The following are a bunch of cheers and jeers from me about comic books. I am dropping the whole "from the past few weeks" thing, as that was too limiting! I needs me my freedom to cheer and jeer almost randomly!! But yeah, it will most likely still be about recent comics.

There will most likely be some spoilers...otherwise, enjoy!

CHEERS to Stagger Lee for winning a bunch of Glyph Awards, including Story of the Year!!

JEERS to the choices the fans had for the Glyph "Fan Award for Best Black Comic of the Year"

Black Panther: The Bride, Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson

Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre, Will Pfeifer & Cliff Chiang

Firestorm #28-32, Stuart Moore, Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne

New Avengers #22, Brian Michael Bendis & Leinil Francis Yu

Storm, Eric Jerome Dickey, David Yardin & Lan Medina and Jay Leisten & Sean Parsons

CHEERS to Don MacPherson, for continuing to put together fun annotations to the Justice League/Justice Society of America crossover. The latest one is here (and it has links to his previous ones).

JEERS to Ed Benes' art on the latest part of the crossover. It was like having a cheese grater rubbed on my eyeballs, it was so bad. I was never a fan of Benes' art, but I have absolutely no idea why he determined that what his style needed was to render it like crazy - it just takes away whatever dynamism or power his art once had (and it wasn't like he had a lot to begin with here), and just makes everything static and dull. There's a scene where a bunch of gorillas race each other on dinosaurs - and it's the most boring gorilla dinosaur race you could ever imagine (and I have imagined quite a few gorilla dinosaur races).

CHEERS to the whole "the belt carried the lightning rods" thing, that was cute.

JEERS to the concept of basing a crossover on a plot point from a comic book forty years ago.

CHEERS to the concept of the seven Legionnaires being flung into the past. That is clever, I just don't like the idea of it all being done so they could redo a forty-year old plotline.

JEERS to the folks complaining about Randy Schueller asking for an acknowledgment that he came up with the idea for the black costume. The defensiveness from some fans on this point is bizarre.

CHEERS to that Andy (DC tells me Adam, but yeah, it does look more like Andy, and the signature sure looks like Andy) Kubert Countdown cover featuring the Joker.

That is some strong artwork.



JEERS to the actual issue of Countdown. It is almost unfathomable how lame Countdown is after two issues. Especially the bit where it just reshows scenes from an issue of JLA from LAST month?

CHEERS to Sean McKeever's ending for the last issue of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. The twist of having Harry only PRETENDING to be having problems with his father to sucker Mary Jane into getting involved in his life (using advice given to him BY his father) was brilliantly handled by McKeever.

JEERS to the last issue of Ultimates. How detached was that issue? "Look! A bunch of bad guys we never met!" "Look, to save the day - a bunch of GOOD GUYS that we never met!" And then the ending that APPEARED to be a book end to Millar's run, except it really didn't even tie in to the first issue of his run. Actually, take away a jeer to the ending. I don't think it worked, but I admire Millar's ATTEMPT to do a book end. That's kinda classy, even if it didn't make sense.

CHEERS to Black Widow's death. Nicely handled.

JEERS to the end of The Rise and Fall of The Shi'Ar Empire. The whole story is about Professor X putting together an X-Men team to stop Vulcan, because Xavier feels responsible. At the end of the issue, Vulcan is not stopped, but Xavier, for some reason, does not seem to have as much of a problem with it as you would think he would. Why doesn't Xavier just go right back out to space? The whole POINT of the story was that, right?

CHEERS to Walt Simonson's Hawkgirl/Batman crossover. Well handled.

JEERS to the end of the Titans East storyline. Wow, that was a wretched, wretched comic book.

CHEERS to Marc Guggenheim's take on Hannibal King in the pages of Blade. I love it. Very "back to basics"

JEERS to this weird story plot Wolfman has in Nightwing where he gives Nightwing, like, a team of lame supervillains, only I do not know if we are SUPPOSED to think they are lame, even though they are about as plainly lame as you can get. And still, the book is a SOLO book, so why is it a team book? JEERS!!

CHEERS, astonishingly, to Jeph Loeb for the latest issue of Fallen Son, where he has Iron Man attempt to convince Clint Barton to become the new Captain America. Good stuff (with great John Romita, Jr. artwork). This issue was good, so why did the first two parts have to be so bad?

JEERS to Noble Causes for bringing up the whole "Liz is from another dimension" plotline. I think Faerber was totally correct when he said "Yeah, I am just not going to mention it, as it is is too complicated." But even if he was incorrect, once he committed to that, it is bizarre to suddenly refer back to it after, what, three years?

CHEERS to the latest issue of Local. Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly really nailed this one beautifully.

JEERS to the latest installment of the Elevenaire. The Elevenaire is a concept that Craig Boldman came up with for Archie, where this guy shows up and gives characters eleven dollars, and that somehow comes into play during the story. Isn't that an interesting plot idea? "How will it come into play?" is a great writing exercise. The problem being, in the latest issue, it came into play in such a stupid, pointless way that I think it really defeated the purpose of the character, which is to come up with clever ways for a gift of eleven dollars to actually have a purpose to it. Still, I give credit to Boldman for trying clever things on Archie Comics.

CHEERS to the Sperm Bank line in All Star Batman and Robin.

JEERS, though, to the entire effect of the latest issue. Jim Lee's art just does not go with what Frank Miller is doing in this book.

CHEERS to Plain Janes. I was hoping to have a review of it up this week, but it doesn't look like my co-reviewer (I was thinking of a He Said/She Said thing) is ready.

JEERS to her for not being ready with her Plain Janes review!!

CHEERS to the latest issue of Death Jr. Very cute book.

JEERS, though, to the small amount of panel time devoted to the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They looked interesting.

CHEERS to the origin issue of Hero Squared. Really nicely done stuff there.

JEERS to the current X-Factor artist. YIKES, that's some bad art.

CHEERS to Slaymaster not continuing on in Claremont's Exiles. Right? He's not, right? Please tell me we're done with him.

JEERS to the latest Supergirl. What the hell was that all about?

CHEERS to Greg Burgas on turning the big three six.

Okay, that's it for this week!