Since this isn’t either work or Mass Effect, we’re just gonna get straight into the meat of it all. These are the best comics of last week, as 100% subjectively picked by us, two Canadians who love Greg Berlanti more than almost anybody else.

Take that, Greg Berlanti’s loving family.

MAKING COMICS FOR FUN AND PROPHET

So what fresh hell have I been transported to, that I’m buying and actively purchasing books like Venom and Uncanny X-Force and Prophet and Glory and such? I missed out ona lot of nineties comics, partly because I was far too young to really get into the stuff. But my cousins had a lot of the things, and whenever I was allowed to read their comics (which was rare), I found myself awash in a sea of just… beyond confusing things. Plus, I wasn’t a fan of the darker fare which seemed to permeate much of comics back then (and continuing today, in a fashion).

Anyway, the fact of the matter is, never in a million years did I think I would be reading a comic starring this guy:

What a difference a few years (and a completely different creative team) will make.

The new Prophet is something seldom seen in American comics. It’s insane. It’s beyond insane. It’s a modern day Jack Kirby comic, but instead of crazy hats, there’s just crazy looking aliens. Seriously, I think one of them had a face that was a vagina? And the other ones have what looks to be several maws with razor sharp teeth that split into four different directions to bite your face. And others are actually buses of a sort, with a storage area for people.

One of the best parts of this series has to be the way that Brandon Graham and Simon Roy seem to be taking the “why not” approach. Which is to say, where a lot of comics will stop and ask why something is a certain way, or why something is happening, he just shrugs and says “why not” and lets the insanity lay on the page, speaking for itself. Its like explaining jokes. The moment you try, all the joy is sucked out, leaving the husk and guts of something that was once fun. Prophet is fun comics. Fun sci-fi, balls the the wall insanity. That’s all a person really needs, right? I mean shit, do we really need an explanation for something like The Force, or are we all just happy that shit like that just happens.

So yeah. Prophet is a book where a lot of things happen, and it’s totally great. More people should probably check it out, but for now, I suppose we’ll be content with awarding it the Rob Liefeld Award for X-ellence in Pouches and call it a day.

MATTERS OF THE LORD OF THE HEART

Every time I think I can stop gushing in new ways about Wolverine and the X-Men, well, Marvel releases another issue. This is a series that started by giving me everything I wanted from it on the first page of the first issue and has managed to thrill me with every page since. It’s hard to believe, but the the book, which started with a living island and some kids with guns that shot Frankensteins with flamethrowers, has only gotten more insane since, and it’s done so following a simple rule I learned from my youth:

Everything is better when it’s The Magic School Bus.

Wolverine and the X-Men is a series about life at a crazy school where you may get killed, maimed or eaten on any given day, which is to say it is exactly like everybody’s favourite book and TV series about a teacher who endangers her students’ lives in the name of education and adventure. In Issue #6, the Jean Grey School’s faculty lead a mission into Kitty Pryde’s body to:

(a) Fight off the microscopic Brood sleazoids she’s “pregnant” with that are murdering her;

(2) Rescue Kid Gladiator, who is trying to rescue Kitty, mostly by zapping her heart and declaring himself Lord of It.

Meanwhile, Wolverine takes Quentin Quire to a space casino to get money for the school by pulling a Mutant Rain Man scam. Quentin… comes up with a series of increasingly ridiculous cover stories and tries to get laid.

By themselves, these are just Crazy Things happening in a Crazy Comic. The way that Jason Aaron and Nick Bradshaw weave it all together, though, it becomes an expertly paced action film. Thanks to Bradshaw, no matter how ridiculous the panels get, either on the battlefield inside Kitty’s body or in the crowded casino, you can always tell exactly what’s happening, and because of Aaron‘s expert scripting, there’s a reason for it all to. In Wolverine and the X-Men, crazy things don’t happen because it’s zany or fun, they happen primarily because there’s a clear reason for them to. And also because they’re incredibly enjoyable. It’s a high-tech school of the impossible in a world with Pym particles, so of course they go inside a human body. And that kind of stuff is expensive, so of course they need more money than they can easily get from an Earth casino. No matter how ridiculous and over-the-top things get, there’s a thread of reason & purpose tying everything together. Crazy comics are seldom fun if they’re not tethered to something, and Wolverine and the X-Men‘s creators are so deft at doing this that you can often barely tell, letting the book be as big as it wants to be. For this and so much more, I’m happy to give Wolvering and the X-Men #6 the prestigious Award for Excellence in Miss Frizzling.

I spent four years in the trenches when Lost was on. Before then. I had been keeping track of it on and off, trying to stay on top of the action despite the fact that I had marching band on Wednesday nights. (Yeah, that’s right, marching band.) Inevitably, I got behind, to the point where I thought I might as well give up. During the show’s third season, I got a job working at a comic shop, and started to get weekly updates from the customers. Soon, I found that I didn’t really have to watch the show - it was being followed for me. Not the same, I realize, but the best I was going to do for a while.

And then some things changed. I was promoted to store manager, and they moved the show to Tuesdays for the final season - which meant two things. Not only was I the guy behind the counter, the nerd equivalent to the mystical bartender, but I was being faced with 16 weeks of post show Wednesdays. A large chunk of our customers would be coming in the store, expecting… nay, demanding discussion, and if I couldn’t provide that to them, then what kind of mystical bartender was I?

So I began to consume the series voraciously in preparation for the season. I almost made it, but figured if I watched the little countdown recap episode the aired before the first episode back, I would be fine. After all, my entire life up until that point had been rife with superhero comics - and in that genre, its nearly impossible to drop into a series with a complete working knowledge of the character’s history. It worked out okay, but near the end of the season, I kind of fudged my knowledge, skipping quite a few episodes (including the finale) and adopting a bit of a “smile and nod” tact to theories that started popping up. By the end of my Wednesday, due to the sheer volume of discussion, I could start to formulate my own theories on things I hadn’t actually watched, and could fake a conversation with the best (worst?) of them. A little disingenuous, yes, but come on. Can a guy really know everything about everything? Often times, we comic shop guys are expected to, but a life of pure content consumption doesn’t give you much time to make flailing attempts at your own. But that’s an article for another day. Point is: Lost was a fucking crazy show, and I had some theories. They were moulded and concocted over the course of hours and hours of discussion, and ended up being pretty well formed. I have a very similar relationship with the series Morning Glories - the only difference being, I read the issues almost immediately when they come out, rather than faking knowledge somewhere down the line. And yes, the experience is much better.

Just like Lost, Morning Glories likes to play with time while throwing some genuinely large questions towards you. A little unlike Lost, however, it tempers those questions with a lot of answers and forward movement - the gift of learning from the mistakes of the past, and from telling the story in a medium that allows for (and sometimes demands) a foreseeable end point that is not dependant on the whims of executives. It’s another glorious bonus about comic books - if you can manage enough interest to keep you floating for the amount of time you need, there’s no one who can tell you what to do. It’s also a huge pitfall to comics - sometimes, when there’s no one to tell you what to do, you fall prey to the more self-indulgent parts of your creative nature. Some creators get lost in that balance, and even though it was (and I suppose is) his first ongoing project, Nick Spencer has avoided the trap of becoming too self indulgent. The story and characters always come first, and the plot moves at a nice brisk pace. Even in the midst of the series’ second arc, when each issue focused on an individual character, there was enough forward propulsion to make the book seem vital. And even now at issue 16, we’re being treated to more and more actual answers, even as bigger questions continue to unspool themselves.

The main thrust of the issue follows Casey’s escape attempt along side Miss Hodge - and the nice little logic loop it forms was quite nicely done, and well pulled off. As with other issues in this series, we see some pages reused from old stories - not a problem considering we got 32 pages of story here for a scant $2.99. Plus, the art is all done by the incomparable Joe Eisma, who continues to amaze. His work looks a lot like Adrian Alphona’s who I still miss dearly (along with my beloved Runaways), but with his own, more personal flourishes. The combined efforts of the creative team makes the book a consistant joy to read - and if you’re behind on it, like I used to be (and still am) with Lost, I would suggest that you give it a try. It’s fun and frustrating (in the very best ways) and you’re almost certain to enjoy it. (B)

This is Comics! The Blog. We now commence our broadcast week.