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I don't know who's here, but at least it gives me somewhere to c&p from when ILC is back.

All Star Western #3: The Gotham Butcher plot concludes just as the cover promises, with guns and gore. This has been the best Hex storyline in a number of years - Doctor Arkham mans up and we see a whole pile of retribution but the sides appear able to co-exist after the resolution. But just when it looks like Hex is leaving (and his interplay with Arkham and Gotham itself as he tries to get out is really well done) he gets sucked into something else... I guess he may be sticking around the city for a bit longer. The backup El Diablo strip is neither here nor there, to be honest, but it's nice to see some second (third?) string Western characters get a run out. I still can't decde whether this is one of the highlights of the reboot or not, since it's still pretty much the same book it was before the reboot.

Aquaman #3: Arthur Curry is a dick, everyone knows it and his powers are so shit everyone laughs at him. That's pretty much all you need to know about Geoff Johns' take on him. There's a fight with last month's new baddies and a bit of development for them where we find out some genetic stuff about them (with another cast-iron opportunity for Aquaman to be a dick and show off his new power of flight) but there's not really enough in this to make it endearing - there's always the hint of Johnsiness about it to put you off - but maybe the mystery of whose trident it is might be worth keeping up with.

Batman The Dark Knight #3: Disappointingly, the Joker elements of this (which have been the most entertaining parts) are wrapped up in the opening pages which leaves us with David Finch trying to puff up his own new David Finch character, the White Rabbit. Who, surprise, surprise, is an sexey womang in an impractical and ridiculous outfit. Flash appears and is immediately sidelined so he plays no further part in the story, and we get one of the most bizarre lines of dialogue in the Johnsiverse: "Thank God for small mercies and lace panties." Is this really something people say? Google suggests it's only ever appeared in amateur pr0n fiction and I think I believe them. The Bat-stuff in this is good, the rest not so much. I'm sure the actual David Finch content in David Finch's own book will soon dwindle to nothing. Will this improve it? Who knows. Or possibly cares.

Blackhawks #3: I like the talking dogs. I don't care about the rest of it. It has the heart of a decent espionage book but it just tries too hard, throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks - the only propblem is that when you get to the end you realise it's ALL supposed to have stuck which just makes it a confused mess. Still, talking dogs, eh?

Firestorm #3: OH NOES, THE TRAGEDY OF A SUPER-SOLDIER! Oh noes, the tragedy of this book, more like. Helix could have been pretty good, and the world through his eyes is the one memorable thing about this, but we get minor plot development and a HUGE fight which at times appears to have been blown up to make it fill the page more. This is really going nowhere.

Flash #3: I hate to bring the ghost of Eisner into this, but from the title page onwards this reminds me of nothing more than The Spirit. Has the Flash ever landed a plane that way before? I'm not sure. But the cliffhanger! THRILLING!

Green Lantern New Guardians #3: What's that you say? Kyle Rayner is the most powerful bestest Lantern ever? Careful now, Hal Jordan will covet his ring... Bleez has clearly been through the process from Red Lanterns, but has degraded back to being a typical Red Lantern, it looks like. Really, you'd think there should be an editor in charge of the whole thing to ensure continuity, or something. In top JRJr-biting, some panels of this could have been in Kick-Ass. Anyway, it turns out the whole plot WHICH WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO TRICK EVERYBODY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, INCLUDING EVERYONE ON OA was just a construct of the Orange Lantern (no, me neither) Glomulus. Or maybe Larfleeze. Who may also be called Agent Orange. OH WAIT, IT A GEOFF JOHNS CHARACTER.* Kyle says "God, this just keeps getting worse..." and I know how he feels.

* Amongst other appearances, there is this. My head hurts.

Larfleeze Christmas Special

On Christmas Day, Larfleeze is outraged to discover that Santa Claus hasn't brought him anything that he asked for. He attacks every costumed Santa in the nearby town, and tries to melt the North Pole, only to be stopped by Hal Jordan. Jordan tells Larfleeze of Christmas spirit, and how it comes from giving. On Hal's suggestion, Larfleeze gives away every item in his mountain of possessions, but afterwards declares that he doesn't like Christmas spirit. Jordan then suggests that he look over his Christmas list and see if he actually needed anything there. That night, Larfleeze stares at a part of his list, on which he had written "my family".

I, Vampire #3: This is still beautiful but I'm not sure why it's being shoehorned into crossovers. Next month sees us in Gotham City, and features John Constantine (presumably the Johnsiverse Constantine from Justice League Dark and not the Vertigo one). I'm finding less reasons to stay with this month on month, but staying for now.

Justice League Dark #3: Constantine and Zatanna have the sex! Deadman desperately tries to get his end away with June Moon! The M-Vest tries to make a new Kathy for Shade to have the sex with! There's almost a plot! GET ON WITH IT! (NB this review only has slightly more exclamation marks than the cover of this book)

Savage Hawkman #3: No no no no no. A confused mess again. The muddy art doesn't help one jot, but Morphicus seems to be alive, then dead, then cut up, then never have existed, then alive again. And Hawkman? Fuck knows. Anyway, next issue promises "The Final Showdown". Pity I won't be there to see it.

Superman #3: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ACTION COMICS. I mean, seriously, why print what happens in Action #4 onwards as part of this issue? IF ONLY THERE WAS A JOHNSIVERSE EDITOR. Anyway, back to the comic itself and this still has lots and lots and lots of words. Far too many. Yet again, this book concentrates about half the page-count to a fight which is part of a bigger overarching plot and still overlays it with so many text boxes you can't see it properly. This will convert nobody.

Teen Titans #3: This is still a joy from front to back. As I've said before, Kid Flash is the undisputed star of the book but Red Robin begins to come into his own in this as well and the team looks mostly complete. I'm still not absolutely sold on the Jim Lee-lite art (especially Wonder Girl in the hospital, which just looks... odd...) but I can get over it. I'm very pleasantly surprised how much I'm getting out of it and very happy that I am.

Voodoo #3: This doesn't really go anywhere. There's a whole load of plot (which doesn't actually make anything much clearer) and some kind of distinction between whatever Voodoo is and whatever the other aliums are which is good enough to get one over on Kyle Rayner (who, let's not forget, is shown elsewhere this month to be the bestest Lantern ever). And then somebody dies in the end. Oh well.

Thanks aldo! I'll take your word on Titans - I dislike the characters and the art so can't even try it.

Flash is so good it overcomes my natural anti-Flash bias (I've never liked the character (or the derivatives) except in his Golden Age incarnation).

So, we reach the end of 3 months and I start cutting books. I'm down to just under half, from memory, but my observations on the experiment thus far:

I had really fallen out of the habit of reading comics. I know we'd discussed it before in ILC, about how we'd cut down to 4 or 5 floppies a week, but the sheer volume overwhelmed me to start with. I ended up having to read them alphabetically because any other way would have been detrimental to the books I was enjoying less - otherwise I would have read the ones I liked and then just left with a pile of dross to plod through (which, truth to tell, was the case some weeks anyway). But then in order to get these reviews out, I was having to read them straight away so I could find the time to do this at the weekend. Discipline was very much the order of the day, and this may have made me less tolerant of the lesser quality books to be honest.

It's important to pick up comics every week. The week of the Diamond fuck-up with my LCS caused me great pain. I was finding one week hard going, now I had to do two in the same timeframe. That almost killed me. I have no idea now how I would have done this on the month I'm on holiday next year.

This process has made me far more judgemental. I had written off Red Hood after the first issue, yet it turns out I actually really quite like it. I proclaimed the first issue of Aquaman to be brilliant, but it fell off a massive cliff edge. And I ended up comparing books to the other ones out that week, probably unfairly.

Three months isn't long enough to judge comics on. See the above. But also see complaints through the process about pacing. They've been uneven but that's only through comparison to each other - since they all started at the same time you'd expect them to be consistent, however, some have raced forward with plot with no hints of backstory, some have concentrated in minutae over things past which may or may not have happened and some are just glacial. It's the change that's jarring though, as some of these books were at #2-300 when this started and the pacing would have been fine on them. So I would have welcomed the opportunity to do this for longer but Diamond set their sale or return at that level. Was this within DC's influence? Probably.

This hasn't really been a success for existing customers. Looking round the internet, it seems people have generally reverted to type. People who were buying Batbooks are still buying Batbooks (irrespective of quality). People who were buying Superfamily books are still buying Superfamily books (irrespective of quality). People who were buying Geoff Johns books are still mad. Nobody is more inclined to pick up Jonah Hex than they were. I'm even aware of one online trend to deliberately cut to only 8 books by month 4. A failure then.

This hasn't exactly been a success for new customers either. OK, so Justice League #1 is on the 5th printing. You don't get sales across the line, you haven't brought in new readers. And in the week James Robinson notes that his Shade mini-series will probably be cancelled before #12 because of sales* it seems like general interest in the new line hasn't transferred into curiosity about things they don't already know about.

Comics professionals aren't what they used to be. I know it looks like I'm being picky, but some of the artwork in the reboot has been exceptionally shoddy. I'm currently reading Prince Valiant Vol 4 and the gulf in quality is amazing, but even in comparison to some of the dailies (Dick Tracy for example) the gulf in quality is astonishing. And what is it with the staying power of these people? The sheer volume of creative changes is overwhelming, and then you remember this was PLANNED. And then you remember David Finch and what's happened with David Finch's Batman The Dark Knight. That's sitcom territory.

Rob Liefeld is exactly what he used to be. Seriously, how is he still employed?

The Johnsiverse is all about the sex. I mean we all know the controversy about Catwoman and the first Red Hood, but really, they've been like rabbits across the line. Is this what it's come to?

I'll keep going with this via t0rr3nt for the titles I'm not sticking with, but it may well be more sporadic (and some may just say "still shit").

* I mean OK, a Golden Age Flash villain might not be the best of choices but it sort of spins off out of Robinson's Starman series and is probably better than 80-90% of the Johnsiverse. You're in the shop already, why not buy something good when you're in there?

I don't know why Grifter and Voodoo are resonating so hard with me, esp. considering I never was a WildC.A.T.S. fan, but the direction they're talking the whole Kherubim/Daemonite conflict and how it seems both sides are now leaning anti-human is very interesting to me. Also, I can't believe how much I disliked that first issue of Stormwatch (possibly because it was The Authority with all of the minorities associated with Stormwatch/The Authority removed)

I mean, I'm not screaming for token representation; Battalion and Fuji have been associated with the team since its inception and Flint and Swift have been mainstays since '96.

And after DC inexplicably take a week off...

Action #4: The premise of this is great - Earth is being harvested by the same guy who put Kandor in a bottle last month - but the execution not so much. The main part of the comic is a fun read (although it does smack slightly of Disco Dad at times; "your favourite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers"? Really?) but the worst part is undoubtedly that GMoz can't even be arsed writing it all himself.

"So, Steel's turned up to fight the Terminaut. At the end I want Steel there, but I don't care about any of the rest of it. I'm not bothered who writes it either. Sholly Fisch? Who he? He writes DC kids' books, huh?"

Animal Man #4: This continues to be a confounding read. The art is still sketchy - I love it when it's doing wilding impressionistic swathes of... weird... but don't get on with it when it's supposed to be real. In terms of plot, basically Maxine could have meant the last issue didn't need to exist, there's a sentient cat from The Red living with the Bakers now and Cliff might be dead having been eaten by Mr Potato Head. I already feel the groan for next month when Maxine makes it so it didn't happen. Poor Cliff. I hope he becomes the Kenny McCormack or Rory Williams of the Johnsiverse.

Batwing #4: I thought I had cut this but it appears the LCS still want me to take it, which isn't really a problem since the story has got better now the art has got worse. That said, you or I could write a SEKRIT ORIGIN OF AN ARFRICAN BOY GROWING UP WITH GUNS AND STUFF and it would look pretty much like this, except we wouldn't be getting paid thousands of bucks to do it. This is now not doing anything the recent run of Unknown Soldier by Josh Dysart wasn't, which was cancelled through lack of readers. HOLY BAT-FRANCHISE! It's the only explanation.

Detective Comics #4: The previous issues of this have been great, but this is a mess of ACTION shots and JUMPING and GRIMACING. Jim Gordon looks and acts like a stoner. The issue ends pretty much exactly where we were at the end of #1, which makes it feel like it's been kind of a waste of time. Looks like the Penguin next. My curiosity will keep me reading but this is a book on the brink of being dropped after this issue. Oh fickle me.

OMAC #4: In which Didio and Giffen embrace the fact they're doing nothing clever here and go all out for the Kirby. GIANT ALLIGATORS WITH ROBOT NUCLEAR HEADS! It looks like Frankenstein shows up next month and the books cross over. This seems to be a trend in the first of the #4s, setting up crossover events early. I suspect this is all pointing to a giant X-Over event next summer (the traditional point for EVENTs) during which the Johnsiverse will be re-integrated back into the 52niverse. Maybe. This is a blast in the meantime, as usual.

Red Lanterns #4: Atrocitus finds out about Bleez' possible deception that's been apparent from the start, given she's been in other books and it's been mentioned in the editorial, but being a creature of RAGE GRRRR reacts by throwing three other Red Lanterns in the sea like he did with Bleez to have more smarter ones. No, I don't understand how having more smart ones will help him if they were plotting against him even when they were stupid either. (He finds this out, by the way, in the time-honoured telepathic manner of biting their necks. Anyway, since the three he chooses aren't SEXEY RED ALIUMS (they are, in fact, a goat, a floating brane and MODOK the rubber ball aliums) they don't get nearly as much character development as Bleez does. In the end Atrocitus' nemesis and confidant Krona appears to have risen from the dead in a stunning cliffhanger. Or at least it would have been if Pete Milligan hadn't said it in the interview in the back of every book this month. You'd think they'd learn by now.

Stormwatch #4: Blah blah blah blah blah. The villain turns out not to be "The Dark Side" after all, but a city swallowed by an alien force which means Jack Hawksmoor can solve it in a page. Then Apollo gets blasted by the power of the sun and frees everyone by punching a hole in its stomach. All that plot takes about 2 pages, so G_d knows what fills the rest. Ho hum.

Swamp Thing #4: This trundles along being entertaining and pulling all the strands together, neatly tying up pretty much all Rick Veitch's writing on the book in a page. It's going somewhere, definitely, but the fact this issue has THREE different inkers can make you wonder whether you want to go there with it. There's a big Animal Man crossover soon, you know. That might be where it gets into fanboy only territory.

And the books I am only reading on CBR...

Green Arrow #4: Giffen and Jurgens don't make this much better. There's a character called Blood Rose, who seems to have become Asian since her cameo at the end of last month and her boss (who in one panel seems to have had the lower half od his body replaced by a chair) who tells her he is ABSOLUTELY 100% CERTAIN there is no link between Green Arrow and Ollie. She appears not to think so either, even after virtually watching him change into his costume in front of her. She also has super-strength, which she doesn't use until after GA's escape - which confuses him as much as it confuses us. In other news, Steve Jobs Ollie is setting up a games company. It's all go round these parts.

Hawk & Dove #4: This just doesn't get any better. Liefeld arguably gets worse. There's now something called the War Circle which may have something to do with all the avatars' owners ganging up on each other. Dawn might have eaten Swan off-page in the last issue. Swan returns the favour in this issue by pulling Deadman's face back like in gonzo pr0n, or on the cover of Gnaw Their Tongues' "All the dread magnificence of perversity". Then a helicopter turns up and they all go home, apart from Dawn who starts acting like Jackie Chan. Oh dear.

JLI #4: A couple of notable things happen in this issue. First, Godiva wanks off Batman with her hair. Second, they are all trapped in mud which absorbs their powers, however, not when it's cold so Ice freezes it and they escape. So why didn't she do that to start with? They then get beaten again and the robots from the previous issues start to work while our heroes are attacked by mud and midgets - in other words back where we were at the start of #3. So the only different thing that happened this month was Godiva wanking off Batman with her hair. I'll leave you with that thought of how far the Johnsiverse has taken us.

Men of War #4: "Next issue: Who is the enemy?" Aldo sez: who gives a fuck? This is dreadful hackneyed war writing, full of cliche tech speak and two separate strands just so we can see Rock dressed up in two different outfits, like some kind of 2D Action Man. Oh and what a surprise, there's magic/superpowers involved animating the dead, maybe. The backups this month is Skull Bots which would be less mature if written by the kid from Axe Cop. Ridiculous stuff.

Static Shock #4: Not even worth writing about. The mid-80s have so much to answer for, and this looks pedestrian compared to the worst excesses of that era. Flabby villain of the week nonsense.

Is the mysterious hooded woman still showing up in every book?

Haven't seen her, but then I missed her in most of the #1s. I think Geoff Johns has said she's only going to show up in Justice League (possibly because she may be a Jim Lee character from the Wildstorm universe, apparently).

aw man I missed that this fill-in thread existed! there has been SO MUCH amazing creator turnover in the last week that has made me twitchy to not be able to post about ;_;

how we'd cut down to 4 or 5 floppies a week

4 or 5 a week* has always seemed a monumental intake to me!

*every week, that is. leaving the shop with five comics I like is obviously great and desirable, but I usually go once a month

Batgirl #4: This is a solid enough close out to the Mirror storyline. Babs works out the motivation and plot at about the same time as the reader, despite having much more information than we do, and we also get a whole pile of Babs Backstory including finding out she got out of the chair because of "a clinic in South Africa". Hmm. Babs' mum turning up at the end is a bit of a shocker though. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a bit of Dad Dancing from Gail Simone, and this month's is that bad guys have an app for their iPhones that lets them know where Batman is. I know, right? This story arc was good enough to keep me on board for the next one, I guess.

Batman & Robin #4: To be honest, I think most people had been sleeping on this Batbook and a lot might have cut it. This issue, particularly the final pages, shows they were wrong. Yes, it's a bit wordy but Nobody has turned by stealth into a great character. The next few issues are going to be the making of Damian, it looks like.

Batwoman #4: In contrast, this has got an easy ride because of how good it was. And it spectacularly fails to drop the ball here, with the strongest issue yet. Kate Kane's world teeters on the brink of complete collapse and I have no idea how it's going to pan out. And just to show all the SEXEY TIMES FUN doesn't just happen in other books, this has probably the most graphic and explicit sex of the Johnsiverse to date but will pass without comment because it's sapphic shenanigans. Oh, and it's intercut with a graphic fight, torture and bloody slashing. Still immune from comment? It seems so. If this was Catwoman the blogverse would be calling for everyone involved to be sacked.

Demon Knights #4: You know what the most under-rated book of the Johnsiverse is? It's this one. An absolute pleasure from start to finish as ever, and as usual Vandal Savage is the best thing about it. "Wake up!It is your comrades! Vandal Savage! Jason Blood! That tall woman!" This is the origin story of this version of the Shining Knight and comes close to out GMoz-ing Gmoz' take on it. Can we have more books like this please?

Frankenstein #4: The other Seven Soldiers character pulled through into the Johnsiverse still feels like an inferior BPRD but this is most accomplished issue so far, and makes me glad I hadn't cut it. Aquaman gets slagged off and giant monsters get killed. What's not to like? I'm hoping Ray Palmer is going to start playing a bigger part in this because he's the part which makes it work the best.

Legion Lost #4: You know what? Even I'm coming round to the idea that this book isn't really that great. We push the idea that the alien is partly Chameleon Girl and the main baddie becomes massively powerful at the end. But not much else happens really. Even this summary is boring.

Suicide Squad #4: Here's the thing. Without going into specifics, the Squad core team regularises and not in the way you'd expect. Also, King Shark actually gets clear-headed at one point. You really should still all be reading this book.

CBR-only books:

Deathstroke #4: Deathstroke gets out of prison. Deathstroke kills some people. Deathstroke's mate gets offed. Reading this text is marginally less boring than reading the comic.

Green Lantern #4: Hal didn't die and is still in WUB with Carol. Sinestro gets tortured for a bit. The rest of the issue is clearly about some OBVIOUSLY HISTORIC Geoff Johns GL thing I never read about which gives us a pile of Sinestro backstory. Then Hal manages to fuck it up for him (by accident, OBVIOUSLY). BLAH BLAH WHO CARES.

Grifter #4: What the fuck has this got to do with the previous issues? They were all about the mystery of who Cole was. Now it's a gun-for-hire book that almost succeeds to be the worst Johnsiverse book that's had Green Arrow in it, and that's some claim. It looks like the daemonites are behind it all, probably. Woohoo, we're off into the Wildstorm universe again. Who cares.

Mister Terrific #4: Big brains are really useful in space. Still, the artist got to draw some cool aliens. Well not really because they don't actually look that cool. Michael uses his intellect once and mostly the aliens do things with each other that he's not that involved with. Dreadful stuff that goes nowhere and, again, seems unlinked to the previous issues.

Resurrection Man #4: Huh? OH LOOK BEWBS! The plot actually moves slightly forward in this, but only by essentially writing the previous two issues out (or at least making their content irrelevant). Thumb-woman from #1 turns out to be an angel, who (it appears) permanently kills our titular hero. Might be for the best.

Superboy #4: Superboy burns a Christmas tree with his heat vision and scares some carollers. Makes a change from punching the universe, I suppose. Anyway, the previous 3 issues may just have been a ruse to capture Fairchild. Superboy seems resigned to his lot and decides to work for the people who are the bad guysin Teen Titans. CROSSOVER ALERT. Again.

I can definitely believe there's a "where is Batman?" app - written by Waynetech, with Alfred putting plausible sightings in when he's not ironing the Batsuits.

No, it's being done by villains - and low rent ones at that as 5 of them are shaking down a couple for a fake fur.