The third volume of Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come ends an interesting experiment in trade paperback comics.

As much as has been beneficial about the rise of trade paperback collections, it's also at times been an excuse for writers to pad out shorter storylines to a neat six-issues in order to fill a trade, with done-in-one-trade stories that don't much forward the title's status quo (see recent volumes of Teen Titans). Thy Kingdom Come instead introduces a seemingly new kind of long-form superhero comics, a storyline with a distinct beginning and end, but with a number of digressions along the way and unrelated storylines which weave in and out of the main thread. At times this is a mini-series, at times these are single issues of Justice Society -- it's a novel, it's a comic, it's a collage. I have a sense that what writer Geoff Johns attempts here is wholly new, at least in terms of DC Comics superhero collections.

In a fashion, we could argue, Johns attempts the same thing with Green Lantern, as Grant Morrison does with his run on Batman. The difference is that both Green Lantern/Blackest Night and Batman RIP remain individual storylines among separate-but-connected storylines, whereas Thy Kingdom Come is just one storyline at the near unheard-of size of twelve-plus issues. If anything, perhaps only Johns and James Robinson's open-ended Superman: New Krypton story comes close; it remains to be seen how long this storyline will be or to what extent DC Comics will collect it under the "New Krypton" bannerhead, but that too may produce connected multiple volumes during its year-or-longer run.

This is important, I think, because as a trend it would cause a certain equilibrium to enter the trade paperback reading experience. No longer would trade paperbacks be collections of self-contained storylines on one hand, or a collected series of done-in-one issues on the other. Instead this kind of long-form storytelling combines the best aspect of monthly comic book collecting (a deepening story that builds over time) with the more sustained reading experience one gets from a trade paperback. At the outset I felt some frustration that Thy Kingdom Come would take three volumes to tell, but in the end I marveled at how each issue and volume stood on its own, but combined to create a massive and involved storyline.

Writer and artist Alex Ross talks at the end of Thy Kingdom Come about how the story is not as much a sequel to Ross and Mark Waid's original King dom Come as it is an homage and a "checking back in" with the Kingdom Come characters. I much prefer thinking about it this way, as the second volume of this series all but drops any ties to Kingdom Come short of the presence of that series's Superman. The third volume returns to the subject; though ultimately Thy Kingdom Come might've been told without Kingdom Come at all, Ross and Johns flesh out a couple of the original's scenes, and integrate enough of the new and old in the end that one might almost believe Thy Kingdome Come really fits between the pages of the original. I for one wouldn't have minded the Kingdom Come Superman sticking around a while longer, though likely that would cause more confusion for new readers than it would be worth.

At the center of Thy Kingdom Come are Gog and Magog, and I found the latter as fascinating as the former ridiculous. No reader very well believed Gog would turn out to be the benevolent god he seemed, but his downfall left me shrugging; I was sure that the "gifts" he provided had some ulterior motive (restoring Dr. Mid-Nite's sight at the cost of his powers; sending Power Girl to her home universe, except everyone tried to kill her), but it turns out instead that Gog's just a very bad gift-giver. Gog turns out to be in the end just what he says he was, a god of the Third World buried underground, and ultimately how the Justice Society members fought over Gog's presence was far more interesting than Gog himself.

The new Magog, however, provides one of the most chilling chapters of Thy Kingdom Come. Writer Peter Tomasi steps in for a surprisingly bloody chapter where Magog, former Lance Corporal David Reid, seeks out his captured former unit and takes gory revenge on their captors. The chapter, which comes right in the middle of this volume of Thy Kingdom Come and at a time when much of the Justice Society is at odds with one another, reveals Magog quite nearly as a villain, certainly someone Superman would sooner put in jail than team-up with. It posits Magog as nearly the Black Adam of the new Justice Society (though he's back, too), a time-bomb waiting to go off, and it's a harrowing example of the powerful digressions Thy Kingdom Come contains. Based on this, I'm not running to read a new Magog series, but I'll be curious to see how it goes over.

Another of Thy Kingdom Come's digressions is Power Girl's trip to Earth-2, supposedly her long-lost home until that world's own Power Girl shows up (see "Gog-the-really-bad-gift-giver"). Here, Geoff Johns turns DC Comics's revamped Multiverse concept on it's head; Power Girl, we learned in Infinite Crisis, is the last survivor of the Earth-2 that was destroyed in Crisis on Infinite Earths, though seemingly at the end of 52 Earth-2 returned. Except, what we come to understand is that the "new" Earth-2 isn't the same planet as the old Earth-2, but rather a recreated Earth-2 with its own Power Girl. Maybe it's better that Power Girl can now see "our" Earth as her home, but it seems Johns causes no end of confusion here -- Power Girl is the last survivor of Earth-2 "but not that Earth-2, the other one." The Earth-2 sequences in this book (with art by Jerry Ordway) are much fun, but I'm stymied as to the story's ultimate purpose.

Geoff Johns reunites us for a while with the Kingdom Come Superman in Thy Kingdom Come, in a powerful story that shows the depth of the Justice Society characters even if it winds and rambles and doesn't tie all of its strings quite together. Ultimately Thy Kingdom Come strikes me as nearing what may be the next iteration of trade paperback comics, something that reads more like a series of novels than a collection of comic book issues; I'm curious if anyone else had the same reaction.

[Contains full covers, character bios and summary section, sketches and thoughts from Alex Ross.]

A bunch of new Superman reviews coming up!

A couple unusual collections stuck out to us from the list of DC Comics early 2010 collected comics solicitations that we wanted to bring special attention to.

DC Universe: Origins - Could this be a collection of the 52 and Countdown hero and villain profile pages (and maybe the Blackest Night "Origins and Omens" lead-ins)? Long rumored, it looks like this collection is finally here. Of course, the other possibility is that this collects a new History of the DC Universe ... (Remember when you read about DC Universe: Origins later, you heard it on Collected Editions first!)

Batman: Under the Cowl - With all the hubub these days as to who wears Batman's cowl, this collection by various authors surely contains stories from the Golden Age to today of times when someone else was behind Batman's mask.

Brave and the Bold: Milestone - Written by Dwayne McDuffie and others, this collection surely includes Brave and the Bold #24-26, which teams the Milestone characters with the heroes of the DC Universe, but three issues isn't enough to make a collection. Surely DC won't reprint the entire fourteen-issue DC Comics/Milestone Worlds Collide miniseries from the 1990s, but I wonder if parts of it will end up here.

Kobra: Resurrection - Kobra's experiencing a comeback in the DC Universe right now, between the "Faces of Evil" story and Eric Trautmann's JSA vs. Kobra miniseries. I've heard rumors there's more to come, and this collection undoubtedly contains recent stories plus selections from the 1970s Kobra series. (Or maybe DC's trying to horn in on the upcoming GI Joe movie.)

The Creeper by Steve Ditko - This hardcover, which seems akin to the Jack Kirby Demon Omnibus and like titles, seems to collect at least Steve Ditko's Creeper stories from Adventure Comics #445-447, World's Finest Comics #249-55, and The Flash (vol. 1) #318-323. Could a The Question by Steve Ditko hardcover be far behind?

Starman Omnibus Vol. 4 - The fourth Starman Omnibus would seem to contain the sixth and seventh Starman trade paperbacks, To Reach the Stars and A Starry Knight, roughly issues #39 through #53 of the series. That leaves three more trade paperbacks left to be collected, but two omnibus volumes planned. Will some additional Starman material round out the sixth?

Doc Savage: The Silver Pyramid - With the apparent return of Doc Savage, the Phantom, and others to the DC Universe, here's a collection of Doc Savage stories by Dennis O'Neil.

Tiny Titans: Sidekickin' It! - Just liked the name of this one, pure and simple.

Your question of the day: - What's the biggest, most ostentatious comics collection not year produced that you'd like to see? Dream big!

While writers Geoff Johns and Alex Ross, and artist Dale Eaglesham, have created an interesting, visually striking story in their second volume of Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come, it's a seeming departure from the intended point of this series. While Thy Kingdome Come part two sees the culmination of Johns intent to make the former JSA into a real justice "society," the aspect of this meant to be a sequel to Kingdom Come fades away.

A fun pin-up that Eaglesham includes at the end of this book sports twenty-five Justice Society members, and even the first pages of the book involved Jakeem Thunder and Stargirl discussing how crowded the Justice Society brownstone has become. Indeed Johns has suceeded in making the Justice Society a real society of heroes (that "society" didn't mean the same thing back then as now not withstanding).

With so many characters, it's understandable that some of them fall by the wayside -- Thunder, Hourman, and Judomaster, to name a few, while the young Cyclone somehow suddenly manifests a monkey -- but each also has a distinct personality as evinced by Eaglesham's pin-up. One of my favorites without doubt is the new Amazing-Man, tied to a civil rights legacy; he shines in his success talking with a risen god as a man of faith, when Mr. Terrific fails to communicate using secular means.

Indeed, even as the plot of Thy Kingdom Come tends toward the scattered and predictable, what's striking here are the pages upon pages that Johns devotes to discussing the different faiths and philosophies of the characters. Justice Society has mildly dealt with the beliefs of Mr. Terrific and Dr. Mid-Nite before, but here the amount of dialogue was akin to Greg Rucka's Checkmate. There are full-blown action sequences here, but also a lot of talking and comparing among the heroes, and I welcomed it. In three volumes, Thy Kingdom Come is a decompressed story to be sure, but Johns uses the decompression to give a great amount of depth to the heroes.

Thy Kingdom Come didn't work for me in two places. First, Johns replaces the initial villain of the piece with a second villain half-way through, and it has the effect of making many of the events of volume one rather unnecessary. Second, the replacement villain has even fewer ties to the Kingdom Come Superman that appears here than the first one did; for a story that's supposed to be a sequel to Kingdom Come, it begins to seem that the only tie between one story and the next is Superman.

Frankly, the initial story was the more interesting to me. Volume two involves a resurrected god providing wish fulfillment that the reader just knows is going to go wrong. I enjoyed the Multiverse aspects of this, as the god sends Power Girl to a Jerry Ordway-drawn Earth-2 to meet that world's equivalent of Infinity Inc., but ultimately it seems Johns spends too long suspending a hammer over our heroes heads, pretending it won't drop when we all know it will.

Certainly in terms of depth and personality, it's no question why Justice Society of America remains one of the best books on the shelves. I'm just hoping part three of Thy Kingdom Come binds the pieces together better, making the story more than just a frentic superhero romp.

[Contains full covers, Dale Eaglesham Justice society pin-up, "What Came Before" pages, brief character bios.]

Collected Editions is back! We continue next time with Thy Kingdom Come volume three.

And we're back!

A big round of applause to Scott Cederlund, Adam Noble, Angela Paman, Erika Peterman, Bob Schoonover, and Kelson Vibber all for contributing guest reviews this past month. You're welcome any time! I love the different perspective that all of them brought to the blog, and we'll have more guest reviews coming up interspersed with the regular fare.

Collected Editions is back in full force starting tomorrow with reviews of Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come volumes two and three. Coming up we've got Superman, Legion of Super-Heroes ... and the much-anticipated Collected Editions review of Final Crisis! We're also looking forward to some new features and a major update to the DC Trade Paperback Timeline, so don't go anywhere!

We love writing Collected Editions and we appreciate everyone who reads it. Stay tuned ... great things to come!

[This review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada. At Noble Stabbings!!, he is blogging his attempt to read all of the comic series Cerebus in 2009.]

“This guy might be the worst thing for comics.”

That summary of Harvey Pekar’s current standing comes courtesy one Tom Scharpling, host of the radio program The Best Show on WFMU, when Scharpling and regular guest/comedian Paul F. Tompkins were debating whether Pekar still has any relevance in modern comics. Scharpling posited that Pekar’s most recent issues of his autobiographical comic American Splendor (published by DC/Vertigo in 2006-2008) have gotten so dull that the only way to spice them up would be to have Pekar develop super-powers and be forced to write about the very thing that he loathes more than nearly anything on Earth: superheroes. (One industrious listener of the Best Show created a mock-up page of what American Splendor: Super “Hero” Harvey might look like and it is, one has to admit, pretty awesome.)

Scharpling and Tompkins’ shots at Pekar are pretty funny and, one has to admit, pretty accurate (“Are you seriously gonna leave me hanging? How did he like the oatmeal cookies?!” sez Paul). But the FM funnymen are being unfair: yes, Pekar’s living situation has changed – he had his comic made into an award-winning movie; he is retired (his sweetly autistic former co-worker Tobey Radloff is nowhere to be found within these pages, sadly), and, yes, Pekar does spend a lot of time in these twin volumes in the role of “writing about the life of a guy who writes about his life.”

But criticisms like this miss the point of these two volumes and of The American Splendor Project in general. First of all, American Splendor was never a thrill-a-minute cavalcade of laughs and tears, even in its “file-clerkin’/getting pilloried by David Letterman/going through a succession of romantic failures” heyday. It was always dull. That was kind of the point. And the hit-to-miss ratio has at least improved since the early-90s Dark Horse era of the book, which contained far too many lectures about jazz for anyone’s RDA. The second attraction of the book was/is its dare to the revolving door of artists: “hey, make this schlubby guy and his misadventures visually interesting!” And in that regard, the DC/Vertigo volumes trump nearly anything done in American Splendor before (excepting of course R. Crumb’s seminal work on the book).

In Another Day (reprinting DC/Vertigo’s first four-issue mini), we’ve got Ty Templeton, Eddie Campbell, Chris Weston (never been a huge fan, but his two-tone art sells me), and Gilbert Hernandez, as well as Pekar standbys Dean Haspiel, Greg Budgett and Gary Dumm. Recurring themes throughout the book are Pekar’s interactions with sales clerks, difficulties getting/taking medications and the everyman’s struggle with that most essential and infernal of household fixtures, the flush toilet.

Another Dollar (reprinting “Season Two,” another four-issue mini) sees a greater continuity between issues, as our hero injures his arm in #1 and struggles with this latest health crisis through subsequent issues. He is aided by some returning artists from the previous series, as well as Darwyn Cooke, Warren Pleece and Sean Murphy. David Lapham illustrates what is perhaps the funniest post-movie-era Splendor story, in which a neighbourhood teenage pseudo-fan awkwardly drops by the Pekar residence to ask our hero advice on how to break into film – during which Harvey gets so bored, he gets up to grab himself a drink of juice, abandoning the kid on the front porch for a spell.

And speaking of artists whose work is pleasantly surprising in black-and-white, Darick Robertson, who has always seemed to lack focus on Transmetropolitan and The Boys completely wins me over here. I’m guessing that doing a real-world story forced Robertson to reign in his tendency for over-the-top reaction shots which makes it a lot easier to admire his finely detailed, expressive and humane depiction of a Pekar faced with a broken-down car and the receptionist who proves his only ally against this crisis. In a comic where Pekar tries to come to grips with a reviewer who praises his comic but trashes its author, illustrator Chris Samnee reminds me of the early work of Stuart Immonen, which probably shouldn’t work, but does, terrifically – every ambivalent line on Pekar’s face is hilarious.

Harvey Pekar is a survivor – of failed relationships, of financial hardships, of a go-nowhere job, of cancer fergawdsake – all of which were chronicled wonderfully in decades’ worth of comics as well as in the filmed adaptation of said comics. The movie may have provided some validation to The American Splendor Project – the damaged-but-not-broken everyman putting his life on display for any who care to look, and thereby exalting that life – but it didn’t end it. Pekar’s journey to the finish line continues, financial success and retirement from civil service be damned, and these volumes do a superb job of capturing that journey and presenting it for any who care to follow him.

And in case you were still wondering, he liked the cookies.

[If you'd like to write a guest review for Collected Editions, email the address listed on the sidebar. You can also see our full Collected Editions review index.]

I'm interrupting our Guest Review Month one more time for some early 2010 DC Comics collected solicitations for your comics library:

Final Crisis Aftermath
* Final Crisis Aftermath: Run

* Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance

* Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink

* Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape

- For those of you waiting for the trade to add Final Crisis to your bookshelf, all the spin-off mini-series are on their way.

Superman
* Superman: New Krypton Vol. 3: James Robinson

* Superman: Mon-El Vol. 1

* Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird Vol. 1

- The headline here is that New Krypton will run three volumes in hardcover before we see the various titles split into their own collections. In this case, here's Greg Rucka's run on Action Comics (and added, Superman: Mon-El, currently listed by mistake as from Vertigo on Amazon. This lists Richard Donner as one of the authors, suggesting it does indeed contain a story from a recent Action Comics annual).

Batman
* Batman R.I.P. SC

* Batman: Heart of Hush

* Oracle: The Cure

- Batman RIP and Heart of Hush both make their softcover debuts here, along with Oracle: The Cure, which I hope includes the final issues of Birds of Prey.

DC Universe
* The Flash: Rebirth

* Solomon Grundy

* JSA: Strange Adventures

* R.E.B.E.L.S.: The Coming of Starro

* Brave and the Bold Vol. 3: Dragons and Demons

* Batman: King Tut's Tomb

* Titans: Old Friends

* Strange Adventures

* Hardware: The Man in the Machine

* The Last Days of Animal Man

- New debut collections include R.E.B.E.L.S.; Titans: Old Friends finally comes out in softcover; glad to see Jim Starlin's Strange Adventures and Last Days of Animal Man both in one volume, not two; Batman: King Tut's Tomb reprints Batman Confidential #26-28, if not more; Hardware continues DC's new printings of the Milestone series.

Special Collections
* Starman Omnibus Vol. 4

* Hitman Vol. 2: Ten Thousand Bullets

* Justice League International Vol. 4

- New volumes of Starman and Hitman should make readers happy.

What are you most looking forward to next season?

[This review comes from Kelson Vibber, whose websites include Hyperborea, K-Squared Ramblings, and the Flash-centered Speed Force.]

Perhapanauts is a fun, rollicking adventure featuring a team of supernatural troubleshooters as they track down creatures like vampires, chimeras, demons and Bigfoot. Actually, that's not quite right.

Bigfoot's actually a member of the team.

The series chronicles the exploits of a field team for BEDLAM, the Bureau of Extra-Dimensional Liabilities and Management. It's sort of a cross between the BPRD in Hellboy and the movie version of Men in Black, with a tongue-in-cheek tone somwhere between MiB and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The leads are Blue Team:

• Arisa Hines, a psychic and the team's leader.
• M.G., a mysterious guy who can slide between dimensions. A condition of his employment was that BEDLAM would not dig into his past.
• Bigfoot a.k.a. "Big", a Sasquatch who was exposed to an "evolvo-ray" which made him a genius.
• Molly MacAlister, a timid ghost who hasn't quite adjusted to her status.
• Choopie, a chupacabras who was exposed to the same evolvo-ray as Big, and has the mind of an 8-year old boy.

The cast is rounded out by BEDLAM's staff -- an administrator whose face is always in shadow, a telepath, a man whose eyes can erase memories -- its researchers, and Red Team, led by a no-nonsense ex-Marine whose training sometimes gets in the way of managing a team that includes a Mothman and a water sprite.

First Blood features two main stories. In the first, the team is dispatched to locate and detain a hulking, seemingly unstoppable monster from the dawn of time. By the time the story is through, the reader has a solid sense of each character's skills and personality, and how they manage when Plan A falls through. (One of my favorite moments is Molly's response to a plan that involves sending cement-eating slugs back in time to the precise moment needed to arrange for a building to collapse now.)

The second story pits them against an aswang, a vampire-like creature from Filipino mythology, and you get to see how they handle a somewhat less successful mission. Actually, "less successful" is putting it midly, as the book ends on a cliffhanger -- a gutsy move, considering it was originally published as a miniseries, with no guarantee of a sequel!

Like Buffy, Perhapanauts can switch between action, horror and comedy at the drop of a hat. BEDLAM learns about a breakdown in the fabric of reality...from a man who talks to butterflies. Choopie dismisses the aswang as a "stinking vampire...and then the scene shifts into intense character drama as Choopie struggles with his own bloodsucking nature. Craig Rousseau manages give his characters a full range of expressions matching the tone shifts.

All of the leads have at least a moment in the spotlight (I particularly like Arisa's psychic battle in the first story), but it's Choopie who steals the show with his hyperactive personality, his tendency to shoot first with his "mess-you-up gun," his penchant for mischief, and the fact that despite a need to drink pre-packaged goat's blood, he still has a thing for sugary junk food. (Fruit pies become a running gag in later volumes.)

In addition to the lead stories, there are three short character pieces. "The Terror from Within!" introduces Karl, the Mothman, whose ability to project fear is matched only by his inferiority complex. The story provides a glimpse into the minds of the heroes, as well as a first look at Red Team. "Seven Months Earlier" is a more action-oriented tale of the last disastrous mission of the previous Blue Team, and how Arisa proved herself capable of becoming its leader. "Fiepick" is a comedic piece in which Choopie tries to "help" as Big and M.G. tinker with highly advanced machinery.

Rounding out the book is a dossier with profiles of the BEDLAM agents, staff, and targets, and an art gallery featuring Kevin Nowlan, Nick Cardy, Mike Wieringo (who also wrote the introduction) and others.

First Blood is followed by Second Chances. With the third volume, Triangle, the series has moved from Dark Horse to Image. The later volumes broaden the focus considerably, allowing characters like Hammerskold the ex-marine, Karl the Mothman, and the Merrow to grow past the one-note caricatures glimpsed in the background of "First Blood." We also learn more about Blue Team, particularly Arisa and Big...and a surprisingly poignant revelation about Molly. Seemingly random events from volume one turn out to be setup for future storylines, and the title begins to make sense as the team begins to navigate "the Perhaps."

One word of warning: Image started the numbering over, so First Blood and Triangle are both labeled #1. Just go with the numbers in the titles, and you'll be fine!

If you'd like to check out the series, Todd Dezago has made the 2008 Perhapanauts Annual #1 available for free as a PDF on his website, http://www.perhapanauts.com/.

[If you'd like to write a guest review for Collected Editions, email the address listed on the sidebar. You can also see our full Collected Editions review index.]

[This review comes from Bob Schoonover, who's annotating NBC's Chuck on his blog.]

Broken, the first trade in the Star Wars: Legacy series, is really a primer on how to start a new series in a shared universe. John Ostrander and Jan Duursema have crafted a truly worthy successor to the Star Wars Original Trilogy by creating a cast of compelling characters that comes close to equalling the characters everyone loved in the original movies. Each character has their own arc and motivations, and screen time is not given exclusively to the "protagonist" of the series, Cade Skywalker.

For those of you that feel daunted by the fact that there are approximately 300 comics and 50 novels in the Star Wars universe that you haven't read, let me sum up everything you need to know to hit the ground running in this newish series: Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance started a new Jedi order and Galactic Republic; the Empire was defeated, but not destroyed, and became an ally of sorts with the Republic; the galaxy far, far away was invaded by an extra-galactic alien race called the Yuuzhan Vong, a warrior race that used biological, rather than electronic technology; the Yuuzhan Vong were defeated and allowed to remain in the galaxy, despite killing billions (they dropped a moon on Chewbacca!); Luke Skywalker married a redhead named Mara Jade and had a child, Ben. Okay, everyone is caught up.

Broken begins about 120 years after Return of the Jedi ended. The Empire is again at war with the Republic/Alliance (the reason for this becomes clear later). The Jedi are attacked by a horde of Sith warriors, and Kol Skywalker, among others, falls in battle. His son, Cade, in an attempt to avenge his father's death, sets out in a fighter to attack the Sith. Shot down, Cade is thought dead, and abandoned by the fleeing Jedi. Meanwhile, Darth Krayt, the newest Dark Lord of the Sith deposes the Emperor, Roan Fel, and takes over the Empire. And that's just the first few pages.

The story continues seven years later, following Roan Fel and his attempts to retake his Empire, Darth Krayt and his Sith minions ruling the galaxy, the scattered Jedi and their plans to fight the Sith, and Cade Skywalker: bounty hunter. Ostrander and Duresma (artist and co-plotter) have managed to find a new path for a Skywalker to follow. Cade, a reluctant adherent to the Jedi code in the first place, was recovered from his starfighter attack by mercenaries, scavenging the wreckage for Jedi artifacts. Cade joined up, and became a pretty good bounty hunter. Of course, as with every Skywalker, destiny calls, and Cade is thrust into the middle of the war between Fel and Krayt. However, Cade does not make a sudden turn to the Jedi way. Bucking conventional wisdom, Ostrander and Duresma keep Cade on the fringe, trying to sit out the galactic war, but always willing to use his Jedi training or natural Force skills if circumstances dictate.

What makes this story works is that the Sith have the variety and depth of the Sinestro Corps from Green Lantern. The many named Sith - Darths Krayt, Wyrrlock, Talon, Maladi, Nihl, etc. - each have an agenda, skill set, and personality, and could probably carry their own series (and yes, if Tomasi or Johns was writing it, I would read a series about Sinestro, the Cyborg Superman, or Ranx in a heartbeat). Likewise, Cade is not one- or two-dimensional - he's a protagonist who has been given a pretty bad hand in life and is doing his best to avoid being re-dealt a new, worse one.

I think my favorite thing about the new characters, though, is Marasiah Fel, the daughter of the deposed Emperor. She is the idealistic, fight-for-what-is-right character that most writers would put front and center. It would be easy (and predictable) to have her be the Skywalker descendant, fighting the Sith and standing for truth and justice. Instead, she is relegated to the second tier (at best). She may be fighting the good fight, and she might beat the Sith (it's hard to say), but that's not the story Ostrander is telling. He's telling a story about Cade, a complicated young man that finds his family heritage too much, and has just shrugged it off.

I can't finish this review without praising the artwork of Jan Duursema. The art in this book is top-notch. There are roughly 20 or 30 important characters - both alien and human - contained in this volume, and each is distinct and consistent throughout. There are also a ton of new starships and alien species, and each looks different than anything from before (although Imperial fighters have the same cockpit design they had 150 years earlier). The sheer effort at making this book look so good must have been phenomenal. The only disappointing thing about Broken, and in fact, all Star Wars trades by Dark Horse, is that not all of the cover art for the issues contained inside is displayed. The front and back covers of the trade display two covers, and I believe one more is shown in the interior, and that is it. With such great art, it's a shame Dark Horse can't give us everything.

[If you'd like to write a guest review for Collected Editions, email the address listed on the sidebar. You can also see our full Collected Editions review index.]

[This review comes from Adam J. Noble, a public librarian living in Eastern Canada. At Noble Stabbings!!, he is blogging his attempt to read all of the comic series Cerebus in 2009.]

This hardcover volume, entitled Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book One reprints "Saga of the Swamp Thing" issues 20-27, the opening eight issues of Alan Moore's mid-eighties run on the series. It includes the famous story "The Anatomy Lesson," in which the titular muck-man discovers that he is not a man transformed into a mossy beast, but rather a vegetable-creature who has deluded itself into believing it is a man.

As an "archival" edition, this new hardcover is ... durable, I guess, which you want in something calling itself "archival." Gone is the original beautiful Michael Zulli painted cover from the trade paperback, replaced by a lot of black, Alan Moore's name in big lettering and Swamp Thing's head in profile.

There are other problems with this volume, and they also have to do with how it stacks up to the earlier paperback edition. Yes, this hardcover is a big deal because, for the first time, it reprints "Loose Ends," issue #20 of the original series, where Alan Moore tied off the stump of Martin Pasko's run, and sowed the seeds of Moore's own story-to-come. However, there is always a price to be paid: we got some Moore, but we also lost some Moore. The original text introduction by Moore is gone in the new edition, most likely because it did its best to summarize Swamp Thing's back story for the new reader, up to and including "Loose Ends." Fair enough, death to spoilers and all that, but in the process we also lost some excellent musings on the horror genre, DC continuity, comic book continuity in general and storytelling in general including a tangent in which Moore discusses the possibility of Dr. Frankenstein performing experiments on the heroines of Little Women, a notion that seems to anticipate both League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls.

(When this volume was announced, months ago, I donated my "Loose Ends"-less Saga of the Swamp Thing trade to my local library. After the hardcover came out, I quickly made a photocopy of Moore's intro to stick between the pages of the new hardcover. Don't laugh, there but for the grace of God go you.)

It's also a shame that Moore's intro has been lost because new readers may find themselves surprised at how easily Moore's Swamp Thing bumps up against other denizens of the DCU proper. After all, Gaiman's Sandman usually tried its best to ignore those early cameos by the Martian Manhunter and Mister Miracle. Same goes for much of Hellblazer. But Moore's Swamp Thing is a "mature readers" book that happily co-exists alongside Jack Kirby's Etrigan, the Justice League, and later, the Crisis on Infinite Earths itself. The DCU is a true cosmos of fiction that we're often in danger of taking for granted, and the lost Moore intro illustrates that point explicitly -- although we've still got the comics themselves, so I guess it's not so bad.

Oh, incidentally: instead of Moore's intro, we get a chummy, backslaps-all-around intro by Swamp Thing creator Len Wein and another by horror author Ramsey Campbell, who gives a brief history of the "mature reader" comic up to the point before Moore began to work in American comics ("My ward is a junkie!" et al).

It's necessary to read Swamp Thing now with the proper context in mind. Moore's prose is sporadically overblown and purple; the art by Moore's former Miracleman cohorts Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, while evocative and atmospheric, is sketchy and at times bogged-down with "inventive" (read: difficult-to-follow) panel layouts; the "horror" is, to be honest, pretty conventional. But the characters shine through all the rough patches: "Alec," the Thing himself; his lover Abby Cable; Abby's husband Matt (later to be seen as the pet raven of Dream); and perhaps most indelibly, Jason Woodrue, the villainous Floronic Man, who delivers to Alec the truth about his inhumanity, before trying to Take Over the World with only Alec to stop him.

Whatever its flaws and growing pains, without Moore's run on Swamp Thing, modern comics would look very different indeed, and we certainly wouldn't have Vertigo, which is the biggest evolutionary step that mainstream comics has ever taken.

And, finally, did anyone else's copy arrive slightly sticky, as if slicked with chlorophyll? If so, DC, I am declaring this the worst cover gimmick ever.

[If you'd like to write a guest review for Collected Editions, email the address listed on the sidebar. You can also see our full Collected Editions review index.]

[This review comes from guest reviewer Erika Peterman of the I Don't Read My Blog Either blog.]

Writer Brian K. Vaughan set the bar high with Y: The Last Man, an epic series set in the aftermath of the sudden, mysterious death of (almost) every male on Earth. While the circumstances in Ex Machina aren’t quite that dire, the story of an unlikely superhero-turned-politician in the post-Sept. 11 era is gripping in its own way.

After a disfiguring explosion, civil engineer Mitchell Hundred emerges with the ability to hear – and command – certain machines. With the aid of a flying contraption he built, Hundred embarks on a brief, bumpy career as “The Great Machine,” a hero that his fellow New Yorkers greet initially with skepticism and flat-out scorn. Hundred’s first meeting with salty Police Commissioner Amy Angotti is comically ill fated, but it also forces him to consider the unintended consequences of his crime-fighting activities. However, one particular act of heroism plays a key role in Hundred’s retirement as The Great Machine and his ascent to an arguably more intimidating job: Mayor of New York City.

The opening pages, which show a dejected Hundred partly in shadow, strongly suggest that his term doesn’t end well: “This is the story of my four years in office, from the beginning of 2002 through Godforsaken 2005,” he says. “It may look like a comic, but it’s really a tragedy.”

Ex Machina is often described as having the feel of a top-notch television drama, and the fast pacing and layers of intrigue are especially satisfying to experience in trade form. In the first few pages alone, Mayor Hundred faces down a would-be assassin and a bold journalist who interrogates him about his origin. As Hundred’s administration handles one crisis after another – a racially incendiary painting at a publicly-funded museum and murderous attacks on city snowplow drivers – there are revealing flashbacks to his childhood and his unconventional journey to the mayor’s office.

Vaughan has surrounded Hundred with a rich supporting cast, including longsuffering Deputy Mayor Dave Wiley, irreverent bodyguard Rick Bradbury, and intern-turned-staffer Journal Moore. But Hundred’s most emotionally loaded relationship may be with his longtime friend Kremlin, an old-school radical who pressures him to suit up again as The Great Machine. Kremlin has known Hundred since he was a boy, and there’s a sense that Hundred’s status as a politician – the ultimate insider – has come between them.

Such a complex story must have been a challenge to illustrate, but Tony Harris’ pencils expertly capture the sweep of the city and the authentic facial expressions of a diverse set of characters.

There’s a saying that people who enjoy sausage and politics should never see how either are made. In the case of Ex Machina, however, the down-and-dirty nature of politics – with a helping of superpowers – makes for a highly recommended comic series.

[If you'd like to write a guest review for Collected Editions, email the address listed on the sidebar. You can also see our full Collected Editions review index.]