Hellboy: The Midnight Circus

 Mike Mignola brings us another one of his occasional HELLBOY original graphic novels with HELLBOY: THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS, along with frequent collaborator Duncan Fegredo, this time exploring Hellboy's little-seen childhood.

 HELLBOY: THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS is a slim 56 page hardcover, and like the previous HELLBOY original graphic novels, it's a light, almost trifling, story that could hardly be considered essential, but is extremely well done.

 The story finds Hellboy sneaking out of B.P.R.D. headquarters after hours, and stumbling upon a sinister Circus troupe setting up their Big Top in the middle of a field. Hellboy is taken on a tour of the Circus by the owner, and discovers some secrets about his past and future that he'd rather not know.

 This is a quick read, but it's packed with the creepy moments that Mignola has become a master of. Duncan Fegredo uses a different art style here, and the result is gorgeous. While seemingly a stand-alone tale, I suspect that one of the characters introduced in this book will become very important to the Hellboy mythology somewhere down the road. I think Hellboy fans are going to have a good time, and new readers might find this to be a great place to jump into Mignola's Fantasy/Horror epic. Recommended.

 Dark Horse Comics provided a review copy.

Green Lantern, Volume 3: The End

 Wow.

 I've been there for the entirety of Geoff John's run on GREEN LANTERN, and it's been a better than average run, but when I reached the last page of GREEN LANTERN, VOLUME 3: THE END, all I could think was "It's way past time that he moved on." Much like Chris Claremont on X-MEN, Geoff Johns has been on this book for too long, and it's just degenerated into a mish-mash of ideas that are presented over and over again, ad nauseum.

 This is a strange volume, in that it shares a handful of issues with the RISE OF THE THIRD ARMY crossover (Hardcover collection reviewed HERE), but then goes on to collect portions of a hardcover (GREEN LANTERN: WRATH OF THE FIRST LANTERN) which will not be available until March of 2014. So you basically get small portions of other, larger stories in this collection, and it's very unsatisfying.

 The book starts off with a new Green Lantern, Simon Baz, who seems like a nice enough character, but is totally unnecessary. Why introduce yet another Earth Green Lantern right before you wrap up your run on the book? Readers who don't know that Baz's story continues in the THIRD ARMY collection will be perplexed at the way the book jumps right into the FIRST LANTERN crossover without any resolution. The "First Lantern" himself is a dreadfully boring character that exists solely to give Geoff Johns yet another reason to trot out every Lantern from the entire color spectrum, and have our main characters swap rings back and forth endlessly. Sinestro is a Green Lantern, and he becomes a Yellow Lantern again. Hal is a Green Lantern, then a Black Lantern, then a Green Lantern again. Kyle is a White Lantern, but he can become any other color Lantern he wants, whenever he wants.

 My head was spinning.

 And again, all I could think was "It's about time he decided to leave GL...he really ran out of ideas years ago."

 And as Johns wraps up his seemingly eternal run on GREEN LANTERN, I drop another of DC's "New 52" books. This reboot is just not for me, it seems.

 DC Comics provided a review copy.

Green Lantern: Rise of The Third Army

 I wonder how DC is doing with these mythical "New readers" that the "New 52" was supposed to be attracting. I can't imagine that anyone not steeped in DC Comics lore could make heads or tails of the complicated, crossover-heavy chronology of the GREEN LANTERN books. I've been reading since GL books since the late '80's, and some of the stuff in the latest GL collection, GREEN LANTERN: RISE OF THE THIRD ARMY, had my head spinning.

 First of all, this is a MASSIVE book. It clocks in a a whopping 416 pages, and retails for $29.99, but you can get it a lot cheaper online. So you're getting your money's worth, at least. (It also makes me wonder just how they price this stuff....ALL STAR WESTERN, VOLUME 1 collected a measly six issues, in paperback format, and cost seventeen bucks. This book, a hardcover, collects 18 issues, along with extra material, for thirty. I don't get it.) So there's that.

 GREEN LANTERN: RISE OF THE THIRD ARMY continues Writer Geoff Johns endless quest to make The Guardians the most evil shitbags ever by having them plot to kill off the entire Green Lantern Corps, and replace them with "The Third Army", a kind of grosser Borg that will assimilate everything they touch. The goal is to bring perfect order to the universe by having everyone and everything in it be a mindless Third Army member. Then there will be no crime, fear, confusion, despair, etc., and The Guardians can finally sit back and take a load off.

 Oddly enough, for such a massive collection, The Third Army kind of rises in the background, and doesn't really make a great impact until the very end of the book. This makes it kind of a non-crossover crossover. Issues of GREEN LANTERN, GREEN LANTERN CORPS, GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS, and RED LANTERNS are reprinted , and kind of sit there on their own before connecting in the final chapter. The only book that I read is GREEN LANTERN, and the issues collected here are also collected in GREEN LANTERN, VOLUME 3: THE END, so I could have theoretically skipped this whole affair and just read that book, and I probably would have been just fine. Having said that, I'll admit that I'm glad that I picked this book up, because the other GL books that I don't read all told compelling stories in their own right. Peter J. Tomasi did a great job on the NEW GUARDIANS and GREEN LANTERN CORPS chapters, and I especially enjoyed Peter Milligan's RED LANTERNS portion, which is saying a lot, considering how much Milligan has been falling on the "Miss" side of "Hit-or-miss" for me lately.

 The art is uniformly excellent throughout, and the story, while convoluted, works, so I just went with it.

 Complaints? Of course! This IS "The Crabby Reviewer", after all......

 First off, the book starts off with a new Earthling becoming a Green Lantern. He's a pretty interesting character, so that's nice, but.....How many times must DC go to the "Oh shit, our hero is gone, and someone NEW is taking up the mantle!!! " well? Geoff Johns is close to wrapping up his GL run here...did he really need to take Hal and Sinestro off the board completely and introduce yet another new character? There must already be 500 characters in this book. That's more than enough.

 And....after reading 400 fairly well-executed pages (SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!)
the book ends on a fucking cliff-hanger that leads to YET ANOTHER CROSSOVER!

 WTF, DC?????

 There's nothing close to a resolution here, folks. Just a "Buy more books, fool!" at the end.
I bitch about it, but I want to know what happens next, so, fool that I am, I will buy more books.

 Also, DC continues to publish probably the grossest, most depressing books out there. This one has dismemberment galore, hearts being ripped out, corpses being defiled, eyes getting gouged, people vomiting hot blood onto other people and melting them with it....It's fucking gross. I can deal with it, but don't buy any of this shit for your kids, unless you want them to become serial killers.

 GREEN LANTERN: RISE OF THE THIRD ARMY collects GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #1, GREEN LANTERN #13-16, GREEN LANTERN CORPS #13-16, GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS #13-16, RED LANTERNS #13-16, and GREEN LANTERN CORPS ANNUAL #1, along with all covers and variants, and a sketch gallery by various artists. A fun read for GREEN LANTERN fans, but it may be a little overwhelming for newcomers.

 DC Comics provided a review copy.

Wonder Woman, Volume 3: Iron

 I've always enjoyed Wonder Woman as a concept, and as a supporting player, but she's never really spoken to me as a lead character, and the closest that I've ever gotten to getting on board with her as a lead in her own series was when Greg Rucka was writing her monthly book around the time of INFINITE CRISIS. Now, having read the first three volumes of her "New 52" reboot over the past week, I can finally say that I have discovered a Wonder Woman that works for me, and I'll throw in this for good measure: WONDER WOMAN is, far and away, the best that "The New 52" has to offer.

 Brian Azzarello has always been hit-or-miss for me, but his work over the course of these three volumes is nothing short of outstanding, and he's complimented perfectly by Pencillers Cliff Chiang and Tony Akins, who share the art chores.

 The three volumes to date tell an ongoing story that looks to continue on into Volume 4, which will be released in March 2014. Zeus is missing from Olympus, and his children are engaged in a power struggle to see who will assume the throne of Olympus. Zeus' Wife, Hera, finds out that a young woman named Zola is pregnant with Zeus' bastard child, and sends her minions to kill it. The young woman, Zola, comes under Wonder Woman's protection, drawing Princess  Diana of Themyscira into the Olympians dangerous game of thrones.

 This third volume centers around Diana's quest to find Zola's missing child, who was kidnapped at the end of Volume 2. Interspersed with Diana's quest, we are introduced to Zeus' first child, "The First Born", who is headed to Mount Olympus to take the throne that he feels is rightfully his. Diana is aided in her quest by a familiar ally, albeit one who is new (I assume...) to this rebooted universe: Orion, of The New Gods.

 The banter between Diana and Orion is priceless, and I enjoyed seeing them bounce off each other. I hope Orion will stick around through the fourth volume. I'd rather see him hook up with Diana than Superman. Thankfully, Azzarello seems content to just ignore whatever is happening in the rest of the "New 52" Universe.

 WONDER WOMAN, VOLUME 3: IRON was so good that I am tempted to run out and buy the floppies so I don't have to wait six months to see what happens next. Amazingly good stuff.

 DC Comics provided a review copy.

Star Wars, Volume 1: In the Shadow of Yavin

 This book was hyped out the wazoo, and I got swept up in it.....Imagine, Dark Horse starting a new ongoing series that told of the Star Wars gang's adventures between the movies....I've gotta have that!!! (Never mind that Dark Horse has been publishing those types of stories for decades now....) And written by BRIAN WOOD, Author of a lot of stuff that I really didn't like (Most of his stuff...) and one thing that I did (NORTHLANDERS), and something that I'm still not sure about (CONAN). With covers by ALEX ROSS!!! (All of his stuff looks alike to me. Look at that cover image above, and tell me you haven't seen 50 other Alex Ross covers that all look just like it.) If I had actually paid it any thought, I would have just passed on this book, but when have I ever given thought to something that could potentially squander away precious hours of my ever-decreasing life span...? Never. Exactly. So away I went......to a Galaxy far, far away....

 STAR WARS, VOLUME 1: IN THE SHADOW OF YAVIN picks up shortly after the destruction of The Death Star, as Mon Mothma (Every time I hear that name, I chuckle and think of Mothra.) and Princess Leia lead the Rebel Alliance in search of a new base of operations. Leia assembles a secret squadron to search out potential sites for the new base, Han and Chewbacca are dispatched to Coruscant to make a deal for weapons to aid in the rebellion, and Luke moons over an Outer Space Indian chick.Also, there's a traitor in Leia's inner circle. I'm betting it's one of these new characters we've never seen before, but I'll probably never know, as Brian Wood doesn't bring this turgid, overlong story to any kind of a conclusion, and I probably won't be back for Volume 2.

 I decided about halfway through that I am totally uninterested in the vast majority of STAR WARS characters. Watching the movies now, the good guys are so bland and white bread that the only real interest I can muster up for them is nostalgia-based. I ate, slept, and breathed STAR WARS when I was a kid, but George Lucas killed that off with THE PHANTOM MENACE and Hayden Christensen's awful acting in the other two films. I'm more interested in the fringe characters, like Boba Fett and the Bounty Hunters, or the bad guys, like Darth Vader. Han Solo gets a pass because Harrison Ford gave him some charisma and personality. Luke and Leia and The Droids......not so much. And unfortunately, this first volume is heavy on Luke and Leia and their creepy lust for one another. Get a room, already!!

 Wood commits what is, to me, one of the cardinal sins of prequels and in-between stories: He introduces concepts and characterizations that don't jibe with what we've already seen in adventures that take place after this one, specifically the way he makes Leia a fighter pilot and an ass-kicker. I have no problem with Leia getting out there and getting her hands dirty, but.........If you are to accept the fact that she's out there, flying an X-Wing and leading an elite squadron right after the destruction of The Death Star, then why is she right back to sitting in the control room and worrying when we get around to THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK? Maybe Wood has some grand character arc planned, where Leia screws up so bad that she never lets herself go out in the field again, but as far as this volume goes, none of her actions rang true. Nor, for that matter, did her manner of speech and her dialogue. I thought Wood did an admirable job of capturing the voices of the rest of the cast, but Leia didn't work for me at all, and that's a sticking point, considering the fact that she is the star of this book.

 Most of what worked in this book was due to the excellent art, by Carlos D'Anda. His likenesses are spot-on, and the amount of detail he imbues his panels with is, at times, mind-boggling. His Darth Vader is a sight to behold.

 Whenever Vader was front and center, the book had my full attention. Otherwise, I was counting the pages until the end. This volume also includes the Darth Vader story from last year's Dark Horse Free Comic Book Day offering, and it's a cracking good yarn that really shows why Darth Vader is the badass of all badasses. It even throws in Boba Fett for good measure. This story was the saving grace of an otherwise totally forgettable book.

 STAR WARS, VOLUME 1: IN THE SHADOW OF YAVIN collects the first six issues of Dark Horse's ongoing STAR WARS series, as well as the Darth Vader Free Comic Book Day story. Dark Horse continues their maddening tradition of not reprinting all of the original series covers. That drives me freaking nuts. There's plenty of room to print two or three cover images. It won't kill you, Dark Horse.....

 Dark Horse Comics provided a review copy.