There’s just far too many comics to review all of them this week. 14 of them, thanks to Marvel’s poor/genius sched­ul­ing. Instead you get one book from each of the Big Two.

Detec­tive Comics #854

My only brush with Greg Rucka came through his work on 52. Where he put a lot of work into the entwined sto­ries of  Bat­woman and The Ques­tion. So I guess it’s only fit­ting that I get reac­quainted with his work through a book that stars those two char­ac­ters. Yes I’m aware they had their own post-52 minis­eries, but I didn’t read that as, to me , that par­tic­u­lar story seemed to have been played out in the pages of 52 already.

At first glance the Kate Kane in this book seems vastly dif­fer­ent than that one who appeared in 52. She’s less a socialite and more of an army brat. She’s got tat­toos and it’s implied she sleeps (or slept) around. Yes, she’s still a les­bian, and yes it comes up but only in a way to flesh out her “com­mit­ted to the mis­sion” mindset.

Before this book, id you’d asked me to point out art by JH Williams I woul’dve had no chance. Would not know him from a bar of soap. After read­ing this book I have every panel burnt out to my brian. In a good way of course. And the panel lay­out. Wow. There’s one two page sequence depict­ing that I loved. A series of light­ning bolt pan­els depicts Bat­woman talk­ing to Bat­man then head­ing back to base and chang­ing back into civil­lian clothes, under­scored by a shot of Bat­woman, on her motor­cy­cle, shoot­ing across the page.

There’s this incred­i­ble amount of energy that crack­les off every page.

Mean­while over in the Ques­tion backup…sorry “co-feature”, Renee Mon­toya seems to have become DC’s answer to the Heroes for Hire. Using an email account and/or web­site to solicit inves­tiga­tive work. Her first case pit­ting her against human traffickers.

It reads like it was orig­i­nally pitched as a full length story that’s been slimmed down through pre­cise cuts. Noth­ing is miss­ing really, but there’s no great expla­na­tion of the bad guy pos­si­ble motives, just that he’s the damn bad guy.

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1

After the let­down of an event that was Brian Michael Bendis’ Secret Inva­sion I har­boured a feel­ing that, given half a chance, Matt Frac­tion could easy write the next Mar­vel event. And here it is.

I’m glad it’s not a company-wide thing as I really couldn’t han­dle another one of those from Mar­vel. But it does carry the Dark Reign tag, which I cna’t really get enthused about. Even though most of the Mar­vel side of my pull list involves Dark Reign in some way.

The story seems organic enough. At the end of Secret Inva­sion, when Nor­man Osbourne was given the job of…well what­ever the hell it is he actu­ally does, he put all mutants on notice. Telling Emma Frost that if they couldn’t con­trol them­selves then he would. Or words to that effect.

In this first issue of the inde­ter­mi­nately long minis­eries (there’s no “#1 of #3″ on the cover, just “Chap­ter One”) Simon Trask organ­ises a march on San Fran­sisco in sup­port of a new law to ster­ilise all mutants, which of course leads to all hell break­ing loose. Really, nobody watched the first 10 min­utes of Die Hard 3?

With half of San Fran­sisco on fire Nor­man Osbourne makes good on his promise and sends in the Dark Avengers to con­trol things. Which of course they don’t because they’re all psy­chopaths. Then Nor­man takes Emma Frost aside reit­ter­ates whats he first told her and then pro­motes her to Leader of All Mutants. Charles Xavier shows up to talk down Cyclops, but it’s revealed to the  reader that the real Charles Xavier is lying in a prison cell with his brain leak­ing down his shirt. None of which makes a whole lot of a sense.

But, this is only the first issue, and I’ve got enough faith that Frac­tion will spin out a few inter­est­ing con­cepts before bring­ing every­thing to a decent conclusion.

Of  course Mar­vel get full praise for keep­ing Greg Land as far from this story as pos­si­ble. Marc Sil­vestri han­dles the art in a pass­able fash­ion. It’s a lot more basic than his linework from back when Grant Mor­ri­son wrote the book, with most of the humans look­ing like scare­crows. And a small but sig­nif­i­cant draw­ing of a continuity-breaking, male Loki.

Com­plete List

Detec­tive Comics #854
Green Lantern #42
Aston­ish­ing X-Men #30
Avengers: Ini­tia­tive #25
Dark Avengers #6
Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1
Immor­tal Iron Fist TP Vol 04 Mor­tal Iron Fist
Ms Mar­vel #40
New Avengers #54
Run­aways 3 #11
Secret War­riors #5
Thun­der­bolts #133
Uncanny X-Men #512
X-Factor #45
X-Force #16
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #214

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #22

So, they’re really run­ning with that whole “vam­pires aren’t that bad” thing? It’s not some crazed fever dream? Brave move that.

This is yet another ‘done in one’ that puts the focus on one mem­ber of the Buffy­verse, this time Satsu, only the sec­ond per­son to share “spe­cial hugs” with Buffy and not die a hor­ri­ble death.

There’s not a lot of plot here: Kennedy is sent to Japan to eval­u­ate Satsu’s per­for­mance as leader of the Japan­ese slayer expan­sion (that seems to solely con­sist of Satsu her­self). When not fight­ing demonic Hello Kitty-esque toys, they engage in a lot of back and forth ban­ter to bed-in that they’re real hon­est to good­ness les­bians just like you see on TV. And then there’s that end­ing that involves a flare, a giant Voltron-style mon­ster, a secret weapon that almost, almost makes up for the bor­ing bits in the pre­ced­ing 20 pages.

There’s a lot of retread­ing here. Reit­er­at­ing things estab­lished long ago in the Buffy­verse. Yes, Satsu likes Buffy (Sea­son 8) Yes, she’s a les­bian (sea­son 8). Yes, Kennedy is too (sea­son 7). Yes, vam­pires are now the ‘in thing’ (last issue!)

This sea­son has to be fin­ish­ing up some­time soon. I do wish they’d hurry up and build on the Twi­light threat already.

Final Cri­sis: Legion Of Three Worlds #3 (of 5)

If you’re going to do a story that fea­tures three times as many char­ac­ters as nor­mal then you’d bet­ter lock George Perez down. And if you’re going to fea­ture Superboy-Prime as the main antag­o­nist then you’d bet­ter lock down Geoff Johns. Lucky for us DC have done just that.

Now they’ve also marked this as a Final Cri­sis tie-in (even though the main story fin­ished last week, but hey, time travel!) it’s more of a the­matic sequel to the Sine­stro Corps War and Light­ning Saga with a bit of Infi­nite Cri­sis thrown in for good mea­sure. So basi­cally all the major ‘events’ that Geoff Johns has been work­ing on for the last five or so years.

So maybe thats the hook into Final Cri­sis? Geoff John’s exam­i­na­tion of the last five years of his career, matched up with Grant Morrison’s exam­i­na­tion of the last ten years of his.

But I could just be clutch­ing at straws.

George Perez does some amaz­ing work here. Fill­ing every panel, every page to burst­ing point with heroes, vil­lains and plenty of action. Last issue ended with the Legion­naires fac­ing off against their ana­logues in the Legion of Super-Villains, while Brainiac 5 sum­moned two alter­nate uni­verse ver­sions of the Legion to assist in the bat­tle. This issue opens with the bat­tle still rag­ing and the Legion get­ting beaten back to their head­quar­ters. The alter­nate Legions — minus every Light­ning Lad, XS and one Light Lass — fly out to join the bat­tle in an incred­i­ble Perez splash page. Brainiac 5 uses those remain­ing to bring back the one char­ac­ter every­one knew was com­ing (telegraphed way back in Light­ning Saga). But that doesn’t make it less impres­sive when they do arrive.

It’s pure, dumb fun. The only down­side is that we now have to wait seven weeks until #4. really DC, thats the best you could do?

Com­plete List

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #22
Final Cri­sis: Legion Of Three Worlds #3 (of 5)
Secret Six #6
Trin­ity #36
Secret War­riors #1