James Robinson is a overlooked comic writer. His 3-part story with Tim Sale (Blades) follows another costumed vigilante coming to Gotham and taking all of Batman’s fame. Also, John Francis Moore and P.Craig Russell’s Poison Ivy story is good, though it seemed a bit too rigid. I wish Russell could’ve done more fantastic art with the book, but even his character work (like showing Bruce Wayne slip up on a date) is good.
I didn’t even try to read the Bat-Mite story.

I was disappointed when I saw on the first page that this was the last volume of Love Roma. I was hoping that future volumes just hadn’t been translated yet. But, alas, it’s over, and Love Roma ended somewhat well. It finally “earned” its 16+ rating, as Hoshino and Negichi had sex—that’s what the first 4 issues of the book were all about. After that story (which worked well), the final stories were a bit of a letdown. The storytelling made a bit less sense (I’m not the best reader of manga, though), and the uncertain ending left me a bit disappointed.

This follows previous volumes of Love Roma with solid, funny romantic stories. I feel like the pacing of the storytelling and the artwork is getting repetitive, but it’s still enjoyable. I usually don’t like manga’s reverse-reading format, but it works here.

This is an interesting reinvention of Tony Stark as more of a superhuman genius, but this volume doesn’t get close to closing all the plots it opens, and the second volume isn’t on the horizon yet. Orson Scott Card spends the first of the five issues showing the situation in which Stark was born—he’s out Ulimate-ing even Brian Michael Bendis in terms of slow storytelling. Most of the moments work, though the true villain moments for Obadiah Stane fall flat.
Adam Kubert and Mark Bagley do serviceable, but not amazing, on art.

I got excited about this book because of Heather O’Neil’s appearances on This American Life and Wiretap (dating a guy in public radio has its benefits). Her voice is so fragile and beautiful, which is how much of her writing in this book is, too.
Her protagonist, Baby, is a twelve-year-old living with her 28-year-old drug-addled dad, and she matter-of-factly gets put in social services, becomes a prostitute, and becomes addicted to drugs. However, it’s not really a sad book—O’Neil never lets Baby be too depressed, and her portrait of the Montreal youth street culture is chaotic and exciting. O’Neil has a way of writing sentences that just crush your heart or make you smile so big, and that’s what kept me reading this book in pieces. (I had to check it out from the library twice, renewing it a total of four times, before I finished it.)

J. Michael Stracynski’s coming up with another fantasy epic. It feels a bit like his Midnight Nation, but I don’t find it quite as compelling. Colleen Doran’s art isn’t as emotional and violent as Gary Frank’s.
It’s about a man who commigts suicide over unrequited love, then has to serve a still-nebulous guy, turning lost souls either toward heaven or hell. There’s an interesting story paralleling a battered wife to a princess fighting a dragon. A two-part story about a mafia hitman falls flat. J. does retread on one theme from Midnight Nation, the fallacy of “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

This is the story of the death/suicide of Marjane Satrapi’s great uncle. He was a musician, but after his wife broke his tar (a stringed instrument) he lost the will to live, and died 8 days later. Most of the book focuses on these 8 days, and contains lots of flashbacks and sidestories about his family. There’s a troubling one about his youngest son, who grows up to have a family that moves to America and has weight problems.
Satrapi still hasn’t matched her first book, Persepolis—even it’s sequel felt less precious. This book is not quite as engaging as Embroideries, but I really enjoy her simple art and storytelling style.

The title says it all. This has very little to actually do with Infinite Crisis (the OMACs and Donna Troy show up, and Batman is bickering with everyone), and otherwise it’s a fairly lame story. I do like how Green Arrow is the star, but I don’t know enough about Manitou Dawn to care about her, and don’t particularly care for how Bob Harras turned The Key into a telepathic psycho.
The art (pencils by Tom Denerick, covers by Daniel Acuna) are pretty good.

Grant Morrison delivers another great big-concept Justice League story, with most of the team transported to the 853rd century. The TPB is kind of loose, since the crossover affected SO MANY books. There are recap pages talking about things like “the Bizarro plague” that I wish I could’ve seen. And Solaris, the evil star, isn’t a great villain, but I do like how he uses Vandal Savage. Also neat is how the JLA members that don’t get transported forward are the ones that don’t have their own solo series. There’s a nice tribute to Superman at the end.

This book takes place as part of DC’s One Year Later story, where all their characters jumped forward a year. In that year, Star City was hit with a disaster that basically made it a shallow allegory of New Orleans. Oliver Queen becomes mayor of Star City to fix it back up. So, it’s splitting time between referencing Hurricane Katrina and badly copying Ex Machina. Also, there’s a weird zombie subplot that doesn’t make sense. Deathstrike shows up, and is somewhat entertaining. I think he’s also in Teen Titans, though, which is weird because he’s in jail for most of this story.