ScatterThoughts: The Books Of August 30th

I can tolerate the poor art in Battlestar Galactica #1, although at times it takes an act of sheer mental fortitude to associate these characters with their show counterparts. Greg Pak's characterization and dialogue is close to the target, though suffers from a feeling of telegraphy: there's little of the grace and subtlety of the show, and that's because it's moving to a different medium. What jars here is the concept behind this "episode". It's not an enviable task: part of Galactica's distinct flavor is constant change and progression, and Pak is trapped between episodes with no ability to make fundamental change. However, this plot seems inappropriate to the naturalistic tone of the show, and feels like something borrowed from Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine, shows that allowed a bit more play with the fantastic than does the grittily realistic Battlestar Galactica.

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Ouroboros, thy name is Geoff Johns. Teen Titans #38 is nothing but continuity eating itself, is it? Nothing new is happening here, rather we have a slow unparceling of history. To mix metaphors, continuity is Johns' bread and butter, so I suppose he may was well may hay while sun shines. In fact, he's moved on to invented continuity (isn't it all?) as Johns has apparently run out of DCU history and now with start to tediously backfill That Missing Year. But it seems that since I started reading Teen Titans about a year ago, this is all I've seen: precious conversations about the recent past. Geoff, here's a friendly bit of advice: unless your characters start doing something, there'll be nothing left to write about.

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My question about X-Isle #2 is this: Is X-Isle a movie pitch ("King King meets Lost") or a T.V. pitch ("Lost meets King Kong"). Either way it's not much a of a comic book, and seems like nothing more than a hopeful aspirant to big ol' Hollywood Option Dollars. I suppose that's fine, I just don't see why I would pay $2.99 to read one fifth of someone's pitch session. It strikes me, though, that comics became a hot option stripmine precisely because they were outside the mainstream, and stories like Sin City, Road To Perdition and History of Violence couldn't be found in incestuous Hollywood pitch sessions.

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What a glorious end to a glorious series. Brendan McCarthy's Solo #12 is a mad assemblage of word and images that flow off the page. He creates synesthesia with colors that taste and layouts that sound. Peter Max homages aside, it all feels/looks/sounds very Beatlesesque. It pushes the borders of the comic like no other issue of Solo has, and closes out this adventurous series with a fitting monument to all it tried to do. I'll miss Solo, but I'm glad I have these issues to go back over - particularly this final one.

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