Not a bad week for comics. Due to “One Year Later,” I’ve started picking up comics I’ve previously abandoned. Let’s see how long the writers can keep me entertained. And, amazingly, I’m actually getting the reviews up in a timely manner. Well, at least these first three. I still have a backlog.
Nightwing #118
Kid gets kidnapped, Nightwing follows and saves her, except, of course, it isn’t really Nightwing, since this one kills the kidnapper. We appear to be in New York now, as well. The scene switches to Dick Grayson in bed with a redhead. No, not that one. I see that Bruce Jones’ characterization of Dick Grayson is more along the lines of Devin Grayson, which is a bad thing: Dick as a womanizing idiot doesn’t work for me.
The redhead appears to be some metahuman, with a power that’s not really illustrated well enough to tell what the heck she can do. Note to the artist, Joe Dodd: try harder.
Ah, in a city of millions, Dick runs into Clancy, his old landlord from Bludhaven. What a coincidence. Clancy seems to know more about Dick’s red-headed f-buddy than he does. Yep, we can also drop the Nightwing as detective from this characterization, too. Anyhow, Dick rents a warehouse and starts beating up on the criminal element. Let’s see, he’s got the stupid longish hair again, and the costume has a lot more leg and belt pouches than before. And he saves Clancy from a nut on the street. Wow, Clancy is stupid. Lois Lane stupid, if you know what I mean.
Nightwing then fights a couple of twin metahumans, and seems woefully unprepared. The bad guys grabs him by the neck and drops him off a building. Where the other Nightwing catches him and then ALSO holds him by the neck. In fact, there’s a lot of neck-holding in this issue: I counted six times.
Anyhow, the other Nightwing is, obviously, Jason Todd. If Nightwing was being written correctly, it would take about four panels for Dick to take care of this problem, but, from this small exposure to Bruce Jones’ scribbles, it would appear that Nightwing will not be written correctly.
As for being “One Year Later,” the comic doesn’t really take advantage of it. Seems like Jason Todd has just started pretending to be Nightwing (and I’m not really sure why he would pick New York to do that in, anyhow: seems like Bludhaven or Gotham would make more sense) and there’s no teasing as to what Dick Grayson’s been up to for the past year.
This whole issue just brings up the bad taste I had in my mouth when Chuck Dixon was writing Nightwing: emphasis on action over characterization. I’ll give this another issue, but I want Nightwing to be better than this.
Birds of Prey #92
Ah, I’ve been trying to catch up on Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey for a while: I bought BoP when Dixon started it, but if never really did much for me. When Simone started writing it, I wrongfully ignored it. I’m correcting that mistake now.
Unlike Nightwing, this comic uses the “One Year Later” shtick to good effect: the Birds are trying to protect the Crime Doctor, a key member of the Secret Society, who is defecting. So you get Huntress trying to keep Clayface, Killer Croc, and the Ventriloquist from killing him. It reintroduces the team, and tosses a new twist: Lady Shiva (or the Jade Canary, apparently). Seems that Shiva is filling in for Black Canary, who seems to be reliving Shiva’s childhood training. And while Shiva doesn’t really work for me, at least the dichotomy between her and Canary is interesting, as is Oracle’s dismay at having to work with her.
I like that there are mysteries in this issue, as if the year really has passed. And we also get Gypsy in the mix, which is always good. Overall, a very strong OYL issue, and a very strong issue regardless.
Batman: Year 100 #2
I wasn’t impressed at all by the first issue of this series. At least this issue has a little more meat to it, but halfway through, it turns into yet another “Batman tries to escape from his would-be captors” story. And again, I’ve seen it all before, done better. And the art, while marginally better than the first issue, is a big detraction for me: Pope’s faces are ugly, but his actual layouts and storytelling aren’t too bad.
So, I’m now out $12 for the first two issues and I think I might have gotten about a half-issue of story and enjoyment out of it. I think I’ll be cutting my losses. This is definitely the most over-hyped piece of crap I’ve read since Cosmic Odyssey.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 10:45 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Responses to “Wednesday Reviews”
Do not trust the Bruce Jones. The man is best left to the human element tales as evidenced byt he sheer lack of the Hulk in his own title book back when he was at the keys.
Something about the man bothers me when super-suits are involved.
Be wary.
March 19th, 2006 at 1:24 am |