#29- Judging Books by Their Covers

First off, if any of you are buying Countdown rather than reading the Sinestro Corps War or Ellis's Black Summer, shame on you. Get thee to a comic book shop and pick them up. This week's Sinestro installment manages to be frustrating and nifty at the same time. While the Countdown franchise takes an entire issue to chronicle a series of non-confrontations between C-list heroes and a universe full of characters barely on the publishing schedule (I'm looking your way, Colon: Blow!), Green Lantern uses a NYC-destroying throwdown between the JLA and the Sinestro Corps as a backdrop. Where's the tie-in mini, kiddoes? Interesting pacing choices but an overall great read that keeps things focused on the book's central characters.

And Black Summer is the best stuff I've read from Ellis since Planetary. Oh, Planetary, where is that denouement, anyway?

Ahem. Okay, back to the subject at hand. If you happen to be a huge Karate Kid fan (for instance, if you happen to be Ralph Macchio or...his mom?), you might be tempted to pick up this issue for red-hot Daniel-san vs. HAL action. I'd hold off if I were you. KK and Singular Girl show up for one page in which they fail to kick anything at all. They do get vaguely scanned again though, so if you like scanning, check it out. Hasn't KK already kicked a hologram on a Countdown cover? Oops, looks like he actually punched that hologram. Point is, dude hates holograms.

Something I'm enjoying outside of the book itself is the fact that fellow Countdown blogger Kim Em and I seem to be doing this gradual Statler and Waldorf thing with our opinions on the book. Kim's been vocally pro-Countdown since the beginning and now seems to be souring, while I'm just now warming to the book.

Piper and Trickster sit down for a Grand Slam Breakfast with Double Down, who has the creepiest case of shingles in recorded history. The man flakes off playing cards, which makes it pretty amazing that the Rogues can keep down their Moons Over My-Hammy while he incessantly shuffles his scabs. He lets them in on a secret that DC solicit fans like myself are already hip to, namely that villians are disappearing. While in the van outside Denny's, someone ominous lurks. That should be the tagline for Countdown: "Someone ominous lurks."

Holly and Harley arrive at Paradise island. That's it.

Jimmy runs into the Newsboy Legion in the sewers who, instead of Morrison's multi-ethnic hallucinatory version are back to the All-Caucasian Squad from the Superman books. Sigh. In Countdown's continuing battle of Kirby vs. Morrison, rack up another one for the King.

In a pretty neat reversal of Isis's role in 52, Mary Marvel uses her powers to help the hell out of some folks. She helps them till it hurts. I don't know about you guys, but I don't entirely trust that Eclipso chick.

Did I miss an issue where Mary went from "prone to tantrums" to "derranged and sadistic"? I thought the standard model for the hero-goes-bad story was that a point is reached, a decision is made and a line is crossed. Mary just suddenly went supervillian on us. Although Carlin insists she hasn't killed yet, even if a certain headless statue might beg to differ.

Lord Havok and the Extremists look like the stepped out of a second rate mid-nineties Image book. A cursory Wikipedia search on these cats (which is, incidentally, the same source editor Mike Carlin went to for info) reveals that their original confusing and uninteresting origin has been rendered irrelevant. Despite the ad's claim that "The Most Dangerous Villians in the Multiverse are Back!", it appears we've never really seen these guys before. The lowdown: they're a group of Marvel villian parodies who have taken over Earth-8 and kicked the collective asses of the Challengers. Which seems to happen a lot. Upon capturing our intrepid protagonists, LH and his crew proceed to torture them in their sleep, which anyone will tell you is pretty ineffective. But this momentary bout of unconsciousness somehow allows Bearded Monitor (remember him?) to locate the Challengers. Despite spending the past twenty-some issues in committee meetings with the rest of the Monitor crew, BM decides to face off against the single greatest threats to the integrity of the Multiverse on his own, Charles Bronson style! Maybe he's trying to fit in with Extremists by being a Punisher knock-off? One of the most powerful sentients in the so on and so forth manages to fire off two shots, which both MISS! The first frees the Challengers from Havok's Sleeptime Torture Machine and the second offs the character find of 2007. So long Jokester, we hardly used ye as a minor plot device.

(I know I said I was going to review Colon: Blow! Crime Society, but since it's twenty pages on the origin of a character who just got shot in the back, I'm going to pass on that. By the way, Jokester was Duella Dent's daddy, but how she got from Earth-3 to New Earth was never explained. There you go.)

Luckily, the Challengers manage to evade the detection of both Bearded Monitor and Bad Sabretooth knock off by teleporting ten feet away.

To add to the craziness, Monarch and Forerunner show up and...float in the air menacingly, issuing vague threats to end someone! Probably one of the Monitors. That Monarch guy hates Monitors almost as much as Karate Kid hates holograms. I sort of forget why that is. But he does manage to convince the Most Dangerous Villians in the Multiverse to get on board his Big Red Train of Doom!

In behind the scenes news, this is Mike Carlin's first solo issue as editor, which doesn't make much difference since it's pretty clear Mike Marts has been off the book for awhile. The rumor is that the unknown big name artists that are supposed to show up to pull this book's fat out of the fire are putting the current artists out of work, raising the question, "How the hell is there a work shortage at DC?" I can imagine there being a work shortage at Marvel due to Bendis and Brubaker writing every book that gets published, but DC is adding titles, subtitles and specials left and right. Give the Countdown artists work, preferrably on books I don't have to read.

#30- Things Get All Ker-razee!

Or possibly they don't. But Tony Bedard promised! We can trust Tony Bedard, right? Oh, wait, Bedard's not even writing this issue. Maybe Graymotti didn't get the "Things go nuts in issue 30" memo. Let's see, shall we?

Leading off the issue, we've got the meet up with Brother Eye, who I guess is no longer evil or destroyed. Last I checked, he was sort of both. Now Brother Eye is a big whopping obvious reference to HAL from "2001", which I guess it always sort of was. Apparently Brother Eye is also hip to the Great Disaster and has been waiting for it to drop by. Oh, and Karate Kid has the OMAC virus. Which we sort of knew.

Jump over to...a cave. Did Black Canary and Green Arrow have their wedding in a cave? That seems tacky. Especially the Cave of Poorly Drawn Villians. At least the Batcave has some nice photo ops. I didn't pick up the BC/GA wedding special, so I have no idea where this story beat takes place. I can tell you what happens, I think. Those wacky Rogues escaped the dust-up at the bachelorette party and decided to attend the wedding. They just care that much. But they escape that too! These guys are getting really good at escaping danger and running smack-dab into...more danger! After blowing up Poison Ivy with an exploding television, they find themselves carjacked by Bullseye! Wait, wrong publisher. They find themselves kidnapped by Gambit! Okay, by some DC villian who uses cards in a threatening manner.

I actually have no idea what happened in the Jimmy Olsen installment. The art is utterly incomprehensible. I think he's escaped the helpful folks at Cadmus via the sewer system. Why the lab has a drain that connects directly to a sewage line is beyond me.

Holly and Harley have made it to Paradise Island, but have to swim through shark infested waters to get there. Feels a bit like the experience of reading Countdown: we can see Morrison's Final Crisis series in the distance, but to get there, we have to fight our way through some sharks. Or some sewage. And Holly's exclamation that "They have no eyes" seems to reflect DC's policy regarding its readers' art appreciation. How else to explain it.

Finally, in the only story that seems to be going anywhere at all, the Challengers touch down in Gotham City of Earth-15. You can tell by the way it's labelled Earth-15. I wonder if the Challengers can see those little captions. Because the Challengers are apparently the most exciting thing to show up in any universe they happen to visit, they are quickly visited by Earth-15's Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, who are actually (gasp!) Jason Todd, Donna Troy and Kyle Rayner. Take the tip, kids: superheroes need nicknames and the classics never go out of style. Jason gets to express his understandable differences with the Joke(ste)r, and a frustration with Bob the Monitor's inefficacy which I think most of us can sympathize with at this point. Donna gets some inspirational words straight out of Bullfinch ("remember, good things pop out of people's foreheads") and then Superzod shows up to inform everyone that Ray Palmer's not around. Apparently he can figure that out faster than Bob the Monitor. I'm not at all sure how Kyle comes to the conclusion that this earth "has a Superman and doesn't need him", unless we assume all the relevant superheroes in any given universe would show up immediately when the Challengers arrive on the scene, not a whopping ten minutes afterwards.

Regarding the cover: why does Donna have a lasso? Is Donna supposed to have a lasso?

On the Monitor scene, it looks like they have both a wayward brother (Bob) and a zealous brother. I have my suspicions as to who the zealous brother is, but didn't he convert the whole brotherhood to his, um, zealotry? I really don't think we're hurting for a third Monitor faction when the goals of the first and second factions are still so sketchy. I mean, is there a middle ground between "avert Great Disaster" and "destroy. DESTROY!"? I think not.

So Tony Bedard has lied to us. Things have not gone all crazy go-nuts. In fact, we are about at the point where everything we knew was going to happen has happened. We also have only three more issues til the title change, which I'm deluding myself into believing will mark a pick up in pacing. I will say this, the Carlin era of this title has been decreasing its overall number of egregious continuity errors, so light applause for that.

Tomorrow, a review of Colon: Blow! #2, which might advance the plot of Countdown more than any given five issues of Countdown. Sometime this week, a review of Countdown reviews, since the web coverage of this series is easily as interesting as the series itself and I want to be the first Countdown blog to do the meta thing. For now, I'm reading the new Exterminators trade and going to bed.

#31- Everybody Hates a Tourist

Sorry about the lateness of this post. I picked this book up last Wednesday and threw it in my bag and it kind of migrated to the bottom of standard bag detritus. Funny how that works, huh?

All right, let's get to it. First off, we've got the Challengers landed on Earth-3, where evil always triumphs! I'm not about to go dusting off my philosphy degree, but don't you think that in a world where evil always triumphs, they'd stop calling it evil? Which also makes the juxtaposition of "Crime" and "Society" a little tough to swallow. Naturally, the presence of this group of B-listers warrants the appearance of the whole Crime Society in their teeming...well, there's about a dozen. You've got your Superwoman, your Owlman (who miraculous reappears after being well-chucked away by Donna), Ultraman, Power Ring, and...oh, seriously, who cares? These are clearly not the characters we've seen in Morrison and Buseik's Crime Syndicate storylines, and since the Challengers are just on a sightseeing tour anyway (picking up a smiley little souvenir), we'll more than likely not see them again, except as foot soldiers in Monarch's little army.

This, by the way, is the first mention of Monitor forming in army here in Countdown proper. Since I've stated a number of times how desperately this series needs an antagonist, let me politely golf-clap for this Monarch appearance. But why would Monarch be set against the Challengers, who are up against the Monitors? Isn't the enemy of my enemy my friend?

Art issues on Earth-3. First of all, a reverse Earth lends itself to all sorts of neat little visual gags. None of which show up here. Hell, even the Daily Planet is still called the Daily Planet. Isn't the whole point of tourism to see new and exciting places? It looks the Challengers are going to show up on identical blocks of downtown Metropolis, mysteriously eliciting the immediate appearance of all that universe's superheroes/villians and then checking out. Thrill-a-minute! Secondly, what's supposed to be a speed effect at the top of page five somehow manages to drag Johnny Quick's entrance line out to a full ten seconds.

Back in Monitor camp, the Monitors are still mad. Really mad. In case you didn't get that. But now they're determined to stop Bob and the gang (who they couldn't find a couple weeks ago, but have a pretty good fix on at the end of this issue) by any means necessary. For instance, doing something. Too bad they killed off all those Forerunners they'd been breedin' up. Yep, a big old warrior race would probably come in pretty handy right about now.

In other news, Holly Robinson has apparently been on the worst sting operation since OJ (sorry if that joke was a little too current. At least, like the cultural references in Countdown, it wasn't all that funny). Even though she wouldn't call Selina a couple weeks ago, Holly decides its a good idea to send a letter through the Amazonian post office about how she's infiltrated the Amazons. We can presume it's addressed to "Catwoman". Next time, write by WASTE. The government will open it if you use the other. The dolphins will be mad.

Mr. Mxyzptlyk shows up for reasons which passeth understanding and is snatched out of the fifth dimension. Hell of a band, "Age of Aquarius" is one of my favorite songs. Do I even want to ask whether this is the fifth dimension of Earth-1 or whether there's only one fifth dimension for the entire multiverse or AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH! My head!

The newly mohawked Eclipso finally gets to chat up Mary Marvel, informing her of pretty much nothing. Even if we assume Mary Marvel is stupid enough to team up with the woman who killed her friend, Sue, the art here is terrible. Particularly problematic is MM's petrification of the Turkish guards. We fet a "fwash" then a "pok", but at no point do we even see these guys have been turned to stone. At least a panel missing, sloppy work.

Over in Karate Kid's neck of the woods, KK has apparently aged into Karate Middle-Aged Dude (KMAD). My favorite line of the week is Singular Girl's "Why would the mysterious Mr. Orr who we know nothing about possibly lie to us?" Gee whiz, KK, if you can't trust shadowy biotech geniuses with questionable mustaches and Darkseid on speed dial, who can you trust? For extra laziness, Buddy Blank apparently lives in "The Burbs". Dear DC Editorial: you operate a fictional universe with a whole list of fictional cities, each of which (with the exception of Opal City) presumably has suburbs. Take two seconds and pick one. Buddy, whose grandkid has a certain resemblence to Kamandi, don't you think, is going to take KK and Singular Girl off to see Brother Eye, who I guess is not evil anymore and will probably tell them to go see someone else.

Runner up for best line of the issue? "No one likes a dated pop culture reference." Here's the thing, you can only make fun of how bad a series used to be once it's gotten better. Jimmy asks the $64,000 question, "What's happening to me?" and gets, unsurprisingly, no answers.

Well, you know next issue, Tony Bedard promised things were going to get all kinds of crazy. So this ish is probaby just a set up. You know. For the craziness.

#32- The Return of the Surprise Ending that Surprised No One

Holy crap, you mean Eclipso has been manipulating Mary Marvel all this time? It's like some kind of Seduction of the Innocent!

Short, late entry on this one, as not a whole lot happens. Mary and Eclipso finally meet up. The Challengers finally end up in one of the few iterations of the multiverse I'm some what familar with: the crime-ridden Earth-3. Jimmy ends up in the hands of the Cadmus project and the Rogues once again narrowly escape from certain homosexual tension.

A note on the strip-club scene. First off, Piper's exit line of "Hey didja seem all them strippers?" is pretty ridiculous, especially since only one dancer ever makes it into the shot. In fact, the club is almost entirely full of scantily-clad ladies. Don't you imagine if you're Big Barda you might relish a chance to leave that helmet at home for a night? The whole thing makes Barbara and Lois look a little dowdy by comparison. Or, I dunno, sane?

The secret identity thing is in question again here. How many party attendees know Barbara Gordon is Oracle? What's Lois doing there anyway? These issues could be resolved in all of two panels, but Countdown has never had any interest in checking itself for loose ends and frayed edges.

I didn't pick up a copy of the Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding, so there's yet another blank spot in the DCU for me. Does Ollie get offed (again)? I did just see a solicit for GA/BC with Connor on the cover, which makes me a little concerned for ol' Curly Beard. (Update: Yup, Ollie's dead. Again.)

The insta-tension between Kyle and Jason seems a little off as well. Kyle in particular should perhaps have a little more perspective after a couple months of being possessed by the embodiment of fear. I know my time possessed by the embodiment of fear was followed by a period of zen-like calm, rather than adolescent jealousy. But that's just me.

You know what the best thing is about Project Cadmus? Its dark counterpart is called the Evil Factory. A place that manufactures Evil. A whole industry of evil, Evil Wholesalers with Evil Warehouses and Evil Invoices. I know we all love Jack Kirby, but that one just feels phoned in. Cadmus has been disbanded more times than...well, actually I can't think of a DCU team that hasn't gone through a bunch of dramatic disbandings, so let's just say it's been disbanded more often than a generic DCU team. Last time out, they were controlled by the Evil Factory, which was controlled by the Agenda, which was controlled by Lex Luthor's wife. Got that? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this time, they're tied to Darkseid. I'm assuming everything's tied to Darkseid, down to the pomegranate margaritas. Dubbilex was one of those characters that made the Superman books all but unreadable for me in the 90s, and I wasn't real psyched to see him back. My fears regarding the return of a crew-cut, flag waving Guardian remain with me. Serling asks a good question of Jimmy, who gives a fairly bland answer, but it hardly forgives the time Countdown wasted with the Mr. Action storyline. Come to think of it, why the hell was Jimmy trying to join the Titans or the JLA before he knew anything about his powers? His current path of inquiry seems much more natural and rational, but then there were pages to fill before Kyle Rayner could show up months before the end of his current arc. A delicate balance of timing.

Another note, motiveless mummies make horribly uninteresting antagonists. And this series could use some antagonism. The reason any minor appearance by Darkseid (or even Eclipso) seems like such a shot in the arm for this series is the sense that they're the only characters on the board with any type of plan. All of our heroes are bopping from point to point aimlessly and the only hope of redemption is the idea that someone (Dini, Darkseid, Didio) has some idea of what's going on.

The art is passable, with no glaring inconsistencies. Bedard mercifully drops the transitional phrases that marked the last couple issues, but unfortunately the issue as a whole comes off as comic relief, even though there's nothing to be relieved from just yet.

Bedard has said that by issue 30, things are really going to blow up. Thing is, Countdown has this amazing ability to constantly give the impression of something about to happen. One major plot development could tip the whole mess towards interesting. For now, reminding myself that this is not even the halfway point should be in some way encouraging, but the thought of reading 31 more issues feels like when you're at the laundromat and realize how many more times you'll have to do laundry before you die. This week's release of the third 52 trade didn't help. It's hurtful how much Countdown suffers in comparison.

#33- The Surprise Ending That Surprised No One

I've been patient. Lord knows I've been patient. But this was absolutely the worst, most useless issue of Countdown to date.

Hey guess what? Kyle Rayner joins the Challengers. Which might seem odd seeing as he's poised to eat Hal Jordan's family in this week's issue of Green Lantern, but seems less odd seeing he did so in the first five pages of last week's All New Atom. Oh, and we've been told since the beginning of Countdown he'd be joining up. What could possibly happen next? Mary Marvel possessed by Eclipso? Jason Todd becoming Red Robin? Judging from the look of shock on the cover images of Donna and Bob, they haven't been reading DC solicits.

And the implication that Kyle showing up with disrupt the delicate chemistry between Donna and Jason? Those two have about as much chemistry as Miss Hoffman, my 10th grade chemistry teacher. That lady was like the Anti-Mr. Wizard.

Seriously, there is no reason to read this issue. If you are following Countdown, it is entirely possible to go from last week's All New Atom to this week's Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Wildstorm (or, if you will "Colon: Blow!") without missing a beat.

You would miss characters behaving inexplicably, however. Like Wally's "I trust you enough to save you from one lethal device but not two" treatment of the Rogues. Or Klarion "I'm a Witchboy!" the Witchboy's vase-shattering frame-up of Mary "I'm Mary Marvel" Marvel. You'd also miss out on the return of yet another shadowy shadowy organization within the DCU, as the Cadmus Project, whose scientific developments have included some of the worst Superman stories ever, returns. Oh, and some pretty terrible art. You'd miss that, too.

Am I the only one who suspects that a lot of Countdown is set up purely to crap in Grant Morrison's sandbox? Countdown has manhandled (you'll forgive the expression) Morrison's revamps of Zatanna, Klarion and the Joker, not to mention entirely dismissing his New Gods reboot. The first issue of "Colon: Blow!" presents an Authority team that's clearly not the same group Morrison set up in his two issues of the book (remember those? Those were pretty. When was that, 2005?). And with Cadmus back, can an All-New, All-Craptacular version of the Newsboy Legion be far behind? Maybe even a new Guardian who's a miliaristic caucasian!

Other issues have left me frustrated, this one left me downright angry. And in case you're wondering, the first issue of "Colon: Blow!" was pretty useless as well. Given the abyssmal state of the Wildstorm universe (has DC left other placeholders open in their 52 universes for publishers they might acquire later?), this might not be the ideal time to sound the trumpets about it. From what I can tell, the only Wildstorm team with a regularly published book, Stormwatch, is the only team absent from this issue. Someone clearly needs to smack Ron Marz around with the ol' cross-marketing stick.

#34- They Blinded Me with Bad Science

All right, this is going to take some figuring out. Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. Mary Marvel meets up with Klarion the Witchboy and gets magicked. The Rogues meet up with the Flash and get beat on, revealing that Deathstroke's got plans to go all Wedding Crashers on Green Arrow and Black Canary. Not in a funny-yet-sad Vince Vaughn way, but in a slashy Owen Wilson way. Holly and Harley are headed to Paradise Island, which might not be Paradise Island at all, since Athena is really Granny Goodness. Still no mention of that switch here in Countdown, which leads me to believe that DC is assuming readers are either picking up Amazons Attack or reading some internet source. Even if they're right, this is going to contribute to Countdown being almost unreadable in trade.

On to the confusion!

Ryan Choi is inexplicably debugged and Queen Belthera is inexplicably repeating exactly what she said at the end of last issue. If that's not enough, pick up this week's All-New Atom. Wait, don't pick it up. Or, pick it up and don't read it til next week. Or until November. See, All-New Atom runs concurrent with next week's Countdown and the end of the Sinestro Corps War. It's mildly perverse, but I can't wait to see how Countdown handles introducing Kyle Rayner without ruining the next three months of Green Lantern books.

Actually, this is the least confusing thing going here. Let's move over to Jimmy Olsen, who has suddenly remembered he has a job other than dressing up like a jackass. Luckily, John Henry Irons has a device that's like a CAT scan, only metaphysically different. It's been a long time since I took a philosophy class, but wouldn't anything that's not a CAT scan be metaphysically different from a CAT scan? In a skull-clutching bit of bad science exposition, we find out that this device scans brainwaves and projects subconscious thoughts, since the subconsciouses of Luthor's Everymen are massively different (metaphysically different?) from those of everyone else. Jimmy's thoughts are even metaphysically differenter and blow up everything with physical manifestations of the Source Wall, several Earths and a pack of Mother Boxes. Oh, and his head expands like a bag of microwave popcorn. If the science is skull-clutchingly nonsensical, it's only made worse by the fact that this whole sequence gives us no new information. John Henry Irons' diagnosis: Kid, you're all kinds of messed up. And then he pawns him off on someone else, because that's what characters in Countdown do after confirming that something is horribly wrong.

Finally, we get to this issue's whopper of a skull-clutcher. First off, Mr. Orr is working for both Checkmate and Desaad. Which means either Desaad was claiming to be Checkmate when he contacted Orr, or that Apokolips has taken over Checkmate. The latter seems more promising. And then there's the science. Man, science is just taking a beating this issue. Orr reveals that KK has a variant of the OMAC virus, which was derrived from Brainiac-13. Somehow, the fact that KK's from the future indicates the virus has been dormant in humans for some time. Huh? Wouldn't it indicate the virus will be dormant or will have been dormant or some other twisting of verb tenses that's probably better expressed in French?

To top it off, Orr sends them to find Buddy Blank, who has direct access to Brother Eye. Despite the fact Brother Eye's been more or less out of commission since the end of Infinite Crisis (with some minor flare ups). And also, Brother Eye is totally EVIL! First rule of medical science: avoid evil diagnostic tools (e.g, satanic x-rays, Nazi MRIs). Depending on how you look at it, Buddy Blank is either the first OMAC or the first OMAC. A Buddy Blank (let's not say "the" Buddy Blank just yet) was the One Man Army Corps in Kirby's Earth AD saga, which Morrison has mentioned will be playing into Final Crisis. Another Buddy Blank was the first OMAC in Countdown to Infinite Crisis. And our current Buddy Blank is a researcher for Pseudo-People, which is in line with the Kirby material.

So the science is a little shaky, the publishing schedule is totally wonky and Countdown is fast becoming a book that can't be read without supplemental material, even though Mike Carlin staunchly refuses to include any. After reading an issue of 52, I'd rush over to Doug Wolk's blog for fun, now I find myself waiting for Mike Carlin's Newsarama interviews for clarity. On the bright side, we're slowly seeing more involvement from the Apokolips contingent, which is making the story look more like, well, a story

Off Topic: Vertigo's Next Generation, Part One

Since glomming dfown Doug Wolk's survey course in graphic novelty, Reading Comics, last week, I've been itching to write about something non-Countdown and non-superhero. Wolk's big on the single auteur theory (excepting Moore and Morrison, of course) which means a lot of the output of Vertigo comics falls outside his scope. Which is a shame.

Vertigo is at an interesting point right now, with current flagship titles like Y: The Last Man and 100 Bullets (and arguably, Fables, which seems set to conclude its major storylines within the next year) wrapping up, the everpresent Hellblazer chugging along under a steady stream of excellent creative teams and a handful of newbies finding their feet. Testament, Douglas Rushkoff's ambitious but aimless mapping of Old-Testament-as-open-source onto late global economics might be Fred Jameson's wet dream but failed to find an audience. Azzarello's Loveless left readers stranded in a deftly-worded historical morass after offing its protagonist. Which leaves The Exterminators, DMZ and American Virgin.

Despite a title that sounds like a low circulation periodical (which, in a way, it is), American Virgin might seem the horse to bet on, based on the experienced creative team and the bold opening statement of its author that AV would do for sexuality what Preacher did for gross-out humor and what Hellblazer did for demonology. Steven Seagle has been writing strong, sometimes inspired stories since the mid 80s. His Eisner nominated It's a Bird...is one of my favorite Superman stories, a mature artist reflecting on the deployment and relevance of a not always mature cultural icon. The premise: 21 year old Adam Chamberlain is the leader and figurehead of a nationwide youth celibacy movement with ties to a shady televagelist family (echoes of Manchurian Candidate), whose faith is deeply shaken by the murder of his girlfriend, the woman for whom God had told him to save himself (echoes of Yorrick's quest for Beth in Y: The Last Man). The book so far has followed Adam and his much more liberal stepsister as they globehop about for various reasons, encountering different cultural attitudes towards sex and sexuality.

But a year in (I've been keeping up in trades rather than floppies), AV seems to be suffering from a perpetual state of tourism. Luckily our visual tour guide (not the cliched mercenary character who leads Adam about) is Becky Cloonan, who for months grounded Brian Wood's Demo with her strong sense of character and even stronger sense of setting (Cloonan's issues are broken up occassionally by the work of fellow B. Wood collaborator Ryan Kelly, whose less manga-influenced style nevertheless shares many of Cloonan's strengths). While her page compositions are fairly conventional and her character designs just make it under the wire of "huge-eyed Japanocuteness", her eye for architecture and environment are detailed and exact, avoiding letting AV's characters languish in a generic pastiche of "3rd World" signifiers.

The problem with the tourist feel of the book is that the brief visits to other culture's sexual mores reinforces how much we're only tourists in Adam's committment to celibacy. It's a problem shared, to a degree, with pop culture's other current effort to put the fun (or at least the mental) back in fundamentalism: HBO's Big Love. But Big Love manages to dodge the faith bullet largely by centering on the outgrowth of that faith, polygamy, as a pragmatic concern. Characters spend minimal time telling us how God showed them the way (although there is a bit of that), and instead show the consequences of that decision, with early storylines focusing on the economics and logistics of multiple marriage. AV's Adam repeatedly tells the audience (both the readers and any character that opts to listen to him for two consecutive seconds) that celibacy is hard but God told him to do it. Which is persuasive if you happen to be a devout Christian from the get-go, but makes for pretty empty motivation if you're a skeptic. Seagle wants the book to be sex positive and for Adam's celibacy to be justified at the same time. Essentially, he wants to have his sex and Jesus too. But his failure to explore or explain Adam's decision (other than some highly subjective dream/vision sequences), his addressing of faith not as faith but as a subject/object of evangelism (Adam's book and quest, his late fiance's missionary work and his family's network) leave the reader feeling adrift; a tourist in a foriegn hotel room, channel-surfing past the religious station.

Later today or tomorrow, I'll get back to Countdown stuff, but at some point soon, I want to talk about Brian Wood's DMZ, in which tourism quite literally explodes and The Exterminators, which is strictly for the locals.