Random Happenstance

When you get stuff cheap, it can be tough to go back to paying full price for it. If I get a bunch of random DC Multiverse figures for five bucks, it's easy to resent paying $20 for a Marvel Legends Falcon. If I get a ton of comics for like forty cents an issue; well, regular priced comics can seem disappointing. But one new book made me laugh out loud last week, possibly even more than once: Silver Surfer#6 #200! "Understanding the Alien Heart" Written by Dan Slott, art by Michael and Laura Allred.

This issue, shape-shifting energy-eating creatures from the earth's core are rampaging through San Francisco, where the Surfer has just taken his companion Dawn Greenwood, to meet her estranged mother! Also on the scene: Peter Parker, who is mildly questioned when the creatures dubbed "Terra-forms" turn into his worst fear, the Green Goblin.

The creatures, having developed a taste for the Power Cosmic, come after the Surfer, but Dawn warns he had previously also used his own life force to save earth, and the creatures want it. Dawn is injured, but the Surfer knew as a Zenn-Lavian, he would have life force to spare. Still, Dawn is less hurt by the creatures, than by her mother seemingly abandoning her again; and asks the Surfer to take her somewhere else, somewhere new...

A good issue, but it also features one of those cover galleries Marvel does for these arbitrary 100th issues--and the gallery only includes regular series for Silver Surfer, so not J.M. Stracynski's Requiem (out of continuity) or his 2011 limited series, but does include the 1982 John Byrne/Stan Lee one-shot! Still, it was the cover for next month's issue that made me snort outright...

Not the best poker face I've ever seen, then. Tell your comic shop to get you one ASAP!