Best comic I bought this week (BCIBTW)

I think I need a better name for this feature. I want it to say "out of the few comics I bought this week, I liked this one best. There may be better out there, but I didn't buy it."

Well, I'll figure it out.

This week, we have a tie! Once again, the comics this week were sorta lackluster. The two titles that managed to pull ahead were: The new Black Adam book, and Stormwatch: PHD.

Black Adam turned into, basically, a version of Vandal Savage in this issue where he tries to bring his dead wife, Isis, back to life. Using minions as meat shields and just meat (eww), he powered his way through this comic on sheer willpower and fierce determination. The comic follows the tradition of 52 in making the reader respect the ferocious passion of Teth Adam while still maintaining the fact that he is hugely unlikable as a person. This kind of juggling act makes the comic like a car wreck you can't help but watch: curious, but repulsed at the same time.

Stormwatch: PHD is always pretty excellent. The best part of the book is the relationship between the cast members. In this issue, our heroes try to solve a mystery, and get their butts handed to them when they finger the wrong supervillain. The dialog and the mystery keep the story flowing, giving us more looks into the souls of each of these characters, while ramping up the tension as they close in on their (innocent) subject.

Other comics I bought were this week's Annihilation selection: Nova and The Wraith. Both of these books felt filler-ish, with Nova getting assimilated by the borg-like Phalanx and the Wraith being tortured by the already-assimilated Ronan the Accuser. Wraith isn't really doing it for me. He's like a superhero I would have designed when I was 15. Hopefully, 15 year olds are reading this book and really liking this character. Me? I say "meh".

This issue was particularly bad, as it featured the Wraith's origin story. Basically, its a version of Conan's, from the movie: child witnesses his family and friends murdered, gets away only to get stuck in a place that is essentially hell, where self-infliction of pain is the norm as the residents of the place gain immortality, but also a kind of numbness that makes them want to hurt themselves in order to feel something. Anyway, everyone there goes insane except our hero, whose thirst for vengeance allows him to maintain his grip and search out his parent's killers. Ok, maybe the self-inflicted pain part kinda diverges from the "slave boy who grows big muscles" part of the Conan flick, but essentially, its the same, as the years of torture make the kid stronger than his foes.

The latest issue of Green Lantern also came out. I was right in my previous post: Johns is making each member of the Uber Sinestro team into a boss monster. Nothing was revealed, nothing got done in this issue except killing Jack Chance, who was basically the Green Lantern version of the Wraith. Oh, the irony. Oh, and we found out that Parallax kills...through psychoanalysis! Which is also funny because that's what the JLA had to use to defeat Kid Amazo in the end of this lame arc set in JLA classified.

Lots of irony this week. Maybe I should come out with the Iron Award!