Supergirl and the Legion of Super-heroes; X-men; 52

Supergirl and The Legion of Super-Heroes # 23
Mark Waid-Barry Kitson
Just when you thought I wasn't going to ramble on and on about Supergirl some more, I read this excellent title. I've never really jumped in on The Legion before, just because I had no real idea of where or what--just pretty much a whole glut of cluelessness. Well I am taking the plunge because in addition to plenty of Supergirl madness, it's also just a damn neat team/concept. I don't know everyone on the team yet, or what is going on exctly, because I'm mid-stream, but the dyanamics of the character interactions is very X-mensy. Or what we all love about the X-men.

It's odd because I usually find Mark Waid really dry. But the characters and dialouge of this book just crackle across the page. I don't know who the characters are, but reading this, I want to know them. And I just found out that the trade collecting the brunt of the Supergirl appearence is out in trade paperback, so I'm getting that toot sweet(means more Supergirl loveage(maybe I should do a Supergirl blog?))

But yeah. This is a really good book. I don't think my Supergirl fangirl-ish is clouding my judgement. The Legion is on the whole a very angsty-snarky group. So those on the lookout for some good old fashioned comic melodrama should apply here(well, not here literally).

X-men 192
Mike Carey-Chris Bachald
I know there are a boot of X-titles out there, and the thought of starting any one in particular can seem daunting, adding into that is the proclivity for the title to have huge scale events seemingly yearly, that radically change the landscape to the point where jumping in suddenly can result in some level of nausea. Frankly while I like the X-men, I find in general that I'm not a fan of most of the writing or storylines, and find it very hard to follow what is going on where.

So it was with trepedation I picked up X-men # 192. I know Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men gets all the pub, and yes, I'm only reading the trades on it so it may have gotten a ton better--but on the whole I feel like I'm reading Buffy the Vampire Slayer in X-men clothes. Whedon like Bendis, in my opinion really only writes one kind of dialouge, and once you get the gimmick, it can sometimes grate. So I'm reading Astonishing but only because I feel I'm obligated to. So maybe my disapointment with that book was coloring my judgement of the X-books. And then the reason I didn't pick up Brubaker's book is because it's some Shi'ar Alien type story, and that's the aspect of the X-men I hate the most. And honestly I kind of hate Charles Xavier.

My favorite X-Men of all-time, in order are: Rogue, Emma Frost, and Wolverine. And some days I like Nightcrawler. So what we have with this X-book is an X-men run by Rogue. She has assembled a really cool team(oh, sometimes I also like Cable, like here in X-men).

So anywho. The current arc is some sort of thing where this one group is all "we're better than mutants and humans, and we want to take over the planet", and then the X-men are all like "nuh-uh". And then they start fighting. So yeah. Re-inventing the X-wheel, this book ain't.

HOWEVER, the art is really cool and the writing is pretty fun, in large part due to the characters that Mike Carey chose. Rogue putting first Cyclops and then Mystique in their place was very cool. At the end of the day X-men is always going to be about the petty personal dramas. So in that respect it probably isn't fair to talk about the action of the story. But that's pretty much all that's in this issue, since I'm reading issue 5 of a 6 issue arc. I guess my reccomendation would be, when this is in trade, and you want a nice light read, there are probably worse X-books you could choose.

52
I figured I should say something about 52. I only started reading it at week 21, so all the ongoing threads are new to me in it, but I was like "what the hey, I want another DC book to read". It's pretty much impossible to review it, and so this may be the first and last time you hear me say anything about it. Judging it like any other book would be entirely unfair to the task the creators are taking.

I've heard they are not going to collect it in a big trade--which I think is a waste.

Meh. What I've read I've enjoyed. Given the talent that is writing it, that's not suprising.

Not much to say on it, honestly.

Happy voting day!