Vibe1-19:30 a.m., February 20th, 2013:

“…Okay, I’m heading to the day job, Amanda. We’ll head to the comic store when I get home, okay?”

“Cool! I’m bummed that Hellblazer‘s closing out, but at least Geoff Johns has a couple of books coming out today!”

“Um… he has one new book. Justice League of America. Which looks pretty interesting, except for… Vibe.”

“Actually, Johns also has the first issue of Vibe’s solo comic coming – ”

“NO! There is no Vibe solo book!”

“But Rob,” Amanda said, “Geoff Johns is a pro at rebooting characters that people have forgotten. And – ”

“I have never forgotten Vibe,” I hissed, “I bought issues of Justice League Detroit when I was 15 years old. And I don’t need Geoff Johns to reboot Vibe, because Vibe already made me reboot. In the sense that once I read those issues, I booted. And when I reread them, I rebooted.”

“Rob,” she said, “It’s been 28 years. Don’t you think it’s time you gave the character, and more importantly, Geoff Johns, a chance?”

“Never!” I cried. “With God as my witness, Vibe will not be a part of my weekly take tonight!”

——–

…and I was right. In the sense that, since Amanda, having a day off her day gig when I didn’t, went to my local comic store, where they know me by name, and ask me to stop telling the female paying clientele that their vibrators cause cancer because they are “part Vibe,” picked up the issue on her own and wrote it a damn fine review. But I am as good as my word, which means that I have obtained this week’s take – sans Vibe – and which further means that this…

new_comics_2_20_2013

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But even putting Vibe aside, this is a pretty solid-looking take, no? We’ve got Johns’s Justice League of America, the final issue of Vertigo’s Hellblazer (which I think Amanda and I will both have comments about in the near future), a new issue of Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man, Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key: Omega, a new Saga, Matt Wagner’s The Shadow: Year One, and a bunch of other good stuff! Good stuff that’s (mostly) Vibe-free!

But in order to discuss any of them, we need time to read them (and to sober up after our drunken, Vibe-related argument). So until those things happen…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Vibe1-1Vibe #1 drops into stores today and, if you’re like many of my LCS’s core demographic, you responded with a polite, “That’s nice”, blinked nonchalantly, and then went looking for Hellblazer #300 because you are a SERIOUS PERSON, GODDAMMIT and that the LAST REAL JOHN CONSTANTINE ISSUE before DC further neuters him and…went on to some post traumatic whimpering before finally pulling yourself together to look through the spoils of this week’s stack. Turns out, once you put your wailing and gnashing of teeth over the the Constantine thing aside and read Geoff Johns and Andrew Kreisburg’s Vibe, it’s actually pretty good.

If you are like many casual, or perhaps not even so casual, comics readers, unless you were a fan of Justice League Detroit in the 80s your only real brush with Vibe was in cameos on the television show Justice League Unlimited and on Cartoon Network’s DC Nation shorts. Behold:

Yeah, you’d take that character seriously too. And, you wouldn’t be alone in your opinion. The original Vibe was killed off by J. M. DeMatteis to try and cap the end of the JLD era and George Pérez disliked Vibe so much that he refused to draw anything more than Vibe’s legs falling off a panel in the mega crossover JLA/Avengers – and Pérez knows a thing or two about teen superheroes.

So, why does this new iteration of Vibe work?

Warning – Ahead there be spoilers!

comedian_5_cover_2013Editor’s Note: And one last review of the comics of 2/13/2013 before the comic stores open with the new books…

I had sworn to myself that I was gonna stop reviewing Comedian by writer Brian Azzarello and artist J. G. Jones, because after just two issues I knew it wasn’t working for me, and even that damnation with faint disappointment was only possible when the book wasn’t actively pissing me off.

From the beginning, Azzarello has made Comedian a story where Watchmen continuity is optional on a good day, where consistency of character with any prior depiction of Edward Blake was problematic, and where Azzarello seemed less interested in telling a story about The Comedian than he did in telling a story about shit that happened in the 1960s where The Comedian happened to be. Sure, The Comedian was an active part of the story, but it wasn’t so much about him; imagine Mad Men if Don Draper was selling anti-Kennedy ads to Donald Segretti, or if he was running a pro-segregation focus group with James Earl Ray as a member: all of Mad Men‘s elements are there, but it ain’t really a story about a conflicted advertising executive anymore, is it?

That tendency continues in Comedian #5, which, as per this book’s norm, is less a story about The Comedian than it is a story about Vietnam and My Lai, where The Comedian just happens to be. Which, again, I’ve learned to expect from this comic book, and which is something that I didn’t think needed further reviewing. However, Azzarello added one thing to this books that boiled my blood. It’s not much – just two words – but to my mind, it put a stamp on the book stating Azzarello’s intentions toward the book, and it’s a check that the series just doesn’t cash. And while there’s a possibility that I’m wrong, and that those two words might just be a simple Easter Egg to observant readers or maybe a nod to placing Comedian into a Wold Newton-style shared universe, it blew me out of the book as effectively as would have seeing Blake throwing the meat to Trudy Campbell. Or even Pete Campbell.