Trade Waiting: Sinestro Corps War Volume 1

Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War Volume 1

Writer:  Geoff Johns, Dave Gibbons

Artist: Ethan Van Sciver

I know next to nothing about DC.  I know vaguely each of the major players, but beyond the Superman and Batman movies, I’m ignorant.  I was told by several people to read the Sinestro Corps storyline in Green Lantern.  There were a lot subtleties that I probably didn’t pick up on, but I have to say that I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would.  It was clearly built on a solid history, and there were points that I had no idea what the characters were talking about, but the current story was strong enough to hold my interest, and got me wanting to read more about Green Lantern.

The bad guy Sinestro has found a Yellow Power Ring and is amassing an army of followers, giving them all rings.  This army stands in opposition to the Green Lantern Corps, and they are called, ironically enough, the Sinestro Corps.  Their goal is to spread fear throughout the universe, to bring all worlds under Sinestro’s rule, and impose order on a chaotic universe.  They kill a lot of Green Lanterns, the Lanterns fight back.  That’s basically the story.

Trade Waiting: Endangered Species

Endangered Species

Written By: Mike Carey, Chris Yost, and Christos Gage

Art By: Scot Eaton, Mark Bagley, Mike Perkins, and Andrea De Vito

Issues:  X-Men: Endangered Species One-Shot, 17 8-page chapters.

Endangered Species is the X-Men event that works to lead into Messiah Complex.  The story follows Beast as he searches for a cure to the depowering of the world’s mutants.  He begins a world tour, meeting with all of Marvel’s top minds, heroic and villainous.  Beast pairs with his corrupt counterpart from the Age of Apocalypse, Dark Beast, and search the world for answers, from the ruins of Genosha to the Neverland mutant containment facility.

The series does some good things and some bad things.  Most of the bad comes from the format.  17 short 8-page stories doesn’t give much time for development.  The characters don’t really go anywhere.  I said the same thing about Illuminati, but I feel this is more from inadequate space to develop the characters more than too many heavy-hitters on the page.  The story is likewise just filler.  While pegged as the lead in to Messiah Complex, I don’t see how this should be required reading.

Hero

Hero by Perry Moore

There’s really nothing the super hero genre hasn’t already done.  It hasn’t really forged any new ground, and has instead continued using the same archetypes of heroes granted godlike powers and all kinds of insecurities.  “I can fly at the speed of sound, can’t be killed, and I just can’t get Lois Lane/Mary Jane/Jean Grey/etc.”  Don’t get me wrong, I love my superhero comics, but the major characters haven’t really evolved.  The same could be said for coming out literature.  Starting with Alex Sanchez’s Rainbow Boys, the number of books involving gay characters coming to grips with their sexuality has grown substantially.  But they are still basically Dawson’s Creek with gay characters.  “Oh, I love you but I can never be with you…Oh woe is me…”  Perry Moore’s Hero manages to merge the two genres into a pretty seamless package.  While it doesn’t forge new ground in either genre, as a combined effort, it’s a great young adult novel.

Thom Creed is not your average kid.  He goes to high school and he plays basketball, but he is far from being a normal teenager.  His father was once a superhero.  He was apprenticed to a character similar to Superman, but was disgraced and driven from the League, a massive group of heroes who protect the Earth and are modeled after DC’s pantheon.  The mystery of Thom’s father’s fall from grace is central to the plot, and is intriguing enough to keep reading.

Monster Planet

Monster Planet: A Zombie Novel

This book is third in David Wellington’s zombie series. The first book is Monster Island, (but actually happens to be the second in story chronology). The second of the series published (but first in story chronology) is Monster Nation. All are great book and work as a trilogy, although I think there may be more to come.

We are all, or at least should be, familiar with zombie apocalypses. Wellington’s Monster series follows the traditional outline of zombie attacks, that is the dead rise from the dead, eat the living, the living fight back to only realize that they (humanity) are the real monsters. Zombies, from a character stand point, are kind of like one trick ponies; they eat people and that’s about it. Wellington diverges from the zombie norm by incorporating lich (rhymes with ditch) zombies, or liches in the plural. Liches are badass zombies who retain their personalities and gain magical abilities. They also want to destroy the rest of humanity (not just eat it).

Overall Wellington does a great job at combining the old with the new. The action sequences are great. The humans are just the right amount of desperate, the zombies are just the right amount of hungry and the liches are just to cool for school. Highly recommended!

The Big Over Easy

An Alternative Nursery Rhyme Noir

Things aren’t all as they should be on Jack Spratt’s beat. As it turns out, Humpty Dumpty (short for Humperdinck Jehosephat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty) did have a great fall, but he did so under very suspicious circumstances. Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division and his partner, Mary Mary, are still sore for not being able to convict the three pigs of premeditation in their boiling of the wolf, are sent to investigate Humpty’s suspicious demise.

This is a terrifically funny book that will appeal to those who love British humor and puns, or for those who have been longing to learn about the secret histories of the nursery rhyme characters they thought they knew.