Mixed Plate Comics- Week of 5.25.11

How freaking sick was it of JJ Abrams and the rest of his BadRobot team to include a surprise prelude story for Super 8 in random DC books this week?!  Really appreciated how they even went retro by making the cover and logo represent the 60's stylee of DC/National Comics.  Here are the fly reads that kept my urbangeek in check:  Gotham City Sirens  #23 / Action Comics #901 / Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Lost Command #5 /  Green Lantern #66 / Secret Avengers #13 / Green Lantern Corps #60 / FF #5 / Secret Warriors #27 / Detective Comics #877 / Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #10 and the best of em go like this...

5     Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Lost Command #5  W. Haden Blackman & Rick Leonardi

Blackman is the man when it comes to delving deep into the corrupt, haunted psyche of the Sith Lord, Darth Vader.  Like the highly successful one-shot, Purge-- that follows the film, Revenge of the Sith-- this read shows us how Vader continues to be haunted of his greatest love/loss, Padme.  In this final ish, Vader  
escapes captivity from his betrayal of Captain Shale.  After killing off Shale, Vader stalks the mystic Lady Saro and her lover the missing son of Grand Moff Tarkin- Garoche.  

Saro uses Vader's weakness of Padme-- sharing how her & Tarkin share a love and unborn child similar to what he had and letting them escape could help with the nightmare of his past.

We see a glimmer of hope that Vader may allow such until he uses the force to crush all of them together by bringing surrounding walls and the environment down on them to die.

Vader awakens to his Emperor in a healing chamber and the ambiguity of whether he was relieved of being alive or preferred death by his own hand with the cursed lovers leaves us gasping for the next Darkhorse book on the demented Sith Lord.  Leonardi's simplistic art does wonders and reels you into the characters of this very emotional, action-packed conclusion.

4   Green Lantern Corps  #60  Tony Bedard & Tyler Kirkham

In part 8 of War of the Green Lanterns, Indigo Lantern Stewart and Blue Lantern Rayner continue their mission of helping to free GL Mogo from the grip of Parallax.

As the duo work to familiarize themselves with their newfound powers on the fly while battling hundreds of GLs-- Stewart begins to see that their attempt at freeing Mogo is futile from is futile.  Thousands of tainted GL power rings are sent out by the second for new recruits from the massive Planet and heart of the GLC.

Rayner tries to cleanse Mogo with the power of Hope sending in a construct of Bzzd.  It looks to help but instead we see the shadow of Blackest Night return with Black Lantern aura being emitted from Mogo.  Hope is lost and Stewart only sees more death.  In a jaw dropping, geeky-fly sequence-- Krona seems to push Stewart over the edge as he hones the "deadliest weapon" of the power of the Black Lantern and creates an ill construct of a sniper-cannon.

Mogo RIP.

ps. DC Direct or Mattel, please make us an Indigo Tribe camo-fatigued Stewart with a big ass Black Lantern sniper rifle construct, while you are at it make a variant of him as a Black Lantern zombie, thx!

3   FF  #5  Jonathan Hickman & Barry Kitson
Whats worse than dealing with an arrogant, genius plotting to make everything right at the expense of whoever and whatever amongst various timestreams and the multiverse...well how about 4 of em.  For the sake of setting up the context, lets just call them the Reeds.

And so we are back to the meeting of geniuses on how to defeat Reed Richards-- chaired by Val, Reed and Doom.  Funny ass shit going on here between Diablo, Doom, Reed and the rest of the group-- explaining that not only are these Reeds more resourceful, less "soft" and experienced-- to the extent that they brain-bang every Doom in their worlds to be a walking veggie (yeah, Doom retracts that whole statement of liking those Reeds now).  Everyone around the table, including the Watcher and High Evolutionary realize that these Reeds are gonna bring some serious pain to their realities and beyond. 

Kitson just rocks the illest-rations in this bangin' book.

Spidey, Sue Storm and Alex Powers finish eating up their sandos and respond to a distress call in Old Atlantis.  On their arrival in black fatigues (kinda sets the mood that they are also in for some ruckus) they battle it out with some big ole roach-thingies and are bombarded by a crapload of villians that are being led by one of those diabolical Reeds...uh-oh!


2  Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #10   Peter Tomasi & Fernando Pasarin
In the second to the last ish of War of the Green Lanterns, Guy and Hal get their chance for a great escape from the clutches of Krona and his band of entity-Guardians-- thanks to planet-slayer (yes, Xanshi and now Mogo) John Stewart.

With the death of Mogo creating a mind-numbing affect on all of the GLs, including Krona and the Guardians-- Hal & Guy seize the moment by freeing Ganthet--who then supes em up like a Nerd candy box with two different ring flavors each to help balance the power struggle against the GLC and free Parallax from the main GL power core.

The Emerald Warriors are able to bust it, restore themselves and the rest of the GLC to be ridden of the Yellow impurity (a nice ode to the GL mythos of the past) and just in time to come together as a unit to faceoff against Krona, a muzzled-up Parallax and the rest of the entity-infused Guardians.  Damn this mini-event is gooooood!!!!


1  Green Lantern #66    Geoff Johns & Doug Mahnke

Right before all of that happening, we get to see a preview of how the Entity-possessed Guardians fare in battle against Sinestro Corps Hal and Red Lantern Guy.

As you can see from the pic well, they didn't do so well.

Krona prepares to mummify-up the GL odd couple which is cool as it somewhat touches on how, why the Guardians end up becoming Yoda-ish (small and impish, yeah I read and watch Game of Thrones- so what?).  Johns and DM serve up a sick flashback setting of Sinestro that shows how each of the New Guardians are struggling against Lyssa Draak in her Book of the Black. 

We see Manhunters, a mad, panel sequence of Sinestro's history and all of a sudden he is jailmates with Indigo-- who as it was foreshadowed with now Indigo Black Hand -- are a bunch of ex-cons.  Coolio!  Sinestro is stopped short by Krona who closes the book, literally on him and begins the ancient bandaid process of creating his new bros-in-arms to oversee the Universe.  Yeah, we already know how that doesn't happen but shit, what a crazy ass week to be a hardcore GL fan.

Ah, let me clear my throat...

This post was written by:
big O