Exciting Comics That Came Out Last Week Or Are Coming Out Tomorrow (Aug 21st Edition)

(Since I won't get last week's comics until tomorrow thanks to being on the road last week, I'm bundling both sets together for one massive post!)

Amazon's Attack # 5 (of 6) - The big news about this miniseries, coming out of Chicago a week and a half ago, was that by the time it's all over "everything is explained for everyone who's wondering what's going on." Which, I'm thinking, speaks volumes about how confusing most people are finding it. And yet I can't stop reading it!

Batman # 668 - Why is it that we've had such big delays on Batman since Grant Morrison and one of the Kubert brothers took over (I'll admit I can't tell Andy from Adam!), and yet here comes a new issue just two weeks after the last one? I guess that means it was young Mr Kubert's fault, since Grant seems to be able to pump out scripts pretty quickly as long as someone else is doing the art (like here)! This is the second of a two-part story that DC describes as "Batman, Robin and the Club of Heroes are stuck on an island rigged with elaborate death traps. And even as the villain behind it all begins to explain his twisted motives, he continues to pick the heroes off one by one." I mean, c'mon, who doesn't want to read that?

Booster Gold # 1 - Normally I wouldn't go anywhere near a Booster Gold series - he's neither likable nor interesting enough for my tastes - but the fact that they're using this as a vehicle to time travel through the DC Universe is just intriguing enough to make me try an issue or two. And featuring Barry Allen in an upcoming storyline certainly got my attention, too.

Brave and the Bold # 6 - This wraps up Mark Waid and George Perez's first B&B storyline, involving Batman, Green Lantern, Supergirl, the Legion of Super-Heroes and most of the DCU! Despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be much buzz about this book, I suspect we'll look back on it in the years to come as an under-appreciated classic.

Countdown #s 37 and 36 - Believe it or not, recent issues of this lacklustre weekly series have actually... not been entirely lacking in lustre! Stuff has happened, and momentum has been achieved in a few of the storylines. I still think they have a long way to go before anyone mistakes this for a good title, but even managing to make it suck less is admirable.

Flash # 231 - After the abortive Bart Allen volume, we're finally back to Wally West again, even down to resuming the numbering from his last series. With Mark Waid writing (for as long as he lasts), and Wally back, I'm all over this one like sweat on a fat man! (Shut up, I'm only slightly overweight!)

Green Arrow Year One # 4 (of 6) - I'm still an issue behind on this (# 3 is in my big stack of unreads) but the first two parts were much better than I'd expected! It's not so much that writer Andy Diggle is adding all that much to the Oliver Queen origin story - he isn't - but he's just presenting it in such an interesting fashion, for a change. I'm likin' it!

Green Lantern Corps # 15 - Continuing the Sinestro Corps War, DC's best crossover event of the year! This is the way to do a big storyline: limit it to a few key titles (2 in this case), make the scale huge and yet personal, and have it all play out in no more than a few months! Give us more like this, DC!

Justice League of America # 12 - And thus ends the Brad Meltzer run, a baker's dozen of sugary treats that tasted great but, in the final analysis, weren't all that filling. I'll miss Brad but I'm also looking forward to seeing what Dwayne McDuffie - a writer who's never impressed me before - brings to the League in Meltzer's wake. After Grant Morrison's amazing run in the 90s, no one who succeeded him seemed to know what to do with the toys he'd left... I wonder if this will turn out any better? In the meantime, we can enjoy the lovely Alex Ross cover (shown here).

Amazing Spider-Man # 543 - The cover shows Spidey, in his black (Venom) costume, drawing a sheet over (or perhaps back from) a presumably dead body on a slab. Who dies? Aunt May? MJ? The girl who cuts Peter Parker's hair? Your guess is as good as mine at this point, but tomorrow I'll know! (And you'll probably still be thinking about Pete's wacky haircut!)

Astonishing X-Men # 22 - Joss Whedon and John Cassaday are now just two issues away from ending their run, and I'm still not exactly sure what's going on! But part of that's the fact that so many weeks pass between issues, which at least won't be the case when I sit down to re-read the 24 issues in sequence, sometime around the middle of next year. Or after # 24 arrives, whichever comes first!

Immortal Iron Fist # 8 - I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love a series that, as I read and enjoy each new issue that comes out, I also think about how much fun it'll be to re-read them in the years to come! Starman, by James Robinson, was like that... as was Geoff Johns' first JSA series (both of which have gotten the treatment I'm talking about). Brubaker's Iron Fist is starting to take on that same sort of feel. And why not, when his Captain America and Daredevil are already in that category?

Captain America # 29 - Marvel got folks all excited in Chicago when they displayed an Alex Ross picture of Cap, emblazoned with the words "The Return"... But a day or two later it was revealed that the project Ross is working on concerns the Invaders (Cap, Sub-Mariner, original Human Torch) coming forward in time from World War II, rather than a revival of the dead Cap. And then of course fans started speculating that maybe this was how Cap would come back... bring a younger version of the hero from before he'd been frozen in suspended animation! Like that wouldn't make for a confusing history! But really, does it even matter one way or the other, when Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting continue to make this comic-without-its-title-character one of the best series out there, month after month (regular as clockwork!)?