Friday the 13th lasts two days.

In more news on how Marvel are price-gouging assholes with regards to their Civil War trade, I was out at a bookstore today and they happened to have a copy of DC’s Infinite Crisis hardcover that cost . . . $24.99 US, which, if you’ll remember from yesterday is the exact same price of the Civil War softcover. And, if you’ll remember, both series were seven issues, so the page count should be pretty similar. Of more interest to me was the fact that the Canadian price for the Infinite Crisis hardcover was, oh, $33.50, not $40 like Civil War. Wow. Price-gouging at its finest, eh?

On with the reviews . . .

Batman #664

Am I the only one who read this issue and thought “Okay, so where’s the other half of the story?” The first bit with Bruce is useless and the second half with Batman versus Bat-Bane is much too short. I did like the idea of Bat-Bane, though.

All-Star Superman #7

Shouldn’t this issue have come out around Halloween? It could have been called “Superman V. Zombies” since that’s what it is. Bizarro zombies. My main problem with the series, that it skims along the surface and doesn’t actually give me anything remains.

Jog suggests that the series is all about Superman encountering versions of himself, which it very well be, but . . . so what? What do these versions of Superman actually say about him? Because I’m drawing a blank.

Too pseudo-smart to be very entertaining, too vapid and superficial to be enlightening.

Army@Love #1

I was looking forward to this series ever since it was announced and this is it? It’s a one-note joke! Yeah, the army recruits the war as a video game with orgies . . . and? I can’t even say it’s that entertaining. It reads like the sort of satire I would have wrote in high school. If you want something intelligent on current US politics, there’s DMZ. I’ll give this a few issues to see if it goes anywhere, but, really, I’m quite disappointed.

Deathblow #4

Holy crap, Brian Azzarello wrote in a cyborg dinosaur that tries to kill Cray. I did not see that coming. It also looks like next issue will involve Cray in a gun fight against his kids. This series is a lot more fun than I expected.

Midnighter #5-6

First up, issue five concludes the first storyarc where Midnighter was kidnapped, implanted with a bomb and told to kill Hitler. So, Midnighter returns to the present and takes revenge in typical Ennis fashion.

Then, issue six is a story involving a Japanese samurai very similar to our hero who fell in love with another swordsman who “looked like the sun.” It’s entertaining in its way.

Both stories attempt to make the same point about Midnighter, which is that he’s a killing machine and that’s all. You can’t give him a conscience about it, or make him into a pseudo-good guy or anything. He kills people, that’s all.

Isn’t Ennis off the book now? Hmm, I’ll probably pick up the next issue anyway, see what’s what.

Gødland #17

Now, there’s an issue! For the past while, I’ve felt this series hasn’t been firing on all cylinders, but something about this issue worked quite well. The US government makes its move against the Archer family, invoking the Infinity Protocols, which means sealing up the Infinity Tower where our hero Adam Archer lives. The Tormentor is back in business. The Triad is building some major cosmic machine that’s probably going to kill us all. And next issue: Crashman versus Adam Archer. Hell yes.

Now, I’ve got Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland sitting there along with a couple of books I bought today, so much reading to do.