Every couple of months (okay, sometimes it’s longer than that — mea culpa) a handful of ComicCritique.Com contributors get together for food, beverage, and extremely geeked-out comic conversation. We few happen to all live in the same metropolitan area, making such a gathering possible. At a booth at a venerated pizza parlour, hours pass in the blink of an eye as any and all topics pass among us. But of course we always return to comics. Such a meeting was had this past Saturday, and it was as satisfying as always.

At one point we had comics strewn about the table amidst glasses of beer and the server must have shown a raised eyebrow because Joe piped up, “It’s okay, we’re literates.” The server clearly didn’t understand, but he was good natured and rolled with it.

Some camera-phone photos from the gathering:

Joe and pizza. And Babe.

John is nearly impossible to photograph from the front. Some might say there was too much light behind him, but I think there’s a superpower involved here. Perhaps he’s YouCantTakeMyPicture-Man.

Joe and YCTMP-Man again.

Matt, Joe, John, several empties, and the remains of… is that the second pizza guys? Egads.

Okay, okay. If I’m reading it at Eonline.com I’m likely the last comic geek to know about it and you all are way ahead of me, but just in case:

• Tom Cruise wants to make a comic book movie
• Surprise! Legal trouble for the Watchmen movie

Batton Lash’s reliably endearing Supernatural Law is in a long tradition of politely revolutionary American pop. The gruesome yet affectionate cartoons of Charles Addams were part of a process of our culture adjusting to social difference in a turbulent era, and Lash’s ongoing series about misunderstood movie monsters’ and mythical fiends’ legal counsel is a none-too-veiled affirmation of minority rights and due process in a xenophobic and extra-legal political landscape. His amiable Archie-esque cartooning style and mild wit draw the jury’s attention from the book’s weightier implications, which only serves to better make the case. Issue #45 was a good jumping-on point for any new readers wishing to bypass some of the series’ accumulated narrative baggage — though it substituted other baggage aplenty, as lawyers Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd defend (and deliver a career-spanning homage to) the Toxic Avenger on the occasion of Troma Films’ 35th anniversary. Readers who missed those movies and other media tie-ins the first time will have no trouble accessing this storyline, though, and the spotlight on a Reagan-era icon is oddly in sync with standard features like the it-came-from-the-’80s fashion sense Wolff is always drawn with. The traditional themes of the Toxic Avenger as embodiment of his native New Jersey’s infamous environmental underachievement are updated with a cleverly integrated look at Jersey’s rampant overdevelopment, and the two sides of Lash’s humor are well on display: the gentle comedy of characters reacting in ways that alert and witty people would in everyday life, and elaborately contrived puns and shaggy-dog situations that Lash sets up to seem natural and inevitable; in Lash’s hands, vaudeville is undead (and I’m loving it). Supernatural Law is worth a special plea to your retailer if they’re not already getting it, and earns your hypnotic loyalty with a preternaturally prolific and consistent webcomic at http://www.webcomicsnation.com/supernaturallaw/.

Readers looking for a way to jump back onto the state of the art of Jim Starlin’s mindbending visuals and substantive space opera are given a good chance in the Hawkman Special out two weeks ago. A narrative digression from Starlin’s gripping Rann-Thanagar Holy War mini (reviewed on our parent site here: http://www.comiccritique.com/st/grevSt600.html), it also advances various plot threads of DC’s more sweeping events of the moment, as aspects of Hawkman’s perceived past are questioned in a metaphysical lurch across spacetime with one of Starlin’s patented spiritual guides, the secretive Demiurge. Taking a headliner I’ve never been too interested in (or at least one whose potential has seldom been too smartly tapped), Starlin really makes me care and stages a sense of monumental truths and textured mysteries, not just overpowering spectacles and contrived continuity twists. This book keeps the cosmic axis of art and commerce balanced expertly; as Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison did in DC Universe Zero, a story that could have been little more than an illustrated editorial-meeting pitch is fleshed out with fascinating incident and consequential characterization. It’s all you need to read, too, though after this you’ll probably want more, and Rann-Thanagar’s got five months to go.

Yes, it’s time to eat the raven and do some second-guessing. I gave the Brubaker-and-Fraction-deprived Immortal Iron Fist one probationary issue (#17) and was surprisingly pleased; so far the mystique, mythic atmosphere, quirky humanism and movie-istic plot-sweep and character-detail are intact under new writer Duane Swierczynski and series-vet artists Travel Foreman and Russ Heath.

Meanwhile, Broob & Fraction are by no means being wasted on Uncanny X-Men; picked up the 500th issue and they’re doing a great job of clearing away the continuity calcium that’s long-since turned the arthouse sleeper some of us loved in the late ’70s into an industrial-strength soap-opera-without-end. The writers are on record as being no big fans of the ad-nauseum redundancy that’s built up in the X-folks’ claustrophobic saga, and the current storyline’s change of venue to a San Francisco that embraces the heroes’ unusualness — along with Minutemen-style thugs to come harass them; a nod to the Celestial standing awesomely and ominously in Golden Gate Park from The Eternals; and a shadowy role for one of classic Marvel’s most underused characters, the High Evolutionary (pick up Wolverine First Class #3 and 4 for one of his best appearances ever, BTW) — is gonna be the first to hold my interest in many a decade. Greg Land’s OC-inspired half of the art as always made me think of a filmed version where the heroes and heroines keep stopping in the middle of natural disasters and cataclysmic fights to make hair-swinging fashion-shoot smiles at the camera and get blasted to death, but I kept telling myself it’s still only a comic…

Speaking of Marvel, The Hulk hasn’t fixed itself, but I’ve realized what could — if ever there were a book that should go weekly, this artistically breathtaking, narratively glacial and apparently somewhat popular comic is it. Marvel’s packing enough wit and depth into the Brand New Day-era Spidey that it could easily unfold monthly (not that I’m asking to have my fix cut down), while the videogame-ish vignettes of Hulk’s lumbering action would lend themselves perfectly to a weekly pace where there’s both lots to see *and* something ever happens. Otherwise I’m not sure it’s worth waiting for (beyond the must-get new issue with a crossover from Straczynski’s must-read Thor). Just sayin’.

In any case, our esteemed editor Louis Vitela was right about Geoff Johns’ Action Comics — I picked it up with Louis’ recommended issue spotlighting the Toyman and barely featuring Superman at all until the end. It did have a big role for Batman, though, and Johns did a shining job of anatomizing the way the villain’s psyche is “broken,” like a toy, into several personae he can’t consciously stand to acknowledge, and how Batman feels disdain for him primarily because Bats is a kind of functional schizophrenic who can call out calculation or mayhem only when they fit the circumstance. Scary and melancholy pop analysis and compelling storytelling. I stuck with it through the current Brainiac storyline and was just as impressed when Superman is actually *in* the book — Johns has a fine-tuned ear for the charm of this series’ archetypes, and a way to tap into both its heritage and feeling of freshness. For some reason the pressure is off in Action, treated by DC almost as the Earth-2 of the main Superman title, which seems obligated to be as generic and product-like as possible; smartly, DC realizes there are as many foes as fans of continuity anymore, and understands that millions of midcentury kids invested their lemonade proceeds and stolen lunch money in Supes’ classic, uncoordinated five-series-a-month for a reason. The Comics Code in those days ruled that the star of the book must always win, but in the present day the company’s given me reason to be happy when I’m wrong.