Panel Discussion: The Week in Comic Book Scans

Every week Geekanerd brings you scans from the week's comics. Click these suckas for some high res action!

How They Like It - Batman's Mask Fetish in Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #7
Everybody's got their thing, you know? Batman's just happens to be masks. If that wasn't obvious. This comes right after Black Canary asks Batman if anyone has ever told him that he is "totally hot" and he replies "Not for the last few days, no."

Find a nice save, clumsy flirtation, decapitations and crossdressing pundits after the jump!

Best Save - Animal Man, Countdown to Adventure #2With the girth of a rhinoceros, Buddy Baker saves depowered Starfire and a bunch of adorable school children from vehicular manslaughter. The flying garbage can near the top of the frame really puts this dynamic panel over the edge of total sweetness.

Worst Flirtation - Countdown #31Jason, what the eff are you talking about? Donna saved you from a villain. That's what superheroes do for weak, non-superpowered morons like yourself. Did you think Batman was into you every time he saved you from certain death? I mean, other than that one time.

Continutity Alert - The Four Horsemen #2
So we're expected to believe that Snapper Carr is some kind of Blackwater-esque Middle Eastern mercenary with Luke Skywalker goggles? When we saw him one week ago at the Green Arrow Black Canary wedding, smilin' and boppin' around in that 1970s What's New Scooby Doo kinda way? Someone find me a Monitor, one of these Snappers has gotta go.

Beatdown of the Week - Countdown to Adventure #2
Kicking someone's head off pretty much guarantees you a spot in Panel Discussion. Well played, The Forerunner.

Why We Wish We Lived in a Comic Book World - The Limbaugh/O'Donnel Link, The Spirit #10

In this week's issue of The Spirit, Darwyn Cooke cooks up (yes!) a story about cable news pundits getting picked off one by one by a mysterious serial killer. Everybody you can think of (Anderson Cooper, Hannity and Colmes, Bill O'Reilly, Stephen Colbert) has their clumsily-named counterparts in the issue. Two of them happen to be:
Dandy O'Lyon as Rosie O'Donnell, and...
Trust Wimbag as Rush Limbaugh. Now after almost all the pundits are dead, other than Trust and Wally O'Bellows (Bill O'Reilly), the big twist comes!
Oh if only real life were so poetic!

Click along to our previous Panel Discussions...

Snap Judgments - Blue Beetle #19, Countdown to Adventure #2, Avengers: The Initiative #6

Blue Beetle # 19

Blue Beetle has been settling into a tidy formula over the last five issues - Jaime fights a guest villain, picks up a bit more wisdom on how to be a superhero, and the book wraps up on a personal note, often with single-tear inducing epilogues. This ish hits all the marks: Giganta is the baddie, and her Kaiju Big Battel style rampage is one of the most exciting action set pieces in months (drawn with gusto by David Baldon, who redeems himself for giving Tim Drake and Jaime the same face last month). Jaimie learns a lesson in horrifying pseudo-science of pressure points, and the emotional moment belongs to his gringa gal pal, Brenda.

These self contained stories work in the same way Paul Dini's recent run on Detective did - the dialogue zips the plot along, the resolutions are smart and satisfying, and it's easy for new readers to pick up. But as regular reader, I'd like to get back into the meat of the alien invasion plot line introduced way back in issue #13. And speaking of 13, rising star Traci 13 shows up for about three minutes in this issue to confirm that she and Jamie are totally hooking up. A- AHR


Countdown to Adventure #2

The only good thing about an alternate earth where Nazis rule the world is that when freedom-loving heroes from other dimensions show up, they have carte blanche to do as many head-severing superpunches as they want without fear of moral compromise. Here, it's Forerunner who gets to do a few laps of nazi-smashin' in the second half of this two-story issue - the first half concerns the dreadfully uninteresting 52 outer-space story, but does feature Animal stomping on a car and Starfire in civvys. I haven't been reading Countdown closely enough to fully understand the Forerunners complicated and tragic back story but I like what I do know: she likes to kick, hit, aaaaand KICK! B AHR



Avengers: The Initiative #6

I'm....I'm blind . Regular Initiative artist Stefano Caselli is MIA on this issue, and the jarring effect of seeing Dan Slott's script interpreted by young gun Steve Uy has caused my neural receptors to refuse the information my eyes attempted to relat. It's not as simple as a case of bad art - what drove me crazy is that the acting in this issue is terrible. Though the stiff body language and flat expressions seen here are not among the worst I've ever seen, artist Uy is at the serious disadvantage of filling in for an artist who has been creating the most vividly realized new characters in mainstream comics. Imagine watching a great movie with a fanatically talented cast, but when you come back from the bathroom all the characters are suddenly being played by first year drama students. The script might still be spot on, but nothing murders good dialogue like bad acting. Some important and surprising information is revealed in this issue, so regular readers may still want to check it out, but don't blame me if you're gripped with the impulse to hurl popcorn at the pages. D AHR