Miscontinuity

Hiatus

2008-11-10T10:24:00.001-08:00

Unfortunately, since the school year started, I have found it increasingly difficult to find the time for these reviews. Once I am able to create a more rational schedule, I do intend to return to them.

Superman #680 Review

2008-09-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Writer: James Robinson
Penciller: Renato Guedes

It's unfortunate that DC Comics doesn't supply pictures of their actual covers with captions intact, because the cover of Superman #680 is a great one. In that empty space of sky to the left of Krypto is written "DOG OF STEEL" in big type, which pretty much sums up this issue. James Robinson has given us, of all things, a Krypto story. On the one hand, this is a very good idea. It's about time someone gave Superman's other best friend (Jimmy has dibs on that title) a story of his own, and it's really a lot of fun. On the other hand, Robinson has ceded that "important" stories to Johns in the Action Comics title, and I hope that at some point, Robinson tackles some of the more central portions of Superman's mythos. However, on the whole, this issue is still fairly strong, and we get a simple story about a man's relationship with his dog and vice versa.

The issue is really one long fight scene, which we've really had for three straight issues now. If it was just a continuation of the fight with Superman, it would have long ago become very dull. However, this issue is a new battle, one between Krypto and the titan Atlas. We finally come to realise why it was Superman was vulnerable to Atlas's strength. Superman has a longstanding weakness to magic, and Atlas's power is magic-based. This issue, we see Krypto and Superman working together to fight an enemy who would otherwise be quite a threat to Superman. In my review of last issue, I compared the Atlas fight to the fight with Doomsday, in which a fight with a previously unknown enemy was able to (apparently) kill Superman, and curiously, Robinson seems to have noticed the parallel as well, as Lois makes the same comparison. One of the nice things about this story is that it shows that Superman isn't simply invulnerable, and the right enemy at the right time taking advantages of the right weaknesses can always be a threat.

However, when Doomsday killed Superman, Krypto had been written out of continuity, and reading this comic, one comes to realise that, had the editors not made the decision to dispose of Krypto, Doomsday might not have been quite so successful. Superman makes a decision that, on the face of it, is not especially good loyal-master behaviour. He leaves Krypto to fight Atlas while he seeks a solution to Atlas's magical superiority. This clever tag-team approach buys Superman the time to find the bratty Zatara, who provides him with the magical equivalent of solar power, enabling him to return and rescue Krypto just as Krypto rescued him. Superman isn't just incredibly strong: comic books are full of extremely strong characters. Rather, when faced directly with one of his weaknesses, Superman also proves that he is an excellent tactician. He quickly discovers why he is losing the battle, and makes the appropriate changes to his strategy in order to defeat him.

One weak element I thought this issue had was the reaction of Lois to Krypto. She seems to not really like Krypto, though why isn't very plausibly established. Apparently, she is worried about the idea of a super-powered dog, since a normal, non-super-powered dog can be dangerous in its own right. However, one would think that years of living with Superman would have inured her to worry about aliens just because they are powerful. In a way, she is reacting how one might expect Luthor to react to the presence of an alien dog, as he is well-known for his xenophobia when it comes to other species. Part of the drama of this issue is intended to come from Lois finally coming to appreciate Krypto, but since we had never really seen her dislike of Krypto before, this part of the story isn't especially convincing.

On the whole though, this is a strong issue. We finally get to see Krypto in action. We get to see Superman and Krypto working together. This issue is a lot of fun. However, the underly premise of establishing Krypto to Lois is weak and, let's face it, this story isn't nearly as powerful as Johns' work over in Action. I definitely appreciate this story, though, and I really feel like Krypto is being established as more than just a holdover from the Silver Age.

B-

Thunderbolts #124 Review

2008-09-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

Writer: Christos Gage
Penciller: Fernando Blanco

I have to admit, when Norman Osborn was made the head of the Thunderbolts, I was dubious. For one thing, Norman Osborn should be dead, as he was from Amazing Spider-Man #121 until issue #418, which is a long time to be dead, especially by comic book standards. Moreover, he was brought back during the dreadful clone saga, and, let's face it, that is a story best forgotten. For another thing, he doesn't really fit in the Thunderbolts milieu. For the most part, they are Avengers characters, and a Spider-Man villain doesn't really fit, especially as the head of the group. So, when I saw he'd taken over, it struck me as a terrible idea, bringing back an outdated villain into a context in which he didn't belong.

This issue proves that I was wrong in my judgement. As the Thunderbolts have spiralled deeper and deeper into madness, having Norman Osborn at the head of the group has proved almost prescient. This issue has given us a great sense of how someone like Osborn is the perfect head of a group of supervillains composed of psychopaths and madmen. For one thing, he fits right in. The scene at the beginning in which he slaughters a group of Skrulls posing as Spider-Man is one of the funniest moments I can remember in the Thunderbolts. After the massacre, with green-blood splattering and Osborn cackling in massive type, he regains his composure and clears his throat: "--Hurm. Well. That was surprisingly therapeutic". He seems perfectly happy to be a little insane. If he were too sane, the book would become very mean, very quickly, as a sane character manipulated and used less stable characters. Because he himself is a little mad, his manipulations seem almost...fair.

The rest of the issue is spent with Osborn masterfully handling a series of personel crises as he must reign in the insecurities and murderous tendencies of one Thunderbolt after another. Penance has to face a group of Skrulls posing as victims of the Stamford explosion, and Osborn helps him realise what is going on because Penance is so obsessed with the disaster. Since Penance has memorised the faces of every single Stamford victim and the Skrulls apparently haven't, he is able to figure it out. Venom prepares to eat civilians, and after being appropriately threatened, and Venom puts them down, pretending it was all an act in an especially unconvincing lie. Bullseye kills Andrea Struker, who it turns out wasn't a Skrull as everyone assumed, and Osborn manages to use her death to turn her brother, Swordsman, into an even more dangerous weapon. One of the funny aspects of Osborn's management skills is that he says almost everything with the same level of calm. When it looks like Radioactive Man is going to explode, he evenly says, "Dr. Chen, can you keep from exploding for a few more minutes?", and when Songbird is getting completely pummeled, he says, "...Songbird looks like she could use assistance". Wactching Osborn calmly handle his out-of-control team in the middle of pure chaos is fantastic farce.

My only real criticism of this issue is that it lacks a lot of the sense of fun of the last issue. No one seems quite as gleeful as they did in the previous issue, which had the same sense of manic freedom as the escape scene from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". In this issue, by contrast, the insanity of the characters has reached a fever pitch that prevents the reader from really identifying with them. They've reached the point at which they don't really seem human anymore, and aside from how Osborn is handled, none of the characters are really sympathetic in any way. Most of all, the character of Bullseye is beginning to both me, though he did before during Ellis's run. While the other characters simply largely imbalanced, a genuinely psychopathic killer doesn't really fit in and isn't very funny. Everyone else seems like they are contantly battling their inner monsters, whereas Bullseye just is a monster. In a farce, one doesn't want a character that is simply so unpleasant to read.

On the whole, then, this is a very strong book. It doesn't quite reach the heights of the last issue, but develops Osborn's leadership skills in a way that is very entertaining. At the end of this issue, it sounds like Osborn plans to take over America. That makes sense, and fits with the very first premise of the book. I really think it will be fun to see him try.

B+

Action Comics #869 Review

2008-09-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciller: Gary Frank

So, it's official. Braniac destroyed Krypton. That is an interesting decision. They hinted at it last issue, and at the time, I wasn't sure they would actually go through with it. At the time, I thought it might not be such a bad idea, but now that they've finally decided to make Braniac's destruction of Krypton canon, I'm not sure that I like it. It is always extremely dangerous to tinker with the origins of a major DC character. When DC decided in the late 80s to make Batman not know that Joe Chill killed his parents, it created the sense that he might be somehow out for revenge rather than simply trying to prevent it from ever happening again, so they had to change it back. Even small details like that can fundamentally alter what makes a character's story meaningful. After all, DC's central characters have been successful for a reason. They are iconic, and perhaps even DC doesn't understand why exactly. Even small tinkering can change the motivation of a character.

This book actually fiddles with Superman's origins in several ways. In the late 1980s, DC made the decision to make Superman the last survivor of Krypton, killing off Supergirl and consigning Zod to oblivion. Both of these removals were mistakes, and DC has recently righted them by bringing both Supergirl and Zod (along with Krypto) back into continuity. However, their heart was in the right place. The introduction of things like the City of Kandor made Superman not especially unique. If there is an entire city of Kryptonians, why is Superman special? However, I think uniqueness isn't the entire issue. When there are more Kryptonians around, especially the thousands now revealed to be living in the City of Kandor, Superman's story becomes less about Earth and more about Krypton itself. It has the effect of shifting the focus of Superman's story away from Earth and back to his original planet. When Grant Morrison gave Superman a one-page, four-line origin in All Star Superman #1, he knew exactly what he was doing. At the end of the day, Superman's origin is the past; his story is really a story about Kal-El on Earth. Too many Kryptonians makes Superman too alien.

The introduction of the actual villain who destroyed Krypton in the first place changes this shift even more radically than the recently reintroduced Kandor. If Braniac destroyed Krypton, then he becomes an even more powerful nemesis for Superman. After all, they now have a very strong history. However, that history is now a Kryptonian history, not a human history. Superman is put in the position of righting or avenging wrongs that happened on a planet long ago, and his story becomes about his Kryptonian heritage, not his unique role on Earth. The reintroduction of Superman's aunt and uncle, Zor-El and Alura, compounds this problem; they are the parents of Supergirl and they apparently survived the destruction of Argo City, where Supergirl had assumed they had died. Superman's story increasingly has the focus of protecting Kryptonian family from Kryptonian threats, and this risks overshadowing his story on Earth, in which he is a boy from small town Kansas with a secret.

Despite these concerns with the overall direction of Action Comics, this is overall a very strong issue. Superman continues his battle with Braniac on Braniac's ship. I love Braniac's creepy assimilation cables. Superman really is outmatched, at least for now, and I look forward to his figuring out how to beat Braniac. My one complaint is that I'm amazed that he didn't know that he can't just turn his back on a wounded Braniac and strike up a conversation with his uncle. One would think he'd have a little more tactical wisdom than that. The battle on Earth, however, is far more interesting. There is a great moment when Supergirl and Lois are on the roof of the Daily Planet, and Kara simply says, "Go", letting go of Lois's hand in an especially well drawn frame. Of course, Lois doesn't listen, and she and the other reporters of the Daily Planet fight off Braniac's drones. Having them have any success somewhat lowers the threat level of Brianiac's robots (how exactly do they survive Supergirl's heat vision and yet are able to be knocked out of a window by a desk wielded by two reporters?), but it does have the nice effect of seeing the Planet staff stand up for Earth.

And of course, the ending is fantastic. Metropolis is bottled and spirited away to Braniac's ship. I've kind of always wanted him to do that. If you're going to have bottled cities, you might as well bottle Metropolis, and I really relish finding out what it will be like living in that bottled city so long as Braniac is able to hold onto it (which I'm assuming won't be very long). In the last four issues, Johns has made Braniac a very credible threat, and now that he's gotten hold of Metropolis, things promise to be very interesting indeed.

This is a very good issue, but also a very dangerous one. I hope the editorial staff know what they're doing in increasingly introducing Kryptonian elements to Superman's story. They risk distracting from Superman's successful premise, and may find themselves written into the same sort of corner they did when they eliminated Joe Chill.

B+

Spike: After the Fall #3 Review

2008-09-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Lynch
Penciller: Franco Urru

Something is missing in Spike: After the Fall #3. It has a lot of great elements to it. Spike seduces a captor. Gunn has an altercation with Non. Spike and Illyria kiss. There is fighting and chaos. Somehow, however, Spike seems to be missing from this comic. It is true that he is on most of the pages, but his usual wit and humour are missing. In the last issue of this series, Spike sizes up a dragon in the hopes of potentially killing it. Every possible strategem is attended by some sort of witty observation or sardonic remark. Lynch has shown in the first two issues that he is capable of capturing the speech patterns and personality of Spike, something which he hasn't had the space to do much of in the Angel: After the Fall series.

However, in this issue, all of that falls away. Take this piece of narration: "Also, she doesn't react well if someone, let's say a vampire, repeatedly yells to her to conure admittedly suggestive mirages to make the day go faster". That doesn't really sound like Spike. There's a little bit of humour in it, but it lacks any of the punch of Spike's usual observational humour. Spike's sense of humour is largely based on two things: he is very intelligent and he is very old. There is very little that he hasn't seen in his six or seven lifetimes, and he doesn't really know when to shut up (or at least doesn't bother). So, he makes comments constantly on what is going on around him, and has a tendency to see right through any of the pretenses around him. Part of what stops him from being simply mean and sarcastic is that he is wise enough not to actually hold people's pretences against them. These characteristics are what led him to fill in some of the role of Giles when Giles left Buffy in season six.

Most of that combination of pretense-popping humour and wisdom are absent in this issue, and it is weaker as a result. True, one might not expect Spike to be in quite such a good mood after being tortured for a month, but I can't think of any torture that would reduce Spike to pure exposition. There are a couple nice moments where we see some of Lynch's great ability to capture Spike's character: the fantasy at the beginning in which he is with Fred and Angel appears with a nametag saying, "Hello, my name is the reason we're stuck here" is great as is his making fun of Non as she goes off to her meeting with Gunn as though it will be some sort of date. However, that's really all we see. The last scene especially lacks Spike's usual sense of keen observation; it really could have been anyone.

Gunn, however, is written very well in this issue. He doesn't come across as quite as crazed as he did in the exceptional Angel: After the Fall #11, but we see what a monster he's become and more of the fate of the slayers from Angel is revealed here. It seems that he has turned them into vampires and is using them for fighting practice, or at least, that's the sense that I can make of why Non seems to kill them but they are alive again a few pages later. Moreover, we see his confused feelings for Fred come to the surface. Is he really just concerned about his prophecy? Or is he concerned about Fred? Remember, this is the same Gunn who murdered a man for Fred, and that was before he became a vampire. We see some of the same confusion in his character we've seen in other issues, and the fate of his slayers is truly creepy.

Overall, this isn't the strongest issue of Spike: After the Fall, and is on about par with the first issue. It has a few good moments, but somehow, Spike himself seemed to be missing. I assume this is just something of a misstep, and we'll see more of Lynch's style next month.

B-

The Incredible Hercules #121 Review

2008-09-18T12:28:00.001-07:00

Writers: Greg Pak and Fred van Lente
Penciller: Clayton Henry

Greg Pak is having a lot of fun. I'm not sure how he managed it, but he took one of Marvel's lamest heroes, Hercules, and somehow managed to turn him into one of the most interesting, entertaining, goofiest, yet strangely plausible heroes that Marvel has ever written. Greg Pak is clearly fascinated with Greek myth and stories, but what is so fantastic about his take on them is that Pak realises that the stories themselves are often simply funny. There is a tendency to solemnise anything old. My wife's former choir director conducts Palestrina at about double the normal pace. His reasoning is that other conductors simply get the pace wrong; centuries of thinking of Palestrina as classic and religious have caused conductors to gradually slow down the pacing, because they think that's how anything classic or religious is supposed to sound. Greek myths and stories often suffer the same fate. Because they're about gods and are written in an old language, they are told with great solemnity as classic stories with deep insights.

Greg Pak does to Hercules what my wife's choir director does to Palestrina. He scrapes of the barnicles of solemnity and returns the story to its former, brisk pace. Hercules represents everything the archaic Greeks loved about themselves: he's a hard drinking, womanizing warrior. This story has no real plot, as many of the stories of Hercules has no plot. Instead, we see a number of Hercules', erm, feats. We hear the story of how he tricked Atlas into taking back his curse of holding up the heavens by pretending he needed to fix his cloak. The image of Atlas, holding up the stars, with the disappointed speech bubble, "Tch", is hilarious. We find out that he tricked Namora, the queen of Atlantis, into kissing him in issue #111, by pretending he was drowning. Rather than get angry, Namora of course propositions him.

All of Hercules' latest adventures are cast against the backdrop of Cho's kidnapping by the Amazons. They want him to sire the next generation of Amazons, you see, which Cho thinks is great. Of course, Hercules also thinks this is great, since he wants his companion to share in the fun. The one catch, though, is that they plan to kill him afterwards, which is somewhat less great. The amazons are dressed somewhere between Greek goddesses and go-go dancers and have rocket launchers, which all Amazons certainly would have had, if the ancient Greeks had known about rocket launchers. Hercules is unconcerned, because he's pretty sure Cho can take care of himself, but decides to rescue him anyway, more because it would probably be fun than because he is worried. And then Namor shows up, and he's mad, which makes sense, since Namor's always mad.

There's also some clever use of Greek in the book that I'm wondering if Pak didn't use it to slip some of his jokes past his editors. Apparently the Amazons stole Cho because they believe that he is Hercules' eromenos. Cho denies this vehemently, while the Amazon explains that it's "perfectly normal" and "none of her business". This is actually a rather complex joke about Greek sex. Homosexual relationships in Greece at the time were usually asymmetrical, in which one older man, the erastes, had a passive younger partner (often an adolescent), the eromenos. The eromenos, however, wasn't supposed to discuss his affair, as he isn't supposed to enjoy being passive, so Cho's denial of the affair is perfectly expected behaviour for an eromenos. Since an eromenos is supposed to deny the affair, Cho has no way of persuading the Amazon that he isn't actually Hercules' eromenos, which he finds incredibly frustrating. Pak is mixing scholarly debate about the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus with "not that there's anything wrong with that" jokes from shows like Seinfeld. It's a very clever bit of humour, and I have no idea how Pak would have gotten this past his editors unless they had no idea what an eromenos was.

The scene with Ares and the beginning is also laugh-out-loud funny. He's sitting in a diner, listening to women talk about how sexy Hercules is and how revolting Ares is. Ares, of course, hates his half-brother, and simply sits there and stews. The sight of the god of war, sitting in a diner, fuming about how sexy his brother is, is brilliant and wickedly funny. Oeming and Pak have done a great job of recreating the character of Ares in his proper glory, the god of war, and I am excited to see him back in this book. He comes across both as brilliant and ruthless, which in some contexts makes him incredibly scary and in others makes him simply hilarious. One of the best things about this scene is that it reminds us that often the gods were jealous of heroes like Hercules partly because they were so frickin' annoying. Hubris or arrogance, the tragic flaw of all heroes according to Aristotle, can sometimes simply be the result of being more attractive than one of the gods. Sometimes hubris can consist of shaking one's fist at the gods like Oilean Ajax. Other times, it can just be the result of out-sexying Ares in a winking photograph signed "Love thee, silly". Here we see an example of the latter.

Incredible Hercules #121 is a fantastic book. It has explosions and jets and a submarine and scuba gear and wrestling and multi-variable calculus and lava and a jealous king and a medusa with her snakes in a pony-tail and just about everything else that Pak can think to throw into the adventure. Somehow he manages to include all of this without ever losing control of the story or losing control of his characters. Instead the book has the same sense of amoral fun that permeated Greek myth. Gods fight. Gods get laid. Were you expecting insights?

A-

Robin #178 Review

2008-09-18T12:28:00.000-07:00

Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciller: Freddie Williams II

The publication of Robin comics continues at breakneck speed. This is the fourth Robin comic I've reviewed since I started this site. To compare, I have only reviewed one comic of either Fantastic Four or Final Crisis. I'm not entirely sure what is driving the bi-weekly publication of this comic, but the rush is beginning to show somewhat. The last four issues have become progressively weaker and weaker, beginning with the excellent Robin #175, in which Robin realises he may need to take down Batman and leading into the slower, less focussed story concerning whether or not Robin will become Batman's replacement.

What is curious about this issue is that it is starting to show the cracks in the Batman premise, cracks which the franchise generally (and wisely) covers up. Batman is, at the end of the day, a vigilante, who strives to create fear in the criminals of Gotham City, a city so corrupt that no legitimate means can be found to fight the crime. Even the police commissioner and the former (and now insane) district attorney are willing to condone his methods because of the depth of the corruption. Now that Batman has retired at the end of the R.I.P. story, a war is beginning to brew among the gangs, this time started by corrupt police hoping to use the war to advance their own agenda. In the middle of this gang war, one of the gangs tries to recruit a young boy into their gang, and Robin defends the boy by beating them up.

Of course, they come back to recruit the boy again, leading to a rather interesting conversation with Ragman who, quite rightly it seems, believes that Robin can't actually protect the boy from the gangs, since they'll just come back the second Robin leaves. This is quite a reasonable objection to Robin's methods. How exactly does he think he can prevent gang violence in the city by dressing up as a bird and beating up criminals? Even when he uses Tim Drake's detective skills, it would seem that the desperate people in a city need, well, help. For some strange reason, things like poverty fail to get even a single mention in this issue. One would think that it would at least occur to Robin that maybe his methods can't actually stop youth violence in the city, and perhaps something other than a costumed vigilante or brilliant detective might be the solution to this boy's problems. I realise the city is corrupt, but did it even occur to him to call a social worker? Or one of the police that isn't corrupt?

This lack of any reflection on Robin's part on the social or economic factors in causing crime or any consideration of non-violent solutions is especially strange given that the vast majority of this issue includes Robin trying to figure out his purpose and how he can stop gang violence. The only alternative to his "putting out brushfires" through isolated bullying that he considers seriously is Jason Todd's alternative of violently uniting all of the gangs. Even Ragman just talks about "choosing between evils", as though the only other option is something like Jason's. It is a little jarring to have Robin spend an entire issue in self-doubt without ever doubting the efficacy of private violence per se. By the end of the issue, it appears that Robin has decided that it is time for him to become Batman or at least to replace his role. However, as a reader, I just wanted him to call Children's Aid.

There are some questions that a comic book like Batman or any book in that franchise simply can't ask, and one of them is whether or not Batman's vigilantism could really improve a city like Gotham. It simply has to assume that it can or provide some quick explanation of why the city really needs is a costumed crime fighter, or else there is no story. By bringing in a street kid being pushed around by various gangs, Robin #178 takes material from serious real world problems and provides a comic book solution. By having Robin spend an entire issue in self-doubt, it asks a question it can't afford to ask. By having Robin not even consider non-violent solutions, it accidently reveals that Robin doesn't have an answer.

C+

Secret Invasion #6 Review

2008-09-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciller: Leinil Francis Yu

Why am I still reading this comic? I've been reading comics for so long that I've always tried to get myself involved in their "major events" every summer. I was so excited about Secret Invasion that I even told my non-comic friends about how exciting it was going to be, leading to the puzzled looks people get when they try to explain any comic book story to a non-fan (though, admittedly, they looked less puzzled than when I tried to explain Infinite Crisis a few years ago). However, Secret Invasion continues to be one of the most disappointing comic books I have ever read. It is boring, repetitive, clichéd, and mean-spirited. It had one good issue, and then has completely petered out in a way that I genuinely didn't believe was possible.

Brian Michael Bendis has convinced me that he has absolutely no idea how to pace a story. At the end of Issue #3, Nick Fury and his new Howling Commandos showed up. At the end of Issue #4, Thor showed up. In this issue, issue #6, they all show up again. The reason they all show up again is that no time has elapsed in New York in three issues. That's right. The reason we have a repeat of the introduction of these characters, this time narrated by the Hood and his villains, is that Bendis's New York story has been looping for three straight issues now. He is literally repeating scenes so as to ensure that the story is not moved forward. I joked in my review of the last issue that the entire invasion would be over in less than twenty-four hours. I was wrong. This comic is actually developing so slowly that it is going backwards in time. It is as though this comic accidentally got crossed with the script of Memento. I have never seen a comic story so badly developed or paced before.

Since the introduction of softcover collections, decompression has become a problem in comics. Rather than writing to the issue, the author writes to the collection. As a result, one finds stories that feel quite slow when read on a month-to-month basis, but that read rather well in a six-part story. For Bendis's Ultimate Spider-man book, he has actually used this decompression quite successfully. Rather than simply develop the story, he has taken time out to develop characters in a way that has made that story quite successful. However, this book is the flipside of decompression. There really aren't any great character moments and the ones that exist tend to be dreadful, turning everyone into the same angry killer. Instead, all of that extra time is spent recapping what happened in previous issues. It has become apparent that Bendis simply cannot tell a fast-paced story, and simply can't stop himself from packing every issue with filler.

At least it looks like something will happen next issue. Maybe. Everyone stands around in Central Park at the end of the issues and threatens each other for six pages. That sounds like something will happen. We get two splashes at the end, one of which includes a big fight, so that's good. Wasp is some kind of traitor who somehow bypassed Reed Richard's new detection device. Maybe it's really her? Either way, I'm sure we'll find out at some point in issue #8. The big final page seems to have two Spider-Men on it, which could be an interesting clue, especially since the cover of next issue seems to have Spider-Man and Wolverine fighting. There are hints of some progression, and that is something positive, but the story is now 75% finished, so it is too late at this point. They have two issues for a fight that has been accumulating since Issue #3, and they have yet to rescue any of the kidnapped heroes except Mr. Fantastic.

One other thing that needs to be mentioned is that somehow this issue fails to incorporate the death of Kly'bn in Incredible Hercules #120. In that issue, Hercules and the rest of his God Squad killed Kly'bn, the god whom the Skrulls in Secret Invasion worship. The book that they are always referring to is destroyed and all of the Skrulls are disheartened. This is an interesting omission, since it would seem directly relevant. It seems that in spinning its wheels, Secret Invasion has even fallen behind its crossovers in the storyline. There seems to have been some sort of editorial gaffe here in keeping the stories straight. When Incredible Hercules actually progressed the Secret Invasion story, I was very happy, and I was disappointed here to see it ignored.

I'm going to finish this story, if only because I've already read three-quarters of it and want to see it end. It is a real shame to see such a great premise go to waste.

C-

Detective Comics #848 Review

2008-09-10T12:43:00.001-07:00

Writer: Paul Dini
Penciller: Dustin Nguyen

Eww! Ewwww! Wait, I'm not sure that's quite sufficient. Ewwwwwwww! There really aren't enough "w"'s available to describe the disgusting ending to Detective Comics #848. When I read the first issue of the story, "Heart of Hush", I kind of expected that it was, well, a metaphor. I didn't actually expect him to go around cutting out people's hearts. And, okay, cutting out people's hearts is pretty gross, but cutting out people's hearts and leaving them alive strapped to rusty machines and tubes is just demented. It's even more demented than the standard "Batman's rogue gallery is demented" demented. Instead, it's more the "What is wrong with Paul Dini and why does he think we want to read this demented story?" demented. Dini manages in this story to cross the line from telling a story about crazy people to adding shock value to his book by brutally mutilating major characters. I realise people get mutilated in comics all the time, but it is usually, at worst, an arm or something. There are also a lot of gory deaths (Johns writes a lot of these), but this is a gory non-death, and it's revolting.

This issue almost makes me want to go back and rewrite my Captain America #41 review. In that review, I criticized Brubaker for leaving Sharon Carter as a tormented prisoner for seventeen straight issues before finally being stabbed so as to lose her baby. I criticised that book for falling into the "Women in Refrigerators" cliché of inflicting violence on the female love interest of the hero for the sake of creating drama. However much I thought (and think) that Brubaker crossed the line in that issue, I want to add the following line: "True, but at least he didn't have her heart cut out and leave her strapped to a gurney with tubes coming out of her chest". Brubaker at least had the good sense not to invent new ways of tormenting and mutilating his major female characters. I underestimated just how far authors were willing to go in brutalizing female characters in order to shock their readers. For that, Mr. Brubaker, I am sorry.

I realise that Detective Comics #848 is a part of a genre, epitomised by such horror fims as Hellraiser and Nightmare on Elm Street, in which part of the, erm, fun is to see the new ways in which the villain is able to mutliate his victim. However, while I'm not a fan of this genre of film, at least half of what is impressive about these films is the use of special effects surrounding the violence. There's a kind of craftsmanship to creating the most disgusting-looking zombie or mutiliating someone in a way that no one has ever tried before and making it look like you're not simply blowing up a shopping mall dummy. Magazines like Fangoria are good examples of the way that these special effects themselves can be impressive, albeit in a not-especially-edifying way. However, since this is a comic book, none of this craftsmanship applies. There is no special-effects challenge involved here. New forms of mutilation are supposed to be interesting, just because they are "freaky".

I'm not really sure what else to say about this issue. I had intended to say something clever and funny about the use of asterisks in speech bubbles when characters are killed, but the ending of the issue kind of made me forget about that. In the last issue, I was impressed that Hush was being turned from a lame and confusing villain into a real threat and given real psychological depth. This issue continues that trend, though Dini seems to be intending to turn Hush into Batman's version of Jack the Ripper. I think I liked the lame version better. Although Batman's villains are insane, the Batman stories usually manage to stay on the level of the surreal. The stories are just kooky enough that one has enough metaphor to counterbalance the violence. However, a physician villain using medical scalpels will always be too literal. The violence of abused medicine will always be too close to reality to ever be anything more than simply grisly violence.

I know I'm supposed to be desensitized to this stuff by now. I grew up on horror films. One might say, "Reviewers are supposed to be neutral to revulsion and just praise the author for how well they produce it". Pfft. Whatever. Kudos to me for not being desensitized. Shame on Dini for expecting me to be.

D

Nightwing #148 Review

2008-09-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

Writer: Peter J. Tomasi
Penciller: Rags Morales

After last issue's extremely dubious advertisement as a crossover to the R.I.P. storyline, Nightwing #148 finally delivers on its promise of being a tie-in. However, it is not a tie-in in the way one might expect. Like Robin #177, this issue takes place after the events of R.I.P., in which the climactic events of R.I.P. have already taken place and Bruce Wayne has since retired as Batman. This has a curious result, and one that I'm not sure is such a good thing: it in effect spoils the ending of R.I.P. True, we do not know what exactly happened at Arkham Asylum, but now we know that just about every major character comes out of R.I.P. alive, although perhaps not unscathed. Robin survived, as we know from his book, and now we discover that both Nightwing and Alfred also survived the encounter. While one can never really expect a major character will get killed, Dick Grayson's fate has always been up in the air ever since we learned there was originally a plan to kill him off in Infinite Crisis #7. If anyone was going to be killed or seriously hurt, it was him (well, maybe Alfred). Now we know that they are both perfectly fine. No matter what happens in the rest of R.I.P., some of the tension of the story has been irrevocably lost, and that is not a positive thing.

This book does, though, reveal that something indeed may be up with Alfred in R.I.P. At one point in this book, Dick Grayson asks Alfred, "Nnn--when did you learn arthroscopic surgery?". That's a really good question, and Alfred's answer of "osmosis" doesn't really sound plausible. If Alfred is a doctor, who is he really? I doubt he is Thomas Wayne, but there is some implication here that he is a lot more than simply the former actor turned butler that we all believed he is. One positive element of this book is that, while it spoils some of the ending of R.I.P., it actually has the effect of adding to some of its mystery. Aside from Alfred's strange and sudden medical skills, there is also a very interesting scene where he washes the blood from his hands and for some reason splashes a little on the case holding Jason Todd's old uniform. Clearly, something happened involving Alfred in R.I.P., and this book is quite clever in giving us some hints but really no answers.

In terms of the story itself, this book has several promising elements. It is an interesting story in which Nightwing has to protect Carol, Two-Face's old flame, from people trying to kill her because she is a witness in a crime. Moreover, somehow the crime itself is becoming more interesting. The potential assassins have somehow gotten a hold on Scarecrow's fear serum, using it to cause Nightwing to start hallucinating. If they have access to that, who are they involved with really? The story has been suitably vague and in leaving it a mystery. If the story somehow involves Scarecrow, could Hush also be involved? They are working together over in Detective Comics. At this point, we don't know, but the conspiracy behind the attempted assassination has moved from being a plot device to a real mystery, and the book is stronger for it.

Unfortunately, Don Kramer is no longer the penciller on Nightwing. His visuals were one of the best things about the last issue, as he draws some of the best action sequences I have ever seen. Instead, Morales' strength seems to be his character elements, writing suitably ambiguous expressions on people's face, so that we aren't sure, for example, what Alfred is thinking or what Carol thinks of Nightwing. There is a nice moment in the book when Nightwing leaves Carol, yet again, in the safehouse (located at the Cloisters in Manhattan, which I found rather a clever idea). She asks him if he promises to come back, almost like a little kid might ask a parent when feeling a little insecure. It is a nice moment, because it reminds us that normal people don't actually encounter superheroes on a regular basis, and she is so impressed with him, she's starting to regress a little. I wonder if perhaps she won't become a love interest for Nightwing in the long run, which would be interesting since Two-Face is still in love with her. There's a lot of potential to this character, and I hope we see her again. However, because Rags isn't quite as strong in drawing action as Kramer, there is more dialogue than action in this book, and I miss the pacing of the last issue.

Overall, then, this is a solid issue of Nightwing. There are a lot of nice character moments and, despite spoiling some of the outcome of R.I.P, it also finds a way to add to the mystery.

B

Buffy: Season Eight #18 Review

2008-09-04T17:59:00.000-07:00

Writer: Joss Whedon
Penciller: Karl Moline

Spoiler Alert

With its third part, the episode "The Time of your Life" is finally starting to come together. What is most interesting about this comic is that Joss Whedon has quite successfully merged his comic book, Fray, with the Buffy universe at large. Several elements are coming together here. At the end of Season Seven, Buffy turned all potential slayers into true slayers, thus changing the world. Moreover, by doing so, she changed her own fate, or rather, removed it. Buffy had been the "one girl, in all the world, a chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of evil". By imbuing the other potential slayers with her power, she removed her own destiny. The final line of the television show was Dawn asking Buffy, "Yeah, Buffy, what are we going to do now?". Buffy lets out a small smile, indicating that, for the first time since she was called to be the Slayer, she was able to ask herself that question.

The importance of the current story line is that it appears, somehow, that Buffy failed. In Fray's future, there is only one slayer again. Most fans had assumed that Fray was simply out of continuity, and because it was published before the final episode was aired, it had just not taken the finale of the series into account. Either Joss Whedon knew what he was planning all along, or he made it seem like he did. Instead, the existence of Fray indicates that somehow Buffy failed, and quickly. All the history books that Buffy reads at the beginning of Issue #18 include no mention of her army of slayers, indicating that her army was either wiped out or depowered before anyone could even notice.

How did all of this happen? Curiously, this issue indicates that somehow Buffy is probably responsible. The Willow of the future claims to have very little magic power left, which may or may not be true. Moreover, whatever she told Fray about Buffy convinced Fray that Buffy needed to be killed or at least captured. The Willow of the future is also apparently conspiring to bring someone back into the past, possibly to change whatever would happen, so that magic will not be eliminated from the world. Either Buffy will lose to this group, Twilight, or somehow she imbalanced magic enough that it will somehow be destroyed.

We are beginning to see some of the complexities of the themes of this season. Buffy has created an entire army of slayers, and humanity has simply had enough. We have seen humanity try to fight magic before, with the disastrous Initiative from season four. Twilight is humanity's response to the continuing threat from magic and from the fairly tale world that continues to press against its borders. One curious thing about the themes of this season is that it's not entirely clear who is in the right. Sure, Twilight is creepy, but when presented with the possibility that humanity might be out to stop magic, Buffy's response is to simply say, "Bring them on".

There is an interesting character moment in which we realise Buffy may have lost her compass. When she and Fray are watching vampires attack a group of citizens, Buffy doesn't leap into battle, but instead plans to watch them kill the humans so they can follow them back to their base. At first, I tried to rationalise this scene, thinking that perhaps Buffy was about to discuss a plan in which Fray stops the vampires while she follows the driver back to their base, but I'm not so sure. This is a new Buffy, not the one who foolishly ran off to save innocent civilians while Drusilla killed Kendra and put Willow in the hospital, falling for the same ruse "every single time!" as Angelus mocked. Looking carefully over the season, there have been a few moments where Buffy's utilitarian reasoning has arisen. She has been robbing banks in order to finance her army. She has put some of her soldiers into jeopardy by turning them into her decoys, one of whom was killed. This issue, she is content to simply watch people die for the greater good. Her reasoning has started to resemble some of the darker reasoning of the Watchers during the television show, which makes sense given that this has basically become her role relative to the newer slayers. Future Willow may not have needed to invent very much in order to turn Fray against Buffy.

As a whole, then, the arc of this story is very impressive. It is good to see this comic turn from a series of interesting events to a genuine story with important themes that Whedon wants to tell. In its particular moments, some of the scenes are very funny. Dawn's comment to Lorelahn is laugh-out-loud funny when she asks him whether or not he was caught in a "legend blender". The face-off between Harth and Gunther is suitably creepy, as the two of them realise that they are in a stalemate, and Gunther shows Harth that maybe he isn't the biggest creep in town. The future Willow is starting to be developed well, and she is not the dark Willow of season six nor the vampire Willow of season three. Instead, she is simply a sad figure, almost like a repository of dark and mostly forgotten memories. She looks like an old, broken doll, with cracks on her porcelain forehead and in a tattered, dirty dress. Her comment that she "earned" her title as "madwoman" indicates that somehow she may be responsible for her own misery.

This is the best issue yet of the series, even though nothing much happens in it. Instead, Whedon is carefully drawing out his themes and subtly tying together his narrative, leaving the reader to realise that something very, very bad is about to happen, and that it might be the fault of our favourite characters.

A-

Angel: After the Fall #12 Review

2008-09-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Lynch
Pencillers: Stephen Mooney and Nick Runge

Spoiler Alert

In every episode of Buffy and Angel, there is a scene where either Giles or Wesley explained, at length, what was happening in the current episode. These exposition scenes tended to occur in the library, the magic shop, or the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. After the Fall #12 is the exposition scene for the After the Fall story. There is nothing remotely wrong with that. Every story requires an exposition scene, and this one is very strong. Taken out of context, however, an exposition issue is a very odd thing. Normally, exposition is immediately framed on either side by drama or action. Here, with a month break on either side, the exposition feels like I'm taking a break from the story to read a very long summary. It's an interesting experience, and I suppose a necessary one, but this doesn't really read like a comic book so much as a university lecture. There is literally more text on every page here than there is in the average Bendis comic.

However, this book shows that Lynch really does know what he is doing with the Angel franchise. While Season Five of the television show was in a lot of ways the strongest of the show, it did seem to veer away from the original premise of Angel. The Shanshu prophecy said that Angel was to play an important role in the apocalypse, and Wolfram & Hart spent much of its time trying to corrupt Angel so that he would be on their side when the apocalypse came. However, in the penultimate episode of the series, Angel signed away his place in the prophecy, making it feel like the Shanshu prophecy was somehow a loose thread that the writers couldn't figure out how to work into the chosen ending for the show.

Lynch takes the prophecy and makes it center stage again. Not only that, but his exposition makes the prophecy retroactively at the heart of everything Wolfram & Hart has been doing, not only in After the Fall, but in Season Five as well. We find that everything from sending Angel to hell to turning Gunn into a vampire has all been a part of a continuing plan to corrupt Angel, one which, if the prophecy given to Angel at the end is to be believed, will be successful. The two-page splash in which the prophecy is revealed to Angel is a phenomenal moment, one in which Angel realises that the Shanshu prophecy is not simply a source of hope but a potential source of horror. Angel sees himself with a sword having brutally killed what looks like everyone, and decides that maybe he would be better off succumbing to the wounds he suffered last issue.

Prophecy has often been a point of focus for the Angel television show, and one of the things it captured nicely is that prophecies can be often manipulated or deceptive. We learned this lesson best in season three, where Wesley learned not to listen to talking hamburgers. Lynch wisely recalls this moment, and is aware of all those ambiguities concerning prophecies. There literally isn't a single prophecy here that might not be something else. Gunn's putative prophecies were apparently actually from Wolfram & Hart. Cordelia may or may not be an illusion, a manifestation of good or a manifestation of evil. Even the last splash page has an untrustworthy source, as it comes from Wolfram & Hart through Wesley. It is genuinely unclear here whether or not Angel should succumb to his wounds or not, and this ambiguity is deliberate on Lynch's part. While everything is revealed in this issue, in another way, nothing is revealed. We have a series of explanations that may or may not be true and a new set of prophecies that may or may not be lies. This has the effect of refocussing the book on these new prophecies until we find out what is really going on: it gives us all the questions.

This isn't the strongest issue of After the Fall. In a sense, there's no way it could be. The exposition scene is never the strongest scene in any story. However, this is an exceptionally well done exposition scene, and shows that Brian Lynch has complete control over the themes and ideas of the television show. We've taken a minute out of the action to find out what is going on, and that is a very worthwhile thing. Next issue, with all of the questions and ideas in mind, the story will be even more meaningful.

B+

Secret Six #1 Review

2008-09-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Writer: Gail Simone
Penciller: Nicola Scott

Three years ago, DC Comics made the wise decision of having four mini-series that led into its summer crossover, Infinite Crisis. While two of them were pretty forgettable (The Rann-Thanagar War and Day of Vengeance), two of them were a couple of the most interesting mini-series DC has ever produced, The OMAC Project and Villains United. The latter story was about six otherwise C-list villains recruited by Lex Luthor to stop Alexander Luthor, Jr.'s plan to impersonate him and unite the villains of the DC universe in an assault against the heroes. This story was very well received, and has since spawned two mini-series, both entitled "Secret Six", following the adventures of his group of third-rate villains.

It can be very hard to write a story based on the lesser-known characters of the DC Universe. After all, they are probably lesser-known for a reason. Well-known characters tend to tap into some sort of psychology of archetypes that enables multiple writers to tell meaningful stories about them for decades. A few years ago, Grant Morrison did something similar with Seven Soldiers of Victory in which he used or created seven lesser known heroes of the DC universe. Gail Simone has done the same thing very successfully with the villains. The characters come across as well-drawn, quirky and ultimately very believable despite their obviously disordered personalities. In a way, Secret Six is the villainous answer to Seven Soldiers, showing that a stong author can write stories using any material, and even find ways to make their stories stronger using the absurdity of the material.

The Secret Six, who are now reduced to four after the deaths of Parademon and Knockout, are hired in this story to kill Tarantula, a prominent character from the Nightwing comics who dated Nightwing until she murdered Blockbuster and was sent to prison. She stole something the size of a card, and a creepy villain who lives in a box named Junior wants it back. Huntress, who apparently dated Catman in the Birds of Prey comic, tries to warn him off of the "job" under the orders of Batman.

However, the plot is not what makes this comic book so interesting. Simone's strength is not really with her plots but with her characterization. Her characterization of Catman is especially strong, and he has always been her most well-written character. If anyone is a C-lister, it is him. He is a knockoff of a knockoff, somehow blending the names of "Batman" and "Catwoman" just because at some point someone at DC thought that there should be a male version of the latter. Part of what makes him so interesting is precisely that he is so third rate. He wants to go "straight", but has no idea how to do it. His retirement to live with the lions failed miserably after he murdered several hunters. Now, he is still working as an assassin, musing that he would like to reform, but with no real plan of how to do so. He and Deadshot are witnesses to a liquor store robbery, where they oscillate back-and-forth on how to handle it. At first, they simply ignore the robbers, then they decide to rob the liquor store themselves. On realising that the robbers are likely to kill the witnesses after they leave, Catman goes in and "saves the day" by beating the original robbers brutally and scarring them like Zorro. His confusion about how a hero is supposed to behave is so well written that one can hardly help but laugh when Deadshot says, "Yep, guess the Justice League oughtta be callin' any day now, General Glory".

The other characters are superbly drawn as well. Deadshot is a dangerous killer with no conscience. He's not really a psychopath, but more of a man with no moral compass of any kind. Ragdoll is truly creepy, and Simone does a great job of blending his insecurity and goofiness with his brutality. Scandal, the daughter of Vandal Savage, spends most of the issue drunk after the death of Knockout (which happened in the Death of the New Gods story), but when the rest of the Secret Four snap her out of it by hiring a stripper dressed as her former lover, she doesn't get angry as one might expect, but appreciates the gesture and turns back into the cold and effective leader she was in the former books. There is also a nice moment with Knockout and Scandal, where we are reminded that Knockout is a goddess and may not really be dead, keeping the book in continuity with what is happening over in Final Crisis without overwhelming the story or turning it into a crossover.

The villain, too, is suitably scary. In a story about villains, the antagonist villain has to be even more...villainous. When killing an insubordinate lackey, Junior is not content so simply kill the lackey, but horrify him and his family. He even kills his dog. When your main characters are villains, having a dark, barely human creature living in a box as the villain is suitably terrifying and I look forward to seeing what Simone plans to do with the rest of the story.

This book doesn't have the same sense of fun with evil that Thunderbolt's current issue has, nor does it have the same sense of malice as Final Crisis. Instead, Simone very carefully and very successfully tells a story about villains without necessarily having any overwhelming theme about evil. She takes these characters very seriously, and has a lot to say about them, their characters and their relationships. We see Catman's futile attempt to reform and the confusion of the other members as to what it is they really want or what will really satisfy them. I'm not sure if this is intended to be an ongoing series (there's no "1 of 6" anywhere on the title), and I am very interested to see what Simone will do with these characters in the long run.

B+

Justice Society of America #18 Review

2008-08-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciller: Dale Eaglesham

This issue continues the "One World, Under Gog" story line, but unfortunately lacks the charm or wonder of the previous issue. One major reason is that the story is told through the eyes of Hawkman, who I think was trying to come across as a tough soldier, but really came across as a dangerous psychopath. As in previous issues, the JSA are in Africa, and Gog, who last issue wiped out most of the disease in Africa, in this issue he intends to wipe out war. He focuses on fighting the Union of Congolese Patriots, an actual group well known for their use of child soldiers and killing of peacekeepers. The JSA and Gog fight them, one JSA member is killed and then Gog turns the UCP members into trees.

This is actually a very strange issue. I think the Johns is trying to say something about war, but I'm not sure what he's trying to get at, and don't like what I think I understood. First, we have a very long debate between Hawkman and Jay Garrick, in which Garrick has to stop Hawkman from killing an unconscious UCP soldier. Sorry? I find it a bit unbelievable that the JSA would include even a single member that would be capable of killing an unconscious prisoner of war. What is even more puzzling is that Garrick doesn't persuade him using the argument that prisoners of war shouldn't be executed. Instead, Garrick argues that the JSA is in Africa representing the United States, and can't be seen to be killing people. One would think that any member of an orgainisation such as the JSA would be immediately expelled if they were ever to seriously consider killing an unconscious prisoner.

The story goes on in this strange way. Eventually Gog turns the UCP soldiers into trees, which, as Superman points out, is tantamount to killing them. Rather than ask Gog to turn them back, however, Hawkman actually implicitly threatens Garrick and Scott who want to turn them back. This is bizarre. Not only is Hawkman a potential war criminal, but he is an insubordinate one. What is going on here? Then, suddenly, David Reid, the newest JSA member, yells out that the UCP soldiers are like monsters and can't be treated like everyone else, but is killed before he can kill more than a few UCP members. At that point, Gog, who seems to have the ability to resurrect people, if only as his stewards, turns him into Magog from the Kingdom Come story, only with no pants.

The debate among the JSA is so bizarre because it would seem these issues were settled years ago with the Geneva Convention. The JSA, which is supposed to be a superhero society, is seen to want to behave in ways that would have any American soldier courtmartialed. Finally, when Gog starts ending violence by turning people into trees, barely gets any sort of negative reaction from the JSA. The issue is narrated by Hawkman, who wants to kill the prisoners and cut down even the trees, who sounds only slightly less insane than Moore's Rorschach. Moreover, very little context is given as to what is a real world conflict, giving the reader no sense of why the JSA might suddenly have turned into costumed vigilantes out to kill African soldiers except that they are "the bad guys".

One serious problem here is that the sense that somehow their battle might be so desperate it warrants killing is completely undermined by the fact that they are a group of superheroes fighting a group of normal human beings. No matter how bad they might be, the JSA has already won the battle, just by showing up. They have Superman, for goodness sake, and he could just inhale and blow them all away if they wanted to. There is a complete implausibility in even calling it a war when it is superheroes against normal people. Moreover, they have a god with them who is nearly omnipotent. This isn't a war in any meaningful sense, and the JSA just comes across as killers.

Some of the ramifications of Gog's previous gifts are starting to come to light. There is a nice scene in which Damage uses a Japanese-English dictionary to ask Judomaster on a date, which he now feels he can do because his face is no longer mutilated. Doctor Midnite is realising that he has lost many of his powers when he regained his sight, and Citizen Steel is so desperate for a miracle, he has become almost oblivious to what is going on around him. These are some good character moments that recall the power of the previous issue, but ultimately, they cannot redeem it from the bizarre mess concerning the UCP.

I'm honestly not sure what happened here. When a giant million-year-old god starts rampaging about, turning people into trees, one would think the response of Earth would be to seriously worry about what he was planning to do with his power. Instead, the JSA decides to join in the killing. This is just a weird issue, and I hope it can be forgotten very quickly now that Magog has appeared on the scene.

C+

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D #1 Review

2008-08-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Writer: Grant Morrison
Penciller Doug Mahnke

With Superman Beyond, we see the flipside of Grant Morrison's writing. Two weeks ago, he produced one of the best comic books in recent years, Final Crisis #3. Superman Beyond, however, is a book of loopy and impenetrable madness. Sometimes Morrison gets so engrossed in his own love of language that he simply stops making any sense, and that tendency is epitomised in this book that has a lot of interesting ideas, but gets lost in its own opacity. This book doesn't make sense in the way that Heidigger doesn't make any sense. The words mean nothing, while the author clearly thinks they do, and the reader is left having simply no idea what the author is talking about. I love Morisson's writing, partly because he is so ambitious, but one of the problems with ambition is that, when it fails, it fails spectacularly.

This book introduces what should be termed Morrison's metaphysics of the Monitors. The Monitors, it seems, are in fact extremely large. When we saw the Monitors looking at the orerary in Final Crisis #1, it appeared that they were looking at some sort of image of the Multiverse. Not so. Apparently, in fact, the Monitors somehow exist outside of the multiverse, to whom the entire multiverse is about the size of a building. The Monitors started as completely indistinct, but the introduction of narrative in the Multiverse, which formed itself, has changed them substantially. Instead of being an abstract "Monitor", they instead formed an entire civilization of distinct Monitors including a very evil one named Mandrakk who was trapped inside of a sepulchre. Now, Mandrakk has escaped, and is hunting the Monitor Zillo Valla, using nano-technology, which for Monitors, are immensely powerful ships. They chase Valla and the four Supermen she has recruited (including Superman, Ultra-Man, the Overman and Dr. Manhattan) through several alternate Eaths before they reach Limbo, a land ruled by a jester with glasses named Merryman.

In Limbo, nothing happens, except there is a library with a single book that is infinitely heavy because it was written by a monkey and contains every possible book (presumably it was written by one of the infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters). Superman reads the book and finds out the history of the Monitors, but before they can escape from Limbo. They learn that the universe was formed in the following way:

"Monitor makes a concept to contain the plan! Monitor examination reveals within terrifiying, unforeseen complexities and contradictions! Magnification reveals a structure of infinitesimal rippling manifolds upon whose surface intricate germlike processes thrive and multiply!"

Does that make sense to anyone? I don't think so. It's just nonsense. What I think Morrison may be trying to get at here is the postmodern idea of order imposed on chaos through narrative, however, when placed inside of a narrative, it just becomes gibberish. The stuff about stories an infinitely heavy book containing an infinite number of stories (which is just one story) is just all over the place in terms of what he is trying to say (all happening, of course, in Limbo, in which nothing ever happens. i.e. there is no narrative). In Superman Beyond, Morrison has lost complete control of his medium.

There is a real danger here in what Morrison is doing, as well, for the entire DC universe. When the New Gods were introduced, they were intended to be immensely powerful gods, who were to the DC universe what gods are in a polytheistic culture. Monitors appear to be taking on something of this role as well, being so large that the entire multiverse fits in a large jar. Such immensely powerful characters have never really fit well in DC, and there has been a lot of difficulty figuring out what to do with them. Now there appear to be a whole new class of gods, who are somehow connected to the universe (and to Superman), and now they will have the problem of trying to fit these incredibly powerful beings in. The problem with characters of this level of power is that they have a tendency to overwhelm the story, or, if they don't, render the stories implausible because they should overwhelm the story.

Something needs to be said about the 3D images as well. In general, I find 3D a lot of fun. However, in this book it doesn't work at all. One problem is that, given how difficult or rather impossible to follow this book is, it needs several readthroughs to make any sense. However, the 3D here would given anyone trying to do that a headache. Also, 3D using red and blue glasses works well if one's images include little actual red or blue. However, Superman's costume is red and blue, and just flashes back and forth when looking at it through the glasses. Also, for some reason the 3D work on this book is incomplete. It is sometimes 3D and sometimes not, which makes me think that somehow the book was never really finished. On some message boards, people were asking where they can get a 2D version, and I understand why.

Morrison has another issue to sort all of this out, and I hope he will, but right now, Superman Beyond is a huge mess. Morrison always has good ideas, and he clearly has put a lot of them into Superman beyond, but there is no sense of control here.

C+

Superman #679 Review

2008-08-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

Writer: James Robinson
Penciller: Renato Guedes

James Robinson has the unfortunate task of entering the Superman franchise right as Geoff Johns is writing some of the best Superman stories the book has ever seen over in Action Comics. He also has been tasked with writing about a lame villain, Atlas, when Johns is fleshing out the arch-nemesis Braniac over in the other book. However, not all comic books need to be monumental events. Sometimes, it is worthwhile just to write fun stories about Superman, and here Robinson is succeeding. In the last issue, Atlas was introduced, and he wasn't very interesting. However, in that issue, Superman wasn't very interesting either, and had almost no dialogue.

A lot of the problems with the last issue have been cleared up here, and Robinson is clearly having a lot of fun with the characters in the Superman family. The strange reference to Zatanna has been cleared up, and while the payoff is simply that Lois is jealous of the all-powerful super-magician in fishnets, the scene with her and Clark at breakfast is a nice moment. Superman is living is such a world of walking metaphors that it is actually a little refreshing to see Lois get a little jealous of one of them (of course, the one she should really be jealous of is Wonder Woman, seeing that Clark ends up married to her in about half of DC's possible futures). Robinson made a bit of a mistake in not giving us any of Superman's characterization until this issue, but here, he nails it.

The other characters are very interesting as well. Jimmy comes across, as usual, as somewhere between an insecure kid and a sharp investigative journalist. He spends his time between worrying about Superman losing the fight to Atlas and trying to figure out who the strange shadow (in a baseball cap?) is on the roof of a building. The relationship between Supergirl and Superman is developed, and we can really see their devotion to each other, both because they are family and because they are the last survivors of their planet. She rushes off to save him, and the two of them are so busy protecting each other, they almost get in each other's way. There is a really awesome moment in which we see Supergirl hanging out with her pet pride of...lions? Yes, lions. I guess when you are invulnerable you can have pet lions, and this is a really great idea. We know she loves cats, so having a pride of pet lions makes perfect sense. The funny thing is that from the looks on the lions face, it's not entirely clear what they think of her, but that's okay. Having a pet with contempt for you half of the time is part of the fun of having a cat.

There is also an interesting scene between Lana Lang and one of her minions at Lex Corp. DC has been trying to figure out to do with the third wheel of the Superman-Lois-Lana tricycle ever since Superman and Lois got married back in 1996, especially given the popularity of the character in the Smallville television show. Having her be the tough, corporate lady is an interesting choice, which makes some sense as she is the former first lady. Here we see that toughness as she stands up to her contemptuous minion and tries to protect Superman using her resources. Unfortunately, she is fired from Lex Corp in this issue in a not-especially-plausible contract dispute, so I hope they don't abandon what is an interesting direction for the character. However, the characterization here is very believable given her recent direction in the franchise.

Finally, of course, we have the introduction of Krypto to save the day at the end of the book. With this moment, Robinson abandons any pretense that this will be an epic Superman story, but that is all right. It is nice to see a master protected by his dog, and Krypto is a character who has always been potentially silly, but clearly represents something important to fans. When he was wiped out in order to make Superman the last Kryptonian in Crisis on Infinite Earths, so many fans rejected his annihilation that they simply refused to accept his removal as canon. This refusal to accept the canonicity of stories actually has come to be known as "Krypto-revisionism", named after the fan rebellion at the removal of this dog, and has been widely used in other instances of fan-rebellion, such as the rejection of Highlander 2. Krypto is, for whatever reason, an important part of the Superman mythos, and I am glad for it. One of the best things about this story is the way we see that Superman isn't alone, but is constantly surrounded by a family and even pets who care for him. I look forward to a Krypto story next issue. It's been a while.

The fight with Atlas is becoming interesting, despite having gone on for two issues now. Somehow, Atlas is super-strong and able to defeat Superman. This reminds me somewhat of the fight with Doomsday, in which a character that comes out of nowhere is the one who finally (apparently) kills Superman. I admit, despite really not liking the character last issue, this one left me intrigued as to who this character is, and I hope there is some explanation beyond the silly one from last issue.

Overall, then, this is a good book. It is not as strong or epic as Action Comics, but this book has finally found its stride. It is a nice, even occasionaly cute, adventure story about Superman. There's nothing wrong with that.

B

Thunderbolts #123 Review

2008-08-30T09:26:00.001-07:00

Writers: Christos N. Gage
Penciller: Fernando Blanco

Marvel's most disfunctional superhero team finally gets involved in the Secret Invasion by attacking the Skrulls in Washington. In doing so, they provide us with one of the most fun superhero comics to be written in recent years, and Gage shows us that he has complete understanding of the Thunderbolts franchise after only two issues. At the end of Secret Invasion #1, Captain Marvel attacked Thunderbolts Mountain, but instead of killing the Thunderbolts, Norman Osborn uses a little pop psychology to undermine his confidence. From the Captain Marvel comic, we know that te Skrull Captain Marvel's encoding didn't quite work, and he really believed he is Captain Marvel. Delivering a great line, "I know something about not being sure if you're really pink...or green", Osborn persuades him to instead attack his own Skrull allies.

One of the nice thing about Gage's run, as opposed to Ellis's run, is that Gage seems to be having a lot of fun with the idea of supervillains in charge, whereas Ellis's run sometimes came across as cynical and even a little mean spirited. Here, the characters are gleefully sociopathic, working together partly because they have to and partly because it's fun. Almost every character is completely off their rocker, but Gage has the remarkable ability to make is seem as though the team and even the effectiveness of the team make perfect sense. Osborn comes across as an incredibly effective leader, even (or especially) of madmen, whose broken psychology makes them easier to manipulate than ordinary people with complex desires. Pulling out an automatic rife, he declares "We're at war", and they head into battle.

The battle is, quite simply, hilarious. Penance of course inflicts pain on himself in order to destroy a Skrull ship. Osborne decides to ram one of the Skrull ships, which may not be the tactically most sound decision, but is certainly the most fun. Venom is dropped into a sea of Skrulls, and of course enjoys eating as many of them as he possibly can, but may end up eating some civilians as well. Bullseye acts like he's a little kid in an arcade game, and is happy for the chance to have an "unsupervised field trip" in which he can murder as many Skrulls (and even some of Osborn's troops) as possible. Everyone is utterly convinced that Swordsman's sister is a Skrull, but they let it pass because they are useful in the fight. Radioactive Man nearly explodes. Moonstone decides to betray humanity in exchange for power. Finally, Osborne sees a bunch of Spider Clones, and the maniacal Green Goblin laugh returns as he prepares to lose his mind again, which seems to happen on a regular basis.

While Grant Morisson is exploring the depths of evil and its meaning in Final Crisis, Gage here is examining the other side. He is making evil fun. Somehow, though, he manages to avoid the mean-spirited satire of books like Preacher or even Ellis's run, and instead manages to turn the chaotic nature of sociopaths into the premise for a truly manic glee. The madness of the Thunderbolts has been fully unleashed, and seeing each character rampaging about, doing more damage to the Skrulls than anyone else gives the same sense of fun that one has when destroying sandcastles or knocking over blocks. Somehow, this book isn't mean-spirited. Gage loves writing this book, and it comes across on every page.

I also want to compliment Blanco's art. He has a lot of fun drawing alien technology and high-tech backgrounds, and there is plenty of opportunity to do that here. He provides a real sense of the layout inside Osborne's ship, for example, and it comes across as a real place. The characters are well drawn, and the cackly look on Bullseye's face is classic. I have two little quibbles, though. Is Moonstone supposed to look completely naked from behind? I know her suit is white, but there is more than one scene where I had to do a bit of a double-take because the lighting makes it look like she's wearing no clothing. Also, Blanco seems a little uncomfortable with architecture, and even though they are fighting in a city, there are few buildings. In the large spreadpage, you'll notice that he carefully puts any buildings behind alien ships, while the most visible part of the ground is a field.

This is one of the best Thunderbolts comics in years. I can't remember enjoying one as much since the origin story of Radioactive Man a few years ago. Gage is having an absolute blast writing the characters and I am having just as much fun reading about them.

A-

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #2 Review

2008-08-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciller: Scott Kolins

While I wasn't very impressed with the first issue of Rogues' Revenge, this issue is much more interesting. Part of why it is so strong is that the apparent original premise, of the rogues seeking revenge for Inertia having "forced" them to kill Bart Allen plays no real role in this issue. That is fortunate, as that premise is really absurd and makes the characters seem like buffoons. Instead, this issue focuses on Libra's attempts to compel the Rogues to join his new Society of Supervillains, in this case by kidnapping the father of the apparent leader of the Rogues, Captain Cold.

However, Captain Cold doesn't want to kill his father. You see, his father was an abusive monster, and Captain Cold has been looking for him for years to kill him. This is not one of Libra's shining moments. Libra had him kidnapped by a group of "replacement" Rogues, given the Rogues' powers but none of their experience. However, rather than simply thumb their noses at the new Rogues, the original Rogues decide to kill their replacements. They show up where they are holding Captain Cold's father, and murder all of them. The murders of the replacements are brutal, though nowhere near as brutal as the murder of Martian Manhunter in Final Crisis: Requiem. It is good to see that Johns takes murder seriously enough to make it a grisly business.

One of the best elements of this book is the Johns does not shy away from the way in which evil characters think, while at the same time making them seem human rather than as pure caricature. The Rogues are very angry about being "replaced", something which Libra had probably banked on when he recreated them. Their violent response is consistent with that offense, and they don't have a moment of pity for their victims. Moreoever, Libra, who at the end has kidnapped Weather Wizard's son, sees the threatening of family members of those he wants to recruit as par for the course. There is no sense that he feels anything like remorse for these kidnappings, and that such kidnappings are for him just standard fare. His ultimate plan is not to destroy the Rogues, but to recruit them. However, because everyone in this book is evil, recruitment does not need to be voluntary. Duress will do.

A secondary story in this book is that Zoom is training Inertia to be his own, new "Kid Flash". His mentorship is nothing what like what one would normally consider mentorship. He clearly despises Inertia, as he presumably despises anyone, and is only training him because Libra wants him to be so trained. Why has yet to be revealed, but somehow speedsters are important to Libra's plan because they have the power to undo the victory of evil that is somehow at the heart of Final Crisis. Despite this, he doesn't consider himself a disciple of Libra as, for example, the Human Flame does. He is constantly scheming, and somehow working for Libra is just another step in his own aggrandisement. This story shows the way in which evil warps even otherwise healty relationships, like mentor and pupil.

This story, then, fits very well into the overall Final Crisis theme in which evil has somehow been victorious in the war among the gods, and Johns, like Morrison, is doing a good job of developing stories in which evil is the main theme. It isn't as brutal as the evil presented in Final Crisis #3, but everything these characters do says more about villainy and how it affects people. A particularly interesting moment is when Captain Cold decides not to kill his father but have Heat Wave do it instead. Does he not do it because he still has some sort of residual concern for his father, or because he has so much contempt for him he will have someone else kill him? The answer is somewhere in the middle, and that confusion of goals is very much a part of what happens to people when they have lost their moral compass.

I am really enjoying the art in this book. The characters are not very well defined, and that realy works as often the sceenes seem almost surreal. However, what is going on with the raindrops? Kolins has to be the worst drawer of raindrops of any artist in comic history. When his characters are dripping, it makes them look like melting wax statues. On the other hand, he draws fire exceptionally well, and the scene in which Heat Wave murders Pyro is so well done, one can almost feel the heat. He is definitely the right choice for this book.

So, this is a very strong book, and I feel sorry that we will only have one more issue. The characterization of the Rogues is very good, and the way in which villains can clash with each other is an interesting theme. Next month, it will all be over, and I am genuinely interested in seeing whether or not Libra will be successful in his "recruiting" of the Rogues.

B+

Skaar: Son of Hulk #3 Review

2008-08-30T07:46:00.001-07:00

Writer: Greg Pak
Pencillers: Ron Garney, Butch Guice (backup)

I've been doing my best to give Skaar: Son of Hulk the benefit of the doubt. I really have. Pak's run on the Hulk was my favourite run ever, and I especially loved his world of Sakaar, where Son of Hulk takes place. However, Pak is missing one of the most important rules of writing a new story: you need to tell your readers what it is about. With an established name like Captain America, you can start a story with intrigue so as to confuse the reader. With Skaar: Son of Hulk, you need a hook and a premise, and you need to establish it fast. After three issues of Skaar: Son of Hulk, I still have no idea what this story will about, or even who its main characters will be. This is the same mistake that Joss Whedon's show Firefly made, taking so long to reveal its central premise that the show was cancelled before it could be revealed.

Make no mistake: I believe that Pak will eventually create a good story here, but he needs to get on with it. There is promise that this will happen next issue, when they reach Prophet Rock and find out who Skaar "really is", whatever that might mean. However, because Pak is writing half of his issues as back story, his main story is only half an issue long each month, and this week, we basically have a fight with Princess Omaka, the woman with no arms from last issue. In it, she tries to kill Skaar, who tears off one of her artificial "arms" (she's replaced them with swords). She plans to kill him, so history doesn't repeat itself and this version of the Hulk doesn't do any more damage to the world. However, they are attacked by Wildebots, and Skaar kills most of them single-handedly. Impressed, she heads off to Prophet Rock with him.

Despite being just as confused as to what is going on this issue as I was in the first issue, there are some very nice elements to Pak's story. I'm reminded that Incredible Hercules is currently also being written by Pak. In both of these books, he is able to write according to a different kind of logic: in Incredible Hercules, it is the logic of mythology, and in Son of Hulk, it is the logic of barbarism. The characters in this book all think very differently than how we normally think, but their logic makes sense given the violent world in which they live. The secondary story about Axeman Bone includes three seperate attempts to assassinate him, which he simply repels with violence. In the world in which he lives, cruelty is utterly ubiquitous, and he considers himself virtuous largely because he has been successful. It is the morality of Agamemnon, and Pak again shows his interest in classical civilization here. Omaka has something of an opposite reaction. She wants to kill Skaar because she wants to stop the endless cycle of bloodshed that destroyed Sakaar City. However, she is also a product of it, and when Skaar destroys the Wildebots, she cannot help but think that his strength might be a sign that he actually is some sort of promised saviour. This logic of barbarism, in which strength and virtue are synonymous, permeates the whole story, and Pak is extremely good at creating stories with their own sense of logic.

I realise there has been a lot of criticism of the art in Son of Hulk, largely due to the lack of an inker. I believe, however, that it really fits the story that Pak is trying to tell. The backgrounds and characters look like they are out of an old adventure storybook, like one of those nineteenth-century novels for boys, with a pencilled drawing above each chapter. Although this may be just my own sense of nostalgia, the sketched out images carry with them a real sense of adventure and tension, like the artist is drawing the image, but leaving the reader to fill in the details. Given how horrible the inking was on Mighty Avengers #17 this week, I have to say that I don't really miss it.

This is the least successful issue of Skaar so far, largely because Pak really needs to get on with his story. However, Pak continutes to do what he do best, which is lay out a world with its own barbaric logic, one in which a character like the Hulk could not help but play a pivotal role.

C+

The New Avengers #44 Review

2008-08-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciller: Billy Tan

This is an interesting comic book, because it promises to be about one thing but then ends up being about something else. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; Hitchcock did the same thing in Psycho. While this book is overall not successful, the transition here is also effective. The story begins putatively to be another story of the Illuminati, a collection of especially clever or powerful superheroes who caused the Skrull invasion in the first place by detonating a bomb in the Skrull capital. However, half way through, we realise that it is all a ruse, and after they are all slaughtered, we learn that they were only clones. At that point, the story becomes about how the Skrulls tricked a Reed Richards clone into providing them with the means of becoming human while remaining completely undetectable.

The transition is actually quite a shocking and interesting moment. The Illuminati are sitting around, talking about the possible ramifications of their attack on the Skrull homeworld. Bendis uses this conversation for exposition for anyone who may not have read the Illuminati series. However, as they discuss ways of detecting Skrulls, they realise they have no powers. Realising that they have no memory of ever escaping from the Skrulls, they come to the conclusion that they never escaped, and they stare at each other in silence until a sweating Doctor Strange says, "I -- I think we're still -- I think we're still here". Having the characters and the readers come to the realisation that all is not as it seems at exactly the same moment is very powerful, and this section of the book is very well written. At that point, Xavier reveals himself to be a Skrull and the rest of the Illuminati are massacred, when we realise that they were all clones.

At this point, the book turns to its less successful second half. The Skrulls realise that their clones of Reed Richards will understand how they can appear undetectable, so they stage ruses to fool his clones into revealing how. In one first ruse, the Skrulls murder a clone of Reed's wife, Susan, and then threaten to murder either a clone of or a Skrull disguised as his son, Franklin. Why, exactly, does Bendis think we want to see this story? It is a pointlessly nasty and violent ruse, and not remotely entertaining. In order to tell stories of people watching their families get murdered, one needs to have some sort of dramatic justification or message. So far, Secret Invasion has been all hype and back story with virtually no payoff, and this reads like Bendis trying to hammer home what meanies the Skrulls are when we already know that their invasion is a flop. If you're going to pull out the big guns of having a character (or even the clone of a character) watch his family die, you'd better have a good reason.

There is some oddness to how the Skrulls are portrayed here. For one thing, are their two races of Skrulls, one really short race and one really tall race? I don't remember ever reading about that. However, there are a number of Skrulls here that are literally half of the height of the other Skrulls, making them look like deformed midgets or maybe green Harry Potter elves. One has the sense that Tan is trying here to capture the feeling of Frankenstein and Igor, in which creepy experiments are performed by their creepy henchmen, whom we know to be creepy because they are so misshapen. It would be an interesting idea if Skrull culture required Skrulls to take on the height of their station, which they could do as shapeshifters, but as it stands, having characters of such completely different heights leaves me scratching my head.

Another unfortunate aspect of this story is that it is trying to flesh out what we meant by "using Reed's brain" in Secret Invasion #5. I had hoped that somehow they were literally using his body in some creepy way in order to make their plans work or maybe one of his inventions. It seemed to imply that Reed was somehow responsible for the Skrull technology. Instead, all it meant was that they got the idea from one of Reed's clones. That's unfortunate, because it takes away from some of the dramatic promise that Reed was somehow responsible for the invasion above and beyond his role in the Illuminati. Reed Richards has a tendency to incredible arrogance, as we've seen before in the Authoritative Action or Civil War story lines, and the possibility that one of his grand schemes or inventions was used in the Skrull invasion was very interesting. Instead, all that was meant was that they got the idea from a clone - hardly something that might follow from one of the character's weaknesses.

As such, this is an interesting comic, with a great moment of transition. However, the comic is ultimately bleak and includes a pointless scene in which a man watches his family die. Moreover, the plot point of the Secret Invasion story the book is supposed to develop is suprisingly uninteresting. This book doesn't work, though it does deserve some credit for what it was trying to do.

C+

The Mighty Avengers #17 Review

2008-08-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciller: Khoi Pham

Brian Michael Bendis continues to use the Avengers comics in order to establish the back story of how the Skrull Invasion came to be. In the last issue, he focused on Elektra, and how she was replaced as a Skrull. That was unfortunate, in that Elektra was not even an Avenger. At least this issue of the Might Avengers focuses on Hank Pym, and what happened to the first Skrull who tried to replace him. Unfortunately, what this story demonstrates is that Bendis really has run out of back story to tell. All of those who were replaced (except Jarvis) have already had their stories fleshed out, and this issue doesn't really reveal anything new. Instead, it is more comparable to New Avengers #43, in which we discover the fate of the Skrull posing as Captain America, who didn't even realise he was a sleeper agent when he was murdered.

Unfortunately, this issue is not as good as New Avengers #43, as it lacks any real sense of tragedy. The Skrull involved is aware that she is a Skrull, and therefore, one does not have the sense of confusion and dark irony that that issue brought. Moreover, the Skrull impersonating Henry Pym is not motivated by heroism as the Captain America Skrull was, but rather by Henry Pym's weaknesses. Henry Pym's insecurities are influencing the Skrull, making her unable to believe in the success in the invasion. As a result, she starts to have a breakdown, insisting on seeing the queen, and as a result, the other Skrulls kill her. However, there is nothing heroic about this, and therefore there is no tragedy. It is really just a pathetic story, which shows a real contempt for the character of Hank Pym, who basically is hard to imitate because he is such a loser.

It is really unfortunate that no one has ever properly rehabilitated Hank Pym, who has potential to be one of the most interesting characters in the Avengers. The problem is that the character struck his wife back in Avengers #213, and is therefore can never be properly rehabilitated without it appearing as though spousal abuse is being condoned. What Pym needs is a retcon, that explains away his hitting his wife as some sort of mind-control or clone. This would be an extreme solution, but it is the only one that would enable the character to be redeemed without at the same time excusing his violence. Such a retcon was attempted in Avengers Forever, in which his paranoid and violent behaviour was induced by Immortus (who later did the same to Tony Stark turning him into a murderer), but it didn't stick. However, without such a solution, no story that makes Pym look heroic will ever be successful, and that lack of heroism is what makes this story pathetic rather than tragic.

Instead, Pym is portrayed as an insane loser, allowing the authors to heap abuse on the character, making the reader wonder why they are writing about him at all if they despise him so much. Millar picked up this theme in the Ultimates series, in which his version of Pym (who is a different character) was constantly unemployed and nearly beat Janet to death. This book has Dugan, apparently speaking for Bendis, telling the Pym Skrull what a loser Pym is. Watching a writer abuse his characters induces in me the same reaction one has when seeing someone publicly humiliated; it makes me squirm and feel uncomfortable, and not be interested in reading the story.

The art in this art is very weak. It suffers from some of the same problems as Hulk #5. There are virtually no bakgrounds in any of the scenes, providing little sense of setting. At best we get some tile or some trees. The faces of the characters seem almost goofy, with facial expressions that are flat and often do not even match what the character is saying. The faces also seem droopy, like the characters have just returned from the dentist. This may be the result of bad collaboration between Pham and his inkers, who are highlighting the wrong aspects of people's facial expressions, but everyone in this book looks a little sedated.

The one positive aspect of the book is that Bendis is starting to develop the ways in which the Skrulls, because they need to copy their targets on a cellular level, risk being unable to shed the personalities of the people they imitate. It is like one of those stories where an agent goes deep undercover and ends up sympathizing with those he plans to betray. With Captain Marvel, this story has been developed, but it is unfortunate to see that this good idea is being used mainly with throw away characters who are killed by the end of the issue.

Overall, then, I do not recommend this comic. It comes across as very mean, showing the kind of contempt for a character that ruins a story.

C

Robin #177 Review

2008-08-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciller: Freddie Williams II

Robin #177 is the third Robin book in less than a month, which is quite a break-neck pace for a monthy comic. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be really hurting the books' quality. Curiously, despite clearly tying into R.I.P., it is not advertised as being a part of the R.I.P. story. I can only assume that this story is taking place after the events of R.I.P., given that it is part one of a story called "Search for a Hero", presumably a reference to the retirement of Bruce Wayne at the end of the still unfinished R.I.P. storyline.

One of the nice things about this issue is that we get to see the kind of stories that the Batman franchise is planning to tell in the absense of Batman. Since he is retired, Gotham is beginning to descend into chaos and gang warfare. Now, the heroes that are left are trying to rebuild some sort of order in Gotham, and they are trying to find their place in the post-Batman world. As a premise, this is really quite interesting, and reminds me of World Without a Superman, No Man's Land and House of M. They were extended premises that allowed the writers to explore ideas that they might not otherwise be able to use. I'd be quite happy to see what the authors do with their opporunity to tell stories about what the various members of the bat family do without their leader, and the sorts of shenanigans that the villains get up to.

Here we see a confrontation between two Robins, Jason Todd and Tim Drake. Jason has a plan to consolidate all of the gangs of Gotham, but, as usual, his plan involves many innocent people getting killed. Tim tries to shut him down, but is injured protecting someone from one of Jason's many stray bullets. He is saved by yet a third Robin, Red Robin, a character we have seen only a couple of times before. In the Kingdom Come story, Red Robin was the Dick Grayson of the future, having abandoned his Nightwing persona and returned to serve as a latter-day Robin. In Countdown, Jason Todd himself became Red Robin when he served under a far more violent Batman of another Earth. As I am not hopeful for Nightwing's fate after R.I.P. and Red Robin is clearly not Jason, this is an interesting mystery. Clearly there are other people hoping to take up Robin's mantle, and I look forward to finding out who this new Robin is.

There is also more development of the relationship between Robin and Spoiler. Tim has reached a point where he simply feels so betrayed by Spoiler that he can't even bring himself to talk to her. This is clearly heartbreaking for Spoiler, since she is still in love him, but clearly feels guilty for betraying him twice in the last year. Spoiler is a great character, and I hope they repair the relationship enough that she can still feature as a regular. However, I appreciate the way that Nicieza is reminding the audience that dishonesty, even with noble intentions, has consequences. If they are to repair their relationship, even to return to friendship, there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of meaningful stories to be told.

The ending of the issue is quite interesting. Spoiler apparently hires Scarab, the same assassin hired to kill Tim back in the War Drums story, to kill Tim. Unless Nicieza has completely lost his mind, this is obviously either not really Stephanie or it is some sort of double-cross. However, it is an interesting plot point, and I look forward to it playing out. It shows us that Stephanie will be an important part of the upcoming story arc, and brings in a new level of danger for Robin by bringing in the person who nearly killed him four years ago. It is also good to see there are going to be negative consequences for the money that Robin paid to Penguin last issue.

Overall, then, this is a very good book. It is not as powerful as either of the R.I.P. crossover stories, but lets us know that Nicieza knows what he wants to do with the character after the departure of Batman. It promises not only to be a worthwhile story in itself, but promises that the Batman franchise has some interesting stories to tell about Gotham after Batman.

B

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #1 Review

2008-08-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciler: George Pérez

There is a lot of exposition in Legion of Three Worlds #1, and I didn't mind any of it. Like a lot of DC Comics readers, I've never really followed the Legion of Super Heroes. It takes place a thousand years in the future and is largely self-contained, so following what happens to them is not really necessary to following the rest of DC comics. Moreover, a series of ill-advised reboots has made them even harder to follow. There have been three legions, recreated after both the Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour stories, meaning that most of what we might have cottoned on to by accident by following other comics over the decades may be largely irrelevant.

Despite my almost complete lack of familiarity with the franchise, I feel like I understand what is happening in Legion of Three Worlds. A thousand years in the future, Earth has become a mostly xenophobic planet, afraid of aliens whom they fear may be taking over the planet. In order to combat that xenophobia, a wealthy alien disguised as a human, R. J. Brande, brought together a group of young aliens inspired by Superboy, the world's greatest alien. They have been saving the world, but have largely not been successfully fighting xenophobia. The government tries to disband the Legion as being useless and outdated, but they are saved by the last minute intervention of Brande, who is promptly assassinated and revealed to be an alien. The Legion made more sense to me after this issue than it ever had.

While all of this has been occurring, a villain, who I think is called the Time Trapper, sends Superboy-Prime, a version of Superman from another universe, back in time to destroy the Legion. He is at first very upset to find out that he was not even considered one of the great Superman villains, but discovers that he has inspired the Legion of Super Villains, playing the antithesis of Superboy's role. I know a lot of people hate Superboy-Prime, but I think he is a great concept. He is a completely out of control teenager with the power of the Silver Age Superman, able to destroy entire planets easily (which he has done). He's like the most sociopathic emo kid on your favourite message board, but with superpowers. He makes a fantastic villain because he is so powerful and so uncontrollable, except by the occasional evil mastermind (like Alex Luthor or Sinestro) able to manipulate his puerile rage. In this story, he frees what seem to be most of the supervillains of the future, and is about to lead them against the Legion.

Or, perhaps I should say, against the Legions. Brainiac 5 decides to bring in the two Legions from other Earths, whom I believe are probably those before the two reboots (I may be wrong on this). This makes me incredibly excited to see that George Pérez is drawing the book. He draws crowd scenes of superheroes better than anyone, and drew the original Crisis on Infinite Earths story back in the mid-1980s. If anyone can make three separate versions of the same heroes look distinct, and create exciting battle scenes with literally hundreds of characters, it is Pérez. This story promises to have a fantastic look to it, and I look forward to reading the next issue.

However, Superman has something of another plan. Superboy-Prime has largely been dealt with by throwing large groups of heroes at him. The results have been disastrous. If the Teen Titans hadn't attacked him back in Infinite Crisis, he may never have turned so evil. Superman realises that the best way to deal with Superboy-Prime is probably to try to redeem him. This is an interesting idea on Superman's part. He knows Superboy-Prime very well; after all, it is him from another universe. Moreover, I think he probably actually feels badly for the kid. There but for the grace of God go he. Had things gone a little differently, Superman might not have ended up the hero that he was, and Superboy-Prime's madness is largely the result of the exile he suffered after helping to save the universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Superman hopes to redeem Superboy-Prime, and that creates the possibility of a more psychologically rich story than the standard adventure romp.

Of course, in order to do that, he has to try to redeem him while six dozen Legionnaires are trying to pummel him. We all know Pérez draws great battle scenes, not so much redemption scenes. However, Johns is capable of crafting extremely complex stories, and I trust he will find a way to blend the two elements.

I have great faith that this will turn into a great series. If it drew me in, a long-time non-Legion fan, I can only imagine what it does for those who understand the franchise. It is a well crafted book, with all the right elements for an exciting futuristic adventure.

B+

Captain America #41 Review

2008-08-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

Writer: Ed Brubaker
Penciler: Steve Epting

Captain America #41 gives us part seventeen of the epic story, "Sharon Carter in the Refrigerator". I kid, of course, but Brubaker's current arc is starting to arouse mine and others' ire at the way that Sharon Carter is being treated in Captain America. She has been a prisoner for over a year now, was stabbed in the womb last issue, and now has apparently lost her baby. Several years ago, Gail Simone famously compiled a list of various violent events that had occurred to female characters in comics called "Women in Refrigerators", titled after Alex DeWitt, Green Lantern's girlfriend who was killed and stuffed in a refrigerator. Many different comic creators responded, ranging from the dismissive ("such things happen to male characters, too"), to a wide variety of possible explanations from sexism to creating drama by harming the lovers of usually-male protagonists. Simone herself decided to remain neutral, leaving the list to speak for itself.

I'd like to give Brubaker the benefit of the doubt. He is responsible for developing one of the most interesting female characters of the last decade, Renée Montoya and generally shows respect for his female characters. Brubaker is one of the few writers who can generally get away with decompression. His attention to detail and ability to write engaging battle scenes and dialogue don't make the reader feel like he should be "get on with it" as one usually does with authors with decompression. I genuinely believe that he is using Carter's captivity for dramatic purposes, and not intending any misogyny. He has put many characters through terrible ordeals, and even killed his protagonist.

However, when dealing with the extended captivity of a female character, a combination of decompression and attention to detail is a terrible combination. Instead, the incarceration of Sharon Carter has become gruelling, endless and far too specific. Moreover, the violence has recently become far too intimate. The addition of specifically female violence, the stabbing of Sharon in the womb and the causing of a miscarriage (something that can only happen to women), has accidently turned this story into the worst refrigerator incident since Karen Page.

Authors often underestimate the danger of violence against women in a visual medium. For whatever reason, many men have a misogynistic streak. There is a part of them that enjoys seeing women hurt. Depictions of violence against women, especially when they become almost constant as in recent Captain America issues and when they are specifically female violence that can only happen to women, are in danger of attracting the wrong sorts of readers and bringing out the worst in the readers they already have. I am in no way arguing for censorship, à la Wertham. I am merely suggesting that Brubaker needs to be more careful.

Unfortunately, the continued torment of Sharon Carter mars what is otherwise a very good book. Early in the book, Falcon and Bucky need to make a very difficult moral decision as to whether or not to allow the Red Skull to capture the Grand Director and to use him as bait. Their solution, "We'll rescue him later", comes across as somewhere between funny and pragmatic. There are other great character moments. Doctor Faustus's explanation for trying to free Sharon Carter makes a sort of sense, as he is so proud of his "work" that he cannot stand to see Sharon harmed. The Red Skull's disgust at being trapped in Lukin's body is starting to drive him a little insane. Finally, Sin's decision to kill the senator so as to prove herself to her father follows perfectly from her character.

Other moments are quite funny. I love the discussion of why on Earth the Red Skull would have a base in Albany. I mean... Albany? Why not just hide out in Hackensack, New Jersey. They decide not to bring S.H.I.E.L.D. into the rescue of Sharon because they don't want to cause Natalia any more trouble (and presumably because Bucky is in love with her), only to find her flying overhead. When the Skull's agents capture the Grand Director and say, "We have captured the flag", I actually laughted out loud.

Brubaker is a great writer, by far one of the best in comics. However, his usual strengths of detailed story-telling are working against him in his continuing torment of Sharon Carter. I usually very much enjoy his detailed, intricate stories. However, this has been going on for far too long. He needs to get on with it.

C+

The Incredible Hercules #120 Review

2008-08-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

Writers: Greg Pak and Fred van Lente
Penciller: Rafa Sandoval

Incredible Hercules breaks one of the fundamental rules of crossovers, and is all the better for it: tie-in titles cannot be directly relevant to the main story. In fact, Secret Invasion held to this rule so strictly, that it was hamstringing its tie-ins completely. The main story had so little development that absolutely nothing could develop in any of the other titles. For example, Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four did not even include the rescue of Reed Richards, as that had to occur in the main title. This issue of Incredible Hercules smashes that rule by killing Kly'bn, the Skrull god of stability. Kly'bn is the "He" of "He loves you", the catch-phrase of the Skrull invasion. Their purpose in invading Earth was to absorb Earth into Kly'bn's empire, thereby "saving" it. Now Kly'bn is dead, and the Skrull invasion has thereby lost its purpose. The effect this will (or at least should) have on the Skrull invasion is massive, as it will have completely lost its motivation. Instead, the Skrulls are now fighting for nothing, and their invasion cannot help but fail.

This is a very interesting editorial decision, and I believe a very good one. The Incredible Hercules has set a tone along with Thor as being a story that is really about the gods, treated as mythological characters rather than as simply prehistoric superheroes. As Kly'bn was a god, Incredible Hercules was the perfect place for his demise. Pak handles the Skrull pantheon extremely well, and seems to be very interested in establishing a meaningful if fictitious pantheon. It seems that the Skrull pantheon includes two gods, Kly'bn and Sl'gur't, who represent stability and change, respectively. Kly'bn is the last of a race of Skrulls who were unable to change shape and thereby lost the evolutionary battle with the shape-changing Skrulls who currently run the empire. However, he manages to persuade Sl'gur't, the head of the shape-shifters, that he is necessary in order for the Skrull to maintain their sense of identity. His spouse, Sl'gur't, never maintains the same shape for more than a few minutes. This has the effect of making them gods of what it means to be a nation or even a person, as our ability to change threatens our identity, while our desire to stay the same threatens our growth. As the god of stability, Kly'bn is by nature intolerant, seeking to conform the entire galaxy to his own way of life, nicely tying together mythological reasoning with a comic book narrative.

While there are some very nice mythological elements to this book, other parts could be very confusing. This book seems to forget that, when you tell a shapeshifting story in a visual medium, you have to hold the readers' hand so they can figure out who is who. After a couple reads, I'd say I'm about seventy per cent sure of what happened, but I still feel like I could be wrong. It appears that Mikaboshi pretended to be Sl'gur't and killed her while she was pretending to be Mikaboshi. As such, both of the Skrull gods are now dead, and Mikaboshi will return in a later story to fight Hercules. That could be the case. Perhaps, though, Mikaboshi was always a Skrull? Hrm...maybe. I'm not entirely sure. A couple other scenes that could have used some clarification include Cho looking like he was impaled by a bone, when he was really just hit by it, and an odd scene where Atum eats Sl'gur't who is simultaneously transformed into a creature that looks a lot like Atum. At the end of the day, I think I figured everything out, but a little extra narrative would have gone a long way in clarifying what was going on in a few of these scenes.

However, the mythological story here is a great deal of fun. Atum doesn't seem aware that, when you have a being that embodies change, eating it whole is probably a very bad idea. For some reason, Kly'bn needs to be stabbed with the bone of an elder god, which reminds us that gods usually need to be stabbed by something strange and random (remember Baldur and the mistletoe?). No explanation is given, which would normally be annoying, but it makes sense in a typical myth. Another nice element to the mythological reasoning is the way that the gods see just how much the current battle threatens their own myths and powers. Atum was supposed to consume the gods, but is now dead. Something is "off" about the myths, and the gods are aware of it, bringing an extra sense of dread to the current "God Squad" story arc. Somehow, the conflict between pantheons constitutes a unique kind of threat, one in which the very narratives themselves are in danger.

Overall, then, this is a very good book. Pak does a very good job of telling stories with a mythological framework, rather than a standard superhero one. There are some problems with clarity, but other than that, this is a very well-crafted issue.

B

Batman #679 Review

2008-08-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

Writer: Grant Morrison
Penciller: Tony Daniel

In the latest installment of Batman R.I.P., the entire story is beginning to come together. Moreover, Morrison's entire run is beginning to tie together in a way that shows he knew exactly what he was planning right from his very first issue. We see the return of the Club of Heroes, one of Morrison's more interesting creations, and much of the mystery of the story has been revealed. Batman's insanity is explained and we learn more about the roles of Alfred and, possibly, Thomas Wayne.

Batman has, at this point, completely lost his mind. However, the explanation of this is very interesting. It isn't just that he was injected with drugs in the last issue. Rather, the trigger word Doctor Hurt implanted in his head has somehow "shut off" Bruce Wayne, and Bruce has had to escape into another personality, the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh. This is actually a reasonably plausible explanation, at least in comic book terms. Perhaps it is better to say that it is an intelligible explanation of what has happened to Batman. Before, we just had Batman hallucinating and acting erratically, but none of it made sense. Now it makes some sense. He has created this persona for himself in which he is all-powerful, but lacking the conscience of Bruce Wayne. Now, the Black Glove must face what is in some ways a more powerful and certainly a more dangerous version of Batman, and they almost certainly will not like it.

Some of the red herrings of previous issues have been removed. Alfred is not evil, which is something of a relief. While having Alfred revealed evil would be better than having Thomas Wayne revealed to be evil, that is not exactly a recommendation. Jezebel Jet also seems to not have been involved in the Black Glove, which avoids the cliché of having the hero fall for a duplicitous vixen. Moreover, the possibility that Doctor Hurt may be Thomas Wayne is finally made explicit for all of the readers who didn't read Detective Comics #235 in 1956. Curiously, Doctor Hurt seems to genuinely believe that he is Thomas Wayne, but Alfred does not believe it. That opens up a whole new set of possibilities: is Doctor Hurt insane? Has he had plastic surgery? Is he from Earth-3? It is certainly odd that Alfred would not recognize him if it was really him.

The story is also leading up to its final confrontation, which appears to take place at Arkham Asylum. Nightwing has been brought in for a lobotomy and presumably to serve as bait. The Joker is being brought into the picture, and since Morrison hasn't done very much with the Joker at all, this promises to be very interesting. In the brave but somewhat unsuccessful Batman #663, he gave a prose story centered on the Joker, but one didn't really get a sense form that how he would portray the character. However, the final act at Arkham needs to include the Joker if it is going to truly spell the end of Batman, and I wonder if Doctor Hurt hasn't unleashed more than he can deal with in siding with the Joker, who is not known for keeping his bargains.

There are some very clever moments in this book. The scene with the gargoyles in which they talk about the "grid" around which people grow like vines is a very interesting image, and quickly followed by another replay of Batman's origin, in which Batman is produced by the city in which he lives. The way in which we arrange our lives into patterns and the way in which those patterns shape our lives is an important part of what it is to be human, and the way in which architecture instantiates those patterns is an important insight. Morrison constantly uses architecture as metaphor, and the Batman is so tied with Gotham he is inseparable from it. A nice thing about this scene is that Morrison finds the time to be reflective in the middle of the madness of R.I.P. Every once and a while he takes a chance to step back and remind us of his themes before stepping back into the story.

Moreover, another important theme in this story is theatricality. The characters in Batman are constantly making themselves up as characters. They take the ideal of playing their role extremely literally. As a result, the characters in this story are constantly driven by the role they have chosen to play. Batman is trying to play Zorro. Charlie thinks he is Caligula. The entire story of R.I.P. is based on a Danse Macabre. Everything that the Black Glove does is done primarily for dramatic effect. Do they have any other motivation than to play their parts? How much of our own motivation is often provided by the roles we want to play? Morrison uses theatrical metaphors almost as much as Shakespeare, though with a slightly different purpose. Shakespeare is interested in how we play our roles in a divine drama. Morrison is more interested in how we create our sense of ourselves out of the roles we decide to play. Gotham City provides the ultimate backdrop for him to explore these themes.

This issue is one of the strongest of Morrison's Batman run. It shows he has truly mastered this material. Morrison is starting to bring all of his themes together toward a conclusion that, given the themes, is seeming more and more inevitable. Everyone in this story is playing some sort of character in a play. Plays have conclusions, and with this story, the final act approaches its climax.

A-

Action Comics #868 Review

2008-08-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciller: Gary Frank

Geoff Johns continues to produce the finest run on Superman that I have ever read. He is completely reinventing (or rereinventing) the character and his world in a way that is so perfect, it doesn't feel like a revinention. Rather, it feels like this is the way the character should always have been in the first place.

In this story, Johns in reinventing Braniac into one of the greatest single threat Superman has ever faced. Braniac is a more destructive version of the Borg, capturing single cities and individuals, and then wiping out the entire civilization. He seeks "perfection", which was one of the key principles of the Borg, presumably wishing to assimilate all knowledge to himself so that he can encompass the entire universe. That's pretty dangerous. He has captured the bottled city of Kandor, and now is attacking Earth, as it has the two remaining Kryptonians (he must not know about the third or care about Power Girl). It is not enough that he absorb the civilizations; the civilizations must also be exterminated so that he can contain all of the information exclusively.

This book is hinting very strongly that Braniac may, in fact, be responsible for the destruction of Krypton. I'm not sure of how good an idea this is. Tinkering with the origins of DC's greatest characters is always dangerous business, and until now, its destruction has always been a natural disaster. However, it would not fundamentally alter Superman's origin, as Jor-El may have been aware of what was occurring as a result of Braniac's machinations. It would lend much greater emotional weight to one of Superman's arch-nemeses if he was responsible for Krypton's destruction, so if that's the way the story chooses to go, I will not be disappointed.

The sheer power of Braniac takes this story to an epic level. He finally, for the first time ever in comics, emerges from his cocoon to fight Superman. Superman gets to fight the real Brainiac, not a machine or a clone. Moreover, Brainiac is so strong, he makes very short work of Superman. Braniac isn't just highly intelligent and technologically advanced, he is strong as well, meaning that Superman cannot simply beat him by working around his latest plan. When Superman defeats him (as I assume he will), Superman will have accomplished on of his greatest victories ever.

Gary Frank's art in Action Comics is very strong. His facial expressions are some of the best drawn in comics. Sometimes they seem so accurate, I wonder if he isn't working from photographs. The early scenes with Supergirl and Cat Grant are largely funny because of the facial expressions that Frank draws for the various characters. Supergirl's cluelessness at the hostility of Cat would likely not have come across so clearly without Grant's art. Moreover, the almost bored disdain of Brainiac at Superman makes him seem more powerful. Truly powerful people don't often don't express much emotion; they don't have to. Frank manages to bring real life to the character of Brainiac, who has often seemed very, well, artificial.

There is some interesting development of Superman's relationship to his parents and his cousin. Originally, they protected him. Now, he protects them. There is a strange sense of helplessness that parents feel when they realise they can no longer protect their children, and even the sense of pride they have in their children can never really offset that. Supergirl is truly terrified of Brainiac, as she has encountered him before on Krypton, and wants to protect Superman from something that she understands better than he does. This was her opporuntity to fulfil the role she was sent to Earth for in the first place. However, there is nothing she can do, and she realises quite clearly the Superman doesn't need her, at least, not as a protector.

The final scene of the book is fantastic. Brainiac has come to Earth. He may have destroyed Krypton, and now he plans to capture Manhattan and destroy the rest of the planet. Even though the skull design of Brainiac's ship is old, Frank makes it look creepier by giving it a darker colour and adding a few touches that almost make it look like it is rotting. My only complaint is this: shouldn't the ship be bigger? I mean, this is the greatest threat the Earth has ever seen and it's not even the size of a skyscraper. Aircraft carriers are larger than the ship. I'd hoped that the most dangerous alien threat the world has ever faced would be at least the size of a city.

In any event, Johns, who seems to be writing half of the books at DC right now, has truly captured the epic scale of the Superman tale. He is a man from another planet. Now he faces what Supergirl calls "the worst of aliens". This story successfully revitalises one of Superman's greatest adversaries, and tells a story worth of DC's greatest hero.

A-

Final Crisis: Revelations #1 Review

2008-08-14T05:21:00.000-07:00

Writer: Greg Rucka
Penciller: Philip Tan

"Homicide...we work for God". Greg Rucka took those words from Vernon Geberth, a former homicide detective with the N.Y.P.D. (they were later used in the television show "Homicide"). This book picks up that theme: what is it that a homicide detective does? How does it differ from what the Specter does? What does it mean to work for God? This book follows Crispus Allen, a former homicide detective, who now serves as the God's spirit of vengeance. He used to serve justice and is now an agent of revenge. This book has a lot of reflection on the nature of justice, the nature of vengeance and what it means to work for God.

I would like to quickly commend this book for something that was long coming: they finally kill off Doctor Light. I didn't get any sense of vicarious revenge from his death. I just wanted to see him gone from DC comics. One of the unfortunate consequences of the success of Identity Crisis is that the characters became affixed in their roles in that story. The Elongated Man became the perpetually grieving husband. The Calculator became the perpetual schemer. Doctor Light became a perpetual rapist. That story turned him into the official sexual predator of the DC universe, and that was not a good thing. Comic creators often underestimate the dangers of representing sexual violence against women, especially in a visual medium, as it can attract exactly the wrong sort of reader. A serial rapist with a superhero fetish has the potential for the wrong sort of stories, and I'm glad to see him gone.

This book does a good job of setting up the Specter's dilemma. When he was a police officer, he served justice. Justice is a matter of balance and reason. However, while what he does as Specter appears to be similar to what he did as Crispus Allen, vengeance is about emotion. This, of course, isn't a new sentiment. It was recently expressed in almost exactly the same terms in Batman Begins. Rucka's approach lacks the subtlety and ambiguity of Morrison's interlocking thematic uses of freedom in Final Crisis #3. However, it is an important part of the setup for this new Specter comic that we realise that what the Specter is doing is not giving the world otherwise unavailable justice. He is doing something else entirely, and Allen's imminent rebellion is a result of that difference, so it needs to be made clear.

At one point, the Specter attempts to attack Libra, for the crime of genocide for killing the last member of the Martian race. Interestingly, the Specter has no power over Libra. Given that justice is defined as being about balance, while vengeance is about emotion, it sets up an interesting contrast between Libra and the Specter. Libra, as one can tell by his name if nothing else, is somehow trying to bring balance, even if it benefits evil. To date, the good guys keep winning. Now it's time to even the scales. The Specter, on the other hand, isn't able to balance anything. He just kills and destroys in revenge. In response to being unable to kill Libra, Specter throws a fit and kills the Hangmen (hanging them, of course). Here, Rucka is starting to take advantage of the medium: when your characters are walking metaphors, having them interact causes the readers to reflect on their meaning.

In terms of what it means to work for God, Geberth, the original source of that phrase, is a practicing Catholic and meant it literally. By helping to enforce the law, he believes the police officer reflects divine justice. Theologians have debated for millenia how to reconcile God's justice, vengeance and mercy in a way that consistent with the basic position that they must, in some sense, ultimately be the same thing. Geberth sees himself as a part of that plan. In the DC universe, however, God's attributes are split into various angels with no real attempt at reconciliation. Moreover, God has a serious personnel problem. The angels are apt to act with complete abandon in their appointed roles unless somehow tethered. As the Specter's role is vengeance, he has a tendency to do things like, for example, threaten to kill all of New York state.

This aspect of the Specter appears to be about to come to a head. Allen is rejecting the Specter persona after being ordered to kill his own son. Now, he has been sent to kill his former partner, Renée Montoya, now the Question, who has found a weapon capable of killing "false gods". As the character has been sketched in DC's quasi-polytheistic universe, Allen has reached a point where his role as the Specter is completely unbearable. He simply can't reconcile his old obsession with justice with his new obsession with vengeance. Now he is almost forced to rebel, as his own character cannot tolerate the Specter.

This promises to be an interesting book. I hope that Libra remains as an important character, as the contrast between he and Specter is the most intriguing part of the story. Fundamentally, it is about a police officer forced into a mockery of his former life, who is trying to break out. This is a solid start to what could be a very powerful story.

B-

Secret Invasion #5 Review

2008-08-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciller: Leinil Francis Yu

Secret Invasion creaks into its fifth month. Or perhaps, I should say, Secret Invasion creaks into its fifth hour, since less than an hour takes place in any given issue. This issue has the advantage of being somewhat better than last month's issue, in which we were given a recap of a story that has so far largely consisted of recaps of other issues. This week, we do see some marginal story development, as Reed Richards is freed from the Skrull spaceship, and Captain Marvel attacks the fleet, both of which are kind of fun, but really we get a lot more of the same. At least this time, though, the endless scenes that have been taking place since issue #2 seem to be ending. Jarvis is still demanding surrender, but he gets blowed up. The Avengers are still in the Savage Land, but they discover the last of the Skrulls. Agent Brand is still floating around in space, but she comes home. That's all progress. Maybe next issue they can do something new.

However, seeing the end of these scenes just reminds the reader how pointless they were in the first place. The ship of Silver Age heroes turns out to not have a single real hero on it. Not one. Zilch. Zip. What on Earth was the point of that plot line, then? If the idea is to have the readers debating who is a Skrull and who is not, why make absolutely every one of them into a Skrull? Isn't that like playing three-card Monte without the queen? It completely ruins the game and the mystery. Here, Marvel had the chance to retcon just about anybody they wanted to any point in their history, and they used it as a silly plot device with absolutely no payoff. The goal of the Skrull ship was to distract the Avengers and waste their time, but it ended up doing both to the readers.

There are some very weird character moments as well. Suddenly, half of the Avengers turn into killers. Bendis seems very insistent that "this is war" and therefore, all the rules are different. In New Avengers #43, Sheena flat out executed a prisoner of war, and dismissed the laws of warfare as being fit for Manhattan coffee shops. In this issue, Hawkeye and apparently even Reed Richards kill Skrulls. I understand this is a war. However, this is the Avengers. When isn't it war? They're constantly at war with someone or other, and yet they don't kill. Is this Bendis trying to hammer what a "big deal" his story is, or is he genuinely trying to undermine the idea that heroes shouldn't kill? Either way, his characterization is completely inappropriate. Reed Richards shouting "I'll kill every last one of you!" is just ridiculous.

There are a couple of good moments in this book. One is the revelation that somehow the Skrulls are using Reed Richard's "brain" for their invasion. I'm not sure what that means, whether they are using his ideas or his brain tissue, but it's an interesting hook. I'd like to find out, and I hope it turns out to be something interesting. Unless they cloned his brain, they can't actually have been using it for very long, since they only captured him in issue #1. Nonetheless, somehow Reed is more involved in this invasion than simply being its catalyst from the Illuminati series, and I'm interested to find out in what way.

Another fun moment is when every celebrity in the world, including Barak Obama, John McCain and Cartman from South Park appear on the television and tell the world that the Skrulls have come to save humanity, even if it means ruling it. It's the kind of big shocking moment that made the first issue of this comic so powerful. I'm not sure if the implication is that all of them have long been Skrulls or that Skrulls are just impersonating them today, but the book here finds its original power, if only for two pages: Skrulls can be anywhere; they can be anybody; they have already won.

Unfortunately, we then get back to the rest of the book, and another ten minutes of activity before the next issue. At this rate, the Skrull invasion will have ended in less than eight hours, and people in Australia will have slept through it only to find out about it on the morning news.

C

Angel: After the Fall #11 Review

2008-08-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

Writer: Bryan Lynch
Penciller: Nick Runge

Spoiler Alert

After ten issues of trying to find its tone, Angel: After the Fall #11 is the best issue yet. Angel and Gunn finally meet face-to-face, and Lynch has the opportunity to explore the psychology of vampirism that was always such an important part of both the shows Angel and Buffy. Neither show ever really glorified vampires. They were neither Murnau's Nosferatu nor Rice's Lestat. Vampire were not characterised in the purely aesthetic categories of ugly and beautiful.

Vampires instead are pathetic mockeries of their former selves. They have human emotions and they have their human memories, but they have lost their humanity, sometimes called their ability to love. Instead, those emotions have nothing to ground them, as they are no longer human, and can never be fulfilled. However, lacking that humanity, they cannot even realise that they are unfulfilled. As Darla said of her unborn baby when she realised she was about to turn back into a soulless vampire, "I won't be able to love it. I won't even be able to remember that I loved it."

In this issue, we see that this is what has become of Gunn, one of main characters on Angel for all but its first season. He still wants to be a hero. He still hates vampires. He believes he has visions from the Powers That Be, and plans to save Los Angeles. However, his emotions are confused. He lurches back and forth between rage and pride. Meanwhile, he can't even quite see what is wrong with leaving a demon, rotting, nailed to a wall for week. He cannot be a hero, and he cannot even be aware that he cannot be a hero. He still wants Angel's approval, while he also wants to kill him. Simply stated, Gunn is a mess. Moreover, he can never be anything more than a mess, because all his emotions and desires are distortions of a humanity that he has forever lost.

The issue takes the right approach in having the reader realise what has happened to Gunn at the same time as Angel realises it. We see that Angel still holds deep affection for his former friend, and come to the realise along with him, that he will almost certainly need to kill him. That captures perfectly the simultaneous sense of familiarity and loss that accompany characters in the Buffy universe when they encounter their sired former loved ones. And Gunn is one of our loved ones, too. Many people identified with him on the show more, perhaps, than any of the other characters. He was a normal guy trying to make things right, deeply angry at the death of his sister at the hands of vampires. Now he is one, and cannot see that he can no more save himself than he could save his sister. He is lost to us, and this book makes us feel it strongly.

The issue has other strong elements as well. The banter between Spike, Connor and Gwen is well written, and it looks like Gwen is going to be playing a much larger role in this story than one might have thought. When Gun stabs Angel, thinking he's still a vampire, it's a reminder of the kind of torture that vampires are able to inflict on each other. Gunn's complete indecision at finding out that Angel is dying shows just how confused he's become. Then, Gunn's strange and ambiguous whisper to Angel, "I found her first", reminds us that this story will stay personal for a long time.

Overall, this is definitely the best issue of Angel: After the Fall by far. It is better than most of the Buffy: Season Eight comics, as well. The book has really returned to its roots, not being afraid to tell the sort of dark, meaningful stories that made the television shows so memorable.

A-

Fantastic Four #559 Review

2008-08-13T20:15:00.000-07:00

Writer: Mark Millar
Penciller: Bryan Hitch

One of the best things about the Millar/Hitch run on the Fantastic Four is that they are not afraid to tell stories that are truly cosmic in scale. At the end of the day, Spider-Man fights bank robbers. True, many of them are bank robbers dressed as a variety of animals, but they are bank robbers all the same. One has the impression at the end of most Spider-Man stories that, had he not fought crime, not much would have changed about the world. None of this is intended as a criticism of Spider-Man. However, Spider-Man is telling a different kind of story, where Spider-Man is trying to make a difference on a small scale, day-to-day.

The Fantastic Four, on the other hand, are rightly called "imaginauts". That is, they sail the imagination in a way that no other comic book ever really accomplishes. In a way, their stories are pure imaginative fiction, in which their adventures are extraordinary. They challenge the writer to imagine what sorts of things humanity might face, either as threats or opportunities. Millar and Hitch have tapped into this potential in a remarkable way. Their first arc, about Nu-World, was a wonderful opporunity to imagine the possibilities of building an entirely new Earth and what that might mean for humanity. Some criticised C.A.P., their omnipotent robot, as being too powerful, but against the Fantastic Four, the goal is to see what one might imagine, not be as realistic as possible.

As such, last issue looked like the "Death of the Invisible Woman" arc might be very diappointing. First, it's selling point is the putative death of a major character, which will almost certainly not stick even if it were to happen. Second, it involved a group of boring looking "New Defenders" and an attack on the Fantastic Four in order to capture Doctor Doom. Ho hum. Bad guys attack. Fighty fighty. No real stretch of the imagination is involved there.

Issue #559 brings us right back into the realms of speculative fiction. First, we have the reintroduction of Nu-World, as Reed wrestles with the possibility that the Earth may actually be dying, and Alyssa Castle reveals that Nu-World may actually be designed only for an elite to continue the species as sort of an extra-dimensional Dubai. It's wonderful to see them return to such a promising premise, not content with the somewhat cliché conclusion that too much well-meaning power leads to naive tyranny (represented, of course, by giant killer robots). Now we'll get a chance to explore Nu-World again, as Reed tries to save the planet and humanity must decide to do with its clone.

Second, the New Defenders story suddenly exploded in scope. After capturing Johnny and Reed, Johnny looks below and we have a truly marvelous two page spread as we and Johnny realise at the same time: it's Galactus! This spread shows one of the wonderful parts of Hitch's art in his book. He is not at all afraid to show scale. His concepts are so big, they constantly make the main characters look like ants. Most artists are afraid to dwarf out the main characters. Even when large structures are shown, the main characters are always in the foreground. In both this book and in the Ultimates, Hitch quite happily turns the main characters into dots in the face of something truly impressive. As such, he is the perfect artist to capture the wonder of the Fantastic Four.

I do have some concerns with the book. I wish Millar wasn't quite so eager to constantly remind us of how cynical he is. We all know that Johnny is vain, but pretending to be with leukemia patients when he's really with twin Playboy centerfolds? That's a bit much. Millar seems intent to constantly hammer the banality of celebrity, and both here and in the Ultimates, it just comes across as cynical and occasionally preachy. I often wonder why Millar wants to tell stories about characters that he doesn't seem to like very much. If he would just lay off the heavy-handed cynicism, his books would be a lot more readable and no less fun.

However, this book has a lot of promise. The "Is that Galactus?" moment is vintage Fantastic Four, and the story is picking up again. Bryan Hitch's art is absolutely beautiful, and I'm amazed it never occurred to anyone to have him draw the Fantastic Four before. He is the perfect artist, and though I don't like Millar's dialogue, Millar is a writer with exactly the right sense of the scope that the Fantastic Four should be taking. There's a lot of prelude to this issue, but it's clearly a prelude to something fantastic.

B-

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #17 Review

2008-08-11T07:20:00.001-07:00

Writer: Joss Whedon
Penciller: Karl Moline

*Spoilers* (Buffy fans have somewhat stricter rules about spoiler warnings)

This review is late for this week, as reading this comic required a lot of homework on my part. Joss Whedon has made an interesting decision: he integrated his comic character Fray (from a story five years ago) into the Season Eight story line. Since I had never read "Fray" but my wife had a copy of the book, I wanted to read the storyline before I read this issue. After having read "Fray" I realised that, in fact, this book would be almost completely unreadable without having read the previous series.

I'm not sure how good an idea this is. It will sell "Fray" comics, which is a good thing, though I don't think that a purely marketing decision would have gotten past Joss Whedon. Season Eight is an interesting comic book, since it is one of the few comic books that does not have comic book readers as its target audience. A lot of the people reading this book are former fans of the Buffy television show who mourn its passing and want to read about the further adventures of their favourite characters. And so far, the story has been almost entirely self-contained, just like most television shows are. Even the five-year-long spin-off Angel was never "required reading" for watching Buffy (although not vice versa). As with most television shows, someone could watch the show and never need to "catch up".

Is this a good decision, then? It has some negative and positive elements. On the negative side, it risks alienating the audience that is unique to this comic. I don't know how many Buffy fans will be interested in reading Fray and this comic is truly unreadable without it. When Fray talks about the past, if one hasn't read Fray, it would be unclear what happened in her own series and what was supposed to have happened two-hundred years ago, since she rarely makes such distinctions. For example, from the two pages I read before giving up, I had assumed the "Battle of Starbucks" was something that happened in the Fray comic, but apparently it happened centuries ago. On the positive side, it might introduce people who would not otherwise be interested in comics and would not have read any comics if not for the Season Eight series to a new medium. Some people might read Fray, enjoy it, and become comic book fans for life. We shall see. I'm interested to follow the sales number of Season Eight after this issue, as I think no single issue will have more effect than this one.

As for the plot, the big reveal in this comic is a little unfulfilling. The issue spends a great deal of effort hinting that the crazy woman in Victorian clothes at the end is Drusilla, but it turns out to be another incarnation of Dark Willow. Am I the only one who was disappointed by this? Drusilla vanished half way through Buffy Season Five never to be seen again except in flashbacks and as a ruse for the First Evil. I kind of miss her. Dark Willow, on the other hand, dominated much of Season Six which was a season of mixed success as it was. I don't miss her. It's fun when Willow's eyes turn black from time to time, but I thought this plot point was resolved with the whole "Willow turns white and is therefore a goddess" scene in the series finale. Now, we're returning to it. I'm not saying that Whedon doesn't have any good ideas about where to take this; he usually does. However, as a big, shocking finale, it doesn't really work because it's an old plot point and not one the fans have really been clamoring for. Moreover, the red herring covering it is something the fans have been clamoring for, so it falls flat.

Despite these general arc concerns, Issue #17 works very well. Joss Whedon is a great banter writer, as good in his own way as Tarantino. The dialogue comes off as both funny and realistic, capturing the way that people are often trying to amuse each other in discussions. Most other authors write dialogue that is either expository, dramatic or "funny". What Whedon has hit onto and few other have is that we are constantly telling jokes, but those jokes are so contextual they can never be taken out of their original place in conversation. Little bits of dialogue like "Buffy Summers." - "Present." - "Buffy Summers is dead." - "Occasionally.", capture very well the way that we are often making little jokes out of what the other person has said, and I can't think of any other writer that mimics this or even tries. The closest analogue is Bendis, but what he provides isn't so much banter as little jokey asides people (especially Spider-Man) say to themselves. Whedon is able to implant that contextual humor into dialogue in a way that is truly unique. This book is full of contextual humour, and it is wonderful to see Whedon writing characters whose voices he understand perfectly as he was the one to create them.

The Fray universe is utilized very well, and one gets the sense that Fray has been fighting her brother for quite some time now. She is still tracking down her brother Harth, who is now working with Dark Willow to bring about a future without any magic (except, presumably, Willow). One annoying thing about Fray was that it seemed to contradict the finale of the television series, as there was only one slayer again, rather than an army, and that the Watchers had "died out" rather than getting blown to bits as in the series. This book does a good job of reconciling them, so well in fact that it is impossible to tell whether this is a retcon or whether this was Whedon's plan all along. Instead, the death of magic referred to happens after Season Seven and is apparently the climax of Season Eight. Here we get a return to the Fray universe that is as strong and confident (even more so, in some ways) as Season Eight's return to the Buffyverse in the first place. Gunther, Erin and Harth all return, and it is as though Whedon never left.

So, overall, it is a very strong book, even if it is at times harder to follow than a Grant Morrison comic. It is well written and Whedon's comfort with his characters is obvious.

B

Final Crisis #3 Review

2008-08-07T07:20:00.000-07:00

Writer: Grant Morrison
Penciller: J. G. Jones

After three issues, Final Crisis is truly turning into Grant Morrison's masterpiece. Once one gets past the horrid Countdown to Final Crisis and Morrison's characteristic narrative lapses, what we have here is a truly epic story that not only is a monumental "event", but thematically profound. Grant Morrison always has a lot to say, both about comic books and about life, and in this book he blends both of those obsessions nearly perfectly. This book is scary, moving and exciting. It is also an interesting reflection on the nature of freedom and the ugliness of evil.

The book contains a number of scenes that deal with the nature of freedom: Checkmate plans to introduce universal law enforcement; Superman is trapped at the hospital bed by the necessity of protecting his life; two rogue Monitors begin machinations to protect the Earth (and Monitor machinations never end well); Lex Luthor is given a choice, to obey Libra or lose his free will; Mister Miracle, who cannot be bound, escapes with a bunch of superbrats ruled by their vanity; Hal Jordan is arrested and trusts the justice of the Guardians to free him; a draft is introduced of all the superheroes; and, finally, Darkseid springs the Anti-Life Equation, which rids people of their free will, on the entire planet. Every step is a dark reflection on the meaning of freedom. Is Superman bound by love? In what sense is Luthor's choice a choice at all? Does Jordan's trust in Oan justice mean that he is in any sense free? Morrison never answers any of these questions directly. Instead, freedom provides a theme and backdrop. Every scene asks a new question. The reader is invited to think carefully and deeply about freedom's nature and importance.

There are a lot of very clever moments in the book, and it is sometimes very funny. Nix is fired from his fast food job for being creepy, which is I suppose what an amnesiac Watcher constantly reciting the dictionary would come across as. Oliver Queen's rant about the draft would be too overt as political commentary if we could not almost hear Black Canary rolling her eyes. The scene at the airport is quite amusing since the Super Young Team can't figure out whether or not they want to rescue Mister Miracle and Super Sumo or get their autographs. Morrison's humour can sometimes be bleak or mocking, but most of the humour in this book seems almost lighthearted, especially in the face of the darkness surrounding it.

Other scenes are especially brutal and jarring, but in an appropriate way. Final Crisis is supposed to be about what happens when evil wins, and Morrison doesn't shy away from the implications of that. The murders of Überfraulein, Orion, Replika and one of the Atomic Knights do not come across as in any way poetic or profound. They are just bleak brutality that are a result of the darkness that is overtaking the world. Other scenes also capture the ugliness of violence. Superman is literally using his powers to hold Lois Lane together. Libra's absolutely malevolent, mocking attack on the Human Flame solidifies his role as a complete monster.

One thing very present in this story is the way that the villains do not just hurt people, they mock them. The sheer disdain they feel for everything is present in every scene. Interestingly, this penchant for mockery not only comes from the evil characters, but the good or ordinary ones as well. Aside from Libra's attack on the Human Flame, there is Boodikka/Granny Goodness's snarl at Wonder Woman and Mary Marvel's barrage of insults in the final battle. Yet, this mockery is seen in other characters as well. Father Time ridicules Frankenstein behind his back, the restaurant manager mocks Nix, and Black Canary makes fun of Green Arrow. Morrison does a great job of allowing his villains to be truly vile, while at the same time, reflecting some of those evil characteristics in the heroes.

The conclusion of the book is brilliantly handled. Not content to have a slow burn any longer, Morrison lets his premise explode. He releases the Anti-Life Equation on the whole world, giving the only two people who notice, Mr. Terrific and Oracle, not even enough time to figure out what is happening before it is too late. Wally West and Barry Allen then arrive two weeks in the future, where the whole world has been turned into dystopian madness in which four superheroines in bondage gear riding dogs attack the Flashes. This is a fantastic climax, well earned from the entire history of the Anti-Life Equation. Now we know why Darkseid wanted it so badly and why it was imperative to keep it from him. The results are horrific and revolting.

There are a few small criticisms I have of the book. Again, Morrison fails to identify characters that a reader might not be familiar with. I don't think that every reader should be expected to know every character. The Black King is only identified as Taleb, and unless one has been following Checkmate, one wouldn't know who that is. In the final scene, one of the Atomic Knights has his sister killed, making me as a reader think, "Was I supposed to know they were related?". However, Morrison is much better at scene setting than he normally is, and lets us know who Replika is and explains his powers in one sentence to make sense of his murder. Unfortunately, one mistake that is not his fault, is that Überfraulein is accidently named <berfraulein because of a font problem. Since the scene is already in German (she says "Ich bin <berfraulein"), who it is that just got murdered is rendered accidently unclear.

Something that I dislike about Morrison is his little mocking comic in-jokes. I happen to like comics, which is why I'm reading them, and sometimes his little in-jokes seem mean spirited. The "praying for a resurrection" comment from issue #2 almost single-handedly ruined the drama of Martian Manhunter's funeral, and there are a couple of instances of this here. One is the quirky dialogue around Barry Allen's return. Iris asks, "And it's not Barry from the past or parallel Earth Barry, is it? Jay, tell me." Jay says, no, this is the real Barry Allen. How, exactly, would he know? He spent about ten seconds with him and presumably he would have the same aura if he was from the past. This is a bit of clunky exposition buried in an in-joke and doesn't work. The other little in-joke is subtle, and a jab at Jim Lee. At the end, a group of superheroines show up in bondage gear, but Catwoman shows up in an unaltered costume. The joke, I suppose, is the Catwoman is already wearing bondage gear. I suppose in some context this could be funny, but this scene is supposed to be frightening and the joke ruins the moment. Fortunately, it took me until a second read to catch the joke, but had I caught it the first time, I would not have enjoyed the book as much.

Despite these few criticisms, Final Crisis #3 is a phenomenal comic book. It expands the possibilities of the medium and blends almost seamlessly the wonder of the superhero genre with the probity of high art. Comics don't get much better than this.

A

Spike: After the Fall #2 Review

2008-08-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Lynch
Penciller: Franco Urru

The first issue really set the stage for what has so far been a great series, Spike: After the Fall. The second issue picks up the action, and the comic has already found its own tone and sense of humour that renders this a great book and a real treat for Spike fans like me. I love Spike, dressed as him for three straight Hallowe'ens, and found him to be the best developed and written character on either the Buffy or Angel television shows. This story has the same mood as Spike: goofy, cynical but ultimately noble, and serves as a perfect vehicle for his character. Even though it is strictly a flashback in the Angel: After the Fall continuity, that doesn't stop Lynch from providing a story with its own plot, characters and suspense. We know that none of the main characters can get killed (and on Buffy and Angel, main characters do get killed), but the story still manages to produce the same kind of suspense we find in mainstream comics where the characters are equally immortal.

The story begins with a hilarious scene in which Angel's dragon decides to take Spike for a ride. Spike goes through a series of calculations about how he might kill the dragon, which serve both as a source of humour ("Thorn in paw. Look for a thorn in paw, pull it out, monster owes me and does my bidding. Might not have a thorn. Don't think they're called 'paws,' either") and as a reminder that Spike has two centuries of training as a fearless strategic fighter and killer. In the end, he decides to just threaten the dragon, which seems to work, and he flies off to Wolfram and Hart, where he encounters a strange tatooed man in a kind of fiery hell. After touching the man, he is incapacitated and leaves. This will serve as an important plot point later.

After that, he decides to rescue his and Illyria's flock from a group of female demons that have captured them. They are well drawn, both literally and dramatically, and the boss lady, Non, seems to have the same sense of humor as Spike. She calls the human beings "shells", which is reminiscent of what Illyria called Fred after she killed her, making me think that there may be some connection to the old ones, the original demons. Spike arrives and attempts a valiant rescue, which fails miserably after he and Illyria are captured and all of his flock (except Jerry, who I'm pretty sure is evil) are turned into zombies. Normally, seeing a few dozen people murdered would be shocking, but the last issue of Angel: After the Fall revealed that the people in hell may very well be illusions, so until that is sorted out, there isn't much horror attached to the killing of civilians.

Non isn't interested in killing Spike or Illyria, but is after their power. It seems that the tatooed man whom Spike touched at the beginning of the issue had filled him with a great deal of power, and Non wants it. This turns Non from a generic demon to a real threat. She's clearly after something very dangerous and I look forward to seeing where this plot is taken. A lot of clever, mysterious villains are being developed, well suited to the characters of Spike and Illyria, and I am really enjoying watching this well-crafted book establish its independence from the main title.

B+

Hulk #5 Review

2008-08-07T05:10:00.000-07:00

Writer: Jeph Loeb
Penciller: Ed McGuinness

I haven't seen many comics raise quite the amount of ire as Jeph Loeb's current Hulk run. There are literally pictures of people burning it on one of the comic book forums, with many other comic fans cheering on the book burner. This is partly a spinoff of the of anger at Loeb's disastrous Ultimates 3 series. Loeb has taken two of Marvel's most successful titles, Ultimates and the Hulk, and has created arcs so goofy that it is unclear whether or not they are intended as satire. When critical success turns into goofy but dark camp, one can see how people might become very upset.

Stepping back from Ultimates 3 for a minute, how does Hulk #5 work as a comic book? That answer is: not very well. It is a great big fight between Hulk and Thor, full of "Kraka-Booming" lightning and a lot of threats to kill one another. It feels like it should be a silver age romp, and I have no problem with that at all. In fact, I love retro romps and goofy comics, especially when they are done well.

However, this book comes across as extremely mean. Since we don't understand this red Hulk's motivations at all, or even whether it is in fact Leonard Samson (the summary page at the beginning hints that it might not be), an extremely articulate Hulk that is systematically trying to kill people isn't fun. I believe this issue is trying to be funny when the Hulk beats up Thor, but is about as funny as a bully picking on another kid or someone ripping the wings off of a bug. Instead of being thrilled by the action, we are supposed to be thrilled by the violence and malevolence of the Red Hulk but they're not thrilling, only disturbing. The anger of the green Hulk is sometimes cathartic because it is a pure expression of rage by an irrational being; the red Hulk is simply to intelligent to be cathartic.

There are other problems with the book. A major one is the art. There are no backgrounds to this story. Thor and the Hulk fight on a bridge, and we only know that because the bridge is seen dimly every three pages or so. The art in the book feels incomplete and seems to be almost an attempt to create a series of pinups of Thor and the Red Hulk fighting. I almost want McGuinness to go back and finish up his artwork.

I don't have the same dislike of the idea of the red Hulk that many other comic book fans do. I am assuming that there is a reason why the red Hulk is so powerful that he can beat up Watchers and gods with very little effort. Once this is revealed, assuming it is done well, I have no problem with his level of power. One of the interesting things about the Hulk is that his power level is literally infinite, in the sense that there is no limit to his power so long as he is angry enough. That he was so angry during the World War Hulk story gave it much of its plausibility, and if the Red Hulk is somehow a side of Bruce Banner (which I'm hoping it is), then it might make sense.

However, Loeb has to get on with it. This book isn't really a mystery, since we haven't even been given enough clues to have any idea why this new Hulk is so powerful. What we have so far are five issues of fighting which are not fun and which need to be brought into focus very quickly, or this book will lose all interest. The book isn't funny as satire, engaging as a mystery or dramatic in effect. I'd call it a mess, but it's not complex enough to be a mess.

The scene between A-Bomb (ugh) and the green Hulk is actually bordering on offensive. Having two characters with the low intelligence of the green Hulk speak to each other in a way that is intended to be funny seems to have its humor rest on people finding conversations between two mentally disabled people funny. Some people find the Hulk's speech patterns intrinsically offensive, but I've always thought they sound more childlike than anything and as long as they aren't supposed to be funny, they are not done to mock the disabled. However, the A-Bomb-Hulk conversation is an example of how the Hulk's speech patterns can be used for tasteless and offensive humour at the expense of the disabled.

So far, Loeb's run on the Hulk is a disaster. I think it's supposed to be either satire or a silver-age adventure, but it's failing on both counts. It's too bad, because either a satirical Hulk or a silver-agey Hulk could provide an interesting story. This isn't as bad as the Ultimates 3, but that's pretty much the only positive thing to say about it.

D+

Robin #176 Review

2008-08-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciller: Joe Bennett

Unlike both the Nightwing and Detective Comics "R.I.P." storylines, the current Robin storyline has been developing the "R.I.P." arc. Last month's issue was extremely strong, digging into the feelings that Robin has about Batman losing his mind and really making plausible that Batman may, in fact, have gone insane, and that Robin is now in the unenviable position of having to take Batman down.

This issue isn't quite as strong as last month's and doesn't have quite as much to say about Robin and his relationship to Batman, but it is still a strong issue. What we learn more about, though, is how Spoiler is finding herself torn between Batman and Robin. Batman asked Spoiler not to help Robin after what Batman presumably thought to be some sort of inevitable breakdown. Spoiler is Robin's ex-girlfriend, and was thought to be dead for over a year, comic time. Robin is already angry with her because she faked her death, and her hiding Batman's secret creates even more tension between them. Since Spoiler is both extremely loyal to Batman and obviously in love with Robin, there are a great number of dramatic possibilities here that I hope they continue to explore.

The plot of this issue revolves around a picture of Batman, crazy, that has apparently been circulating among the criminals of Gotham. One can tell he is crazy because he is yelling and has a lot of stubble. One would think that, because Batman is currently dressed in a technicolor batsuit based on that of the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh, that the wacky suit would be more evidence that Batman has lost his mind, but presumably whoever took the picture was only interested in the stubble. However, Batman certainly looks pretty crazy in the photograph, and when Spoiler finds it, she hides it from Robin because Batman warned her "something was about to happen" and asked her to help keep it from Robin.

Batman is acting even crazier than ever, and has been for a long time. He hasn't been using his contacts to investigate the Black Glove for exactly forty-nine days, which was the exact amount of time he spent in the cave at Nanda Parbat. That's a little crazy. Moreover, if he hasn't been investigating the Black Glove like he claims to have been doing for seven weeks, what exactly has he been up to? Apparently, he was so convinced he was going to lose his mind or have something else happen that he felt the need to tell Spoiler to hinder Robin in helping and believed that Robin would have to carry on without him. The madness that is overtaking Batman is being very well developed here, while also keeping us interested in what exactly has been going on.

There are some well-written scenes with Tim and Dick, and their relationship (which has never been very well developed) has been getting some attention. There's a rather ominous scene in which Dick gives Tim a voice-activated self-destruct mask. Would you really want to wear a mask, or any other article of clothing, that can self-destruct? That seems like a very, very bad idea, and I hope they don't use the device to blind Tim or something because that would be an especially silly way of injuring a major character.

This issue doesn't develop the R.I.P. arc or themes as much as the last issue. However, it is still a strong comic book, giving us more insight into the relationships of Batman, Robin and Spoiler that will prove very important in the coming confrontation of Batman and Robin.

B+

Nightwing #147 Review

2008-08-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

Writer: Peter J. Tomasi
Penciller: Don Kramer

Nightwing #147 represents a truly infuriating trend in recent comic books. It is marketed as a part of the "R.I.P." storyline taking place in the other Batman comics, but has absolutely nothing to do with it. This continues the pattern of soliciting comics as being a part of a larger story and then having it have nothing to do with the story at all. I believe this trend started with the "Avengers Disassembled" story line four years ago, in which both Thor and the Fantastic Four were solicited as a part of the story, but had nothing to do with it. It culminated with the disastrous Countdown to Final Crisis, which not only had nothing to do with Final Crisis but contradicted so many elements in it that it made Final Crisis even harder to read. Even if Nightwing turns out to be a part of the R.I.P. story in the end (is the guy falling into a cloud of bats a part of R.I.P.?), I have lost all faith that it will be.

So, Nightwing #175 puts me in an awkward position. Tomasi just wrote one of my favourite books ever, the wonderful Final Crisis: Requiem, and I want to read more of his work. On the other hand, I feel almost morally obliged to drop Nightwing immediately so as not to find myself taken advantage of. Since I am interested in both Tomasi and Nightwing, I will give this series a shot, and hold my nose at the stench of DC marketing.

Despite all of these concerns, Nightwing #147 is actually a pretty good book. It isn't especially insightful or moving, but is a well-paced, well-told action story in which Nightwing has to protect Two Face's ex-paramour from unnamed assassins. Every part of the action is well described and clear, and between the fight in the car, the battle on the rooftop and a mad leap through a crashing helicopter. Kramer has a great sense of visual storytelling that makes every scene seem like it is in motion.

The rooftop scene with Two-Face and Nightwing is a lot of fun. Two-Face has such a bizarre moral code that Nightwing can only laugh at him. However, he did love the assassin's target, and now he wants to save her life. Somehow, Two-Face blends not being willing to actually follow through on the affair because of his wife with dropping innocent people in a silo filling with sugar, and makes it seem sort of plausible.

Some of the elements are a little implausible, even from the standpoint of a comic book. The sniper on the roof battle is perhaps the worst sniper who ever lived. He literally kills every single person except for his intended target. However, no matter how implausible the occasional element became, the sense of desperation in the scenes made every dangerous decision people took make sense.

The cliffhanger has all the wind taken out of its sails by the fact that we know Nightwing will soon be in Gotham, perfectly healthy, and captured by the Black Glove. If this hadn't been marketed as a part of R.I.P., it would work well as an independent story, but since it is supposedly a part of R.I.P., it must happen before Batman #678, so we know that Nightwing gets up from his injury so fast, it seems like it happened two months ago. Not only is the marketing dishonest, but it actually hurts the story.

I'm not sure how to grade this comic. I want to fail it, because I want to punish DC, but I suppose at the end of the day, a grade isn't a weapon but a description of the quality of the book, independent of such considerations.

B-

Detective Comics #847 Review

2008-08-06T21:45:00.001-07:00

Writer: Paul Dini
Penciller: Dunstin Nguyen

I have to admit, I've never been a fan of Hush. The original storyline was very good, but not really because of the character of Tommy Elliot. The wonderful art of Jim Lee was coupled with many of Batman's rogue gallery being manipulated into attacking him. At the end, Jason Todd's return was hinted at, and we learned that Bruce's oldest friend (whom we only met at the beginning of the story) was, in fact, the person behind the attacks.

However, the story was mainly successful because of its mood and art. The problem with the revelation is that Hush's background story sounded absurd, even for a Batman villain. Hush had, at the age of ten, tried to murder his parents by causing a car accident. However, Thomas Wayne saved his mother's life, condemning Tommy to a life of taking care of his insane mother. In revenge, and this is where the premise starts to lose credibility, Tommy decides to destroy the life of his oldest friend, because Bruce's father was murdered and he can't strike at him directly.

That's quite a grudge. It's also not an especially plausible grudge. Someone with that level of vindictiveness would be running over the children of their tax accountant because he didn't get enough money back on his tax return. How exactly did Tommy Elliot get to the point where the only person he blames for ruining his life is the son of the doctor who saved his mother? Why didn't he, for example, attack the person who called the hospital, or the ambulance driver, or the orderly? The grudge just didn't make any sense, and was the weakest part of that story.

This issue gives us part two of the "Heart of Hush" storyline, which is intended to provide some sort of insight into the character of Hush. I have a feeling the editors at DC know that Hush is something of a problem. They have a character at the heart of one of the best known and loved Batman stories ever told, who in himself isn't very interesting. They had something of the same problem after the Death of Superman story. What should they do with Doomsday, the big rock guy who killed Superman? After all, he's a big rock guy, and therefore by definition boring. The same problem arises here. They are trying to make Hush plausible and interesting, as they intend to make him a major player in the R.I.P. story or at least its after-story, Battle for the Cowl.

How successful is this story, then? So far, it does provide some insight into the character that at least makes him more plausible. That will at least provide the ground for making him more interesting in future issues. Tommy Elliot comes across as a dangerous psychopath. They introduce the possibility that this is the result of his father's physical abuse, which does seem to be common to many psychopaths. He tried to murder his parents, then nearly beats another child to death with an oar for calling him a "Momma's boy". When put into an institution, he primarily schemes in order to be released, and fools Doctor Crane, the future Scarecrow, into letting him go. If it were anyone other than the Scarecrow, this scene would have been implausible, but it is implied later in the story that this meeting will lead to some sort of relationship between the two later.

This story is at least making some sense out of Tommy Elliot, at least in so far as psychopaths make sense. The guy's been very evil for a very long time, and has a grudge against Batman because he has to have a grudge against someone. Now that he's back, he's very dangerous, and while of course I can't relate to the character, his actions can now at least be put into some sort of context.

The rest of the book is largely scene setting for the rest of the Heart of Hush storyline. Batman, Nightwing and Robin take out four very goofy villains and the Batman informs them he is worried about the return of Hush. While this is a little implausible given that Batman was supposedly completely obsessed with the Black Glove for the last forty-nine days, it would at least be sensible to warn one's friends if a dangerous, brilliant psychopath who hates you and who knows your secret identity is back in town. Following this, we have a clever scene between Zatanna and a jealous Catwoman, and Zatanna encourages her to pursue Bruce romantically despite his current love for Jezebel Jet.

Finally, there is a scene with my favorite Batman villain of all, Scarecrow. It is implied that he is working with Hush (at least the orderlies look the same), and appears to be capturing children in order to drive them crazy with fear. Compared to the psychological complexity of Tommy Elliot, there is something refreshing about a villain who is just fear incarnate trying to scare people because that's what he does. It makes me interested in knowing how Hush and Scarecrow are planning together and serves as a very good hook.

All in all, this is a fairly good issue. One of Batman's most troublesome characters is fleshed out to some degree, and there are a lot of interesting plot hooks to keep the reader in the story.

B

Justice Society of America Annual #1 Review

2008-07-30T20:56:00.001-07:00

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciller: Jerry Ordway

Finally, after twenty-two years, we get to revisit Earth-Two. I know a lot of people don't remember Earth-Two anymore. I barely do. In fact, I got my first ever superhero comic in a loot bag at another boy's eleventh birthday party. It was Crisis on Infinite Earths #12. The experience was absolutely mindblowing. Shadow demons attacked the one remaining Earth. Heroes I'd never heard of (and a couple I had) were dropping like flies. A huge battle occurred in space against the evil Anti-Monitor. As my comic book journey began, one ended in that book. The last of the doppelgangers apparently died off, including Superman, Robin, Green Arrow and Huntress of Earth-Two and Superboy of Earth Prime, and, despite their deaths, I read everything about them I could (no small chore before the internet). I have a special fondness for the Multiverse, and when I saw that Earth-Two was reformed at the end of the series 52, I was thrilled.

This book is the first story set on Earth-Two, and it was by-and-large a very strong one. It centres on the Huntress, the daughter of Earth-Two's Batman and Catwoman, and her experiences following the Crisis. After the death of her father and the departure of Robin, the Joker has apparently taken to systematically destroying her life. In this book he has seriously disfigured her boyfriend, Harry Sim, just as she was about to reject his marriage proposal, and she decides it is time to kill the Joker. She is seriously conflicted since she is in love with Robin, but cannot declare her love now that her boyfriend is in the hospital. Power Girl, who apparently forgot to use her superspeed, fails to stop her attacking Joker, but he commits suicide right before Huntress can land the killing blow, thus "getting the last laugh" so to speak, knowing that he turned her into a killer while not actually letting her have the honour.

Unfortunately, aside from Robin and Huntress, we don't get to meet many of the other characters that made Earth-Two unique. Jade, Doctor Fate and the Specter are there, but the original Flash and Green Lantern are apparently retired and don't appear. In fact, one of the things that this book makes clear is that the merger of Earths-One and Two actually did a very good job of continuing many of the best elements of Earth-Two in the mainstream books. What we're left with is a collection of dated superheroes that have been successfully developed in JSA and other books. In a weird way, Earth-Two, which had mostly its own heroes with a few doppelgangers has now turned into a world consisting almost entirely of doppelgangers, and is less interesting for it.

I was disappointed, too, with Power Girl's reaction to Earth-Two. Power Girl, who is the cousin of Earth-Two's Superman, has always felt somewhat out of place since Earth-Two was largely destroyed after Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, despite that being a part of her personality, there is only one brief moment where she seems happy that she might have found her own Earth. After being hissed at by an angry cat, she quickly tells the Huntress, who was her best friend, "I don't feel like we're friends anymore", which was pretty heartless on any scale. Do they not have tact on Earth-One? After literally decades of Power Girl's feelings of displacement, she doesn't really make much of an effort to fit in when she discovers her putative long-lost friends. Her response really didn't seem consistent with the character.

Of course, all is not as it seems, and Skrull Power Girl (wearing a more modest costume) shows up, reminding the Huntress of a personal conversation, and the Justice Society attacks Power Girl. Okay, she's probably not a Skrull, given that there are no Skrulls in DC comics, but she sure acts like one and her timing is a little too convenient. I do hope it turns out the Skrull Power Girl is the imposter, so that the real Power Girl's feelings about Earth-Two can develop some more before Earth-Two is blown up in the next crossover.

Despite these problems, it really is wonderful to see Earth-Two again, and I hope they can tell as many JSA stories as possible on this Earth. It is, after all, the home of most of the cast of the book, and provides a wonderful context in which to tell stories about what the JSA is all about. Moreover, the character of the Huntress is very interesting, and I want to see more of her and find out more of her story.

B

Skaar: Son of Hulk #2 Review

2008-07-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Writer: Greg Pak
Pencillers: Ron Garney/Butch Guice

This book has a cool cover. Lightning is cool. Dragons are very cool. The Hulk (or his son, who looks a lot like him) is extremely cool. The Hulk with a battle axe is especially cool. The Hulk with a battle axe attacking a dragon with lightning in the background? That may be the coolest thing since the invention of the double-bladed lightsaber. It is impossible to underestimate the coolness of this cover, which would have made me buy the book regardless of its contents.

Except I need to review the contents, too, don't I? Sigh. I have to say, I'm still not one hundred percent sold on this book. I think the main problem is that I'm not one hundred percent certain of the premise. What, exactly, is the point of this story? We've been introduced to a number of characters, but aside from the main character of Skaar, I'm not at all sure who will be the main characters or what this story will be about. We've had two big fight issues, including dragons, and... that's really it. There's some sort of power struggle going on between two of the pink people (as opposed to the grey people - one must keep such things straight), one of whom is a woman with no arms, so is that the point? I don't know. There's really nothing here to latch onto.

One serious problem with this story is Skaar himself. Skaar is incredibly boring. Basically, he's like the savage Hulk from the early Eighties, who just says "rawr" and smashes things. Skaar doesn't even say "Skaar smash!", which would at least be articulate. Instead, he says (and I quote), "Grrraaaaaa!", "Gggrnnn", "Rrrrrrrrrr...", "Grrraaaaaaa!", "Rrrraaaannnnrrrggg", and "Graaaaaaa!". Even Robinson's Superman has better dialogue. This is just Klingon baby talk. There's really nothing else to say about him, except that he seems like a tough fighter, and doesn't like to wear a loin cloth.

I'm going to give this book some time, since Pak's "Planet Hulk" story line was the best Hulk story I've ever read. Unless he's completely lost his mind, Pak is planning to go somewhere with this story, and I'm going to give it a chance. I'm happy to see that Sakarr wasn't completely destroyed at the end of Planet Hulk, and it's nice to see Pak return to a world for which he clearly has great fondness. A cast does seem to be developing and I do hope that Skaar is healed from his apparent lobotomy at some point in the near future, so that he can be a character rather than a plot device.

Pak also has a lot to say about violence, fear and retribution, and the Planet Hulk storyline really captured the way that anger and strength can sometimes be exactly the right approach to great evil. The Planet Hulk story line reminded me of the Rage of Achilles book of the Iliad. In that story, Achilles, following the death of Patroclus, cuts a swath of death through the Trojans, all of which is described in great detail, and ultimately ends up fighting the river itself, who is enraged by all the corpses piling up in its water. The Hulk has the same sort of virtues: he is strong, he is angry and he is right. In the face of a violent and barbarous world like Sakarr, he was exactly what they needed, and had the same sort of heroic virtues that the Greeks prized before they started founding cities and needed to get along with each other. Pak's work on the Incredible Hercules shows that he has a great fondness for Greek stories and myth, and they are clearly influencing his stories and themes.

The second story in this book gives some hints as to where Pak may be going with this story. As one grey man says to another, "When so much power lies in the hands of one man...people like you die by the millions". The cost of the kind of virtues that the Hulk possesses are destruction and death. When Achilles storms across the battle field he kills dozens; the sack of Troy kills thousands. When a world is founded on strength, the violence spills over, as it did when Miek destroyed the capital sity of Sakarr. If Pak doesn't give some language to Skarr, what we may find this book to be is the reactions to the Hulk's fruits on Sakarr. What is the cost of anger and strength, even righteous anger? Pak explored this in World War Hulk, and the second story is beginning to address them.

However, as it is, this book is only beginning to touch these themes. Right now, it is promise but no punch, and I can only hope it improves:

C+

Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #3 Review

2008-07-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Writer: Roberto Aguirre Sacasa
Penciller: Barry Kitson

The limited series chronicling the adventures of Ben, Johnny, Franklin and Valeria in the Negative Zone has finally concluded, and overall it has been a very mixed series. The story is almost completely uninspired: The Human Torch, the Thing and the two Richards children are trapped in the Negative Zone and must escape. They find their way to a prison and are rescued by the Tinkerer. In the meantime, Lyja betrays them, then betrays the Skrulls and we find out a bit about what happened to her in the meantime.

The overall plot arc is actually very boring. For three issues, the four of them basically fight off large animals. First it was bugs and then it was bats. The Negative Zone itself is presented as incredibly boring, with simply floating rocks on a generic starscape. They don't even encounter Annihilus, who is usually a staple in Negative Zone stories. Even if he is currently dead (it's hard to keep track), shouldn't there at least be someone in the Negative Zone worth fighting who can utter a sentence? As a plot arc, the story is terribly uninspired. If this is the Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four story, why not put the rescue of Susan Storm or Reed Richards in it? Presumably those things will happen at some point, and this would seem to be the suitable book for it. Instead we get some fights with oversized vermin.

On the other hand, there are a lot of nice human touches in this story. One of the best things about the Fantastic Four is that it really feels like a family. There really aren't any other popular books that even come close to that feeling. Part of the reason the Thing has always been the emotional centre of the book is that he's the one member who isn't either a spouse, sibling or parent of another member, and he is always a little insecure about where he stands. A lot of those human touches come across very well in this story. The bickering between the Thing and the Human Torch comes across as genuinely light-hearted. Kids are usually written terribly in comics, but Franklin and Valeria come across as very realistic children, who manage to be cute without being sappy. The way that they don't panic when attacked by bats is quite amusing, as presumably bats aren't scary if you fought Doctor Doom last week. They turn everything into a game, and the Thing has the good sense to play along as panicking the children could be terribly dangerous.

The part with the Tinkerer is quite interesting. At the end of the day, he's a family man like everyone else. I love that he wants to get revenge, and can stand up to the Thing and the Human Torch, but completely breaks down in the face of a crying little girl. It really did accentuate the "family" feel of the book to make the primary motivations of everyone in the book be caring about their family members.

The Tinkerer section added a new element of sinisterness to the Civil War as well. He was rounded up without due process because he used to be a meta human. This little tidbit makes me think the Regristration Act's days are numbered, as Marvel has presumably given up all pretension that there could be any legitimate debate about the Act, whose exact contents shifts wildly from author to author depending on who is writing the book. Now it just seems to be an overarching metaphor for fascism or Guantanamo Bay or whatever else it is that authors dislike about the Bush administration. I guess the debate ended with the surrender of Captain America, but it is interesting to see the issue shift from debate to heavy-handed political metaphor.

Of course, the big story of this limited series is the return of Lyja. She always comes up in "Top Ten Dangling Threads" lists along with Spider Man's baby. She was Johnny's wife and later girlfriend (since he didn't actually intend to marry her when she was disguised as Alicia Masters), but completely vanished without a trace after the Onslaught story. No matter how mediocre this book, her return would redeem it. Erm, except, she isn't returning, as she decides to stay in the Negative Zone, presumably for another eleven years. But at least we got to see some resolution here.

Unfortunately, the resolution isn't very interesting. She decided to live as a human being, and the Human Torch never bothered to call her after he got back from Counter-Earth. I guess a lot of breakups happen that way, when people just don't bother to call each other after some awkward event, but it came across here as very immature behaviour on the part of both characters. Her actions seem very odd as well. To protect the Fantastic Four, she kidnapped the Invisible Woman and sucked the Baxter Building into the Negative Zone. That seems like an odd approach given that she could presumably have prevented the destruction of the Baxter Building by, I don't know, warning them? Moral dilemma stories only work when a third option isn't glaringly obvious.

Overall, this book really captures the tone of the Fantastic Four, but revolves around a very boring story. The big return was nice to see, but mismanaged. Overall, this story was a real disappointment.

C+

Robin #175 Review

2008-07-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciler: Joe Bennett

Robin #175 is a great issue, really expanding on and developing the story of R.I.P., while simultaneously telling the story from the point of view of Robin, who, honestly, is more interesting than Bruce Wayne right now. Moreover, it is nice to see a part of a crossover that, unlike Detective Comics #847, is actually a part of the story by more than pure editorial fiat.

The story is about Robin and his growing fears that Batman, his mentor and now father, has in fact gone insane, and that is why he cannot find him. By and large, this is true, though the insanity was brought on largely by drugs injected by Doctor Hurt. Robin doesn't know this, though, and despite my often arguing that Batman is sane but driven, this comic made me realise that the last two years of Batman's life are really consistent with someone who is losing his mind.

Some of the dialogue is very witty. My favourite was from Robin's voiceover: "Purging his 'inner demons,' then off to a hidden temple in Nepal where Bruce said he needed to die and become reborn. Leave it to him to make that sound like a plan." Spoiler simply cracking up to the point of tears when Robin says he thinks Batman has lost his mind really sums up how most sane people would approach people dressing up as bats and birds and swinging around the city: "Of course he's crazy! We all are. I mean, look at us!"

One thing I really appreciate about the Robin comic is the way it draws Tim Drake as a complete human being, worthy of carrying a comic book himself and every bit a hero in his own right. As this book reaches its conclusion, we understand exactly what Robin plans to do and why he plans to do it. He plans to go up against Batman and defeat him, and I, as a reader, even want him to. Moreover, it looks very much like he might be the one to replace him. I know Batman #666 hints that Dick Grayson will be the likely next Batman, but Tim Drake would be the better Batman. He's more mature than Dick Grayson, and Dick Grayson moved on with his life a long time ago. Tim Drake is his son, and I imagine Batbrat (Damian) will probably become the next Robin.

One of course can't comment on this book without commenting on the cover. It is a representation of the final issue of the "Death in the Family" story in which Jason Todd dies (which was in turn an homage to the Pietà). At first, I thought that it was only a cheap marketing gimmick, especially with the header "Death of a Family", and I suppose it is a gimmick, but it is actually more than that. The point of this book is Robin realising that he may be losing Batman, which would be his greatest loss since his father died, and that he will need to carry on his mission without him. It really is a book about loss, and having the cover from Batman's greatest loss since his parents died is actually a very insightful and a important parallel.

This is an excellent book. It isn't quite as groundbreaking as the R.I.P. story, but it makes up for that with keen psychological insight and clear storytelling. I look forward to reading the rest of this story and this is a great start.

A-

The New Avengers #43 Review

2008-07-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: Billy Tan

The never-ending premise known as Secret Invasion reveals to us that yet another of the "heroes" that left the Skrull ship three months ago (or twenty minutes ago in Marvel time) was in fact a Skrull. In this case, it is Captain America, who was the one whom Mockingbird assured us could not possibly be a Skrull back in Secret Invasion #2. So far, if I'm counting right, that's six of them that have been shown to be Skrulls and zero that have not been, which has largely removed any interest most of us have in the plot point.

However, despite being yet another page in the book "Previously in Marvel Comics", New Avengers #43 is actually quite a successful comic. In fact, what makes this piece of backstory so interesting and what makes this book so successful is precisely that it is completely irrelevant. The death of the Skrull Captain America is a truly pathetic event, and actually horrifying, as you realise that he doesn't even realise that he is a Skrull when he is murdered.

Basically, the story is the one we've seen several times now: a Skrull promises to join the mission by impersonating a superhero. He has fake memories implanted so he believes he was captured at some point in the '80s (we can tell because She-Hulk is on the Fantastic Four). He then is sent to Eath genuinely believing that he is Captain America, leads the group, and then is revealed to be a Skrull by a paralytic poison used by Sheena and then murdered by her, as she explains that the Geneva convention is only relevant in Manhattan coffee shops.

The whole book builds up to the last few pages, as we realise that this Skrull, in fact, has no idea that he is a Skrull. He is, in a lot of ways, an analogue of the new Captain Marvel, who is also a Skrull that had come to believe in his own false memories. In a way, when he dies, it is like seeing Captain America die again. Even though we knew Steve Rogers was dead, most of us still held out the slightest bit of hope that the Skrull Cap was really him. And, in some ways, he was. He had the personality and memories of Captain America, and maybe could have gone on to be a hero.

As it was, he was murdered. I say murdered, because Bendis doesn't seem to believe in war crimes, but the rest of us should. His death is truly pathetic. His mission was always basically hopeless, as Cap was dead and clearly did not revert to a Skrull. He lasted about fifteen minutes as Captain America before he was shot down and he didn't even realise what was going on. It was a truly sad moment, even if not exactly an original one (Buffy Season Eight did something similar with one of Buffy's imposters in Issue #7 or so).

So, overall, this is a good comic book. It is self-contained, as all Secret Invasion crossovers need to be lest they accidently advance the non-existent story. And as that, a short book whose primary purpose was to move the audience with the sense of waste in war, was a successful one.

B

Thunderbolts #122 Review

2008-07-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

Writer: Cristos N. Gage
Penciler: Frank Martin

Warren Ellis is off the Thunderbolts. I'm honestly not sure whether that is good news or bad news. Warren Ellis is a great writer, capable of interesting ideas, and his run on the Thunderbolts was very engaging. The Green Goblin's monologue as he dons his costume in issue #120 was one of the funniest speeches in a comic book ever.

However, at the end of the day, the book has veered so far from its original premise that it has lost a lot of its charm. The original premise (well, since issue #13) of the Thunderbolts has been largely lost. A group of supervillains pretend to be heroes so as to take over the world, but end up enjoying it so much they decide to become heroes for real. It was a premise that created a lot of clever moments and very interesting stories as some of them live up to their potential, and others do not.

Now, the group is largely composed of unlikable criminals and psychopaths. That can be occasionally funny, but by-and-large it's very hard to be engaged with a book with unlikeable characters. Songbird and Radioactive Man are really the only old-school Thunderbolts left. The others are either so evil or so insane as to be virtually unreadable in the long run.

The question then is: who will most inspire Gage, the new writer, Nicieza or Ellis? So far, it looks like mainly Ellis, as Gage tries to pick up on the sense of humour that drove Ellis's book, which is unfortunate. Moreover, he doesn't do it as well. When Moonstone calls Samson a "sanctimonious ivy league surrender monkey", the writing even sounds a little desperate. Moreover, do we need any more creepy implied twin incest? I thought that Loeb had proven definitively that it is a horrible idea in Ultimates 3.

A couple points are funny, but more because they are having fun at the expense of Ellis's concept: when Osborne and Moonstone simultaneously ask each other whether or not the other killed Songbird's mother, Gage seems to actually be having fun at Ellis's expense, and it is the funniest moment in the book. At times, Gage finds his voice, which seems to be in having fun at the expense of the idea of evil characters.

Hopefully, Gage will use the Secret Invasion as a chance to break away from Ellis's style, partly because it is a tone that can only be carried on so long, and partly because he isn't especially good at it. He does seem to be putting into the mouths of the characters justifications for turning away from the Osborne and Co. Psycho Brigade premise, and now we have the Secret Invasion to distract everyone for a while. Andrea Strucker has a great big "I'm a Skrull" sign on her forehead, and it will be interesting to see how everyone reacts to the news.

Overall, this is a weaker version of Ellis's Thunderbolts, but shows some promise. Gage will hopefully be with the book for a while, and I do hope this book can recapture some of its original charm.

B-

Superman #678 Review

2008-07-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

Writer: James Robinson
Penciler: Renato Guedes

The second part of the "Coming of Atlas" story is not a bad comic, but it has so many clichés that it occasionally become accidently comedic. The story is fairly straightforward. Atlas, a man from the past with superpowers takes over the world from the evil head of the Lizard Kingdom (who is, disappointingly, not actually a lizard). He puts the Lizard king's head on a pike, and everyone is happy to get rid of him, until they realise that Atlas is an angry bastard with a taste for orgies (yes, this book includes what is probably the first ever orgy in a Superman comic). So, his adviser tricks him into being sent into the future, where he decides to take over the world again.

There's more going on of course. We see more of the techno-cops that we met in the last issue, who will presumably become supporting characters. There are also two mysterious people behind the scenes, who are clearly both evil because they are obviously Republicans. The first is a woman in a suit, who may or not be Lana Lang, who is directing the techno-cops. The second is, as far as I can tell, General Thunderbolt Ross, who seems to have accidentally gotten lost in the DC universe. He plans to study Superman fight Atlas, presumably through the cameras that are floating around, in hopes of killing the Man of Steel later.

The book is occasionally quite funny. I enjoy that the general sends in Atlas to fight Superman and has so little expectation that Atlas can possibly win that, when Atlas says he plans to rule the world, he answers, "I wish you well in your endeavors". Occasionally, though, the book becomes unintentionally silly. Lana...er, the cop...gets upset when she is called "ma'am". The past history of the Lizard Kingdom is so silly, it feels like a Hagar the Horrible comic.

One cliché that is getting a little annoying is how the past in comic books is being represented in old style printing with visible dots. It was very clever in the Sentry and worked well in the recent Might Avengers arc, largely because it included the Sentry. However, now the trick is popping up all over the place. Here, Atlas the Horrible's past looks like a comic book from the '40s, largely I suppose because it's the past (though, shouldn't it be in cave drawings?). The difference is that the Sentry comics were largely surreal, and the old-style drawings captured the strange sense that perhaps the Sentry was just insane. In this story, it's just a way to shout, "Look a flashback!". I almost expect to see Wayne and Garth waving their hands up and down saying "ditditditdoo ditditditdoo", since that's only slightly more hokey and obvious.

Overall, though, it's a solid effort if a little quaint. The fight is fun. There are unseemly happenings about. We get to see Jimmy on a motorcycle. However, with Action Comics consistently putting out engaging stories right now, a story like this just can't measure up.

C+

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #1 Review

2008-07-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciler: Scott Kolins

I admit, I don't really follow the Flash, so I'm piecing together a lot of what is going on here. I think I did a pretty good job, but I'm not convinced, after piecing it together, that we have a very good story here. As a premise, it seems not very interesting, and actually silly to the point of unbelievability. It putatively ties into the Final Crisis story, but does such a good job of establishing that these villains are not going to be a part of Libra's new Society, that it cuts its own umbilical cord right away.

The story starts off with a group called the "rogues", most of whom I recognise. There is Mirror Master, Weather Wizard, Captain Cold and Heat Wave (he's the one I don't remember). They killed Bart Allen, the Flash, formerly known as Kid Flash, and now are on the run.

Except...and here's the part that I found silly...they killed the Kid Flash by accident. Wait, what? It seems they didn't really think that their powers would kill the Flash, as he runs so fast. By the dastardly Inertia stole Kid Flash's speed (that fink!), and they killed him by accident when he slowed down. Now, they plan to track down Inertia and kill him in revenge for causing them to accidently kill Kid Flash. Zoom, however, shows up and kidnaps Intertia, intending to turn him into the new Kid Flash.

Okay, now that's just silly. I get that the rogues in the Flash comics aren't the deranged psychos from Batman, but they certainly are murderers. At one point, Cold says that he only kills in self-defense, despite clearly murdering someone in cold blood a few pages earlier. Perhaps the theme of this book is going to be the confusion that evil people feel when they try to integrate their compassion and sense of honour into their lives and that this is all just a commentary on that, but right now, it looks like this book is shaping up to be a weak story.

There are a few positive elements to this book. Aside from the strange looking raindrops from early in the book, the art is quite strong, especially for locations like the Flash Museum. I like seeing Pied Piper again, especially now that he's decided to be creepy. Libra is scary, as usual, although I admit I cringe when he reads from the "Crime Bible", since I think that may actually be D.C.'s stupidest idea ever.

As a non-Flash fan, I'm not sure how interesting a group of villains ganging up on another villain for "revenge" for "making" them kill a rival is going to be. I think all the stuff about how they killed Bart by accident was supposed to make us feel like they are less evil than Inertia so that we will root for them, but really it just made them look stupid. Stupid characters tend not to make interesting protagonists, and I worry this story will end up falling flat.

C+

Captain America #40 Review

2008-07-16T19:19:00.001-07:00

Writer: Ed Brubaker
Penciler: Steve Epting

Ed Brubaker's Captain America continues to be one of Marvel's strongest books, and Brubaker has definitely shown himself to be one of the best and most consistent comic book writers today. While writers like Morrison, Bendis, Loeb and Claremont are hit-and-miss, sometimes brilliant and sometimes dreadful, Brubaker seems incapable of writing an issue that isn't engaging and enjoyable.

In this book, we basically get two fight scenes, which normally I find quite annoying. However, Brubaker details the fights so cleverly that it makes for a highly engrossing issue. Bucky (whom I still can't bring myself to call Captain America) and the Grand Director (also dressed as Captain America) fight on a rooftop. It is a very interesting battle because the Grand Director is so strong. Here one really gets the feeling of what it might be like to fight someone with superpowers. At the end of the day, Bucky is just a very strong human. The Grand Director tips into superhero territory, knocking Bucky through bricks. One doesn't usually feel the strategic decisions being made in comic book battle, but Brubaker, as usual, lets the reader in on every thought and makes the fights seem tactical.

On the other hand, we have the fight between Sin and Sharon Carter. For the first half of the book, Brubaker builds tension by having Sin, who comes across as quite insane, threaten Sharon. When the fight finally begins, we really feel that threat. Even though we know it is unlikely Sharon will be killed, the threats create suspense in the battle later. Finally, the battle begins when Sin figures out Sharon would not actually kill her hostage, and ends up as a wrestling match over the knife that Sharon cannot hope to win. The actual stabbing of Sharon happens offpanel, but makes perfect sense in light of the fight.

I do have one complaint: I do not want Sharon Carter to lose her baby, and that stab wound looks very dangerous. It is bad enough that they killed Captain America, but then to dangle his son or daughter in front of the reader only to kill him or her crosses the line from tragic to just manipulative and mean. The number of miscarriages as a result of violence in comics is too high, and I'd like to see Brubaker not place his female characters in that particular refrigerator.

However, this is a great book. It is well written, taut, and highly engaging. I look forward to reading this book week after week, and I am always excited when I see it has arrived.

B+

The Mighty Avengers #16 Review

2008-07-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: Khoi Pham

The Avengers books have done a good job of setting the background for the Secret Invasion crossover. By and large, in fact, they have been better than the main series itself, which has been crippled by Bendis's inability to tell the difference between a premise and a story. The Avengers books, on the other hand, have explained to us how things as we believed them were not how they appeared for the last three years, and brought us up to speed on the excellent premise of the Secret Invasion story.

This book, however, fails even as an interesting contribution to the premise. For one thing, this book is about Elektra's abduction or possible murder. Elektra is not an Avenger. She's the usually-dead former girlfriend of a former Avenger, an Avenger, who I might add, who was on the New Avengers team, not this one. Perhaps one might justify this as being an explanation of what led to the Skrully Elektra, but that also was a story in the New Avengers. There's really no justification for this story being in the Mighty Avengers book. Last issue, we were finding out about what happened to Sentry, and that story is not remotely mentioned here, perhaps because Bendis doesn't want to accidently push forward his Secret Invasion story, since he is already have trouble stretching his weak story over eight issues.

However, even a random, unrelated character would be worth reading about if it were a worthwhile story. This story, however, is terribly told. For one thing, the Skrulls don't use actually use any trickery. This is what makes them scary. They could be anyone. However, they are very unlikely to be Elektra's clone dressed in a purple outfit, since Elektra is already pretty sure that she is herself. When Pym was kidnapped, it was after being seduced by a "graduate student" at a conference. This was both a suitable Skrull ploy and played well on Pym's weaknesses. On the other hand, Mighty Avengers #16 was just a fight against a bunch of Skrulls. The end.

Well, not quite the end. Elektra has to kill a Hydra member and then a Hand member to take over the Hand. The end. What we lack in this story, though, is any reinterpretation of events to which we were familiar. Elektra took over the Hand, but that happened offpanel, and her two fights to the death are uninspired. Compare this to Skrull Pym's giving of a new growth formula to Janet, and you can see how an old scene can be truly creepy when scene from a different perspective. The scenes with Elektra all fall flat.

To date this has been the weakest of the Avengers Secret Invasion tie-ins. It represents a real danger of thinking that somehow a book, just because it is has a Secret Invasion header, need have no connection with the characters it is supposed to be about. I hope this doesn't represent a trend.

C

Spike: After the Fall #1 Review

2008-07-16T18:38:00.001-07:00

Writer: Brian Lynch
Penciler: Franco Urru

After ten months of reading about his sidekick, Angel, we finally have a story about the main man himself, Spike. This book is about the experience of Spike right after he and the rest of L.A. are sent to hell at the end of the television series, Angel.

The book is a mixture of good and bad elements. On the positive side, Spike finally finds his voice. While Spike has been a character in Angel: After the Fall since the first issue, he's never really sounded like Spike and has never really been a focus of attention. In this book, Lynch shows that he really understands how to write Spike. His sardonic humour and wit come across perfectly, and he has the ability to make jokes even in the face of horror. He is like one of those very intelligent people who make clever and witty comments at the most inappropriate times, because they can't think of anything stupid to say.

The story is a lot of fun, and catches up with Spike right after the trip to hell. He and Illyria lead a group of refugees in a former amusment park, which is the source of a great deal of humour in itself. Illyria is busy smashing the park, since she is apparently wounded in her Fred form, and the rides make her angry enough to change back. The backdrop of an amusement park is a perfect location for Spike and Lynch to let their absurd sides out, as they are unlikely to upstage their surroundings.

On the other hand, Spike: After the Fall makes the same mistake as the main series. The main draw of both Buffy: Season Eight and Angel: After the Fall is that we want to catch up with the main characters and see what happens to them. Telling stories about what happened in high school or before Wolfram and Hart never sold very well. However, the After the Fall stories have now spent almost half their time telling us stories that are now in the past, not progressing the stories any further.

Unfortunately, it looks like this might be the case for the entirety of the Spike series. I don't understand why Lynch believes that he cannot simply tell a story about Spike that runs concurrently with the main story, and turns the entire series into a flashback. There's little here we didn't already know: Spike and Illyria are working together and she is turning periodically into Fred. Lynch is dangerously close to having less development in his stories than Bendis.

The art is also a bit jarring. We met these characters as live-action characters, and they look especially cartoon-like in this story. The edges of the characters are drawn very thickly and sometimes they seem more like shapes than people. However, the art is good and I'm sure with time it will grow on me, but it is worth noting that this book is not attempting, like Buffy: Season Eight, to mimic the faces of the actors.

Nonetheless, it is nice to see some focus on Spike and it refreshing to catch up with someone who feels like an old friend. The subplot of the possibly evil Jerry/Jeremy is interesting. It's nice to see Fred back, even if she is a bit confused, and the ending, in which the people at the amusement park are happy to be conquered because they are so bored is hilarious. This is an entertaining book and a worthwhile read.

B-

The Incredible Hercules #119 Review

2008-07-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

Writers: Greg Pak and Fred van Lente
Penciler: Rafa Sandoval

In a lot of ways, Greg Pak is picking up where Oeming left off. After years of treating mythical gods as simply superheroes that speak in badly conjugated old English, Oeming's Ares and Thor changed the way that Marvel does gods, and for the better. Instead, they are prisoners of their own personalities, endlessly fighting each other and compulsively unable to grow beyond the archetypes they represent.

Pak has given us something we haven't seen in a while: a mythical adventure. He has the good sense to have fun while doing so. The "God squad", as he calls them on the opening page, have banded together in order to hunt the Skrull gods and end the invasion of Earth. They believe, reasonably enough, that if humanity is wiped out, they will lose their worshippers and be forgotten.

It turns out that the consequences would be worse than that. On arriving at the citadel of Kly'Bn, they discover that he has enslaved the gods of all the worlds conquered by the Skrull. And, so Hercules unleashes his master plan: smash things. The other gods are a little surprised that his plan lacks any more than this, but what did they expect? He's Hercules. Pak's Hercules is fantastically written, because he's basically a drunken warrior who breaks stuff and has a ton of fun doing so. Oh yes, and he beds women, like the Inuit goddess Snowbird. Their post-coital chatter is quite amusing, as Hercules can't quite break out of his swaggering frat boy mode long enough to not get a boot thrown at him.

The issue is in general quite well written, and the big revelation, that Cho's coyote pup is really a Skrull is well handled. The death of Snowbird, if indeed that's what it is, is a little confusing. She turns into a giant green monster that grown hundreds of large white tentacles with multiple mouths that eat the other gods before collapsing into a point and going pop. I think. One problem with this book in general, as has been a problem since this story began, is that I have a feeling the Sandoval is a little unsure how to render many of the bizarre visuals Pak's mythological scripts ask for. A few points of the story are a little unclear, as the script is far away from its usual superhero roots and isn't able to depend on many of the visual hints that usually convey what is happening.

All in all, though, The Incredible Hercules is a great book and Pak hasn't missed a beat since moving from writing Hulk to Hercules. His gods come across as quite interesting, and I am enyoing the merry adventure.

B-

Justice Society of America #17 Review

2008-07-15T06:48:00.001-07:00

Writers: Geoff Johns and Alex Ross
Penciler: Fernando Pasarin

The current arc in Justice Society of America is a lot of fun. For those of us who were a fan of the Kingdom Come series, it promises to introduce the character of Magog, who was such an important part of those stories. In addition, this new god (or, I guess, old god, since he's from the Third World) adds some opportunities for the book to talk about faith and salvation, and what it might mean in a world that already has superheroes.

For one thing, the current heroes in comic books are basically walking tanks. Sure some of them have pew pew lasers, but at the end of the day, what makes you a hero is your ability to be a weapon. Most of their abilities are about hitting stuff and being resilient when being hit. Sure, they help rebuild cities once and a while, and the Flash especially is very good at rescuing people, but their powers are more about strength than anything.

On the other hand, they are really rather useless when it comes to solving any problems that can't be smashed or lifted. What if someone with real superpowers showed up? Gog spends most of this issue walking across Africa, healing diseases. Moreover, he is able to look deeply into the characters in the JSA and give them what they think they want. Damage's face is healed, Starman's mind is cured and Power Girl, who always feels like an outsider, is sent home, presumably to the new multiverse's equivalent of Earth-2.

This opens up a host of dramatic possibilities, and the book takes advantage of some of them. What if someone showed up who could give you whatever it was your heart desired? Stories like this tend to assume that people would want selfish power, but what if that person were just able to cure a disfiguring ailment or be rid of loneliness? How would people react? That strange feeling of hope, so much a part of religious faith, that in fact we might be healed in so far as we are most damaged, is presented here as the characters fly after Gog, wondering what their lives might be like if they were actually happy, and confronted with the reality that they have been unhappy for so long, they can't really imagine it.

Unfortunately, it looks increasingly like Gog is going to turn into the CAP from the recent Fantastic Four arc, destroying war probably in quite brutal ways. I say it is unfortunate, because it would be nice to see an author take a direction in which hope need not be immediately crushed, and real superpowers, those that heal rather than smash, exist. But for now, it is interesting to see the kind of disorientation that the characters feel in the face of real hope.

This book is very clever and occasionally funny, especially as the heroes fly over Gog, reporting with surprise that he isn't actually smashing anything. It gives Johns the opportunity to tell stories about those who suddenly find hope, and are unsure of how to deal with it. Next month, this will all come crashing down, of course, but this issue is an interesting reflection on how disorienting the possibility of hope can be.

B+

Final Crisis: Requiem #1 Review

2008-07-14T21:12:00.001-07:00

Writer: Peter Tomasi
Penciler: Doug Mahnke

Poor Martian Manhunter. While being a contant presence in nearly every incarnation of the Justice League of America, he has never been able to carry his own book, a television show or a movie. No editor has ever figured out what the problem is, but I believe it was his insecurity. As a shapeshifter, he was never quite "in his own skin", so to speak, and was often in the position of continually trying to fit in with humanity, never really noticing that he already did so.

Whatever it was that plagued the poor fellow's commercial success, he's now dead. He's probably permanently dead, given that resurrection seems to be saved for tier-one characters or at least their angry sidekicks. The quality of this story, moreover, is likely to make this a classic, and having something bad happen to you in such a classic story kept Supergirl and Barry Allen dead and Barbara Gordon in a wheelchair for twenty years.

This comic is a wonderful tribute to one of DC's most unappreciated characters. It does a very good job of tracing what it was about J'onn that made us love him. A lot of his past history is retold, including the betrayal of his brother and the death of his family, followed by many of his adventures on Earth. I knew many of these stories and some I didn't, but it had the effect of a wake in which we got to hear many of the stories about the deceased.

There were two truly masterful parts of this story. First, it gave the sense perfectly of how loved he was by his friends. As J'onn was a psychic, his friends were able to feel him die. Moreover, he gave them a part of himself, the history of Mars, and they were able to know a part of him only in his death. This brought out the real feelings people often have at the death of those close to them: they gain insights into the person who died just as they realise they will never see them again. It was very saddening, and a much more insightful approach to death than Morrison's jokey "praying for a resurrection" in Final Crisis #2.

The second aspect of this story that was done brilliantly was the actual murder of J'onn J'onzz. Murdering someone is a messy, bloody business, and this story captures it perfectly. Often characters die in either ways that are either poetic or absurd in their violence, like Supergirl's or Jason Todd's ambiguous scratches, or the dissolving of Barry Allen or the eye-poking of Psycho-Pirate. Instead, J'onn takes a while to kill. His mind thrashes out at his killers, confronting them with their worst fears. Finally, Libra takes out a knife and finishes off the writhing Martian as even Luthor looks on in horror. This is a messy, ugly death, with no charm.

This is really one of the best comics published in recent years. It was a wonderful tribute to one of DC's longest-running characters, and deeply insightful into brutality and into what it feels like to lose a friend whom one may not have appreciated as much as one ought.

We should have appreciated you more, J'onn. We'll miss you.

A

Batman #678 Review

2008-07-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

Writer: Grant Morrison
Penciler: Tony Daniel

I have mixed feelings about Grant Morrison's writing. By and large, I really enjoy his work. He is always having a lot of fun with his material, and usually has a lot to say. His stories are often very insightful, mysterious and rewarding. They take a lot of effort to read, something that I really appreciate in the age of extremely accessible books that can be explained in a single premise.

On the other hand, Morrison sometimes seems incapable of even the most basic narrative focus. He fails to establish at times even who is present in a given scene, or when one scene shifts into another. Moreover, while I appreciate that his work requires more work than other authors, his work often requires surfing message boards in order to even follow the plot and characters. His failure to identify Anthro and Kamandi in Final Crisis #1 is a good example of this, and this book suffers from some of the same problems.

Tony Daniel's art doesn't help matters any. It is difficult in this book to even tell which white, dark haired man is who in many of his scenes. There are hints: Tim Drake has a red motorcycle, and Bruce Wayne has stubble, but when a reader is trouble figuring out even who is who in a scene, that's not an interesting mystery, but just poor storytelling.

Despite these problems, Batman R.I.P. is one of the most interesting Batman stories in years. Morrison is delving deep into Batman lore, referencing Batman's experiences on the planet Zur En Arrh in Batman #123, Bat-Mite and "The First Batman" in which Thomas Wayne was the first Batman in the late '50s. Many people find this frustrating, but it can be a lot of fun to research these references. Strangely, I actually knew who Bat-Mite was and had read "The First Batman", so I felt somewhat rewarded by those parts.

The story hints extremely strongly that Doctor Hurt, the head of the Black Glove, is in fact Thomas Wayne. This is almost certainly a red herring, as it would be as disastrous to Batman lore as having Ben Parker being revealed as the Green Goblin would be to Spider-Man lore. However, it is a fun ruse, and trying to figure out what is really going on is a part of the game. Something is definitely iffy about Alfred, but this fits nicely with Batman lore. Alfred was temporarily a villain known as the Outsider in the early '60s, and Morrison seems to be enjoying these elements.

The story asks some interesting questions about human nature: could Batman be insane? He does, after all, dress up like a giant bat and scare people. If one takes seriously his Silver Age adventures, he has had some quite absurd experiences that sound like hallucinations. Since Morrison takes all of those stories as a part of Batman's continuity (though strictly-speaking, all of them before 1964 were supposed to have happened to the Batman of Earth-2), he is having fun with the possibility that Batman may be just a little batty.

In the end, Batman has to be sane, or his stories lose their strength, as a great deal of them are about a sane man trying to deal with a literally insane and Gothic world. However, to toy with the concept is a worthwhile endeavour, and Morrison is certainly the best person for the task.

I've always considered Morrison's comic books to be meta-comics. That is not simply because Animal Man talked to his creator, but because his comics are almost always about the themes in the comics, and not necessarily about the characters themselves. This may seem like a subtle distinction, but Morrison often doesn't seem interested in telling a Batman story, but rather a story about Batman stories.

Putting someone with a meta-interest in comics on a title is dangerous, and Morrison has promised that R.I.P. represents the end of Bruce Wayne as Batman. I seriously doubt that such a thing can stick. However, in the meantime, assuming he doesn't do too much damage, his stories are interesting simply by virtue of saying something very interesting about Batman and giving us the chance to really think about the character and what he means.

B+

Secret Invasion #4 Review

2008-07-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: Leinil Francis Yu

Secret Invasion #4 is the last issue for which I will be a crossover zombie for either Marvel or DC Comics. In the last few years, I've happily bought the crossovers for many different stories, starting with Infinite Crisis and ending (finally) with Secret Invasion.

It has become apparent that Secret Invasion, which started with almost infinite promise in its fantastic first issue, has no story line to speak of, and this issue, which reads like an issue-long "previously in Secret Invasion" fails to advance the story any further.

For example, Jarvis is still on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier demanding surrender. He has been doing this for three issue now. The heroes that headed to the Savage Land are still there. Each issue of the fight in New York has simply ended with someone new showing up, this time with Thor and the new Captain America.

The problem with the Marvel crossovers is that no one seems to have put any thought into telling a story. They are more like premises repeated endlessly. Nothing ever happens, and the same scenes just continue month after month.

A lot of the Secret Invasion crossovers have been very good, especially the Avengers titles, which I intend to continue to read. However, the main title is almost completely flat. I can probably pick up issue #8 and find the end of the four scenes, with only slight variations on who has arrived.

Secret Invasion is especially disappointing, as its initial premise is incredible. The Skrulls have been on Earth for years, and they have already won the war. There is an opportunity for a rich, guerilla-style battle on the part of the few heroes who have somehow been able to continute trusting each other.

Instead, we have none of that. The entire war will likely be over in less than forty-eight hours of comic time. This entire issue takes place over about twenty minutes. Somebody should explain to Marvel the a World War or a truly dangerous invasion should take more than a few days.

The main story has become a hook on which other books can tell stories about Skrulls. That is a lot of fun in books that are doing it well (Like Captain Britain). However, the main book has become completely glacial and uninteresting.

C-