Best Comic

I have a little time this weekend, so I wrote down what I bought this week:

Annihilation Conquest #1
Astonishing X-men #23
Atom #17
Countdown 25
Death of the New Gods #2
Illuminati #5
Infinity Inc #3
Modok's 11 #5
Starlord #4
The Order #4
Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon

Countdown is beginning to get more intense, which is good, but the constant spin off books are dropping off my buy list. For instance, I didn't buy the Jimmy Olsen Countdown Special, and I've stopped buying the Search for Ray Palmer, which seems to have turned into a Crosby & Hope Road movie, but with less interesting characters and no musical interludes.

This was a big week for me, but several of the above comics are the last book in their miniseries, including Illuminati, Modok's 11, and Starlord, while Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon was, I think, a one-shot.

Modok's 11 and The Atom are the two top picks this week. Modok's plan comes together, and, in Ocean's 11 style, stuff the reader doesn't know are revealed to show how smart Modok is. The unfortunate thing is that Modok doesn't seem that smart throughout the miniseries, so it comes as a sort of shock. I think the main value of Modok's 11 is that no one expected it to be as good as it was.

The Atom, which wins my coveted award for the week, once again pleases with its dialog and character interaction, as well as a really well-drawn Giganta. Our hero finds himself in a tough spot: he likes Giganta as a person (though he realizes she isn't completely sane nor completely nice) and doesn't want any harm to come to her, but Wonder Woman, in the form of Diana Prince, wants him to wear a wire and keep tabs on her. These two conflicting emotions: the main character's admiration for someone and the fact that that person is on the opposite side of a conflict from the main character, has been done many times before, and better, but here in the Atom, it brings out a lot about the character that I like.