Buy Pile Report

The hardest part about writing a major comic book war has always been the ending. It's an impossible task to tie everything together and deliver a finish worthy of the event's opening chapters -- case in point, Marvel's "Civil War." And this week, I think we saw Geoff Johns start to struggle with the ending of his could-be-masterpiece, the Sinestro Corps War.

Johns penned the long-awaited Tales of the Sinestro Corps Presents Superman-Prime this week, a decent book that didn't quite live up to expectations but does succeed as a half-brawl, half-biography over-sized issue. While the biography is needless to most everyone that read Infinite Crisis, the brawl is just plain fun with good moments, brief moments like Cassie mentioning Connor and the Super-family all attacking Prime at once.

We also see another solid instalment to the war plotted by Johns and written by Dave Gibbons in Green Lantern Corps #17 which, for the most part, was all predictable stuff. Lanterns fighting Sinestros on Earth, Sodam Yat becoming Ion, few surprises. Not bad by any means, just not anything shocking.

Here's the problem though... these two books, which came out on the same day, don't quite fit together. And what's worse is, you can start to see seams in the story forming caused by too many major players being too many places at once. Throughout Superman-Prime, we watch all of the DCU battle Prime to a standstill. Throughout GL Corps, we watch a group of Lanterns fly head-first toward Sinestro and Anti-Monitor, before Yat is turned to Ion. At the end of both books, for no real reason whatsoever, all of a sudden Prime and Ion are attacking each other. Where did that come from? Now, I'll give this story the benefit of the doubt for now and eagerly await the next installments, but this week did worry me that Johns' masterpiece may be turning a bit sour.

The pleasant surprise award for the week goes to X-Men #204, the immediate precursor to "Messiah CompleX." Now, I'm a huge X-Men-world fan, but I admit that despite a decent start to Carey's run, I stopped reading this title after "SuperNovas" simply because Bachalo's and Ramos' art bothered me that much. Mike Choi's pencils in this issue, though, were like an open invitation to me as I thumbed through this book, deciding whether or not to buy.

And boy was I glad that I picked up the issue. I don't know when Carey got to know these characters so well -- but he hit the nail on the head with plenty of the characters he doesn't normally handle, namely my man Scott Summers. This one issue was THE BEST CYCLOPS I have read in a long time, better even than Joss Whedon's Cyclops. Where Whedon has made Cyclops cool again by turning him into something that he isn't, Carey simply brought out the best in Cyclops that was always there, his strong and decisive leadership. And that alone really set the tone for me as we head into "Messiah CompleX."

Oh, and "Endangered Species" finished in this issue, and, as expected, nothing happened. Hope you didn't go and buy each issue just to have all 17 parts, you would probably be pretty pissed right now.

Finally, I'm not quite sure of what to make of Superman #669. We meet the "Third Kryptonian" in this issue -- and we REALLY meet her. I mean, this broad immediately tells Supes her entire life story, right down to when she lost her first tooth and the first time a boy punched her on the monkey bars which meant he actually liked her. While this all was pretty informative and a fresh look on Kryptonian history before the big boom, I found myself wondering when the backstory was going to end and the resolution was going to begin. Finally, at the end of the issue, someone attacks Superman and Ms. Third, so we'll get some action in #670. Until then, this issue is only for those of you who are into Kryptonian History Lessons.

Oh, and Countdown #27 was horrible. 'Nuff said.