Bag of Mixed Reviews

No excuse on the lateness of some of these. I'm just lazy.

Saga 15
Featuring a romance novel-style cover, this chapter catches up with most of the book's large cast of characters. The reporters run into some trouble with a sniper; Alana does laundry; Oswald, Klara, Marko, and Alana play a game; Will gets mixed signals, and then... well, he does get the point. I also loved the lettercol, even if the typist screwed up my name. :)

Jennifer Blood 33
Still no sign of the title character, but the hunt for her continues apace, with reporters, the FBI, mobsters, and the general populace getting into the act. This is a fascinating book that explores how the media is as responsible for, if not helping to create monsters, then helping to keep them alive.

Red Sonja 5
Though still recovering from the plague, Sonja prepares for her final showdown with Red Annisia, but all is not as it seems. A decent story with interesting characters. Not the best, but quite enjoyable.

World's Finest 17
Karen is still dealing with powers run amok, while Helena continues her pursuit of a bomber in a catsuit. Decent enough to keep me reading, mostly because I love these two characters.

Nightwing 25
A Zero Year tie-in. I'm not reading this "event" story other than in the very few books I already read, so I really don't care about this. And this installment seemed rather pointless. We get a so-so story about Dick's days in the circus when he sneaked out to go to a movie when his circus friends wouldn't go and his parents didn't want him going into Gotham alone. But he does and there's a power outage and he and a group of other teens run into some trouble and for some reason, he dons a red mask and gets his new friends to wear them, too. And really, that's 10 or 15 minutes out of my life I'll never get back. The art was nice, though.

Red Hood and the Outlaws 25
Another Zero Year tie-in. And again, a red mask, or rather, a red hood seems to be the point of the story, as in the first time worn by our hero. The Red Hoods are a gang, apparently, and Jason and his friend Chris wear red hoods to get into a secret meeting, only Jason runs into a woman we know is Talia -- I mean, REALLY, how hard was that to guess? -- who is looking for the meeting, so Jason takes her along, but after teaching him a few fancy moves, she knocks him out to go alone and eliminate the leader of the Red Hoods because he's an Untitled, but she can't destroy him because she's not good enough. So then Jason comes in and he can and does destroy the Untitled with the move Talia taught him. And after, she tells dear old dad about Jason and what he did and that they should keep an eye on him, which is, I suppose the real point of the story: why she revived him after the Joker killed him. Oh, and the Joker was lurking around and torches the building where the Red Hoods were meeting, I suppose because he's a lunatic. Not the waste of time and paper that the Nightwing issue was, but hardly a vital chapter in Jason's saga. I would have been fine if I'd remained ignorant of this little chapter. Yes, the New 52 is different than the old DCU. I get it. I just don't really care. At least now we should be able to get back to the current story. These breaks for "event" issues really takes away from a long arc slowly building to a conclusion. It just screws up the pacing.

Astro City 6
An interesting tale of an ordinary man who, while working a legit, ordinary job, is also a fairly low cog in a mob machine who dreams of being more, in that mob machine, maybe running it someday, or at least, being important. So when he gets the chance to nab some alien tech, he takes it, and the consequences are more than he bargained for. Yet, for all he learns about what's important in life, there remains the chance that someday, he'll use that tech again, which is a very human reaction, and one reason why this book is so good. It just feels so real. For a universe with super powered beings and aliens and all.