Justice League #25 (Comics Review)

After a 2-week delay (might be as much as 3), Geoff Johns’ Justice League #25 finally hit stands this week. As the overlord of all of the Forever Evil titles and controlling the core story of this mega-event, Geoff Johns has been doing great on his most high-profile New 52 book and the new issue is more of the same. If the art on Forever Evil itself could be much better, then that mini-series too could be really good. Thankfully, this is where we get Justice League to plug in all the gaps, where Geoff can let loose with all his crazy ideas and come out with something really good.

Despite what it shows on the cover (another misleading Forever Evil cover by the way), Justice League #25 really is about Geoff exploring the backhistory of Owlman, who is the Earth 3 evil version of Batman. And other than Owlman, we also get to see Dick Grayson through Owlman’s eyes, which was pretty neatly handled. Sadly, Ivan Reis & Co. are not on the art duties on this issue, and we have Doug Mahnke & Co. stepping up to the table, but that ends up benefiting the title rather than taking away from it. And in the end, this proves to be another great issue of Justice League from Geoff and team.

Doctor Who: The Day of The Doctor 50th Anniversary Special (Podcast Chat)

This is going to be a very short post. Just over 2 weeks ago I posted a review of the 50th Anniversary Special episode of BBC’s Doctor Who, one of the world’s longest running television shows. It was my first ever episode of Doctor Who and, in a nutshell, I quite enjoyed it.

This past weekend, I made plans with a couple of friends to do a podcast together and talk about our experiences. Paul (blogger extraordinaire for the Hugo-winning SF Signal) and Sally (chief editor of The Qwillery) are both far more experienced Whovians than me, and they’ve been watching the show for years. We had a really great discussion and I enjoyed chatting with them about the show and the episode in particular. Of course, I listened to these two get into the nuts and bolts of various things more than talking about it, but it was fantastic.

Always great to be able to discuss current shows with people.

Sally was kind enough to upload the audio file of our chat to SoundCloud and get that up and running. So here is the link (and here is Sally’s own write-up). Hope it is a lively discussion.

NANP: The Mundane Process of Creating Magic

Stoppy by the blog today to talk names and their significance for the Names: A New Perspective series is urban fantasy author Jaye Wells. I started reading her work this year with her first Sabina Kane novel, The Red-Headed Stepchild (review) and I became an instant fan. Its a great book that balances romance and action well and for me, stands as one of the best examples or urban fantasy novels. Having read it, I was really glad that I picked it for my “25-in-13” reading challenge, which has been quite fun. I’ll be reading her upcoming novel Dirty Magic, which begins a new series, quite soon and its one that I’m looking forward to. In the meantime, here’s Jaye.

Advent Review #11: Detective Comics Vol.4 (Graphic Novel Review)

First off, apologies to everyone who was waiting for this review to up yesterday, as expected. I ended up going to a cousin’s birthday party in the evening and that took up a huge chunk of my reading time. And when I sat down to read the issues again for the review, I was just way too tired and kept dozing off in the middle. So once again, apologies.

Now, for the review. Given the immense proliferation of Batman-related titles in the New 52, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s run is the only one I stuck with when I begin reading comics again last year. It was a maze of titles and I was unsure what to pick up. Recently, my fellow The Founding Fields reviewer Bane of Kings was talking quite highly about John Layman’s run on the title so I decided to pick it up from its fourth volume arc, starting on the special #19 issue which commemorates what would have been the 900th issue of Detective Comics had DC not renumbered their titles for the New 52.

And I found that I quite enjoyed these issues. Layman’s writing is fantastic, easily a match for Snyder’s and the same can be said for Fabok’s art, which is just as good as Capullo’s but is stylistically different. Whether its the special, or the conclusion of the Emperor Penguin saga or the League of Assassins one-shot or the three-issue arc with the villain Wrath, I enjoyed both the writing and the artwork. Fabok is already a favourite and now I’m a Layman fan as well.

Note: Some minor spoilers for the backups are mentioned in this review.