Batman #701 (DC)

Grant Morrison (writer), Tony Daniel (artist).

Like Wonder Woman and Superman, Batman hit a milestone number last month with issue number seven hundred. Unlike those the other two books, which are currently going through controversial “new directions,” it’s business as usual in the pages of Batman. And that’s not a bad thing- for several years now, Grant Morrison’s work on the Bat-books has been consistently excellent, and it’s rapidly becoming one of those character-defining runs like Garth Ennis had on The Punisher and Mark Gruenwald had on Captain America. With this issue, Morrison and artist Tony Daniel begin “R.I.P.: The Missing Chapter,” which promises to fill in the blanks left between “Batman: R.I.P.” and Final Crisis, and hopefully to answer a few questions about the nebulous Doctor Hurt- a character who has been implied to be either the late Thomas Wayne or The Devil, or possibly both. Amazingly, that’s nowhere near the strangest character Morrison has come up with.

Batman #701 is a good comic, but I’d wager it would fairly indecipherable to anyone unfamiliar with Morrison’s previous work on the title. You really need to have read “R.I.P.” and “Final Crisis” to have even the most basic idea of what’s going on, and to get the full effect it wouldn’t hurt to currently be picking up Batman and Robin and Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. If you’ve read all those books, this is a good coda to some excellent stories, but this definitely isn’t a jumping on place for new readers.

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Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom #1 (Dark Horse)

Jim Shooter and Paul S. Newman (writers), Dennis Calero and Bob Fujitani (artists)

This issue marks the first of several planned revivals of classic Gold Key characters to be produced by Dark Horse comics. For those of you unfamiliar with the good doctor, Phillip Solar risked his life trying to save a colleague from a sabotaged radioactive experiment, but rather than dying a painful death, Solar somehow gained superhuman abilities. Donning a fancy red costume, Solar became the crime fighting Man of the Atom.

This is actually Doctor Solar’s third incarnation, having already been revived once by Valiant Comics about twenty years ago, in a treatment that reinvented many elements of the hero and cast him as the cornerstone of the Valiant universe (and creator of the spinoff Acclaim universe). This series (written by Valiant founder Jim Shooter) mostly returns the character to his Gold Key roots, though with the higher power levels of his Valiant incarnation. Shooter also updates the character a bit in subtle ways- the science behind Doctor Solar’s transformation is tweaked to reflect fifty years of technological progress, and both the Solar’s origin and powers seem to have been altered slightly to make him seem like a less Smurf-coloured Doctor Manhattan. Admittedly, it’s not a huge leap- Doctor Solar is incredibly similar to the character Manhattan was based on, Charleton’s Captain Atom- but it’s hard to escape the familiarity of a character who gets physically annihilated by an atomic experiment, then rebuilds himself from pure atomic matter and gains godlike powers in the process. At least Solar doesn’t share Manhattan’s sunny disposition- the Man of the Atom has a pretty grounded outlook on life, making him a more relatable (if less fascinating) hero.

This issue establishes Doctor Solar’s updated origin and establishes the series’ hook- in the process of gaining his powers, Solar made a slight alteration to recent history, which has had the unintended consequence of slightly destabilizing reality. In this case, that lack of stability has resulted in imaginary characters created by a science fiction writer to somehow manifest in reality, which if nothing else gives Solar someone to punch. As a special back up feature, this issue also reprints Doctor Solar’s first Gold Key appearance (by Paul Newman and Bob Fujitani), from way back in the halcyon days of October 1962.

While it’s cool to see a classic character like Doctor Solar brought back for a new generation of readers to enjoy, this comic is actually fairly bland. There’s nothing really wrong with Shooter’s story, but it also does nothing to hook me and make me want to check out the next issue. Likewise, Dennis Calero’s artwork just doesn’t do it for me, varying in quality almost page by page- at times it’s quite good, but other times looks rushed and uneven.  I don’t know…check this one out if you have a few bucks to spare, but don’t make it a huge priority, unless you’re absolutely enraptured with the character.

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Doctor Who Annual 2010 (IDW)

Jonathan L. Davis, Matthew Dow Smith, Al Davison and Tony Yee (writers), Kelly Yates, Smith and Davison (artists)

Though I’m a relative newcomer to the Doctor Who franchise, I’ve quickly become a convert, thanks to both the brilliant newer show and reruns of the original episodes airing on BBC Canada. It’s a brilliant property that perfectly balances between the goofy and the deadly serious, with elements of comedy, drama, action and horror. What really draws me to the Doctor Who mythos is the unique sense of humour that pervades virtually all the series’ incarnations, which can go from slapstick to deliciously macabre with the drop of a hat. The Doctor himself is one of the most compelling and remarkably fleshed out characters in all of modern fiction, a deeply complex protagonist whose adventures take him through one of the most fascinating universes in the history of science fiction. Or, put simply, the Doctor is the only character I can think of that’s even more awesome than Batman.

This annual features a quartet of stories about the Tenth Doctor (the one played by fan-favourite David Tennant), most of them focusing on the Doctor’s unique relationship with his time- and space-ship the TARDIS. The best of the four is the opening tale, which involves the Doctor facing an inquiry by a purported interstellar traffic safety officer. It’s completely in the spirit of the best Doctor Who serials, taking a goofy concept but treating it with enough seriousness to ask some clever moral questions about the Doctor’s adventures. Plus, there’s a space panda. The third story, “To Sleep Perchance to Scream” is also excellent, a trippy story with a very European flair, vaguely reminiscent of the works of Moebius.

Like many Annuals done as anthologies, there’s nothing too groundbreaking or unforgettable in this comic, but it’s a fun little diversion, especially for readers who are already Doctor Who fans. The artwork is nice and the stories are punchy- shame about that eight dollar price tag though. Even at 48 pages, that’s a rather steep price, and likely to drive a lot of readers away from a good comic book. What a pity.

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Scott Pilgrim vol. 6- Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (Oni Press)

Bryan Lee O’Malley (writer and artist).

Just a few short weeks before the Scott Pilgrim hits the big screen, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s unlikely hero appears in this sixth and final volume of his comic book adventures. In Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, our hero prepares to battle the last of his girlfriend Ramona’s seven evil exes. It may all be for not though, as Ramona has taken a powder, Scott band the Sex Bob-ombs has broken up and he’s stuck sponging off his parents for rent money.

Now admittedly, I’m pretty much the exact target demographic for a comic about a twenty-something guy from Toronto with financial issues and delusions of musical talent, and who dates girls with ex-boyfriend issues- frankly, that’s a pretty good synopsis of my life. But even if you’re not a citizen of the Big Smoke, there’s a lot to love about Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour. There’s action, comedy and romance in roughly equal amounts, all told in O’Malley’s inimitable style that clearly comes out of hundreds of hours spent playing “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Ninja Gaiden”. With the complete series now available, now is the perfect time to read Scott Pilgrim from beginning to end.

And that’s really how Scott Pilgrim needs to be read- this isn’t a series you can pick up half way through and expect to follow along. Even with a recap page at the beginning of each volume, and a happy relationship flowchart in book three, you’ll be lost quickly unless you start from volume one (or cheat and read the synopses on Wikipedia). If you’re a fan or manga or video games, or a Torontonian like myself, the entire Scott Pilgrim series is a must read, and Finest Hour is exactly what the title claims, ending the series on a high point that both satisfies the reader and paradoxically leaves you wanting more.

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Superman #701 (DC)

J. Michael Straczynski (writer), Eddy Barrows (artist).

Considering that Superman has been around for over seventy years now, you’d think that there’s enough history behind the character that he’d be fairly easy to write for at this point, but somehow Straczynski gets it about as wrong as can be. In the first part of the “Grounded” storyline, the Man of Steel has decided to walk across America, trying to reconnect with humanity. Of course, Superman is only disconnected from mankind because Straczynski says he is- you’d think that the most enduring icon in the entire comic book medium has a certain connection with readers that would rely on him being at least somewhat relatable. You’d also think that Superman- an immigrant raised by a farm couple in the heart of middle America- would be about as down-to-Earth (so to speak) as a guy with godlike power could be. But Straczynski needed pathos, so he pulled something out of thin air, with little or no regard to the character’s history or defining personality traits.

Now, one issue of Superman walking around might have been fun if it was done in an over-the-top Silver Age kind of way, but there isn’t a trace of irony in Stracyzynski’s script. Superman just goes around helping people fix their broken cars and cleaning up messy stockrooms, and eventually takes several hours out of his life (and six pages of this comic) to talk a woman out of committing suicide. This scene in particular sticks in my craw, because it’s directly comparable to All-Star Superman #10, which may be the greatest single comic book I’ve ever read, and is without a doubt the best Superman story of all time. In that issue of All-Star Superman, our hero also stops a girl from committing suicide, and it takes him all of two panels and twenty five words, in one of the most powerful sequences I’ve ever seen- not just in comics, mind you, but in any medium. In the rest of that issue, over the course of less than a day Superman flies a school bus full of sick children around Egypt to sightsee, creates a miniaturized universe to observe, maps out his own DNA, stops a monorail from crashing, fights a giant robot that’s holding Lois Lane captive, relocates the Bottle City of Kandor to the surface of Mars, visits Lex Luthor in prison and develops a cure for cancer- all this while he’s slowly dying from solar radiation poisoning.

The power behind the scene in All-Star Superman is in the fact that with all the epic feats that Superman performs, he still takes the time out to save one girl’s life in her hour of need. But Superman still does those epic things, because he’s Superman, and that’s kind of his job. To steal a cliché from Spider-Man, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Not so for Straczynski’s Superman- with his great power apparently comes a whole lot of navel-gazing. You can’t help but wonder how many people in the DC Universe died in plane crashes, volcanoes and extra-dimensional invasions while Superman was wandering around quoting Thoreau at people walking their dogs.

Reading Superman as Straczynski portrays him is like listening to a Jimi Hendrix album where Hendrix ditched his guitar and declared from now on he would only play the kazoo. It’s a maddening waste of talent and ability, that for me at least is incredibly off-putting. Why anyone would want to read about this story is completely beyond me.