Still have a bunch more to go, but here’s a few reviews for the week. I still have to plow through the latest issue of Nightwing, too. That’s something to look forward to.
Green Lantern Corps #1
There’s a certain momentum to this comic that I like: Dave Gibbon’s take on the Green Lantern Corps is to make it a lot more like a police force, with the GLs entering chaotic situations and attempting to resolve them. You’ve got self-doubt, grandstanding, tactics, everything a police drama has. The idea of pairing Green Lanterns together gives much more drama than the usual “single operative” type stories.
It also helps that I like the characters a lot. While there are the usual faceless cannon-fodder characters, there’s Guy Gardner, Natu, Kilowog. I hope G’nort shows up soon. Or Ch’p. Is Ch’p still alive? Oh, crap, he’s dead.
52 #6
There are many things about 52 that I like, but the pacing is certainly not one of them. It seems that whenever a storyline starts gaining steam, the next issue just drops it. I want to know what’s up with the 25 foot tall Hawkgirl, or what Ralph is up to, or more Renee and the Question.
Instead, we get a very confusing sequence of Hal Jordan and John Stewart fighting off some poorly named (at least for a comic book) Chinese super-heroes. Yeah, I know, Grant Morrison created them so I should just love them. I don’t (at least not yet). You know, if two people with power rings can’t manage to kick the butts of some newbie third-world heroes, you’ve got problems. And hey, don’t those guys have their own comic, anyhow?
There’s some movement on the Booster Gold front: he’s paying actors to fight him in public (Manthrax! What a great name!) and discovers that the problems in the timestream might be his fault.
I can’t help but think that 52 might have been better realized as a set of mini-series, ala Seven Soldiers of Victory, rather than serialized weekly: it’s like I’ll always hate about half the storylines. This is going back on probation.
Checkmate #3
More international intrigue and action as a cast of way too many attempts to… uh, I forgot what they were trying to do.
I think I’m getting a little tired of government agencies either investigating superheroes or being made up of superheroes. Let’s see, we’ve got this comic, Wonder Woman, Manhunter, etc. I can’t keep it all straight.
By the third issue of any series, I really shouldn’t need captions telling me who is who. Yet, without such captions, I’d be totally lost. It’s easy enough to pick out Mr. Terrific and Count Vertigo, since they continue to wear their normal uniforms. But for the life of me, I can’t tell many of the other characters apart.
So, more clandestine missions to gather information about the people behind Checkmate’s recent decommissioning to use as blackmail to get the program reinstated.
Captain Atom: Armageddon #9
Wait. So after buying nine issues and hoping to get a complete story, this ends on a cliffhanger? And even worse, it seems that the whole thing was the Wildstorm equivalent of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Now, tell me, if you are a Wildstorm fan, would you really expect a universe-changing event to happen in a comic starring a non-Wildstorm character? I mean, it would be like killing off Tim Drake’s father in a crappy cross-over or having Nightwing kill the Joker in a comic other than his own…. Oh, wait, never mind, I forgot that we are really talking about DC Comics here.
The sad thing is that this mini-series was pretty good, up to that point. Having Captain Atom taking a tour of a reality similar to his in many ways, but quite different in its view of super-heroes: his dismay that people were actually afraid of him was interesting (though it really didn’t go much further than the first few issues).
And Captain Atom does defeat the Authority this issue, though in a way that’s not terribly interesting: Apollo attacks Captain Atom (since the Authority believes that the only way to save the universe is to kill the good Captain), which triggers a chain reaction in Atom: the Void Signature he’s picked up kicks in and he vaporizes Apollo. And then the Midnighter. And then Jenny Quantum. But, just when all looks lost, the Deus Ex Machina comes along, Nikola, and reclaims the portion of the Void Signature in Captain Atom. Then she restarts the Wildstorm universe. I think.
Anyhow, there just aren’t enough answers or resolutions to make this a satisfying series. It got close, and the previous issues I found rather interesting: Captain Atom’s new powers (while a little overpowered) were used effectively and interestingly and his interactions with Majestic and the Authority (especially the Engineer) were well-written and kept me coming back for more.
A disappointing conclusion to what could have been something great.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 5:17 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Reviews, Wildstorm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Responses to “Day Later Reviews”
Is China actually considered “third world” these days? It’s a nitpick, I know, but I thought that term specifically refers to what are considered undeveloped or developing countries.
June 17th, 2006 at 12:43 pm |