What's a three for?

Stopped by Borders yesterday and took in a half dozen graphic novels while doing some Christmas shopping.

I remember the One Man Army Corp from a guest spot in DC Comics Presents - to which I had a subscription as a kid. He was a butt-kicker with a mohawk, the kind of superhero who was to be remembered. Somewhere along the line, however, OMAC seems to have gone by the wayside - probably during the original Crisis. In The OMAC Project mini-series leading up the the Infinite Crisis event, we see a paranoid Batman again setting into motion another plot to keep his fellow leaguers in check that goes awry. (C'mon, man, take better care with your secret plots.)

The storyline is based on a lot of comics history (recent history, admittedly, but history) that isn't really explained, so this probably isn't the place for a newbie to be dropped in, but I'm getting the feeling that such is gonna be the case throughout Infinite Crisis with tons of references back to the original Crisis and events that happened because of it. The touches back to a funnier time for the Justice League as well as a couple of Batman characters - Sascha and CHeckmate - who haven't had a lot to do for a while. For that reason, I give you warning.

The series is, however, thoroughly entertaining, balancing very nice fight sequences with story exposition back at the Checkmate headquarters. The use of Maxwell Lord as badguy works well here even though he's using his power to nearly take out the absolute best and brightest that DC has to offer, and the sentient computer badguy works well.

To get what's happening with Infinite Crisis, this is apparently the one series that absolutely has to be read - other than Identity Crisis, probably.

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Also grabbed Day of Vengeance - another of the lead-in mini-series to Infinite Crisis. This one doesn't seem to lead into anything terrifically important, and it's taking advantage of some of DC's lesser lights - using only one Big Gun (Captain Marvel) who seems to matter. I admittedly skimmed this as little was there to catch my attention. If you're fan of DC's continuing machinations with the Spectre (who I haven't really enjoyed other than in Kingdom Come), then this'll be a big one for you since he kicks some major butt, but otherwise, the artwork left me cold (lots of black), and the storyline didn't do much for me either (Spectre and the Wizard Shazam have at it while Eclipso takes over a bunch of people).

I'm curious how this is going to lead into Infinite Crisis, but it's a much lesser light than The OMAC Project

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I've been hearing a lot of good stuff about the new She-Hulk series, so I grabbed hold of her second collection Superhero Law on a lark and was very pleasently surprised. It's a well-written collection with a very light-hearted tone. There's some really nice references back to Marvel Universe events that even I can remember - especially the use of the Champion that I remember fondly from a comic of my childhood. She-Hulk is currently working - as her alter ego Jennifer Walters - in a law firm specializing in superhero law that leads to a lot of hilarious situations such as using a local comic book store as a legal resource. She seems to be one of the only characters who is aware of her situation as a comic book character, which leads to some great jokes about continuity and how the entire universe seemed to forget about some events but that they can be remembered once comic books dealing with them are read.

This was a really good, funny, quick, enjoyable read, one of the best light-hearted books of the past few years. I'll be hunting down the first collected volume as well.

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Ok, back a little later today with some more reviews including some cd's of the past week and a short book from Kurt Vonnegut.