Hey everyone! How's it going? I know it's been a minute since I've posted something on here, but that's because I've been re-reevaluating how I'm running both this blog and Josh's Movie Review Corner. I'm cutting back to two posts a week, one here, and one over there. However, rather than do one review a week for each blog, I'm going to do this wrap-up style. So over here, since The Review Basement is now a comic book centric blog, I'm going to talk about however many comics that I read each week. Which means if I don't read any, there won't be a post here for that week. Over on Josh's Movie Review Corner I'm going to be doing the same thing, but with movies and TV shows. With one being the primary focus of the post. For the comic book side of things I was inspired by Ed Gosney II's Cool Comics in My Collection blog. However, while he decides which books he's going to read each week ahead of time, I'm not going to do things that way. At least not for the single issues. Yes, I will be talking about collected editions in Comic Book Wrap-Up, though I don't have any for this week, so that will be starting next time. I've got nine single issues, and an Archie digest size collection, to talk about today, so without any further ado, let's dive into this week's comic books.
The first book of the week is the oldest one that I read this week. Archie #656 was published in 2014. As you can see from the front cover it shows Archie with a girl who's in a wheelchair. Her name is Harper and she's Veronica's cousin. I got this issue on Monday when I went to do groceries. It's collected in the recent anniversary collected edition, The Best of Archie Comics; 80 Years, 80 Stories, which I'm going to be talking about on it's own shortly, and when I saw that this story was in it, I knew I had to talk about it as the Feature issue of the week.
I admit that when this issue came out in 2014 I wasn't reading Archie. I was reading the Digests, but not the ongoing monthly series. So I missed the debut of both Harper, and Kevin Keller, Archie's first openly gay character. Sadly, unlike Toni Topaz, Kevin Keller, and a few others, Harper only had two appearances in the comics before Archie Comics rebooted everything and Mark Waid took over writing duties on Archie in 2015 and unless she's appeared in more recent issues, which Nick Spencer has been writing, Harper hasn't been seen since then. And she certainly hasn't appeared on Riverdale.
Harper is a great character. I love how she stands up to Veronica, when her cousin tries to dictate her life, and I love her attitude about her disability, because there are times when it's hard to think about things that way if you're disabled. My problem with Harper is her disability itself. She wasn't born with anything. She was injured in a car accident. The most generic and easy thing to do when you're writing a character who's in a wheelchair. Look, I get it's hard to write a good disabled character when you yourself aren't disabled, but not every disabled person was in a car accident. Some have diseases that cause them to be unable to walk, some are born with deformities that take away their ability to walk. I also get that Archie Comics is an all-ages book, and more heavy on the comedy, particularly back in 2014 before Mark Waid helped to revamp the series, but the least Dan Parent, who wrote and did the pencils on this issue could've done is been more creative when it came to Harper's disability. Especially since she was only in two issues before disappearing forever, because apparently Archie Comics isn't interested in disabled people as potential characters for their books. But THAT's a rant for another time, given that it isn't just Archie Comics that has this problem.
There really isn't much to say about the story, since this was your typical Archie story. Though there's a twist concerning Reggie that is pretty cool, and very off brand for him. And again, having Harper be so positive and asserting herself toward Veronica is pretty cool. Veronica has been really hit and miss in the series before 2015. For the most part she was pretty unlikeable before the 2015 revamp, though she did have moments where she did nice things for her friends. But again, she was generally unlikeable and you never really knew why Archie would date her over Betty, who was sweet, helpful, and an overall nice person. But he did, and it frustrated me when I was a teenager. Can you tell that I like Archie Comics?
So the reason I wanted to talk about The Best of Archie Comics: 80 Years, 80 Stories this week is because unlike previous Best of Archie collections like The Best of Archie Comics: 75 Years, 75 Stories and the four volume 70th Anniversary series from 2011-2014, is that the stories are backwards in this edition. No, I don't mean each story is printed with the endings first. What I mean is that while most anniversary collections start from whatever year the first issue featuring a character was published in, this book starts in the present day, 2021 and goes backward until 1941, the year Archie, Jughead, and Betty debuted in Pep Comics #22. So it's kind of like travelling back through time rather than going back in time and then moving forward back to the present day. And this Archie collection has a number of issues in it that aren't in the previous collections that I own, so that's pretty refreshing.
Over the last few months my sister and I have been watching The Orville on Disney+. She hadn't seen season 2 before, so it was fun watching her reactions to each episode, particularly as we towards the end of the season and episodes like "Identity" came up. Last night we watched the two part season finale. I'll be talking about that over on Josh's Movie Review Corner on Friday, but the reason I mention it here is because Brad showed up last week with some comics for me. Two of them were both issues of The Orville: Digressions, which takes place in the alternate timeline created when past Kelly turned down a second date from Ed due to the memory wipe Claire performed on her at the end of episode 13. It basically tells the story of what happened in this timeline leading up to where we see Ed and Gordon at the beginning of episode 14. Issue one starts with the ending of episode 13 and continues through the first season of the show, with differences in the crew of the Orville. I'm not going to go into spoilers here since that's not the point of this post. It was a good start though.
Issue #2 starts from the point of "Identity, Part 1" and continues right through until the point where Kelly has gathered the main timeline's crew of the Orville aside from Bortus, Isaac, Ed, and Gordon before the beginning of episode 14. If you've watched the show then you know the ending of this comic, so there's a scene where Ed and Gordon are on Epsilon Eridani Station, which Ed mentioned in episode 14, covering the station's personnel's evacuation and over the comm you here "Kaylon troops have entered the station! Kaylon troops have entered---" and then Gordon says to Ed, "Come on, that's it. We gotta go. You did your job" and they leave. Kinda sounds like in The Empire Strikes Back where Han, Leia and Threepio are still in the command center of Echo Base and you hear, "Imperial troops have entered the base! Imperial troops have entered---" and Han says to Leia, "Come on, that's it" and they leave. It's not surprising since everybody working on The Orville are a bunch of geeks and David A. Goodman, one of the show's writers, writes these comics. So there was bound to be some homage to Star Wars either on the show or in these comics.
I already did a review of Titans United #1 so I'm not going to talk about it much more here. But, it was a good issue and I read it again after I posted my review of it last week. There's just something about these characters that just draws you into their story, no matter how old you are and no matter what era you're reading them in. I've always loved the Teen Titans. At least, ever since the animated series was on TV in the mid 2000s. So it's just fun getting to read the comics, even the ones being published in 2021.
I Am Batman #1 was a completely didn't experience. I was so confused by the end of it because I had no idea what was going on and so I felt like I was missing something. It turns out, I am. This is another comic that Brad bought for me last week but he didn't realize, and neither did I, that there was a Zero Issue that came out before this and this issue isn't written for people to pick up if they haven't read the Zero Issue. I'm not a big fan of what DC has been doing with Batman these days. It's been so convoluted, especially since Batman didn't get a complete reboot like most DC characters got at the beginning of the New 52 back in 2011, that I just can't keep up with all of it. And this issue didn't really help with that either. I do like Olivier Coipel's artwork in this issue though. It's pretty decent. I just don't have much to say about this new Batman since, well, I don't actually know who he is.
However, later in the week I read the Batman Free Comic Book Day 2021 issue that Brad dropped off for me a few weeks ago. It had a preview of I Am Batman #0 in it and it explains that the new Batman is actually Lucius Fox's son, Jace. It's also a spin-off of Batman: Second Son, a four issue mini-series that just ended a month or two ago (the final issue's cover date is September 2021 and cover dates are usually two months ahead of the actual publication date). Which is fine, I don't mind that. But I should've been able to pick up I Am Batman #1 and read it without any sort of confusion. I shouldn't have to go digging for information that SHOULD'VE been in the issue itself. But that's comic books for you.
I absolutely love Superman: Son of Kal-El #1. Particularly that cover which is homaging the cover for the original Superman #1 that was published in 1939, a year after Superman's debut in 1938's Action Comics #1. I admit that I've never read any of Super Sons nor have I read alot with John Kent in it. But I've enjoyed what I've read of the character so far and I love that he's Superman in this new book. It just feels better than having Batman being Lucius Fox's son, who has no ties to Batman whatsoever. At least not in any of the Batman comics I've ever read. And I love that the new Superman is learning the ropes despite being the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and has been a superhero in his own right alongside Damian Wayne in Super Sons. Despite the fact that Damian Wayne is far from being my favourite Robin, mainly because most of the time it feels like he's trying to be Red Hood Jr, rather than Robin, I actually really like him in this issue as well as the conversation between him and John that takes place WHILE they're fighting ninjas who are after Damian (no surprise there). It's just a fun issue and one I highly recommend you pick up if you haven't already.
I've never played Fortnite and I don't know much about it. And this special Batman Day issue doesn't actually tell me anything about the game either. Batman somehow finds himself in that world, with basically no memory of who he is. That's the issue. Not the whole issue as this is just a preview issue for the longer graphic novel, Batman Fortnite: Zero Point. I know the title isn't actually referring this, but the title sums up how I feel about this book. There is zero point to it. I'm sure fans of Fortnite will enjoy it, but if you don't know these characters, this is just another pointless DC crossover with another property similar to Justice League/Power Rangers or Star Trek/Green Lantern. Just from this issue's front cover I see there are alot of weird looking characters in Fortnite.
The final issue for this week, and the second Batman Day issue, is actually a pretty cool concept, Batman: Knightwatch. It's basically Batman, Nightwing, and Batgirl fighting crime in Gotham City based on tips they get on the Knightwatch Network. like a neighbourhood watch, but citywide and keyed directly to the Batcave and the Bat Family's cell phones and other technology. Kind of like Oracle's pre-New 52 network of contacts all over the world. It's alot lighter than most Batman books tend to be these days, which makes it refreshing. I'm sure it's just a goofy little one off but I would love it if they actually did an entire series based on this premise. The story is cool and the artwork is pretty great. In fact it actually reminds me of the artwork in the Batman comics of the late '90s and early 2000s. So that's fun.
Honestly the only comic I can't really recommend of the ones that I read this week is I Am Batman #1 as it does a poor job of explaining who the new Batman is for people who didn't read the Zero Issue, and you basically need to have kept up with the last two years of Batman comics to really follow what's going on. The rest though are definitely worth checking out though. Including the Batman Fortnite book.
That's it for this week's comic book wrap-up. Next week I'll have a better mix of old and new(ish) comics as well as a trade paperback collected edition. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime please pop over to Josh's Movie Review Corner on Friday where I'll be talking about the movies and shows that I watched this past week. So until then have a great week and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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