Panel Discussion: The Week in Comic Book Scans

Every week Geekanerd brings you the best, worst and weirdest panels from the week's comics. There will be SPOILERS. Be sure to click these puppies for high res action!

Splashiest Super-Villain - Dr. T.O Morrow, Metal Men #3
After a relaxing vacation on Oolong Island, Dr. T.O Morrow is well rested and back in top mad scientist form, using the Metal Men to create monstrous new creatures. From the George Perez style oval belt to the twisty mustache, this splash panel does it up old school. This scene continues in this spirit, with Morrow's dialogue including lines like "You're no match for my death metal men!". Chocolate covered kudos to writer/artist Duncan Rouleau for reminding us jaded post-modern comic fans how much fun a good maniacal super villain can be.

Parental robots, burning gamblers and bodily fluids after the jump!

Worst Superpower Byproducts - Puke, Piss and Poop, The Vinyl Underground #1
This is Perv. Perv is a psychic. Unfortunately, his visions come along with an unfortunate side-effect: He pukes, pisses and shits himself while thrashing uncontrollably. Ggk.

Best Fake Old-Timey Comics - Welcome to Tranquility #11
Even if this intentionally bad copy is a little broad ("It's fun to stay alive!") and the the time-period is a bit hazy (The clothing says 30s, but the art looks closer to the 70s) these fake-vintage comics regularly featured in Welcome to Tranquility are fun and do their job of demonstrating what the Tranquility's over-the-hill heroes were like in their glory days. What really sold me on this one was the simulated coffee stain and water damage - be sure to click the image for higher res.

Shocking Teen Trauma - Alexander Discovers His Parents are Robots, Omega: The Unknown #1
As if having his mom decapitated in a car crash wasn't bad enough, poor Alexander now has to try to understand what it means that his parents were robots.

Best Visual Payoff - Parade (With Fireworks) #2
Hey, remember this panel, "Most Self-Satisfied Kid"? In the second and final part of Parade With Fireworks, we revisit that image and see the character after his life has been ruined by a personal betrayal and an increasingly fascistic government. Besides the overt symmetry of the panels, there are some subtle touches - the bright jug of water in the earlier image has been replaced by a sinister jug of liquor, a tombstone can now be seen in the window, and the comically grandiose cigar is now a simple cigarette. Great art, great storytelling.

Toughest House Rule- Burning at the Man-Thing's Touch, Howard the Duck #1Howard is dreaming about Monster Poker again, which has the hardcore house rule: "Whoever folds their hand... Burns at the Man-Thing's touch! WAAUGH!" Dem are some high stakes.

Snap Judgments: Omega: The Unknown #1, Metal Men #3, Howard The Duck #1, Detective #837

Geekanerd's Snap Judgments gives you Triple-S comic reviews: short, sweet, and spoiler-free.

Omega: The Unknown #1 (of 10)
Gets a A- from Albo
This ten issue miniseries is a retelling of a 70s series which was cut short due to slow sales. From the beginning of the plot synopsis I read on Wikipedia it appears writer Jonathan Lethem (novelist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, first time comics writer) is sticking pretty tight to that original story. What we have is Omega, a traveler from another world who apparently has crash landed on earth and Alexander, a precocious young boy who learns something very shocking about his parents before lapsing into a coma. The two characters are clearly linked (though to go into how might violate our spoiler rule), but it isn't exactly explained how. Is Omega a dream of Alexander's? Is Alexander a dream of Omega's? The storytelling is deep and sometimes dips into Allred-esque absurdity, but the emotional core of the story is quite grounded. So far. Farel Dalrymple (Pop Gun War) produces art that's a little crude but fits the mood of the story so well it can't be considered a detriment. Anyway, it's a very fresh and original (it's a remake, I know I know) book and I'll definitely be sticking around to see where this goes.

Metal Men, two takes on Howard the Duck, and Detective after the jump...

Metal Men #3

Gets an A+ From AHR
Wow, this was great. The last two issues of this series certainly looked amazing, but the tech talk and ancient alchemy plot-lines seemed needlessly inaccessible, and very separate from the fun and engaging sequences featuring the present-day Metal Men and the flashback storyline concerning Dr. Magnus' early career. But it all comes together here, with a dynamite opening scene in which we find Dr. T.O Morrow having gone from his most recent incarnation in 52, as a cocktail sipping eccentric, back to a full blown mad scientist supervillian, complete with a Snidely Whiplash Mustache and army of "Death Metal Men". All of the elemental explanation about how these radioactive doppelgangers came into existence is easily understood and hugely satisfying; this is a rare book where instead of patiently waiting for the exposition to be over with, I couldn't wait to see what new piece of the puzzle the next page would reveal. Throw in some more sweet 'n' sad relationship drama, a great cliffhanger, and Metal Men has become my new most anticipated book of next month.

Howard the Duck #1 (of 4)
Gets a C+ from Albo
There's not really anything bad about this book. The writing by Ty Templeton (Bigg Time) isn't bad, the art team of Juan Bobillo, Marcelo Sosa and Nestor Pereyra puts some pretty pages together, but... Maybe it's just me, but when you pull a poor-selling third string character with a weak history out of the archives for their own series, you better have a reason. Not even really a good reason, just any reason. The first issue should be a mission statement as to what's different, why it's going to work this time. This book doesn't do that. It's just a straight-forward silly Howard the Duck tale. Fans will likely love it, but if you've never known why you should care about Howard, this isn't the book to convince you.

...but gets a SOLID A From AHR
I picked this up because I loved Ty Templeton's work on Batman Adventures, a series of one-shot stories set in the BTAS universe that shockingly managed to capture the same wit and heart of the series. I've never read a Howard the Duck comic, never saw the much maligned film, and really had no clue what Howard's role in the Marvel Universe is. I still don't, but one thing that comes across in this story is Howard's personality. This issue paints him as dryer-than-toast cynic, with few illusions about the superheroic world he lives in. I was hooked after a panel in which Howard switches off a political radio show with a yawn; "Yadda yadda, Stark is bad, Cap was good...next!" The ish is packed with plot-lines and various hapless human characters, but ends up being largely following Howard as he's chased around the city by quantum physicist duck hunters, who note "We're scientists. We don't know the first thing about ethics." Fun from start to finish.

Detective Comics #837
Gets a B+ From AHR
The featured detective in this story isn't Batman, but the other greatest detective in Gotham: The Riddler (sorry Renee). Now working on the right side of the law as a PI, Eddie is hired by a certain playboy industrialist to investigate some disappearing lab samples. The trail leads to the Athenian Women's Shelter, where Countdown readers know Harley Quinn currently resides. Much of the issue is just a framework for these two re-formed Akhamites to catch-up and drop some hints about what's going on in DCU continuity, Paul Dini being currently in charge of that kinda stuff. It's a good issue for Harley fans, who's character isn't diminished by being reformed since she was never particularly evil to begin with. But Riddler fans (do those exist?) may be disappointed by how little detecting he does. And dumb nerds like me will choke on the idea of Bruce outsourcing his detective work to the Riddler, but as I should have known, he's got his reasons. Sorry for the lapse in trust, Bats.