This Week's Comic Stack 9/15/10

I know, no posts for the last few weeks.

Instead of playing catch up I'm just going to go into this week's books.

And play with my review format a little...

From DC this week:

• Batman Beyond #4- I was afraid that Dick Grayson would be treated badly in this new "future" [these type of stories about the future never bode well for him]. Terry gets an explanation for his retirement that is a little lame. Meanwhile Bruce is going all Kingdom Come Batbot on Hush. Terry's friend Max makes an appearance, which is cool. The last page has a reveal that is a head scratcher. My first reaction was "Damn, I knew it. I knew they were gonna do that" but then I thought about the issue and art and it's quite possible that it's not who they said they were. So there is hope. I'm enjoying this even if the mixing of the animated series and the DCU is a bit uneven. -Good
• Birds Of Prey #5- Things look bad as the BoP are split because of the fallout of Savant's attack on them. Huntress has to be talked down from killing the Penguin by Oracle. As Babs deals with Savant and Creote [by showing them the new HQ?] and alludes to a way to make them forget the location of the Batcave [paging Zatanna?], Hawk and Zinda recover in the hospital. Dinah takes White Canary back home agreeing to something that will prevent Sin [her adopted daughter] from being killed shutting out the rest of the team from her decision. So Zinda and Huntress go to Bangkok [just realized how that sounds] to find Dinah. They find her alright, but it doesn't look like she's happy to see them. -Good
• Brightest Day #10- Now that the issues are focused on two or three plot points this is a better title. 52 was the same way. Here the focus is on what's going on with Firestorm and the intro/origin of the new Aqualad [not called that yet]. I don't care who you are, you have got to love both cliffhangers...Aquaman vs Black Manta and the return of Black Lantern Firestorm! -Great
• DC Universe: Legacies #5- Crisis On Infinite Earths and George Perez hit this issue. Len Wein gives an everyman perspective on the Crisis. But, the late 70's and early 80's are blazed through in order to get there. I do like that Spectre page that references specific Spectre stories. Perez seems a bit shaky art wise till the story turns to the emergence of heroes in the 80's (Firestorm, New Teen Titans, Outsiders, Blue Devil, Quality characters). Once the red skies show up it's incredible. Heroes and rubble galore...his forte. The second story was an okay look at some of DC's space characters drawn by Walt Simonson. -Great
• Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #2- Warning- scenes depicted on covers are further than they appear. In actuality, the cover gives away the cliffhanger. Some great art by Fernando Pasarin and great emotional scenes with Arisa and Kilowog working through the aftermath of their Blackest Night experiences. The "Big Bad" gets teased for a few pages then it's on to Odym to get Guy purged of the Red Lantern rage...where the cover happens. -Good
• Justice Society Of America Special #1- I picked this up really by accident, it was in my pull list because the JSA is in there. I figured, it's Scott Kolins, how bad could it be? This was the conclusion to the Magog series, I guess. The story was just not that good, it did have some interesting aspects of the Kingdom Come future that it brought into the DCU. However, this really felt like they were clearing the slate for whatever Magog's role is that was hinted at in Brightest Day. -Bad
• Zatanna#5- I'm kinda surprised at how much I like this series. Poor Zach...just when Zatanna and him were gonna reconnect...she gets love potion roses and an age defying casino owner who wants to marry her and give her soul to a demon as payment for his debt. Also,...he has a zombie army. -Good

From Marvel:

• Captain America: Patriot #1- This starts a four issue mini that looks at the second replacement Captain America, Jeff Mace. This issue looks at how an encounter with Cap just before the war inspires him to become the Patriot. Stuck at home because of being 4-F, Mace throws himself into the home front war effort. He joins the Liberty Legion. The last few pages he is debriefed on the events of What If #5 and is offered to carry on as Captain America. Karl Kesel and Mitch Breitweiser did a wonderful job. -Great
• New Mutants #17- This title is slowly losing me. Zeb Wells starts out with an awful scene between Sam and Dani that is teen drama at it's worst. These characters are supposed to be in their early to mid twenties yet since the series started they've acted more and more like teenagers. There was finally some action involving the team this issue too. The art by Leonard Kirk is good, but he needs more to do with it. I hope it's just this arc that is like this because I enjoyed the team in Second Coming. -Okay
• Steve Rogers: Super-Soldier #3- This continues to be a fun series. I liked the part where Steve, who has lost his Super Soldier TM muscles can still kick ass because he still remembers all his training. The art was good but had none of the fun panel layouts of the first two. -Good
• Thunderbolts #148- Ugh, after the non-crossover crossover with Avengers Academy last issue, this time it's a Shadowland crossover. I guess it makes more sense as Cage is involved in that debacle. Cage sends in the T-bolts under command of Fixer and Songbird to destroy a Hand fortress and rescue a kidnapped cop. Within moments both supervising T-bolts are taken out by the Hand ninjas and once again the chains on the others are unfettered. I have liked Jeff Parker's Atlas series and I really wanted to like this one being an old T-bolts fan. This issue pulls some pretty big BS though. I'll start off saying that I am not reading the Shadowlands mini or Daredevil title now but do know the gist of it. That said WTF is a HUGE Japanese temple/fortress doing in Clint--Hell's Kitchen and how did it get there? [that's definitely a non union job] Looking at this thing on the third panel on page two...it has got to take up several city blocks. Now I'm willing to accept that as someone else's BS that Parker has to deal with. But he wrote the so bad it's good again dialogue of Luke Cage. Saying to a ninja who tried disguising himself as Iron Fist "Ninja, please." Then he gets some info from a street musician who knows all about the Hand's evil undead army living in the sewers (called the Underhand [get it]). This was just awful. -Bad

Great=3

Good=5

Okay=1

Bad=2

MIA: Amazing Spider-Man #643- The great Mark Waid throws all of Spidey's villains at him at once in this arc that closes out the near weekly run of Amazing for the past two years.