Justice League Unlimited #5

Story: Adam Beechen
Art: Carlo Barberi & Walden Wong

My monthly order often contains comics that I probably wouldn't buy if my only option was retail. Effectively, it works because I have an option to select Title X and Related Issues. Assuming that a Son of Title X mini series is produced, I would automatically receive it without needing to update my order.

This generally works pretty well, but it does produce oddities like this one.

Justice League Unlimited is obviously aimed at a younger audience, tying in as it does with an animated series (which I've never seen).

Predictably, for me to regard it as a top notch comic, I would probably ask for a little more depth, although as I'm sure we'll find out, this may not always be forthcoming.

Nonetheless, I started reading comics as a child, so I'm looking at this issue and wondering if this would have captured my imagination as a wee young thing.

You know, I don't think this was too bad. This is ostensibly a Blue Beetle solo outing, as we share his boredom during monitor duty at the JLA HQ.

There's a couple of jokey pages that I'm sure would've had mini-me chuckling away. Today, they at least made me smile. Not bad.

The Beetle checks in with his colleagues, only to find them with their hands full dealing with various emergencies.

Of course, it's not too long before our hero has his own hands full, being confronted with a pretty generic baddy. I'm not too sure if this is a baddy with a track record, or if he was created especially for the occasion. In fact, he is probably the most disappointing thing about this issue, being a bit generic even for my imaginary 10 year old taste. (Hell, when I was 10, I had Dr. Doom) . His incessant military schtick gets a bit much as well.

Realising that he's out gunned, the Beetle calls for help, which duly arrives in the form of the Green Lantern. Unfortunately, the Lantern is knocked out of the game almost immediately, causing a hasty rethink.

The Beetle quickly realises that brawn alone will not suffice and concocts a way to defeat his opponent by out-thinking him.

Post brawl he realises that perhaps an uneventful monitor duty is not so bad.

As I say, I fully realise that I am not target audience. That being said, this is pretty solid stuff. The script works, and for me, Barberi's art remains just the right side of cartoony to do the job in hand, particularly given the aforementioned audience.

A slightly jaded 4 out of 10 from me.

An enjoyable 7 out of 10 from mini-me

Monthly Comic Time

The primary reason for setting up this blog was to discuss Comics, To date there has been very little on the subject, so time to change that, methinks.

The vast majority of my purchasing is done by way of a regular mail order. Monday, just gone, was delivery day.

I tend to receive my issues later than they are available via retail outlets. This, I guess, is the downside of the convenience (and discount?) of mail order.

Task number one is always to go through the contents and sort everything into a reading order. I have a system for this. It's not much of a system, but it's better than nothing. The first criteria is a Marvel / Non Marvel sort. This is followed by a further sort of each pile on the basis of "Least interested" first, "Most interested / old favourites" last.

The degree of interest is pretty fluid, but it does act as a kind of league table, as issues with decent arcs find themselves getting further and further down the pile.

Blimey, that's just to establish the order !

Non marvel stuff is read first. If anybody finds that odd - do I really think that Elektra, for example, is better than 100 Bullets - well, no I don't, but this way I get an early peak, before soldiering on through some pretty average stuff.

I've never actually tracked the reading order before, but this blog presents an opportunity to do just that, so without further ado;

This months comics in reading order


1 Justice League Unlimited 5
2 Doom Patrol 7
3 Authority: Revolution 4
4 JLA: Elite 7
5 Batgirl 59
6 100 Bullets 57
7 JLA: Classified 2
8 Wonder Woman 211
9 Wonder Woman 212
10 Tom Strong 30
11 JLA 109
12 JLA 110
13 Strangers In Paradise 70
14 Identity Crisis 7
15 Powers 7
16 Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Golden Age
17 Tales of Suspense Commemorative Edition
18 Young Guns '04
19 Marvel Age: Hulk 4
20 Marvel Age: Spider-Man Team-Up 4
21 Marvel Age: Spider-Man 18
22 Marvel Age: Spider-Man 19
23 Marvel Age: Fantastic Four 10
24 Electra: The Movie
25 Punisher 15
26 New Invaders 6
27 Electra: The Hand 5
28 Stoker's Dracula 2
29 Spider-Man Unlimited 7
30 Tomb of Dracula 4
31 X-23 1
32 Cable & Deadpool 11
33 Gambit 5
34 What If Dr. Doom Had Become The Thing
35 What If Aunt May Had Died Instead of Uncle Ben
36 What If General Ross Had Become The Hulk
37 What If Karen Page Had Lived
38 What If Magneto & Prof. X Had Formed The X-Men
39 What If Jessica Jones Had Joined The Avengers
40 Thor: Son of Asgard 12
41 Fantastic Four: Foes 1
42 Rogue 7
43 Alpha Flight 11
44 Bullseye Greatest Hits 4
45 Warlock 4
46 Jubilee 5
47 Thunderbolts 4
48 Nightcrawler 5
49 Ultimate Electra 5
50 Doctor Spectrum 4
51 X-Men / Fantastic Four 1
52 X-Men / Fantastic Four 2
53 Ultimate Nightmare 4
54 Hulk / Thing: Hard Knocks 4
55 Captain America 2
56 Wolverine 24
57 Marvel Team Up 3
58 Marvel Team Up 4
59 Emma Frost 18
60 Exiles 57
61 Exiles 58
62 Phoenix: Endsong 1
63 Spider-Man / Human Torch 1
64 Iron Man 2
65 Hulk 77
66 Supreme Power 14
67 Spectacular Spider-Man 23
68 (Marvel Knights) Spider-Man 10
69 New X-Men: X-Men Academy 8
70 Ultimate Fantastic Four 14
71 X-Men 166
72 (Marvel Knights) 4 14
73 Fantastic Four 521
74 The Pulse 7
75 Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes 3
76 Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes 4
77 Ultimate X-Men 54
78 Ultimate Spider-Man 70
79 Daredevil 68
80 Daredevil 69
81 Amazing Spider-Man 515
82 Astonishing X-Men 7
83 New Avengers 2

Phew !! Better get reading

A Touch of Music

Today's song of choice is "All Together Now", from the album Yellow Submarine by the Beatles (again - I promise there is other stuff on my mp3 player).

Not an awful lot to say about this. Let's face it, it is pretty throwaway, albeit reasonably jolly. Very much in the style of the albums eponymous track. (Although, that originally appeared on Revolver)

Team America

I went to our local cinema last night. This is something that, perhaps, I should do more often. I certainly enjoy it, but, as a smoker, I tend to shy away from putting myself in places where I can't smoke. At the cinema, not only can I not smoke, I pay for the privilege as well.

In any event, last night was kind of a pub outing. Four of us, who seldom socialise outside of our local watering hole, decided to give the above film a try.

Team America, which as I am sure most people are aware, is a film created by the creators of South Park.

It's film that has two distinct things to satirise. One being the approach to the "War on Terror", the other the supermarionation style of Gerry Anderson shows such as Thunderbirds and Captain scarlet.

Of the two, the most successful, in my view, is the latter. Perhaps, because it is easier, or perhaps because I'm an old Anderson fan who is pre-disposed towards this stuff.

From the outset with strings unashamedly visible, it is clear that the film makers are going to have as much fun with this as possible. Incredibly awkward scenes of martial arts, secret locations, explosions, chase scenes, sex scenes all add to the general sense of the absurd. In particular, a drawn out projectile vomit scene had me looking for the aisle so that I could roll in it. I think most people who know me, would not consider me the sort of person who would find vomit particularly funny.

With regard to the war on terror angle, I think that it is less clear that the film worked. At times, the humour of the puppets undercut the satire present in the bigger picture. There were also some mixed messages. Certainly there are times when the team went into action that they were shown to be disregardful of any ancillary damage done to the surroundings. OK, the point is that the American approach to terror is heavy handed and creates more problems than it solves. Or perhaps not. The climax of the film still requires that the same heavy handed team saves the world. Maybe the point is that America has no choice.

There is no easy reconciliation between the two, and perhaps that was the point.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the soundtrack. In many big screen movies, I find the soundtrack unnecessarily loud and obtrusive. Not so in this case. There are many occasions where the songs to become the focal point, but this only serves to emphasise the humour of the situation. Basically, there are some very funny songs.

Ultimately, my reaction to this film would depend on how much it made me laugh, and I'm happy to report that it did. A lot.

A highly credible 7 out of 10.

Update

Just discovered how to add a links section.

Just to start it off I've added links for Newsarama and Comicon, both of which are great for comic news, views and previews.

From a non-comic viewpoint, I've also added a link to J-Walk. A blog dedicated to "Stuff that may or may not interest you". It's a blog that I visit daily, pretty much always finding things that are interesting or amusing.

More to follow

A Touch of Music

A few months ago, in a moment of pure selfishness, I bought myself an MP3 player. Probably ranks as the best toy I've ever bought.

Consequently, as an act of self indulgence, I thought I would introduce an occasion feature highlighting a song heard whilst it is set to random play.

Incidentally, if the player is full, and I do one song daily, we'll be done in about 27 years, by which time I'll be 70, and will probably have to have it turned up very loudly.

Our first song is - "Why Don't We Do It In The Road".

As the deal here is that I must have heard the song that day, it is, perhaps, a shame that it could not have been a higher profile song by the greatest band ever to hit the planet, but you have to deal with what you are given.

This song which appeared on The Beatles' White Album, is credited to Lennon/McCartney. In reality it is a Paul solo effort. Even the drums are his.

I seem to recollect that John said that this one of his favourite songs on the album (or at least favourite Paul song). He may have been joking, of course.

That being said, the vocal is good. It's not as twee as some of Paul's other contributions and it is short.

Comics News

Just trying out the "Blog This" thing - let's see if it works

NEWSARAMA - TOM GRUMMETT SIGNS EXCLUSIVE WITH MARVEL

..And off we go

Wow, my first post to my first blog.

I've already learned that I was born in the year of the Tiger. Fancy That. I'm not sure of the significance, but it's good to know.

Anyway, a brief statement of intent;

My primary hobby involves Comics. All kinds.

I've been a comic reader all of my life. As a child I read the usual UK kids humour comics. The Beano, The Dandy, Topper Etc.

In my pre-teens I was turned to the now largely lost area of sports comics. Scorcher, Score and my personal favourite Tiger. Ahhhh.....Nostalgia.

In my early teens I discovered American comic books, albeit in the form of UK reprints. This happened when I was ill and off school. As was the tradition, my Mother came home with a bottle of Lucozade (The only real reason to be ill), and a copy of Dracula Lives, which reprinted The Tomb of Dracula. I was hooked! I can't begin to count the number of times my mother has cursed her generosity.

25 year later, and I'm still buying the things. Oh sure, I've quit and sold pretty hefty collections twice, but I've still returned.

These days my tastes are still pretty mainstream, probably too much so, but I figure it's my time, money and enjoyment at stake, so what the hell.

So this blog will contain some news, views and reviews, and if anyone feels like joining the party, please feel free.

There will also be some stuff on other areas of interest.

I anticipate a slow start to my own postings, but the plan is that they increase eventually