The Weekly Comics Wrap-up: Jan. 17, 2008
Written by: Ron Bricker
The world of comics is complicated, with multiple companies (and universes) to keep track of. Luckily, CC2K has Joey Esposito, our resident expert on all things pulpy and good. Each week, Joey will break down what's happening in the world of comics, so you can pick up right where he left off. Today, he praises the best of a lackluster week, with particular focus on the reinvigorated Booster Gold.
This week in comics has proved to be another light week, albeit not as impressive. The past few weeks have shown great ingenuity, with a small amount of books on my pull list. This week differs however, even though two of my favorite books came out, there seems to be something amiss.
Booster Gold #6, written by Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz continues its impressive streak of the reinvigorated title character. Booster, for a long time, had been a joke in the comics world. D-List and a sell out, Michael Carter was egocentric and always on the lookout for his next product endorsement. What makes this book so special, just as 52 did before it, is rebuild the character's respect for himself and his mission in life. Johns has created plenty of clay to mold when he came up with the pairing of Booster and Rip Hunter adventuring throughout the multiversal time stream to fix things up, all the while necessitating Booster to keep up his egoist public image.
The first arc of the series, "52 Pickup" concludes with this issue and succeeds. My only worry is that what I expected to be one of the overall arching dramatic leads to this series has already been cleared up by issue's end. However, if I had to put faith into any single comic book scribe working today, it would be Geoff Johns. This book has great potential to be a classic series as it provides not only amusing insights to classic eras of the DCU via the characters' time traveling, but also different character dynamics not really seen in other superhero books.
The other book I mentioned previously as being one of my favorites, is Catwoman. This week sees the release of issue #75. I'm sorry to say that this is the first issue in at LEAST 35 issues that I haven't enjoyed to the fullest. I guess that's not a bad track record, but still disappointing nonetheless when your favorite book doesn't deliver.
Catwoman was the only book that truly benefited from the "One Year Later" event, in that it gave Selina Kyle and writer Will Pfeifer a host of new, and different, stories to tell. The problem with this issue is mainly that it has become a Countdown tie in. The new arc entitled "Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Universe" sees Selina arrive on the Hell Planet prison that the Suicide Squad/the government have been shipping super villains off to in recent weeks. In the first two pages we get two editorial notes: "See Salvation Run #2!" Why? Granted, the cliffhanger to this issue suggests that this story may have more in store for us than a simple tie in, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. Spending an entire issue doing essentially nothing but having witty banter between villains may seem amusing to some, but in a book like Catwoman it lacks the creative drive that readers have come to expect. Again, as in Booster Gold, Pfeifer has my faith that he is leading us someplace exciting, even if the setup was a bit stale.
All in all, I'm sorry to say that there isn't much else worth mentioning. Countdown had no pizazz this week, aside from an interesting scene between Earth-51 Batman and the real Jason Todd. Unfortunately, this scene, as many things in this series, led to a lackluster climax of the scene with nowhere to go. It almost seems that with many of these books the writers are almost writing themselves into corners. I suppose, the only way around this is to write yourself out. We'll see what future weeks deliver.