I’ve been in a comic booky mood lately, ever since I dragged ten comic storage boxes upstairs and started leafing through a bunch of old New Mutants issues and such. It didn’t help that this was a particularly good week of comic book publishing. Look at all the goodies this week.

We’ve got Justice, a Justice League story where the team is taken down by their foes who, as it appears to the world at large, have supplanted the heroes and are woring to solve all the world’s problems. And it’s painted by Alex Ross.

There’s Girls, by the Luna brothers, which is sort of a really messed up spin on the zombie genre. I think that’s probably the best way to describe it, because otherwise you have to say it’s about half-mindless naked women who lay eggs that hatch clones of themselves in a small town surrounded by what may be some kind of giant womb. But the dialogue is great and the characters are very believable. Despite the fact that every guy they draw looks like an adolescent, I really like their style. It’s very clean and simple, but expressive.

Superman Allstars has been a great throwback to the Golden Age of Comics, and the art by Frank Quitely is just so crisp. Not to mention that it’s a book written by Grant Morrison.

There’s the premiere issue of Eternals, a story of amnesiac ancient gods by Neil Gaiman and drawn by John Romita, Jr, whose very stylistic work always takes me back to when I first started collecting. His take on the Celestials is just great.

Then to finish it out you’ve got an issue of Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon (whose parents’ home I’ve visited) in which the Hellfire Club takes out the X-Men, in all sorts of cool ways. Wolverine is given the mind of a scared child, Beast turns feral, Cyclops faces inner demons (and may not have to wear his ruby quartz goggles anymore) but is left catatonic, Colossus beats the crap out of Sebastian Shaw, only to be reminded in a hard way that Shaw absorbs kinetic energy, and Shadowcat is made to phase deep within the Earth, ending the comic with a panel that pays homage when the X-Men were getting beat by the Hellfire Club back during the Phoenix Saga.