Best Comic

Well, I'm more on time this week. That's good.

Here's what I got this week:

All-Star Superman #9
Avengers Initiative #7
Black Adam #4
Booster Gold #4
Brit #3
Captain Mar-vell #1
Countdown #24
JLA Classified #46
Nova # 8

It was a decent week. I managed to not buy a couple of comics, like Salvation Run #1, and that made me feel a disciplined and stuff. I am not an impulse buyer! I am a free man!

Countdown once again was better than usual, with lots of Superman Prime action as he destroys the world that the Search for Ray Palmer group just visited. You know, the one where the superheroes won? Yeah, the one that was pretty nice.

Nope: no drama in being nice. Superman took them all out. And then blew up the world. Take that, boring world!

Otherwise, Countdown had lots more action. Stuff is happening. Plots are unfolding. It still isn't the best comic out there, but it's improving.

Captain Marvel was fairly decent. He knows that, sometime in his future, he gets cancer and dies. He doesn't like that much, so he's wondering if he should just alter time and get fixed, or if his duty is to play his part in the grand scheme of things.I vote he changes time, survives, makes sure the people on Titan don't clone him any kids, and defeats the skrulls before they have time to menace Earth and cause the Civil War and get Captain America killed. Likely, though, he'll set his iron jaw and go to his death like a soldier.

The best comic of the week is All Star Superman. Grant Morrison tears Superman a new one by having kryptonian survivors take Superman's place while he's trying to get back to earth from the last comic. As he talks with them, they berate him, his lack of backbone in actually working hard to make earth a better (and thus more Kryptonian) place. You should see what they say about the fortress of solitude. Then, they die. Well, not really...they almost die and get sent to the phantom zone to be the new law in them parts.

Morrison's All Star Superman is probably the best book out there right now. It might be the best thing he's ever done.

Congrats All Star Superman!

Lefties don't listen

According to this study the human brain uses the left hemisphere to pick out relevant sounds from the jumble of sounds we hear every day.

This is pretty interesting. It may mean that right-handed people can pick out sounds better than left-handed people (right handed people use the left hemisphere of their brain more), which may indicate why there are more right handers than left handers (right handers hunt better because they can distinguish the prey's footsteps from the other sounds of the forest and whatnot, giving them a survival bonus).

It could also mean that your left handed kid isn't listening to you because he can't hear you over the tv, construction next door, the cat wailing, etc.

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.