Tell Me A Story. And Make It Good. – Review Of Teen Titans #1

Call me a pessimist, but after reading Scott Lobdell’s take on Starfire, Red Hood and Roy Harper in Red Hood And The Outlaws, I wasn’t entirely sure that Lobdell could write his own name correctly without the intervention of special education services. I mean, sure he’s been writing comics for over twenty years, but people also buy art made by zoo animals, so the fact that people kept buying his X-Men titles after Chris Claremont left Uncanny X-Men means they call Marvel fans Marvel Zombies for a reason places a, perhaps, suspect light on the buying habits of Joe Q. Public. However, I found myself pleasantly surprised by Teen Titans #1. Still, I’m going to proceed with caution; it’s just the first issue and we haven’t met all the players, yet.

Neither, Nor: All-Star Western #1 Review

I really wanted to like All-Star Western #1 because I was a big fan of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s Jonah Hex, and if you were too, great to meet you! I was wondering who the other one was!

If you were a western fan the way I am – by which I mean you think “western” means “starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Sergio Leone” – then Jonah Hex was about the perfect comic. The stories were solid shoot-’em-ups, set in the wilderness and the boomtowns of the still-unsettled west, filled with saloons, crooked lawmen, morally-questionable entrepreneurs, and filthy, gunslinging outlaws. They were stories where then Men were Men and the Women were Whores with Hearts of Gold and Groins of Chlamydia.

And at the center of it all was Jonah Hex: a bounty hunter with a face like Clint if Clint never bothered to get that thing on his lip looked at. Fast with a gun, implacable, unstoppable. A man of few words and fewer baths.

You know: a fucking western.

Alas, to my disappointment, Jonah Hex was canceled last month to make way for DC’s New 52 and replaced with All-Star Western. All-Star Western stars Jonah Hex. However, All-Star Western is no Jonah Hex.