Comics I Bought: July 31, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got no new comics. Slow week. So I looked around and found a couple of hardcovers to get.

Green Lantern "Will World" - (on sale for $7.50)

The Incredible Hercules "Against the World" (Just because I wanted to check it out)

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Squadron Supreme - The Pre-War Years by J. Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank

Modern comics can be a real mess. I don't know what the creators are thinking sometimes. I read one other volume of Straczynski's Squadron Supreme a few years ago and I remember finding it interesting if flawed. This volume I just found flawed.

As with a lot of modern comics which have "decompressed" storytelling not a lot happens early on. The entire first issue (and there are only five of them in this volume) is devoted to introducing the team. Nothing else happens. Stan Lee would have introduced the team in three pages (or just the splash page) and then gotten on with the story. No here. In this story military men sit around and discuss the team until they are finally introduced on the last page of issue one. No wonder new comic book series don't last very long. They always start so slowly nowadays.

But don't worry because first thing in issue two we are treated to a five page sequence of the Squad filling out paper work. Yes, you heard me right, filling out paperwork. What thrills, what excitement, what insight into the characters as they each approach filling out paperwork differently. Who thinks super heros filling out paperwork is a good story point? Crazy.

The rest of the book was not badly done but filled with stuff I've seen a thousand times before. The Squad are super powered but not really heroes, the US government is evil, terrorists are evil, half of the Squad is evil, fictional Mid-Eastern countries are evil, rape is evil, most people in general are evil, and there is pretty much no good in the Squadron Supreme world.

Then the story just ends right in the middle. I'd say the story isn't resolved but it's more a collection of events than a story. It's a good thing I only paid six bucks for this.