Comic pulls for a week of 3-15

Let’s kick things off with Batgirls. It’s a nice little one-shot which is a good change of pace after the somewhat have your story arc we just finished. There’s some familiar Batman villains in it… in fact there’s a lot of Batman imagery here. It’s almost as if the writer was reveling in the fact that they get to write a Batman book. Maybe not the Batman book, but at least a Batman book! The enthusiasm is fun. That’s really what has carried this series from the word go. Just how fun it is.

Over at Marvel, the Amazing Spider-Man declares itself to be the issue you’ve been waiting for. Well,  that’s not entirely true. It’s about half the issue that I’ve been waiting for. We’re starting to get into the flashbacks on what happened between Peter and Mary Jane, how we arrived at our current status quo. It’s taken long enough, but even then, you left me on another cliff hangar! Like seriously, just explain to me what’s going on and let me decide whether or not I like it. I know I praised this sort of reverse character development in World’s Finest, but to be fair, in that book…. the character development was for the supporting characters, not fundamental to the central continuity that you’re building. When you’re doing this with the main characters (which affects the entire story), then just dropping us into the middle of it….. it’s frustrating. I’m still gonna ride this out for at least one more issue… simply because I have to know what happened. So in that respect, I suppose it makes sense. You’re getting the sales… but you’re frustrating the fan.

Also a little frustrating is the fact that the best stuff Marvel’s putting out are these infinity comics like Alligator Loki! It’s still adorable, even this week with him looking at Venom and Carnage and thinking about how cool it would be to bond with a symbiote!

For the most part though, it was Star Trek week. Up the mainline Star Trek book, which is getting better by inches, they found their way into the dimension that the Klingon gods used to dwell in, and there’s some intrigue going on here. However, this brings Worf into conflict with Sisko, and Worf leaves… which brings us to Star Trek Defiant issue 1. This is a spin off of the main series, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. With the way that they are doing these jumbled patchwork crews, I almost feel like we would have been better off just running the series as a bunch of Minis, and picked up this Defiant book after the current run of Star Trek is over. The crew here is going to be B’elanna Torres from Voyager, Ambassador Spock, and for some inexplicable reason, Lore. The timing couldn’t be better though. Releasing this book at the same time that Picard is running is either really good timing, or really good luck. Worf is featured heavily on Picard in a covert role, much like what we’re seeing in the Defiant series, and a lot of that goodwill is going to spill over. We also saw previews with Brent Spiner in this final season of Picard and everybody assumed that Lore was coming back. Now that we know that the series is all about changelings, I’m reconsidering that suspicion, but it still got him back in the public consciousness, just in time to appear in this comic book. Well done.

The jewel of this stack though, is still Star Trek Resurgence. It concludes its story with issue 5 in a very moving way. It’s been a nice little self contained side adventure in one of my favorite eras. It didn’t go too far with fan service, but kept enough just keep me roped in and interested. I’m sad this series is over and I genuinely hope they’ll do another one. There doesn’t seem to be plans for it, But the game seems to be continuing on. Since I’m not attending Concoction this weekend, maybe I’ll scour YouTube to see if I can find a play-through to watch. I’ve really come to enjoy these characters. And isn’t that really the entire point of expanded universe, whether it’s for a television series or a game?

It’s been a good week for comics. It’s been a good week for Star Trek for that matter too! And what’s that? Superman and Lois is back? Well, I think I’d better head back to the living room and catch upon my television!

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