MattBrady
05-12-2003, 06:30 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/DC/league.jpg" width="185" height="285" align="right" border="0">by Michael Sangiacomo
This column is about three very different leagues of extraordinary gentlemen (and ladies.) The fifth and penultimate issue of the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Wildstorm/America’s Best Comics/DC, $3.50) is an occasion for both sadness and joy. Joy because Alan Moore’s story about a group of disparate fictional heroes of the Victorian era is just so amazing and sad because it’s coming to an end.
The Martians of H.G. Well’s War of The Worlds have attacked. The Earth and rivers run red with blood and Martian dreck as the league members fight among themselves or love each other into oblivion. In addition, Moore gives eight tightly written text pages of “TheNew Traveller’s Almanac,” a weird guide to strange lands that we’ve heard about in fables, stories and songs. The last issue should come out just about the time of the release of the film version of the League starring Sean Connery.
UNCANNY X-MEN
Speaking of films, as of this writing, the second X-Men movie had pulled in $155 million bucks its first weekend. That’s pretty darn impressive. With all this attention being paid to the X-Men and to Nightcrawler it’s about time that Marvel fixed that weird, wonky storyline that expects us to accept that Nightcrawler had become a priest.
When it was announced last year that he had somehow been ordained a priest in the six months between issues, the whole thing seemed fishy. No one is ordained a priest in any legitimate religion after six months of training.
Granted, he never said he was a Roman Catholic priest, though I did get that impression. I don’t know about other religions, but Catholic priests get ordained after years in the seminary, seven if I remember my basic religion classes. It’s not like he was a priest in Billy Bob’s Bible Belt Baptist Church and Bait Shop, he had a big old church building and the works.
Now, in Uncanny X-Men #423, (Marvel, 25 cents!) writer Chuck Austen cleans up the little untidy mess created by another writer. In the first part of two-part story, “Holy War,” Nightcrawler realizes that something’s funky with his liturgical memories. Glad to see that little piece of X-weirdness taken care of in a logical fashion.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/DC/jsa_cvr.jpg" width="185" height="285" align="left" border="0">JSA ALL STARS
It’s no surprise that the last of the three league comics is JSA All Stars #1, one of the best books of the week. This one opens with JSA leader Sand trying to convince the new Icicle to change his evil ways and join the good guys, but as the villain puts it, “I already belong to a team.”
Which is a cue for a rescue by Solomon Grundy and the Injustice Society.
But it’s all a set-up for a major league bad guy named Legacy who has it in for the five remaining members of the original JSA: Flash, Hawkman, Sentinel (Green Lantern), Wildcat and the Spectre. David Goyer and Geoff Johns team up to write the main story of the eight-issue mini-series. Back up solo stories will be written by some pretty impressive people including Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon and the story and art team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.
It’s gonna be a good summer. And fall.
Michael Sangiacomo is a statewide news reporter for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. His syndicated "Journey Into Comics" weekly column on the state of the comic book business, can be found in newspapers and at the Newsarama website. His monthly comic book column appears the first Saturday of each month in the Plain Dealer Arts page and is syndicated through Newhouse Newspapers. He also writes a twice-monthly audiobooks review column covering crime thrillers and mysteries that can be seen at <a href="http://www.audiobookstoday.com" target="_blank">www.audiobookstoday.com</a>. He currently is developing Nowhere Man for Marvel’s Epic imprint.
This column is about three very different leagues of extraordinary gentlemen (and ladies.) The fifth and penultimate issue of the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Wildstorm/America’s Best Comics/DC, $3.50) is an occasion for both sadness and joy. Joy because Alan Moore’s story about a group of disparate fictional heroes of the Victorian era is just so amazing and sad because it’s coming to an end.
The Martians of H.G. Well’s War of The Worlds have attacked. The Earth and rivers run red with blood and Martian dreck as the league members fight among themselves or love each other into oblivion. In addition, Moore gives eight tightly written text pages of “TheNew Traveller’s Almanac,” a weird guide to strange lands that we’ve heard about in fables, stories and songs. The last issue should come out just about the time of the release of the film version of the League starring Sean Connery.
UNCANNY X-MEN
Speaking of films, as of this writing, the second X-Men movie had pulled in $155 million bucks its first weekend. That’s pretty darn impressive. With all this attention being paid to the X-Men and to Nightcrawler it’s about time that Marvel fixed that weird, wonky storyline that expects us to accept that Nightcrawler had become a priest.
When it was announced last year that he had somehow been ordained a priest in the six months between issues, the whole thing seemed fishy. No one is ordained a priest in any legitimate religion after six months of training.
Granted, he never said he was a Roman Catholic priest, though I did get that impression. I don’t know about other religions, but Catholic priests get ordained after years in the seminary, seven if I remember my basic religion classes. It’s not like he was a priest in Billy Bob’s Bible Belt Baptist Church and Bait Shop, he had a big old church building and the works.
Now, in Uncanny X-Men #423, (Marvel, 25 cents!) writer Chuck Austen cleans up the little untidy mess created by another writer. In the first part of two-part story, “Holy War,” Nightcrawler realizes that something’s funky with his liturgical memories. Glad to see that little piece of X-weirdness taken care of in a logical fashion.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/DC/jsa_cvr.jpg" width="185" height="285" align="left" border="0">JSA ALL STARS
It’s no surprise that the last of the three league comics is JSA All Stars #1, one of the best books of the week. This one opens with JSA leader Sand trying to convince the new Icicle to change his evil ways and join the good guys, but as the villain puts it, “I already belong to a team.”
Which is a cue for a rescue by Solomon Grundy and the Injustice Society.
But it’s all a set-up for a major league bad guy named Legacy who has it in for the five remaining members of the original JSA: Flash, Hawkman, Sentinel (Green Lantern), Wildcat and the Spectre. David Goyer and Geoff Johns team up to write the main story of the eight-issue mini-series. Back up solo stories will be written by some pretty impressive people including Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon and the story and art team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.
It’s gonna be a good summer. And fall.
Michael Sangiacomo is a statewide news reporter for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. His syndicated "Journey Into Comics" weekly column on the state of the comic book business, can be found in newspapers and at the Newsarama website. His monthly comic book column appears the first Saturday of each month in the Plain Dealer Arts page and is syndicated through Newhouse Newspapers. He also writes a twice-monthly audiobooks review column covering crime thrillers and mysteries that can be seen at <a href="http://www.audiobookstoday.com" target="_blank">www.audiobookstoday.com</a>. He currently is developing Nowhere Man for Marvel’s Epic imprint.