Lower Decks

I had a most curious awakening recently. I know how common it is to stick with pretty rigid opinions in the sci-fi/fantasy community (the “genre” of both Lower Decks’ and HYGOTS’ focus), but I also know that in my own life, I seem capable of pretty radically changing my own, sometimes at the drop of a dime. When their album ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ was released a decade ago, my only opinion of the video for “Beautiful Day” was how thoroughly preening and irritating U2 lead singer Bono was, just in his dancing. I couldn’t stand the band, even though I’d flirted with being a fan five years earlier when, of all things, they’d done a song for the ‘Batman Forever’ soundtrack (“How Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me”). I was twenty years old, U2 was twenty, and beyond Batman, my closest connection was “Staring at the Sun,” another song I liked, but at the very peak of general discontent for what they’d become, synthesized, forgettable pop. Anyway, not so long after writing U2 off forever, I suddenly became one of their biggest fans, and for the last decade, I’ve remained in their camp. How is any of this relevant? Have you heard of a show called ‘Babylon 5’? Yeah, well, for me, today ‘B5’ is a little like U2.

For you modern fans out there, ‘Babylon 5’ was the precursor to ‘Stargate SG1,’ ‘Farscape,’ and most importantly, ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ Premiering at the height of Star Trek’s dominance of filmed genre material (though already with shows like ‘The X-Files’ and ‘Xena’ ready to beat down the doors and redefine everything, set up ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ and eventually ‘Lost,’ which for me was the true culmination of this trend, the next evolution), ‘B5’ was the first real effort since the original ‘BSG’ (itself inspired moreso by Star Wars) to challenge the dominance of Star Trek in the space opera arena. Once the eerily similar ‘Deep Space Nine’ premiered, comparisons, quagmires, and battle lines were drawn that would never truly fade. I was one of the fans who quickly threw their allegiance behind one rather than the other (or both), ‘DS9,’ and never truly looked back.

During the golden age of the Observation Lounge (our message board community that still acts as the heart of the Lower Decks experience, even though activity has slowed recently to a meandering crawl), I became most familiar with how the genre crowd saw this experience of the 1990s as it discussed ‘B5’ so passionately as one of the best stories ever told on television. The OL was one of the places that spoke in the same hallowed tones about ‘DS9,’ so it wasn’t as if my early impressions in that regard would have necessitated my choosing one over the other, but I had my own hang-ups, which I’ll get into soon enough. The truth was, every time I heard how great ‘B5’ was, I couldn’t help but shake my head. That was the very opposite of my opinion in those days. Sure, I could appreciate how intricate the storytelling apparently was, but I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy any of it. All I saw was something that was a pale imitation of even the shows (‘Voyager’) that the same community almost universally despised.

As the years progressed, I would immerse myself in more TV shows (‘Earth: Final Conflict,’ ‘Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda,’ ‘Enterprise,’ all material I’ve covered in previously HYGOTS columns, #17, 27, and 37 respectively) that featured what I had understood to be at the heart of the appeal of ‘B5,’ intricate, long-term arcs, which would be continuously ridiculed and dismissed by that community. The big difference, of course, was the presence, or lack thereof, of a central creative figure on any of these shows. When Robert Hewitt Wolfe famously left ‘Andromeda’ during its second season, it was the deathnell of any continued interest for many of its fans, for instance, comparable if fellow ‘DS9’ alum Ron Moore had left ‘BSG’ at some point before its conclusion.

‘Babylon 5’ had, of course, J. Michael Straczynski. ‘B5’ was thoroughly dominated, in fact, by Straczynski, who wrote every one of its scripts, a completely unheard kind of dedication in television. But that show was his baby, which he struggled for years to bring into existence. At this point, I might stress how difficult it really is to bring a science fiction show to life on television. Even today, with SyFy having a ‘Stargate’ on every season (like Paramount had a Star Trek on for nearly twenty years), a space opera isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as a crime drama. It’s too expensive, and the rewards are far more difficult to support, especially with most fans unwilling to support more than one of them at a time in any truly significant numbers. When Straczynski was finally able to bring ‘B5’ to life, he and his audience had the misfortune to come about at the very same time as ‘DS9,’ a show set at a space station that would go on to feature an increasingly complex series arc. Since Star Trek was far better known, it got more attention and better ratings, but genre fans being as they are, they threw most of their strongest support behind ‘B5,’ which for the fact of its very existence and the vision of its creator, was primed to be one of their favorites for years.

That’s how it always happens, how the Star Trek empire was crumbled, the slow chipping-away of its fan base by an ever-increasing onslaught of competition, and with ‘B5’ so convincingly demonstrating an alternative so early, it was a foregone conclusion that eventually, the Star Trek fans would eventually dwindle enough so they could no longer sustain their franchise.

What Straczynski and ‘B5’ did was prove the old formula (mission-of-the-week) established thirty years earlier by the original Star Trek was no longer good enough for modern, sophisticated audiences, many of whom were as much abandoning filmed Star Trek for competitors as for the expanding Pocket Books line of original Star Trek fiction that more closely mirrored their experiences with other sci-fi novels they might have been reading. What ‘B5’ really represented was a television version of that experience, one creator willing to devote himself entirely to a continuing story, which Star Trek never entirely pulled off (last summer I did a series of specials dedicated to the team of writers who made ‘DS9’ work for seven seasons, two more than ‘B5’ got in syndication and TNT airings).

But as I said, I wasn’t onboard the ‘Babylon Five’ wagon. Now, by necessity, for the reasons of ill-support that defied the fact that Straczynski was able to do ‘B5’ at all, the show never had the same kind of budget contemporary Star Trek productions regularly enjoyed. Almost by necessity, ‘B5’ embraced a total CGI immersion long before Star Trek did, but the resulting graphics never did quite manage to totally convince the viewer in any realistic sense. At the same time, the acting, with a few notable exceptions, wasn’t always to par with what you’d find on a Star Trek. (To take nothing away from genre acting in general, I’ll note that even in 2003, Edward James Olmos was reluctant to do ‘Battlestar Galactica’ because of the continuing stigma against the material that exists in the public.) The writing itself was another problem for me. Simply put, I didn’t think Straczynski was up to the rigorous schedule he’d made for himself. The combination of the effects, acting, and writing made for a series, regardless of the hype, I was unwilling to watch with any real level of commitment. For me, ‘B5’ really was just an excuse for people to quit what they considered the Star Trek habit. I didn’t think ‘B5’ was good enough to compare, much less compete, with Star Trek, and that was very much the kind of opinion that led to my persecution complex (funny, isn’t it?).

So for years I dismissed ‘Babylon 5’ the same way others rejected ‘Andromeda’ or ‘Enterprise,’ never bothering to truly take a second look. I laughed at the continuing devotion to Straczynski, how it failed to support the ‘B5’ spin-off ‘Crusade’ (which he didn’t write, during its one and only season, entirely by himself) or any of the other efforts to continue the franchise (from ‘Legend of the Rangers’ to ‘The Lost Tales’). When he started writing comics, from ‘Rising Stars’ to ‘Amazing Spider-Man,’ I saw no reason to take them seriously.

When the same kind of support that had created the ‘B5’ phenomenon fell behind Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ films (albeit amplified about a thousand times), I wasn’t all that surprised to find my reaction to be pretty similar. The more fans cheered, the more cynically I took in the reaction. I saw in both efforts a creative force that didn’t sustain the support, decisions made that constantly crippled the results. Where ‘B5’ failed in the execution, Jackson failed in the reverse, a wildly successful visual experience that couldn’t support what was in essence a story that was sabotaged with increasing earnestness with each film. But it was the shock of the new with both of them that built their audiences, the sheer fact that neither could have been anticipated. Before ‘Babylon 5’ no other TV show had truly rivaled the Star Trek empire. Before ‘Lord of the Rings,’ no film had managed to represent fantasy so convincingly.

But as I said, I couldn’t support either one, not like others were around me. For years, I brooded on the remarkable success Jackson enjoyed, at the expense of the new Star Wars trilogy, or the Matrix films. Like ‘B5’ and Star Trek, film fans couldn’t support both ‘LotR’ and Star Wars, much less the increasingly intricate Matrix saga. I understand that there are certain personal tastes that need to be accounted for, how ‘The Phantom Menace’ had already begun alienating existing Star Wars fans, how ‘The Matrix’ had started that trilogy to so much unexpected popular appeal, and that to an extent, the fate of those trilogies rested on their own fortunes, just as many would argue that diminishing creative returns was what cooled off the Star Trek franchise. But without ‘Lord of the Rings,’ would eager genre fans really have found it so easy to turn their noses as the competition?

I kept giving Jackson’s films new chances. I’d always loved ‘Fellowship of the Ring,’ but ‘The Two Towers’ and ‘Return of the King’ always left me cold, so each time I watched them again, I tried to see what I might be missing, but always circled back to the same thoughts that I’d originally had, that the films made decisions that couldn’t support them, or compare favorably to what had been done in the first one. I would never deny that the trilogy was itself an achievement I was proud to represent in my collection, but I found that I couldn’t change my opinion about the overall effort.

Meanwhile, Straczynski began writing ‘The Twelve’ for Marvel Comics. Without getting too much into another recurring subject in HYGOTS, ‘Watchmen,’ I’ll simply note that ‘The Twelve’ is another modern attempt to replicate the ‘Watchmen’ experience, telling an epic, self-contained story about a group of superheroes, in this case a group of forgotten Golden Age characters. Now, unfortunately, Straczynski stopped producing new issues of the series right around the time he started writing for DC (about four issues before it would have been completed), but suffice it to say, ‘The Twelve’ quickly became one of my favorite comics, and it became the gateway I’d long needed into the creative mind of J. Michael Straczynski.

I’d never entirely shaken my interest in ‘Babylon 5.’ As I’ve said, filmed sci-fi is still rare, and I’ve always got an appetite for it. Since Star Trek went off the air and most of recent productions sticking to cable (which I’ve only intermittently had access to over the years), I’ve had to scrounge for doses, and while I’m still selective about it (the old curse!), it made me want to revisit ‘B5.’ Recently, to get that sampling, I purchased the movie collection box set. It was through that purchase, plus the good will ‘The Twelve’ had engendered, that I finally had my breakthrough, in the film called ‘In the Beginning.’

When TNT agreed to air the final season of ‘B5,’ part of the agreement was that Straczynski would produce a series of standalone feature-length episodes that might serve as starting points for new viewers. ‘In the Beginning’ was, appropriately, the first of them, and it told the origin story of the whole series. Simply put, if Straczynski had always managed to produce the kind of visionary storytelling evident in that film, I probably would have long been a fan of the series. Deeply embroiled in all the petty excuses as to why I shouldn’t care, I think I might have missed out on the experience I’d long been told about, which had always been there, a deeply intricate saga, a singular television event and moment.

This is not the part where I confess I suddenly devoured the rest of the ‘Babylon 5’ experience. That is still a matter of time and economics, and the old fears that I will still have problems with certain acting and the day-to-day writing (after all, a conviction that Straczynski in the end could have used to accept a little more support doesn’t just go away). This is where I admit that I can appreciate the work that was put into the show, the vision of Straczynski, which is still mostly unparalleled in TV shows without “Star Trek” in the title (though I’d argue that ‘Futurama,’ which I covered in HYGOTS #46, trumped it fairly handily), unless you count ‘Lost,’ which at this point has become the new touchstone in genre television, a belief that the column is going to start thoroughly examining starting with HYGOTS #85 at the end of May.

So, here’s to you, ‘Babylon 5’ and J. Michael Straczynski. I did you wrong for years, but am now ready to admit my mistakes.

***

The Twenty-Five Best Comics from February 2010, no particular order but alphabetical:

1. Adventure Comics #7 (DC)
After the introductory issues of the relaunch featuring Geoff Johns reintroducing Superboy to comics fans, this is the ‘Blackest Night’ tie-in that features Black Lantern Superboy (long story short, the returning Superboy is the result of a long-term resurrection project that actually saw him return to the present after his revival in the Legion of Super-Heroes future so technically at this point in the lore, he’s dead). Another standout Blackest Night tae.

2. Air #18 (Vertigo)
It’s my belief that if you’re not interested in superheroes, then you’ll find no better comic book than ‘Air,’ a true successor to the Vertigo tradition of finding the best and most innovative storytelling talent and letting them run wild. G. Willow Wilson is that kind of talent (following the likes of Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Brian K. Vaughn), and her tale of flight attendant Blythe as she learns the complex saga of the next evolution in technology only gets better. This issue, she learns she’s only now ready to take her pilot’s test as a hyperpract, a tradition that she carries on from Amelia Earhart, and this issues suggests the next historical figure to be woven into the tapestry will be none other than Jules Verne. Remember that guy?

3. Atomic Robo: Revenge of the Vampire Dimension #1 (Red 5)
By now, there’s no point in denying it: Atomic Robo is my Hellboy. I’ve never read a Hellboy comic, though I have seen both movies. I’ve never developed an interest in delving further into Mike Mignola’s creation, but it seemed like kismet the first time I saw an Atomic Robo comic, back in 2008. At the time, it had just launched, was in demand because it’d been nominated for the Eisner Awards (the comic book version of the Oscars), so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. It was a robot comic! But the real interest for me was that no matter how facile it might have seemed, it name-checked Tesla, an obscure but important scientist from an century ago, Edison’s chief rival, and a name I kept bumping into in my youth. Two years later, I’m a fan, the comics have only gotten better, and the latest one launched in February.

4. Azrael #5 (DC)
I became a fan of Fabian Nicieza not during his Marvel run a decade ago but far more recently, while he was working on ‘Robin,’ which I considered to be the best Boy Wonder comics since Chuck Dixon launched Tim Drake’s first series in 1993. Azrael was a character first introduced around the same time, who played an integral part of the last time Bruce Wayne wasn’t Batman, but eventually became lost in the shuffle. This is a new incarnation of the character, quickly and brilliantly introduced in the first issue of this new series, though subsequent issues haven’t been so inspired. Still, one of my favorite obscure characters, Ragman (last seen regularly in the pages of ‘Shadowpact’), makes an appearance this issue, which by way of Palestinian-Israeli metaphor, tries to make the case of how complicated the world really is. It’s good Nicieza, Azrael, and Ragman all rolled into one!

5. Batman #696 (DC)
Since making his name as artist during some of the later Grant Morrison issues on this title, Tony Daniel has become a major figure in the current lore of the Dark Knight. He wrote and illustrated ‘Battle for the Cowl,’ the mini-series that introduced Dick Grayson as the new Batman, and subsequently inherited the main title. Intriguingly, he’s been spending most of his run in effect creating a sequel to the iconic work done by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale in the pages of ‘The Long Halloween’ and ‘Dark Victory,’ but this would have to be his best issue to date, which might be the best way to sample how he’s become in a very unorthodox way one of the best creators to hit Batman in years.

6. Batman and Robin #s 8-9 (DC)
This would be the series Grant Morrison launched to continue his own Bat-adventures with Dick under the cowl and Bruce Wayne’s son Damian as the new Robin, and #8 would be the best Batman comic Grant’s done since concluding “Batman R.I.P.” last year. It features vintage, kinetic (some might say “frenetic”) Grant storytelling, which spills into #9, where the reader learns definitely that the Batman whose corpse Superman famously clutched in the pages of ‘Final Crisis’ belonged to one of the Darkseid-created clones that were supposed to introduce an army of Batmen into the world (seriously, you must read this stuff, which will be all the easier when the ‘Batman R.I.P.’ TPB collection is finally released, really soon). Plus, you know that Grant’s had the return of Bruce plotted in his mind since the beginning, a comic that will begin releasing in May, so now would be an excellent time to begin reading anyway, if you haven’t been reading from the start (the ‘Batman & Son’ trade, featuring Damian’s debut).

7. Blackest Night #7 (DC)
Geoff Johns has been revolutionizing Green Lantern lore since ‘Rebirth’ (for slightly more information on that, you can reread last week’s HYGOTS), and this is the issue of ‘Blackest Night’ where he takes all that work to the next level, creating the very first White Lantern (horribly appropriately Sinestro). With the event concluding this month, you’ve got to read this one first!

8. Black Lantern Green Arrow #30 (DC)
Playing off the old ‘Green Lantern/Green Arrow’ comics, this is the ‘Blackest Night’ tie-in issue that’s more or less the Oliver Queen version of the Superboy story referenced earlier in ‘Adventure Comics #7.’ More importantly, it’s written by J.T. Krul, the dude who seems poised to be the next Geoff Johns at DC, who’ll be handling a very important year for GA, perhaps the first time he’s a must-read since the Kevin Smith relaunch.

9. Booster Gold #29 (DC)
Again, not to slight Booster and Dan Jurgens at all, but the Blue Beetle second feature is the reason this one’s a must-read from February, since it’s the final one, concluding the Reach arc that began back in Jaime Reyes’ late ongoing series. I was a huge fan of that book, and Matt Sturges did it pretty proud here.

10. The Flash: Rebirth #6 (DC)
The long-delayed final issue of Barry Allen’s return to comics doesn’t provide a lot of surprises, only the defeat of the Reverse Flash and the opportunity to give fans another, definitive relaunch of ‘The Flash’ ongoing series, which Barry’s grandson Bart attempted to carry in recent years, before Mark Waid returned for an abbreviated effort of his own. It’s funny, because before ‘Rebirth,’ Geoff Johns wasn’t doing Flash like Waid did, but rather as a more traditional approach that embraced more the Rogues tradition than the mythology that had exploded in the ’90s under Waid. With ‘Rebirth,’ however, Johns finally started approaching The Flash as he has Green Lantern, making this book probably the start of what everyone’s going to be buzzing about five years from now…

11. G.I. Joe: Cobra #2 (IDW)
With the release of the first ‘G.I. Joe: Cobra’ trade, fans can catch up on the best of IDW’s efforts with this franchise, how it took also-ran (if anything) Chuckles and transformed him into the most interesting character in the whole collection. Mike Costa and Christos Gage continue here the story of his infiltration into the mysterious Cobra organization, in the days before much was known about them, much less half the battle even begun. This issue is a terrible sort of reunion between Chuckles and Jinx, who was actually killed in the original mini-series, but here is actually new Joe recruit Chameleon, whose help Chuckles doesn’t actually need to free himself from his current predicament. An absolute must-read series, whether you’re a G.I. Joe fan or not.

12. The Great Ten #4 (DC)
Tony Bedard and Scott McDaniel continue the series that explores a different member of the Great Ten, the Chinese superhero team first introduced in ‘52,’ every issue, all the while telling a single story. This would be a great book for fans of either ‘Watchmen’ or ‘The Twelve,’ actually, consistently engaging character studies every time, with this issue spotlighting Immortal Man in Darkness, which reads like a nightmare version of the kind of game Dick Grayson is currently playing as the new Batman.

13. The Incredible Hercules #141 (Marvel)
On the recap page Marvel has been including in all its books for the past few years now, this issue cleverly recaps every cover and comic since Hercules inherited the numbering from ‘Incredible Hulk’ in January of 2008. Which means this is probably a pretty important book, and of course it is. Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente conclude what has been apparently Amadeus Cho’s ascension to the role of Prince of Power, replacing Herc as Athena’s champion on Earth in the epic conclusion to “Assault on New Olympus,” killing off really important characters (including Herc) and leading to bold new stories for fans of this title in the months to come. Part of me was wondering if this was always going to be only a temporary thing, but I had so much fun reading it, naturally I never wanted it to end. How often to I get into monthly Marvel storytelling? Not very often (it seems the cancelled ‘Captain Britain and MI13’ might be continuing in some fashion as well, with Paul Cornell likely integrating the Black Knight into future Avengers comics in the coming months).

14. Justice Society of America #36 (DC)
I’ve never gotten into ‘Fables,’ one of Vertigo’s most prominent current offerings and the original home of writers Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges, who have been attempting to find permanent homes at the DC side of the stables for years now. Their best effort, ‘Shadowpact,’ disintegrated and never had fan support, but nurtured my soft spot for both of them. Sturges writes ‘JSA All-Stars,’ among other projects, these days, while Willingham has this one, and my tenuous relationship has continued for both writers. But this issue might have changed that. This is a bold one indeed. Willingham envisions a possible future (which has to be assumed at this point) where the Fourth Reich band of modern Nazi villains defeated the Justice Society, and on the eve of Mr. Terrific’s execution, he’s forced to relive the entire story. This is the first issue in this arc, the first must-read in the title since Geoff Johns departed early last year.

15. Magog #6 (DC)
One of the most interesting things Johns did with his last run on the Society was finally introduce Mark Waid’s ‘Kingdom Come’ antihero Magog into regular continuity. The fact that he now has his own series is a fairly momentous development, and may signal any number of things, but finding the right tone has been something of a problem for Keith Giffen (aided by Howard Porter on art), until now, that is. Weaving through a number of recent JSA titles was Magog’s expulsion from the group, which was something that should always have been inevitable, and can help free him to do more of the stuff that sets him apart from other DC heroes. This book only gets better the more Giffen explores that territory, which means now’s a great time to jump onboard.

16. The Marvelous Land of Oz #4 (Marvel)
I cannot speak highly enough about this book and/or the collaboration of Eric Shanower and Skottie Young, which is helping to demonstrate how alive and vital the work of L. Frank Baum really does continue to be. Long neglected in the face of the famous Judy Garland film (now some seventy years in the past), maybe you just need to meet H.M. Woggle-Bug T.E. to discover the considerable charms for yourself.

17. Resurrection #8 (Oni)
Marc Guggenheim’s increasingly intricate concept of what might happen ten years after an alien invasion and occupation that devastated mankind continues to unfold, with unsettling new questions raised about the events surrounding the return of Bill Clinton. Hey, any comic, and regardless of what you think about him, that features such a touchstone to our own history, ought to be recognized for that level of boldness alone.

18. Scalped #s 34-35 (Vertigo)
People have their opinions about the Vertigo books worth following, but for my money, it doesn’t get any better than ‘Air’ and ‘Scalped,’ which had a double-serving in February, concluding the wrenching and suspenseful “The Gnawing” arc and followed that with a standalone issue featuring another way to look at the plight of the Native American in today’s world. Jason Aaron gets more attention for his Marvel work, but it doesn’t get any better than ‘Scalped.’

19. Spider-Man: Clone Saga #6 (Marvel)
The re-envisioning of the infamous ’90s arc that wouldn’t end comes to its own conclusion with this issue, a real pickle for fans of current continuity, where if you tried to reconcile the current situations of Norman and Harry Osborn to what they were at the time of this story, you’d be more confused than the fans still trying to wrap their heads around “One More Day.”

20. The Stand: Soul Survivors #4 (Marvel)
With the Dark Tower and upcoming ‘N’ comics at Marvel and ‘Talisman’ over at Del Rey, you might suddenly find it difficult these days to choose which Stephen King comic to read, and that’s before even considering that King himself will be writing the upcoming ‘American Vampire’ at Vertigo. But I doubt anything truly compares to ‘The Stand,’ which I still contend (as in HYGOTS #20) will be the author’s most lasting legacy. In this issue, the story of Mother Abagail is finally explored, another key component of the epic revealed, how the opposite number of the main villain (whom I’ll refer to as the Walkin’ Dude here) factors into the grand scheme, beyond strictly how a group of survivors from an apocalyptic plague become drawn to her.

21. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Fool’s Gold #3 (IDW)
This is classic ‘DS9’ storytelling in the most literal sense. A long-time fan of the show will feel right at home reading this book, or even a casual one. You don’t need to know the Dominion at all (the events here actually take place before the war years), just the friendly and familiar faces of the station. The treasure hunt’s background is explored this issue, as well as the first suggestion that, as always, Garak knows more than anyone else about what’s really going on…

22. Star Trek – The Official Motion Picture Adaptation #1 (IDW)
IDW has quickly become the home of the best Star Trek comics I’ve ever read, and that in itself would be a reason to check out this much-anticipated adaptation of last year’s movie, which finally revived (and augmented) the fortunes of the franchise. Another reason to read this book would be to see how the movie works in a different medium (I won’t be getting around to the novelization for a while, so this is my first chance). For the record, this includes the deleted scenes from the DVD release, which means this issue runs from Spock’s birth to Kirk’s. It’s a contrast from movie storytelling to comics, certainly, but one that works pretty interestingly.

23. The Web #6 (DC)
I was worried when DC first announced it was messing with the creative team (I guess I don’t really know the details about why it happened, whether it was always planned or not, only that I enjoyed the book as it was originally presented, an excellent spin-off from the launch one-shot from J. Michael Straczynski), especially after reading last month’s issue, which written by Marc Guggenheim, which failed to match either the impact or the specific storytelling already established. Matt Sturges, however, takes over this issue, with original artist Roger Robinson back and inking his own work (which actually makes it stronger, making it all the more puzzling that the last time I remember him even penciling at all was on the ‘Steel’ ongoing book – yeah). Hey, turns out I shouldn’t have been so worried…

24. Whatever Happened to the World’s Fastest Man? (Accent UK)
A rare graphic novel to cross my path, this one’s another look at the alternatives to the traditional approach to superheroes, which might read like a standalone episode of ‘Heroes,’ as if Hiro spends his life attempting one grand gesture while freezing time, aging for him regularly, and rescuing a crowded public area from a bomb’s explosion. Pretty awesome stuff.

25. Okay, so I pulled up only 24 comics worth, but this spot could belong to any number of others, whether the ‘45’ graphic novel from Com.X that sold out before I could get it, featuring an innovative approach that intrigued me to no end (an interview with, yup, forty-five superheroes, text with illustrations from as many artists), or any of the following:

‘Joe the Barbarian #2’ (Vertigo), from Grant Morrison; ‘Power Girl #9’ (DC), featuring the start of another great arc; ‘Outsiders #27’ (DC), which advances Dan DiDio’s bold new direction a step further; ‘The Mice Templar #7’ (Image), which is a key issue for the comic’s lore and continuing arc; ‘Green Lantern Corps #45’ and ‘Green Lantern #51’ (DC), which free Guy Gardner from the rage of the red ring and Hal Jordan from Parallax, respectively; ‘Blackest Night: The Flash #3’ (DC), which allows Geoff Johns to continue his love for the Rogues; ‘The Anchor #5’ (Boom!), which features Phil Hester working his mojo with an emerging cult classic; ‘Superman: World of New Krypton #12’ (DC), which brings back not only Zod but Brainiac; or ‘Milestone Forever #1’ (DC), which is the version of ‘Image United’ I actually care about.