I talk about Wolverine and Batman comics you've already read.

Sorry for the delay. Monday was a holiday and I took Tuesday off. Took care of wedding stuff and visiting parents for the last few days so no time to really post or read many comics. I’ve actually not been contemplating them too much recently either. There was a time I was thinking of opening a shop but not having an extra $50,000.00 sitting around is kind of hampering that plan.

Still, a while back I did get to read Wolverine: Enemy of the State/Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and enjoyed them thoroughly. I'm not sure if I already mentioned them here so I'll give a couple of seconds here. Any comic where someone wrecks a submarine then kills the sharks in blood frenzy drawn to the sinking ship is fine by me. But then when the same character hijacks a sentinel and rides it head first into a zombie ninja secret hideout, my mind gets blown.

This weekend I did manage to read Batman: The Long Halloween while A. was out picking out flower arrangements. I’d heard some good things a while back and the structure for the story is uniquely cool. The idea of a noir gangster Batman story with a holiday serial killer is so simply wonderful it makes you wonder why it took so long to come to pass. The story is quite good even if it sort of feels a bit too incestuous in the end. I don’t like the constant retrofitting of characters into new roles with previously hidden depths. The additions at the end seemed unnecessary to me and weighed down an otherwise really great story. I love the stylized art here which is such a break from what I expect to see in Batman comics. I was unsure of the whole re-examining characters from Batman: Year One but that was quickly forgotten as I got drawn into the plot. This is a great little Batman distraction from your other readings. I highly recommend it if you haven’t checked it out.

There’s nothing like a fun little dark mystery in the middle of summer. It’s got gangsters and the slow introduction of Batman’s rogues. I particularly like The Riddler’s appearance, and Batman meeting him in the bar. There’s nothing better than someone trying to take a piece of Batman, he catches the baseball bat and simply says “Wrong answer.” Then you know the shit is ON! I do have a feeling that after this story came out there was a sudden increase in adding a lot of previously unknown and uncharacteristic back stories to the Batman supporting cast because this one ends with elements coming out of left field. It could have worked better if the idea went completely one way or the other instead of the mixing of two stories. I guess it was probably the deleted scenes collected at the end of this trade with Holiday and Calendar Man meeting up in Arkham that made the ending presented here seem all that much more of a let down. I wasn’t the biggest fan, it wasn’t terrible but it could have been a lot better. It felt like a bit of a cheat to me, doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the rest. But that deleted scene really set up a great possibility for future stories.