J.L.U.N.

Ahh, that's better. Now I feel like I have some room to breath. Certainly my posts with big images, like my recent post on the myth of aristocracy look a lot better now. And I followed through on my promise of adding a greatest hits section (based on hits and links).

Went to the store today. A slow week for me. The most enjoyable comic was 52, which enjoyably progresses a plotline or three. Nothing surprising, (except maybe the religion bit), but well executed, particularly the tan line. I mean, the line about the tan.

Whatever.

But the most interesting comic, the one that stuck, was JLA Classified #28. Howard Chaykin started from the same basic premise as Gail Simone's run (Justice League intervenes in international politics) and goes in a very different direction. There's a lot of smart writing going on there. The two fictional South American nations featured supposedly have radically different ideologies, one communist, one capitalist, but the rhetoric does little to disguise the fact that they are nearly identical dictatorships. (Though I should note the capitalist dictator welcomes "plutocrat" Bruce Wayne with open arms, while the communist opens up to, of course, that old leftist Clark Kent.) And even though it's clear they're both bad guys, it's not black & white whether the Justice League is doing more good than harm by intervening, which is nice. There's even a crack about the American comics industry that's both nicely done and awfully mean.

The art's good, not great. Tom Nguyen really does make every penciller's work look like Doug Mahnke, but weak Doug Mahnke. And it's a three or four issue story at most, unfortunately told over six issues. But it's a good solid Justice League story where Wonder Woman and Batman actually hit people instead of bitching at each other from across a table, so I'd recommend picking it up.

In other news, Earth Prime has in fact bled into the DC Universe, as Infinite Crisis the book shows up in Gotham book stores. And as before, what is fiction here becomes non-fiction there.

But if Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are missing, how did the writer learn what happened on the moon?

Damn it, Frey! Not again!