Jim Doom: DC! Some of this is because of good work by DC, including the flawed but still very good Blackest Night and the fantastic new Batman & Robin. But a lot of this is because of Marvel’s insistence on charging $3.99 for so many of its books. When a publisher chooses a path that…
Jim Doom: Batman! Excluding things written by Tony Daniel, I have to say Batman. In Grant Morrison’s Batman & Robin and Judd Winick’s Batman, Dick was believable and fun to watch as his own man. Both writers were able to cast him in the character of Batman while maintaining his own defined Dick Grayson personality….
Jim Doom: Cyclops! Cyclops is such a huge douchebag. I seriously can’t even stand X-Men books anymore because of this prick, and I used to read ALL OF THEM. I don’t mind unbearable characters when they appear to serve a greater purpose in the big story, but every time I dip back in to the…
Jim Doom: Norman Osborn! The Dark Reign era certainly has its flaws (some of them by design), but I have no problems whatsoever with the greater experiment Marvel attempted – putting the military branch of its universe under the control of a power-hungry opportunist. It was a fun attempt at art-imitates-life, giving Marvel its very…
Jim Doom: Mandrakk the Vampire Monitor! The biggest villain of Final Crisis makes his debut in a god-awful two-issue 3D miniseries and then decides to show up in the last issue of the main series. It’s probably worth mentioning that he was defeated by Superman in Superman Beyond 3D #2, so that miniseries was relevant…
Jim Doom: Blackest Night #0! Geoff Johns has written quite a few comics this year that I completely disliked, moreso than in any other year I can recall. But when he’s been good, he’s been great, and Blackest Night #0 was a perfect example. This issue was a fantastic combination of a big-picture scene-setters for…
Jim Doom: (tie) Superman Beyond 3D #2; Final Crisis #6; Final Crisis #7; Final Crisis: Secret Files #1; Final Crisis: Revelations #5! The extreme disappointment with Final Crisis has been well documented on this site, but I’m not sure I have ever been so consistently punched in the face and then kicked in the gut…
Jim Doom: “Return of the King,” Daredevil! This was Ed Brubaker at his best, and by extension, Daredevil as well. It was a fantastic collision of longtime adversaries on a collision course with each other, bringing together events that had been laid out for years. I hated seeing Brubaker leave the title, but it was…
Jim Doom: Mon-El in Charge! I’ve slowly learned to respect James Robinson, but almost everything he’s done in Superman has just been downright clumsy. To start with, Superman is able to save Mon-El thanks to some mystery potion that just magically appears. But the basic premise behind leaving Mon-El in charge of Metropolis is inherently…
Jim Doom: Ultimatum ended! Dear God this was an awful, awful series. It was like Marvel paid someone to illustrate awful fan fiction. Here’s what I said at the time: What a terrible mess. It’s like somebody made a bet on how many exploding heads they could fit into a mainstream comic book. Remember when…