With all due respect, it's not much of a feat to say that Hawkgirl: Hawkman Returns is not as bad as the nightmarishly poor Hawkgirl: The Maw. But in comparison to some books I've read lately like Booster Gold and Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War, Hawkgirl: Hawkman Returns seems hardly worth your hard-earned cash. There's some nice art here by writer Walt Simonson, Joe Bennett, and Renato Arlem especially, and the story isn't egregiously bad -- but neither does it ever get off the ground in a meaningful way.

The main difficulty with the book is that the plot never quite raises itself above good guys-fight-bad guys, though this is likely as much Simonson's fault as it is DC Comics's very loosely defined Rann/Thanagar War. Even having read Rann/Thanagar War, it was very unclear to me what Blackfire had to gain by keeping the war going on; aren't here "people," whom we never actually see here, dead as of Final Night?

Similarly, I found it hard to believe that Thanagar is still in danger, a year after 52, because of a mistake the Green Lantern Corps made and didn't fix. It doesn't help that Simonson completely mangles Blackfire's origin, often treats Hawkman as if he's native Thanagarian, and that it's impossible to tell the Thangarians from the Rannians through most of the story. That leaves just the fighting, and while Simonson and company draw some nice action sequences, there's not much more here than standard fare.

To be sure, any book that centers on the female lead pining away for the male lead to return seems somewhat destined for trouble (I've lately been thinking this might be why the last two seasons of The X-Files bombed). Hawkgirl, simultaneously wishing Hawkman would return and also cursing him for leaving, isn't terribly interesting, and it only reinforces the reader's sense that Hawkman is the real protagonist in this tale. Simonson fails to make Hawkgirl Kenda Saunders interesting in her own right -- she mostly mopes around and thinks about finding a direction for herself -- and as such the scenes without Hawkman feel simply like passing time.

The one bright spot, perhaps, is the last issue, with the aforementioned art by Renato Arlem. Arlem has a detailed style that shines especially in the New Orleans-inspired backgrounds of St. Roch, and it gives some sorely needed atmosphere to the comic. Simonson returns in the last chapter returns to the Egyptian Hath-Set plot begun by Geoff Johns, adding a bit of Apokoliptian technology to the mix. It was only here that I felt the trade began to pick up (amidst another tired Hawkman/Hawkgirl break-up scene), and this plot plus Arlem's art might almost be enough for me to pick up the final Hawkgirl trade before this series' cancellation (see discussion on the cancellation with Graeme McMillan at Newsarama). Almost.

[Contains full covers]

On now perhaps to some Batman, and then maybe Justice Society. Be there!

Maybe I'm a little anal-retentive (though what comics fan isn't), but I like my trade paperbacks to stay in good condition. That's why when I shelve them on my bookshelf, I store them in bags; that's why when I read them, I'm careful not to bend the spines.

And when I read a hardcover, of course, I take the jacket off. A dust jacket, I know, is supposed to protect a book, but increasingly I find myself protecting the dust jacket from the world at large.

Now, with all the new DC Comics hardcovers, more and more when I take off the jacket I find ... a foil-stamped cover! Foil stamping on the hardcover spine I expect, and the occasional stamped cover I can deal with. But increasingly I'm finding ever more intricate cover stampings; see the full Justice League logo on Justice League of America hardcovers, the Justice Society eagle on Justice Society hardcovers, even a scene of Batman and Ra's al Ghul fighting on Batman: The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul!

As if trying not to crease the pages, trying not to bend the spine, trying not to damage the jacket, and trying not to scuff the edges all weren't enough ... I now have to endeavor not to flake the stamping off the front of my hardcovers! It's getting so that I have to hold my hardcover three feet away with salad tongs to read it, just to keep a collection in good shape.

Please, oh please DC Comics -- we know you're high end, and we know you're fancy ... now enough with the front stamping already!

[Paid for by Readers Against Front Stamping and the Society for Tongue-in-Cheek Blog Posts.]

Videos,imagenes y curiosidades de series míticas de la televisión.

Fox News host Gregg Jarrett apologised for making transphobic remarks about a transgender competitor on the upcoming season of America’s Next Top Model but I’m wondering when will the apology come from gossip magazine US Weekly, their “editor at large” went along with Jarrett’s comments:

Yes! It’s finally happening! Rachel Maddow is finally getting her own show on MSNBC starting September 9.

It’s a smart move, Maddow is one of the few people able to mix snark and gravitas, something that perfectly captures the zeitgeist as noted by the New York Times’ recent profile of Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show resonates not only because it is wickedly funny but also because its keen sense of the absurd is perfectly attuned to an era in which cognitive dissonance has become a national epidemic. Indeed, Mr. Stewart’s frequent exclamation “Are you insane?!â€� seems a fitting refrain for a post-M*A*S*H, post-Catch-22 reality, where the surreal and outrageous have become commonplace — an era kicked off by the wacko 2000 election standoff in Florida, rocked by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and haunted by the fallout of a costly war waged on the premise of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist…

The day begins with a morning meeting where material harvested from 15 TiVos and even more newspapers, magazines and Web sites is reviewed. That meeting, Mr. Stewart said, “would be very unpleasant for most people to watch: it’s really a gathering of curmudgeons expressing frustration and upset, and the rest of the day is spent trying to mask or repress that through whatever creative devices we can find.�

That, of course, is also the dynamic found on Maddow’s future lead-in, Keith Olbermann, one that’s given the network enough ratings juice to kill off those constant rumors about the network being dismantled eventually.

The collection Green Lantern: Tales of the Sinestro Corps War is something of a strange animal, serving at times as both a prelude, a chapter, and an epilogue to The Sinestro Corps War. I'm a bit disappointed in how it turned out to be necessary to read these "background" tales in order to understand the main Sinestro Corps action (how the Statue of Liberty gets broken, for one, and why Superman-Prime is suddenly half-naked mid-way through the second volume, for two); at the same time, the completist in me likes how DC has collected not just the Sinestro Corps backup stories and specials, but also the amazingly detailed Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps Secret Files.

Aside from the Tales of the Sinestro Corps short stories and the Secret Files, the main thrust of this volume is four Sinestro Corps specials: Parallax, Cyborg-Superman, Superman-Prime, and Ion. The Cyborg-Superman story, written by Alan Burnett, essentially retells the Adventures of Superman #466 origin of the cyborg, Hank Henshaw, with a couple of minor retcons. It's a fun story because of the visual appeal of the Cyborg, and because the reader gets to see him throw down with Superman again, but I felt most of the content could have been blended into the main Sinestro Corps War story.

Probably the best part of the Tales of the Sinestro Corps War collection is the Superman-Prime special written by Geoff Johns. Like Black Adam, "Prime" is a character who's voice Johns has spot-on, and it's a sick thrill whenever Prime is on the scene. Johns dives right into the conflicts Prime left behind at the end of Infinite Crisis, pitting Prime against another mob of DC heroes, including the Flashes who previously imprisoned him, Red Star (whose family Prime killed), and Risk (where Prime, gleefully, rips off Risk's other arm).

All the while, and into Prime's battle with Krypto and then Superman, Johns keeps up Prime's whiny, woe-is-me-tone, just on this side of parodying today's fanboys, and the story is twisted goodness. The art by Pete Woods, echoing his great crowd scenes in Amazons Attack, make this special feel all the more epic.

The Parallax and Ion specials are both written by Ron Marz, are essentially Kyle Rayner stories, continuations in many ways of the recent Ion miniseries. As in Ion, Marz writes a particularly morose Kyle Rayner, but it's also a Kyle that feels entirely natural, given all that he's been through. That Kyle is asked to train the new Ion, Sodam Yat, further cements Kyle's growth in the Green Lantern Corps, and I especially like the emphasis that Marz and Geoff Johns are placing on the four Earth Lanterns now being a "band of brothers," with Kyle back in the fold. There's not much in this special that isn't covered by the final issue of Green Lantern Corps in the second Sinestro Corps War volume, but I'll still take all the Marz-writing-Kyle I can get.

Finally, the Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps Secret Files offers pages upon pages of tiny biographies of hundreds of Lanterns. Literally, the longest part of my read was this Secret Files. The detail here is nothing short of unbelievable, a combination of already-established stories and backgrounds on dozens of new characters. There was so much here I found myself skimming at parts, and I couldn't help but wonder if much of this was background for background's sake, or if Geoff Johns has plans for every one of the story tidbits he sprinkled through this section. If you're a Green Lantern history buff, you won't be disappointed with this.

[Contains full covers.]

So that's that for The Sinestro Corps War -- in retrospect, it's been quite a ride. I'll be interested to go back and read it again in a few months, possibly interspersing the Sinestro Corps tales where I now understand they go. Anyway, on now I think to some Hawkgirl, and we'll see what's next from there.