Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Random Review Corner

You have the ultimately combo: understanding their humor but having none of their PC restraints! You get the sarcasm but are able to fire back with something taboo and gross. Basically, you pull a Lard Lad!

Shirtless Bear Fighter was everything I dreamed it could be. An over-the-top, silly, skewer of action-adventure tropes, with some Tarzan homage thrown in more good measure. Bears get punched. A lot.

^ Dave, do you think SBF is okay for kids? The zaniness of it definitely caught my eye but I hadn't committed to getting it. If my kids could enjoy it too that might help.

Ummm....probably not. The running gag is that he walks around in the buff, and they pixelate out his genitals, but the pixels extend QUITE a ways. At one point he turns around quickly and there's a slapping sound effect. The agents he comes in contact with are visibly disturbed. Even in the flashback to his infancy he's got a full beard and giant tackle.

"Sometimes God makes a mistake and makes a man too much of a man!"

I also loved SBF, but boy yeah are you right about it not being for kids.

That answers that

Who knows? This might just be considered age-appropriate on the Cobie Scale!

BTW, I've got SBF on reserve at my store. I just knew I had to get it after seeing the pre-release pub! I'll weigh in on it after I get it in the next week or so.

"Sometimes a wain comes down so hawrd you forwget you've ever been dwy...." So begin the epic noir tale that is Batman/Elmer Fudd. It's.... brilliant. Tom King must have had a blast writing it.

It's kind of hard for me to accept how good DC Comics is in 2017, after YEARS of being a contender for snapshot of worst publisher in the history of comics. But in addition to Rebirth, which has been shockingly great and Young Animal, which has been a delight, they're doing all kinds of other great things. Chief among them is the Kamandi maxiseries, which is using the "Exquisite Corpse" / Challenge method of writers using cliffhanger endings to challenge next writer. While that element is fun, and some endings are awesomely weird, its just a pleasure to read awesome Kamandi stories each month. With some of DC's best writers teaming up with some of comics best and most legendary artists, we're seeing top notch creative teams tell their best, offbeat Kamandi stories...and its just over the top fun!

The latest issue, #5, had Ivan Reis (best new emerging talent in last 5 years?) team up with Bill Willingham (who seems perfect for Kamandi) and the result was brilliant as you can imagine. Resolving last issue's challenge of falling to his death, an anthropomorphic pirate crew, a former wrestler turned private eye Tiger on an Indiana Jones type adventure, a reverse Dr. Moreau type villain that instead experiments on humans...it's wild.

Kamandi, Cave Carson, Bug, Doom Patrol, a great Captain Atom miniseries, a great Deadman miniseries...it's not just Rebirth--something is in the water at DC.

Agreed that Kamandi Challenge is great fun, though I must admit to not digging issue #6, mostly due to the reductive politics that Orlando injected into the story. But, of course, the great thing is - next month's a new team again!

^ I haven't read #6 yet, but I've noticed a not-so-subtle political current in Orlando's writing that is more distracting than effective. It's certainly there in Justice League of America and I wish it wasn't, as it is preventing a "pretty good" series from becoming truly good or even great. He does Supergirl too, but I haven't really been keeping up with that series.

Like you said: the great thing is, next month its on to someone else!

Astro City 45 Vertigo
The purple haired Narrator that comes and goes through the series never fails to be annoying. I nearly skipped this one as a result. This issue links a number of previous characters, all who change with the times, into a single narrative. It's joining the dots, and it's not really anything that wasn't telegraphed before. There's a certain Wild cards feel about this one too. The dialogue is good and the characters are interesting. Even if one is a lift from the Invisibles and the creature behind it all also linked to a number of other sources. Its still creepy. This is really a set up issue for the next issue, where there should be some snake cults. 3.5

Sex Criminals 19 Image
There's a great page involving the speech balloons that gets points all by itself. The cold relationship between the protagonists is the spine of this one with a decision at the end that could see a big change. Perhaps. The buzz word bingo presentation gets more points as does the dark threat behind it. 4.75

Stray Bullets 24 El Capitan
Consistently riveting. 5.75

Walking Dead 168 Image
Negan continues to grate as a Mary Sue in a title that should have weeded out such things long ago. Other than that, tensions are eased, if not eliminated, between two factions and the cast begin to come to terms with their recent losses (again). 4.75

Saga 44 Image
I've skipped some issues, but the characters are strong enough to make it an easy read. There's the shock of action done well, and the touch of a deeper theme done very well. 5

Aliens: Dead Orbit 1 Dark Horse
I've read a number of Aliens comics over the years, and I can count on one hand the number that were even half decent reads. This one is welcome improvement. It's a cinematic approach with a stripped back plot accompanied by cluttered looking, yet focused, Euro style art. There are a few earl;y tell tales of things to come, but nothing that slows the plot, that sees an abandoned space ship investigated and it's survivors raised from cryosleep. 5.25

I decided to go ahead and fold my review thread back into this one. It seemed weird to post my own thoughts about an issue there, and then come over here to discuss the same one.

Holdovers from last week:

Batman '66 Meets the Legion of Super-Heroes #2 - A wonderful wrap-up to a story over much too soon.

Astro City #45 - Hey, metafictional narrator. Don't blame me for the plot going off the rails last issue. I didn't want the story getting sidetracked either! I'm happy to see the long-simmering story start to boil over, hopefully in time for issue 50. I'm not a music guy, so I'm liking this arc but not as much as I might do. This was possibly my favorite, with the transition from glam to punk being more interesting than what he has to say about any musical genre in its own right. Not as good as the superpets issue, though.

Mother Panic - my interest in the main feature is starting to diminish somewhat, and it could stand to pick up the pace some. Take a lesson from the backup, which is starting to really pick up steam. I was intrigued by the Lunar Bat, the most interesting character to be shot dead within panels of his debut that I've read all week.

This Week:

Cyborg #14 - Another great issue, with a Cyborg/Beast Boy teamup! Sort of. I was REALLY pleased by the reveal of the mysterious "muse." I was half afraid it was going to tie into the big Mr. Oz thing somehow, even though this title has been delightfully Event free so far. Another book I wouldn't be reading if it weren't for you folks, so thanks.

Deathstroke #21 - The first proper issue of the new direction, and it was a delight. Of course Deathstroke is going to have trouble figuring out how to walk the straight and narrow, and of course most of his team are joining with ulterior motives. I had lost track of the Etienne subplot to be honest, so the refresher was nice. Throw in an ending that was great both in its own right and as an homage to a classic, and I'm definitely intrigued and on board.

Rock Candy Mountain #4 - The boys get themselves thrown in prison in this one. Jackson finds an extremely clever way to make use of his devil-given power, Slim gets his head shaved, and it looks like the end of the road for our dusty duo. I hope this book is doing well, because I absolutely love it.

Shade The Changing Girl #10 - I feel like the book is really finding its voice. Unfortunately, while I like the high school arc, I feel like those characters have served their purpose and they need to drop out and let the series spread its wings. This may be my favorite of the ongoing Young Animal series.

The WIcked + The Divine #29 - For whatever reason, this issue really reminded me of those "day in the life" issues from the late bronze age. Lots of issues of this series show the characters living their own lives, so I'm not sure why the comparison resonated so strongly this time, but it did. Most of this issue is a reaction to one of the characters going on a berserker killing spree last issue, but lots of personal plotlines get moved along. This book veers between "rollercoaster" and "slow lane," and we're in a slow lane period. But at least the roller coaster arcs change things enough that there is new material to mine when things get quiet.

On Kamandi 6 - I assumed the political material was a throwback to the hamfisted polemics of 70s comics in keeping with the high concept. But then I don't have much experience of Steve Orlando, so I may be giving him more benefit of the doubt than he deserves.

Copra 1-6: A self-published comic that is basically John Ostrander's Suicide Squad. Like, the way Alan Moore's Supreme was Superman. Most of the characters have 1:1 correspondences, many even having the same physical features, costumes, and sometimes even similar names. Not only the obvious ones like Deadshot and Amanda Waller, but some less well known favorites like a take on Duchess, and Shade as portrayed in Suicide Squad. While some basically walked right out of the DC book, some are more indirectly insipred. There is one character I think is probably a Vixen analog, but I can't be sure. Another is a teenager in a high tech armor suit who, if he has a specific progenitor, isn't coming to mind for me.

The premise of this arc is that Manhead (the Bronze Tiger analog) is running an unauthorized op to help his brother that goes wrong. Half the team is killed by a former team member who escapes with the macguffin while in the process destroying Manhead's entire hometown and family. Someone in the government leaks the existence of Copra and blames them for the attack, forcing Sonia (The Waller character) and remnants of the team to go on the run. They assemble some former members and associates to try to find the villain and recapture the macguffin.

I learned about this series when the creator, Michel Fiffe, was a guest host on Justice League International: Bwah ha ha podcast. I enjoyed it, although I suspect more in an "if you liked THIS, you can get more like it HERE" than something I would necessarily recommend cold to people. The art is in a very "indie" style, probably reminding me of Jack Staff more than anything, although there is a definite Sin City era Frank Miller influence on the art as well. I sometimes felt like I had trouble telling similar looking characters apart, and some trouble following the action in fight scenes. I read them in comixology in guided view, so that latter may have ben an artifact of my reading format. Whole page may have flowed better.

One advantage of not being an actual Suicide Squad comic is that he can homage Marvel as well as DC, and the team wind up turning to pastiches of Doctor Strange, Clea, and the Punisher on their mission.

The characterization is well done. Although this initial arc doesn't really give the characters much chance to grow beyond their progenitors, they capture them very well, Harkness, the Captain Boomerang character, managed to annoy me in exactly the same way the original did throughout the Ostrander run. Manhead manages to get the most characterization and also the most deviation from the source material, so I'm hopeful for the future.

I should mention that in the first issue, there is a character named Lite based on Doctor Light. I am going to be more spoilery than usual to say that a) he is written just as mockingly as Ostrander wrote the original, and b) he dies in the first issue fight scene. I feel like lack of a significant amount of Doctor Light might make the book more palatable for some.

There 30 issues so far, plus a couple of issues of a spinoff mini spotlight the series' villains, Copra Versus. Again I've only read the first six, but am looking forward to reading more. They are available through Comixology, Diamond, or the author's website,

Final analysis: if you liked Ostrander's Suicide Squad, give it a try.

I didn't get past "Copra 1-6: A self-published comic that is basically John Ostrander's Suicide Squad. " Sold. And I'll read the rest of the review once I've got my paws on the books

Shirtless Bear Fighter #2 is problematic for me. The first half was great fun and lots of silliness, the second half with the Hillbilly Warlock was a little disappointing. I get that homophobic overtones are part of the whole macho 80's action genre they are trying to pastiche, but I don't know if it was really necessary. Basically at one one SBF gets mind controlled by the Warlock (who's half-a-pig, "Deliverence", get it?) and the first thing he wants him to do is start rubbing butter all over his nipples. This enrages SBF so much he's able to break the control, but the whole implication of the sleazy, gay, pervert villain didn't sit well with me.

Dark Nights: Metal #1 didn't do it for me. People seem to like it but I just couldn't get into it. Scott Snyder seems like a nice guy, and he's passionate about the same concepts and characters I am. His ideas always sound creative at first, but I can never warm up to the execution. It just comes off to me like bad fan fiction.

The promise of Challengers of the Unknown and Blackhawks (and possibly eventually the Metal Men, as suggested in The Forge) got me to buy the issue but it didn't hook me either. I can't help but wish they'd just let Batman be Batman, without adding still more layers to an already convoluted history. After this story has played out, what do you do for an encore?

Saucer State just made the GOP front runner a Trump analogue, which I thought would have derailed things a bit, but his satirical portrayal was well done. The story continues to be a bit of a labyrinth and I can't tell if it's Cornell getting bogged down in the complexity of it all, or if it's another take on the UFO fiction trope that these stories always get out of hand in the scope of the mysteries.

Scales & Scoundrels #1 (Image) - A very fun all-ages fantasy series. The current reign of dark, grim low fantasy was a counter to all of the fluffy adventure about parties of fantasy characters adventuring for gold and glory. Now the pendulum has swung so far the other way, I think we need more stuff like this.

Luvander is a young adventurer making her way through life as a free-spirited pickpocket and rogue. After getting caught cheating in a game of cards, the inn where she was playing goes up in flames as she escapes. Some people are convinced she is a dragon in disguise, but that remains to be seen. She is shown standing in front of the burning building saying "Nobody. Messes. With my gold." Plus, Scales is in the title. She subsequently saves a prince and his entourage from bandits (she has no problem with theft, but she draws the line at violence), he invites her to join his adventure and quest for some sort of treasure.

The heart is nice, with the kind of light touch you'd expect for a children's book, but well detailed. The writing is by Sebastian Girner, art by Galaad, letters and "design" by Jeff Powell. None of the names are familiar to me.

If you're looking for a good kid-appropriate read, or just an antidote for yourself to the Game of Thrones style of depressing fantasy that's dominating the culture right now, give it a try.

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys The Big Lie 1-6



On the other end of the spectrum is this dark take on the chilren's book sleuths. I discovered the series just in time to catch up before the final issue came out last week. I have mixed feelings about the "dark take on lighthearted children's material" genre. Most often it's lazily written and reliant on the gimmick. Sometimes it works, though. Sometimes that's because it's cleverly handled (I may do an Oz Squad review here at some point), and sometimes they find a way to make it actually feel natural. That's what happens here. Anthony Del Col and Werther Del'Edera make it work by just bringing a noir touch to the teen sleuth's adventures. The characters are still essentially themselves, but most other aspects of the sreies have been shifted to suit the darker mood. It's noir, so don't expect the kids to get the kind of positive support from adults and authority figures they got in their traditional books.

The Hardy Boys' father Fenton has been murdered, and Frank and Joe are the main suspects. Nancy Drew helps them find the real killer. The boys are the ones who find the body, so if you immediately thought "he's not really dead," let me disabuse you of that notion right off the bat. Fenton Hardy is dead.

There are other Stratemeyer Syndicate characters scattered through the series, however most of them are radically altered. The Rover Boys are a family of drug dealers. The Bobbsey Twins are rich kids who were throwing a party the Hardys were attending the night their father was murdered. Tom Swift, the Hardys' tech savvy classmate and friend, is the only character to retain his essence outside of the leads of the main two series.

The mystery resolves in a satisfying manner, with a twist that will lead into further series.

It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if there's at least a chance this sounds like something you might like, it may be worth a look.

Nancy Drew et al sounds like a good read for anyone who went through all those books as a kid. The TPB is out November 28, so I'll wait for that. Thanks for the heads-up!

Re: Scales & Scoundrels, I haven't read a lot of fantasy books, but finished a few novels this summer and observed that the "dragon disguised as a human" seems to be pretty common. Don't know if it's always been around or is a new trope. (Legionnaire Dragonwing could have been a dragon, which would have been more interesting than the reboot snake.)

B.P.R.D. - The Devil You know Series - Issues 1-10
Having spent years and years plodding through B.P.R.D. fighting big monsters, the whole thing ended up being a Marvel Monster comic. One where The Human Torch and Iron Man team up to fight them. Now, we seem to be careering towards some sort of conclusion to the whole thing. After such a long time, this seems to be a little rushed. Despite all those issues, I never felt particularly close to any of the characters. The cast expanded very rapidly a while ago, and all play a role in this series. Some haven't made it to the latest issue. The reveal is one that doesn't match the rough book chronology in my head, but we'll see. The art is very good. Sure, Hellboy and Abe are distinctive enough, but there's no problem recognising any of the non powered cast members.

Series Rating: 4

Copra 1-6

A lot has already been covered in Brain Fall Out Boy's post above. It is a lift and drop of Ostrander's Suicide squad. It's also mixed in with many other late '80s comic book and some film concepts. I was just thinking about compiling a mental list of the main cast's analogues when the plot wiped out half of them as per the first Mission Impossible movie. The real team, like that movie, is then pulled together from a number of sources.

Some of the analogues are too on the nose for my liking. There's no difference between Deadshots so far for example. The further the book nods to the Suicide Squad cast without being exact, the better they are. While the art has rough edges, it works very well for the book, adding to the rough, desperate plight of the characters and adding to the kinetics of the well choreographed Hong Kong style action sequences.

After a strong first issue, the plot touches a little too much on a Morrison-nod villain and former member and his minions. That issue also brings in a very close Shade analogue into the book. Some characters could have been introduced later to give more space to the idea of the cast being really hunted following the events of #1. That seemed like a missed opportunity. Perhaps the next arc will have more on that. But that's less rough edges on plotting than the writer's choice of content. There was an internal monologue scene I thought was a bit clunky though.

As BFOB said, if you like Flag, Bronze Tiger, Nightshade, Vixen, Deadshot, Boomerang, Duchess, Waller, Flo and the others then this is a book worth reading. It's a lot better than the opening issues off the post flashpoint DC version.

Series Rating 4.25