Harley Quinn and Power Girl #1 (2015)

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #1 (August, 2015)
"Extrastellar Exxploitations"
Writers - Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray
Artist - Stephane Roux
Colors - Paul Mounts
Letters - John J. Hill
Assistant Editor - Dave Welgosz
Editor - Chris Conroy
Group Editor - Mark Doyle
Cover Price: $3.99

You might be able to tell by the book we're covering today that I was unsuccessful in tracking down those two subsequent issues of Power Girl.  I guess we used up all of our Vartox Week miracles!

I do have a calls into a couple of local comics "warehouses"... and I'm hoping to hear back this weekend.  So, fingers-crossed, we could just be back in the thick of it before long!

For today though, we're jumping through the Flashpoint... through the New-52!... and into that weird and short-lived DCYOU era for our next appearance of Vartox.

For completion's sake though, the main man did make a single panel cameo in Action Comics (vol.2) #15 (2013)... which I'll include here.

From: Action Comics (vol.2) #15 (February, 2013)
Grant Morrison (w) / Brad Walker or Rags Morales (a)

And no, we're also not counting his appearances in those lame-o Channel-52 bits... okay, okay... maybe I'll include a few choice "news reports" down below... I mean, where else are you going to see Vartox in a hot dog costume?  Seriously... 

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We open with Harley and Power Girl being spit out of a portal... which causes Harley to spit out everything she'd eaten the previous day... right on top of a cute little Mister Mind-lookin' critter.  They're in the Sombrero Hat Galaxy, by the way.  They soon run into a creepy little fella who refers to himself Sleezox, the uncrowned and exiled Sexyprince of Valeron.  Oh, it's worth noting, Power Girl is currently an amnesiac... so words like "Valeron" ain't ringing any bells.

After being insulted, Sleezox sics his pet hydra on the ladies... and before long, we go full-blown Bugs Bunny.  Power Girl gets swallowed... Harley hops on one of the heads and pounds on it... Pee Gee bursts out of one of the beast's throats... then, Harley just appears with an arsenal that would make 1991 Cable jealous.  Suddenly I'm feeling really old because... I don't "get" this.  Like, am I supposed to be laughing right now... or just cock my head to the side, smirk, and say "Oh, that Harley...".

After dispatching the dragon, the ladies come across... a giant mustachioed head.  It scans them... and recognizes Power Girl as Kara Zor-L.

I neglected to mention this yesterday, but I'm pretty sure this giant head is a nod to the Zardoz movie.  Take a look:

Here's Sean Connery actually climbing out of the thing.  I mean, it's gotta be a nod, right?  Also... I gotta actually see this movie... I'm guessing I'm missing a lot of references to it.

Anyhoo, the gals climb inside, and it's completely plushed out in 1970's style... as one might expect from Vartox.  Beanbag chairs, lava lamps... we're a disco ball and glowing dance platform away from a swell ol' time.  In fact, the head himself claims it was designed (and scented) based on acquisitions from Vartox's first visit to Earth in 1974.

The giant head then takes Harley and Kara to Vartox... or more accurately toward Vartox.  Ya see, he's currently being held captive by a fella called Oreth Odeox, who wants to rid the galaxy of hedonism.  Vartox promises, however, to get his groove back.

Hey, we already used that line...

Anyhoo... Harley and Pee Gee are shot down while passing the Valeron Moon of... Lustox.  Oh boy.  They run into an acne-addled alien who accuses them of being prostitutes... ya know, outfits that show off their ample curves... and also tight enough to facilitate... um, well, Karflippian toe?  Harley blasts him to cinder.

Which starts a big ol' thing.  They ladies are swarmed by dudes who look like A.I.M. rejects, but Power Girl takes them out with the quickness.  To avoid further scuffles, she then crushes Harley's adorable little death-pistol.

Then... Groovicus Mellow shows up!  Power Girl, being an amnesiac, doesn't remember him.  He recognizes her as the "original" Power Girl... as in, the same one from the pre-Flashpoint DCU... which scratches me where I itch, but... it's a Harley book, who could say how "in continuity" it is.

Then... they are attacked by a space armada.  To be continued... but, not on this blog until I procure the rest of this mini.

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So... Harley Quinn is basically Deadpool now, right?  Ehh, I guess ya go with what works... though, I can't say that I'm a fan.

That's not to say it's bad... just not for me.  Makes me feel positively ancient to be rolling my eyes more than even slightly curling my lip.  The book we discussed yesterday... now that was funny... and I don't just mean "comicbook" funny... actually funny.  Like, caught off guard where I laughed through my nose kinda funny.  This... this was just wacky Deadpool antics.

We don't get a heckuva lot of Vartox here... and it's starting to feel like he's going to be a one-joke pony at this point.  He's just a polyester Pepe Le Pew.  Could work for a one-off, but I'm not sure I want more more of it than that.  Though, maybe (and hopefully) I'll be proven wrong when I procure the rest of this run.

The art here comes from Stephane Roux... who, I'm guessing was trying to evoke a more "cartoony" style to fit this story... but, I gotta say, I had to check the credits twice.  This looks nothing like his spectacularly gorgeous work from the pre-Flashpoint Zatanna series.

Overall, if modern Harley Quinn is your bag, you're probably going to love this.  If it's not... hell, you still might have a good time here.  All I can say is, it's not my thing... and, in my opinion, it's a step backwards from the pre-Flashpoint Power Girl series when it comes to comedy and characterization.

Now, you might think this is the end of Vartox Week... buuuut, it's not.  I've got a "for Vartox completionists only" pick set up for tomorrow... because, I'm sure by now, we'd all refer to ourselves as "Vartox completionists", right?

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Assortment of rather pot-bellied Vartox features in Channel-52!:

... and, of course, Vartox in a hot dog costume!

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Action Comics (vol.2) #38 (2015)

Action Comics (vol.2) #38 (March, 2015)
"Home is Where the Hell Is"
Writer - Greg Pak
Artists - Aaron Kuder & Jae Lee
Partial Inks - June Chung
Colorist - Wil Quintana
Letterer - Dezi Sienty
Assistant Editor - Jeremy Bent
Group Editor - Eddie Berganza
Cover Price: $3.99

S'funny, well... maybe not "ha-ha" funny (or even "interesting" funny), but before we discussed Action Comics (vol.2) #36 a couple weeks back, I had originally grabbed this one from the longbox.  This is always the cover image I associate with this story arc... and I guess I imagined that it was what kicked it off!  Even set up the very post you are reading now!

I mean, what a cover it is, right?  A wonderfully striking image... even if I wasn't reading Action Comics, this cover would entice me to give it a shot!

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We open with a flashback of Lana Lang as a young girl facing off against a stringy-looking Lovecraftian horror bathed in flame.  Worth mentioning that the flashbacks are being drawn by Jae Lee... who Pak had worked with on the first arc of Batman/Superman.  It is vastly different from Kuder's "present day" bits, but not as jarring a transition as you might think.  Speaking of the present, our bearded Clark Kent wakes up to find his childhood home burning... with Lana inside it!

In a really well-done few pages, we see Clark attempt to save Lana... running down a hallway that continues to stretch... it's like something from a dream, and again, really well-done!  She is engulfed in the inferno before he can reach her... and he lets out an amazing bellow!  Another great use of the comics "language" to express urgency!

Suddenly, the fire is out... and Clark is left standing alone at his folks' house.  He is summoned to the kitchen by a pair of familiar voices... why it's Eben and Sar... er, Ma and Pa Kent!  They're back... in zombified form!

They have a pretty uncomfortable chat... as you might imagine.  The folks say plenty of hurtful things about their son... including that they'd always feared him.  Upon getting a closer look, it's clear that the Horrors are behind this.  Lana has been taken over by one... but is still "her" enough to apologize to Clark.

Clark responds by eye-beaming the baddie.  This doesn't appear to hurt the beast... but, amuses it in a way.  It releases its hold over the Kent-elders, and Clark gets to watch them thud to the ground.  He, Clark that is, lets out another shout before carrying the bodies of his adoptive-parents out of the now-really-burning house.

Outside, Steel and Amadeus... er, Hiro are doing some small-town crowd control... which is to say, they're watching over some kids.  They ask where Lana is... and after Superman fills them in, they get to planning.  Unfortunately, this is cut short by the discovery of disgusting parasitic horrors attaching themselves to the upper-back of everybody remaining (this is a sentence I typed out like a dozen times, and still don't like how it reads!).  Steel yanks his off... and squishes it... which causes him great pain.

The townies approach and give Superman the quick and dirty on their newfound "abilities".  Ya see, during the "Doomed" storyline, Brainiac placed the entire town in a coma.  When they "came to", they had powers.  They reveal that they're not responsible for the horrors... instead, they were responsible for containing them!  Further, they do cop to being responsible for the mist... because that will keep the horror quarantined to Smallville, at least for now.

One of the townies suggests Superman figure something out quick... because once the little attached critters bring their host-bodies into the "second stage" of their horror-morphosis, they start liking the feeling of fear.  Wouldn'tcha know it, no sooner do we learn this, than folks start really diggin' the feel of fear!

We close out... nearby, where Lana has almost been completely incorporated into a horror... to the point where it almost looks as though she's the parasite of a much larger host body!

--

A(nother) surprisingly good issue of New-52! era Superman and that ain't a compliment I go doling out all that often...

Horror elements-notwithstanding, this issue made me a bit squirmy.  The idea of parasites is one that... I dunno, really skeeves me out.  I doubt that's a particularly unique viewpoint or anything... but... how do I put this?

You ever see a picture of something that particularly grossed you out or scared you?  Perhaps it's a giant hairy spider... or maybe a snake or something?  Like you're looking at it in a book... and it bugs you so much that you don't even want to touch the picture of it?  Like, you wanna ask someone else to turn the page for you because the thought of touching... just the picture of the thing... makes your skin crawl?  That's kinda how I felt here with the squishy-back-horrors.  So gross.

I think that's a pretty good sign that your horror story is effective.  I actually didn't want to go through this a second time to synopsize it because it skeeved me out so!  That's certainly a testament to Aaron Kuder's art... where he can craft something that can skeeve me out, especially when that was (I believe) the intent!

The story... while good, relied on some pretty predictable pathos.  I mean, it didn't take a rocket-surgeon to figure out that we were eventually going to see the Kent corpses.

Where the story shined though, was in the twist.  We were led to believe that the townies were responsible for the horrors... when in fact, they were the only things effectively holding them back!  That was unexpected, and I thought it was really cool!  Great use of past storylines too... which is something I'd all but given up hope on ever happening again post the September, 2011.

Overall... I'd say this arc is definitely worth checking out.

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Channel-52!

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Action Comics (vol.2) #36 (2015)

Action Comics (vol.2) #36 (January, 2015)
"Horrorville"
Writer - Greg Pak
Artist - Aaron Kuder
Colorist - Wil Quintana
Letterer - Carlos M. Mangual
Assistant Editor - Jeremy Bent
Group Editor - Eddie Berganza
Cover Price: $3.99

Well, the Bloggiversary is over... and what a day it was.  I was overwhelmed by the kind words from my friends and our little community.  I can't even begin to thank you all for making me feel like this silly little blog, in some small way, matters.

That was yesterday, and as they say... no rest for the ridiculous.  I can't promise we'll have a three years of daily posts celebration next year (I'd say it's unlikely... but I've been saying that all along), so well just do the best we can.  Today begins:

And, how are we gonna start it?  Well, it's business as usual!  We're diving right back into our #Action100 Project... and we're going to discuss a book from pretty late in The New-52! run.  It's actually the last story arc under that branding!

This was one of the first storylines I was "back" for... this was during the time where Futures End was a "thing", and I was pretty psyched by the possibilities... and rumors that everything was about to go back to how I remembered (and wanted).  Also remember, the Doomed storyline that just wrapped up showed us some verrrrrry familiar things.

Let's see how it reads with all we know now.  This issue, by the way, would have been Action Comics #940 had they kept the original numbering.

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We open in the wake of Superman: Doomed (well, two months hence)... where Brainiac did some stuff.  A bearded Clark Kent looks on while Metropolis rebuilds.  We suddenly shift scenes to Smallville, where Lana Lang is awoken from a nightmare in which her (recently departed) parents ask her "Whyyyyy?"

She springs awake, which also wakes her boyfriend... John Henry Irons.  I never glommed onto Steel being a younger guy.  I always appreciated that he was an older, more established dude.  Just makes more sense to me that way.  Anyhoo, we learn that these nightmares have been haunting her for a month now, and John gets up to fix her breakfast.

We jump ahead a bit... to Lana and John arriving in town to test the townsfolk for residual Brainiac-related maladies.  Here we meet a trio of older fellas... who bring with them some down home sass.

Lana notices that a fog has rolled over the town, and is surprised at the sight of a hearse riding down the street.  I guess having just lost her parents, things like that sorta stand out to her.  For some reason, she insists that she and John follow it... and it leads them to the graveyard, where we see that the Langs are no longer in the ground.

We check back in with Superman, who has also noticed the odd fog surrounding his hometown, and decides to call in his friend Amadeus Cho... er, waitasec... ahem, I mean Hiro, the Toymaster.  This dude is... annoying.  Anyhoo, he taps into his satellites (did you know he has satellites?) to peek in on Smallville... and finds that there's nothing there!

Speaking of "there", back in Smallville Lana's zombified parents approach!

Also, a local Sheriff... who looks to have been taken over by some sort of Lovecraftian horror!

Back to Superman... he makes his approach toward Smallville.  Let's look at this "logically".  Superman can travel around the world in the blink of an eye... but still called freaking Amadeus Hiro to use his satellites instead?  Seems our writer really wants to include this kid.  Anyhoo, Superman is making his approach, while Hiro "beat-boxes".  I've mentioned that he's annoying, right?

Superman arrives in Smallville, just in time to beat the glorp out of the horror.  The beastie bugs out at the last second, leaving the now-dead Sheriff in its wake.  Superman checks in on Lana... who really ain't in the mood for a chat.

In a neat bit, Superman attempts to get a hold of the Justice League... only to learn that there's no escape from Smallville!  Also worth noting, phones no longer work.

We wrap up back in front of the Barber Shop where our three sassy elders are loitering... they wonder aloud how Superman's going to react when he learns just what's going on.  The camera pans back to reveal the townsfolk... well, they be weird.

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All in all, a pretty great issue here!

This definitely takes Superman out of his element... I'm not used to seeing him take on actual "horror".  I mean, we've seen him face vampires... and magically-powered baddies, but this feels like new territory for the Man of Steel.

This is a very atmospheric tale... Smallville, even on it's best day... feels a little, I dunno, too idyllic?  Ya know, the kinda "perfect" where you can sense a sort of evil lurking just under the surface.  Feeling as though there's something sinister behind every smile and neighborly wave.

Here... things are a bit more obvious... and ominous.  Was never really keen on zombies, always felt like they were one of the lazier "scares", but under the circumstances... this was handled quite well.  Also, the idea that nobody can escape Smallville lends a claustrophobic element to an already tense situation.  This was really quite well done.

And then there's Aaron Kuder.  Holy cow, this dude is great!  From the Lovecraftian horror... to the dead-eyed Smallvillians... to a bearded Superman, everything looks phenomenal!  Truly a gorgeous book to behold.  Such a great creative team here.

My only complaint... and it should be obvious if you read the synopsis... but, what's up with Hiro?  This kid... this kid is so annoying, and his inclusion feels so forced.  I was only half-joking when I referred to him as Amadeus Cho, because I felt very much the same way when that character was crammed into Hulk and Herc stories a decade ago at Marvel.  I wouldn't mind as much if we weren't going to such lengths to illustrate how "quirky" he is.  He's just... annoying.  Not a character I care to follow.

Overall though... it's a relatively rare thing where I read a book from The New-52! and wholeheartedly recommend it!  It's decompressed as Hell, but that's just the day we're living in... that said, it's still a rather satisfying read.  We wrap up with a strange and unsettling cliffhanger, which only makes me want more.

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