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The first story arc of Fathom is utterly compelling. Aspen Matthews is a marine biologist who has always been drawn to the ocean-- she was an orphan who returned to land with an ocean liner that had been thought lost, and she doesn't remember beyond that, but she surfs, was an Olympic swimmer, and when she is invited to a deep sea research station, she is drawn into a bigger story of a war being instigated by a group of beings who live in the ocean, with involvement of Air Force pilots testing amphibious planes, and along the way Aspen discovers more about her own heritage and how powerful she is.

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Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann meet up with a Russian agent who is trying to get somewhere in the Midwest U.S., because the three astronauts who have been on the Space Station since the plague hit are going to try to land-- and two of them are men. Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann go to a “hot suite” and try to make arrangements to protect the men (so the plague doesn’t kill them as soon as they land), but the Israeli military force that’s been tracking Yorick gets in the way-- kidnaps Yorick, attempts to take out the landing capsule, possibly contributing to its explosive landing.

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Does a good job of summarizing what happened in Vol.1 (all the males on earth died except Yorick and his pet chimp Ampersand), and reminding us what a male-dominated world we still live in, as most of the business owners, pilots, construction workers, etc. are now gone. Yorick, Agent 355, and Dr. Mann are working their way across the country to get to Dr. Mann’s laboratory and backup copies of the notes and data destroyed when her east coast lab was burned down. After a little incident on their train, they end up in a small town that seems Edenic in comparison to the rest of the places they have seen on their way through the country-- they have electricity, food, and seem to be taking care of themselves quite well, and even deal rather well with the news of Yorick’s existence (as compared to the other extreme reactions he’s seen before). Meanwhile, Yorick is being hunted-- by some Israeli troops, and by the extreme Daughters of the Amazon, now accompanied by his sister Hero, who seems to have been brainwashed by the care and attention of the leader who protects and feeds her and all the other women.

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For some reason, I was unaware of the fact that there were so many Buffy comic books before the new Season 8 run. This is the first book in an omnibus series that collects them all in chronological order. This one starts with "All's Fair", a story about Dru and Spike on a rampage at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, which I didn't particularly enjoy, but then it gets more Buffy-centric. "The Origin" is a comic-book adaptation of Joss Whedon's original screenplay for the Buffy movie; the stories after that cover the time between the movie and the TV series, while Buffy was on her own without a Watcher. She and Pike take a trip to Las Vegas to hunt down vampires in "Viva Las Buffy!". In "Dawn & Hoopy the Bear" we get a story of Dawn's experience while Buffy has run off and their parents are on their way to divorce; a teddy bear ensorceled with a djinn meant for the slayer is mistakenly delivered to Dawn, but her distracted mother just thinks Dawn has a wild imagination when she takes about the bear coming alive. Then, in "Slayer, Interrrupted" we get the story of Buffy's stay in the mental hospital, which is referred to in the TV series. Interspersed with these, we also get some interesting parts of Giles' path to becoming Buffy's Watcher.

I had a little bit of trouble getting into this book because I didn't enjoy the first story; I know some people really love Spike and Dru, but a whole story with them killing and destroying just isn't my thing. In this story and in some of the others, I felt like there might be references to characters or events in the TV series, but I'm not familiar enough with them to catch it-- and not sure I care enough to go to the trouble of looking it up. Angel shows up in the Las Vegas story, and I wondered about the time lines of that, but again, I guess I'm not familiar enough with all the details of his back story to know how this fits in.

As Scott Allie points out in his brief introduction, these stories include Dawn-- which is an interesting choice. Like him, I'm glad that we got the story of "Dawn and Hoopy the Bear"; but other things make me wonder a bit about how things would have worked without Dawn being there. For instance, Dawn is the one who reads Buffy's diary (because she misses her), and that is how Buffy ends up getting sent to a mental institute.

Artwork for comic books based on TV shows and movies can be a little strained sometimes-- either they are too creepily like the actors or they aren't quite recognizable. In this case, I found the artwork to be quite good, and it certainly never distracted me from the story being told.

I enjoyed this enough that I'd be interested to read the other Buffy Omnibus collections, although I'm a bit intimidated by the fact that there are 7 volumes.

Title:	Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 1
Author:
Date published:	2007
Genre:	Young Adult, Graphic Novel, Horror
Series:	Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Number of pages:	296

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An entertaining, if all too brief, escapade with the crew of Serenity. Presumably set sometime during the days of "Firefly," when all the characters we know and love are on board, this story finds the crew pulling off a heist and being the first guinea pigs to come up against a new, sophisticated, automatic anti-theft/crime-prevention device. They do manage to outwit it, and when they go to sell what's left of it, the cache they are sent to retrieve as payment ends up being far more money than they ever expected. So, interspersed with the rest of the story, as they are being chased down by the makers of the anti-crime machine and Mal or Zoe is being tracked down as a "dust devil" terrorist after the war ended, we also get to see the various dreams of how the different crew members would like to spend their share of the money-- sometimes serious, sometimes joking just to get a reaction, and sometimes downright strange..

The artwork is generally gorgeous but I found it a little uneven, because there were a few points where I wasn't quite sure for a moment or two who a particular character was supposed to be-- usually it was a matter of context or not enough detail, and I eventually figured it out from the story or dialogue-- but it made me realize [again] how much you lose, when you go from actors who all give life to their characters with their voice and bearing, in addition to the way they look.

The "dream" sections when the various characters are telling what they'd want to do with the money are all pretty entertaining, and it seems like it probably gave the artists some more interesting things to portray than they might otherwise get to draw in the serenity-verse. River's fantasy, particularly, is quite strange-- but what makes it fit perfectly is Zoe's wry response (I can just hear her saying it) that now her idea is taken.

The other interesting detail is that somehow, by the end of the story, the money has somehow been stolen. The only one who catches on is Inara-- she notices that Mal never shared what he wanted to do with the money, and guesses that having his crew leave him is the last thing he wants. It's well-written and subtle, but quite clear and insightful into Mal, at the same time.

Title:	Serenity: Better Days
Author:	Joss Whedon; art by Brett Mathews, Will Conrad, and Adam Hughes
Date published:	2008
Genre:	Science Fiction / Graphic Novel
Series:	Firefly/Serenity-verse
Number of pages:	80

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This is the first volume of the acclaimed Y: The Last Man series, and it is engaging right from the start. Some unknown disease (or something) kills off all the males on the planet (not just humans but every species), and it happens all over the world at the same time. The only male survivors are Yorick, an out-of-work street magician and escape artist, and his pet monkey Ampersand. Vaughan presents a compelling picture of what the world might be like and how people might respond to an abrupt change like this. Some women form a new gang of Amazons, insisting that the world is better off without men; others mourn the incredible losses of all the talented musicians, scientists, and other great men that were taken away all at once. Even the political aspects are compelling: Congress is left with mostly Democratic politicians and the wives of the dead politicians demand their share of the power. The title of the series works beautifully on so many levels-- Y for Yorick, the last man on Earth, but also for the Y chromosome, as well as a play on the question, "Why?" since no one knows the cause of this disaster (although Vaughan offers a couple of possibilities in some of the different storylines).

The artwork is great, and so many little details-- in the art and in the story-- are delightful. Yorick's father is a literature professor who named his children after characters in Shakespeare (Yorick's sister is named Hero). The opening of this volume grabs you immediately because it shows the catastrophic event and then jumps back a little bit and gives you some of the different events in the storylines that lead up to the moment when all the males on the planet drop dead. This technique is very effective for this part of the story, but it began to seem a little overused when I saw it in the other sections of the story, at the beginning of some of the other issues in this volume, where it really wasn't needed to tell the story effectively.

Overall, very interesting and engaging. I will be looking to read more of this series.

Title:	Y: The Last Man - Unmanned
Author:	Brian K. Vaughan
Date published:	2003
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Series:	Y: The Last Man
Number of pages:	128
Notes:	gift from Jane (from my wish list)

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This is a graphic novel adaptation of Richard Matheson's famous 1954 novel (which I haven't yet read but now want to). Robert Neville is the only uninfected, normal human left in a post-apocalyptic world (there are hints of bombs and dust-clouds in his flashbacks) where all other humans have been infected by a disease that basically turns them into vampires. The black and white artwork conveys beautifully the darkness and the utter loneliness of the world that Neville lives in. When the book opens, Neville has an established routine of the errands and tasks he does during the daylight (including repairing any holes in his boarded up windows, growing garlic in his hot-house, and stringing garlic around the doors and windows), but is always inside and locked up by dusk, usually playing classical music in attempt to drown out the noise of the monsters that congregate outside his house to try to lure him out. Eventually, Neville starts to move beyond this routine-- he starts researching the infected blood and reasons through how much of the vampirism is biological and what might be psychological (like fear of the cross and mirrors), and he starts hunting and killing as many vampires as he can during the day, while they are in their coma-like sleep.

There are great details here that make the whole world Neville inhabits much more convincing. For instance, on cloudy days he can't go far from home because he doesn't know how soon it will be dark enough for the vampires to come out. Or how a little thing like a watch stopping could mean death. Neville goes to abandoned stores for whatever equipment he needs and can salvage (like the microscopes he uses to study the infected blood), and he drives at high speeds, goes the wrong way on one-way streets, etc-- rules that were necessary in society become meaningless when he is the only man left.

What makes this story is compelling is the human element. Neville is tortured by the loss of his wife and child to the plague, and some of these experiences are shown through flashbacks. When Neville sees a thin, scared, stray dog in the daytime is nearly overwhelmed by the desire to have companionship. Over days and weeks he slowly, patiently gets the dog used to him, feeding him and moving closer to the food while remaining utterly still so as not to scare the dog off. Finally he manages to bring the dog into his house, and as night falls the dog is terrified because it can't get to its hiding place (and, of course, doesn't know that the house or this man is safe). Neville is finally able to touch the animal, and discovers that it is infected.

The other brilliance of this book, of course, is the twist of the title. Eventually (after three years of this existence), Neville discovers that the infected humans have figured out a way to live with their disease and are beginning to establish a new society-- and as he is dying, he recognizes that he has become to this new society what vampires are to us: the legendary, horrific monster that comes in while we are asleep and kills for no reason.

Title:	I Am Legend
Author:	Richard Matheson (adapted by Steve Niles and Elman Brown)
Date published:	1991
Genre:	Graphic Novel, Science Fiction / Horror
Number of pages:	244

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Brilliant, but so dark. This is one of those great graphic novels that you hear about-- it's a Hugo award winner, made Time's 100 best novels of the last century, etc. I've been wanting to read it for a while, and finally got around to it. It's incredibly well-written and it's a compelling story, but it took me a while to read because it is so dark and challenging. Set in the Cold War of the 1980s, gripped by the terror of nuclear war, this is a world where real people decided to become masked superheroes, and Moore shows us the downside of that life, in large and small terms-- the societal outcomes, where police went on strike and the heroes handled the rioting poorly, and masked heroes were eventually outlawed. But we also see some of the individual outcomes of those choices: the flaws and world-views and motivations of these different people. Perhaps part of the reason I didn't particularly enjoy reading the book was that none of these people are particularly likable. Also, this story is set in a confusing and complicated world, and sometimes it was hard to figure out what was going on-- although I think this is probably a disorienting quality intended by the creators of the story.

The story begins with a dead man. One masked superhero, Rorshach, investigates and discovers that this man was the superhero known as the Comedian, and is convinced that someone is plotting to kill the masks. The story goes from there, with various chapters about some of the different people who became masked vigilantes. Each chapter (except the last, I believe) ends with an excerpt from a written "historical" document-- such as the tell-all memoir of the retired hero Night Owl.

Threaded through the book is a pirate comic series that a kid is reading on the street near a newsstand (it's supposed to be a well-known story written by a missing writer who comes into the plot in a small way). This is a dark tale of a man stranded on an island, his boat destroyed and his fellow crew members killed by a ghastly death boat that his heading towards his home town. In his fear for his family, he does whatever he can to get home in time to warn and protect them-- committing atrocities while intending good. By the time he gets there, he is so transformed by the process of all he has done in the name of protecting his family that he has turned into a monster himself, does more damage than good, and finally recognizes all he is fit for is the death ship, which was waiting for him in the first place. Of course, this story is a very bleak take on the heroes of the main story, and the bits of the pirate story we get mesh tightly with the rest of the plot as it flows around it.

Each chapter also ends with a quote from a song or literature that is relevant to the section that has just ended. The last one of these is in Latin from Juvenal, the famous line that most people know about this book if they know anything: "Who watches the watchmen?"

There are some compelling characters here, and for some of them we get a very clear insight into their perceptions and thinking. Rorshach, who wears a mask with shifting patterns like the famous ink blots, and who sees the world in black and white:

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose.

Dr. Manhattan, the man who wanted to be a watchmaker but became a physicist and was accidentally disintegrated, and then figured out how to put himself back together piece by piece, and in the process learned to manipulate atoms, but who experiences time all at once and not in sequence the way the rest of us do. He explains his perspective thus:

I read atoms... I see the ancient spectacle that birthed the rubble. Beside this human life is brief and mundane.

(Although later he changes his mind on this last part when he is reminded by his one-time lover Laurie that every human birth is an improbable and miraculous event.)

In places the artwork is very compelling-- particularly the page at the beginning of each chapter-- a black page showing the top of a clock with the hand moving slowly toward some fateful hour and blood seeping down the page. These images change gradually enough that I didn't notice where it was going at first, but near the end of the book, when the details about some impending disaster were more clear, this image with the slow build-up was very compelling. Also, of course, the iconic cover image-- a close-up of a smiley face button with a drop of blood on it.

Title:	Watchmen
Author:	Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
Date published:	1995
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Number of pages:	334

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At first, this graphic novel left me feeling unsatisfied, overwhelmed, and disoriented. So many disturbing and painful things happen to this Iranian child and her family, so many different factions inflict suffering, and the suffering ranges so much in degree that the novel seems to proceed as a barrage of highly charged and emotional experiences. But having reread some portions and reflected a little, I see now that the succession of images works as a child’s memoir. Much of a child’s life is spent navigating unfamiliar territory even in the best of circumstances. Add civil unrest, war, political repression, violence, and fear, and a childhood might very well progress as a series of bewildering and contradictory events.

Marjane Satrapi relates an autobiographical account of her younger years growing up in Iran during the repressive regime of the Shah (also called the ‘King’) prior to 1979, and then during the violent, uncertain era of the Islamic cultural revolution, which also turned out to be repressive. Marji’s life intersects constantly with people who have been imprisoned and tortured by the Shah’s regime or the Islamists. Many are killed. The war with Iraq follows, and Tehran is exposed to bomb attacks and food shortages. Many more people die in the raids and in offensive efforts against Baghdad. Meanwhile, Marji is trying to go to school, her family contemplates emigrating, and her classmates rebel against wearing the veil and regurgitating Islamist propaganda.

This is only second graphic novel I’ve read, and I am still very ambivalent about the format. It is obvious that the author feels deeply about her experiences, and through her spartan black-and-white drawings, compellingly draws the reader into her story. The pictoral setting, however, with scant opportunity for nuance and detailed explanation, often leads to a simplistic account which serves her purpose very imperfectly. Such important topics as her religious sensibilities, (apparent) loss of faith, first crush, indignation at injustice based on social class, rebellion against school authorities, and the perceived hypocrisy of her parents are very difficult to discuss in a meaningful way through a graphic novel. I often felt like the story was dumbed down and incomplete. Nevertheless, the format makes the story very accessible and easy to read, and perhaps more readers will benefit from its telling because of it.

Title:	Persepolis
Author:	Marjane Satrapi
Date published:	2003
Genre:	Graphic novel
Number of pages:	153
Notes:	Recommended by L.

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This volume starts out in a red desert with people speaking a language with foreign characters-- I thought maybe it was Arabic, but it turns out they're on Mars, in the middle of a battle that is a prelude to an invasion of Earth. The Martian tripods crash to Earth, and the League is summoned to deal with them. The invisible man turns traitor (decides the invaders have better odds, especially with his help), and Mina and Allan Quartermain are sent to retrieve a weapon from Dr. Moreau (no longer on an island, but still conducting experiments). In a twist on the original, the invaders are destroyed not by the common cold but by an biologically engineered virus.

Some interesting things along the way-- I particularly like the discovery of a certain kind of rapport or sympathy between Mina and Hyde. He thinks she doesn't fear him; she admits that she does, but she has seen something more fearful and terrible than him (it's never spoken, but of course she must mean Dracula).

This volume includes a couple of sexual encounters that I thought were unnecessary and a little too graphic for my taste (one of them rather violent). I don't think I enjoyed this one as much as the first volume-- it just didn't hold my interest as well, and certain aspects were off-putting.

Includes a very long "travelogue" of all the extraordinary places on the globe, organized by continent. Sometimes this seemed a little dry, but other times it was quite fun-- especially when it referenced books I know (whizzing past Garcia Marquez's Macondo, or mentioning a small town in New England with a deadly yearly lottery). Early on it has a long section on the other side of the story of Alice in Wonderland (what everyone else must have thought). When they get to the Arctic, they encounter a land of sentient polar bears who mention that they had been approached by the representatives of a soda company to participate in an advertising campaign. The travelogue affords an opportunity to tell a little more of Mina and Allan's story, as many of the places are described in Mina's journal. Descriptions of other parts are taken from writings of members of earlier incarnations of the League.

Title:	The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2
Author:	Alan Moore
Date published:	2004
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Series:	League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Number of pages:	228

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The return of Cloak & Dagger! Dagger has been badly injured by someone who looks an awful lot like Cloak, and she's lying in the hospital in a coma. Something jogs Dagger's memory, and he remembers the runaways (the Pride wiped Cloak & Dagger's memories before so they wouldn't send Captain America or someone like that to interfere). He brings them to New York to help investigate and clear his name, since no one else believes he's innocence.

The escapes in NY are pretty entertaining. Gert's dinosaur gets turned into a terrier so she'll be less conspicuous; the kids have run-ins with folks like Spider-man and Wolverine (Molly's apparently stronger than he is). They track down the dealers of a drug that temporarily gives the user superpowers, and then figure out that Dagger's got a stalker who works at the hospital, and they get there in time to clean things up.

Karolina leaves for some interstellar adventures early on in this volume (hope we get to hear more about that), but before she does the fact that she's a lesbian is made very clear. She seems to feel like more of a weirdo and an outcast over that than the fact that she's an actual outer-space alien.

Title:	Runaways Volume 5: Escape to New York
Author:	Brian K. Vaughan
Date published:	2006
Genre:	Young Adult Graphic Novel
Series:	Runaways
Number of pages:	144

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Kind of a reboot of the "Runaways" series. Their villainous parents are dead, and the runaways have escaped from their various foster situations and found a new home base (an old parental lair under the La Brea tar pits museum). Their parents used to keep tight control on the crime in L.A. (they had the monopoly), but with their death new villains are moving in-- so the kids are doing their part to try to keep it under control. One of the subplots is a group of former teenage superheroes (now forming a recovery-type organization) are trying to catch the runaways to keep them out of this life that's not for children. There's also a new, interesting kid thrown into the mix.

Future Gert shows up, and before she dies she warns them about a future supervillian who will/has destroyed the Avengers and all the main heroes-- and he's a kid in L.A. now. They take off to find Victor Mancha, and when they do his power starts manifesting and he learns that his father wasn't dead like he thought, but is actually (what else) a supervillain. Eventually, there's a big showdown and they figure out Vic was actually built (but given memories to think he was normal) by the evil robot Ultron. The Runaways hold their own in the fight-- which makes you wonder, are they really that much more talented and clever than any of the other heroes around (young or otherwise), or if there's something else going on.

The group of former teen-heroes and their group ("Excelsior") is pretty funny, and would probably be even more so if I was more familiar with the characters.

Also some hints of mysterious villains-- either new ones, or maybe the Pride is not as dead as we thought they were.

Title:	Runaways Volume 4: True Believers
Author:	Brian K. Vaughan
Date published:	2006
Genre:	Young Adult Graphic Novel
Series:	Runaways
Number of pages:	144

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The runaway children finally find out how their parents came to be supervillains and join together in the Pride, and have a showdown with their parents-- and the powerful beings they answer to. All along there have been hints that one of the runaways was a traitor to the rest, was still faithful to their evil parents; the parents argue over who it might be, all wanting to claim their own son or daughter as the one. This volume brings that story arc to a powerful and satisfying conclusion-- we find out who the traitor is, why they've done what they did, and their ultimate reward for such a betrayal.

When they first ran away from their parents, they stole a secret book and a decoder ring. Alex has been steadily working on translating it, and as he does the children learn the story of the Pride-- how their parents were recruited by an ancient, evil, giant race called the Gibborim to serve them and help them purify the earth-- by eventually destroying all of humanity. These six couples were specifically chosen for their diverse skills and origins, and after supplying the Gibborim with blood sacrifices for 25 years (to increase their power), six of the twelve would be given a place (and immortality) in the new, purified earth. In the meantime, they would all have power and prestige in human society for those 25 years.

Their underground hiding place is discovered, and after being rousted out, they decide to go after their parents. Alex determines that another rite is about to occur-- their parents will be delivering to the Gibborim the soul of the young woman they murdered. But they will be unarmed, so the kids make a plan and go after them.

And it all goes perfectly according to plan. Someone's plan. But that someone is actually the traitor. (Don't read this if you think you might read the books!) And once I knew the answer, everything made perfect sense. I was shocked and surprised, but everything made sense (the sign of a well-written twist). Even the fact that, when the kids first run away and decide to give themselves new codenames because they no longer want their identities defined by their evil parents, Alex chooses not to take one (although he gives a believable rationale for it). Alex is the strategic & tactical genius-- and he planned the whole thing from the very beginning. He purposely showed the other kids the blood rite (he'd discovered it the year before), and manipulated them into cleverly "finding" the gifts and tools of power from their parents. He even knowingly brought a vampire into their midst to toughen up their fighting skills. In watching his parents, he had discovered that two of the couples were planning to kill all the others so that they and their children could be the six immortals in the Gibborim's new earth. So, he maneuvers all of this (quite cleverly) to save his parents.

Unfortunately for him, he underestimates the skill of his team, and they manage to overpower him. The youngest and strongest, Molly, destroys the soul that was to be delivered to the Gibborim-- and rather than let his dad take the brunt of their displeasure, he offers himself and is destroyed. The other children escape the Gibborim's underwater citadel before it explodes and (presumably) kills their parents.

After they've taken down the Pride on their own, Captaim America shows up to take care of things-- not that there's much left for him to do. The kids are all sent to foster homes or schools appropriate to their powers and abilities-- but at the end of the book the meet up and runaway again, because they'd rather be together. Sets up further adventures neatly-- but I don't mind, because I want to read more of them.

Title:	Runaways Volume 3: The Good Die Young
Author:	Brian K. Vaughan
Date published:	2005
Genre:	Young Adult Graphic Novel
Series:	Runaways
Number of pages:	144

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In hiding from their parents and trying to live on their own, the runaways come out of their hiding place to find some food. They see a convenience store robbery in progress and decide to use their powers for good and stop it. They run into Topher, a young man their own age who says his parents forced him to rob the store-- since he's in the same boat they are, they take him back with them. Later, the super-duo Cloak and Dagger, themselves once runaways, come to L.A. to try to find the kids, who they think are murderers and kidnappers.

The Runaways are adapting to their new powers and new understanding of the world & their parents. The introduction of Topher causes all kinds of problems-- social friction between the different girls who think he's cute, but even worse conflict when they discover he's actually a vampire. He's over a century old, and he can handle Gert's velociraptor without losing his breath. They eventually defeat him, although almost by accident. The alien, Karolina, draws her power from the sun-- so when he bites her, she tastes like sunshine and it burns through him and destroys him. (Hmm, reminds me in a small way of Robin McKinley's title character Sunshine.)

The Runaways also have a run-in with Cloak & Dagger, a super-duo from back east (Alex calls them "B-list," which kind of offends them, but I don't think I've heard of them before). An enterprising L.A. policeman called them in, thinking-- who better to find super-powered runaways than one-time runaways and orphans who are now practicing superheroes? (His bright idea later gets him into pretty severe trouble with the Runaways parents, the Pride). The kids are pretty much beaten and captured by Cloak and Dagger, but the duo quickly realize the kids are innocent, and promise they'll send help to take care of the Pride.

Title:	Runaways Volume 2: Teenage Wasteland
Author:	Brian K. Vaughan
Date published:	2004
Genre:	Young Adult Graphic Novel
Series:	Runaways
Number of pages:	144

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A group of six teenagers living in L.A. see each other once a year when their parents get together for some kind of yearly business transactions (they've never paid much attention). Because they're bored, they decided to spy on their parents-- and are surprised to see their parents in strange costumes. At first they think they've discovered their parents are superheroes, but then they see their parents murder a young girl their own age in some kind of rite, and realize their parents must be supervillians. After they decide to run away, the call to mind all the "lies" their parents told them-- the kind of things parents stereotypically say, whether super or not. When they realize their parents are evil, one of the girls responds, "Well, duh. I've known our parents were evil since I was five."

Once they get over their shock, the kids plan to turn their parents in to the authorities-- but even in a world of superheroes, their story sounds crazy. And what's more, the police, media, etc are all in the pocket of the Pride, their parents secret organization. As a group they stop by their different houses and make discoveries-- about their parents, about their own legacies of power. When they realize they can't turn their parents in, and aren't strong enough to beat them, they decide to lie low-- and also to do some good, to compensate for their parents evil-doing.

The kids and their parents are a great mix of different kinds of heroes/villains. The mafia kingpin parents have no super-powers, but their son Alex is a tactical & strategic genius. One couple are magicians, another aliens (their Karolina had unknowingly worn a charm bracelet to suppress her appearance all her life), another are mutants, and another set are genius inventors with all kinds of crazy gadgets (their son steals powerful gauntlets & x-ray goggles), and yet another are time-travellers who left their daughter a genetically engineered velociraptor telepathically tuned to her.

Fun, quick read. The books are paperback-size, so they seem even shorter than trade paperback comicbook collections usually do. Lovely artwork-- I especially liked the issue covers; realistic and beautiful without being too much different from the way the characters were depicted throughout the book.

First heard of this series because Joss Whedon is writing the new issues. This is good stuff.

Title:	Runaways Volume 1: Pride and Joy
Author:	Brian K. Vaughan
Date published:	2004
Genre:	Young Adult Graphic Novel
Series:	Runaways
Number of pages:	144

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An interesting story with all kinds of fairy tale characters. The premise is that years ago their homeland was invaded by an emperor who was taking over all the magical kingdoms, and those who survived escaped into our world-- and now they live in New York with their own secret "Fabletown," which they keep hidden from the regular people ("mundys", as they call them, for mundane). Rose Red is missing, with blood spattered all over the walls of her apartment, so the Fabletown policeman -- Bigby Wolf (known as the Big Bad Wolf to you and me)-- investigates the case, along with Rose's estranged sister, Snow White.

It's an interesting twist on the fairy tale idea, and it's fun to see all kinds of different characters consorting together-- Old King Cole is the unofficial mayor-for-life of Fabletown, Jack (of beanstalk fame) is Rose Red's boyfriend, Bluebeard gives fencing lessons to Cinderella, and one of the three pigs stays at the Big Bad Wolf's house when he escapes from the Fable farm to come to the city. In some cases, the way they "updated" the characters and stories made them seem a little too sullied and modern to me-- Snow White was abused by the dwarves, Beast is only human when Beauty is in love with him and their marriage is on the rocks, etc.

Bigby looks human, but at one point reverts to a huge wolfish form-- and I wondered about that. It's not explained during the course of the main story, but there's a brief prose story at the end that describes the invasion of the Fables' home kingdom and the part that Bigby played (harassing the armies, freeing Fables and helping them escape-- although mostly for his own reasons), and the time he first met Snow White (he has a bit of a crush on her). And, eventually, the story reveals that his human form is kind of an inversion of the werewolf curse that lets him live with the human Fables in New York.

An interesting enough story (the resolution to Rose Red's disappearance was fairly clever) and enjoyable artwork. I wouldn't buy this book, but I'd probably read subsequent volumes if I see them at the library.

Title:	Fable: Legends in Exile
Author:	Bill Willingham
Date published:	2003
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Number of pages:	128

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I've been waiting a while for the latest Whedon/Cassaday X-Men, and it seemed too short and ends with a cliff-hanger-- so it doesn't seem like enough. But I still enjoyed it. We finally get to find out why Emma Frost is double-dealing on the X-men, and get to see Kitty in action.

Emma's been secretly working for the Hellfire Club-- although there's a twist at the end that changes all of this, and I didn't feel like I knew enough about the Hellfire Club and Cassandra Nova to get it. But it's pretty interesting the way Emma is able to neutralize pretty much all of the X-Men (through dreams or mental constraints).

Some interesting interactions between Emma and Scott; I especially liked when he comes around and helps save the day. We finally find out that Colossus is the one destined to destroy the Breakworld (seems like that storyline has been hanging around for a while, so it will be nice to see what comes of it).

The artwork, as usual, is gorgeous. And there's even some bits of conversation in foreign languages, which made me miss Firefly a bit (and wonder where I can find translations).

Title:	Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn
Author:	Joss Whedon (artwork by John Cassaday)
Date published:	2007
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Series:	Astonishing X-Men
Number of pages:	152

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Wolverine leaves the X-Men and goes out on his own, and ends up getting hunted down by some rogue operation with pretty sophisticated weaponry. Wolverine ends up going to Peter Parker's house to recover from his first shellacking by this group, and then Spiderman tags along with him for a while. Then they run into Daredevil, who is incensed that Wolverine would bring this violence into his neighborhood where the gunshots could hit anyone. It was fun, if a little odd, to see those characters in an X-Men book, and I enjoyed Spidey's wisecracks (even if Wolverine didn't).

This didn't seem like a particularly eventful episode. That seems silly to say in one sense, because there is lots of action and blowing things up. But it doesn't feel like the larger story moves forward so much, or you learn too much more about Wolverine. The villains turned out to be former Weapon-X soldiers who were taught to hate mutants (and Wolverine in particular) who are being used by some shadowy leader who may or may not be trying to overthrow the government. There is one woman in particular who seems an interesting character-- hates Wolverine and comes after him with a vengeance. But they don't go into it much more than that.

Some fabulous artwork, as usual with this series. One section in particular was the great full-spread shots of Jean Grey going into Phoenix mode to take out some of the people hunting Wolverine before they take out Xavier's school.

Title:	Ultimate X-Men Vol. 7: Blockbuster
Author:	Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch (illustrator)
Date published:	2004
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Series:	Ultimate X-Men
Number of pages:	144

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Magneto's back. Charles Xavier is being held captive by the U.S. government. Cyclops is left for dead in the savage lands. The X-Men are in hiding on their own, trying to find Magneto's people and stop whatever disaster he's planning. Even though there was plenty of stuff going on that should have been exciting, for some reason this volume just didn't grab my attention like some of the other ones have.

This is the first time I've encountered Forge in the comic books (I've only seen him in the X-Men video games before, and he's mostly there for the mechanics of getting the necessary gear)-- he seems like a pretty interesting character, and I like how he's portrayed. I guess the idea of an ability like his-- to see into the workings of things, to be able to create any device that anyone can dream up-- is pretty appealing, and in some ways it seems a little more realistic than others, because there are people who have abilities like that, to a somewhat lesser degree.

Of course, the device that Forge builds in this case is one to augment Magneto's powers-- and he actually plans to flip the magnetic poles of the earth and kill all of humanity. Magneto's logic-- or lack thereof-- bothers me, probably more than it should (although maybe this is why the story didn't grab me). Sometimes Magneto seems to want to rule over humanity, other times he and the other mutants are afraid of them (as if the sheer numbers of regular humans means much against such powerful beings) and want to exterminate them. Maybe that kind of conflicted attitude makes sense for someone who considers himself "Homo Superior" and yet has some love for humans that he's not willing to admit. The thing that makes this second plan seem even crazier is that the mutants are coming out of the regular population, and near the end of this volume even the government officials are admitting that there will be more and more mutants coming out of the general population.

Fairly entertaining, great artwork as always-- but I hope this volume is setup for some better stories.

Title:	Ultimate X-Men: Return of the King (Vol. 6)
Author:	Mark Millar
Date published:	2003
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Series:	Ultimate X-Men
Number of pages:	192

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Batman as an old man. Bats has been gone for a while, and everyone thinks he died three years ago. In fact, all of the superheroes are thought to be gone-- although most of them are still around, just doing their heroics in secret at the behest of a corrupt and tyrannical government that has decided the populace doesn't need to see (or believe in) the superfolk in their spandex (it isn't good for them, or something). In the meantime, Batman has recruited and trained a band of young new heroes to help him change all of that.

This book is chock-full of superheroes (most of whom I'd at least heard of), and adds a few new ones (as far as I know), including Batman's young protegé Catgirl. Among other things, in this world Superman and Wonderwoman have a love-child named Lara, and a very corpulent and ugly Lex Luthor is the power behind the computer-generated image of a president. Superman and Batman are pretty antagonistic towards each other (although I think that may be common in other renditions), and Lex Luthor and Brainiac have an entire Kryptonian city miniaturized in a bottle that they're keeping as hostages so that Supes will do their bidding. I particularly liked the character of The Atom, who can make himself tiny-- and who had his own technology turned against him when the government kept him imprisoned in a petri dish. The government was also using the Flash, harnessing his speed to generate a secret power source that provided electricity to the entire eastern seaboard. Batman himself isn't all that visible, especially not in the first third or so-- although he's the one pulling the strings making things happen.

Miller is not just the author, but also the penciller for this work, which I find pretty interesting (I'm not so familiar with comic books, so I don't know how common this is, but I think not very). The artwork was fun and had a unique kind of flair to it. At many times, the layout on the page did a great job of representing the kind of infoglut and proliferation of talking heads we have now in our media when anything is going on. Also, there were some interesting ideas, like the "superchix," a girl band cashing in on the sexy superheroine chic or the vengeful, rejected sidekick who only wanted to be appreciated.

This is apparently a sequel to Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which I haven't read. I enjoyed reading it, and it made sense to me without reading the first one.

Title:	Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
Author:	Frank Miller, Lynn Varley, and others
Date published:	2002
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Number of pages:	256

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