New 52 First Arc Review Discussion

Know what? Let's just review / discuss the first arc of each of the books I've kept up with. They're all meant to be read in six issue chunks. Which are being released as a trade paperback soon.

-Green Lantern-

Green Lantern did than better than most of these new series by offering a real cliff-hanger in the middle of the first arc. Unfortunately the arc has done little but have both major characters get their person lives squared away. It makes the book feel like clean-up. Just giving Sinestro and Hal Jordan a little something to lose for the next arc, but it isn’t thrilling or satisfying to see Hal “get the girl” or Sinestro accept responsibility for all he’s done to his race. I can get pretty cozy with just some exploration of the Green Lantern mythos though. I’m with Sinestro in never having trusted the Guardians or their dogma, doesn’t matter how big their book is. Those tidbits have sustained me but a Hal centric story will push me right out. Hal’s just this self-centered little nothing wreck of a man wanting to feel special. Sinestro will actually take this story in interesting directions by figuring out all the secrets the Guardians have kept. Hal dragging down half the book makes it tough to keep reading…

-RedHood-

What A Fucking Mess. The Red Hood that got me into this series has all but disappeared. Let me just blow through major plot points and scenes from issues 2-5 to showcase how absurd it has gotten. So, ancient shapeshifting beings of pure evil live among humanity, blending into the day-today, not causing a fuss unless an ancient, but not quite as ancient, monk collective shows up for a throw down. Cue Red Hood (the last of the monks). Meanwhile, Random Fucking Guy transform himself into a green goblin (not capital Gs) using alien technology that he hates to fight aliens because he hates them (they killed his mom and dad or something). Goes through his whole life story without prompt. Deeply lonely. Beaten by Arsenal so you know he’s garbage. Flashback! Starfire isn’t just a set of giant, orange, boobs. She knows bullshit pop culture psychology AND philosophy. Tells Red Hood to forget all that history that makes him a character and be something new for this series. Because she can only smell people anyways. 

The art is brilliant at least. Colorful with this comic book / realistic sketchy quality. Everything is crisp and vibrant. Detail without being a mess at first blush. Even if you’re not the type to really take in a scene, it will drag your eye over every inch of it. I mean it. Every inch. Red Hood’s coat? Incredible (check out that cover right there). Never mind the action poses or the characters themselves.

-JusticeLeague-

The quality has plummeted since issue TWO. All effort to organically and logically being the League together has been jettisoned in the fall. Cyborg, the unknown kid with alien tech strapped over his body, just appears and joins up. Never mind that what the League is fighting are aliens with tech strapped over their body. I think Superman asks him if he’s “cool”, to which Victor (Cyborg) says he has no idea what’s going on or who he is, and apparently that’s good enough. Wonder Woman is trying so hard to be tough but the abysmal writing can’t convince anybody. She’s also playing the comically ignorant “alien on Earth” and those efforts just make you want to gag. By the time Aquaman pops out of nowhere, it’s clear anybody can just show up and be on the team, plus get the next cover. He quips that the aliens are under water too and falls right into line. Sum total motivation and exchange with the League over in one panel. Very efficient.

The biggest problem is the League is one shared personality with seven mouths. And the only thing this beast can do is verbalize the action. “Superman just used that truck like a baseball bat!”. I hate when anybody speaks. It’s tedious, boring, and insulting.

Darksied is another set of problems. 1) His name is dumb. 2) His signature, and perhaps only, attack is dumb. 3) He looks dumb. 4) His plan to conqueror Earth to feed his ego is dumb. The guy is from decades ago and doesn’t need to be revisited in this form. Crazy aliens attack the Earth with lasers! We all, children to adults, know every step and feint of this story. On top of the handling here being so clumsy. After SIX I’m done and not looking back. Jim Lee couldn’t save this and that’s saying something. 


Images Copywrite DC Dcomics

New 52 Batch 2 - Comics Review

GREENLANTERN #1

Half of this book tells a story I like, the other is some outdated nonsense. Green Lantern opens with Sinestro accepting a green ring(!). I don’t know half of Sinestro’s full story but I know he used to be a badguy and disagreed with everything the Guardians did. Maybe I’m just a sucker for any “big changes”, Sinestro did very little this issue, but I’m digging the feel here. . A pissed-off, very powerful, calculating, mean s-o-b who is given power by a group he detests to protect a place he enslaved the last time around. The guy is going to do whatever he wants and I’m on board with that. There’s load of conflict here that I want to see play out. Sinestro is my ideal Lantern because he will actual change the universe to get what he wants. Not just run around putting out fires with a cute green hose. He’s serious. Though I guess he could play it straight, but with such a loaded conflict, why waste that? This is exciting.

Then Hal Jordan comes along. The way he’s written here, he belongs with Brenda Starr in the Sunday comics. . Every other word is bold and italics. Very irritating and dated. Some boring, dopey, soap opera horseshit going on. . He’s whining about the difficulty adjusting to life on Earth after having saved the whole universe and nobody understands him. … “Did you not just see Sinestro doing work a few pages ago?” I’d be fine with Jordan dying and the book being solely about Sinestro. Jordan is too boring for me to care about. What he does I’ve seen better and before. Teen Hal can’t get a car or pay his rent, and bounces around, hitting all the loser lowpoints. Why should I sympathize with such a dope? I thought he was supposed to be fearless? Only while flying a plane apparently.

 The art doesn’t do him any favors either, the panel where he’s lying on some charming smile is downright grotesque. It alternates from passable, generic comic book fair, to bad.

The strength of Sinestro as a character might have been enough to keep me going on this book, but with a focus on Jordan, and better books calling to me, I doubt I’ll check this out again.

REDHOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #1

I went back and forth throughout this whole issue. The opening action scene isn’t thrilling conceptually (a prison break. Are there any mercenaries in DC that can stand up to a hero?), but there are some details, such as Red Hood’s disguise, that made me smile. And to be fully up front, I love the Jason Todd / Red Hood character. What he did in Under The Red Hood (both comic and movie) and Battle For The Cowl made me a very big fan. He takes a situation that’s going a bit stale and blasts life into it. The debates he had with Batman won me over completely. He’s hilarious in his taunts, clever in those and planning both, and caps it off with an overall aesthetic I love seeing in every panel. Red Hood isn’t good or bad, he’s coming at this playing field from a new angle altogether. That’s exciting. Though I’m sorry to see him leave Gotham. Especially for no discernible reason. Besides “get Arsenal”, this issue did very little.

Arsenal isn’t anything like Jason Todd. I don’t know anything about him except for what this issue set-up. He wasn’t anything special. A regular dude who used a bow. Jason Todd called him an idiot. I’ll believe Jason.

Starfire / Kori has gotten a lot of attention from seemingly everybody (comic readers and not). I wasn’t sure how to read her. She starts off really into Jason, almost like a school-girl, then switches to the cold “nobody controls me” by the next scene. I like that she’s an alien. Aliens trying to fit into Earth society usually raise interesting questions as what’s taken for granted isn’t by them. They can expose taboos or play with human society in fun or insightful ways. I’m not sure if that’s what she’s doing here. Comics haven’t historically been kind to women, at all, so I’m not sure if Starfire is exploring the concept of sex or just being a cheap fan service tool. She certainly has the backstory to become compelling. Princess betrayed by her sister, sold as slave to prevent war. But here she just throws her body around for a splash page or sex.

The set-up for next issue nailed cliché hard. A group of, thought to be, unbeatable monks who live in a hidden mountain monetary are mysteriously killed. Why does the Red Hood care at all about them? Why does he care about Arsenal or Starfire? Why are they together? How did Jason get over Gotham? These aren’t questions the book raises to make me interested in further reading to find out, these I see as fundamental problems of the narrative. If I do look into issue 2, it’ll be a statement to how much I love Jason Todd, not having much to do with the quality of this first issue.

LEGION LOST #1

Every single aspect of this was a gross travesty. Art - Terrible. Characters, none of whom I know anything about, told me nothing in the entire issue. Powers were barely shown and presented nothing of note. The dialogue was by far the worst part. It was the most laughable excuse of exposition. All of it was interchangeable between the characters. The same dated misuse of bold and italics prevalent here as well. The villain is a joke who rails against THE WORLD, and vows to make EVERYONE PAY. Mid-way through I wanted to close it.

I bought this without checking into it at all because I thought Fabien Nicieza was King Shit. The work he did on Cable& Deadpool was profound. I’m not just talking an issue or two. The whole run was brilliant. I’d hold it up as beautiful story-telling comparable to any in any other form. I thought to run a series as well as that means the guy knows his business and can be counted on. Won’t make that mistake again.

SUICIDE SQUAD #1

I come from reading and liking Warren Ellis’s work on Thunderbolts, so I’ll call this the standard set-up for a villain-pressed-into-squad type of book. Tiny, unremovable bombs, placed on the team to ensure cooperation. Given the sure-to-be-persuasive-choice of rot for all time in jail or work for people you hate doing what you’re good at. I’m not sure there aren’t a few holes there that couldn’t be patched with some more thought dedicated to inventing a better situation. Workable though.

The book opens to all the members being tortured, with the presumption that they slipped up on their first assignment. Pretty inventive opening, and it turns into a solid creative choice to showcase the characters. At first I was a bit worried for the team as Deadshot (my boy) didn’t seem to be handling things so well. As we take a turn around the circle though, we see that torturing psychotics plays to their strength. These people get the shit kicked out of them regularly. So it’s a lot of fun seeing them take control of the situation. It’s showing me the writer isn’t going to treat this like a hero team-up book. The characters involved are fundamentally different here. That’s going to allow for what makes a book of this type to truly capitalize on the concept; the possibility for anything to happen.

I don’t understand the set-up for next issue. It struck me as over-the-top for the sake of being over-the-top. I’m not anxious to see where this goes but this issue was good, so if I can get more of that, have something develop, I’ll be happy with that.

THE DARK KNIGHT #1

Tough break for this book to feature yet another break-out from Arkham along with another issue-long speech from Bruce Wayne. At this point I just wanted to know how this book was different from the others. It’s better than Detective Comics and worse than Batman is really the only answer I got. The dialogue is instantly forgettable with the exception of the rallying speech Batman delivers to some cops who are about to storm Arkham, but were told not to (for some reason… There’s a lot of cops there though...), but decided to do it anyway… Yeah, it’s trying to nail “tough guys who make the tough calls” without paying attention to reason. Anyway, Batman doesn’t rally anybody. This was wildly out of character. He doesn’t stand on top of a cop car, remind them all about families then charge in.  Plus, like I said, all these guys were about to kick down the front door anyway. It was all needless posturing.

Action didn’t do a single thing unique with Batman. He kicked a guy and head-butted another.  The End.

The ending left me exasperated. This route again? Also, villains calling out their name as some 

introduction doesn’t belong in a modern comic. Good news is there is only one good Batman comic to keep up with, and, how easy, it’s called Batman. 

DECTECTIVE COMICS #1

This issue was offensively bad. We’re given some really shitty old-school dialogue (“And Gotham is a hell hole, always has been, always will be” “Like hell it will”). Coupled with action that doesn’t need to occur and is just going through the motions for all involved. Nothing new and not done well. I’ll give credit to the team for an inviting ending hook but I don’t trust them to do anything with it.

All images Copyright DC Comics