Comics Fondle

The biggest development in this story–Jimmy learning Clark’s identity–gets no attention. Maybe it’s just because Final Crisis will undo it, but it might have something to do with Busiek not really having a handle on Jimmy as a protagonist. He just isn’t an interesting main character with Busiek’s narration and thought balloon-heavy approach. Jimmy doesn’t […]

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This issue is strangely light and heavy.
It’s Busiek’s post-Infinite Crisis origin of Jimmy Olsen and a lot of it is light. Jimmy’s a good-hearted, hard-working kid with a big problem–he’s on the run from the mob! Will his new friends at the Daily Planet help him out? Gee whiz, Superman, I bet they will.
Busiek can […]

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Superman goes to Hell, but at least he’s got some nice Walt Simonson art to get him there. Sorry, that sentence came to me and I had to go with it. Truly, the art is nice and gives the issue a somewhat established feel, which the issue really needs. Without the Simonson art, Superman #666 […]

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Here’s a well-executed Superman story–a flashback, set in loose continuity (I wonder if writers at DC worry their residuals off trade paperbacks will go south once Didio changes the entire DCU to chimpanzees for two years)–about Superman’s influence on people. It’s a nice story, filled with good scenes and a good handle on the character […]

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Kurt Busiek’s Aquaman was advertised, mostly by Busiek himself I think, as an underwater Conan, as Busiek left Dark Horse’s excellent Conan series behind for a DC Comics exclusive contract. Aquaman is no Conan–while Busiek does get to explore an imaginary world, there’s none of the fetishistic enthusiasm he had in Conan and the characters […]

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