a 12 year old I ate it up. I adored ShadowHawk. This brutal, metal-shorn maniac had captured my attention, to the point where when Spawn guest-starred in the second issue, my brain read it as "Oh good, Spawn will get a rub from appearing in ShadowHawk." And we all know how that turned out. Heck, when I made that 12 year old attempt to become a comic book artist (who didn't have that dream?), I drew the cover to ShadowHawk #3. So obviously there was something about the character which appealed to my psuedo-adolescent mind.

But the other noteworthy aspect about ShadowHawk was (here it comes!) that it introduced me to the work of Jim Valentino, 'Hawk's creator. I knew who Todd MacFarlane and Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld and Erik Larsen (heck, I owned a few of their comics... well, except Liefeld. Honest!) were, and had at least heard of Jim Silvestri. But this Valentino guy? What did he ever do? Guardians of the Galaxy? Huh? I was intrigued with his new creation and sought out his older work.

Which (finally) leads me to The Complete normalman. Unlike his fellow Image Founders, Valentino was much more at home doing indy comics than working for the Big Two. And, I would soon discover, he was much more suited to doing his indy comics than he was doing superheroes in general. And then we have this little gem. What do you get when you combine those two dissimilar elements together?

You get the story of norm, put into a rocket as a baby by his CPA father, who is convinced that their planet Arnold will blow up in half an hour (it doesn't) only to drift in space for 20 years to land on the planet Levram (read it carefully), which is populated entirely by superheroes. In fact, no sooner does norm land there than he is brefriended by the inane Captain Everything (possessing the power to create a power for every plot twist) and dubbed "normalman." But would you want to live on a planet of high-powered lunatics who spend all their time brawling and causing general mayhem? Yeah, neither does norm, who desperately tries to return to Arnold. But along the way, he will face deadly peril, travel to other dimensions, overthrow a dictator, fight in a war, sire a race, fall in love, travel through time, run for president, get fall down drunk, meet a host of other indy comics stars, and just about anything else which could theoretically happen in a comic book.

What's even more impressive than the astounding amount of cliches is the way Valentino weaves them into an ongoing narrative; no matter what hackneyed device is in the crosshairs, the jokes come organically and flow into the story instead of standing out. Everything from the Silver Age of heroics to EC horror to Archie-style romance ("Love stinks!") to Elfquest and Asterix is lampooned, skewered, and roasted to a golden brown for our enjoyment. But then we take a moment and realize that we're part of the joke as well, and that none of Valentino's gags would mean a thing unless we loved the medium and the genre as much as he does, and recognized all of the potshots and guffawed at what we take for granted with "normal" (how peculiar a phrase!) comics. But it never veers into spite: though norm is typically very cynical, the naive and trusting Captain Everything happily glomps along with every development and twist, every shocking death and subsequent resurrection. Valentino has characters count the pages between fights scenes and declare that they are making "Kirby poses" or wielding "space vacuums," but it's good natured, the result of too many nights staying up late reading the latest 4 Color goodies, instead of having axes to grind. It leaves the reader smiling more often than anything else.

And it's funny as all get out. Witness: The Legion of Superfluous Heroes, whose rollcall lasts for several issues! See: The Unnecessary A-Men, the Tight Teens, and the Cloned Kids -- superpowered teens all, and all exactly the same! Cower Before: Sgt. Fluffy, Agent of S.C.H.M.U.C.K.*! (*Stands for nothing-in-particular.)

Collected here is literally everything normal: the first short entries from Cerebus and A-V in 3-D, the original series, a few other appearances, then covers and other art. One of the best reads in the volume is the normalman-Megaton Man Special which features two of comicdoms great lunkheads getting a whirlwind tour of the comics industry, as well as the normalman 20th Anniversary Special, which sees norm and Cap head to San Diego Comic Con!

As a genre, superheroes is taken entirely too seriously by its fans. If you have ever found yourself arguing about the best Green Lantern, or rationalizing how Psycho-Man couldn't possibly bypass Mr. Fantastic's energy-shield generator, then this trade is for you. You'll laugh, sure, but you might just gain a deeper appreciation of the characters whom we shell money out for each week, as well as the creators behind them.