Thoughts on this week’s new comics: Countdown To Final Crisis #1, Fables #72, Hulk #3, Justice League of America #20

April 23rd, 2008 | Comics, Writing

Countdown To Final Crisis #1:
I covered the failings of Countdown already in Countdown To Final Crisis is Consistently Terrible, so rather than elaborate at length in reviewing this issue I’ll simply add this: thanks god this shit is over, and that the events of this issue have already been undone by the announcement of Ray Palmer being a character in James Robinson’s new Justice League book, Donna Troy being in Judd Winick’s Titans, and Kyle Rayner being back where he belongs AT LAST in Green Lantern Corps, because the idiotic ‘team’ they form in this issue is completely undesired by any audience and will be hopefully immediately forgotten. Paul Dini’s writing shows signs of the self-awareness that’s crept into the final issues of Countdown — the protagonists are uninvited party guests who’ve overstayed their welcome, trapped in crumbling relationships built on nothing, who’ve gotten this far on a positive attitude and lots of denial — but really, this issue should have been an apology, and we didn’t get it. Ah well, at least we’ll be getting a hardcover collection of Kirby’s OMAC out of the deal. I just hope no one scarred by Countdown’s incompetent hackery associates Final Crisis with it in any way due to the mid-series title change and misses out on Morrison’s series because of it. (Last thought: why is Marvel’s character Apocalypse on the Source Wall? Ahh, why bother putting any thought into it.)

Fables #72:
While Bill Willingham’s mainstream DC work can be frustratingly inconsistent, Fables is nothing if not consistent. Nearly every issue features work by the same team, and the occasional art fill-ins are always high quality one- or two-shot stories and not randomly dropped in the middle of longer stories. As a monthly reader, it’s easy to see the book has found its real audience in collected form on the shelves of Borders and Barnes & Nobles everywhere rather than in comic shops — even Mark Buckingham’s page layouts leave conspicuous gutters on either vertical edge to allow for the tighter binding of trade paperbacks. Willingham’s Cinderella-as-a-secret-agent story here is a well-timed change of pace easing into the next major storyline heading up to the promised “everything will change no we mean it” issue #75, and I’m glad to see the book’s success hasn’t made them too trepidatious to take chances — if anything, the remarkably consistency of the book gives them a stabler ground off of which to springboard new ideas. Still looking forward to what’s to come, which is pretty good for a Vertigo series passing its sixth year.

Hulk #3:
Jeph Loeb is the only guy in 2008 who thinks it’s still high-tech and cool for a guy to command a computer by verbally addressing it as “Computer” the way Captain Kirk did in the sixties. He is also the the only guy who thinks a secret agent — nay, a HEAD secret agent, a leader of secret agents — would not have heard of forensic audio reconstruction. This issue is basically a long boring fight scene pretending to be a murder mystery, containing a few truly heinous WTF moments (robot harpies with Banner’s deceased wife’s face?) but is at least mostly well-drawn. I don’t really find Ed McGuinness’ style appropriate for this book, though — everything he draws looks bright and shiny by default, which worked well on Superman/Batman but doesn’t work as well here. Only recommended if you really like Ed’s art, because the writing is just not good.

Justice League of America #20:
Good to see Dwayne McDuffie return to scripting after the awful Salvation Run tie-in three part Alan Burnett fill-in, and the Ethan Van Sciver art provides a nice change from Ed Benes’ hyper-idealized superhumans. Also a nice surprise is that this is basically a Flash story with Wonder Woman co-starring, and a better Flash story than we’ve gotten in the Flash’s own book in awhile. After nearly two years of this series we still haven’t gotten a really compelling case for this particular grouping of the League though, and I’m waiting for that one killer JLA story in this series to make it happen. This isn’t that story, but it’s a good little one-off that at the very least Flash and Ethan Van Sciver fans would do well to pick up.