Very Late Buy Pile Report

OK, so I've had my hands full for the past week dealing with the Section One basketball playoffs. I know, I know, comic books are far more important than silly old high school basketball, but with the amount of blogging I've been doing from the Westchester County Center, I just haven't had the opportunity to get over here and write on the week's issues.

I did, however, find time to read right after the games, and I did notice some very interesting things worth commenting on. Because of that, this Buy Pile Report will be a little different from the others. I'm guessing you all have already bought what you're going to buy this week anyway.

So, other than stating the obvious, like how much Captain America #35 kicked ass, here we go with three important reflections on the week:

1) The value of a good penciler vs. a decent one:
Fernando Pasarin served as replacement penciler for Dale Eaglesham on Justice Society #13. I was actually happy with his first few pages, because he was obviously making an effort to emulate Eaglesham's style, which always looks nicer when you go back and re-read a whole arc all at once.
But then came the part where Superman met Superman... again. With Superman-22 stuck gazing at Lois Lane, the first time he's seen A Lois Lane since his died, Superman of New Earth finds him and says "Are you spying on my wife?" Now, when reading the text, in the context of the situation and the context of their conversation immediately after, I would think this line would be Clark poking fun at Superman-22, seeing as they are the same person and were married to the same person. He couldn't have actually been trying to mark his territory, could he?
But Pasarin's faces in this sequence are so nondescript that I have absolutely no idea how this scene actually played out. And, with the right art, this could have been a classic sequence. His art, especially during the action scenes, only gets worse from there, obviously rushing to meet his deadline as a fill-in artist.
This was a great script, with only marginal art, and it really makes you think twice about complaining when a good artist ends up making a book miss its shipping date by a couple of weeks.

2) Geoff Johns is re-building the whole DC Universe in his image:
And, this is NOT a bad thing. In his penultimate issue of the "Superman and the Legion of Superheroes" arc in Action Comics #862, which was brilliant again, by the way, Johns makes use of the "Legion of Substitute Heroes," the rejected Legionaries who former their own super team.
While I applaud this story point, as it provides a mirror to the now evil Justice League of Earth, I noticed he included a Rainbow Girl on this team that isn't actually Rainbow Girl. The original Rainbow Girl had the ability to split herself into colored versions of herself; Blue was cold, Red was heat, Yellow was bright light, and Green was kryptonite.
Johns' Rainbow Girl utilizes the colorized emotional spectrum, making Red anger, Blue hope, Purple love, Yellow fear, Green willpower... hmn... where have I seen this before?
I am a big fan of Johns, I am more than willing to let him re-shape parts of the DCU as he choses, I trust his ideas. That said, the man clearly has the keys to the castle to do whatever he likes.
He dreams up this idea for use in his Green Lantern stories — and alone it is just a story point — but by including it in his other books, like this one, he legitimizes the idea. Suddenly it's not just the Green Lanterns that have this emotional spectrum, it's also in the 31st century! I'm sure we'll see it pop up in other books too, and before long, Johns will have used his influence to turn this idea he had into continuity fact.
And again, that's a good thing.

3) Alex Ross backs winners:
You want to pick up Project Superpowers #1. You also want to go back and pick up the cheaply priced Project Superpowers #0 from last month.
You may have been skeptical about this book, since Ross decided not to do the interiors after all. And you might have been skeptical about picking up this story of golden-age heroes only your grandfathers have heard of. What's the use in reading about characters you don't care about, you probably asked yourself.
Well you want to read this book. In one and a half issues, Ross and co-plotter Jim Krueger have already established two intriguing and likable heroes, as well as one awfully shady family of villains and a world that clearly has something wrong with it.
There's a great mystery waiting to be read here, and there aren't enough good superhero books on the market lately to pass this up.
This issue also features one of the best short first-page dialogs, which immediately introduces you to a character: "Dynamic Man" says "I made them you know," before giving a speech about how he has secured this whole society. His assistant says "What do you see when you down on them?" Dynamic Man responds "That's simple. I see that it is good."
If ever there was a perfect way to introduce a God complex, that's it.

OK, that's it for the late Buy Pile Report. I promise not to be tardy two weeks in a row.