Comics of July 4, 2018

For any American readers, Happy Independence Day. To the rest of you, happy new comic day. So this past weekend, I swam three 200m butterflies, all negative split, all in a 50m pool, and two of them were within 20 minutes of each other. Still had enough energy after that for an aggressive 200m individual medley. I think it’s safe to say that I’m on the right track with improving my general fitness. But enough about that – it’s time to talk about comics.

The comics I picked up this week include Avengers 4, Star Wars 50, The Man Of Steel 6 and I Hate Fairyland 20. Here are my first impressions.

Avengers 4 is fun. I won’t say much else about it because I’m pretty sure I’ve missed a couple issues somewhere. I have a minor complaint with She-Hulk’s portrayal as well – if this is supposed to take place after her recent solo run, then she should be in full control of her hulk form and she should be retaining her full intelligence. Yet she’s basically talking like classic Hulk, with short sentences and talking in third person. Apart from that, this comic is good.

Star Wars 50 is great. This double-sized anniversary issue continues where the last issue left off, with the Rebel fleet gaining huge numbers thanks to a couple recent deals. That said, they’ve fallen into a trap – one that doesn’t look good for the rebellion as a whole. All of this being orchestrated by Darth Vader and as revealed in the last issue, a possibly reluctant queen. This feels like the perfect way to celebrate this series’ 50^th issue. Star Wars fans will likely enjoy this series, and this is a good place to start.

The Man Of Steel 6 is decent. To sum up this 6-issue miniseries as a whole, the first issue was good, but then it continually went downhill up to issue 4. This issue is better than anything in this miniseries but the first issue. It’s nice how the comic actually explains what’s been so vaguely touched on so far. But the fact that it took this long to get good again concerns me about Bendis’s run on the title. I hesitate to recommend this to Superman fans, and I’m not sure if I’m going to read his run or not. I might give it a couple issues, but I haven’t decided yet. This miniseries feels more like a teaser than it does an actual story, and that might not be a good sign.

I Hate Fairyland 20 concludes this consistently entertaining creator-owned series by Scottie Young. After being bestowed massive powers by the Fairyland council, Gertrude fights the dark Cloud Queen in an epic struggle. After that, the comic suggests that Gertrude actually learned something from this overall experience, at least to the point where she’s manipulating the council into letting her finally leave fairyland. As with the rest of this series, this issue is boundlessly creative in its use of fairytale cursing like “mother fluffer” and “piece of flip”. I won’t spoil the ending, but it feels just right for a character like Gertrude. In short, you should read this series.