These will be short and sweet. Just going through the stack of comics and giving my brief impressions.
Nextwave #1 and #2
Funny and well-drawn, though the pacing of issue two seems to be a little wanting. Not anywhere near the level of Giffen’s Justice League (Warren Ellis seems to be trying to emulate that style), but still a nice diversion. I like that I don’t really need to be neck-deep in continuity for the comic to work. The “director’s cut” version of the first issue is marred by a stupid Squadron Supreme teaser that totally breaks the flow of the story.
Anyhow, good art and good writing plus amusing characters means that I’ll likely keep picking this up, using my Marvel rule of “get it until you have to buy another comic to understand the storyline.”
Bulleteer #4
Overall, an okay mini-series. I wish the main conflict could have been resolved without violence, since I think it would have made the themes resonate a little more, but it is a comic book and we must have the big fight.
Teen Titans #33
Superboy and Nightwing: “Together for the Last Time?” is how this is teased on the cover. Funny, I don’t really recall Nightwing and Superboy being together very much at all, save for the Outsider/Titans crossovers. There’s sort of a “fake conflict” manufactured between the two, with Nightwing not trusting Superboy (except he does) and Superboy feeling like a second-stringer compared to Nightwing (which he is). It almost seemed like this should have been Robin and Superboy.
Anyhow, this is a basic “get heroes from point A to point B” story, with a lot of things that just made me go “huh?” For example, Nightwing changed into his old costume for the sole purpose of using the glider wings that the old costume actually never had (it had little glider wings, but not anything that would allow Nightwing to fly). Multiple Earths explode, seemingly within the atmosphere, causing both Superboy and Nightwing to be knocked off balance. The Batplane mysteriously appears at one point. The whole issue is chaotic and just not that good.
Captain Atom: Armageddon #6
I’m enjoying this series more than I thought I would. Captain Atom, stuck on an alternate Earth and a danger to that Earth’s universe, turns to the Authority (well, the Engineer, mostly) for help. There’s good action, good characterization, and good art. Can’t ask for much more. The pacing is somewhat slow at times, but that’s okay with me.
Firestorm #23
Speaking of nuclear heroes, Firestorm is already into “One Year Later” territory. I started buying this version of Firestorm when it started, but it didn’t do anything for me. I dropped it a few issues later. I know that when Stuart Moore took over, it did get better, but I still resisted returning. I picked up the latest issue just to see how the OYL thing would play out and discovered that I liked this issue a lot. It helps that Moore is bringing back some old friends and a compelling mystery.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 21st, 2006 at 10:38 am and is filed under DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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