I'm beginning to agree with
@Mani-Man about Ram V's Detective run. I've found myself having very little patience for this book the last couple of months. Beautiful art and some moments of wonderfully poetic prose that ultimately led me to ask the question the great philosophers ask: "What the hell is happening?"
I applaud the experiment. It's been a while since Detective was doing anything really interesting, and I dig the Vertigo-of-old vibes, but I've lost track of where this story is going. Only a few more months to go. The Federici art has been a real joy however. More of that everywhere, please.
I've been loving the hell outta Spurrier's Flash. I give a lot of credit to Jeremy Adams for doing some pretty effortless rehab on Wally. But I won't pretend that the 60 Second War wasn't excruciatingly bad and a profoundly disappointing finish to his run. Spurrier has tapped into the weird, cosmic horror sci-fi that I love. Conceptually, I'm pretty engrossed by it. I like how Spurrier is digging into Wally's family dynamic with a little more grit to make it more human and relatable. Whatever the strife, they'll figure out how to overcome. That's what the Flash has always been about. Not to mention, I find Spurrier's take a pretty refreshing refrain from the Waid/Johns stylings we're more accustomed to.
I'm not worried about them hot-swapping Barry in for Wally, but if they did, they'd have to bring his mom back to life. It's not that I don't like Barry because I don't. I grew up reading all of my Dad's silver age flash comics. Barry is great. It's the Johns/Rebirth/Dead Mom Barry that I can't stand. That Barry mopes more about his mom than Batman does his parents. That its infected other media interpretations of Barry have only made it worse. Fix his mom, you fix Barry. But with issue #6, it just got real. I'm at once annoyed because I feel like this particular character very much outstayed his welcome over the last few years. However, his relation to Wally isn't exactly as intense as it is with Barry. I won't pretend that Wally turned this particular character into a whimpering coward under Mark Waid's brilliant pen. So I'm excited to see how Spurrier handles it.
For my next hot take, World's Finest. I think I'm giving it to this month, issue 25, and then dropping it. I've not been too impressed by any of the arcs and this Kingdom Come return just fell flat for me. It just never really rose to the occasion and felt half-cocked. One would assume that this story would have been a much bigger deal than it was treated so I'm a little puzzled by the fact that it wasn't. Overall, this book has felt like a beating heart approaching flatline. #25 sounds fun though so hopefully it delivers.
Now then, we move into the big book of the week for me. The incredible return of The Savage Sword of Conan! I'm a huge Conan fan, something I inherited from my Dad as a kid. I'd read his old Marvel color books and the Savage Sword magazine of old. We were both a little disappointed by Marvel's second attempts at the character. There was the overwhelming sense the character was being sanitized. It was missing a vibe that Titan has seen fit to restore. The Jim Zub color "Barbarian" comic has been the best book of the month every month for the last 9. And now, Titan has resurrected "Savage Sword" in all its magazine-sized black & white newsprint glory!
We get an awesome, classically typical Conan story by the always dependable John Arcudi and Max von Fafner, whose art I'm not familiar with but reminds me of Michal Janin. Conan fights dinosaurs in the desert and kills corrupt kings. It's great. Meanwhile, we get a cool Jim Zub prose story about Conan rescuing a prospective Virgin sacrifice, and Patrick Zircher delivers a pretty taut and moody first chapter of a three part Solomon Kane story.
It's a delight. That it is bi-monthly is the only downside. The MASSIVE upside is that this book is priced at $6.99 with 80 pages, no ads. If that's not enough of an incentive to check out this mag, you might be a hopeless case.
Conan the Barbarian #8 also came out this week. That's right. TWO Conan books in one day! This sees the conclusion of the second arc, and man. It is just too damn good. This arc takes place shortly after the events of Queen of the Black Coast, as Conan struggles with the loss of the first woman he's ever loved, while getting roped into a heist to steal an artifact that winds up being the black stone from the first arc. Chaos ensues and Conan, now possessed by the evil spirit servants of one Thulsa Doom, struggles to save his own soul. This is evidently leading up to a summer Conan event that sees more Robert E. Howard characters, specifically (and obviously) Kull and Brule the Spear-Slayer make appearances. Doug Braithwaite delivers the pencils on this arc. While his style is markedly different from the Buscema-esque brilliance of Roberto De la Torre (who comes back next month), he brings a more atmospheric grounded approach to the story that Jim Zub writes the hell out of.
Penguin #7. Mr. King delivers a pretty incredible conclusion to this little 2-part break that retells the beginning of Batman's relationship with Oswald Copplepot.
This is the sleeper Tom King book of the year. The use of ever-shifting POVs to tell the story leads to a very engrossing and dynamic read, especially as all the POVs begin to converge. Everyone is using everyone. The suspense is that they all know but don't let on. Once again King tries something different and succeeds. DC has relegated this to a 12 issue Maxi series. If King can stick the landing and make this thing come together cohesively (as this book was initially announced as an ongoing), this could be a book that really wows people. In the Batman world, this ranks among his best.
