comickal: recently read, spoilerrific edition, or, age and the batman
Yes! That's right! In this review, I tell you now: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! BIG ONES! Small ones! Spoilers that go round and round and round ... and they come out here! That's right! If you can't stand the thought, then walk away! Just walk away! In fact, you can consider the folly of staying during the following musical interlude:
OK, so let's get to it, shall we? Let's shall.
Brightest Day 10 (Johns/Tomasi/Reis/Clark/Prado; DC)
(NB: This is the most spoilerrific of the reviews. You get through this one, you should be good to go.)
In which, after having spent essentially no time at all with the Aqualad-to-be, and hardly any time in the last issue or so with Firestorm, we get the all Aqualad/all Firestorm issue. (The cover is a lie, of course; we don't even see Deadman this issue, let alone see Aqualad reverting him to his previously dead status.) And the big bad that the White Lantern is so afraid of seems to have been revealed! And ... frankly, I think I'm done with the main "Brightest Day" title now.
The good aspects of issue 10: narrowing the focus of the issue to only two stories and three major characters, rather than bouncing between the 15 people who have been raised, strengthens the storytelling considerably. If nothing else, it's easier to follow what's happening. And we get an explanation that makes sense, of sorts, for why Firestorm's powers seem so weirdly variable. The art and coloring in both sections are superb in service of a story that doesn't really deserve them.
Now, the downside ... well, it's considerable. Along with an explanation of why Firestorm's powers are so wonky, we also get an explanation for the origin of the Firestorm matrix which is perhaps the most spectacular retcon ever. Seriously, the genesis of the Big Bang is trapped in Firestorm's body? Seriously? And it's welded the two of them together because it likes them? And you don't even want to think about what happens if Firestorm gets mad and loses control -- which is pretty much his/their natural state of being, actually. At least, as far as you can tell from reading Brightest Day so far. There is such a thing as overexplaining and over-expositing, and I think that nailed it. A perfect score, as it were. And then there is the last page reveal of the villain of the piece, and that just lost me completely. (The truly horrifying aspect of the ending is what it implies about what's possibly going on with the rest of the resurrected heroes -- almost certainly with Aquaman, I would think, given how his powers have been perverted since his undeath. And probably most of the others, as well. There is the rather puzzling question of why the White Lantern would have resurrected these people, if that was a reasonable possibility.)
Look, if I'd wanted to read Blackest Night, then I'd have done so. The only part of it that I read on purpose was Blackest Night: Wonder Woman, and that was a mess. Regardless, I don't need some flavor of Blackest Night redux. To be sure, I'm a mite curious as to how the new Aqualad -- who just came into his powers, like, ten seconds ago -- and Aquaman are going to defeat/get away from Syren and Black Manta. And I'm mildly curious about what the Star City forest has to do with anything. And I'm mildly curious about what's going on with Hawkgirl and Hawkman back on ... wherever it is they're being held prisoner by their Great Nemesis. And I'm mildly curious about why Hawk was brought back to keep Dove alive -- but I'm getting at least some of that through Birds of Prey. I'm not curious enough about any of the rest of it to see how they explain that final page of issue 10. (Strange character note: I assume the way the villain is talking is to mock the people who were just attacked. Of course, those people are unconscious, so there's not a lot of point, but whatever.)
Bad DC, BAD! No cookie for you! (...OK, to be fair: if you liked Blackest Night, then this is likely to be Absolutely Your Thing. It's not mine, and it never will be.)
Batman Beyond 4 of 6 (Adam Beechen/Ryan Benjamin/John Stanisci; DC)
So a friend of mine and I were talking about how they've sorta/kinda pulled Batman Beyond into continuity, and how Batman Inc. is supposed to work (apparently Dick and Damian will be the Bat-team of Gotham, and Bruce [and possibly Tim] will work in the rest of the world) and how and why things might work. And we realized: a major issue of the Bat titles is that Bruce is getting older. They've massively retarded it, of course, in the way the comics can. Nonetheless, the idea is that Bruce is supposed to be sort of fortyish in the current run of stories. The problem with that is, Dick is pretty clearly supposed to be kind of thirtyish himself. Twenty-five, at least. He is, in fact, too old to have been taken in by Bruce as a twelve-year-old. (He was either 10 or 12, I'm not sure which.) Money galore or not, nobody in anything pretending to be their right mind is going to let someone under 20 take in a kid. (Granted, sanity and Gotham clearly only have passing acquaintance with each other.) So on the one hand, it behooves DC to start laying the ground work to say, "OK, this is what happens when Bruce gets too old and battered to take on the mantle of the Bat." After all, aside from event titles like the Nights and the Days and the Crises, the Batman suite are their best selling titles.
The other aspect of that is of the DC Trinity, Bruce is the only one that is fully human. Superman is an alien, and the Batman Beyond story from Superman/Batman has made it clear that he ages much more slowly than humans. Wonder Woman is, depending on how you look at things, either a golem or a being created by and favored of (for certain highly idiosyncratic values of "favored") the Greek gods, so normal aging rules probably don't apply to her, either.
For all that they've created subsequent generations of Superman's family and Wonder Woman's family, the only one for whom succession is becoming a looming issue is Bruce.
So, all that said: this particular issue is primarily, but not purely, a big ol' lump of character development and exposition. There was an utterly insane fight between the guy in the bandages and the new Catwoman, and also a big revelatory fight near the end. During the issue, we learn why Dick and Bruce parted (and also the practical reason why Batman wears a cape, which makes it somewhat nonsensical that Nightwing never did). I will just note that even allowing that he's a manipulative bastard, I have a hard time believing Bruce would have treated the child he raised like that. And from a stray remark Dick makes, I have a horrible horrible feeling that issue 6 of "Batman: the Widening Gyre" may not have been some sort of strange drug trip that Bruce was on; it took me forever to figure out who "Silver" might have been or why whatever happened to that person would have such an effect on Bruce.
Anyway, on the final page of the story, the face of the villain is revealed! ... and I can't tell you what my reaction was without revealing more of the ending than I'm comfortable with. (Hey, I spoilered the heck out of Brightest Day, already! One is enough!) All I can say is ... I'm very very confused, and I'm not sure whether or not I'm meant to be.
At the technical level, despite there being a lot of exposition, the story moves -- boy, does the story move! The artwork really does strike that balance between more traditional comics art, and the look of the DC Animated universe that Batman Beyond would require. The only place where I think the art might have some issues is on that confusing last page ... and, again, I don't know if it's the art, or if there's a story element that I'm just not getting.
Good; Recommended
Azrael 12 (David Hine/Guillem March; DC): "The Killer of Saints, part 3: Heart of Fire, Heart of Ice"
"The Killer of Saints" arc can be read as a truly astonishing anti-Catholic screed. (Anti-Catholic, rather than anti-Christian, because all the rest of Christianity has been actively deceived by the Catholics.)
It seems that in DC world, the Church wants to destroy the Shroud of Turin because forensic evidence revealed that the man wrapped in it wasn't actually dead yet, thus refuting the resurrection. The Order of Purity, which absconded with the Shroud during said testing, is devoted to preserving and possibly revealing the truth, whether or not it brings down the Catholic Church and incidentally also all of Christianity. This issue, we discover that the Order of Purity is based on the Gnostic Gospels, and that the Catholic Church has persecuted them through the ages, going so far as to kidnap, brainwash and train mystics -- some of whom were children -- and mystical soldiers of their own to combat the Order. And it turns out that the Gnostic Book of True Revelation of the Prophet Matheus has detailed prophecy about everything that's happened in this story arc, including the battle Azrael and the Crusader.
The truly fascinating thing about this arc is that every single person in it is, to put it vaguely politely, batguano insane. Michael, of course, is being driven insane by the suit of sorrows. The Crusader was made insane by the Church so that he could carry out his duties properly. The dark priest of the order was driven a particular sort of insane by having read the book of True Revelation and knowing his fate. And the priest who's been "helping" Michael is insane because he's a member of the Order, which itself appears to be insane.
I really do wonder how much longer this series has left to run. You'd think that the arc that undermines all of Christianity would be a good place to end, wouldn't you? After all, either Michael -- who started out as a devout Catholic -- defends the Order and lets them reveal the Shroud as ... well, not a fake, but not what it's been assumed to be, or his Catholicism rears its head and he helps the Crusader hide the evidence. His faith has already been used against him, and, lest we forget, was used to make him slaughter the entire Swiss Guard of the Vatican; the Crusader has been mocking him for letting his responsibility to the Order supersede his faith. Regardless, what's left of his sanity doesn't seem long for this world.
Really fascinating; Recommended for the truly bizarre theology and politics.
-- Originally posted at http://iainpj.dreamwidth.org/21173.html, where there are
comments.
OK, so let's get to it, shall we? Let's shall.
Brightest Day 10 (Johns/Tomasi/Reis/Clark/Prado; DC)
(NB: This is the most spoilerrific of the reviews. You get through this one, you should be good to go.)
In which, after having spent essentially no time at all with the Aqualad-to-be, and hardly any time in the last issue or so with Firestorm, we get the all Aqualad/all Firestorm issue. (The cover is a lie, of course; we don't even see Deadman this issue, let alone see Aqualad reverting him to his previously dead status.) And the big bad that the White Lantern is so afraid of seems to have been revealed! And ... frankly, I think I'm done with the main "Brightest Day" title now.
The good aspects of issue 10: narrowing the focus of the issue to only two stories and three major characters, rather than bouncing between the 15 people who have been raised, strengthens the storytelling considerably. If nothing else, it's easier to follow what's happening. And we get an explanation that makes sense, of sorts, for why Firestorm's powers seem so weirdly variable. The art and coloring in both sections are superb in service of a story that doesn't really deserve them.
Now, the downside ... well, it's considerable. Along with an explanation of why Firestorm's powers are so wonky, we also get an explanation for the origin of the Firestorm matrix which is perhaps the most spectacular retcon ever. Seriously, the genesis of the Big Bang is trapped in Firestorm's body? Seriously? And it's welded the two of them together because it likes them? And you don't even want to think about what happens if Firestorm gets mad and loses control -- which is pretty much his/their natural state of being, actually. At least, as far as you can tell from reading Brightest Day so far. There is such a thing as overexplaining and over-expositing, and I think that nailed it. A perfect score, as it were. And then there is the last page reveal of the villain of the piece, and that just lost me completely. (The truly horrifying aspect of the ending is what it implies about what's possibly going on with the rest of the resurrected heroes -- almost certainly with Aquaman, I would think, given how his powers have been perverted since his undeath. And probably most of the others, as well. There is the rather puzzling question of why the White Lantern would have resurrected these people, if that was a reasonable possibility.)
Look, if I'd wanted to read Blackest Night, then I'd have done so. The only part of it that I read on purpose was Blackest Night: Wonder Woman, and that was a mess. Regardless, I don't need some flavor of Blackest Night redux. To be sure, I'm a mite curious as to how the new Aqualad -- who just came into his powers, like, ten seconds ago -- and Aquaman are going to defeat/get away from Syren and Black Manta. And I'm mildly curious about what the Star City forest has to do with anything. And I'm mildly curious about what's going on with Hawkgirl and Hawkman back on ... wherever it is they're being held prisoner by their Great Nemesis. And I'm mildly curious about why Hawk was brought back to keep Dove alive -- but I'm getting at least some of that through Birds of Prey. I'm not curious enough about any of the rest of it to see how they explain that final page of issue 10. (Strange character note: I assume the way the villain is talking is to mock the people who were just attacked. Of course, those people are unconscious, so there's not a lot of point, but whatever.)
Bad DC, BAD! No cookie for you! (...OK, to be fair: if you liked Blackest Night, then this is likely to be Absolutely Your Thing. It's not mine, and it never will be.)
Batman Beyond 4 of 6 (Adam Beechen/Ryan Benjamin/John Stanisci; DC)
So a friend of mine and I were talking about how they've sorta/kinda pulled Batman Beyond into continuity, and how Batman Inc. is supposed to work (apparently Dick and Damian will be the Bat-team of Gotham, and Bruce [and possibly Tim] will work in the rest of the world) and how and why things might work. And we realized: a major issue of the Bat titles is that Bruce is getting older. They've massively retarded it, of course, in the way the comics can. Nonetheless, the idea is that Bruce is supposed to be sort of fortyish in the current run of stories. The problem with that is, Dick is pretty clearly supposed to be kind of thirtyish himself. Twenty-five, at least. He is, in fact, too old to have been taken in by Bruce as a twelve-year-old. (He was either 10 or 12, I'm not sure which.) Money galore or not, nobody in anything pretending to be their right mind is going to let someone under 20 take in a kid. (Granted, sanity and Gotham clearly only have passing acquaintance with each other.) So on the one hand, it behooves DC to start laying the ground work to say, "OK, this is what happens when Bruce gets too old and battered to take on the mantle of the Bat." After all, aside from event titles like the Nights and the Days and the Crises, the Batman suite are their best selling titles.
The other aspect of that is of the DC Trinity, Bruce is the only one that is fully human. Superman is an alien, and the Batman Beyond story from Superman/Batman has made it clear that he ages much more slowly than humans. Wonder Woman is, depending on how you look at things, either a golem or a being created by and favored of (for certain highly idiosyncratic values of "favored") the Greek gods, so normal aging rules probably don't apply to her, either.
For all that they've created subsequent generations of Superman's family and Wonder Woman's family, the only one for whom succession is becoming a looming issue is Bruce.
So, all that said: this particular issue is primarily, but not purely, a big ol' lump of character development and exposition. There was an utterly insane fight between the guy in the bandages and the new Catwoman, and also a big revelatory fight near the end. During the issue, we learn why Dick and Bruce parted (and also the practical reason why Batman wears a cape, which makes it somewhat nonsensical that Nightwing never did). I will just note that even allowing that he's a manipulative bastard, I have a hard time believing Bruce would have treated the child he raised like that. And from a stray remark Dick makes, I have a horrible horrible feeling that issue 6 of "Batman: the Widening Gyre" may not have been some sort of strange drug trip that Bruce was on; it took me forever to figure out who "Silver" might have been or why whatever happened to that person would have such an effect on Bruce.
Anyway, on the final page of the story, the face of the villain is revealed! ... and I can't tell you what my reaction was without revealing more of the ending than I'm comfortable with. (Hey, I spoilered the heck out of Brightest Day, already! One is enough!) All I can say is ... I'm very very confused, and I'm not sure whether or not I'm meant to be.
At the technical level, despite there being a lot of exposition, the story moves -- boy, does the story move! The artwork really does strike that balance between more traditional comics art, and the look of the DC Animated universe that Batman Beyond would require. The only place where I think the art might have some issues is on that confusing last page ... and, again, I don't know if it's the art, or if there's a story element that I'm just not getting.
Good; Recommended
Azrael 12 (David Hine/Guillem March; DC): "The Killer of Saints, part 3: Heart of Fire, Heart of Ice"
"The Killer of Saints" arc can be read as a truly astonishing anti-Catholic screed. (Anti-Catholic, rather than anti-Christian, because all the rest of Christianity has been actively deceived by the Catholics.)
It seems that in DC world, the Church wants to destroy the Shroud of Turin because forensic evidence revealed that the man wrapped in it wasn't actually dead yet, thus refuting the resurrection. The Order of Purity, which absconded with the Shroud during said testing, is devoted to preserving and possibly revealing the truth, whether or not it brings down the Catholic Church and incidentally also all of Christianity. This issue, we discover that the Order of Purity is based on the Gnostic Gospels, and that the Catholic Church has persecuted them through the ages, going so far as to kidnap, brainwash and train mystics -- some of whom were children -- and mystical soldiers of their own to combat the Order. And it turns out that the Gnostic Book of True Revelation of the Prophet Matheus has detailed prophecy about everything that's happened in this story arc, including the battle Azrael and the Crusader.
The truly fascinating thing about this arc is that every single person in it is, to put it vaguely politely, batguano insane. Michael, of course, is being driven insane by the suit of sorrows. The Crusader was made insane by the Church so that he could carry out his duties properly. The dark priest of the order was driven a particular sort of insane by having read the book of True Revelation and knowing his fate. And the priest who's been "helping" Michael is insane because he's a member of the Order, which itself appears to be insane.
I really do wonder how much longer this series has left to run. You'd think that the arc that undermines all of Christianity would be a good place to end, wouldn't you? After all, either Michael -- who started out as a devout Catholic -- defends the Order and lets them reveal the Shroud as ... well, not a fake, but not what it's been assumed to be, or his Catholicism rears its head and he helps the Crusader hide the evidence. His faith has already been used against him, and, lest we forget, was used to make him slaughter the entire Swiss Guard of the Vatican; the Crusader has been mocking him for letting his responsibility to the Order supersede his faith. Regardless, what's left of his sanity doesn't seem long for this world.
Really fascinating; Recommended for the truly bizarre theology and politics.
-- Originally posted at http://iainpj.dreamwidth.org/21173.html, where there are
comments.