- Flash #2- This book delivers everything. Some great action as Barry fights future cops based on Rogues. A little humor as he rebuilds an apartment building and interacts with a little girl [I wonder though...did he furnish the apartments too? He also built a brand new building...is that still the apartment the tenants rented? Can the landlord raise the rent because of improvements?]. Cold and the Rogues want Boomerang to prove himself before being welcomed back. There is even a trademark Johns cliffhanger, Barry Allen murderer.
- Birds Of Prey #1- The girls are back! And I couldn't be happier. When Babs, Dinah and Helena met on the rooftop I couldn't help smiling. Now, I didn't cry like Helena, but that little moment got to me. So most of the issue is about the reunion and the threat that someone is going to expose all the heroes IDs along with those connected to them. In the middle of the meeting a "BoP" signal lights up in the sky and Canary and Huntress face a female martial artist (called White Canary in teaser) but is she Cassandra Cain, Shiva or a newcomer? One thing is certain, this feels right. Both as a group and a comic.
- Superman: War Of The Supermen #2- As Earth and the remnants of New Krypton keep on their collision course for confrontation [yay, alliteration], the Lanes have a family reunion. Superman calms Kara down after losing her mother and they head off to stop Zod's attack on the HDC's Mars base [guess this is pre- Blackest Night, otherwise J'onn might have noticed the huge space battle during his terraforming]. The K's are slaughtering the HDC despite Kal and Kara's intervention. Then Luthor pulls an equalizing move, using the corpse of fRao (fake Rao from Action Comics) to turn the sun red...and the Kryptonians start to die in space (Superman and Supergirl too).
- Avengers: Initiative #35- Unfortunately, this book ends with a whimper. There are lots of small resolutions for each of the "original" cast as well as scenes from Siege expanded upon. The Deus Ex Machina (literally) affects the battle at Camp HAMMER. The one thing I didn't like was the reversion of Constrictor to a criminal, the guy came so far in the Thing series and this title.
- The Marvels Project #8- This had a satisfying conclusion to the retro WWII story. Although, there was not the huge gathering of WWII heroes that I wanted [and the cover teases]The last scene took place in current time. This provided a nice bookend to the story. There is an opportunity for the threads here to be picked up in Secret Avengers.
The Alright:
- Adventure Comics #11- Mon-El bows out of current time for now. This issue he spends his last moments finding planets to put the shrunken cities that Brainiac had on. Thus seeding the future of the Legion Of Super-Heroes. The serum that prevented his lead poisoning no longer works. The Legionnaires convince him to face the torment of the Phantom Zone again than the release of death. Flash to the future and Superboy and the LSH pulling him out of the Phantom Zone.
- Justice League: Generation Lost #1- The hunt for Max Lord is on...Booster gets what he feels are crap leads. So ignoring his assigned leads he goes off on his own. Meanwhile, other members of the old JLI feel the pressure to find Ted's killer. Booster deduces Max's whereabouts and heads off on his own to confront him [that worked so well for Ted]. Max outsmarts him and knocks him out. However, Booster manages to activate on old JLI signal device before blacking out. The rest of the JLI arrive, but Max has already left. He's pushed the world to forget him. Only the JLI remember him. As Giffen can get quite jokey and Winick is all over the board it will be interesting if this works. I enjoyed the early JLI which were serious stories with humor put into them, rather than the later JLI which were the opposite.
- Booster Gold #32- Again, knowing the way Giffen writes this is another title that really has to work to keep me around. And it is off to a good start. While more jokey than JL: Generation Lost it still hasn't slipped into full on BWA-HA-HA-HA.
- New Mutants #13- The X-Men are a step behind the evil humans once again. Cyke has his fleet of Blackbirds destroyed, his group of super-smart science guys lured away and tensions among the mutants growing after being isolated. I sure hope that he comes up with something before the inevitable all out assault on the island.
- Batman: The Return Of Bruce Wayne #1- Morrison uses odd language and syntax to represent the stone age tribes speaking as well as syllabic spellings of Bruce's dialogue to get across his "strangeness" to those tribes. It's a neat device, but a little tedious to read. It seems like it will tie in heavily with the Time Masters series, I guess that's cool. There was really nothing to give me that WOW factor here.
- Siege #4- This is a case study in Deus Ex Machina (actually real gods involved too). Used not once but twice! Loki reabsorbs the power he gave to the Hood and the bad guys and gives it to the good guys. Then Thor zaps the Void and kills him. This isn't that bad of a plot, just poor pacing. The dialogue is flat. The Siege pales in comparison to Blackest Night
The Bad:
- New Avengers Finale #1- Continuing right after Siege #4 as the New Avengers pursue Madame Masque and the Hood. They seek the aid of Masque's father Count Nefaria [already ticking me off as Masque HATES her father and Nefaria could care less about her]. After a long sequence of the Avengers tracking and observing their targets (with lots of "snarky" dialogue) there is an okay battle scene. The Avengers triumph, drop off their captives with SHIELD?/HAMMER? then celebrate the "Heroic Age"(TM) and reminisce about the last few years. The rest of the issue is double page spreads of past battles ending with the team in civilian clothes taking a walk in the park. If I were a fan of the title this would have been cool. However, I have exactly two issues...the first and this one. Which also caused something I noticed to annoy me. Bendis tries to bring it back to the first issue with one line, ONE LINE, referencing the fact that Nefaria was part of the breakout that got them all together [WTF!]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment