I have a feeling Alias is one of those books that will be much more enjoyable when I sit down and read all the issues in one sitting. There's a few things I've meant to do that with; a couple of the Vertigo series, few other things. I'm moving this week but maybe after that I can finally sit down and catch up...

JLA hasn't replaced Aquaman, they're still going with the originals plus Plastic Man. There've been occasional hints dropped that he's not croaked; occasionally they'll cut to a panel of an empty throne at the bottom of the sea, which seems like a weird thing to do if he's really permanently dead.

As for Guy Gardner, apparently he's still alive. I don't read the Superman stuff but I guess he's been popping up there recently. Who knows how/why?

Greg

The SS cancellation may have just been a rumor. I read it on Usenet, actually, so that means its credibility is probably zero. Maybe I'll give it another shot. I was planning on picking up some selected What-Ifs next time I go to the store, so maybe jumping back on to Suicide Squad'll be in the cards as well.

I like Alias -- I think it kind of suffers from how Bendis oftentimes doesn't "accomplish" much in a given issue, but there is plenty to read there. (And certainly there are plenty of writers who accomplish nothing AND give you no text.) I have to give the penciller credit, though -- when Captain America showed up out-of-costume a few months back it was the first time I'd ever seen somebody draw Steve Rogers as looking like something other than a stereotypical blond guy. Cap, Hawkeye, Hank Pym and the robot Human Torch that the West Coast Avengers dug up are drawn to look almost exactly the same by a lot of artists. There should be an alternate-universe story where one of them commits a crime and someone has to pick the right one out of a police lineup that includes those four, but none of the witnesses can agree on the right dude. Anyway, the guy who draws Alias managed to make Cap look how (now that I think about it) you'd think he'd look, externally -- a goofy-looking boyscout doofus with terminal 1950's face. Marvel needs to give Pym or Hawkeye a fu manchu or something to further distinguish them.

Did they replace Aquaman with somebody in JLA? I quit reading JLA after the Worlds at War (or whatever it was called) thing that was supposed to involve most of the DC books. Somebody put a spear through Guy Gardner practically off-panel which was offensive enough, but DC trying to "kill" Aquaman when everyone knows he's going to back back sooner or later wasn't much better. Not that I am a big fan of his or anything, but in general... NEEDS MORE FINNY FRIENDS, natch.

Wait, they're cancelling Suicide Squad? Goddammit. It's a good series, lots of snappy dialogue, but the way it was going it was the type where a lot of groundwork was obviously being laid ... and now it'll die. Good job, world.

Whaddyou think of Alias? It's a series that I've been getting, and I'm still waiting for it to really catch fire ... but it's oddly captivating.

Other than that, I've (in my latest bout with comic collecting) been getting JSA, JLA (though it seems to be entering "suck" territory with rapidity), Flash, Green Arrow... few other things. Anything Greg Rucka writes. I've got the first few issues of Power Company, since it's written by the Astro City guy, but thus far GOD does it suck.

Greg

(It warms my heart to see a post here that is not somebody telling me it's their last.)

Y'know, I picked up issue #2. I had called up the guy who runs the local comic place before #1 was out and I asked him if Suicide Squad was coming out anytime soon. He assured me that this was not the case. Of course, the Comicon.com board said it was shipping that Wednesday, and as it turns out the Comicon.com board was correct. I ended up missing issue #1, where I understand Giffen offed (most of?) the Injustice League.

I did buy the next one, and it just didn't grab me. To be fair, I had never bought an issue of the old Suicide Squad run, so for all I know the characters in the second issue were from that. But when I open up a comic and see that a teenage character is named "Modem" within, that doesn't get things off to a very good start for me.

(That reminds me, the computer kids in the new G.I. Joe run have names like Firewall or Process something. WTF? If I were being drafted by the army to write code for them, and would be bopping around with guys named "Snake Eyes" and "Bazooka," I'm thinking I'd do a little bit better than "Firewall." Yes... yes, I think I'd probably grab the name... "Black Ice." Er, wait -- !!)

I haven't bought another SS, though. I usually get Daredevil, Powers, Green Arrow, the Hulk and Alias each month. I used to collect the Avengers and Captain America, so I give them a shot once in a while. They haven't been too captivating though. Oh, and I thumb through Thuderbolts once ever four months or so as I hear it's OMG OMG good, but I have never seen Hawkeye in costume in an issue of it, much less shooting a guy with a trick arrow. That's all I'm looking for. Archer-on-criminal violence. And as I understand it, he's in a GROUP with like five other villanous reprobates. It's like putting bugs in a bottle, shaking it up and them not fighting.


What was your take on the new Suicide Squad? I hear it's headed towards cancellation... did Giffen string together a pretty good set of issues?

Speaking of Giffen ... are you reading Suicide Squad?

[quote]
Fifteen years ago, they were a sensation, with embassies around the world, now; they’re renting a storefront in Queens. They used to go around under the name Justice League International, but now, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Fire, Captain Atom, the Elongated Man, are back in Formerly Known as the Justice League, a six issue miniseries coming later this year from DC which reunites original JLI creators Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, and Joe Rubinstein.

And instead of calling themselves the Justice League, since they’re another group of heroes using that name these days, the team has come up with a new name: the Super Friends.

We’re not kidding. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back a little.

This year’s revisiting of the Giffen/DeMatteis League isn’t the first time such an idea has been floated by the creators. According to Giffen, the duo has been talking about returning to the League in some form or another since the mid-90s.

“They wanted me to do this a ways back,” Giffen said. “Marc and I would come back to it now and then, but my head wasn’t there. I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to go back just revisit these characters for the sake of revisiting them. I didn’t want to go back unless I could find something to wrap these characters around that was different. I didn’t want to do embassies.”

In fact, even Formerly Known as the Justice League has suffered through starts and stops, and as little as a few months back, was dead. The light bulb went on above Giffen’s head however, and the project sprung back to life. The concept for the team’s return to “team” status has to do with the man who got the Giffen/DeMatteis team together in the first place, DCU billionaire Maxwell Lord.

“It wasn’t until it dawned on me that if Max was going to try it again, he would probably take a different tact that I really got excited about going back to the League,” Giffen said. “Once I came up with the idea of them being ‘the people’s heroes,’ I figured we had something to go with. If you need a cop, who do you call? 911. In this universe, which is lousy with superheroes, how do you get in touch with them? All of these superheroes that populate the DCU are completely beyond the ability of common man to contact them.

“I thought – 1-800-SuperFriends, or something along those lines. They would operate out of a storefront in Queens and they’re a nonprofit organization. They trade their images for merchandising to plug money back into the organization, and it all goes back to the idea that these are superheroes who don’t need the money – they’re all doing fine, but they’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do. Yeah, they’re kind of goofy, but they’re altruistic and doing this for the right reasons. I figured we should give it a shot.”
[/quote]

Read all about it here, from the Newsarama board on Comicon.com:

http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=13&t=001011


Those 60 issues of JLA were probably my favorite run of comics ever. Can't wait for this limited series to arrive.