I totally, totally gasped at the revelation on the last page that Tombstone is the Beetle's dad. Amazeballs.
I'm finding that this series almost defies reviewing, since it's all so perfect and tight that you sort of just have to read it to get a sense of it. I mean, how do you describe the brilliance of the story of the "The True Face of Victor Von Doom?" How do you explain the visual gags, like Fred pulling a poster of "The Ugly Truth" over "The True Face of Victor Von Doom" or Dr. Doom standing in his boxers contemplating his vulnerability. You can't. You just can't. You have to experience it yourself.
As result, I really only have two specific comments. First, Spencer and Lieber still do an amazing job of conveying the emotions of the Superior Foes without words. It fits, of course, that super-villains aren't exactly comfortable discussing their emotions, either to one another or to themselves (via first-person narration), so the visual cues are our only real insight into their inner truths. For example, the splash page of Fred envisioning his future with the waitress went beyond Fred simply saying that he was in love with her; similarly, Speed Demon thinking about his dog when the Owl said that he was going to kill him was remarkably touching (even if he stole that dog off a little girl). Although the tone of this series is light, I will say that I feel like Spencer is letting us know that the other shoe may drop one day and not everyone is going to get to the other side of that OK. He and Lieber are slowly making us care about these characters, by using visuals to go past their bluster. Second, in the aforementioned splash page, Fred and the waitress' child seems to be the son of the guy with a flame for a head, not Fred's, leading me to wonder why Fred, in his own dreams, appears to see himself cuckolded? That's a little screwy, right? Then again, Fred's pretty screwy, so maybe it makes sense.
In other words, it's all still amazing.
**** (four of five stars)
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