By ANDREW A. SMITH, Scripps Howard News Service

It is said that Garth Ennis is the best writer of World War II stories in the comics biz today, and "Battlefields" ($29.99, Dynamite Entertainment) is convincing evidence of that.

It is said that Garth Ennis is the best writer of World War II stories in the comics biz today, and "Battlefields" ($29.99, Dynamite Entertainment) is convincing evidence of that.

"Luna Park" will haunt you.

A graphic novel by best-selling author Kevin Baker ("Dreamland") and artist Daniel Zezelj ("Loveless"), "Luna Park" (Vertigo, $24.99) begins as a noir crime thriller but expands into historical fiction and dreamlike scenarios, stretching through centuries of Russian and New York history.

Forget turning lemons into lemonade. I'm beginning to think writer Geoff Johns can turn lemons into fine wine.

Johns has gained a reputation for fixing characters that have become radioactive because various revamps have made their histories too convoluted. He did it with Hawkman, he did it with the 1960s Green Lantern and Flash, and now he's doing it with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Most of us have never wanted to go to Turkmenistan, nor could we find it on a map. But the graphic novel "Joe and Azat" ($10.95, NBM/ComicsLit) depicts it as an awfully interesting place.

One word: Breathtaking.

That's the best description for "Sandman: The Dream Hunters" (DC/Vertigo, $24.99), a hardback collection of the recent miniseries written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by P. Craig Russell.

Rabbi David Kahn was a well-respected spiritual and community leader when he died. That's when his wife, three children and synagogue found out he wasn't a rabbi. And he wasn't Jewish. Heck, he wasn't even David Kahn.

He was a con man named Donnie Dobbs, a cheap grifter who fell in love with a Jewish girl and transformed into the good man she thought he was.

Rabbi David Kahn was a well-respected spiritual and community leader when he died. That's when his wife, three children and synagogue found out he wasn't a rabbi. And he wasn't Jewish. Heck, he wasn't even David Kahn.

He was a con man named Donnie Dobbs, a cheap grifter who fell in love with a Jewish girl and transformed into the good man she thought he was.

As practice for Twitter -- which apparently is going to take over the world -- I'm going to pretend I'm tweeting and do all of my reviews this week in 140 characters or less. While that necessarily means shallow content, it does have the benefit of blazing through a tremendous amount of reviews at one whack.

Can I do it? Is this a stupid idea not worth doing? Let's find out:

Mother Nature is the scariest killer of them all. That's what I took away from "Whiteout," the 1998 miniseries from Oni Press that was collected as a graphic novel in 2001, and is now a movie, premiering Sept. 11.

It's not that Mama Nature kills any more savagely or brutally or frequently than human beings. We're actually pretty good at that.