Dane-Sized Pull List, 3-7

I haven't been updating as much as I'd like. I'll have to fix that.

I left the comic shop with two purchases cette semaine.
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Fantastic Four: The End 6
-- A disappointing finale for the latest of Marvel's THE END series. There were a number of things that felt off here --
a. Galactus's sudden arrival to save the day. Technically, it's not a deus ex machina because it was foreshadowed, but it's dangerously close to one.
b. Reed's odd insistence that time travel can't change the past. Obviously, the very premise of the THE END books points to a less-than-strict adherence to past continuity. Still, a change this big bugs me in a way I can't pin down. (Edited to add: On second thought, maybe it's not that big a change; there had to be some reason they never used time travel to save the day, right?)
c. For a THE END story, there's not much of a sense of finality to this tale.

I'm not sure how much water that last criticism holds. Obviously, mistaken expectations can have a negative effect on one's enjoyment of a story, but how much of the blame for mistaken expectations falls in a writer's lap?

I don't regret buying this because it's page after page of beautiful Alan Davis art. I do regret that the writing wasn't by the same Davis who gave us KILLRAVEN, JLA: THE NAIL, not to mention every single CLANDESTINE story the man ever put out. Those three works were enough to solidify his place as one of my favorite mainstream writers, despite how little of his oeuvre I've read. Unfortunately, this six-parter wasn't up to their admittedly high standards.

I will say that the Dragon Man being a member of the future Avengers was cool, though.

Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil 2
Mary Takes The Cake!
-- I said in my comments for the first issue that I found it disappointing. Well, now this is more like it.

Things start out a bit slow, with a couple of scenes that aren't particularly bad but not especially good either, simply... there. However, from the moment the alligator men stage their reptilian revolution onwards, it's nothing but grade-A entertainment, with a deft balance between humor and drama.

I prefer my plotlines to be more complex (and no, by this I do not mean more adult or darker) than what we have here, but it's still a delightful read.

And the new Talky Tawny, née Tawky? Rocks. (And face it, in its own way, this is as radical a revamp as anything Judd Winnick is doing over in TRIALS OF SHAZAM.) I'm a bit of a sucker for talking, intelligent animals who -- and here's the important part -- still look like completely normal animals.

Now that I think about it, Waid and Perez should do a Krypto/Smith's Talky team-up in a BRAVE AND THE BOLD issue. It'd be neat to see how Perez handles an entire issue where the two protags are both four-legged animals. Oh wait, my mistake; it was Alan Moore's Radar, the Hound Supreme, who talked and thought.