Tpull's Weekly DC Comics Review – Part 1

March 14, 2010 7:48 PM | Comments:

Action Comics 887

by Greg Rucka, Eric Trautmann, and Pere Pèrez

There is a slight shift in the way the story is told as we focus on Lois Lane, who manages to trail after Flamebird and Nightwing on their adventure. It looks like she burns a lot of bridges, using up powerful contashadcts to make travel arrangements into the dangerous situations, but it also makes good use of the interlinkages (is too a word!) of the DC universe. Instead of the prose from last issue, Lois Lane’s journal article serves as a good narration piece, although it does make a mess of things at one point: the conversation of the characters on the page and her article start to read almost verbatim, which is a redundancy you have no room for in a comic.

Vohc has revealed himself, tampering with both his attempted creation of a new Rao, and the booby-traps he left inside Nightwing. Vohc is able to use a device powered by Flamebird’s energy to thrust Nightwing into the Phantom Zone again. Lois proves instrumental at the end, getting ready to call in the cavalry, as Flamebird is somewhat despondent at the loss of Chris. Pèrez does well on art, giving us a solid Lois, as well as an overpowering and energetic Rao construct. The design of Vohc is very good, and you can almost feel his rage.

The second feature rambles on, but at least Cafu gets the chance to draw some dinosaurs, which is always fun. It’s also virtually meaningless to the greater story, but they name-drop Warlord (even though Travis Morgan just got killed in his own title), and Captain Atom flies through Skartaris to get to the Sorceror’s World, to try to make up for what he did when under Mirabai’s control. Perhaps James Robinson will use this feature to have Cap Atom take Mirabai out of play, but in a very clumsy, long-winded, and boring manner. I can’t wait for them to start a second feature with a different character. Can you imagine if they used this space to give us some backup stories for Lois, Jimmy, Perry and others?

Batman and Robin 8

by Grant Morrison and Andy Clarke

Andy Clarke takes over the artwork and does a fairly good job. It can be tricky at the moment to find a way to portray him in the suit as Dick Grayson instead of Bruce Wayne. The boards are aflutter trying to figure out the identity of Oberon Sexton, but I can’t quite work up any interest. The main point of interest is that everybody has finally figured out Bruce is alive, and this has Alfred noticing some possible meaning in the arrangements of Wayne Manor that he hasn’t thought of before. Following the “messages” embedded in pictures of the Wayne family line, they turn the manor upside-down and find a secret passage. The way they do it is a little tough to swallow, because what if Alfred had moved one of the portraits over the years? Just one piece out of place would have ruined everything. The clues are by no means obvious, although they immediately assume that Darkseid’s omega rays threw Bruce back in time. That saves them a lot of time, and they assume Bruce was able to arrange all of these clues through the past somehow.

All of a sudden, some hidden trigger goes off inside Damian’s head, planted there by his mother Talia. The prospect of not being Robin anymore if Bruce Wayne comes back seems to have played a role, but the trigger is not immediately obvious, making for an awkward element of the story.

It’s not for certain if Grayson even realizes that Damian was about to slice his head off. He steps on a hole in the ground and gets swallowed up, nonchalantly falling into another secret cave. We’re back to the sparse weaving that leaves too many gaps in between the pages, turning this into yet another adventure where you’ll have to do some homework and wade through a dozen pages of annotations to figure out every facet of the intent of the imagery. I think I’m ready for some more colorful villains and less abstract, less obtuse stories. Just bring Bruce Wayne back already.

Red Robin 10

by Chris Yost and Marcus To

In a crossover from the Batgirl title, Tim and Stephanie have apparently beaten up a ton of assassins while the two of them were still in their civilian clothes. This is during a big social function too, but we don’t have to worry about their secret identities one bit, do we? Up on the rooftop later, they are back in costume, but found immediately by Penance, who gives the exposition for the entire lot by al Ghul to kill Tim. Then she pulls a gun on Stephanie. To’s art is cool, but Tim freezes uncharacteristically, and we spend an entire page having to wade through his angst. Meanwhile, Prudence is taking her own sweet time in doing something as simple as pulling a trigger, and doesn’t bother fighting back when Stephanie starts kicking her butt. Which should have told both of the heroes something, but Yost needs them to be stupid, so stupid they remain.

Prudence has to have gone the extra step to have made sure she didn’t load her gun, and claims to be helping. Why Yost thinks this made for a good scene, I will never know. Pointing a gun at anyone does not accomplish much if you’re there to help, and to have both Tim and Steph be that slow on the uptake when she obviously wasn’t going to shoot is just mind-numbing. It’s like Yost has devolved Tim into a 15-year-old, instead of the genius detective he is supposed to be.

Vicky Vale shows up looking for Tim Drake, after smelling a mystery, leaving Alfred in an awkward position, before we fade back to al Ghul, who has a dozen ninjas that have knocked out Katanna. See, in this plot, Elliot is still masquerading as Bruce Wayne, and attended by a super-hero at all times. It ignores that Katanna is now in Markovia with the rest of the Outsiders, but if Yost is going to give us lousy stuff in the beginning of the comic, I’ve given up hope it will suddenly keep continuity halfway through it. What’s worse is that al Ghul claims Katanna put up “quite a fight.” Yet no one is bleeding, and there are no bad guys on the floor. They all look just fine, which mean Katanna didn’t even cut a single foe. Epic fail.

We make it worse by including a massive explosion, destroying his secret hide-out, but killing nobody. Not that this cliché isn’t bad enough and been overdone 20 times in the last year, but the rest of al Ghul’s assassins are all neatly standing there waiting for him, ready to fight. Isn’t it great that Tim’s booby-trap, which took him to safety, landed him right in front of every assassin assigned to kill him? What are the odds?!? Only in a (very bad) comic book.

Secret Six 19

by Gail Simone and J. Calafiore

Shades of X-Force! All of the bad guys are dressed up in black versions of their outfits, but with glowing red parts. Gee, that’s never been done before! Rag Doll provides the only redeeming quality to the book, by being his normal, unnaturally creepy self. The bad guys are hird to raid a Brother Blood cult and retrieve a child for a rich guy. Rag Doll saves Black Alice, and hugs him, and everyone jumps to the worst possible conclusion, which is perverted considering Alice’s age, but it does make for funny moments.

We turn lame again real soon, as eight heavily-armed assailants try to kill Chesire, but she opens the glass door for them, lets them in, and bites off a guy’s lip, poisoning him. The other seven guys stand there and watch it happen, then Chesire uses his body as a human shield, grabs his weapon, and kills at least three of them before leaping away and dodging all of their return fire. It’s always lame when you see them try to present professionals, but they just get mowed over like unmoving bumps.

Wait, it gets worse. After Chesire kills all of them, three rip-offs of Spider-Mans old foes, the Enforcers, show up and knock her out with a couple punches. Why would you send in a tac squad in the first place if these three could do that? Talk about wasting resources! Back in the main story, the team goes to deliver the news that the cult members are all dead. The old rich guy feels the need to make the old joke about offering a woman tons of money to sleep with him. The punch-line doesn’t get said, since Bane chooses that moment to become offended about Scandal’s “virtue.” The idea that these guys are offended by anything at this point is ridiculous in and of itself. They’re hired killers, and they’ve all tried to kill each other often enough in the past, what big deal is it for some stranger to solicit one of them? The reason each one chooses to get upset is so totally random, it ruins any enjoyment you can get out of the comic.

Catman gets a call by the Enforcer rip-offs, who tell him they have his son, and he needs to start killing his teammates to save the son’s life. By the way, there are still seven people here in the book titles “secret Six.” Just sayin’.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

Action Comics 887 \n\n by Greg Rucka, Eric Trautmann, and Pere Pèrez \n\nThere is a slight shift in the way the story is told as we focus on Lois Lane, who manages to trail after Flamebird and Nightwing on their adventure. It looks like she burns a lot of bridges, using up powerful contashadcts to make travel arrangements into the dangerous situations, but it also makes good use of the interlinkages (is too a word!) of the DC universe. Instead of the prose from last issue, Lois Lane’s journal article serves as a good narration piece, although it does make a mess of things at one point: the conversation of the characters on the page and her article start to read almost verbatim, which is a redundancy you have no room for in a comic.\n\nVohc has revealed himself, tampering with both his attempted creation of a new Rao, and the booby-traps he left inside Nightwing. Vohc is able to use a device powered by Flamebird’s energy to thrust Nightwing into the Phantom Zone again. Lois proves instrumental at the end, getting ready to call in the cavalry, as Flamebird is somewhat despondent at the loss of Chris. Pèrez does well on art, giving us a solid Lois, as well as an overpowering and energetic Rao construct. The design of Vohc is very good, and you can almost feel his rage.\n\nThe second feature rambles on, but at least Cafu gets the chance to draw some dinosaurs, which is always fun. It’s also virtually meaningless to the greater story, but they name-drop Warlord (even though Travis Morgan just got killed in his own title), and Captain Atom flies through Skartaris to get to the Sorceror’s World, to try to make up for what he did when under Mirabai’s control. Perhaps James Robinson will use this feature to have Cap Atom take Mirabai out of play, but in a very clumsy, long-winded, and boring manner. I can’t wait for them to start a second feature with a different character. Can you imagine if they used this space to give us some backup stories for Lois, Jimmy, Perry and others?\n\n\n Batman and Robin 8 \n\n by Grant Morrison and Andy Clarke \n\nAndy Clarke takes over the artwork and does a fairly good job. It can be tricky at the moment to find a way to portray him in the suit as Dick Grayson instead of Bruce Wayne. The boards are aflutter trying to figure out the identity of Oberon Sexton, but I can’t quite work up any interest. The main point of interest is that everybody has finally figured out Bruce is alive, and this has Alfred noticing some possible meaning in the arrangements of Wayne Manor that he hasn’t thought of before. Following the “messages” embedded in pictures of the Wayne family line, they turn the manor upside-down and find a secret passage. The way they do it is a little tough to swallow, because what if Alfred had moved one of the portraits over the years? Just one piece out of place would have ruined everything. The clues are by no means obvious, although they immediately assume that Darkseid’s omega rays threw Bruce back in time. That saves them a lot of time, and they assume Bruce was able to arrange all of these clues through the past somehow.\n\nAll of a sudden, some hidden trigger goes off inside Damian’s head, planted there by his mother Talia. The prospect of not being Robin anymore if Bruce Wayne comes back seems to have played a role, but the trigger is not immediately obvious, making for an awkward element of the story.\n\nIt’s not for certain if Grayson even realizes that Damian was about to slice his head off. He steps on a hole in the ground and gets swallowed up, nonchalantly falling into another secret cave. We’re back to the sparse weaving that leaves too many gaps in between the pages, turning this into yet another adventure where you’ll have to do some homework and wade through a dozen pages of annotations to figure out every facet of the intent of the imagery. I think I’m ready for some more colorful villains and less abstract, less obtuse stories. Just bring Bruce Wayne back already.\n\n\n Red Robin 10 \n\n by Chris Yost and Marcus To \n\nIn a crossover from the Batgirl title, Tim and Stephanie have apparently beaten up a ton of assassins while the two of them were still in their civilian clothes. This is during a big social function too, but we don’t have to worry about their secret identities one bit, do we? Up on the rooftop later, they are back in costume, but found immediately by Penance, who gives the exposition for the entire lot by al Ghul to kill Tim. Then she pulls a gun on Stephanie. To’s art is cool, but Tim freezes uncharacteristically, and we spend an entire page having to wade through his angst. Meanwhile, Prudence is taking her own sweet time in doing something as simple as pulling a trigger, and doesn’t bother fighting back when Stephanie starts kicking her butt. Which should have told both of the heroes something, but Yost needs them to be stupid, so stupid they remain.\n\nPrudence has to have gone the extra step to have made sure she didn’t load her gun, and claims to be helping. Why Yost thinks this made for a good scene, I will never know. Pointing a gun at anyone does not accomplish much if you’re there to help, and to have both Tim and Steph be that slow on the uptake when she obviously wasn’t going to shoot is just mind-numbing. It’s like Yost has devolved Tim into a 15-year-old, instead of the genius detective he is supposed to be.\n\nVicky Vale shows up looking for Tim Drake, after smelling a mystery, leaving Alfred in an awkward position, before we fade back to al Ghul, who has a dozen ninjas that have knocked out Katanna. See, in this plot, Elliot is still masquerading as Bruce Wayne, and attended by a super-hero at all times. It ignores that Katanna is now in Markovia with the rest of the Outsiders, but if Yost is going to give us lousy stuff in the beginning of the comic, I’ve given up hope it will suddenly keep continuity halfway through it. What’s worse is that al Ghul claims Katanna put up “quite a fight.” Yet no one is bleeding, and there are no bad guys on the floor. They all look just fine, which mean Katanna didn’t even cut a single foe. Epic fail.\n\nWe make it worse by including a massive explosion, destroying his secret hide-out, but killing nobody. Not that this cliché isn’t bad enough and been overdone 20 times in the last year, but the rest of al Ghul’s assassins are all neatly standing there waiting for him, ready to fight. Isn’t it great that Tim’s booby-trap, which took him to safety, landed him right in front of every assassin assigned to kill him? What are the odds?!? Only in a (very bad) comic book.\n\n\n Secret Six 19 \n\n by Gail Simone and J. Calafiore \n\nShades of X-Force! All of the bad guys are dressed up in black versions of their outfits, but with glowing red parts. Gee, that’s never been done before! Rag Doll provides the only redeeming quality to the book, by being his normal, unnaturally creepy self. The bad guys are hird to raid a Brother Blood cult and retrieve a child for a rich guy. Rag Doll saves Black Alice, and hugs him, and everyone jumps to the worst possible conclusion, which is perverted considering Alice’s age, but it does make for funny moments.\n\nWe turn lame again real soon, as eight heavily-armed assailants try to kill Chesire, but she opens the glass door for them, lets them in, and bites off a guy’s lip, poisoning him. The other seven guys stand there and watch it happen, then Chesire uses his body as a human shield, grabs his weapon, and kills at least three of them before leaping away and dodging all of their return fire. It’s always lame when you see them try to present professionals, but they just get mowed over like unmoving bumps.\n\nWait, it gets worse. After Chesire kills all of them, three rip-offs of Spider-Mans old foes, the Enforcers, show up and knock her out with a couple punches. Why would you send in a tac squad in the first place if these three could do that? Talk about wasting resources! Back in the main story, the team goes to deliver the news that the cult members are all dead. The old rich guy feels the need to make the old joke about offering a woman tons of money to sleep with him. The punch-line doesn’t get said, since Bane chooses that moment to become offended about Scandal’s “virtue.” The idea that these guys are offended by anything at this point is ridiculous in and of itself. They’re hired killers, and they’ve all tried to kill each other often enough in the past, what big deal is it for some stranger to solicit one of them? The reason each one chooses to get upset is so totally random, it ruins any enjoyment you can get out of the comic.\n\nCatman gets a call by the Enforcer rip-offs, who tell him they have his son, and he needs to start killing his teammates to save the son’s life. By the way, there are still seven people here in the book titles “secret Six.” Just sayin’.\n\n Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

Tpull's Weekly DC Comics Review – Part 1

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