Odds and sods

It's Monday, and what better way is there to celebrate the dawn of a new week with all of the challenges and opportunities it'll present than with some comic book talk. I'll start things off with some random thoughts that have been kicking around my brain over the last week.

• Stargirl needs a new costume. Ten years has been plenty long enough for the mid-thigh spandex shorts and bare midriff. Her character has matured a great deal since she was a rebellious teenage girl, becoming a super-hero to spite her step-father. After all, she's got one of the coolest looking props around with Jack Knight's cosmic staff, so it's about time she had a costume to match.



• Speaking of costumes, I'm a little underwhelmed with the Van Sciver redesigns of the Flash family in Flash Rebirth #5. Wally West's new costume is all right, but they really played it safe with that redesign. I hate the new duds for Jesse Quick. The Liberty Belle costume was a solid update on a classic costume. The new one? Not so much. The one I do really like is the new Impulse. The only problem I've ever had with Wally's kids was the overly-muscled one, so now that that's not an issue anymore I'm curious to see where this goes.



• I've long been a fan of Carlos Pacheco, keeping an eye out for his work since I first saw it on the Star Jammers mini with Warren Ellis from the mid-90's. I think I realized this week, however, that I really should've been saying that I'm a fan of Jesus Merino instead. The longtime penciller/inker team are now at different companies and you can definitely see who had the dominant style. Merino's work on Justice Society of America is everything that I've come to enjoy from their work over the past 10+ years, while Pacheco's work on Ultimate Comics Avengers looks kinda boring. His storytelling and layouts are still strong, but his pencils lack that extra punch that used to make his work stand out.



• I brought this up with the last installment of odds and sods, but it's worth mentioning again since I just read the latest issue last night. The Unwritten is still the strongest new title I've read in a long, long time. Don't let the obvious Harry Potter angle scare you off if you're not a fan of those books. I've never read a word of J.K. Rowling's work and I can't get enough of this book. Carey and Gross are doing some flat out phenomenal stuff with this title.



• Postings been a little light lately, so my apologies. Having your computer infected with annoying adware tends to make you not want to turn it on some days, and I've found that to be somewhat counterproductive to a prolific blog. If you really want to be kept in the loop for new posts here, the best way to do that is to follow the blog. Click on the FOLLOW button to the right, and help brighten my week.



• And finally, a quick shout-out is in order for the mania.com web site. If you do a google search for "Justice Society Jesus" to make sure you're spelling Jesus Merino's name right, they're listed first with a review of the comic before that other Jesus fella and all of his social justice stuff pops up. There's a website that knows how to massage the search engines!

Now that I got those out of my system, let's get the next random book picked to review.

...and that book is Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #41 from May 1992, published by Marvel Comics!

I hope y'all have your internet sarcasm detectors on, because "Yea, it's another Marvel book from the 90's!" That's three in a row, for everybody keeping score at home. "And is that Wolverine on the cover? Woo hoo!"

In all seriousness, I'm actually surprised that we've seen so little Wolverine on the blog up to this point. This is, after all, the twenty-first book from the 90's that we've reviewed and this is the first gratuitous Wolverine guest shot so far. I say we can consider ourselves lucky.

While I'm glad to see another Dr. Strange book pop up, I am disappointed that we've once again missed the Roy Thomas/Jackson Guice run that I fondly remember. Oh well, but it's like my mom always used to say...if you live by the Randomizer, you die by the Randomizer!

And speaking of the Randomizer, it appears to have gotten itself caught in a bit of rut. Not only is it stuck on 90's Marvel books, but this is the second pick in a row (and the third pick overall) from May of 1992. So while you're waiting for the review that'll pop up in a day or two, relive the time that was May 1992 over here and here.