Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Sacks Of Men?

It is Wednesday, as it winds up being every week, no matter how loudly we pray on Fridays, or how little we remember our Saturdays. However, Wednesdays means two things: the beginning of the fatigue hysteria that will dog us until Friday night’s first beer, and more importantly: new comics! And not a moment too soon, given the generally disappointing nature of most of last week’s biggest books.

But, as Scarlett O’Hara – or perhaps Scarlett from G.I. Joe – said: “Tomorrow is another day… only today is tomorrow. Wait, what? Look, trails!” Either way, it means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there’s some good shit there, huh? We’ve got the first issue of Garth Ennis’s The Shadow, the opening of Scott Snyder’s Night of The Owls crossover Batman event, Jonathan Hickman’s second Manhattan Projects, and a ton of other good looking stuff!

But before we can review any of them, we gotta read them. So, as always: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Unctous Sodomites And Vain, Pampered Whores: The Shade #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And one last brief review of one of last week’s comics before the comic stores open…

Looking back over this past week’s reviews, it seems like there wasn’t very much I actually liked. Which is a bummer, but just the way things go sometimes; some weeks you get journeymen turning in inspired craftsmanship, others you get dillitanates who are fucking around in the medium for the sheer, lunatic thrill of it.

Thankfully, The Shade is no dillitante… and neither is writer James Robinson, who is continuing via The Shade miniseries to channel the closest to a Jack Knight Starman story that we are every likely to see again.

Robinson is just over halfway through this 12-issue miniseries with this issue, and yet amazingly, it is not a bad place to jump on if you haven’t been reading from the beginning. Yes, it is mid story – even mid ministory within the series, which recalls adventures from the title character’s past – but Robinson gives the reader a three page recap at the start of the book, in the middle of a fight, to bring us up to speed. Which is valuable, and the kind of thing that I like to see in comics – I prefer a book that I can pick up and follow without having to hunt up back issues or old trades – although I’ll admit that the sequence is dialogue-heavy exposition.