That’s My Bag!
Wonder Woman #30: Contrary to widely-help opinions, Diana’s rage makes perfect sense in this issue, and the Genocide storyline has in no way run its course and should not be ended. In the aftermath of Genocide’s merciless attack on the Princesses of Themyscira and the Justice League and the kidnapping of Etta Candy, it makes perfect sense she would “declare war” on the Cheetah and her pawns. And even though she says it in anger, I really think she regrets the necessity of cutting off the Cheetah’s tail in order to extract information form her of Genocide’s whereabouts. I have to admit though that there must also have been a certain satisfaction to that last bloody bit of violence to say nothing of kicking the ass of everyone in the DMA. Of course, I may be projecting. She is, after all, a comic book character. The Olympian is still a minor concern here, but once he’s revealed, I wonder if he’ll be getting his little boyfriend back anytime soon. Yay gay Greeks! A
Superman #686: Apparently parallelism has hit the halls of the Big Two as yet another title does simultaneous contrasting. I have to say, it’s better here than it was in last month’s Wonder Woman and last week’s Uncanny X-Men, but it’s already in danger of becoming over-used. In this issue, Princess Diana goes undercover as a special super-human policing agent in a department that is mistrustful of super-humans in general and Amazons in particular. She somewhat awkwardly adopts a human life, but is always at the ready to transform to Wonder Woman when an emergency arises. Wait. Strike that. Replace it with “Mon-El.” B
X-Infernus #4: I saw Neil Gaiman speak in Austin for the release of his book Anansi Boys. He was in a bitchy-gossipy mood that day and gave the crowd some insight into the Beowulf movie (“In a fit of typecasting, Angelina Jolie will be Grendel’s mother.”) and MiracleMan (“”So I asked Todd if he would just do what the court told him to do and he said, ‘I’m fuckin’ Todd McFarlane, man, fuck. I don’t gotta. Fuck.”) and how he’s always surprised by how expensive American comics are when, essentially, nothing happens in each issue. Funny guy. In essence, this is what the conclusion of X-Infernus suffers from – a whole lot of nothing. I counted 22 pages of a rather uninspired End-of-the-World scenario that actually occupies about five pages of actual action. Illyana has feared the release of the Elder Gods since 1982 and they get almost no panel time and certainly don’t seem to be the threat they’ve been made out to be. The last page shows the new New Mutants cover, but with Rahne, Doug and Warlock in the ranks. Retcon or Retro-chic? We’ll find out in May. D
