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Tpull's Weekly DC Comics Review – Part Two
Action Comics Annual 12
by Greg Rucka and Pere Perez
This annual is part of the ongoing story, and it has a Superman crest on the cover, but no number associated with it. Supergirl 42, for example, has the number 30 over the S this month. So they want you to know it’s associated with the current storyline, but there’s no set place in the chronology that you have to read it. When you go back to re-read your books, you can read it first or last, it makes no difference.
Pere Perez is a fun name, and a good artist! For a change, the writing is clunky. The narration panels are not gripping, and it feels almost like a history textbook. This I supposed to be the origin of Nightwing and Flamebird. They cop out when trying to explain Chris’ sudden age growth, basically saying “it just happened.” Well, if the writer doesn’t know, then what hope is there for the reader. It’s cheap, and we deserve better. The other big development is also questionable, as Flamebird is having a vision right when Chris puts on a piece of technology related to Brainiac. In yet another incident that is not explained, this tech allows an instant mind-meld with Thara. For $4.99, this was not good enough for me.
Batman: Streets of Gotham 1
by Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen
The Dini/Nguyen team starts off another monthly Bat-book, but I have to question whether there is sufficient demand for one. I think a better experiment might have been to try one Bat-book three times a week; that formula has been successful for Spider-Man at Marvel, and it might be worth trying with Batman.
The very first page has a nonsense-conversation. A police officer asks Gordon about the city and says, “The players are saying the Bat seems… different now. Some say he’s gone for good.” If the people who have seen Batman say he’s “different” now, then how can he be gone for good? As readers, we know the Bat is different now because it’s a different person in the suit. We also know that most of the heroes think the original Batman is gone for good. But the police officer couldn’t know this, and putting those two things next to each other, while it can be clear to a long-time reader, makes no sense as part of an actual conversation.
Dini walks us through a meandering story that shows us Harley Quinn in civilian clothes, followed by a teen prostitute situation, then finally to a plot by Firefly. The grammar is messed up all the way through, with the narration putting the period both before and after the end quotation mark in a number of places. For the editor’s information (and the writer’s, and the letterer’s, and everyone else who can’t be bothered to put out a quality book anymore), the period goes inside the quotes, like “this.” Just like you did it right for the phrase “into the fire” earlier. Why did you then act European and mess it up on the “kindling” part later? And a second and third time in the second feature, where Kate talks about being a red shirt on Star Trek, and later for the “good cop” phrase? The period is in the wrong place in both of those sentences, too. It’s not even the same letterer! Granted, it’s a nitpick, but my point is that a dozen people are supposed to be looking at this before it goes final, and there’s only 22 pages! I can find the same mistakes or fewer in an entire daily newspaper sometimes. There’s no excuse when you have that many people looking over such a small number of pages.
It’s not all bad. Nguyen’s style, while not my personal favorite, has very good elements to it, and I can definitely appreciate his consistent good output. For the writing, Damian is portrayed “correctly” here, with his blunt and partially-oblivious comments reflecting his somewhat strange upbringing. It’s just good enough to make me want to come back for another issue.
Manhunter is the star of the “second feature,” which Didio keeps trying to call a co-feature, but you can’t have a co-feature unless each character has the same number of pages. “Second feature” works best if you’re trying to avoid the term “backup.” The story itself is about as good as the main feature, though, with Marc Andreyko getting another shot at writing his character, and Georges Jeanty doing a serviceable job on pencils, even if the proportions of some body parts are a little “off” in a few places.
Kate is setting up shop in Gotham as the new district attorney. She’s a big fan of James Gordon, Oracle seems to be warming up to her, and she’s a little more aggressive as D.A. than most I’ve come across in real life. It’s a good character distinction from many other heroes, but we know she’s a little more ambiguous when it comes to that, leaning more to the Punisher side of the house.
Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance 2
by Joe Casey, Andre Coelho, and Eduardo Pansica
Las Vegas is recast as “Las Vulgar” for some unknown reason, but it’s where the team sets up shop. The Twitter-equivalent comments are wearing thin on me, because half of them are not necessary. Perhaps that’s a reflection on the nature of Twitter itself, or the personality of the character, but I’d rather be reading something else. The art has anime influences, which may be intentional for these Asian heroes, but the team is obsessed with being famous and cultivating their “own” arch-nemesis and so on. Their conduct is one-note and irritating.
Rising Sun actually drinks alcohol in front of the Japanese military. They weren’t going to let him into Tokyo in the first place, but boozing publicly does not help your cause, and unless times have changed more than I know, being drunk in public is still socially shameful in Japanese society. The battle scenes are lackluster, and the entire concept of quarantining Japan without the rest of the world noticing is still a concept that I can’t buy into.
Cancelled from my list. Recommend you avoid this. The entire Final Crisis Aftermath mini-series seem to be poorly-planned epilogues that fail to incite interest in any of the characters. It’s worse than World War II, but maybe not as bad as Countdown, at least. It's an insult to the tradition of the Crisis name.
Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.
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Posted by Travis on June 19, 2009 4:54 PM
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I'm in agreement with you on the Action Comics annual. While I was glad to see the narrative threads closed (how did Thara meet Chris), the answers weren't particularly convincing. I've tended to think of the Superman books as pseudo-science fiction, and so things like mystical Kryptonian mythology sometimes rings a little off-base as a narrative device. I didn't like the insta-aging in Flash after Infinite Crisis, and I don't care for it here, either.
I agree with the textbook/ history lesson feel to the narration. Part of me wondered if in creating the "bible" that tends to get set with ongoing narratives, DC didn't just ask Rucka to reprint portions as part of the narrative (ex: the out of nowhere explanation for Kryptonian naming conventions. Which, btw, made little sense to this reader. I got tuck on that panel for about five minutes trying to figure out how that applied to characters like Ursa).
It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been as an issue, but it felt underwritten. I'd have liked more development of the points you address.
-- Posted by: Ryan at June 20, 2009 12:21 PM