A review and dramatic reading of "Doctor Strange: The Oath," Issue 1, by Vaughan Martin Lopez Rodriguez, with possible suprise guest appearances.

Meet Justin & Friends on Friday, September 22, at 7pm, at A Different Light.

American Born Chinese is a collection of three stories, told simultaneously and finishing with an unexpected cross-pollination: one is a cute retelling of Journey to the East (with some slightly distracting Christian imagery sprinkled in), another is a Wonder-Yearsy memoir of a young boy named Jin who feels left out of local American culture because his parents are Asian, and the other is a sitcom called "Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee," in which a very average white boy named Danny is mortified by his astoundingly offensive Chinese cousin.

Gotham by Gaslight, by Brian Augustyn, Michael Mignola, P. Craig Russell, and Eduardo Barreto, takes the Batman legend and turns it UP-SIDE-FREAKING-DOWN by having Batman do exactly what he's been doing all along ... only a hundred years ago. In this curly re-imagining, Gotham of 1906 is terrorized by Jack the Ripper and a Jokery madman, and it's up to suave gadfly Bruce Wayne to blah blah blah like he always does. The conversation probably went something like, "Okay, I've got it ... we keep writing Batman stories exactly like we have been ... only now he's in 1906!" "Wait, why is he in 1906? I mean, is there any reason for him to be in 1906?" "Um, no." "Good enough for me. Now, let's go get drunk and cry."

And then there's "The Dummy's Guide to Danger," in which the best private eye in LA solves crime while toting around his partner: a ventriloquist's dummy who he insists can talk. Both the dummy and the dick have plenty to say; they're both hard-boiled tough-talking type-A manly men, unphased by gore and undeterred by threats. In issue one, they rough up a perv, they schmooze with a sexy lady reporter, and they narrowly avoid being run over by a car driven into their office by a starlet whose head's just been chopped off. Neato.

It's the end of days, lakes are on fire, it's raining frogs, and zombies roam. Dirty toughguys Otis and Dale Savage make a living as bounty hunters -- folks pay them to track down the specific zombies that were their family members, and assure that their undead loved ones are put to a specific end. It's a good enough living, and they take their apocalyptic setting with teeth-gritted good humor. And then a mystery man in a suit comissions them to retrieve a zombie doctor from the dangerous zombie slum of Atlanta, and they proceed to get chased, shot at, and then stumble across a head in a jar who's about to sacrifice a virgin stripper. In other words, things get interesting.

It's all well and good that superheros charge around saving the world, but what happens when they're not very good at it? Now and then there's bound to be a few screw-ups, innocent bystanders hurt, that sort of thing. The Boys, by Garth Ennis (of Preacher fame) and local artist Darick Robertson, follows crime-fighting from the perspective of the victims -- people who've been hurt by careless superheroics and who make it their business to see that the superheros pay.

Reading Casanova, by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Bá, feels like a homework assignment. What's happening here? From one panel to the next, we're leaping all over the place, and everyone's talking about stuff we've never heard about like we're supposed to be able to follow along. The book sort of feels like it's had all its exposition stripped out. Having too much exposition sucks, but having none at all is just disorienting.

Here's a short interview with Lev, local comic author. He's got a film screening in the SF Undergound Film Fest this Saturday.

Jack is shy and artsy, which isn't helping him with his primary goal: attracting chicks. "Jack and Lucky," by bay-area artist Anthony Hon, chronicles the travails of a lonely, horny 20-something. Oh and also, and this is never explained but somehow doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary, he lives with a giant talking 300-pound cat. Like the talking monkey in Rob Osborne's 1000 Steps to World Domination, Lucky seems to channel Jack's inner beast -- in this case, a carefree oaf; while Jack stammers and frets over beautiful women, Lucky gleefully serves up food, booze, and erotica. They're a cute couple.

Words cannot possibly express what a gold mine "Millie the Model" and "Patsy Walker" are. Originally published by Marvel in the mid-sixties, the strips are a camp dream come true. Dreadfully cheap coloring (they make Archie comics look like they belong in a museum), recycled character poses, some of the most hideous outfits we've ever seen ... and oh lord, the dialogue. "How DARE you tell ME how to pose!" "Clicker Holbrook, if you try to KISS me, I'll call for HELP!" "The only way YOU could win a beauty contest is with your FACE tied behind you!" Oh Millie, stop, please, we're in stitches. Seriously.

And speaking of frivolous, let's give a mention to "Agents of Atlas," a sort-of origin story that's set in the old-timey golden-age Marvel Universe, back before the company changed its name from Atlas to Marvel. A team of superpowered heros rescue Eisenhower from a thoroughly enjoyable cabal of Chinese and German villains, then disband, then re-band years later to fight a ... um ... something. It gets a little vague toward the end what their actual goal is.

Castle Waiting, Bumperboy and the Loud Loud Mountain, Polly and the Pirates

"The Leading Man" (by B. Clay Moore and Jeremy Haun) disappointed us, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, because the thing that disappointed us is that there wasn't more of it. It's got a grabby, high-concept sort of hook: a suave Hollywood actor who plays secret agents and spies is actually, in real life, a secret agent and a spy. It's such a cool idea, but the book lingers over it just a little too long, making sure we see how cool it is from every possible angle before getting down to brass tacks of thermal suits and creepy caves. And once those brass tacks are finally gotten down to, it's time for the issue to end. Grr, issue-one cliffhangers!

Look out, everybody, there's an Artist at work. "Babel #2," by the vaguely-identified "David B," is a cozy mosey through memories of a childhood steeped in war. David apparantly came of age in French-speaking Algeria, where people were fighting and tribes were doing scary things and soldiers lived on squalid little boats. As is kids' tendancy, he felt desperately curious about the fighting, and it permeated his dreams, and his games with other kids, and his readings of Paris Match. Ooh, we got to mention Paris Match in an article! We feel so Continental

Can anybody really tell any of these hero books apart? Seriously, guys. Honestly. They print billions of pages of this stuff, and for the life of us, we can't tell why the "52" series is any different from any of it, aside from that, bizarrely, there is no immediate indication who the writers or artists are.

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Toupydoops and Convention Confessional are about comic books. The Golden Plates is about Mormons.

Sorry about the terrible sound quality -- I'll get a better mic for next week.

Sorry about the terrible sound quality -- I'll get a better mic for next week.