The Mighty Reviews 1/15/09

[Kdawg59]

We're flying low and fast here this week in review land. Our leader Joe as well as myself will be posting our reviews sometime tomorrow as business has Joe away and a snow storm and idiot drivers have the Dawg rendered a day late and a dollar short here in Michigan. Fret not though faithful followers... we have Sammy and his local flavor for you today to stem the tide of your restlessness...

WKTF's Review

A business trip took me away until now so apologies this review is late. I bought Amazing Spider-Man #583 just on a lark but haven’t read it yet. The only other comic for me this week was this one.

Final Crisis #6 of 7
DC Comics
Written by: Grant Morrison
Art by: JG Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Doug Mahnke, Marco Rudy, Christian Alamy, Jesus Merino
Cover by: JG Jones
Variant cover by: Pacheco, Merino and Sinclair

I wish I knew where to begin with this review but I’m afraid I don’t understand enough of what’s going on to properly address the story. Maybe it’s just as simple as Darkseid and the minions of Apokolips are attempting to purge the Earth of life to create their Fifth World, following his incredibly damaging battle with Orion. Of course, as of the first issue of this series, Orion is dead, felled by a god bullet filled with Radion. Since that time, the Dark Gods have infiltrated the bodies of other beings and resurrected their lives on Earth. Darkseid has absorbed his host, our dear friend Dan Turpin, just as Granny Goodness gained control of Kraken, the Alpha Lantern who imprisoned Hal Jordan and captured Batman. Ah, Batman. More on the Dark Knight in a moment.

This penultimate issue is an all out battle issue and, art wise, it’s pretty impressive. The multiple talents (see the credits) handling the art make for a bit of a distracting read but there are some pretty big moments in this book if what you’re looking for are some impressive slugfests. Supergirl vs. Mary Marvel is a bludgeoning battle that destroys a good part of the city. Two great creators’ characters, Jack Kirby’s Kalibak and Otto Binder’s Mister Tawky Tawny, face off in spectacular tiger-y fashion rendered with some very impressive and even gory art. Luthor and Sivana’s teaming up was surprisingly fun, especially after they’d declared themselves enemies in the Superman/Captain Marvel crossover of a few years back. Superman’s rage at the end was absolutely palpable. And Black Canary’s facing her possessed husband delivered absolutely the right level of pain, desperation and anger on Diana’s part. These, sadly, are offset by scenes like the outcome between Freddy and Mary that could have been predicted by anyone who’d read Kingdom Come, as well as the final panel with Tawny that basically was telegraphed by that same page’s opening panel. Still, for high impact visuals, despite the constant shifting of visual styles, this issue really delivered.

As for the story? It’s a convoluted mess. Even if you’ve been following the Final Crisis: Superman Beyond tie-in (all one issue thus far) you still wouldn’t know what the hell is going on in the opening few pages with the Man of Steel. The scenes with Mr. Miracle, Sonny Sumo, The Atoms, The Flashes, Alan Scott, The Hawks, The Lanterns and especially Rene Montoya (much beloved character of those who followed Gotham Central) are just random enough to be confusing as hell. And, I’m sorry, just how many damn times do we have to have someone say “Look! Up in the sky…” to know the cavalry is finally coming? If what Morrison’s trying to communicate is total disparate and random chaos then he’s succeeded in making the reader feel as lost as the players in his story. Rarely have I read a story with so many confusing or plain unknowable moving parts that simply refuse to integrate into a coherent whole.

And now for (SPOILERS) my rant. Batman RIP. I’ve felt put over by comics companies before. Marvel’s a prime offender with Secret Wars way back when…nothing more than a marketing event designed to sell a line of toys wrapped in the pretense of a story. I, personally, was grateful “The Return” of Captain Mar-Vel during Civil War turned out not to be, only because Mar-Vel’s death was handled with such sadness and grace. Still, “The Return” was nothing of the kind and was a huge bait-and-switch for fans who believed it to be true. This one takes the cake, though. DC led readers to believe that the RIP storyline in Batman’s own title was the final Dark Knight story. It was nothing of the kind. In fact, that story didn’t even really end, even after it had finished! The reader went from Batman’s crashing, along with a helicopter, into Gotham Harbor only to move to Batman’s being captured by Kraken as Orion lay dead in Final Crisis, as noted above. Except, for the reader, the latter actually occurred before the former, which made no sense at all. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, let’s move back to Batman’s book after RIP to find him bound by Darkseid’s minions and his brain patterns dissected to create an army of Batmen. Well, Dan Didio has claimed in several interviews that RIP was always intended to continue into and conclude in Final Crisis. It was? Did the reader know this when buying Batman’s books? What happened after the helicopter crash, and how did Batman get to Orion in the hospital? I know, this newsarama.com article, http://www.newsarama.com/comics/0109...P-Finally.html, points out that Batman #682-3 explains how Bruce survived the crash and made this transition. It did? Really? I read them. Could anyone make enough sense of those two issues to know what the hell story actually was being told? And are comic book readers now required to read the online rags to be able to make sense of the stories they’re reading? Is this a new requirement to being able to follow a story? Is this how editors and writers help us poor, ignorant readers raise our intellects to their levels?

DC should be taken to task for Batman RIP, a case of false advertising in order to sell more books. Face it, those looking to read Batman’s final story need not ever have bought those comics, they just didn’t know it at the time. Grant Morrison should not be allowed to write for DC any more, and certainly not a Batman title any more. In addition to giving the reader a story with no end, RIP (like Final Crisis) was a mishmash of convoluted thoughts with no clear direction or coherence. And as for Final Crisis, as Macbeth said of life when he learned of his wife’s suicide, it’s “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Ugh. For anyone interested in cleaning their pallets of Morrison and see how Batman REALLY should be written, please move on to my trade review, below.

Wktf’s Trade Review

Batman: Private Casebook HC
DC Comics
Written by: Paul Dini (with Peter Milligan)
Drawn by: Dustin Nguyen

Ever listen to those classic rock FM stations who extol that “it doesn’t have to be old to be a classic?” Such is the case with Paul Dini’s as yet still continuing Batman run on Detective Comics. Seriously, don’t you wish that all Batman stories could be like these? Or, at the very least, Grant Morrison would just pay attention to what’s been going on in Batman’s sister title over the last couple of years? This trade, which came out in the final month of 2008, is the third collection of Dini’s run on Detective. And, as good as each individual issue has been (except the tie ins to the miserable Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul story), I’ve discovered the best way to appreciate what Dini’s done is to read them collected together. You just get that, “Damn, that’s good” satisfied sensation after finishing them, like after you’ve just finished a really excellent steak dinner.

This little beauty collects Detective Comics #840-845 with a story from the DC Infinite Halloween Special #1 thrown in as a bit of a nightcap. In here we are treated to a smorgasbord of classic Batman friends and foes, but most rendered in completely new and different ways, as well as a few new characters that may prove to have potential down the line. The latter of these are Gotham Jack, a Jack the Ripper style serial killer (from Peter Milligan’s largely forgettable contribution to this volume, a story about the Suit of Sorrows gifted to Batman by Talia during the Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul), and a Wilson Fisk smuggler named Hammond Carter who calls himself “The Globe” after his fascination, shtick really, with maps and plots his crimes by latitude, longitude, time zones and the shape of landmasses. It seems as ridiculous to Batman as it does to the reader. But these two minor characters are only devices in these issues to stories with larger themes.

The marquis cast in this book begins with Ra’s al Ghul in the masterful epilogue to that now twice aforementioned dreadful story. Here, Ra’s has staked Gotham as his new headquarters and has decided no longer to suffer the presence of the Bat, nor can Batman any long suffer Ra’s in this showdown to end all showdowns. The Mad Hatter and his deadly Wonderland gang appear to vex Gotham but, as Batman, quickly deduces, not all is as it appears and the biggest victim of these crimes is the most unlikely of all. The two part story of Scarface and the new Ventriloquist, also featuring The Penguin, may well be the jewel in this crown, involving a continued reconciliation between Zatanna (who stars in the little vignette at the end) and Batman as well as an origin story for this Ventriloquist that hits a little too close to home for Bruce Wayne. The Riddler’s tale, titled “The Riddle Unanswered” features the reformed villain-turned-private-detective’s race against Batman to solve a murder that turns out to be a horror story for Nigma, himself, where his past crimes come back to bite him hard.

I loved the art work Don Kramer was doing on Detective before Nguyen took over. But Nguyen’s one-upped Kramer, for sure. His work is dark, eerie and at times even grotesque. This is Dini’s show but Nguyen’s delivering Dini’s goods masterfully here. And, as Dini promised when he took over this title, his Batman’s a little more analytical than usual and every bit the detective for which this title calls. We even see the compassionate side of Batman more than once here. But, does he sacrifice the visceral and violent nature of Batman’s character? Not at all. If you’re looking for a Batman who can throw down like none other, including against an entire room and rooftop full of ninjas, and is willing to go to serious if not sometimes desperate measures to facilitate his war on crime and stop his enemies in their tracks, then look no further than this book as well. Dini gives us the complete Batman character, not just one side or another, but the fully nuanced and complex package that has made The Dark Knight the most popular comic book superhero of the last several decades. My only complaint is that the first two trade volumes of Dini’s Detective Comics work were published in tpb format whereas this one, “Private Casebook,” is a HC. “Private Casebook” is such a spectacular title that if DC decides to repackage Dini’s work as a collection of HC’s (maybe slipcover packaging, as well?), or as one massive deluxe HC, under the “Private Casebook” banner I’d give my tpb’s and this lone HC to my kids and snatch it up in a heartbeat.

Dawg's Reviews
(coming soon)

[Kdawg59]

Sam Wilson's Reviews


DMZ #38
DC/Vertigo Comics
Written by: Brian Wood
Drawn by: Riccardo Burchelli
Cover by: John Paul Leon

To catch up those who haven’t checked out this book yet: our story opens five years into the second American Civil War. The conflict is between the United States of America and the “Free States”. According to the White House, these “Free States” Soldiers are “thugs and murderers”, and they are indiscriminate and uncivilized when it comes to warfare in civilian areas. As far as New York City goes, the “Free States” control New Jersey and the inland, and they are amassing at the banks of the Hudson River. The United States of America has Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island and is well dug in on the coastline, with Manhattan Island caught in-between in the “DMZ”. The thing is, there are still people living on Manhattan Island, and even though there has been a formal ceasefire in effect from the last three days (when the story opens) the reality of life there consists of looters, gangs, local militias, insurgents and contract killers. All a day in the life in the DMZ.

Enter rich white-kid Matthew Rose, he entered the DMZ an intern to a world famous journalist and ended up the voice of the people. Since Matthew has set foot in the DMZ he has been used by both sides, made some friends (Zee, the former Med Student among them) and has established himself as a “name” person in the DMZ. He reports the truth, no matter how ugly, so most of the time he gets free reign, and has even become a celebrity of sorts. Latest up for Matty, he finds himself working for Parco Delgado, the newly elected President of the DMZ (and he has an uncanny resemblance to Sen Dawg from Cypress Hill). Also in the mix is Matty’s high powered mom, who helped Parco get elected and now is a close personal advisor to him. In part two of “War Power” the first few pages give us a quick recap of DMZ events of late. Parco is in power, yet his reign is tenuous to say this least with Trustwell (thing Blackwater) working on behest of the US Gov’t to jump at the first sign of weakness on Parco’s part. Parco is pretty much fu$#ed because he needs to start rebuilding Manhattan, and to do that he is going to need a crapload of money. As you remember last issue, he sent Matty to do some fund raising in Chinatown looking for some lost gold, kind of a DMZ urban legend. Matty finds some gold, and also finds out Parco made a deal with the devil both he and Matty new to get it out of Chinatown, and so it goes…

If you looking for something different and politically relevant, this book is for you. This issue would be a bad jumping on point, but check out a few of the trades already out and I’m sure you wouldn’t be disappointed.

Green Arrow/Black Canary #16
DC Comics
Written by: Andrew Kreisberg
Drawn by: Mark Norton and Joe Rubinstein
Cover by: Ladronn

The past year or so in the “Arrowverse” has been harrowing for Ollie to say the lease. First we thought he married DCU uber-hottie Dinah Lance aka Black Canary, only he didn’t and he was kidnapped by some Amazon’s while his clone married Dinah. Ollie finally married Dinah only to have his son, Connor taken out by an assassin. The thing is Connor did die but he was resurrected and combined with Plastic Man’s DNA in some sort of clone/supersoldier venture (seriously) and is alive now but not really quite who he was. Of course that’s resolved, and he’s still with Dinah (damn, fishnets are awesome) and Judd Winick has left and a new writer is on board. So what’s going on now?

Our story opens with Ollie and Dinah hot on the trail of Merlyn, evil archer and member of the League of Assassins. He’s killing people in Ollie’s city, and well, Ollie has to stop him. On the way Ollie and Dinah touch base with the local PD and possibly make a friend, Dinah reconnects with Oracle and is kind of salty towards her (?), and even though the art is fairly mediocre and the story mostly set up, things could be going okay. I should also mentioned the psychotic Green Arrow stalker who popped up at the end of the issue…

When Winick and Chiang were on the book things were okay, this new team doesn’t seem better but doesn’t seem any worse either (isn’t Ollie and Dinah high profile enough for Gary Frank, Greg Ruck or anybody A list?). For now, I’m in, but that could change.


Sam Wilson’s TPB/HC Review

Ultimate Origins Premiere Hardcover
Marvel Comics
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Drawn by: Jackson Guice
Sweet Variant Cover by: Michael Turner

Lots of people greatly dislike Marvel’s “Ultimate” Universe. When it first popped up on the scene 10 years ago it was a skinned down, fat free version of the Marvel U. Peter Parker was a teenager (still is), the Fantastic Four were young people as well. Nick Fury looked like Sam Jackson and was the superbad puppet master of the Marvel U. Captain America kicked a lot of ass and Tony Stark was a drunk who boinked celebs. Bruce Banner was off his rocker and as the Hulk he killed hundreds, destroyed most of New York and saved mankind (more than once). The stuff that made Norman Osborn the Green Goblin is also said to have made Bruce Banner the Hulk and Captain America Captain America (well, it all went back to cap, Osborne and Hulk were results of what happened when the gov’t tried to duplicate that experiment), and that right there is essentially what this series is about. The origins of the Ultimate U, the conspiracy revealed written by the guy who started it all, Brian Michael Bendis. Going back to my first point, I am not one of those people who hate the Ultimate Marvel U, in fact I think those titles are consistently some of the best titles coming out of the house of ideas (not so much lately, but the “Ultimate Galactus Trilogy”, any issue of Ultimate Spidey, the Warren Ellis issues of Fantastic Four, Greg Rucka’s Daredevil and Elektra, all classic). Anyway, on to the conspiracy…

Ultimate Origins starts out in WW II, with three familiar soldiers who are committing theft, probably from bad people, but theft nonetheless. These soldiers are James Howlett (I hate that goddam name, I hated “Origins”, Wolverine is Logan, always will be no matter how many ****ing times the house of ideas keeps pushing that lame ass ****ing James Howlett bull**** down our throats, retconning mothe****ers, there was NOTHING wrong with the ****ing Widsor-Smith origin story, nothing. Goddam assholes…), Nick Fury and Wilson Fisk (ru roh). Yeah, the military was segregated during WW II, but that’s okay, it didn’t appear these guys were in the same unit, they were just partners in crime. Anyway, they get caught and next thing we know Nick Fury is part of some messed up Tuskegee type experiment and Wolverine is back in Canada going through some familiar Weapon X-type experimentation. During the experimentation on “James” (goddammit) the powers that be learn he is a mutant, and suddenly become very, very scared. From there we go to the second issue, where the pace changes a little. It starts out in present time Ultimate Marvel U; Carol Danvers is in charge of SHIELD and Nick Fury is MIA. There is a problem at project Pegasus where the gov’t has their “X-Files” giant room of unexplained **** and the Fantastic Four is called in because they have all the big brains. Meanwhile, we get a wicked cool origin story for Ultimate Captain America. Unlike other Ultimate Marvel U origins, this one is pretty close to the original, but hey, it’s done pretty well. In issue three things over at Project Pegasus take a turn for the weird, and the effect is felt all throughout the Ultimate Marvel U, and our flashback takes us to the origins of Wolverine, Magneto and Charles Xavier. Issue four is all about the Hulk and Nick Fury, and I gotta see I didn’t see any of it coming. In the early days of Nick Fury he kind of formed his own “Ultimate Illuminati Big Brain” group on orders from the president to invent a new super soldier. The plot thickens because it turns out Fury was (is) a super soldier himself. The series wraps up with Nick Fury being a bad-ass unforgiving mother****er, a young ultimate Black Panther and the revelation of a big Ultimate Universe secret…

I loved this series. Yes, it just came out in floppy form a few months back, but now that “Ultimatum” is in high gear this would help you catch up. Word. $24.99, Turner Cover available for Direct Market only. Indeed…

[thecallahan]

Man, that DMZ reminds me I still need to pick up the TPB's, I just never think of it.

And Joe, I got that tpb of Wolverine Origins: Our War. I thought it was decent but Steve Dillon's art just kills anything for me anymore. He has like 3 faces and it's just too distracting. His Captain America doesn't look heroic in a chainmail type uniform. He looks like a bug eyes freak in a gimp suit. Everytime I saw him I just rolled my eyes.

[Babytoxie]

Originally Posted by thecallahan

Man, that DMZ reminds me I still need to pick up the TPB's, I just never think of it.

And Joe, I got that tpb of Wolverine Origins: Our War. I thought it was decent but Steve Dillon's art just kills anything for me anymore. He has like 3 faces and it's just too distracting. His Captain America doesn't look heroic in a chainmail type uniform. He looks like a bug eyes freak in a gimp suit. Everytime I saw him I just rolled my eyes.

I have to agree, his style is pretty limited.

[Sam Wilson]

personally I'm a huge fan of dillon. Love his work on pretty much everything, and I think his faces are very expressive. Difference of opinion I guess. BTW, JDH, get that origins page for me yo...

[wktf]

Totally agree with my brother, Sam, on this one. I'll admit, Dillon's work lacks the detail and appears a bit more simplistic compared to other artists. But I think his work is very expressive and the still shot of Cap sitting in the plane made him look like a quiet, contemplative powerhouse.

[wktf]

Okay, folks, my review of Final Crisis #6 and a Batman HC is up. Have at it!

[moon_knight1971]

Do you guys think Morrison's bad writing is because he is jealous of Miller's and Loeb's Hollywood success?

[wktf]

Originally Posted by moon_knight1971

Do you guys think Morrison's bad writing is because he is jealous of Miller's and Loeb's Hollywood success?

Actually, and I've said this before, I think Morrison has Neil Gaiman envy. Gaiman's a real, NYTimes bestselling author who's done absolutely phenomenal, complex as well as intellectually and viscerally satisfying comic book work. I think Morrison's grinding his teeth and thinking he should get the kind of credit Gaiman gets. Problem is, Morrison simply doesn't have Gaiman's chops to compete.

[lord odin]

Originally Posted by moon_knight1971

Do you guys think Morrison's bad writing is because he is jealous of Miller's and Loeb's Hollywood success?

I think he is trying to outdo other writers with his tales but at the same time he's pushing them away.