Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge #1& The Flash #242:Tom Peyer is one of those guys who guys like Mark Waid and Mark Millar or whoever always say is a great underrated writer who doesn’t get enough work, but man, he writes some bad comics. The Flash #242 is just awful in every way and demonstrates that the man just doesn’t get the series, the characters, or how to write an appealing story. Freddie Williams’ amazingly flat and static-looking art doesn’t help elevate the World’s Most Depressingest Comics Magazine, but there’s really no point getting too worked up as Peyer and Williams are just filling space as the Flash rejuvenation has gotten underway elsewhere, in books people are actually reading. Speaking of which, this week also brought us Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge #1, which is that recently elusive and rare item: a good Flash story! Of course, technically “the Flash” isn’t the star of Rogues’ Revenge, but outside of Librafrom Final Crisis every other character in this book is a Flash character. The best creative team of the Wally West Flash series steps right back into their roles as if they’d never left: Geoff Johns elegantly picks up some abandoned plot threads from his run on the book, explains away some of the idiocies of Countdown to Final Crisis and Flash: The Fastest Man Alive in a few panels, and reminds us why The Flash was where his writing was first widely hailed; I do wish Kolins had been forced to have his work properly inked, but he manages to evoke his previous work on the book quite well and his storytelling is stronger than ever here. I find it slightly odd that this was originally not planned as an official Final Crisis tie-in, because man, it’s hard to see how this could have much more to do with FC so far without having Metron and Anthro show up. Point blank, if you read and liked DC Universe #0 and Final Crisis #1 & 2, read Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge. And no matter who you are, skip The Flash #242 — and most likely, every issue of that series until such time as the changes currently occurring in the Final Crisis books filter into the regular monthly Flash series, whether that be the current volume, yet another new Flash #1, or The Flash v1 #351.
Mighty Avengers #16: This was kind of boring and lousy, actually. The Secret Invasion tie-in backstory of when Elektra was replaced by a Skrull turns out not to be that interesting or dramatic, at least to me. Oh well, they can’t all be winners.
I was watching the ‘History of the Justice League of America’ bonus feature from The New Frontier DVD when it struck me that with few exceptions, the JLA comic has always been something of a letdown. Even at its best, it’s rarely delivered on the promise it’s been dangling in front of the readers’ noses since even before there was a JLA book: “Just imagine all your favorite heroes in one book.” Even when all the characters are technically there, they’re not usually at their best, or the heroes are there stripped of the context of their own books — which reduces them to little more than a symbol of drama occurring elsewhere.
1. The book needs to be published more often than monthly. At minimum, biweekly publication of JLA is a must. The unspoken truth is that JLA is basically ‘DC Universe Monthly;’ at heart it’s really less a book about the League than the milieu these characters all share. A large cast is necessary for the JLA book, but 22 pages a month is just not enough to have interesting character moments AND big action, to spotlight interesting second-tier characters AND deliver the DCU’s big guns in full flight. And while everyone loved the old JLA/JSA team-ups, when they came every year it never seemed like enough in-book time had passed for it be time again for them to meet up, especially as they were usually tied to a holiday theme. While JLA doesn’t have to tie in to every book, it’s one of the books that ALWAYS gets sucked into crossover events out of necessity, and a more frequent publishing schedule would help fit those promotional crossover issues in without regular readers feeling like the book was constantly being derailed (I’m still waiting for Dwayne MacDuffie’s JLA run to really get rolling, something like a year after he started writing the book.) JLA doesn’t have to be constantly tied in continuity-wise with what’s being contemporaneously published, but it is the spine of the DCU and must reflect the status quos of the characters’ home books eventually — just not in the middle of a story.
2. Snapper Carr is the JLA HQ caretaker. Look, the JLA needs someone holding down the fort 24-7, and no one really believes Batman is taking his proper turns at monitor duty. Snapper can live in the Hall of Justice and call people to solve problems as necessary. He’s got nothing else going on, and he’s part of the book. Deal with it. He’s also a magnificently flawed, human character with many layers of depth if one takes into account all the different ways he’s been used, from annoying teleporting superhero in Invasion to annoying overly-familiar secret agent guy in Four Horsemen. Just picture him as written by Ed Brubaker: he’s a guy who wants nothing more than to do what’s right and constantly fucks up by trying too hard to do just that. The book has always suffered from a lack of strong supporting characters, so the few that the series has managed to establish should be made full use of, including Snapper, Catherine Colbert, and whoever else hasn’t gone the way of Maxwell Lord and Sue Dibny at this point.
3. It’s not all just big action. The interaction of the characters can be humorous (Giffen & DeMatteis) or more soap opera (Gerry Conway) or both but there needs to be room for it. Romance is far more interesting against the backdrop of war, and humor more cutting.
4. It’s not really a book for hardcore comic fans. Oddly enough. JLA should not be steeped in continuity and references to out-of-print, obscure stories. It should always be as accessible as possible to the average reader, because let’s face it, juggling 14 characters is difficult enough without trying to make jokes only 5% of the audience is going to get. JLA should be a gateway drug to the rest of the DCU — the references should be the character’ current books.
5. Bold, accessible, detailed art is a must. Obviously George Perez cannot draw every issue of JLA ever published as would be ideal, but no weak art on JLA is at all acceptable at any time. It doesn’t have to have an A-list marquee artist — in fact the ideal JLA artist is a dependable, consistent, professional workhorse. Dick Dillin was the JLA artist. (Ed Benes is not.) The artist is not — can not — be bigger than the JLA, but the art must be at least B+ quality at all times and the book can not be late. Fill-ins are fine, and almost a given on a book like JLA, but on this book on-time regular publication frankly trumps artistic posturing.
6. Most of the traditional JLA enemies suck. Kanjar Ro? Despero? Hyathis? Quit trying to revamp the interchangeable alien dictator types, because they don’t work anymore. Yeah, you gotta have a fight against an Injustice League/Legion of Doom/Secret Society fairly regularly, but outside of that, JLA foes tend not to work so well in repeat performances. New, unknown threats are always more threatening to the established structure of the JLA because they don’t know what coming, and that puts them in more of an underdog position, if such a thing is even possible. They’re the redcoats, their foes are the terrorists, or possibly representatives of an enemy culture; take it from there.
7. It’s not the Equal Opportunity League for Bolstering Beloved Characters. Look, Brad Meltzer, I loved the Barr/Aparo Batman and the Outsiders too, but Geo-Force didn’t belong on the League roster. Vixen doesn’t belong on anything but a B-team, and Red Arrow…oh man. No. Come on. Black Lightning was a good addition, and could potentially be an anchor character for the JLA book…but it hasn’t happened yet. Regardless, yes, the book is a great place for second-tier characters to shine, but some characters need to join the team to find out they don’t really fit the team — like the Huntress, who was summarily fired by Batman. Not every story about a second-tier character has to be about them coming into their own and taking their place among the A-listers, because 1. it doesn’t work that way and 2. no one believes 95% of those stories will stick at this point.
8. We get it, the Red Tornado is a robot with a soul who is conflicted about his humanity. MOVE ON.
9. No spin-off books. You want to publish more JLA books? Great. Put out JLA more often (see #1). There can’t be more than one JLA, and having more than one JLA book with a different set of characters can never feel like anything more than the B-team — Justice League Europe, or Justice League Task Force, or Justice League Elite, it all says “Just imagine, a few characters you give a shit about with a bunch you don’t!” Similarly, ‘casebook’ stories of the JLA a la JLA Classified are rarely interesting — it’s all about what’s next, and not one ‘untold story from the JLA casebook’ has ever read like anything but an unscheduled fill-in inventory story.
10. The JLA is not the X-Men. But the book could be written a lot more like that. A lot more. It would have a lot more successful for, oh, the last 20 years.
11. The JLA is the A-team. Every time they try to do a JLA book without most of thebig guns, people complain, “This isn’t the real JLA!” Guess what? That’s because it isn’t. I like Nuklon and Ice and Obsidian and all those other characters no one’s ever heard of, but if you have to explain to someone who a character is in more than two sentences they probably don’t belong on the JLA.
12. The JLA isn’t just the A-team. However, since the big names all have their own books, there’s the sense nothing really important can happen to those characters outside of their own books — which is something the JLA creative team and the creators of those individual characters’ titles whould work to overcome, incidentally — and there’s the sense that serious shit can happen in JLA to, say, Zatanna that can’t happen to Batman. And serious shit can happen to those second tier characters…as long as the writer hasn’t stocked the team with his beloved favorites that he can’t bear anything bad happening to (see #7). This is where publishing more-than-monthly comes in handy, because it allows for the occasional spotlight issue (not a solo issue — NEVER a solo issue within JLA, that’s simply false advertising, no matter how much you love Red Arrow and Vixen, Brad Meltzer) that highlight’s an individual character’s strengths without derailing an entire quarter’s output.
Internet advertising can be a confusing labyrinth to navigate at the best of times, but here at aaronpoehler.com I like to keep things simple. Basically, you’ll notice that on nearly all posts and pages at aaronpoehler.com there is a single banner ad. That banner ad is managed through Project Wonderful, which allows advertisers to bid what they think the ad space is worth and what they’re willing to pay per day. The highest bidder at any given time has their ad displayed sitewide here, across both blog pages and static website pages such as the vault of music reviews, so if your ad is the winning one at any given time, your ad will be seen by visitors to virtually all pages on this site (the number of which is in the hundreds right now). Advertisers are charged only for the amount of time their ads are displayed and there are no per-click charges, so it generally ends up being a good deal for all concerned — unlike many internet ad schemes which are easily defrauded through false clicks, which is why I’ve stuck with Project Wonderful above AdBrite or Google Adsense. Plus, it’s nice for me that I generally find the ads placed through Project Wonderful are interesting links to cool stuff I haven’t heard of, rather than the untargeted spammy links I seemed to get with the other services.
So if you’ve got a website, product or service you’d like to advertise here, go to http://www.projectwonderful.com/advertisehere.php?id=15866&type=1 and sign up today. There are a bunch of interesting demographic data and site statistics there for your perusal as well, and of course, right below these words should be an ad banner by the current highest bidder. I wonder who it is right now?
Booster Gold #1000000: Writers Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz conclude their run in style, putting a much-belated DC One Million tie-in, a welcome trademark Johns loophole resurrection of an unjustly-deceased character, one mindblower revelation that rivals anything in Secret Invasion, and a crisis of conscience on the part of the titular character into 22 pages of story so packed it has the feel of a silver age DC three-part ‘novel.’ The final two story pages (not counting the epilogue/teaser image) alone are absolute killers. I’m sorry to see these guys leave; between this series and 52 Johns has done more to rehabilitate Booster than anyone. Though I’m hopeful whatever regular writer comes on after upcoming Chuck Dixon’s fill-in run will be up to the standard set by Johns and Katz, in my heart I doubt it’ll happen (ironically, I feel much the same about Blue Beetle right now). Whatever comes afterwards, the Johns/Katz Booster Gold run was consistently good and is highly recommended as a trade paperback purchase once the whole run is collected, especially as a followup for readers of 52 — I would guess it’ll be two six-issue books.
Final Crisis - Requiem: Did you read Final Crisis and want an expansion upon the Martian Manhunter scene? If so, here it is, though since it’s not written by Grant Morrison or Geoff Johns (or even Greg Rucka) you might suspect the validity of this one-shot tie-in. Honestly, Peter Tomasi hasn’t yet written anything I’ve read that’s really knocked me out, but he’s generally good for a B+ script — not in the Johns/Bendis/Morrison/Brubaker league or anywhere near it, but safely out of the Beechen/Jones/Winick/Bedard gutter. This alternately maudlin and morbidly violent tale sports knockout art by Doug Mahnke and should serve as an appropriate sendoff for J’onn J’onzz fans seeking such, but the story’s connections to Final Crisis proper seems secondary to the function it serves as setup for James Robinson’s upcoming Justice League book. Nothing too unexpected happens here, really, which is somewhat disappointing. Midway the book turns into a recital of events from J’onn’s history that’s actually pretty deadly boring, but the last-page nod to the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League was cute. In the end, unless you really honestly truly care that much about the Martian Manhunter I’d say you could probably skip this one pretty safely.
Secret Invasion #4: As we hit the halfway point of Secret Invasion, the contours of the story are fairly well established — a certain amount of the “anything could happen” sense of excitement that the first few issues of any event book carries has abated, and the basic plot is pretty clear. This issue’s Black Widow fakeout with the green-eye motif was well-executed but the issue comes up otherwise short on big revelations. The first look at Nick Fury’s Secret Warriors was underwhelming (and the size of Nick’s gun recalls the bad old Image days) but the lead-up to the next issue works so well one is willing to forgive the lack of big surprises here. More consistent goodness from the Bendis/Yu/Morales team page after page, but ultimately it feels like more of a chapter than a complete unit of entertainment in itself.
I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this direct-to-DVD offering going in, as the stated intentions of the project seemed somewhat at cross purposes, combining influences and creative forces from many different areas — comics, animation, and film — in such a way that ‘too many cooks’ syndrome could easily have been a fatal flaw. Ostensibly, Batman: Gotham Knight bridges the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and is thus set in that continuity, but with scripts contributed by comics writers and then handed over to a variety of Japanese animators to render as they saw fit I was worried the end product would be disjointed beyond comprehension. Fortunately, while the individual episodes stand alone there is enough of a throughline connecting them to keep the viewing experience fairly cohesive despite the fact that Bruce Wayne looks like a teenage Asian boy in one episode and a 30 year old Caucasian man in the next. Over the property’s 70 year history the Batman has stood up to hundreds of differing interpretations, so none of the liberties taken here were too disturbing, though a few of the stylistic choices do beggar explanation, and the welcome presence of Kevin Conroy as the voice of the Dark Knight throughout was an absolute comfort. While not completely satisfying as a piece unto itself, many of Gotham Knight’s segments are pleasantly successful and overall the work is of a piece with the dark tone of Nolan’s movies. This isn’t a must-buy by any means, and nowhere near the quality of DC’s recent awesome animated offering The New Frontier, but it’s a worthwhile attempt to try something different with Batman and company and a good way for viewers to get themselves good and hyped for the impending premiere of The Dark Knight itself.
Final Crisis #2: As the behind-the-scenes stories of DC were seemingly beginning to outperform their fictional output recently, along comes Final Crisis #2 to remind us — and clue some of us in — that Grant Morrison’s had this thing pretty well set for awhile, and the story proceeds apace. This issue is a bit more straightforward than the debut (read: more action, fewer cavemen), and the overall thrust of the story becomes a lot more clear. Art is exemplary throughout, which is part of what made the announcement of Carlos Pacheco fill-in pages on #4 on so disappointing — it would be nice if DC could have just one big event book with consistent art and writing alike. Still, I enjoyed this issue from the awesome introductory Japanese superhero sequence to the last-page reveal and as the roller-coaster heads into the first big hill I’m digging the ride.
Green Lantern #32: In the more-than-capable hands of Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis this has become one of the most consistently dependable high-quality books on the stands month in and month out (more or less, with a few delays here and there), to the degree that it has become one of the few DC books even diehard Marvelites seem to pick up — and can pick up, thanks to the relative accessibility of the series. This issue is no exception, continuing the tightening up and recasting of Hal Jordan’s origin while tying firmly in to recent GL stories and effectively foreshadowing future events (Atrocitus’ oath is pretty goofy, though). A great book for pretty much anyone who likes good comics.
Captain America #39: This is the Marvel book that’s so consistently high-quality month in and month out that even diehard DC fans pick it up, although actually this month’s art isn’t quite up to the level of excellence set by Epting/Perkins/Guice. It’s not damaging, fortunately, as Ed Brubaker’s script provides yet another great chapter in his continually unfolding megaplot. Recommended.
Superman #677: Starman writer James Robinson makes his return to regular monthly comics writing with this issue, kicking off in fairly consistent tone with what Kurt Busiek was doing immediately prior in this series. Promising, but nowhere near the level of awesome of Johns and Frank over on Action Comics nor quite as strong as Busiek’s work yet — especially considering Busiek’s Superman work is still around for comparison in the form of Trinity, which incorporates some plotlines Busiek had intended for Superman. Hopefully the promised upcoming reintertwining of the Super-books will be to the benefit of all, and in any case I almost always enjoy Robinson’s work so I’m looking forward to seeing where he goes from this fairly standard first act.
New Avengers #42/Mighty Avengers #15: More Secret Invasion “What really happened” Skrull infiltration backstories, for Spider-Woman and Hank Pym respectively. Interesting stuff, though I am starting to feel like it is kind of getting to be a bit much of this kind of thing and that Secret Invasion is a “one step forward, two steps back”type of event. Of these two issues, New gets the edge due to its slightly sharper script and beautiful Jim Cheung artwork, though Romita Jr/Janson/Palmer aren’t too shabby over on Mighty either. Let’s face it, if you’re buying one of these, you’re buying the other, and if you’re not buying one you’re not buying either — at least until the SI Avengers trades come out.
Action Comics #866: I actually had to look back at the credits of this issue to check to see if Richard Donner was involved in its creation — and was surprised to find not even so much as a ‘thanks to’ credit. Odd then, that well after the end of Donner’s involvement in the writing of the series comes the single issue of any Superman comic I’ve ever seen that feels the most like the Donner Superman movies: it has the classic Daily Planet dynamic involving humorous scenes with geeky Clark switching to his alter ego; Zod, Ursa, and Non; Ma & Pa Kent back in Smallville. Hell, this issue even reintroduces obnoxious Planet sportswriter Steve Lombard, who was last a player in the series when those movies were first coming out. Writer Geoff Johns and artists Gary Frank and Jon Sibal are hitting on all cylinders here: pretty much every page is a pleasure both in terms of writing and art, even approaching the timeless quality of Morrison & Quitely’s All-Star Superman. Frank’s Superman looks like the perfect cross between Curt Swan’s rendition of the character and Chris Reeve — even Lois looks very Margot Kidderish at one point, and Ursa is so obviously based on the actress from the Donner movies that I got sidetracked wondering what the likeness rights issues would be with someone like that. I mean, would she have signed them away at the time of the film, or would they have to clear that with her now? Anyway, at least so far Johns & co. seem to be accomplishing that ever-rarer solid superhero story that would work equally as well for someone with no previous knowledge of the series as it would for someone with a Ph.D. in DC continuity. A promising kickoff to Johns’ long-promised Brainiac story and a great jumping-on point; it’s great to see DC’s flagship title is again one of its best.
Secret Invasion - Who Do You Trust? one-shot: It’s necessary to maintain a certain healthy skepticism about picking up any tie-ins branded with a big event banner that may not be….let’s be nice and say necessary. And the fact that Secret Invasion writer Brian Bendis didn’t write any of the five stories in this one-shot is, admittedly, not a good sign. However, as the lead-off story is a coda to the recent Captain Marvel mini-series (itself an SI tie-in) bridging directly into SI#1 and dramatically clarifying Mar-Vell’s role in the series, the Wonder Man/Beast story is pretty good, and the Agent Brand story tells us, uh, that Agent Brand from Astonishing X-Men is going to be involved in Secret Invasion, if you’ve been digging the main book you’ll probably find this worth your time. The Marvel Boy story is sorta incomprehensible, but it’s great to see Agents of ATLAS again — their miniseries was really good, and I’d like to see more. Their chunk of this book serves more to reintroduce them than anything else, so I guess that’s a good sign in that direction. Overall, Secret Invasion - Who Do You Trust? certainly isn’t essential, but it’s largely enjoyable.
Booster Gold #10: Johns and co-writer Jeff Katz begin winding down their run (next month’s #1,000,000 is their last, and yes, it’s a DC One Million tie-in) in a fashion that should please anyone reading this as a followup from 52 — in fact, of the several 52 spinoffs this is definitely the most direct sequel and the highest quality (along with The Question — I mean, 52 Aftermath: Crime Bible: Five Books of Blood — yeah, much catchier title, guys!). I can’t say I’m not disappointed the Johns/Katz team didn’t end up scripting more issues, but I guess they got a couple of solid trade paperbacks’ worth with consistent art and rock-solid scripts, and that’s about as much as one can ask these days in most cases. I just hope the next writer or writers remember that it’s always, always awesome when Skeets gets the big action hero lines. In any case, this penultimate issue was definitely satisfying, providing answers to many lingering questions ( I really hope the Black Beetle’s not who I think he is, though), and leading into their big finale in style.
Skaar - Son of Hulk #1: Mmm….huh. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect of this Planet Hulk/World War Hulk spinoff, and after reading the first issue I’m still not entirely sure. It’s sorta Conan crossed with Star Wars, and intriguing, but Skaar #1 definitely suffers from first issue syndrome: there’s a lot of setup here as well as a lot of recap, and not much real meat. I’ll probably stick around at least through the first arc, anyway.
The Eternals #1 : The previews of this series Marvel stuck in the back of seemingly every book they publish didn’t do a good job of selling me on this series, I found the Neil Gaiman/John Romita Jr. mini-series this ongoing follows up on underwhelming, and the memory of artist Daniel Acuna crashing and burning on The Flash in two issues is still fresh in my mind, so I’ll admit was somewhat dubious heading in to this one. I have really been digging the Knauf writing team’s Iron Man work, though, so I was definitely holding out hope they’d pull it out. Just as with the New Gods at DC, tying Kirby’s Eternals elegantly into the rest of the Marvel Universe has always been something of a problem, and the attempts at it here come off as more than a bit gratuitous, frankly, basically amounting to nothing more than a series of single-panel cameos. Fortunately, Acuna’s work fits much better here than it did on The Flash, though this issue didn’t quite grab me entirely as I’d have liked. There is some indication the Knaufs are going somewhere with it (I recall not being entirely sure about their Iron Man run in the beginning, but that paid off in spades) but unfortunately pretty much the entirety of this issue is utterly incomprehensible — and I read the Gaiman/JRJR miniseries. The portrayal of “Reverend Lester” here approaches tragically-bad levels of cliche and caricature, and most of the rest of the issue is basically just gibberish interspersed with out-of-context cameos. #2 is gonna have to pick waaaay up if I’m gonna stick around on this one.
Trinity #1: Hmmm, I’m not totally sold on Chip Kidd’s blurred three-tiered logo design for this Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman team-up book, but at least it’s a solid break from the now-tiresome 52-Countdown logotype. The cover design spotlighting one of the three main characters on each successive tryptych piece doesn’t really grab me either, failing to convey instantly what this series actually is — this basically looks like a Superman book at first look, and second look too — rather than showing all three characters together. Inside the pages of DC’s 52-part newest weekly series, Mark Bagley hits the ground running moving over from Marvel and Ultimate Spider-Man, stepping comfortably into the DC Universe with spot-on renditions of DC big three as well as a good chunk of the current Flash cast. Writer Kurt Busiek doesn’t go for the big bang opener out of the box here, not even having any of the main characters in costume until two-thirds of the way through the main story, but opts instead to lay enough solid groundwork to get one intrigued. If they can keep up this level of quality in the main story, it shouldn’t be too much trouble holding that attention from here. The backup is slightly less satisfying, and a bit less lucid — it took a couple readings to be clear exactly what was going on — but the glimpses of things to come are pretty successful at whetting the appetite for what’s to come this series. I’m onboard this title (for the near future, at least) and looking forward to the ride.
Secret Invasion #3: This series hits its full stride bigtime with this issue, a solid improvement over the slight letdown of the last one. Leinil Yu’s art (sharpened nicely by Mark Morales’ inks) is uniformly excellent, while Bendis keeps the action coming page after page, including some fairly graphic Authority-level violence. It does get a bit rough keeping track of all the characters at times, especially as the B-listers are brought solidly center-stage here, followed by the “who were they again?” gang at the cliffhanger end. Still, the level of execution here is such that if this issue doesn’t hook you, this series is just not for you.
Kick-Ass #3: I’ve been enjoying this Mark Millar satire (far more than the first issue of his saccharine 1985, anyway), and the visceral John Romita Jr. art is pure pleasure. A comic starring a moron who gets beat up a lot is not for everyone, admittedly, but the laughs keep coming here, even if they’re somewhat evil laughs. The last few pages betray, once again, Millar’s failure to accurately capture the flavor of American slang, and the events contained on those pages worry me that I may count that as the point where the series went horribly wrong (not to mention Millar’s nauseatingly self-congratulatory text page that follows), but I’ll wait until next issue to judge that.
Ultimate Origins #1: I’ll admit I’ve largely lost interest in the goings-on of the Ultimate Marvel Universe lately, but if any team can catch my attention again it’s Bendis and Guice. This mostly flashback to 1940s wartime issue fails to reignite my zeal for the Ultimate U as a whole, but it’s piqued my interest for whatever supposed long-held secrets are to be divulged here. If nothing else, Guice is doing great work, on a level with his recent Captain America fill-ins. Can’t help but feel somewhat disappointed that the secret in the first issue is exactly what I thought it would be , though — not to mention disappointed that “James Howlett” is apparently set in stone as Wolverine’s real name now. Oh well.
So it’s Grant Morrison week for sure. Between Final Crisis #1 and Batman #677, the display of sheer writing mastery Morrison brings to bear is staggering. In Final Crisis #1 Morrison manages to infuse the standard universe-shattering crossover structure with enough sheer humanity to overcome the cynicism with which one would normally view such events, in a few elegant opening pages explaining why stories of super-powered, more-than-human characters have such elemental appeal, tying deeply into the rich history of DC Comics’ seventy-plus year publication record without making it inaccessible or incomprehensible. The scene with the Monitors manages to make better use of the characters in a few scant panels than in the entirety of Countdown combined — and actually does follow up on a single plot thread from that series, making it not totally dismissable. (Perhaps its relevant storylines could just be retold in a single standalone 48-page book rather than force anyone to slog through all 51 issues + innumerable tie-ins and spinoffs of Countdown.) JG Jones’ art is pretty much flawless, although the Question does look a bit too much like she has a face in the panel where (thanks to Entertainment Weekly’s Final Crisis preview featuring excerpts of Morrison’s script) Grant clearly indicated no face. Minor nitpick aside though, everything on the page is exemplary — I just hope he can keep it up on time and this series doesn’t fall victim to the incongruous dropped-in fill-in pages that torpedoed Infinite Crisis. Because so far, Final Crisis is shaping up to be fairly awesome — and also kind of beautiful.
The striking Alex Ross cover (based on a Morrison design, I believe) that adorns Batman #677 leads in to the best work of Tony Daniel’s penciling career. Previously I’ve always found Daniel’s work on series like Teen Titans and Flash to be acceptable at best and fairly static, but his work has really risen to the level of Morrison’s writing quickly during his relatively brief tenure on Batman. While he could still stand to render depth a bit more naturally, for the most part he evokes exactly the right crossbreed between Jim Lee’s and Neal Adams’ Batman work. And Morrison’s script…uh, wow. As Batman R.I.P. kicks into high gear, Morrison deconstructs the entire basis of the Batman character in a few devastating pages (capped with an excellent silent Daniel full-page splash the original of which will surely bring a dear price at auction) — and that’s where the story really begins, rolling down a rollercoaster sequence of events that tie together plot threads Morrison has been weaving into the series since the beginning of his run. Parallels to the excellent Len Wein/Jim Aparo/John Byrne miniseries Untold Legend of the Batman abound, including the promised next-issue appearance of the “first Batman”, whose costume is prominently highlighted here, so hopefully a reprint edition is on the way, perhaps in one of those reprint specials Ryan Sook keeps doing great covers for.
Taken together, Final Crisis #1 and Batman #677 thematically show Morrison going deeply into the basic humanity of these superheroic characters, restoring some of the primal appeal that frequently gets lost amidst pointless revisions of continuity and whatnot, stripping back many of the barnacles of history that have accumulated on these properties over time — while also celebrating the rich mine of potential story elements provided by that selfsame history. Sure, if you know the entire history of DC Comics you might catch all the references Morrison makes in these two comics, including all the crazy 50s Batman stories where he fought aliens and had rainbow costumes and so on — but it’s not necessary, and it’s not the point. That background can enrich a story, but it can’t be the basis for it in and of itself, and it can’t really do more than provide a really good prefabricated background for a story. But done well, it can provide a fantastic stockpile of raw material to pick and choose among around which to craft an excellent story, and Morrison does well here.
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Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge #1 & The Flash #242: Tom Peyer is one of those guys who guys like Mark Waid and Mark Millar or whoever always say is a great underrated writer who doesn’t get enough work, but man, he writes some bad comics. The Flash #242 is just awful in every way and demonstrates that the man just doesn’t get the series, the characters, or how to write an appealing story. Freddie Williams’ amazingly flat and static-looking art doesn’t help elevate the World’s Most Depressingest Comics Magazine, but there’s really no point getting too worked up as Peyer and Williams are just filling space as the Flash rejuvenation has gotten underway elsewhere, in books people are actually reading. Speaking of which, this week also brought us Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge #1, which is that recently elusive and rare item: a good Flash story! Of course, technically “the Flash” isn’t the star of Rogues’ Revenge, but outside of Libra from Final Crisis every other character in this book is a Flash character. The best creative team of the Wally West Flash series steps right back into their roles as if they’d never left: Geoff Johns elegantly picks up some abandoned plot threads from his run on the book, explains away some of the idiocies of Countdown to Final Crisis and Flash: The Fastest Man Alive in a few panels, and reminds us why The Flash was where his writing was first widely hailed; I do wish Kolins had been forced to have his work properly inked, but he manages to evoke his previous work on the book quite well and his storytelling is stronger than ever here. I find it slightly odd that this was originally not planned as an official Final Crisis tie-in, because man, it’s hard to see how this could have much more to do with FC so far without having Metron and Anthro show up. Point blank, if you read and liked DC Universe #0 and Final Crisis #1 & 2, read Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge. And no matter who you are, skip The Flash #242 — and most likely, every issue of that series until such time as the changes currently occurring in the Final Crisis books filter into the regular monthly Flash series, whether that be the current volume, yet another new Flash #1, or The Flash v1 #351.
I was watching the ‘History of the Justice League of America’ bonus feature from The New Frontier DVD when it struck me that with few exceptions, the JLA comic has always been something of a letdown. Even at its best, it’s rarely delivered on the promise it’s been dangling in front of the readers’ noses since even before there was a JLA book: “Just imagine all your favorite heroes in one book.” Even when all the characters are technically there, they’re not usually at their best, or the heroes are there stripped of the context of their own books — which reduces them to little more than a symbol of drama occurring elsewhere.
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Booster Gold #1000000: Writers Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz conclude their run in style, putting a much-belated DC One Million tie-in, a welcome trademark Johns loophole resurrection of an unjustly-deceased character, one mindblower revelation that rivals anything in Secret Invasion, and a crisis of conscience on the part of the titular character into 22 pages of story so packed it has the feel of a silver age DC three-part ‘novel.’ The final two story pages (not counting the epilogue/teaser image) alone are absolute killers. I’m sorry to see these guys leave; between this series and 52 Johns has done more to rehabilitate Booster than anyone. Though I’m hopeful whatever regular writer comes on after upcoming Chuck Dixon’s fill-in run will be up to the standard set by Johns and Katz, in my heart I doubt it’ll happen (ironically, I feel much the same about Blue Beetle right now). Whatever comes afterwards, the Johns/Katz Booster Gold run was consistently good and is highly recommended as a trade paperback purchase once the whole run is collected, especially as a followup for readers of 52 — I would guess it’ll be two six-issue books.
I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this direct-to-DVD offering going in, as the stated intentions of the project seemed somewhat at cross purposes, combining influences and creative forces from many different areas — comics, animation, and film — in such a way that ‘too many cooks’ syndrome could easily have been a fatal flaw. Ostensibly, Batman: Gotham Knight bridges the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and is thus set in that continuity, but with scripts contributed by comics writers and then handed over to a variety of Japanese animators to render as they saw fit I was worried the end product would be disjointed beyond comprehension. Fortunately, while the individual episodes stand alone there is enough of a throughline connecting them to keep the viewing experience fairly cohesive despite the fact that Bruce Wayne looks like a teenage Asian boy in one episode and a 30 year old Caucasian man in the next. Over the property’s 70 year history the Batman has stood up to hundreds of differing interpretations, so none of the liberties taken here were too disturbing, though a few of the stylistic choices do beggar explanation, and the welcome presence of Kevin Conroy as the voice of the Dark Knight throughout was an absolute comfort. While not completely satisfying as a piece unto itself, many of Gotham Knight’s segments are pleasantly successful and overall the work is of a piece with the dark tone of Nolan’s movies. This isn’t a must-buy by any means, and nowhere near the quality of DC’s recent awesome animated offering The New Frontier, but it’s a worthwhile attempt to try something different with Batman and company and a good way for viewers to get themselves good and hyped for the impending premiere of The Dark Knight itself.
Final Crisis #2: As the behind-the-scenes stories of DC were seemingly beginning to outperform their fictional output recently, along comes Final Crisis #2 to remind us — and clue some of us in — that Grant Morrison’s had this thing pretty well set for awhile, and the story proceeds apace. This issue is a bit more straightforward than the debut (read: more action, fewer cavemen), and the overall thrust of the story becomes a lot more clear. Art is exemplary throughout, which is part of what made the announcement of Carlos Pacheco fill-in pages on #4 on so disappointing — it would be nice if DC could have just one big event book with consistent art and writing alike. Still, I enjoyed this issue from the awesome introductory Japanese superhero sequence to the last-page reveal and as the roller-coaster heads into the first big hill I’m digging the ride.
Action Comics #866: I actually had to look back at the credits of this issue to check to see if Richard Donner was involved in its creation — and was surprised to find not even so much as a ‘thanks to’ credit. Odd then, that well after the end of Donner’s involvement in the writing of the series comes the single issue of any Superman comic I’ve ever seen that feels the most like the Donner Superman movies: it has the classic Daily Planet dynamic involving humorous scenes with geeky Clark switching to his alter ego; Zod, Ursa, and Non; Ma & Pa Kent back in Smallville. Hell, this issue even reintroduces obnoxious Planet sportswriter Steve Lombard, who was last a player in the series when those movies were first coming out. Writer Geoff Johns and artists Gary Frank and Jon Sibal are hitting on all cylinders here: pretty much every page is a pleasure both in terms of writing and art, even approaching the timeless quality of Morrison & Quitely’s All-Star Superman. Frank’s Superman looks like the perfect cross between Curt Swan’s rendition of the character and Chris Reeve — even Lois looks very Margot Kidderish at one point, and Ursa is so obviously based on the actress from the Donner movies that I got sidetracked wondering what the likeness rights issues would be with someone like that. I mean, would she have signed them away at the time of the film, or would they have to clear that with her now? Anyway, at least so far Johns & co. seem to be accomplishing that ever-rarer solid superhero story that would work equally as well for someone with no previous knowledge of the series as it would for someone with a Ph.D. in DC continuity. A promising kickoff to Johns’ long-promised Brainiac story and a great jumping-on point; it’s great to see DC’s flagship title is again one of its best.
Trinity #1: Hmmm, I’m not totally sold on Chip Kidd’s blurred three-tiered logo design for this Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman team-up book, but at least it’s a solid break from the now-tiresome 52-Countdown logotype. The cover design spotlighting one of the three main characters on each successive tryptych piece doesn’t really grab me either, failing to convey instantly what this series actually is — this basically looks like a Superman book at first look, and second look too — rather than showing all three characters together. Inside the pages of DC’s 52-part newest weekly series, Mark Bagley hits the ground running moving over from Marvel and Ultimate Spider-Man, stepping comfortably into the DC Universe with spot-on renditions of DC big three as well as a good chunk of the current Flash cast. Writer Kurt Busiek doesn’t go for the big bang opener out of the box here, not even having any of the main characters in costume until two-thirds of the way through the main story, but opts instead to lay enough solid groundwork to get one intrigued. If they can keep up this level of quality in the main story, it shouldn’t be too much trouble holding that attention from here. The backup is slightly less satisfying, and a bit less lucid — it took a couple readings to be clear exactly what was going on — but the glimpses of things to come are pretty successful at whetting the appetite for what’s to come this series. I’m onboard this title (for the near future, at least) and looking forward to the ride.
So it’s Grant Morrison week for sure. Between Final Crisis #1 and Batman #677, the display of sheer writing mastery Morrison brings to bear is staggering. In Final Crisis #1 Morrison manages to infuse the standard universe-shattering crossover structure with enough sheer humanity to overcome the cynicism with which one would normally view such events, in a few elegant opening pages explaining why stories of super-powered, more-than-human characters have such elemental appeal, tying deeply into the rich history of DC Comics’ seventy-plus year publication record without making it inaccessible or incomprehensible. The scene with the Monitors manages to make better use of the characters in a few scant panels than in the entirety of Countdown combined — and actually does follow up on a single plot thread from that series, making it not totally dismissable. (Perhaps its relevant storylines could just be retold in a single standalone 48-page book rather than force anyone to slog through all 51 issues + innumerable tie-ins and spinoffs of Countdown.) JG Jones’ art is pretty much flawless, although the Question does look a bit too much like she has a face in the panel where (thanks to Entertainment Weekly’s Final Crisis preview featuring excerpts of Morrison’s script) Grant clearly indicated no face. Minor nitpick aside though, everything on the page is exemplary — I just hope he can keep it up on time and this series doesn’t fall victim to the incongruous dropped-in fill-in pages that torpedoed Infinite Crisis. Because so far, Final Crisis is shaping up to be fairly awesome — and also kind of beautiful.
The striking Alex Ross cover (based on a Morrison design, I believe) that adorns Batman #677 leads in to the best work of Tony Daniel’s penciling career. Previously I’ve always found Daniel’s work on series like Teen Titans and Flash to be acceptable at best and fairly static, but his work has really risen to the level of Morrison’s writing quickly during his relatively brief tenure on Batman. While he could still stand to render depth a bit more naturally, for the most part he evokes exactly the right crossbreed between Jim Lee’s and Neal Adams’ Batman work. And Morrison’s script…uh, wow. As Batman R.I.P. kicks into high gear, Morrison deconstructs the entire basis of the Batman character in a few devastating pages (capped with an excellent silent Daniel full-page splash the original of which will surely bring a dear price at auction) — and that’s where the story really begins, rolling down a rollercoaster sequence of events that tie together plot threads Morrison has been weaving into the series since the beginning of his run. Parallels to the excellent Len Wein/Jim Aparo/John Byrne miniseries Untold Legend of the Batman abound, including the promised next-issue appearance of the “first Batman”, whose costume is prominently highlighted here, so hopefully a reprint edition is on the way, perhaps in one of those reprint specials Ryan Sook keeps doing great covers for.
