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

Green Lantern #38

There’s no mess­ing around with the Hal Jordan-as-a-Red Lantern stuff from the end of the last issue. It’s dealt with by the mid­dle of the book, in a way that puts a lot of empha­sis on why the Blue Lanterns exist. Of course there’s a  down­side in that it unfor­tu­nately destroys my the­ory that Hal Jor­dan would con­trol all the rings by the end of the War of Light.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this book. The way it jumped from Ysmault to Earth to Qward to the Vega Sys­tem pro­vid­ing lit­tle hooks into future sto­ry­lines. Like Carol Fer­ris return­ing to the Star Sap­phires (now Vio­let Lanterns) after play­ing a major part in their for­ma­tion way back in The Sins of the Star Sap­phires story arc; Sine­stro escap­ing back to Qward to pre­pare for his incur­sion into the Green Lantern Corps book to face off against Mongul for the lead­er­ship of Sinestro’s epony­mous Corps; and the Con­trollers head­ing to the Vega Sys­tem to remind every­one that the Agent Orange story starts next month.

As the Black­est Night mini-event gets closer both Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps books are pick­ing up a lot of momen­tum, espe­cially this book. I still remem­ber how slowly Secret Ori­gin plod­ded along just to set up Atroc­i­tus as the Red Lantern big bad, so I really shouldn’t com­plain about pac­ing. I got what I wished for.

X-Force #12

Back in New X-Men Kyle and Yost spun some really great tales fea­tur­ing the kids ver­sus long time X-Men foes like Rev­erend Stryker. When they announced the move to X-Force (along with ini­tial char­ac­ter sketches) I was, much like the rest of the inter­net, imme­di­ately skep­ti­cal. A year later I’m happy to say that I was wrong. X-Force is good. Bet­ter than it deserves to be, for sure, But I like it.

Well ‘liked’ might be a bet­ter word. This issue was just very, very underwhelming.

It starts off with the team quickly real­is­ing that they weren’t exactly suc­cess­ful in keep­ing Bas­tion from the get­ting his robot hands on the Legacy Virus (as seen last issue). D-grade mutants start show­ing up in the mid­dle of pro-human rallys, with their pow­ers flar­ing wildly out of con­trol, killing all the protesters.

Apart from that, not a whole lot actu­ally hap­pens this issue. There is an incred­i­bly awk­ward exchange between Rahne, in wolf-humanoid form, and some sort of Asgar­dian wolf-god. But the less said about that the better.

If I was going to choose a shin­ing moment it would be find­ing out, on the recap page of all places, that Domino has a real name.

Just so I don’t end on a downer I thought I’d men­tion the colour­ing. The usual muted grey/brown palette gets a huge kick this issue with the addi­tion bright oranges and pinks of the energy spikes spin­ning off the Legacy Virus-infected.

— —  — –

I’m off on hol­i­day next week, so no reviews for a cou­ple of weeks. Once I’m set­tled in I’ll be chang­ing the reviews up a bit. I’m run­ning low of the spare time needed to prop­erly review a books so I’ll just be review­ing the one book each week. I’m going to ran­domly pick the book out of the weekly pile so it could be the worst or it could be the best.

Com­plete List

Green Lantern #38
Trin­ity #39
Avengers: Ini­tia­tive #22
Mighty Avengers #22
Ms Mar­vel #36
New Avengers #50
Run­aways vol 3 #7
Thun­der­bolts #129
X-Force #12
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #210
Angel #18

Final Cri­sis #7 (of 7)

Well this was cer­tainly something.

If you didn’t read Super­man: Beyond before this final issue I would imag­ine that this would come across as a gar­bled mess.  Even after read­ing S:B, it still has a lot of rough edges.

It’s main strength is that it doesn’t play out as a typ­i­cal event line-wide comic (though it is hin­dered by mis­di­rected mar­ket­ing on DC’s behalf). There’s no great uni­ver­sal upheaval that affects every sin­gle char­ac­ter. This is Superman’s story and, to a lesser extent, Batman’s. But it is enjoy­able, and that’s the main point.

Like all ser­ial minis there’s a lot of ques­tions left unan­swered. I could write these down, but instead I’ll direct you to The Final Cri­sis FAQ project over at Comics Should Be Good. They seem to be doing a bet­ter job of it.

Legion of Super Heroes #50

Wow. I take back every­thing I said about Final Cri­sis’ empty ending.

I’m well aware that Jim Shooter had to hack at the main plot­lines he’d been build­ing for the past year, but this is just ridicu­lous. What should be a huge mon­u­men­tal bat­tle between good and evil is not much more than a skir­mish between seven Legionar­ies and a hand­ful of bad guys.

The dan­gling thread about the fate of Dream Girl, some­thing given all of three pan­els over the last four issues,  is given a res­o­lu­tion at the very end, but with most of the work seem­ingly han­dled off panel it just comes across as filler. Then there’s the big reveal last issue of Princess Pro­jec­tra being the final Big Bad. But that’s com­pletely dropped.

I’ve only read one issue of Geoff John’s Super­man and the Legion of Super­heroes and the two issues of Legion of Three Worlds, but they’ve been a lot more fun to read than the last year or so of this series. I guess that’s the major prob­lem I had with this title. Jim Shooter for­got to make it fun, and it suf­fered for that.

Long live the Legion!

Note: I’ve read that Jim Shooter didn’t even write this last issue. Can’t wait to here the story behind that.

New Avengers #49

I sat down to read this fully expect­ing that the “search for the baby” plot would be stretched out for at least six issues. That Bendis man­aged to resolve it in under 22 pages, with next-to-no decom­pres­sion, is noth­ing less than a small miracle.

If Bendis can keep that pace up for at least half a year then I’ll be a happy guy.

Com­plete List

Final Cri­sis #7 (of 7)
Legion of Super Heroes #50
Trin­ity #35
Avengers Ini­tia­tive #21
Ms Mar­vel #35
New Avengers #49
Run­aways 3 #6
X-Force #11
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #209 Dark Avengers Cvr

Booster Gold

This is the first issue writ­ten by Dan Jur­gens, cre­ator of Booster Gold and drawer of said char­ac­ter since issue one of this par­tic­u­lar ongo­ing. This issue is a  lot more light-hearted than the pre­vi­ous issues writ­ten by Rick Remender. While adven­ter­ous, his issues were com­pletely lack­ing in charm. But enough about ol’ Rick. How does Booster Gold stand up now?

Bet­ter. Much, much bet­ter. It’s not quite Geoff Johns level, but this Booster has just the right amount of self-indulgent goofi­ness and Skeets has the right amount of know-it-all side­kick­i­ness going for him.

I would’ve pre­ferred this to be a done-in-one issue, but it looks like we get another mul­ti­part story, spin­ning out of the sto­ry­line Remender fol­lowed. Is this Jur­gens’ way of ignor­ing Remender I wonder?

After a cute open­ing scene with Booster and Gold­star in 16th cen­tury Italy look­ing for food and fame, the story quickly becomes a search for Rip Hunter and their head­quar­ters that seems to have van­ished from the timestream. There’s a fun sib­ling fight then Skeets informs the two that all evi­dence points to time trav­el­ing knife, mis­placed dur­ing the Killer Moth mis­sion, being the cause and not Goldstar’s pos­ing for a por­trait with Leonardo da Vinci as Booster sug­gested. Booster meets up with future fel­low Jus­tice League Inter­na­tional team­ster Elon­gated Man, in a scene that would mean a lot more had I grown up read­ing JLI. Then Booster is flung through time to some­where next month’s solicit reveals to be World War 1.

This book sits fairly low on the month-by-month sales chart. Lower than Blue Bee­tle and Birds of Prey. I hope that doesn’t mean that this book is up for can­cel­la­tion. Though I wouldn’t be too sur­prised, given DC’s cancel-happy atti­tude these last few weeks.

Green Lantern Corps #31

Con­fes­sion time. Kryb scares the every lov­ing shit out of me. This is Kryb:

Seri­ously, it took all of my willpower just to post that picture.

Not only is she a super­pow­ered baby-stealing alien that runs on fear. Her “milk” also acts as a DNA-specific mind-controlling agent if it gets on your skin. Jesus H. Christ. The only way Kryb could be more creepy is if “she” was a “he”.

Despite the recent ick fac­tor Green Lantern Corps has been great to read. Expand­ing on the emo­tional spec­trum where the stand­alone GL book has become more tightly focused.

Yes, we know that the Love Lantern is going to defeat Kryb and break the hold over the other lanterns. Well at least I hope that’s what hap­pens. Before Kryb cuts the baby out of Amnee’s body, thanks. The third law of Oa, “no rela­tion­ships between Green Lanterns”, is only going to end in dis­as­ter. But if the Guardians actu­ally thought things through instead of just react­ing to every­thing then we wouldn’t have the Man­hunters or the Alpha Lanterns.

Yes, this book is creepy, but it’s creepy in a “look through your fin­gers” kind of way. And I love it for that.

Com­plete Pull List:

Booster Gold #15
Final Cri­sis #5 (of 7)
Green Lantern Corps #31
Jus­tice Soci­ety of Amer­ica HC Vol 03 Thy King­dom Come Part 2
Jus­tice League of Amer­ica #27
Secret Six #4
Trin­ity #28
Aston­ish­ing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #2 (of 2)
Secret Inva­sion Dark Reign
Wiz­ard Mag 2009 Platinum