This was a weird week in comics. Some weeks, all my favorites come out and I get flooded with so many fun comics to review! And then we get weeks like this one, where none of the new Marvel Comics are ones that I read, or that I’m so far behind on that I can’t review, like All-New Wolverine (which remains excellent). And since it was a Fifth Wednesday, DC mostly put out Annuals, which I’m never all-too thrill to review. The Detective Comics Annual has an origin for James Tynion’s Clayface, so at least there’s that.

But of regular, meat and potatoes comics that I actually read, there was really only the new issue of Harley Quinn for me this week! It’s an improvement over the previous issue, but I’m going to give Comic Book of the Week to the first issue of The Silencer, one of DC’s new wave of titles. I applaud DC for releasing a wave of comics with almost entirely new characters — even if I haven’t been too tickled by the lineup personally. The Silencer could be fun, though.

New comic!

Honestly, All-New Wolverine should have won. I’ll get back to reviewing it next issue.

Meanwhile, I really, really don’t care for Dark Nights: Metal, which saw a new issue drop this week. It thinks it’s so clever, fiddling with DC continuity on the fly and treating it like  kibble for fanboys. But DC continuity is so malleable right now, after the New 52 and Rebirth, that none of this stuff matters. Martian Manhunter shows up in a surprise appearance, and I was left scratching my head as to when the last time Martian Manhunter mattered or had solid continuity. How is his sudden arrival supposed to mean anything if we don’t know where he’s arriving from? Or why his arrival is sudden?

It’s stuff like that, plus the general idea that the villains are just a vague, omnipresent evil that can be anywhere, do anything and beat anybody…until they can’t and the heroes win. No thanks.

Comic Reviews: Harley Quinn #36 and The Silencer #1.

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