Hello? General Glory?

Sure, some readers -- and probably artists, too -- cast the movies in their heads as they're going along, but there's no upside to actually putting Bruce Willis into a comic. It distracting, so it interrupts the storytelling and derails the suspension of disbelief, and it comes across as either pandering (maybe if Willis' agent sees this he'll want to make the movie!), lazy (creating believable characters is hard, the writer wants a 'Tony Soprano type' ... so I'll just use Tony Soprano!), or both.

We love the great artists because they're able to transfer their imaginations from their minds to their art board. Copying from famous and widely seen sources feels a bit unseemly and a lot like cheating.

I don't know about as a joke, but that concept played a role in Flex Mentallo and Miracleman.

I know that the Joker is supposed to be bat-shit crazy, but I too like him better when he has an agenda. And my favorite Joker moment ever is, I think, the one you hinted at; The Joker casually pushing his henchman into traffic for giving him unsolicited advice (which the Joker admits is good advice)in the Englehart/Rogers run on Detective.

As for this issue ... what could've made it better, more in keeping with the title on its cover, would've been Batman figuring out that Robin was AWOL and trying to track him down. That would've led to some suspense: Will he save Robin in time? Yet still let Tim save himself. Anyhoo, I didn't take it to be all quite as random as you, Greg: I figured the Joker set Robin up. Otherwise, come on, he just happens to be driving around Gotham (it's not like he blends in with other Gothamites, even behind the wheel of a car) and happens to be there to offer Robin a "safe haven" at a key moment? So I saw the whole thing as Joker's plot to capture and torture Robin — and therefore, of course, to torture Batman. Which is, you know, what Joker likes to do, right? So I thought the issue was pretty good.

The idea about the aging superhero losing his memory and forgetting his magic word has been done before, but also, you may have seen it in a preview...at Newsarama.

The Neil Googe interview gave away most of the jokes in this issue of Welcome To Tranquility.

Past that, wasn't the idea of the aging superhero forgetting their magic word done in JSA with the very old Johnny Thunder? That's how Jakeem Thunder came about, wasnt it?

Other than that:

Nightly News 2 came out this week? Damn, I must have missed it completely...

I like The Joker in Detective. That's all I'm going to say.

In the mid-90's there was a revival of "Showcase" for a few years. It was generally one-off stories, sometimes shorter than a full issue, sometimes featuring characters that had their own titles. Too bad there isn't a vehicle like that to put stories like that one in.

....oh God.

/ shudders

Thankfully I didn't even get suckered into buying that one, I gave it a flick through on the shelf and put it down as quick as my hands would allow me to.

I then wiped off any fingerprints I might have left on the cover, and taped over their CCTV so nobody would ever associate me with such a vile thing.

I've been really disappointed by Detective recently. #821 was one of the best issues in years, but it feels like it really was every good idea Dini had at the outset. I dropped it after that terrible Poison Ivy issue and have been reading it in the store since then. I really haven't seen anything to make me regret that decision since then, and this issue was no exception.

The main weakness I saw with newuniversal was some of the blatant photoreferencing going on by Larocca. It got really distracting how obviously Det. Tensen was supposed to be Bruce Willis and Dr. Carson was Johnny Depp

On a positive note, Nightly News #2 was by far my favorite book this week. I'm really looking forward to where Hickman takes this series.

And G'nort! Don't get me started on what they've done with G'nort. I might have to start punching children.

I really dug The Next. You're right, Greg, it drags a bit (issues 3-5 are really just one long fight scene), but it's very enjoyable. I like crazy science fiction ideas, and the book is full of them. Williams did write a lot of text, but I think he realized that he was doing so, so he wrote the captions in a jokey, narrator-talking-to-the-reader sort of manner. I liked that. And Smith's art was quite good, although he made Superman look a little ugly, kind of like a boxer or something.

Great issue of Dr. Strange: The Oath this week. And Agents of Atlas. And Nightly News. And The Other Side. I think you'll be happy when all these miniserieses finish.

In Welcome to Tranquility...

Is the Dr. Strange-looking character on the cover actually a Dr. Strange-type character?

I'm sure there are archetypes that are being skewered in this humorous send-up.
So, is the good Doctor (and mystics in general) among them?

I don't want to come across as one of those fans who is narrow-minded or short-sighted in what he buys.
That is truly not the case.

Sadly, I've been at this game for too long to keep buying things that just seem good.

There's waaay too many titles like that these days, and after DECADES of buying just about EVERYTHING that comes out every week (from multiple publishers), I have made a vow to only buy the stuff that features my all-time favorite characters or tropes.
Doctor Strange is at the top of that list.
But I will allow myself to buy things that "allude" to him as well, if they are good.

Just for the record, I've been buying comics since the mid-1970's and helped to support many an indie publisher:
First, Pacific, Comico, Innovation, Aircel, Eclipse, Atlas, Charlton, Blackthorne, Continuity, Kitchen Sink, Aardvark-Vanaheim, Caliber, WaRP, and many more that have faded into the dim corners of memory)

NOW, I'm just a slave to my Doctor Strange (and other obscure characters) collections.

So... I'll check in later to see if I need to pick up this mini.

ThanX in advance for any help.

~P~
P-TOR