Got some comic day impressions here. You can get reviews any place! But here you get "impressions." Lucky you. For those of you outside of geekdom, Wednesdays are when the new comic books arrive at comic shops. I assume there is a delay for Alaska and Hawaii. My rules are: I gotta read everything I got today before I talk about it. If it's good enough or bad enough (rarely bad enough) that it really sticks out, you get to hear about it. Thank you for letting me tell you what to think.

Y: The Last Man is this week's standout. Probably this year's standout. It's Preacher-grade fun with a deceptively simple concept. Yorick's probably the best character to come along since Jesse Custer, too. Not even going to bother with this month's plot synopsis--everything goes by story arcs now, and this is the second one (actually the first "real" one with what I assume is going to be the recurring cast). Brian Vaughan's got a good knack for characterization and dialogue and a firm grasp on born-in-the-70's pop culture. Read it or be dumb.

Batman by Jeph Loeb and Mister James Lee. Sure I could just say "Batman" but the creative team is the real killer there. I think these two could team up on Rocket Raccoon: Stripes and retailers wouldn't be able to keep it on the stands. The first issue of Uncanny X-Men I ever bought was #269, the second in Jim Lee's legendary run. And after he left for Wildcats and Wildstorm and Wildwhatnot, nobody ever drew Psylocke, Rogue, or Wolverine correctly. People, that was over ten years ago and Rogue still doesn't look right. Back to Batman. Good to see Lee back in action and Loeb is laying on the cliffhangers in this arc. I likes it all a lot.

After lounging through Joe Kelly's, err, "competent" run on Uncanny X-Men, Chuck Austen has been just dreamy. I wasn't surprised since I've never read anything he's done that didn't leave me genuinely happy, but Austen and the X-Men are just great. Got one of those sad little surprises at the end and Austen really makes it mean something. Long live Mr. Austen!

Fantastic Four... If you had told me ten years ago that I'd be reading FF, I'd have doffed my glow-in-the-dark Ghost Rider cover at you. Truth be told, I was surprised to find out in the late 90's that Marvel was still printing it. Mark Waid saved comicdom from its morbid little "edgy" pity-party with Kingdom Come, so making the Fantastic Four relevant, delightful, and meaningful probably drew nothing more than three beads of sweat off of him. We should be giving this man our thanks and buying everything he writes--those are two separate actions, people.

Back to our regularly scheduled garbage.