The Week's Best, for the week of 6-14-10 to 6-20-10

So obviously, since the TV season ended and none of these summer replacement shows have done anything to pique my interest, I have to make a change to this column. If I didn't the best TV show every week would be True Blood and there would be no runner-up, and that would just be too repetitive for me. Instead, what will happen is that until the new fall season starts (or until I decide to stop blogging in the sheer face of indifference I'm receiving from people who all told me it would be awesome if I blogged again...), this will solely be a comic book column. There will still be a runner-up and a winner each week, but to add to it in place of the missing TV show entries, there will be a new "Week's Worst Comic Book" Award, and we'll kick it off with that right now.

The Week's Worst Comic Book - Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth #12

Look, I want to make it clear right off the bat, my intention here isn't to bash anybody or say anybody sucks. Truth is, even the writers and artists I don't like are doing something I can't do and I have no right to bash them; in fact, I have the utmost respect for them. And in this case, it isn't the writing or art I really have a problem with (although Gischler's writing style just rubs me the wrong way for some reason I can't quite articulate, and Dazo's art just feels too cartoony to me), it's more like the problem I have is with the direction Marvel has taken Deadpool as a whole. He's gone from being a dangerous, highly skilled mercenary who was a little cracked and used it to his advantage to distract and annoy his targets to being completely out of his gourd, having schizophrenic conversations with himself, doing completely ridiculous things for even more ridiculous reasons, and on top of that, he shows up in almost as many books in a month as Wolverine or Spider-Man! The overexposure makes things worse, and I find myself fervently wishing that Fabian Nicieza would be given Deadpool to make him shine again. If the good ship Deadpool isn't righted by the time the movie comes out, things will only get worse, I imagine...

The Week's Best Comic Book Runner-Up - Birds of Prey #2

Having Gail Simone and Ed Benes back on this book is like having Christmas come once a month. Nobody is better suited to drawing a book with an almost all-female cast than Benes, who draws beautiful women better than just about anyone I've ever seen, and Simone's ability to give all the characters different voices and use of thought boxes is fantastic. The book is packed with action, comedy, character beats, and a mystery, and is just not something to be missed.

The Week's Best Comic Book Winner - Amazing Spider-Man #634

"They're hunting spiders," really does say it all. For the better part of the last year, Spider-man has been running a gauntlet, facing all of his deadliest foes, one after another, and while he's survived each encounter, he's never won; in fact, each time he's lost something... a friend, his job, etc... The whole time, it has all been orchestrated by Sasha Kravinoff, the wife of the deadly and long-deceased Kraven the Hunter, and their equally deadly daughter, Ana, who, along with Ana's half-brother Aloysha, really have been hunting spiders. They've already kidnapped Madame Web and the third Spider-Woman, Mattie Franklin, and when this issue opens, they've already beaten the crap out of Spidey-clone Kaine, who shows up on Peter Parker's door looking for help. In the midst of helping him, Peter gets dragged into a battle outside, where Ana and Aloysha are attacking the second Spider-Woman, Julia Carpenter, now known as Arachne. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say the issue also features a very surprising return, a heart-breaking death, and a resurrection that isn't quite what's expected, as well as the revelation of what Sasha's plan has been all along. Joe Kelly's sense of action and dialogue is fantastic, and the scenes he writes her are both thrilling, compelling, and saddening. The art by Lark and Gaudiano is a perfect fit for this story, dark and gritty and, well, grim. The Grim Hunt is the first of three Spidey storylines this summer, and it starts off with a bang here. Plus, as if all that wasn't enough, the issue also features a back-up story about the first time Kaine met the original hunter, Kraven, and ANOTHER back-up story that features two pages written by Stan Lee. Price of admission right there, folks.