New Thunderbolts #3:
Uncomplicated mind that he is, Erik Jostens determines that the UN Building will not fall, and uses all of the ionic growth power at his command to make sure he's right, even at the risk of his own health. Meanwhile, the dumbest group of Atlantean characters since the New Warriors annual from "Atlantis Attacks" back in the '90s (did you think I forgot? Hello, photographic memory!) struts and preens and tries to forget that they're all underwater and smell like something manufactured by Gortons or Van De Kamps. I liked Grummett and Erskine's art, (mostly, the Mack IV flying by the UN shot is great, while the solid sound shield page right after is only all right), and the characterization on Atlas' loyalty and heroism was really good. However, every panel that the ... lemme spell this right, if I can stop laughing long enough ... that "At'La'Tique" (good attempt at deepening the mythos on the backstory, though) was on panel, I just rolled my eyes and saw them in the same light as Earth Force or Night Shift or the Headmen or scores of other lame mini-groups that came and went without fanfare (see, those OHOTMUs did come in handy). The guest stars were all used well (and there's a ton of 'em, from the now-ubiquitous FF to Spidey to the Radioactive Man), but I'm not sure what to think of the subplot surrounding the funding for the 'Bolts. All around interesting reading, though, and I have no real complaints about it.

Wonder Woman #211:
A kind of quiet after-moment -- as tough as Medousa was, her sisters barely even rated two pages before catching a hoof in the grill. The depiction of the Themyscrian oracle's vision was very creative, but I don't really understand the purpose of the Keystone City interlude, and I found the talk with Athena strangely ... fitting. A good issue, if a quiet denouement from months and months of foreplay.

The Punisher: Red XMas #1:
Jump from the Read Pile. I've never gone very far to hide the fact that I hate Christmas, but when I read Palmiotti and Gray's heart-warming, blood-soaked tale, illustrated lovingly by Mark Texeira (I have an original Tex sketch of T'Challa in my bedroom ... don't tell anybody), well, it just gave me a warm Yuletide feeling in the cockles of my heart. Maybe the sub-cockle area. Maybe the liver. Maybe the spleen. Maybe even the colon. We may never know. Anyway, The Punisher kills mobsters. No, that's nothing new. What's fun is that he does it, in part, in a Santa suit while bright eyed children watch with horror. That's wonderful. Well, okay, I'm a vile, evil human being, so I find it wonderful. Your mileage may vary. When mob widows decide to call in a talented costumed assassin from the old country, fairly predictable -- but highly enjoyable, if you're up for this kind of thing -- mayhem ensues. It may not hold up as well on repeated readings, but since I'd just decided to break up with somebody on my way to the comic book store today, this became my favorite book of the week. So it's got that going for it ...

Sleeper #7:
Bang bang bang bang bang. With shades of Mercury Rising and a hint of Doug Ramsey thrown in for fun, all three of Tao's Prodigals go on a mission together, and nothing goes right for anybody. Mostly action, mostly dimly lit (I never have gotten used to Sean Phillips' jagged stylings), but enjoyable enough. My favorite bit from Tao: When have I ever given the impression that any of you weren't disposable?" That felt just about right. I am reading along, hoping Holden Carver has a plan somewhere down the line to get back at everybody who uses him, but I somehow suspect he'll always be an operative of the lowest order, a conflicted super soldier who never can accept his role.

Space Ghost #2:
Why, why can't any villains just cut somebody's head off, or shoot them in the brain? No, it's always "leave them to die and look surprised when they return for bloody vengeance." Still, Ariel Olivetti's gorgeously textured artwork goes a long way towards helping this case, plus the downtrodden "engineer monk" was both serendipitous and apropos. The creation of the character we know as Space Ghost, wrapped in the tragedies of multiple worlds and a Frank Castle-styled vendetta, makes for damned fine pulp reading. Not as powerful as its predecessor, but still a damned fine issue in and of itself.

Buy Pile Breakdown: Not great, but not bad. Fairly acceptable.

Then there's the stuff on the "read pile" that I don't bring home ...

Green Lantern: Rebirth #3:
In the next few weeks I will be presenting the return of the Smackdown Awards on UGO, a formerly annual roundup of the good, bad and ugly in comics for a year. I spent a lot of the last week compiling, looking over old reviews, figuring the end of the year would change little. Nuh uh. I am here to tell you, true believers, that this issue of Green Lantern: Rebirth is as much an insult to your intelligence as Iron Man #89 or the war crime-like Superman/Batman #6. This issue will tie for second worst individual issue of the year, just pulling ahead of Wolverine/Witchblade. Why? Well, the worst possible thing that could happen to Hal Jordan's quest for redemption would be to take the responsibility for his actions out of his hands. That happens here. Worse still, lay it all at the feet of a multiply-dead villainous nemesis who simply has no good reason to be involved at all. Also done here. Y'see, we're gonna add some JMS-Ezekiel level mythological and ideological underpinnings here, alleging that green energy is pure will and yellow is pure fear, you see. Good ol' Hal was just the wrong guy in the wrong place wearing the wrong ring, it turns out, and he'll be fine to suit back up. Even though, this alleges, suiting up is what made him ... you know what? I'm gonna stop. In the height of my DC fandom, I was never a big Hal Jordan fan (sorry HEAT members). When I thought about Lanterns, I was always aching for more Mogo the Living Planet. This ... that this issue made it out of the DC Editorial offices implies that either everybody is asleep at the wheel or that there's such contempt for the fans that it's less subtle than a presidential dictate or worse case scenario, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. An old saying says, "never attribute to malice what can be explained with stupidity," but that possibility is just too horrible to consider.

Queen & Country #28:
Hey, where's my "thus far" recap? Anyway, nothing really happens, and Tara gets yelled at for screwing up and getting twitchy. I'm sure (since I have been reading this series since before man walked on two legs) that the death of her former lover has a lot to do with it, but this issue didn't go far to make much of a case for why one of the world's premiere intelligence operatives out and out flubs a fairly routine mission. Maybe less Superman and more Q&C, eh?

Black Widow #4:
I debated calling this "But I Digress Week," and this issue of Black Widow would be a big part of why. Widow is supposed to be trying to throw some people off her track who've been hunting her, or even kill them before she gets killed, but she gets distracted by nostalgia in the old country and finds out she's not so special after all. No, that's not Jack Bristowe in the ballet scenes, but the brainwashing and spy-making from an early age surely echo J.J. Abrams' work. Off the road and careening down the hill, and I'm not very interested in where it ends up.

Authority: Revolution #3:
First of all, why is the "ancestral" super-team so visually uninteresting? I mean, I read All-Star Squadron and Freedom Force for the love of Julius Schwartz, I know how WWII era heroes can be done interestingly (please take note Invaders). Anyway, this sadly internecine bit (which didn't hearken back to the futuristic interlude the Midnighter had an issue or two ago, predicting doom, which I remembered hours later) featured at its heart a boring and poorly depicted fistfight between Jack Hawksmoor and the Midnighter captured on camera for the world to see and "deep in the holds of the Nebuchanezzar" styled pondering from the aforementioned boring old schoolers. I looked around and said, "remember when the Authority used to be interesting?" Until they broke out the Absolute hardcover, I was having a hard time doing just that ...

G.I. Joe #38:
I was very, very pleasantly surprised at a late reveal here, which was very well done and very smart and showed Cobra to be quite less foolish than many would believe. The team is operating on many levels (liked the Flint-Lady Jaye call by way of humanizing the experience), legally and not-so-legally, like the IRA and Sinn Fein, with neither side really cognizant of the work of the other, but all heading towards common goals. If the story could be somehow streamlined and seem less jumbled, it'd be worthy of purchase, but as of now it's an interesting cacophony that strives to be melodic.

Catwoman: When in Rome #3:
Again off track -- after getting stuck in a block of ice, Catwoman's delusions poke holes in her veneer of unflappability, but do little to progress the story along (aside from giving the Riddler a chance to grope her while she was unconscious).

Astonishing X-Men #7:
Joss Whedon needs to write Wolverine a lot more often. While Kitty and other X-Men pore over their inner demons, what's Logan's sole thought in the middle of a battle with a massive underground monster in the middle of Manhattan? "I really like beer." See? Now that's what I'm talking about. The main plot, a PR-friendly "save the city" shtick bumps heads with the FF (Whedon's Ben Grimm also works wonders, claiming monster fighting is the FF's shtick and having the best exchange in the book -- Grimm: "I thought there was a cure for people like you." Logan: "You got a problem with mutants?" Grimm: "No, I mean Canadians!") and looks at the nature of who's "good" and who's "bad" rather smartly. However, the teen angst backplot drags on and does little, and my well known hatred of unsafe holodecks rears its nagging head again.

G.I. Joe Reloaded #10:
Great covert action as Dixon keeps all the plates spinning, getting ready to reclaim "Cobra Island" by hook or by crook. Every bit is adequately explained in context without delving into early 80s over-exposition, and the art is top notch. Edging its way closer and closer to taking my money ...

Green Arrow #45:
Speedy? Speedy? As soon as I stopped laughing (and the uniform is actually kind of cool), I got sad. After all these years, we're back to Speedy? Is she gonna be a Titan? Argh. Mia's HIV-friendly speech was appropriately after school special, but I'm no more sure it reached its audience in the comic or outside of it, to the readers. The Brick fight showed that even fairly smart super villains are fairly stupid (why do people feel the need to talk so much?) and overall, this book was under the mediocre mark.

Conan #11:
Despite the fact that, in every single panel, I knew what the ending was gonna be (it's very like the first Conan movie in some cases), Busiek creates a cute little muder mystery yarn mixing a kind of Roman Empire feel with a much more Visigoth-styled barbarian presence. Good balance of action and chatting, but nothing vital here.

Losers #19:
I've noticed that there can be entire issues of this series -- this one included -- where I read the entire thing and retain virtually nothing. It's like a cinnamon crisp from Taco Bell, completely without substance. I mean, I know Max betrays blah blah, killings blah blah, another great shot of Aisha from below, saying somebody who died was her dad blah blah. But it doesn't seem to resonate for some reason. Mmm.

Ultimate Elektra #5:
The ending was my favorite (no spoiler here, you can figger the two main characters make it out) when Matt showed Elektra a much less messy, and more legal way she could have accomplished her goals. But it never occurred to her. Because she speaks violence, not laws. A little drawn out, and the coloring was awfully gray, but an okay issue to end the mini (it was a mini, right?).

JLA Classified #2:
JLA-Bots? Against Gorilla Grodd and mind-controlled Ultramarines? Please. The Bat would have been better off bringing nothing but Superman-bots, since the others were largely useless. I love Morrison's grasp on Grodd's simian personality, the high-falutin' speech of an "evolved" ape out to wipe out mankind. The rest of the League seemed pretty hapless without the Bat, and he didn't do so well on his own. Still too scattered to consider a good read, but too insane and interesting to dismiss out of hand.

Wolverine #23:
Five weeks. Eighteen attacks. Wolverine and Hydra are terrorizing the superhuman community and the US in general, while an old dame of the Nazi party (yes, Nazis again, I know, I'm tired too, let's just try to make it through this) considers this showy exercise to be overcompensation. Wolvie and Hydra go after a "street level" recruit that seemingly went unguarded, and it looks like next to nothing can stop this sinister plan. Which is good, until you realize that something has to stop it, because Marvel just can't let Wolvie be a villain for long, especially as he beats monsters and adores beer just a few titles over. Like "Spiral" in Thor or "The Best Defense" in Iron Man, interesting to see how far it goes before it snaps back into status quo-esque place.

Manhunter #5:
When the JLA shows up in the day job office of this new vigilante, the characterization on her near-panic was perfect (and you thought that thought balloons had no use anymore ... or were those captions? Hmm ...). She still gets her butt kicked again, despite getting a tune up on her battle armor, and throws away her relationship with her son to boot. Why should I like this character, again?

X-Force #5:
If the level of "craft" shown in this art work (and I use the term loosely) is acceptable, I really do need to start drawing again. The story, some time travel hoo-hah with a future teammate in Stryfe armor and something else, led to a lot of talking and a lot of really pointless blather. I couldn't find one single thing to care about in this book. Whereas many issues this week had driven off the rails, I don't even think this issue ever saw them.

Richard Dragon #8:
Somebody called and said they wanted their motif back. It was either Holden Carver from Sleeper or Mel Gibson from Payback, I can't remember. Anyway, Dragon gets talked into going undercover by Bill Duke and some other cop, er, I mean two FBI agents, who promise to "someday" help him out of his charges. So Dragon goes and joins some gang, and ... huh, I don't remember. It's just gone blank. I guess that says how interesting it was.

Mystique #22:
Mystique on the run, coerced into taking the heat to Chuck Xavier, with her handler Shortpack held in some kind of gerbil cage, soon to die himself. Wait, wasn't that what happened last issue? It was? It happened again? Oh. Okay. Way to use the time you have left, since we all know this series got cancelled already.

Read Pile Roundup: In the words of Cartman, "screw you guys, I'm going home."

So, How Was It This Week? Given the lackluster purchases, I can only quote the words of Bart Simpson: "It's crap-tacular."

The Buy Pile is a weekly collection of comic reviews done by Hannibal Tabu (www.operative.net), originally published at UGO.com.