The first page of the comic is an interview column from a magazine called The Believer. Here we learn that Buddy Baker (AKA Animal Man) is not only a superhero, but also an actor and activist; a favorite among hipsters, so claims the interviewer.

The following pages depict Buddy Baker’s home life and interaction with his family, which in some ways is reminiscent of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible. Here, more emphasis is placed on Buddy Baker the husband and father than his crime-fighting alter ego.

Animal Man takes a twist pretty quickly from being a lighthearted story about a regular guy struggling to balance home life, fame and crime fighting, to that of a dark, disturbing mystery.

It also became one of my favorite comics of all time.

Animal Man issues 2 and 3 have since been released and have remained engaging. There is a certain menacing feeling that permeates the story, and it seems that there will be some tie-ins with Swamp Thing.

I regret having missed out on the Grant Morrison run and perhaps I will catch up on that series sometime. But for now I could not be happier with the treatment writer Jeff Lemire is giving this revived title.

Animal Man #1 ”The Hunt Part 1: Warning from the Red”  was written by Jeff Lemire, illustrated by Travel foreman and inked by Dan Green and Travel Foreman.

However I do shoot arrows once or twice a week, both in a local indoor league, and at an outdoor range with a nice view of Lake Michigan and downtown Chicago. I shoot an Olympic style recurve bow. None of my arrows concuss, nor do they allow the control of boats; those are green arrows. My arrows are pretty straight-forward: they put holes in targets. Before we get to issue #1 “Living a Life of Privilege”, let’s talk about archery. To grossly oversimplify, the world of archery is divided into two camps – people that shoot targets, and people that shoot animals. Although I don’t get sad when people shoot animals (responsibly of course), I’m in the target camp. Target archery is all about repetition and repetition (see what I did there?). You stand the same way, draw the bow the same length, anchor the nock of the arrow in the same place, and get really good at not gripping your bow all tight. Because you know the exact distance to the target, it’s possible to adjust a bow sight to give you accurate shots, as long as all your repetitive motions are exactly the same every time.

Hunting is an entirely different skill set. You don’t know where your target is going to be. The repetition is still key, but now you have to adjust the angle of the shot based on your estimate of the distance. Hunters still use sights, but they’ll usually have multiple pins in them that represent different distances. Obviously, Green Arrow is a hunter, not a target shooter, he eschews sights altogether though, and just magically shoots arrows real good, as seen in the panel of Ollie blasting a computer-hackery arrow. Yes, some of his arrows hack computers.

So, how do you hit stuff if you don’t use a sight? Well there are two schools of thought there. One method uses the tip of the arrow as a sight. You anchor the nock of the arrow in the same place (typically under the chin), and then put the tip of the arrow a few feet below what you want to hit. It’s awkward at first, but it actually works very well. The second way, which I’ve never actually seen done outside of movies and Green Arrow #1, is to sight down the shaft of the arrow.

It seems to make sense to sight down the arrow, but in practice it just is not sustainable. There are ‘instinctive’ archers that don’t use sights, nor the tip of the arrow as a sight, they just build a lot of muscle memory that allows them to put the arrow where they want to, so we’ll assume that Oliver Queen is one of those. That said – if Oliver wants to seriously impress the nerd-archer set, he should consider anchoring his shot underneath his chin like a professional. His over under finger grip is reasonable, except that typically you use two fingers on the bottom and one on top, rather than just two fingers total. Of course bows and arrows are not a science, they are an art – so if Green Arrow wants to shoot like he’s in a movie, go for it. Don’t let Archery Haters get you down GA.

What about his bow? It’s pretty sweet – it starts out as a big old timey telephone,

Then expands into a compound bow that looks like a recurve bow,

The advantage to a compound bow (think, Dukes of Hazzard bow), is that the amount of force you use to pull it back tapers off to the point of being tremendously easy to hold at full draw. The cam system also allows the arrow to go super-duper fast. It is the typical choice of hunters, as it is a favor to the animal to make your arrow go super fast and hit pretty hard. The advantage of recurve bows is that they look way more badass, but are harder to pull back. I am a fan of recurve bows, largely because I am a fan of Lord of the Rings. Oliver likes the look of a recurve, but wants to make sure his arrows go super fast, plus it needs to be small enough to shrink down into a telephone thing. I would really like to have a technological super bow that stows away in my backpack. Just last week while stringing my bow, I didn’t get the string on there quite right, and only realized it a moment before my bow gave everyone at the range a physics lesson by completely exploding all over the place. It was terrifying. No one was hurt, but everyone looked at me like a bow had just exploded in my hand.

Anyway, bow safety aside, what does Green Arrow do with his green arrows? He fights bad guys. Why does he do this? Because he’s super rich? That is the only explanation I can gather from issue #1. He mentions some past event where something bad happened that he could have prevented, but didn’t. I guess that is what passes for back story so far. I can get behind the idea of a guy that does something, vaguely alludes to why he does it, but doesn’t exactly clear it up right away. I mean, Oliver is going to develop as a character over time, right? We don’t want to waste a whole issue #1 with his entire life story, right? Oliver is rich, he’s clearly modeled after a crime fighting Steve Jobs, just like Batman, and oh – a gazillion other rich crime fighters, perpetuating the myth that the only way we can prosper as a society is if rich white dudes enforce societal rules using a set of anachronistic weapons, working around the laws and systems that we, as a people, have agreed to abide by and rely on. Really though, a guy shooting green arrows is way cooler than people calling 911, or voting to maintain a healthy education system which encourages prosperity for all people, regardless of their economic background.

Yeah, a comic book about voting, about the everyday heroes that make our world possible, would just be… boring.

I had no idea what to expect out of this comic book, but approached it with an open mind and a bit of excitement. I have to admit that the visit from Superman during the first half of the book nearly ruined it for me as his cameo felt out-of-place. But the second half pulled me right back in. The stuff that happens at the archeological dig site is dark and should lead to an interesting story.

Yanic Paquette’s art does the series justice, but I will say his rendition of Superman could have used a bit of work…. he looks to have taken one too many punches to the face from Doomsday.

The issue is set “5 years ago” and opens with Batman being chased by the cops as he chases after an unnamed extraterrestrial villain. The Green Lantern appears, meets Batman for the first time, and helps him out. After some typical Geoff Johns buddy-buddy dialog, Green Lantern and Batman head to Metropolis to see if Superman is connected to the alien they just chased down.

After all this time I still can not decide if I like Geoff Johns’ writing style. The stories Johns writes are often times entertaining, however the dialogue between heroes is often laced with bravado and I feel that it cheapens the story. Justice League #1 is no exception. At one point Batman steals the Green Lantern’s ring without him knowing it. A bit of dry-humor ensues and it is moments like this that make me feel as though Johns is giving a nod to the so-called fanboys, and this annoys me.
But in the end the small annoyances do not matter. I find myself coming back to Geoff Johns’ writing because it is fast paced and focuses more on characters than anything else.

Jim Lee’s art is as good as ever and Scott Williams inks enhance it nicely, just as the art serves to enhance the story itself.

Justice League #1 is a great jumping on point for new fans and a fun new take on the Justice League for those of us who have been around for a while.

In Batman Detective Comics #1, the Batman struggles to track down and stop the Joker who leaves a path of seemingly random murders in his wake. If it sounds like a typical Batman story, that’s because it is. However it is more intense, darker and exciting overall.

The Batman of this relaunched Universe seems like the same guy we have grown to know and love over the years (no more of that Thomas Wayne tripe we saw in Flashpoint). Batman is still a hardened detective, refrains from murder and hates the Joker.
The Joker introduced here is the same sociopath of the past, but ramped up. He is even more psychotic than the Heath Ledger version as seen in The Dark Knight. His wanton violence and senseless destruction make him feel more menacing, evil and unstoppable.

Detective Comics has somehow managed to feel familiar but fresh at the same time.

With The Justice League #1 and Action Comics #1 delivering equally strong and entertaining stories, I have to say that so far, I am happy with The New 52.

After my lengthy leave of absence from this blog and from comic books in general I decided to dive back in head first by reading every Flashpoint related comic that I could get my hands on. I am fairly certain I have the complete list (sixty-one issues) and I started reading them in close to their intended order.

After reading the 19th comic in the Flashpoint series, the realization that the timeline presented within is a fleeting one hit me, and I stopped caring. The intricacies of the events within Flashpoint simply do not matter and I am not too keen on reading through yet another multi-verse shattering epic that leaves timelines and continuity in tatters.
The novelty of these alternate Universes always wears off pretty quickly for me and I am left caring only about the outcome of the over-all story. It is not because I lack patience or dislike long stories. I just fail to see the point in delving into a number of stories and characters that will be erased by the end of the series. I suppose if the story was compelling enough I would be interested, but honestly Flashpoint was rather dull. And being that the Flashpoint event is meant to lead to a permanently simplified DC Universe, I’d rather not clutter up my head with a bunch of information that will soon be useless.

So anyway, there I was, 19 issues deep into Flashpoint. I had read mostly one-shots or part ones of various mini-stories, and that’s where I decided to give up and just get to the meat of the whole thing: Flashpoint itself. Five issues ending with an epic reboot of DC Comics… one they claim they will never revert. I went ahead and read the four-part Booster Gold story entitled Turbulence as well (issues 44 – 47) because it was a decent back up to the Flash’s story and tied in to the overall theme.

Geoff Johns did a pretty decent job with the main Flashpoint comic, although his cutesy, knowing-dialog between heroes still gets on my nerves. An example of this is in Flashpoint #3 when Batman grumbles and the Flash replies with “That’s the Batman ‘mmmrrr’ for saying something without saying something. Your son did it too. What is it?”. A small gripe perhaps, but it just sounds needlessly nostalgic.

By the end of Flashpoint I was a little surprised to see that the Flash seemed to have his memories kept intact since DC has claimed no trapdoors will exist, and I assumed this meant no characters would remember the original timeline.
Of course I could pick apart why it makes no sense that Thomas Wayne would become the Batman and a handful of other large plot-holes, but I feel this is not worth delving into since this was a temporary timeline. A quick distraction that leads us into a simplified Universe, less tangled by alternate realities and timelines.

1. ^[1] DC has said that The New 52 is not a reboot, but that it is a launch. Here is how they define the difference: “A reboot is typically a restart of the story or character that jettisons away everything that happened previously. This is a new beginning which builds off the best of the past.” ↩

Artist Cliff Chiang just posted to the Threadless blogs regarding his recently designed and printed Threadless Tee, Every Night I Have the Same Dream, Issue 3, Vol. 1.

Besides the interesting behind the scenes perspective on his design process, he also tells us about an easter egg of sorts on the shirt:

“If you scan the codes, they actually say “Threadless” and “Chiang”!”

Pretty cool stuff, and the shirt is rad too.

This comic book trend that Threadless has been on pleases me. Last week they released four shirts which are tied together through a story written by Jill Thompson entitled “Every Night I Have the Same Dream”. The shirts feature art by Jill Thompson, Tony Moore, Cliff Chiang and Art Baltazar.

I haven’t wanted to write. I simply haven’t felt inspired. I had overwhelmed myself by reading too many comic books. In fact my hobby had become a chore, and once a hobby becomes a chore, it’s time for that hobby to die.

However my love for comics wouldn’t die, and I suspect it never will. I thought long and hard about deleting this blog. Overtime it had become a den of negativity. Post after post I complained like a whiny fanboy and praised only a handful of titles. Although I stand by my tastes I found myself wishing I had spent less time complaining and more time talking about the titles which truly deserve to be talked about.

So I decided to come back and write once more, but still I was uninspired. I felt as though I needed the right thing to come along and bonk me on the head. Something that would rejuvenate my love of comics and force me to write once more.

I absolutely did not expect my enthusiasm to be revived by a comic book written by a five year old boy.

Axe Cop is an amazing comic created and written by Malachai Nicolle, age 5 and features art by his brother Ethan Nicolle, age 29. The age difference and the fact that the two are brothers instantly sparked my interest.
Reading through the first issue I was reminded of my own comics which I wrote at a very young age, and now here I am, nearly Ethan’s age… and I feel like a kid again.

But beyond forcing me to long for my youth, Axe Cop is actually good. In fact it’s hilarious, and not in a malicious way. In many ways it is reminiscent of the Tick. From the black and white art to the heroes and villains that seem to poke fun at the cliché nature of comic books in general.

Of course the tongue in cheek humor really comes from the art of Malachai’s brother, Ethan. But the stories wouldn’t work if they weren’t written by a five year old. The real humor comes from seeing a child’s take on the world of super heroes. A world he seems to take seriously… but only as serious as a kid can really get: head-chopping plays just as big a role as candy canes, unicorn magic and killer robots.
I honestly have no complaint with this comic. It’s fun to read, makes me feel young again and left me wanting more.

Over time I’m confident more Axe Cop will be released, and I fully plan on reviewing each coming issue here.

All six issues are posted on the official Axe Cop site, however at the time of this writing the site’s account has been suspended due to an unexpected increase in traffic from Reddit. Thankfully someone uploaded all six pages to imgur. Once Axecop.com comes back up I’ll change these links to point to their rightful home.

A few more links related to Axe Cop

• Ethan Nicolle’s blog
• Axe Cop on twitter
• Information about Ethan’s solo project, Chumble Spuzz