Becka Reviews (DC) Comics: The New 52 Week 2
And we're back!
As usual, ALPHABETICAL, and spoilers follow. Also, fair warning, you may wish to start at Batwoman because my Batman & Robin review is...weird and long. Some other reviews in here are also long and some even include rants! But the first one is both weird and long and I feel it only fair to warn you all.
Batman & Robin #1
Like Detective Comics last week, this seems to be something of a hit on the interwebs and I don't quite understand why, but unlike Detective last week, I find the comic more independently interesting if only for it's tonal shifts.
Essentially there are two parts to this comic. I'm going to talk about the second part first, because that's how I roll.
The second part of this story is an absolutely bog standard Batman and Robin Chase Down Bad Guys story. Robin acts a bit angsty and out of control. Batman grumps at him. The henchmen who escape are killed by the actual as-yet-unmet-by-Batman villain to show us that he's ~evil. Well, that and chewing up and spitting out the Batman of Moscow during the opening.
It's tremendously average and highlights some problems with the Batman and Robin dynamic now that Bruce is back as Batman and Damian is still Robin. I'm not the first to mention it and I won't be the last, but Robin usually provides a lighter tone to offset Batman's grimdark. When Dick Grayson took over as Batman and put Damian Wayne in the Robin costume the dynamic was reversed and that was interesting in itself. Now we just have darrrrrk Batman and darrrrrk Robin and they're just...doing exactly what I expect them to do.
Personally I don't think Damian is a particularly great addition to the Batfamily, not if Bruce is still around, but he's here, we're stuck with him, and with Dick you at least had that pathos - that feeling that was at times two lost sons, at times older/younger sibling, at times parental and at times professional. While it was never a dynamic I went bananas on, I don't deny its dramatic potential.
Now I'm sure there are a lot of stories that can be told between Bruce and his son too, but I'm not sure any of them fit as interesting a shape. In some ways because the only story you can ever tell about them is that they are father and son, and all this does is remind me that pairing Damian up with Dick even after he returned was actually a really responsible parenting decision, because Damian isn't the kind of kid who can go to normal school anymore, and he does need the role of Robin to provide him with direction and discipline. But he can do it with Dick, who is a more healthy role model. He can have a kind of education and a teacher and a life outside his immediate nuclear family of Bruce and Alfred.
Pair Bruce with Damian and I have this nebulous sense that a madman is pulling his son into the darkness with him. It's a tangent but one I feel is apt to mention in a comic that shows a man literally lurking in a sewer with his ten year old child, describing to him how his grandmother's pearl necklace sounded like bullets as the pearls fell through the grate above them while she was dying.
It's less a specific comment about anything in this and more a general comment on why I think I have wider contextual problems that this issue did nothing - in its very mundane second half - to allay.
Damian disobeys orders because he is cocky. Bruce shoots him down. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But I did say that there were two parts to this story, and now I will circle back to the first, which is...almost surrealist and which I enjoyed a great deal more although I'm not entirely sure what I think about it.
The opening scene shows us a different take on Bruce and Damian. It's one that comes close to addressing some of the issues I had above, but doesn't quite achieve it. A brief recap is that Bruce takes Damian to the site of his grandparents' murder for the first and last time as Bruce is attempting to put that behind him, and after one last visit, he intends to celebrate how his parents lived, on their wedding anniversary. Damian approves of putting the past behind him, but still seems somewhat offput by his father's sentimentalism.
Once in said sewer, Bruce monologues quite a bit, specifically about his parents' deaths in quite intimate detail, and eventually sends a paper boat sailing off through a stream of stuff I'm going to assume is stormwater for my own sanity, with Damian mocking the implication that he can send his pain away in a paper boat and Bruce declaring that it is, after all, his boat.
If that sounds surreal, it's because it is. It's an almost existentialist take on both Bruce and grief that is...bizarrely not something I found to be completely at odds with his character. There's something frustratingly fleeting in the writing and the setup that I like but can't quite grip - a determined, methodical attempt to embrace the pathos of what's not said in Japanese poetry.
Perhaps I'm simply impressed by any story that has me not outright laughing at this kind of setup, and perhaps pseudo existentialism is the only thing that could achieve it. I don't know I'd go so far as to say it's good because it left me more confused than satisfied, but it was the kind of confused that seeks an answer not the kind that shakes a fist.
I am interested in the idea that Bruce is terrified of damning his son to this life and is trying to fix himself so he can fix Damian.
The problem is that, as I said, the sequence doesn't ultimately address the issues I originally raised, because I can't help but think that Bruce is enacting the ultimate definition of madness - repeating patterns and expecting a different outcome.
He says he is no longer going to focus on his parents' deaths, but his obsession is transferred, not forgotten. Whether he focuses on how they lived or how they died, he remains fixed in time as a child, idolising the parents he no longer has. Further, everything about the scene is so lovingly recalled, this one last time before he puts it in a paper boat and sails it away, it's so intimate, so detailed, there are ways in which this feels like a smoker enjoying one last cigarette before quitting. They don't want to quit, they just think they can. Trying to show his son life doesn't have to be painful and dark, that it can be about life, not death, also ends up feeling like rather a hollow message when the next thing they do is jump back into Dark Batman shouting at Dark Robin to follow his orders. When we're immediately spiraling back into that Batman world of darkness and pain where pearls only ever sound like gunshots when they fall, they're never worn, safely, home again.
The Batman in the sewer would have known that he needs to apprentice his son to Dick Grayson, because he can't fix him by controlling him, and his version of Batman doesn't know how to do anything else.
But we don't keep Surrealist!Sewer!Batman, we go back to Bog!Standard!Angsty!Batman, and I lose all interest.
So clearly, I am having trouble scoring this. It made me think a hell of a lot, but not necessarily charitably or in the way I think I was intended to. It was something that might have been surrealist art in the middle of a story that was not only banal, it actively worked against the confusing, but interesting, messages I might otherwise have taken from it.
I give it 2.5 out of 5 Paper Boats Full of Bloody Pearls. But I also give it the Surrealist Batman award for, well, inventing an existentialist, surrealist version of Batman that I really, really wish existed now.
Pull List Status: Not on it and not likely to go on it, which is a shame in some ways because if there are more scenes like that, I might have fun reading it totally against text - and seriously too. But I think the other parts would bore me stupid.
Batwoman #1
This is straight-up awesome. Well, almost straight-up awesome. Basically there's just art galore. It's fucking GORGEOUS, which should surprise no one who's either read Batwoman: Elegy or heard me talking about it. I seriously think that JH Williams is doing stuff that's even more gorgeous here than he drew previously. The colourist also deserves mad props. There's more of the tearstained inkwashy stuff that we got a little of in Elegy, and while the occasional complex, two-page-spread was a little hard to visually navigate, it's a price I'm more than willing to pay for that amount of eyecandy. It's. Just. Beautiful.
Narratively, I was dreading the loss of Greg Rucka as the writer. It wasn't as bad as I feared based on the preview that was released (which is essentially one of the very last sequences which basically functions as a pre-relaunch recap for the reader), because that turned out to be the clunkiest example of dialogue in the whole story. However, I did notice his loss. Dialogue was slightly less seamless, a little more awkward in places. It's unfair in some ways because if I hadn't read it written by Rucka I wouldn't notice it now and I'd think it was really well done - because it is. But there's stuff like her father saying, "We soldier on," which in Elegy felt like a natural line but here feels a bit like a forced callback both to that event and to his profession.
However, in terms of story rather than dialogue, it's working pretty strongly. I'm really excited by the introduction of Bette as Kate's sidekick. I love that she's getting the full-on hero treatment, that she's considered big enough to support her own sidekick, and I enjoyed watching her implement her military training in Bette's own training. I want her official superhero name to be Plebe! I'm definitely looking forward to how that develops.
I also liked that we got some time to spend with Maggie. I still miss Renee Montoya (yay, at least we saw a photo!) and still don't really feel that one amusing wisecrack about tuxedos is enough to make me care about Maggie, so it was nice to see her essentially dealing with the aftermath of Batwoman in her interview with that family, and to see her not really at all approving. It doesn't feel like gratuitous angst (thank god), but it does feel complex and I like that.
I also thought that the villain was incredibly creepy and well-realised on the page and in the art style. With her extremely realworld military grounding, I'm liking that Kate Kane is rapidly becoming the Bat character who deals with the creepy and the supernatural. It's something I've always felt fit well with the nightmarish background to Gotham, and served as a good counterpoint to Metropolis' more 50s science fiction daytime brightness.
The only serious drawback I can see is that it's not hugely welcoming to new readers, given that it was never intended to be the first issue of a relaunch, it just got delayed until the be relaunch for obvious reasons. The final sequence serves as a really good recap of Elegy, but equally, that's the sequence I felt suffered most from poor dialogue and exposition. It just feels tacked onto an otherwise beautiful comic, probably because it was.
4.5 out of 5 Plebes Without Costumes.
Pull List Status: OH HELLS YES. I will also be buying the hell out of the trade paperbacks. Even though I don't normally do that for series where I have the single issues (sorry, Star Wars).
Deathstroke #1
The one aspect of this comic I found interesting was that they made the decision not to make Deathstroke into a younger man and that his story is rooted in being a grizzled older guy everyone thinks is past it. That's genuinely a more interesting approach than I would have expected, knowing next to nothing about Deathstroke. Having said that, my expectations were south of zero so that's not saying all that much.
Other than that I found most of the comic to be fairly tiresome. It's a parade of cliches, from his handler to the teenaged sidekicks. And I get that the latter are meant to be annoying, and yes, it was genuinely not a twist I expected to see coming as I kind of assumed they were being set up as supporting cast, so props on the technicality of the twist, I guess, but also I wasn't paying all that much attention and they annoyed me. And they stuck around long enough I'm not entirely convinced that the twist at the end was enough payoff for that. It was drawn out kind of long.
Also I wasn't a huge fan of Christoph telling Deathstroke what a badass he was in literally those terms. Again I get that Deathstroke isn't supposed to care? But that just makes it more obvious that it's for audience effect and even though we see images of Deathstroke's badassery to go with Cristoph's narration, it still gives the effect of showing rather than telling, which is bad most of the time but awful when it comes to how cool a character is supposed to be.
But like I said, it has a more interesting premise than I was expecting and while I think the first issue oughta have been condensed down to eight pages to give the twist real punch and let us move on to the real story, it wasn't an awful idea.
2 out of 5 Annoying Teenagers.
Pull List Status: Nope and not interested.
Demon Knights #1
I loved this comic! It's everything I was hoping Stormwatch would be (minus the whole being set in post-Arthurian Britain thing). The dialogue is sharp and entertaining, the characters are varied, and unlike Stormwatch, I'm not too worried that I don't quite understand what everyone's powers are yet, possibly because the plot itself isn't also jumping around but is rather linear (opening scene aside) which makes the whole experience feel a bit more grounded.
The art is great too. Detailed without being overdrawn, clean, consistent, and it has nice, vibrant colours.
I really don't have too much more to say about this because I just plain enjoyed it so much. It's got the really simple D&D game premise of an unlikely band in a tavern, but Cornell works it so that it feels like great setup instead of predictable rubbish. I have no idea what's up with the ravening horde running towards them, but the group of protagonists is wild and weird enough I can't wait to see what they get up to once it arrives.
With its inclusion of Vandal Savage (I can't wait to see how that works) who's an actual villain, the seeds of a truly weird love affair between Madame Xanadu and Etrigan, a Knight who indulges in genderplay (from the little I know of her character), some twisted and sharp humour and a bunch of other C-List characters (at least I'm arrogantly assuming they are since I haven't heard much of anything about most of them), I'm really wondering if this book is going to be a kind of spiritual successor to Secret Six.
In any event, this comic was just great fun, and it's honestly one of my favourites that has come out so far. I really can't think of a single thing I'd change.
5 out of 5 Madame Xanadus declaring "Sod This!" and Diving after Excalibur.
Pull List Status: I would REALLY REALLY ADD IT if it weren't for the fact that I promised to stick with what we agreed to for a few months to see how it went unless something was TRULY awful. But this is top of the replacement list and I will probably end up using some of my unbudgeted cash to pick it up when it comes out on a month-to-month basis anyway. (It's all about tricking the budget!)
Frankenstein - Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1
This comic is straight up nuts. It's a bizarre trip of high concept science fiction mixed with surrealism and comedy. S.H.A.D.E. HQ is a miniaturised base you have to shrink down to enter, populated by disposal bio-robots that live for a day before degrading to fuel the place. Inside, a bunch of Hammer Horror monsters (the Creature Commandos) work for some mad dude named Father Time who regenerates himself a new body every ten years. This time, it's a 10 year old schoolgirl. Everyone still calls her Father Time. Into all this steps Frank (Frankenstein's Monster), who plays a rather hilarious straight-man to all this ridiculousness; he keeps warning people that making bio-robots isn't without consequence, doesn't like Father Time making cracks about his marriage and is really ticked to have been called back from his holiday on Mars because said wife got sent into a hot zone full of um, the bad type of monsters, and now he, a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Mummy and a Fishwoman have to go...do some fighting.
I want to say you'll already know if you're going to like it or not, but if I read that I'd think it sounded like the best, nutsest comic on Earth whereas my actual reaction was a little more tempered.
I think partly because the surreal mad science road trip of the first half gives way to some fairly standard action that I found boring in the second - I like the characters and the setup, but I'm not sure about the ongoing plot. Like literally, I have no idea what it is, beyond Some Monsters Attacked A Town and maybe Frank's got some issues with his wife? But aside from Frank and Father Time, no one really gets much character development beyond the cursory, and while it's usually enough in a first issue, I just kind of don't feel much is at stake.
Another issue is the art. It's actually a good art style for it, although not quite my thing. But the "not my thing" problem is compounded by the colouring which is very, very drab. Again I think this is a stylistic choice, and perhaps not one I can objectively criticise, but when I measure it against the crazy romp that was OMAC last week, while I enjoyed the characters and world of this more, the visuals of that were far more fun with their wonderful, vibrant colouring.
Ultimately, it's a fantastic setup, and even though I think this is leading out of either Flashpoint or some other mini series or series or something, I never felt lost as a new reader. However, the impressive setup and characters were ultimately let down by a (currently) pedestrian plot.
3.5 out of 5 Monster Mashups.
Pull List Status: Not on it, but I would consider it a "what the hell!" replacement if I had the space. I may also check this out in trades as I figure the issues I had with the plot might not be so prominent if I got to read more of it at once.
Green Lantern #1
I feel like I don't have too much to say about this. I suppose I felt like it was very well-crafted but without as much charm as I would have liked. I find it difficult to identify any flaws - it was definitely competent. Hal Jordan's jerky side as he tries to handle being a regular human again is entertaining and needed, although he does (as usual) skirt the boundaries of falling towards being unlikeable in general, which again I figure is intentional. Sinestro is more interesting, although gets less page time, in that it's interesting to watch him return to being a Green Lantern, and then carry out those duties, while retaining his exact personality. I believe it and it's kind of brilliant, too bad we didn't focus more on him.
The only part of the story I actively felt annoyed by was the Guardians. I always want to like them and I never quite can. For example, you get the very interesting line about how they don't expect anything of Sinestro in terms of obeying them, they simply expect him to protect his sector. But then we're back to the problem I have with them; it's such an old trope - the out-of-touch godlike beings, the traditional arguments of rationality over emotion. When dealing with a mythos that literally depends on the emotional spectrum, that debate will never not hold weight, but in my admittedly limited experience with them, the Guardians too often fall short of being weighty and mysterious and instead come off as jerks. Honestly I think it's half the visuals; if they looked creepy and otherwordly instead of like blue gnomes, I'd probably buy it more. Either way it was a fairly brief moment in the comic.
The ending genuinely did hook me; I do want to know what Sinestro has planned for Hal Jordan and it's the kind of crazy forced team-up that could be fun.
But ultimately, like the art, which was beautiful and deliberate and thoughtful, this comic feels like it was very skillfully crafted to elicit exactly the desired response from the reader at the right time. It was like watching a clockwork machine churn and whirr and click into place on "final page plot twist". If that sounds like a fairly weak criticism it's because it sort of is, and I'm not docking it too harshly in the scoring for it. It just didn't drive me wild.
In addition, this wasn't a brilliant introductory issue. It was actually better than I feared (knowing that Green Lantern wasn't really getting rebooted), because if you can grasp the concept of Hal having been thrown off the Lanterns and Sinestro, a guy no one likes, being on them, you're probably going to get the emotional aspect of the comic at least, even if the Yellow Lanterns would be a bit confusing (though with the recent movie, it's more likely people will be familiar with the Yellow/Green Fear/Will split at least). But if you want to know what the hell happened to bring this about, the comic won't answer it, it just moves forwards. Again, it's difficult to know whether to criticise. Trying to explain all the backstory would have been nightmarish too, but this does feel more like a "jumping on" point for an ongoing than an actual #1.
3.5 out of 5 Cosigned Car Leases.
Pull List Status: Eeeeh, nah. It's Green Lantern, I'll pick up what's going on by osmosis anyhow.
Grifter #1
I went into this with no expectations and no experience of Grifter whatsoever beyond an understanding that he was a Wildstorm character and an appearance by him in Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance, which really didn't characterise him as anything other than a member of the resistance. I thought his red face thing looked kind of cool - I haven't seen that kind of "mask" for any kind of superhero before.
Reading this book though, I'm just...I don't know where to start. The idea of a grifter on the run from creepy aliens is interesting enough, I suppose. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a man-on-the-run story, grifting is always entertaining and hey, aliens!
Except I don't really feel that the comic grounds any of those elements strongly enough. The single grift we see him pull we simply see in its aftermath, and the comic spends most of its time letting us watch him freak out about the voices he is suddenly hearing in his head.
Which is fine, except we then spend all our time with a guy in a state of extreme stress so we don't get to find out much about him. Which again would be fine except he doesn't really do anything proactive or make any decisions until the final sequence when he puts on the mask and is all, "I WANT MY MISSING TIME BACK!" Which...again would be fine except until that point he's been scared stiff and with good reason and just wants to get to someplace safe, so the transformation from "OMFG MAN WTF IS HAPPENING?!" to "REVENGE! MISSING TIME! FACE MASKS!" is jarring enough that it really drives home to me that I have no idea who this guy is.
Also there's a continuity error in that Grifter thinks he was out for 17 minutes, but then someone tells him he's really been gone for 17 days, and there's DRAMA. But at the end he refers to 17 hours? Was that a typo? Either way it's confusing.
It's not bad, exactly, it's just fairly formulaic, with missing time, botched alien procedures and pod people (or possessed people which is sort of the same trope; it's the Agents in the Matrix).
It has a bunch of strong individual elements that might not have appealed to me personally but ought to make a good comic, but it just doesn't come together. I don't understand anyone's motivations or care about the mystery. It would probably help if I already knew the character.
On the other hand, the art is lovely! Very elegant pencil work!
2 out of 5 Alien Abductions.
Pull List Status: Nope and based on this not very interested, though if someone told me it got awesome, I'd give it another look, were I bored.
Legion Lost #1
I wanted to like this book. I love the Legion in their current form (I assume what's still their current form). They're this combination of golden age heroism, 1950s teenage rebellion and a sort of wholesome 1980s punk rocker aesthetic. It's this aggressively cheerful teenage social movement that embraces action and freedom and love and helping in the face of Big Brother and government control, but it's still basically a bunch of punk kids having punk kid histrionic drama.
But while I love the concept, I've always struggled a bit with the comics I've read from it. Like, I always felt, this world is awesome! If only they had a writer who wrote it in a style I didn't find headache-inducing!
Alas, this is not that comic.
Now, in fairness, what I found alienating about this comic is pretty much exactly what I found alienating about the Legion comics I read before, so if you do like it, you might well like this. But too many characters are introduced without enough introduction, the plot manages to be both incredibly linear and confusing (they capture the fugitive, too late to stop him releasing the bad thing, and...then he explodes? Why? What? Um?), and the interpersonal interactions just don't quite have the depth I want. In addition, I'm familiar with the Legion and their predilection for random time-travel, but for a new reader, while it's very clear what's happening (that they're a bunch of teenagers from the future), there's no time given to grounding that concept and I think that would be less of a problem for a new reader if the rest of the issue were more compelling but since it isn't, it's one more essentially random piece of infodump information about what's happening, without any real emotional investment in why.
That's a slightly brutal and cursory examination of the comic, for which I apologise to anyone who enjoyed it, but ultimately it just didn't charm me enough to want to have anything but a cursory response.
On the other hand, as with Grifter, the art was very nice.
I didn't hate it, I just found it boring.
1.5 out of 5 Lost Legionnaires.
Pull List Status: Nope and nope.
Mister Terrific #1
Oh, man, this is gonna be tough to review.
Basically I love Mister Terrific. He's fucking awesome. Pretty much because he is better than Batman in every way. I'm sure this makes me shallow, but mocking Batman's emo through your very existence is a tried and tested way to earn my affections! They're both regular guys who superhero through technology, intelligence and determination rather than superpowers, and both have tragic pasts that serve as motivators. But unlike Batman, Mister Terrific went and won the Olympics, made his money rather than inheriting it, takes an active, leadership role in his company's philanthropic efforts (rather than Wayne's pretense at disaffection to maintain his cover), and DOESN'T BROOD IN A CAVE DRESSED LIKE A BAT.
So like, upfront, all I wanted out of this comic was twenty pages of Mister Terrific wandering around Doing Science and I would have been happy. I like to own my biases.
But attempting to be unbiased, I will say that this comic was interesting - had a great mix of fun ideas and more serious, and perhaps uncomfortable ones - but had a few issues that concerned me. I suppose the easiest way to say it is that I felt it was bursting with ideas but they weren't always executed in the smoothest way either in terms of narrative shape or dialogue, but I'd much rather read a vibrant, excited comic that's maybe a little all over the place than a dry, tidy one.
My first concern is with regards to Michael's atheism. It's something I really like about the character, being an atheist myself and also since it's so unusual to have a character come out and say it like that. I also think it's very interesting to give that trait to a character who knows, for a fact, that gods, or at least godlike beings, do exist in the universe. (He likewise doesn't believe in magic, essentially trusting to Clark's law about it simply being extraordinarily advanced science). The book, though, strays perilously close to portraying his atheism as a direct result of his wife's death. This frustrates me somewhat as it paints him as someone who turned away from God in anger rather than someone who simply doesn't believe in him. However, I'm willing to give it a pass because he searches for solace in science, and, after he's given up on finding it, it actually is an experience based in science that saves him and gives him hope again. So in that sense the story at least does not suggest that his atheism is unfulfilling and that what he really needs is faith in the divine. At the time I read it I was concerned, but after reading the entire sequence to which it pertained, I felt more like it was perhaps an error in writing and tone rather than an intention to change that part of his character - see above about how I feel it's full of ideas that are sometimes a little messy in their communication.
My second concern is this love triangle business. I hate them at the best of times, and I just don't see how this one ends any way other than badly. Now, again, I'm actually willing to be a little more charitable on this than I otherwise would be, because I was excited enough about this book that I went and read a bunch of interviews with the writer, and listened to some podcasts with him and have heard him talk excitedly about both of the women in question in ways that lead me to believe that they are important to the story in ways other than romantic rivalry, and he seems really excited about when he gets to reveal some of those. I also know who Karen Starr is, and am assuming she's still Power Girl in this universe, which again suggests a level of involvement and agency beyond being Michael's sort-of-girlfriend. But new readers aren't going to know these things, and I'm deeply dubious that this was the best way to introduce the two main female cast members.
So yes, I have a few quibbles about the handling of certain aspects of the story, but overall I like the characters being built up here, and while I don't feel that the cliffhanger at the end of the issue was enormously strong, I felt the cliffhanger in the middle - with Aaron Holt - was really compelling. That I can't wait to find out more about.
BEGIN ILL-ADVISED INFLAMMATORY RANT
Before I score this, though, I feel I have to make a comment about the general reception this book seems to be getting on the internet. Frankly I'm a bit disappointed - a lot of the major sites haven't really been giving it that great a rating for reasons I cynically think are because as a more minor character he doesn't have enough of a following to garner goodwill through nostalgia and desire to like it. I feel a bit like a thoroughly average Batman/Superman/Green Lantern story will be described as "solid" whereas an average Mister Terrific story gets described along lines of "not having hooked me yet," or "average" in a much more negative way. That, though, I'm willing to acknowledge as something I probably do to other characters too, it's just that for once, I'm in the "BUT I WANT TO LIKE IT!" camp.
But what has been actually disturbing me has been the level of racial defensiveness that some reviews, and a lot of general internet reactions, have been displaying.
Essentially, Mister Terrific makes one passing, lighthearted reference to his race, and there's a one page scene between Karen and Aleeka where it is discussed in a more (intentionally) awkward and serious way. Now, opinion will obviously vary as to whether Wallace did a good job hitting a realistic tone with the conversation. I suppose my main reaction to it is that I actually think that, if he's going to have two women getting tense over a guy, it's actually more interesting to at least frame that as part of a much more complicated nexus of race, class and gender (and wow, comics acknowledging class? I'm honestly shocked), that both participants belatedly realise is a fucking minefield, than to simply have them fighting over a dude because he's dreammmmmyyyy. On the other hand, because it's a fucking minefield, it also makes that love triangle about a bajillion times harder to resolve in any way that doesn't look dodgy from some angle, which is part of why I'm so nervous about it.
But the number of places I've seen "awkward and forced references to race!" being touted as a major failing of the book, this myth that the book is somehow full of agenda-pushing madness is crazy. There's this massive, defensive dislike of race being raised at all. Like somehow the comic is being distasteful by drawing attention to it because it makes us all uncomfortable and OH MY GOD COMIC, HOW DARE YOU PRETEND THAT'S STILL AN ISSUE IN 2011. YOU'RE THE RACIST, RACIST!
So you know, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but it's one page out of twenty. It's a short conversation between supporting cast members. It's not the comic book that's forcing an agenda, it's the freaking reviewers and internet commenters who have decided that that page takes precedence over nineteen others. And if that page were some kind of emotional or plot culmination for the main character, perhaps they'd have a point, but it's not.
I hate to go there, but I do wonder how many people would be accusing the writer of having an "agenda" if he were a white dude. Okay, probably a bunch, though I imagined the "agenda" would get shifted from the writer to "political correctness gone mad".
Bah. It makes me want to like the comic even more, even though, as I said, there were actually a couple of things in it that make me wary.
Okay, my ill-advised inflammatory rant is over now.
END ILL-ADVISED INFLAMMATORY RANT
3 out of 5 Ninth Dimensions.
Pull List Status: This is one of K's titles, so yes, we're getting it. I'd get it myself if he weren't already, but since he is, that's a non-issue. I may also get it in trades if I can afford it, but it's not a must-buy in trades.
Red Lanterns #1
I was honestly curious about this because, well, really. I don't really read too much Green Lantern stuff because that stuff is epic and there's so much of it, but I love the different coloured Lanterns. Frankly, out of all of them, probably only Orange is a less likely colour for a series because how can you sustain a series about a bunch of guys who are often literally incoherent with rage?
And honestly, this book didn't really answer that question for me. The opening scene with the raging house cat is funny but totally incongruous to the tone of the rest of the comic, which is, actually, quite aptly operatic and melodramatic. But the tonal shift is a little odd - it's a great opening sequence, but ultimately unrelated to the rest of the issue, especially since Dex-Starr is a weird character without any context (and I have very little) and I'd have preferred some more, well, of the ongoing story.
The stuff on Earth with those brothers and their grandfather is clearly going to hook into the main plot at some point, but at the moment stands unrelated, which doesn't help the slow feel of the comic.
Atrocitus himself is reasonably interesting as a guy whose power is derived from his rage and lust for vengeance, but the object of his vengeance is already dead, and not by his hand. The question of his ability to control his Corps could be interesting if played correctly and as I said, I genuinely did approve of the unbridled melodramatic tone this struck. It needs to be like an opera, we need wailing people tearing at their clothes and frothing at the mouth, we need our heroes to address the corpses of their nemeses with hamfisted metaphors about lovers and we need prophecies of blood and rage. I am genuinely on board with some kind of high drama Kill Bill meets Shaw Brothers kind of story.
The tone is fine.
But...nothing happens. There's so much exposition, which is good to catch up new readers, and something I wish some other comics had spent more time doing, but also slows everything down.
There are interesting questions that could be asked about sustained revenge and whether that's even possible, especially after one has achieved one's primary goal (one of the only interesting questions I feel The Punisher ever asks, as a character), but this comic fails to raise them because it spends all its time introducing and pontificating. Now, as I said, a great pontificating, angry bad guy/protagonist could rock in this book, but not if we have no direction. Generic Punishment To The Guilty just...doesn't quite cut it. It's too nebulous, in some ways too easy, but certainly too indistinct for a specific cliffhanger from a first issue.
Basically, it feels like it should be #0 - the comic you get knowing it's just a prelude, expecting a grounding in the world but no real forward motion to the plot because it's a taster, and ad, a bonus strip.
As an issue #0 it'd be good, as a #1, it's disappointing.
2 out of 5 Angry Housecats.
Pull List Status: No. Based on this, I would take another look at the series if I heard good things down the line once the plot started moving, but I think I might prefer to read a six-issue trade rather than get it monthly, and I'm not sure I'd want to pay the amount the trade would cost all in one go. So like, I don't want to write it off, I'm just not sure the method through which I would enjoy it and the amount I'd be willing to pay for it in one go are compatible.
Resurrection Man #1
Beautiful writing, acceptable art, slightly disappointing plotline.
To address the thing that needs addressing - the plotline wasn't bad so much as, I don't know, kind of predictable when you think about it. Resurrection Man has this great, creepy, strange power of coming back to life with a new superpower whenever he dies, which he does in this issue, twice, but I don't know. The idea of heaven and hell wondering where his soul is and fighting over it sounds cool for about thirty seconds before it starts to feel like the most obvious possible way to go. Which doesn't mean it'll play out badly, but it does feel a little derivative of every other piece of pop culture that tries to relevantly update the heaven/hell war from Preacher through Dogma through Constantine. As I said, it might not turn out that way, and the second two of my examples above are things I enjoyed, but there's nothing so far to say it won't be super derivative either and I guess I feel like the book thinks it presented its hook and I feel like the hook has been done enough I needed something else in addition to it - like the next piece of the puzzle or some other element introduced to the setup.
In addition, I found the two girls (who I guess are also demons?) looking for "John Doe" to be visually very eyerolly. Like, oh my god you guys, how edgy is dressing demons like slutty co-eds! One of them can be the rich blonde in a tiny designer dress and the other one can dress like a schoolgirl and be covered in gothic tattoos! Prior to that I'd've dismissed the earlier barebreasted creepy demon design the woman on the plane transformed into as stylistic choice, but in context, I'm getting a little eyerolly at that too.
Having said that, I'm serious when I say the writing is gorgeous. The narration of Resurrection Man's, well, resurrection, the way he feels and learns his new powers, is really lovely. Verbally this book lives up to the potential of the main character's quiet, strange and fascinating power set. I hope it also ends up doing so with its plot, but so far, I'm on the fence.
3 out of 5 Demons Want Your Soul.
Pull List Status: No, and not hugely likely, though I might check out the trades from the library in a year or two.
Suicide Squad #1
This is a book that uses violence and darkness to masquerade as quality. The plot is incredibly simple - the Suicide Squad are being tortured to turn on each other and this is used as a plot device to tell us a little about how they got recruited from death row to the squad. Someone breaks, the whole thing is revealed to be a "final test" setup, and the new Suicide Squad are sent on their first mission with a SHOCKING tag line!
Frankly, a slightly less obvious version of "it was all a dream" is a fairly weak twist to hang an issue on when there's nearly no other plot in it (because the flashbacks as to how they ended up in the squad are okay and kind of interesting but don't quite feel like mini stories in themselves). But it's not a series-killing mistake, it's just...slow.
But it's also indicative of the general level of mediocrity in the whole comic.
The art is kind of nice, and both Harley Quinn and Deadshot seem to have survived with their personalities mostly intact, even if Harley feels a bit more like a forced emo version of herself, I at least mostly recognise her, so this would be a 2 outta 5 issue if not for the fact that:
1) Harley's new outfit. Now originally I wasn't like, freaking out over this, I just thought it was kind of a shame that a character almost universally thought of as sexy, who wore a totally full-body costume (complete with ridiculous hat) had succumbed to the usual comic book stereotype of less is more when it comes to clothing women. Especially given her costume actually said some stuff about her personality. So sure, I thought it was lulzy and dumb but it's only in the context of the rest of this that it starts getting to be more than another in a long line of lulzy and dumb wardrobe decisions made by comics for women and instead indicative of something a little creepy in the book itself.
2) Of the characters who are up for the squad, the one who breaks is a guy named Savant. Now, I don't know a huge deal about him, but I'm fairly sure that he was either in a gay relationship with a dude named Creote, or that Creote was head over heels in love with Savant whether or not that was reciprocated. I get a bit hazy since I wasn't reading that stuff. Either way, the dude who breaks and sells everyone out, and therefore isn't good enough to be on the team, is a character who is either gay or best-known for being in a gay storyline. And sure, would it have been better to leave the character in DCnU limbo? That's a valid question. But another is why isn't Savant one of the characters in the book? Why is he the only one who breaks? Why not have someone else break and write him out somehow in issue #2 or have him not join for some other reason? I dunno, something about it sits wrong with me.
3) Again, I'm not sure I can articulate it and I also think this may partially be my disillusionment with the comic making me be less charitable than I otherwise would be, but I worry that El Diablo was uncomfortably exotified. I feel like there was some Noble Savage stuff going on with him, albeit more Noble Warrior Monk from the Gangland. But yeah. That's basically the same thing.
4) AMANDA WALLER. YOU DO NOT DO THAT TO AMANDA WALLER. WHAT THE HELL MAN, WHAT THE HELL.
To explain, Amanda Waller, pre-relaunch, was an amazing character. She was a very overweight, middle-aged African-American woman who had worked her way up through various parts of the government through sheer force of will and basically ran...everything. She was morally ambiguous, fiercely patriotic, and frighteningly competent.
Her nickname was "The Wall" because she was one. You could not go through her or around her, metaphorically or literally. Her physical size was neither tied to her superpowers (not that she had any) nor used as a comedic device. She yelled at Batman. You did not fuck with her.
Now Amanda Waller is hot and skinny and if she's still middle-aged it's the Hollywood 40-playing-45 kind of middle-aged. Even if she's still every other part of her character, just...just...why. She was a brilliant and unique character.
Now she's another sexy government femme fatale. I bet the increased sexualisation of her character will lead to increasingly sexualised dialogue and behaviour. I wonder when increased moral judgement of her will begin. The whole thing hugely undermines her authority and agency because of the implicit reasons behind it and the assumptions that go with it.
So, yeah.
1 out of 5, Suicide Squad, and you're lucky to get that.
Pull List Status: NO.
Superboy #1
I was surprised at how well-executed this comic was. I was kind of expecting something underwhelming, for no reason I could name, but it was actually very solid. By having Superboy be aware of far more than his creators suspect, including the ways in which they are attempting to manipulate him, it provides him with far more agency and intelligence than I expected from a setup to put Superboy on the Teen Titans as a double agent. I think many others would simply have had him miseducated by his creators for extra angst. But Superboy's very cerebral and measured choice to play along, which implies an equally measured approach to the Titans, creates the potential for a far more nuanced story.
Similarly, I think that his relationship with "Red" (who I think I read is a Wildstorm character? Not that I know that universe well, it's just nice that they really do seem to be integrating stuff) is off to an interesting and layered start with his understanding that she genuinely cares for him, but not enough to cease being his jailer. There's also the contributing factor of her feeling that she owes it to him to fix him, but the evidence she's using that leads her to believe her team did something wrong and that he needs fixing, may simply be because she doesn't know he knows what he's experiencing isn't real.
I'm slightly concerned that they're trying to genuinely tell us that Superboy's moral radar was trashed by his Luthor DNA, which I would dislike, since I think it's far more interesting if he's simply quietly observing and understands that there's no need to save pixel people from a pixel fire, rather than setting up an arc about him learning morality from scratch, but I shouldn't review what may or may not happen and there's not enough in this issue to draw conclusions about whether I should be worried.
The art is also surprisingly pleasing to the eye. I say surprisingly because when I first looked at it I kind of felt it a bit...I don't know, cartoony is the wrong word, but very open and spacious and simple, but as it continued I started to feel that was a real boon. There's a strong consistency here and the light, airy feel of the art not only counteracts what could otherwise seem like a very "gritty" story due simply to its subject matter, but is also very soothing and easy to look at.
There's nothing here that blew my mind, but I was pleasantly surprised by some of the choices the writer made.
3.5 out of 5 Imaginary Kansases.
Pull List Status: No, and it's not really my thing, even though I like Superman. I feel kinda bad because as I said, it's a pretty solid comic, but it just doesn't inspire me, personally, to read more of it at this point, even if objectively I thought it was pretty good.
END WEEK TWO.
As usual, ALPHABETICAL, and spoilers follow. Also, fair warning, you may wish to start at Batwoman because my Batman & Robin review is...weird and long. Some other reviews in here are also long and some even include rants! But the first one is both weird and long and I feel it only fair to warn you all.
Batman & Robin #1
Like Detective Comics last week, this seems to be something of a hit on the interwebs and I don't quite understand why, but unlike Detective last week, I find the comic more independently interesting if only for it's tonal shifts.
Essentially there are two parts to this comic. I'm going to talk about the second part first, because that's how I roll.
The second part of this story is an absolutely bog standard Batman and Robin Chase Down Bad Guys story. Robin acts a bit angsty and out of control. Batman grumps at him. The henchmen who escape are killed by the actual as-yet-unmet-by-Batman villain to show us that he's ~evil. Well, that and chewing up and spitting out the Batman of Moscow during the opening.
It's tremendously average and highlights some problems with the Batman and Robin dynamic now that Bruce is back as Batman and Damian is still Robin. I'm not the first to mention it and I won't be the last, but Robin usually provides a lighter tone to offset Batman's grimdark. When Dick Grayson took over as Batman and put Damian Wayne in the Robin costume the dynamic was reversed and that was interesting in itself. Now we just have darrrrrk Batman and darrrrrk Robin and they're just...doing exactly what I expect them to do.
Personally I don't think Damian is a particularly great addition to the Batfamily, not if Bruce is still around, but he's here, we're stuck with him, and with Dick you at least had that pathos - that feeling that was at times two lost sons, at times older/younger sibling, at times parental and at times professional. While it was never a dynamic I went bananas on, I don't deny its dramatic potential.
Now I'm sure there are a lot of stories that can be told between Bruce and his son too, but I'm not sure any of them fit as interesting a shape. In some ways because the only story you can ever tell about them is that they are father and son, and all this does is remind me that pairing Damian up with Dick even after he returned was actually a really responsible parenting decision, because Damian isn't the kind of kid who can go to normal school anymore, and he does need the role of Robin to provide him with direction and discipline. But he can do it with Dick, who is a more healthy role model. He can have a kind of education and a teacher and a life outside his immediate nuclear family of Bruce and Alfred.
Pair Bruce with Damian and I have this nebulous sense that a madman is pulling his son into the darkness with him. It's a tangent but one I feel is apt to mention in a comic that shows a man literally lurking in a sewer with his ten year old child, describing to him how his grandmother's pearl necklace sounded like bullets as the pearls fell through the grate above them while she was dying.
It's less a specific comment about anything in this and more a general comment on why I think I have wider contextual problems that this issue did nothing - in its very mundane second half - to allay.
Damian disobeys orders because he is cocky. Bruce shoots him down. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But I did say that there were two parts to this story, and now I will circle back to the first, which is...almost surrealist and which I enjoyed a great deal more although I'm not entirely sure what I think about it.
The opening scene shows us a different take on Bruce and Damian. It's one that comes close to addressing some of the issues I had above, but doesn't quite achieve it. A brief recap is that Bruce takes Damian to the site of his grandparents' murder for the first and last time as Bruce is attempting to put that behind him, and after one last visit, he intends to celebrate how his parents lived, on their wedding anniversary. Damian approves of putting the past behind him, but still seems somewhat offput by his father's sentimentalism.
Once in said sewer, Bruce monologues quite a bit, specifically about his parents' deaths in quite intimate detail, and eventually sends a paper boat sailing off through a stream of stuff I'm going to assume is stormwater for my own sanity, with Damian mocking the implication that he can send his pain away in a paper boat and Bruce declaring that it is, after all, his boat.
If that sounds surreal, it's because it is. It's an almost existentialist take on both Bruce and grief that is...bizarrely not something I found to be completely at odds with his character. There's something frustratingly fleeting in the writing and the setup that I like but can't quite grip - a determined, methodical attempt to embrace the pathos of what's not said in Japanese poetry.
Perhaps I'm simply impressed by any story that has me not outright laughing at this kind of setup, and perhaps pseudo existentialism is the only thing that could achieve it. I don't know I'd go so far as to say it's good because it left me more confused than satisfied, but it was the kind of confused that seeks an answer not the kind that shakes a fist.
I am interested in the idea that Bruce is terrified of damning his son to this life and is trying to fix himself so he can fix Damian.
The problem is that, as I said, the sequence doesn't ultimately address the issues I originally raised, because I can't help but think that Bruce is enacting the ultimate definition of madness - repeating patterns and expecting a different outcome.
He says he is no longer going to focus on his parents' deaths, but his obsession is transferred, not forgotten. Whether he focuses on how they lived or how they died, he remains fixed in time as a child, idolising the parents he no longer has. Further, everything about the scene is so lovingly recalled, this one last time before he puts it in a paper boat and sails it away, it's so intimate, so detailed, there are ways in which this feels like a smoker enjoying one last cigarette before quitting. They don't want to quit, they just think they can. Trying to show his son life doesn't have to be painful and dark, that it can be about life, not death, also ends up feeling like rather a hollow message when the next thing they do is jump back into Dark Batman shouting at Dark Robin to follow his orders. When we're immediately spiraling back into that Batman world of darkness and pain where pearls only ever sound like gunshots when they fall, they're never worn, safely, home again.
The Batman in the sewer would have known that he needs to apprentice his son to Dick Grayson, because he can't fix him by controlling him, and his version of Batman doesn't know how to do anything else.
But we don't keep Surrealist!Sewer!Batman, we go back to Bog!Standard!Angsty!Batman, and I lose all interest.
So clearly, I am having trouble scoring this. It made me think a hell of a lot, but not necessarily charitably or in the way I think I was intended to. It was something that might have been surrealist art in the middle of a story that was not only banal, it actively worked against the confusing, but interesting, messages I might otherwise have taken from it.
I give it 2.5 out of 5 Paper Boats Full of Bloody Pearls. But I also give it the Surrealist Batman award for, well, inventing an existentialist, surrealist version of Batman that I really, really wish existed now.
Pull List Status: Not on it and not likely to go on it, which is a shame in some ways because if there are more scenes like that, I might have fun reading it totally against text - and seriously too. But I think the other parts would bore me stupid.
Batwoman #1
This is straight-up awesome. Well, almost straight-up awesome. Basically there's just art galore. It's fucking GORGEOUS, which should surprise no one who's either read Batwoman: Elegy or heard me talking about it. I seriously think that JH Williams is doing stuff that's even more gorgeous here than he drew previously. The colourist also deserves mad props. There's more of the tearstained inkwashy stuff that we got a little of in Elegy, and while the occasional complex, two-page-spread was a little hard to visually navigate, it's a price I'm more than willing to pay for that amount of eyecandy. It's. Just. Beautiful.
Narratively, I was dreading the loss of Greg Rucka as the writer. It wasn't as bad as I feared based on the preview that was released (which is essentially one of the very last sequences which basically functions as a pre-relaunch recap for the reader), because that turned out to be the clunkiest example of dialogue in the whole story. However, I did notice his loss. Dialogue was slightly less seamless, a little more awkward in places. It's unfair in some ways because if I hadn't read it written by Rucka I wouldn't notice it now and I'd think it was really well done - because it is. But there's stuff like her father saying, "We soldier on," which in Elegy felt like a natural line but here feels a bit like a forced callback both to that event and to his profession.
However, in terms of story rather than dialogue, it's working pretty strongly. I'm really excited by the introduction of Bette as Kate's sidekick. I love that she's getting the full-on hero treatment, that she's considered big enough to support her own sidekick, and I enjoyed watching her implement her military training in Bette's own training. I want her official superhero name to be Plebe! I'm definitely looking forward to how that develops.
I also liked that we got some time to spend with Maggie. I still miss Renee Montoya (yay, at least we saw a photo!) and still don't really feel that one amusing wisecrack about tuxedos is enough to make me care about Maggie, so it was nice to see her essentially dealing with the aftermath of Batwoman in her interview with that family, and to see her not really at all approving. It doesn't feel like gratuitous angst (thank god), but it does feel complex and I like that.
I also thought that the villain was incredibly creepy and well-realised on the page and in the art style. With her extremely realworld military grounding, I'm liking that Kate Kane is rapidly becoming the Bat character who deals with the creepy and the supernatural. It's something I've always felt fit well with the nightmarish background to Gotham, and served as a good counterpoint to Metropolis' more 50s science fiction daytime brightness.
The only serious drawback I can see is that it's not hugely welcoming to new readers, given that it was never intended to be the first issue of a relaunch, it just got delayed until the be relaunch for obvious reasons. The final sequence serves as a really good recap of Elegy, but equally, that's the sequence I felt suffered most from poor dialogue and exposition. It just feels tacked onto an otherwise beautiful comic, probably because it was.
4.5 out of 5 Plebes Without Costumes.
Pull List Status: OH HELLS YES. I will also be buying the hell out of the trade paperbacks. Even though I don't normally do that for series where I have the single issues (sorry, Star Wars).
Deathstroke #1
The one aspect of this comic I found interesting was that they made the decision not to make Deathstroke into a younger man and that his story is rooted in being a grizzled older guy everyone thinks is past it. That's genuinely a more interesting approach than I would have expected, knowing next to nothing about Deathstroke. Having said that, my expectations were south of zero so that's not saying all that much.
Other than that I found most of the comic to be fairly tiresome. It's a parade of cliches, from his handler to the teenaged sidekicks. And I get that the latter are meant to be annoying, and yes, it was genuinely not a twist I expected to see coming as I kind of assumed they were being set up as supporting cast, so props on the technicality of the twist, I guess, but also I wasn't paying all that much attention and they annoyed me. And they stuck around long enough I'm not entirely convinced that the twist at the end was enough payoff for that. It was drawn out kind of long.
Also I wasn't a huge fan of Christoph telling Deathstroke what a badass he was in literally those terms. Again I get that Deathstroke isn't supposed to care? But that just makes it more obvious that it's for audience effect and even though we see images of Deathstroke's badassery to go with Cristoph's narration, it still gives the effect of showing rather than telling, which is bad most of the time but awful when it comes to how cool a character is supposed to be.
But like I said, it has a more interesting premise than I was expecting and while I think the first issue oughta have been condensed down to eight pages to give the twist real punch and let us move on to the real story, it wasn't an awful idea.
2 out of 5 Annoying Teenagers.
Pull List Status: Nope and not interested.
Demon Knights #1
I loved this comic! It's everything I was hoping Stormwatch would be (minus the whole being set in post-Arthurian Britain thing). The dialogue is sharp and entertaining, the characters are varied, and unlike Stormwatch, I'm not too worried that I don't quite understand what everyone's powers are yet, possibly because the plot itself isn't also jumping around but is rather linear (opening scene aside) which makes the whole experience feel a bit more grounded.
The art is great too. Detailed without being overdrawn, clean, consistent, and it has nice, vibrant colours.
I really don't have too much more to say about this because I just plain enjoyed it so much. It's got the really simple D&D game premise of an unlikely band in a tavern, but Cornell works it so that it feels like great setup instead of predictable rubbish. I have no idea what's up with the ravening horde running towards them, but the group of protagonists is wild and weird enough I can't wait to see what they get up to once it arrives.
With its inclusion of Vandal Savage (I can't wait to see how that works) who's an actual villain, the seeds of a truly weird love affair between Madame Xanadu and Etrigan, a Knight who indulges in genderplay (from the little I know of her character), some twisted and sharp humour and a bunch of other C-List characters (at least I'm arrogantly assuming they are since I haven't heard much of anything about most of them), I'm really wondering if this book is going to be a kind of spiritual successor to Secret Six.
In any event, this comic was just great fun, and it's honestly one of my favourites that has come out so far. I really can't think of a single thing I'd change.
5 out of 5 Madame Xanadus declaring "Sod This!" and Diving after Excalibur.
Pull List Status: I would REALLY REALLY ADD IT if it weren't for the fact that I promised to stick with what we agreed to for a few months to see how it went unless something was TRULY awful. But this is top of the replacement list and I will probably end up using some of my unbudgeted cash to pick it up when it comes out on a month-to-month basis anyway. (It's all about tricking the budget!)
Frankenstein - Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1
This comic is straight up nuts. It's a bizarre trip of high concept science fiction mixed with surrealism and comedy. S.H.A.D.E. HQ is a miniaturised base you have to shrink down to enter, populated by disposal bio-robots that live for a day before degrading to fuel the place. Inside, a bunch of Hammer Horror monsters (the Creature Commandos) work for some mad dude named Father Time who regenerates himself a new body every ten years. This time, it's a 10 year old schoolgirl. Everyone still calls her Father Time. Into all this steps Frank (Frankenstein's Monster), who plays a rather hilarious straight-man to all this ridiculousness; he keeps warning people that making bio-robots isn't without consequence, doesn't like Father Time making cracks about his marriage and is really ticked to have been called back from his holiday on Mars because said wife got sent into a hot zone full of um, the bad type of monsters, and now he, a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Mummy and a Fishwoman have to go...do some fighting.
I want to say you'll already know if you're going to like it or not, but if I read that I'd think it sounded like the best, nutsest comic on Earth whereas my actual reaction was a little more tempered.
I think partly because the surreal mad science road trip of the first half gives way to some fairly standard action that I found boring in the second - I like the characters and the setup, but I'm not sure about the ongoing plot. Like literally, I have no idea what it is, beyond Some Monsters Attacked A Town and maybe Frank's got some issues with his wife? But aside from Frank and Father Time, no one really gets much character development beyond the cursory, and while it's usually enough in a first issue, I just kind of don't feel much is at stake.
Another issue is the art. It's actually a good art style for it, although not quite my thing. But the "not my thing" problem is compounded by the colouring which is very, very drab. Again I think this is a stylistic choice, and perhaps not one I can objectively criticise, but when I measure it against the crazy romp that was OMAC last week, while I enjoyed the characters and world of this more, the visuals of that were far more fun with their wonderful, vibrant colouring.
Ultimately, it's a fantastic setup, and even though I think this is leading out of either Flashpoint or some other mini series or series or something, I never felt lost as a new reader. However, the impressive setup and characters were ultimately let down by a (currently) pedestrian plot.
3.5 out of 5 Monster Mashups.
Pull List Status: Not on it, but I would consider it a "what the hell!" replacement if I had the space. I may also check this out in trades as I figure the issues I had with the plot might not be so prominent if I got to read more of it at once.
Green Lantern #1
I feel like I don't have too much to say about this. I suppose I felt like it was very well-crafted but without as much charm as I would have liked. I find it difficult to identify any flaws - it was definitely competent. Hal Jordan's jerky side as he tries to handle being a regular human again is entertaining and needed, although he does (as usual) skirt the boundaries of falling towards being unlikeable in general, which again I figure is intentional. Sinestro is more interesting, although gets less page time, in that it's interesting to watch him return to being a Green Lantern, and then carry out those duties, while retaining his exact personality. I believe it and it's kind of brilliant, too bad we didn't focus more on him.
The only part of the story I actively felt annoyed by was the Guardians. I always want to like them and I never quite can. For example, you get the very interesting line about how they don't expect anything of Sinestro in terms of obeying them, they simply expect him to protect his sector. But then we're back to the problem I have with them; it's such an old trope - the out-of-touch godlike beings, the traditional arguments of rationality over emotion. When dealing with a mythos that literally depends on the emotional spectrum, that debate will never not hold weight, but in my admittedly limited experience with them, the Guardians too often fall short of being weighty and mysterious and instead come off as jerks. Honestly I think it's half the visuals; if they looked creepy and otherwordly instead of like blue gnomes, I'd probably buy it more. Either way it was a fairly brief moment in the comic.
The ending genuinely did hook me; I do want to know what Sinestro has planned for Hal Jordan and it's the kind of crazy forced team-up that could be fun.
But ultimately, like the art, which was beautiful and deliberate and thoughtful, this comic feels like it was very skillfully crafted to elicit exactly the desired response from the reader at the right time. It was like watching a clockwork machine churn and whirr and click into place on "final page plot twist". If that sounds like a fairly weak criticism it's because it sort of is, and I'm not docking it too harshly in the scoring for it. It just didn't drive me wild.
In addition, this wasn't a brilliant introductory issue. It was actually better than I feared (knowing that Green Lantern wasn't really getting rebooted), because if you can grasp the concept of Hal having been thrown off the Lanterns and Sinestro, a guy no one likes, being on them, you're probably going to get the emotional aspect of the comic at least, even if the Yellow Lanterns would be a bit confusing (though with the recent movie, it's more likely people will be familiar with the Yellow/Green Fear/Will split at least). But if you want to know what the hell happened to bring this about, the comic won't answer it, it just moves forwards. Again, it's difficult to know whether to criticise. Trying to explain all the backstory would have been nightmarish too, but this does feel more like a "jumping on" point for an ongoing than an actual #1.
3.5 out of 5 Cosigned Car Leases.
Pull List Status: Eeeeh, nah. It's Green Lantern, I'll pick up what's going on by osmosis anyhow.
Grifter #1
I went into this with no expectations and no experience of Grifter whatsoever beyond an understanding that he was a Wildstorm character and an appearance by him in Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance, which really didn't characterise him as anything other than a member of the resistance. I thought his red face thing looked kind of cool - I haven't seen that kind of "mask" for any kind of superhero before.
Reading this book though, I'm just...I don't know where to start. The idea of a grifter on the run from creepy aliens is interesting enough, I suppose. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a man-on-the-run story, grifting is always entertaining and hey, aliens!
Except I don't really feel that the comic grounds any of those elements strongly enough. The single grift we see him pull we simply see in its aftermath, and the comic spends most of its time letting us watch him freak out about the voices he is suddenly hearing in his head.
Which is fine, except we then spend all our time with a guy in a state of extreme stress so we don't get to find out much about him. Which again would be fine except he doesn't really do anything proactive or make any decisions until the final sequence when he puts on the mask and is all, "I WANT MY MISSING TIME BACK!" Which...again would be fine except until that point he's been scared stiff and with good reason and just wants to get to someplace safe, so the transformation from "OMFG MAN WTF IS HAPPENING?!" to "REVENGE! MISSING TIME! FACE MASKS!" is jarring enough that it really drives home to me that I have no idea who this guy is.
Also there's a continuity error in that Grifter thinks he was out for 17 minutes, but then someone tells him he's really been gone for 17 days, and there's DRAMA. But at the end he refers to 17 hours? Was that a typo? Either way it's confusing.
It's not bad, exactly, it's just fairly formulaic, with missing time, botched alien procedures and pod people (or possessed people which is sort of the same trope; it's the Agents in the Matrix).
It has a bunch of strong individual elements that might not have appealed to me personally but ought to make a good comic, but it just doesn't come together. I don't understand anyone's motivations or care about the mystery. It would probably help if I already knew the character.
On the other hand, the art is lovely! Very elegant pencil work!
2 out of 5 Alien Abductions.
Pull List Status: Nope and based on this not very interested, though if someone told me it got awesome, I'd give it another look, were I bored.
Legion Lost #1
I wanted to like this book. I love the Legion in their current form (I assume what's still their current form). They're this combination of golden age heroism, 1950s teenage rebellion and a sort of wholesome 1980s punk rocker aesthetic. It's this aggressively cheerful teenage social movement that embraces action and freedom and love and helping in the face of Big Brother and government control, but it's still basically a bunch of punk kids having punk kid histrionic drama.
But while I love the concept, I've always struggled a bit with the comics I've read from it. Like, I always felt, this world is awesome! If only they had a writer who wrote it in a style I didn't find headache-inducing!
Alas, this is not that comic.
Now, in fairness, what I found alienating about this comic is pretty much exactly what I found alienating about the Legion comics I read before, so if you do like it, you might well like this. But too many characters are introduced without enough introduction, the plot manages to be both incredibly linear and confusing (they capture the fugitive, too late to stop him releasing the bad thing, and...then he explodes? Why? What? Um?), and the interpersonal interactions just don't quite have the depth I want. In addition, I'm familiar with the Legion and their predilection for random time-travel, but for a new reader, while it's very clear what's happening (that they're a bunch of teenagers from the future), there's no time given to grounding that concept and I think that would be less of a problem for a new reader if the rest of the issue were more compelling but since it isn't, it's one more essentially random piece of infodump information about what's happening, without any real emotional investment in why.
That's a slightly brutal and cursory examination of the comic, for which I apologise to anyone who enjoyed it, but ultimately it just didn't charm me enough to want to have anything but a cursory response.
On the other hand, as with Grifter, the art was very nice.
I didn't hate it, I just found it boring.
1.5 out of 5 Lost Legionnaires.
Pull List Status: Nope and nope.
Mister Terrific #1
Oh, man, this is gonna be tough to review.
Basically I love Mister Terrific. He's fucking awesome. Pretty much because he is better than Batman in every way. I'm sure this makes me shallow, but mocking Batman's emo through your very existence is a tried and tested way to earn my affections! They're both regular guys who superhero through technology, intelligence and determination rather than superpowers, and both have tragic pasts that serve as motivators. But unlike Batman, Mister Terrific went and won the Olympics, made his money rather than inheriting it, takes an active, leadership role in his company's philanthropic efforts (rather than Wayne's pretense at disaffection to maintain his cover), and DOESN'T BROOD IN A CAVE DRESSED LIKE A BAT.
So like, upfront, all I wanted out of this comic was twenty pages of Mister Terrific wandering around Doing Science and I would have been happy. I like to own my biases.
But attempting to be unbiased, I will say that this comic was interesting - had a great mix of fun ideas and more serious, and perhaps uncomfortable ones - but had a few issues that concerned me. I suppose the easiest way to say it is that I felt it was bursting with ideas but they weren't always executed in the smoothest way either in terms of narrative shape or dialogue, but I'd much rather read a vibrant, excited comic that's maybe a little all over the place than a dry, tidy one.
My first concern is with regards to Michael's atheism. It's something I really like about the character, being an atheist myself and also since it's so unusual to have a character come out and say it like that. I also think it's very interesting to give that trait to a character who knows, for a fact, that gods, or at least godlike beings, do exist in the universe. (He likewise doesn't believe in magic, essentially trusting to Clark's law about it simply being extraordinarily advanced science). The book, though, strays perilously close to portraying his atheism as a direct result of his wife's death. This frustrates me somewhat as it paints him as someone who turned away from God in anger rather than someone who simply doesn't believe in him. However, I'm willing to give it a pass because he searches for solace in science, and, after he's given up on finding it, it actually is an experience based in science that saves him and gives him hope again. So in that sense the story at least does not suggest that his atheism is unfulfilling and that what he really needs is faith in the divine. At the time I read it I was concerned, but after reading the entire sequence to which it pertained, I felt more like it was perhaps an error in writing and tone rather than an intention to change that part of his character - see above about how I feel it's full of ideas that are sometimes a little messy in their communication.
My second concern is this love triangle business. I hate them at the best of times, and I just don't see how this one ends any way other than badly. Now, again, I'm actually willing to be a little more charitable on this than I otherwise would be, because I was excited enough about this book that I went and read a bunch of interviews with the writer, and listened to some podcasts with him and have heard him talk excitedly about both of the women in question in ways that lead me to believe that they are important to the story in ways other than romantic rivalry, and he seems really excited about when he gets to reveal some of those. I also know who Karen Starr is, and am assuming she's still Power Girl in this universe, which again suggests a level of involvement and agency beyond being Michael's sort-of-girlfriend. But new readers aren't going to know these things, and I'm deeply dubious that this was the best way to introduce the two main female cast members.
So yes, I have a few quibbles about the handling of certain aspects of the story, but overall I like the characters being built up here, and while I don't feel that the cliffhanger at the end of the issue was enormously strong, I felt the cliffhanger in the middle - with Aaron Holt - was really compelling. That I can't wait to find out more about.
BEGIN ILL-ADVISED INFLAMMATORY RANT
Before I score this, though, I feel I have to make a comment about the general reception this book seems to be getting on the internet. Frankly I'm a bit disappointed - a lot of the major sites haven't really been giving it that great a rating for reasons I cynically think are because as a more minor character he doesn't have enough of a following to garner goodwill through nostalgia and desire to like it. I feel a bit like a thoroughly average Batman/Superman/Green Lantern story will be described as "solid" whereas an average Mister Terrific story gets described along lines of "not having hooked me yet," or "average" in a much more negative way. That, though, I'm willing to acknowledge as something I probably do to other characters too, it's just that for once, I'm in the "BUT I WANT TO LIKE IT!" camp.
But what has been actually disturbing me has been the level of racial defensiveness that some reviews, and a lot of general internet reactions, have been displaying.
Essentially, Mister Terrific makes one passing, lighthearted reference to his race, and there's a one page scene between Karen and Aleeka where it is discussed in a more (intentionally) awkward and serious way. Now, opinion will obviously vary as to whether Wallace did a good job hitting a realistic tone with the conversation. I suppose my main reaction to it is that I actually think that, if he's going to have two women getting tense over a guy, it's actually more interesting to at least frame that as part of a much more complicated nexus of race, class and gender (and wow, comics acknowledging class? I'm honestly shocked), that both participants belatedly realise is a fucking minefield, than to simply have them fighting over a dude because he's dreammmmmyyyy. On the other hand, because it's a fucking minefield, it also makes that love triangle about a bajillion times harder to resolve in any way that doesn't look dodgy from some angle, which is part of why I'm so nervous about it.
But the number of places I've seen "awkward and forced references to race!" being touted as a major failing of the book, this myth that the book is somehow full of agenda-pushing madness is crazy. There's this massive, defensive dislike of race being raised at all. Like somehow the comic is being distasteful by drawing attention to it because it makes us all uncomfortable and OH MY GOD COMIC, HOW DARE YOU PRETEND THAT'S STILL AN ISSUE IN 2011. YOU'RE THE RACIST, RACIST!
So you know, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but it's one page out of twenty. It's a short conversation between supporting cast members. It's not the comic book that's forcing an agenda, it's the freaking reviewers and internet commenters who have decided that that page takes precedence over nineteen others. And if that page were some kind of emotional or plot culmination for the main character, perhaps they'd have a point, but it's not.
I hate to go there, but I do wonder how many people would be accusing the writer of having an "agenda" if he were a white dude. Okay, probably a bunch, though I imagined the "agenda" would get shifted from the writer to "political correctness gone mad".
Bah. It makes me want to like the comic even more, even though, as I said, there were actually a couple of things in it that make me wary.
Okay, my ill-advised inflammatory rant is over now.
END ILL-ADVISED INFLAMMATORY RANT
3 out of 5 Ninth Dimensions.
Pull List Status: This is one of K's titles, so yes, we're getting it. I'd get it myself if he weren't already, but since he is, that's a non-issue. I may also get it in trades if I can afford it, but it's not a must-buy in trades.
Red Lanterns #1
I was honestly curious about this because, well, really. I don't really read too much Green Lantern stuff because that stuff is epic and there's so much of it, but I love the different coloured Lanterns. Frankly, out of all of them, probably only Orange is a less likely colour for a series because how can you sustain a series about a bunch of guys who are often literally incoherent with rage?
And honestly, this book didn't really answer that question for me. The opening scene with the raging house cat is funny but totally incongruous to the tone of the rest of the comic, which is, actually, quite aptly operatic and melodramatic. But the tonal shift is a little odd - it's a great opening sequence, but ultimately unrelated to the rest of the issue, especially since Dex-Starr is a weird character without any context (and I have very little) and I'd have preferred some more, well, of the ongoing story.
The stuff on Earth with those brothers and their grandfather is clearly going to hook into the main plot at some point, but at the moment stands unrelated, which doesn't help the slow feel of the comic.
Atrocitus himself is reasonably interesting as a guy whose power is derived from his rage and lust for vengeance, but the object of his vengeance is already dead, and not by his hand. The question of his ability to control his Corps could be interesting if played correctly and as I said, I genuinely did approve of the unbridled melodramatic tone this struck. It needs to be like an opera, we need wailing people tearing at their clothes and frothing at the mouth, we need our heroes to address the corpses of their nemeses with hamfisted metaphors about lovers and we need prophecies of blood and rage. I am genuinely on board with some kind of high drama Kill Bill meets Shaw Brothers kind of story.
The tone is fine.
But...nothing happens. There's so much exposition, which is good to catch up new readers, and something I wish some other comics had spent more time doing, but also slows everything down.
There are interesting questions that could be asked about sustained revenge and whether that's even possible, especially after one has achieved one's primary goal (one of the only interesting questions I feel The Punisher ever asks, as a character), but this comic fails to raise them because it spends all its time introducing and pontificating. Now, as I said, a great pontificating, angry bad guy/protagonist could rock in this book, but not if we have no direction. Generic Punishment To The Guilty just...doesn't quite cut it. It's too nebulous, in some ways too easy, but certainly too indistinct for a specific cliffhanger from a first issue.
Basically, it feels like it should be #0 - the comic you get knowing it's just a prelude, expecting a grounding in the world but no real forward motion to the plot because it's a taster, and ad, a bonus strip.
As an issue #0 it'd be good, as a #1, it's disappointing.
2 out of 5 Angry Housecats.
Pull List Status: No. Based on this, I would take another look at the series if I heard good things down the line once the plot started moving, but I think I might prefer to read a six-issue trade rather than get it monthly, and I'm not sure I'd want to pay the amount the trade would cost all in one go. So like, I don't want to write it off, I'm just not sure the method through which I would enjoy it and the amount I'd be willing to pay for it in one go are compatible.
Resurrection Man #1
Beautiful writing, acceptable art, slightly disappointing plotline.
To address the thing that needs addressing - the plotline wasn't bad so much as, I don't know, kind of predictable when you think about it. Resurrection Man has this great, creepy, strange power of coming back to life with a new superpower whenever he dies, which he does in this issue, twice, but I don't know. The idea of heaven and hell wondering where his soul is and fighting over it sounds cool for about thirty seconds before it starts to feel like the most obvious possible way to go. Which doesn't mean it'll play out badly, but it does feel a little derivative of every other piece of pop culture that tries to relevantly update the heaven/hell war from Preacher through Dogma through Constantine. As I said, it might not turn out that way, and the second two of my examples above are things I enjoyed, but there's nothing so far to say it won't be super derivative either and I guess I feel like the book thinks it presented its hook and I feel like the hook has been done enough I needed something else in addition to it - like the next piece of the puzzle or some other element introduced to the setup.
In addition, I found the two girls (who I guess are also demons?) looking for "John Doe" to be visually very eyerolly. Like, oh my god you guys, how edgy is dressing demons like slutty co-eds! One of them can be the rich blonde in a tiny designer dress and the other one can dress like a schoolgirl and be covered in gothic tattoos! Prior to that I'd've dismissed the earlier barebreasted creepy demon design the woman on the plane transformed into as stylistic choice, but in context, I'm getting a little eyerolly at that too.
Having said that, I'm serious when I say the writing is gorgeous. The narration of Resurrection Man's, well, resurrection, the way he feels and learns his new powers, is really lovely. Verbally this book lives up to the potential of the main character's quiet, strange and fascinating power set. I hope it also ends up doing so with its plot, but so far, I'm on the fence.
3 out of 5 Demons Want Your Soul.
Pull List Status: No, and not hugely likely, though I might check out the trades from the library in a year or two.
Suicide Squad #1
This is a book that uses violence and darkness to masquerade as quality. The plot is incredibly simple - the Suicide Squad are being tortured to turn on each other and this is used as a plot device to tell us a little about how they got recruited from death row to the squad. Someone breaks, the whole thing is revealed to be a "final test" setup, and the new Suicide Squad are sent on their first mission with a SHOCKING tag line!
Frankly, a slightly less obvious version of "it was all a dream" is a fairly weak twist to hang an issue on when there's nearly no other plot in it (because the flashbacks as to how they ended up in the squad are okay and kind of interesting but don't quite feel like mini stories in themselves). But it's not a series-killing mistake, it's just...slow.
But it's also indicative of the general level of mediocrity in the whole comic.
The art is kind of nice, and both Harley Quinn and Deadshot seem to have survived with their personalities mostly intact, even if Harley feels a bit more like a forced emo version of herself, I at least mostly recognise her, so this would be a 2 outta 5 issue if not for the fact that:
1) Harley's new outfit. Now originally I wasn't like, freaking out over this, I just thought it was kind of a shame that a character almost universally thought of as sexy, who wore a totally full-body costume (complete with ridiculous hat) had succumbed to the usual comic book stereotype of less is more when it comes to clothing women. Especially given her costume actually said some stuff about her personality. So sure, I thought it was lulzy and dumb but it's only in the context of the rest of this that it starts getting to be more than another in a long line of lulzy and dumb wardrobe decisions made by comics for women and instead indicative of something a little creepy in the book itself.
2) Of the characters who are up for the squad, the one who breaks is a guy named Savant. Now, I don't know a huge deal about him, but I'm fairly sure that he was either in a gay relationship with a dude named Creote, or that Creote was head over heels in love with Savant whether or not that was reciprocated. I get a bit hazy since I wasn't reading that stuff. Either way, the dude who breaks and sells everyone out, and therefore isn't good enough to be on the team, is a character who is either gay or best-known for being in a gay storyline. And sure, would it have been better to leave the character in DCnU limbo? That's a valid question. But another is why isn't Savant one of the characters in the book? Why is he the only one who breaks? Why not have someone else break and write him out somehow in issue #2 or have him not join for some other reason? I dunno, something about it sits wrong with me.
3) Again, I'm not sure I can articulate it and I also think this may partially be my disillusionment with the comic making me be less charitable than I otherwise would be, but I worry that El Diablo was uncomfortably exotified. I feel like there was some Noble Savage stuff going on with him, albeit more Noble Warrior Monk from the Gangland. But yeah. That's basically the same thing.
4) AMANDA WALLER. YOU DO NOT DO THAT TO AMANDA WALLER. WHAT THE HELL MAN, WHAT THE HELL.
To explain, Amanda Waller, pre-relaunch, was an amazing character. She was a very overweight, middle-aged African-American woman who had worked her way up through various parts of the government through sheer force of will and basically ran...everything. She was morally ambiguous, fiercely patriotic, and frighteningly competent.
Her nickname was "The Wall" because she was one. You could not go through her or around her, metaphorically or literally. Her physical size was neither tied to her superpowers (not that she had any) nor used as a comedic device. She yelled at Batman. You did not fuck with her.
Now Amanda Waller is hot and skinny and if she's still middle-aged it's the Hollywood 40-playing-45 kind of middle-aged. Even if she's still every other part of her character, just...just...why. She was a brilliant and unique character.
Now she's another sexy government femme fatale. I bet the increased sexualisation of her character will lead to increasingly sexualised dialogue and behaviour. I wonder when increased moral judgement of her will begin. The whole thing hugely undermines her authority and agency because of the implicit reasons behind it and the assumptions that go with it.
So, yeah.
1 out of 5, Suicide Squad, and you're lucky to get that.
Pull List Status: NO.
Superboy #1
I was surprised at how well-executed this comic was. I was kind of expecting something underwhelming, for no reason I could name, but it was actually very solid. By having Superboy be aware of far more than his creators suspect, including the ways in which they are attempting to manipulate him, it provides him with far more agency and intelligence than I expected from a setup to put Superboy on the Teen Titans as a double agent. I think many others would simply have had him miseducated by his creators for extra angst. But Superboy's very cerebral and measured choice to play along, which implies an equally measured approach to the Titans, creates the potential for a far more nuanced story.
Similarly, I think that his relationship with "Red" (who I think I read is a Wildstorm character? Not that I know that universe well, it's just nice that they really do seem to be integrating stuff) is off to an interesting and layered start with his understanding that she genuinely cares for him, but not enough to cease being his jailer. There's also the contributing factor of her feeling that she owes it to him to fix him, but the evidence she's using that leads her to believe her team did something wrong and that he needs fixing, may simply be because she doesn't know he knows what he's experiencing isn't real.
I'm slightly concerned that they're trying to genuinely tell us that Superboy's moral radar was trashed by his Luthor DNA, which I would dislike, since I think it's far more interesting if he's simply quietly observing and understands that there's no need to save pixel people from a pixel fire, rather than setting up an arc about him learning morality from scratch, but I shouldn't review what may or may not happen and there's not enough in this issue to draw conclusions about whether I should be worried.
The art is also surprisingly pleasing to the eye. I say surprisingly because when I first looked at it I kind of felt it a bit...I don't know, cartoony is the wrong word, but very open and spacious and simple, but as it continued I started to feel that was a real boon. There's a strong consistency here and the light, airy feel of the art not only counteracts what could otherwise seem like a very "gritty" story due simply to its subject matter, but is also very soothing and easy to look at.
There's nothing here that blew my mind, but I was pleasantly surprised by some of the choices the writer made.
3.5 out of 5 Imaginary Kansases.
Pull List Status: No, and it's not really my thing, even though I like Superman. I feel kinda bad because as I said, it's a pretty solid comic, but it just doesn't inspire me, personally, to read more of it at this point, even if objectively I thought it was pretty good.
END WEEK TWO.