Reviews: DETECTIVE #854, SIRENS #1, STREETS #1

I’m sorry for so many delays between posts here, but I promise I’m writing more than I’ve ever written in my life. I’m just writing it other places.

I’m busier than ever with Impact, and my co-writer Kevin Rice and I are working hard on our Hercules movie with Alexander Nevsky, and there might be some other things I can’t tell you about yet.

But I do have some new reviews as part of my monthly gig for Bill Ramey, the hardest-working Batman fan on the planet who runs the superb Batman on Film.

I’ll no longer be reviewing Batman Confidential for the site; future reviews will be done by the massively talented Paul Casey, who’s a better writer than I am anyway.

I’ll be moving over to the new titles Streets of Gotham and Gotham City Sirens while continuing to review Detective Comics, which introduced Batman in May of 1939.

Here’s the first round:

Review: Detective Comics #854

Review: Gotham City Sirens #1

Review: Streets of Gotham #1

As good as these issues are, the gimmick behind them is 47 kinds of ridiculous; even though the latest Batman movie made a billion dollars, the rocket scientists running DC have lost their marbles when it comes to his comics. Bruce Wayne has been transported to the distant past of another dimension or reality or whatever, where he’s sitting around in his Batman pants drawing bats on cave walls.

Yeah.

And until he “returns” in what’s sure to be a similarly ridiculously fashion that will require buying a stupid number of expensive crossover issues and stunt one-shots to get the whole story, original Robin Dick Grayson has taken over as Batman and the new Robin is Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s genetically engineered “son” with Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul.

Yeah.

It’s ridiculous, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt. The Detective Comics creative team of writer Paul Dini and artist Dustin Nguyen was shuffled off of Detective and placed on Streets of Gotham, which focuses less on the internal struggles of Dick’s Batman (which are being chronicled in the pages Batman and Robin and Batman) and more on the new Caped Crusader’s dealings with Jim Gordon, the Gotham City Police Department, and the various mobsters and villains always scheming to claim a bigger piece of the Gotham pie. And yet Dini and Nguyen are making gourmet omelets with the broken eggs they’ve been given. Check out the review for more details.

Sirens focuses on Gotham’s bad girls (kind of) trying to go good, and Detective will now showcase Batwoman. As my review will tell you, issue 854 is one of the most beautiful and exciting books I’ve ever read.

(As for previous Robin Tim Drake, you can track his adventures across the globe to prove Bruce Wayne is still alive in the pages of yet another new title, Red Robin.)

Thanks as always for reading. More to come soon!

I know I’ve told this story before …

… but I’ve been listening a lot lately to the Gin Blossoms album in question, and it always reminds me of the night I bought it, so here it is again for the 40-gazillionth time.

It’s August 2006. The Gin Blossoms and Nina Gordon have released new albums on the same day, which is excellent news for me. So just after midnight on release day, I drive to Wal-Mart to buy them so I can put them in my iPod and listen to them at work that morning.

So it’s almost 1 a.m. and I’m standing in line at the checkout lane, and the woman in front of me has gathered so many groceries that her cart is straining and sagging. She turns around and looks at me with my two CDs and says, “Please go in front of me. You only have two things, and I bought the entire store.”

“Thank you,” I say. “That’s very sweet.”

(And it really was — a rare bit of thoughtful humanity in the wild world of retail.)

The creepy old man in front of her says, “You can go in front of me, too. It’s going to be a long night.”

He smiles a leering, crazy smile and brandishes his own two items — a Jimmy Buffett concert DVD and a big box of Ex-Lax.

I promise I’ll try to get some new stories. I have a great one about something that happened at Long John Silver’s, but I can only tell you in person because it requires lots of funny voices. And then there’s the “Sheena Queen of the Jungle” flight attendant story from last summer, but that one requires an in-person telling, too.

Review: RHETT MILLER, by Rhett Miller

With and without his friends in the Old 97′s, the amazing Rhett Miller sweats mighty bullets of voice and guitar brilliance.

The Old 97’s have one of the healthiest band relationships I’ve ever heard of — they work on solo projects in between recording (and touring in support of) their own albums. This arrangement results in a lot of really great material at a relatively frequent rate of release — along with lots of fun concerts to go see.

(In fact, the guys are playing Headliners Music Hall in Louisville on Friday, July 24. I’ll be there, and so should you.)

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Last year’s Old 97’s album, Blame It on Gravity, came along right when I needed it. I’ve been lied to by girls before, and thrown away by girls before, but in the early months of 2008 I ended up on the receiving end of the most heinous and disgustingly vile scheme of gross manipulation and utter dishonesty I’ve ever seen.

(I should have known better, but sometimes we choose to believe, and believe in, people we shouldn’t.)

About two weeks after the jig bellied all the way up, I found myself staring at my ceiling one night, lost and in shock, wondering if I’d ever make sense of it all — and deciding on probably not.

To try to coax my heart-battered brain in a different direction, I powered up Sweet Lorelai (my iPod) and gave Blame It on Gravity its first spin.

It didn’t take long before I was smiling, laughing, and vigorously nodding my head to its snappy rhythms and jaunty, jangling widsom.

(Or its occasional — and hilarious — lack of wisdom. Songs like “I Will Remain” evoke Roger Miller meets the Beatles.)

It’s such a fun album.

Barely over a year later, here comes Rhett Miller with Rhett Miller … and holy cow, it’s good.

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Effortlessly good.

Too good.

The perfect solo sequel to one of my absolute favorite albums of 2008.

I’m a huge fan of Rhett’s previous albums — The Instigator and The Believer. As a whole, I think The Believer is probably better, but The Instigator is probably a little easier to listen to all the way through while you’re driving.

Rhett Miller pretty much hits the perfect balance between the two.

(His first solo record, 1989’s Mythologies, remains a sought-after rarity.)

And I love that the front and back cover photos look like they were taken by Deb from Napoleon Dynamite.

This is truly the kind of music that makes everything better.

So please hop on down to your favorite local record store, and let Rhett’s latest batch of songs bop you all the way home.