Comic Book Coffee Break #41

 Thanks or joining me on my Comic Book Coffee Break. Today I'm having Folger's Coffeehouse Blend with Irish Cream syrup.  Pretty good start.

Let's talk comic books. 

Marvel

This week I interviewed Alex Irvine for an upcoming episode of Howe's Things. I also sat in on the interview he was doing for Previously on X-Men, so I got to talk some Marvel with him as well. I really had a great time chatting with him, but I can't say the same thing for reading Iron Man: Rapture. It's a standalone, What-If kind of story and it just falls flat. However, I highly recommend his Daredevil: Noir.

Next, I picked up Generation X: Classic, V.1.  I'm inadvertently on a Scott Lobdell kick I guess. I read the Generation X novel he wrote with Elliot S! Maggin and was intrigued by the team so I decided to go to the source. The vibe is weird, but I really like the Banshee throws Emma Frost off of her game.  It works well to have this second branch of the Xavier school, and I like the showcase it gives to Jubilee.  I'm not sure that I will read it through to the end, but I do prefer it to Mutant X and New Mutants. I've read a lot of  X-Men offshoots lately, which reminds me that I need to get back to Exiles.

DC Comics

My New 52 Superman continues with Action Comics V.4, Hybrid; Superman V.4, Psi-War; Superboy V. 4, Blood & Steel, and Krypton Returns.  This is not a good bunch of comics. I remember at the time I was really excited about Andy Diggle taking over Action Comics.  I'd heard him speak of Superman in interviews and he seemed to get the thing that made Superman special.  Sadly, his tenure was only a few issues long.  And while it showed promise it was really about transitioning from the Grant Morrison era and didn't really have a chance to be it's own thing.  The rest of Hybrid and Psi-War make up this convoluted and ugly Hector Hammond story that is best forgotten. Weirdly, I kinda liked the Superboy volume.  That story got a little more grounded after the H'El on Earth storyline, only to be disrupted again and the messy retread that was Krypton Returns.  I was really hoping this reread would lead to me finding a new appreciation for this era, but so far my pereceptions haven't shifted even a little. 

Next, I got my hands on the Catwoman 80th Anniversary Special.  Unfortunately that's a bit of a misnomer because there wasn't much of anything special about it.  It was utterly forgettable to the point that I genuinely can't remember enough to even write about it... 

Justice League V. 7: Justice Lost.  Why do I do this to myself?  The Rebirth run of Justice League makes New 52 Superman look like an unrivaled masterpiece. 

Firestorm: The Nuclear Men: The Firestorm Protocols. Yeesh. Poor Jason Rusch can't catch a break (or a decent storyline). Really though, haven't we all thought at one time or another, "Yeah, Firestorm is cool, but what if there were 45 of them."

Mercifully, that was it for DC this week. Hard to pick a winner but I guess I'll go with Catwoman since that was harmless.

For next week, I'm at Action Comics v.5 in the great Superman reread.  Also, I feel like I'm on a hot streak with X-Men offshoots, so I might pick up the Jubilee standalone series. I'm open to suggestions as well. 

______________________

You can find back issues of the video version of Comic Book Coffee Break here.

The audio version of Comic Book Coffee Break is over there. 

You can find me as the co-host of 9021 Here We G0: A 90210 Rewatch Podcast for the Radio Meanwhile Network. 

I also host Howe's Things, the podcast and radio show of the David A. Howe Public Library.