DC Comics has relaunched its superhero universe with 52 new #1 issues and the PW Comics World staff plans to review them all. We’re back with 13 reviews of DC’s week 2 releases. Here's a link to Week 1 reviews, Week 3 and Week 4.
Batman and Robin by Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray
A man is so obsessed with the violent death of his parents at the hands of a street criminal that he reacts by turning himself into an emotionally stunted, costumed crime fighter -- and then turns around and trains his 10-year-old son to go out and fight crime with him, endangering the life of the only family he’s got left. Yeah, this is one seriously messed up book. Tomasi and Gleason pick up where Grant Morrison and various collaborators left off on the previous version of this book, and do a sound job channeling Morrison’s creepy take. Here Batman is determined to ditch some of his gloomiest baggage, vowing to celebrate his parent’s wedding anniversary instead of their death date. Damian, Batman’s young son (acquired by methods not mentioned in this first issue), has taken over the Robin/sidekick role, with a love of bloodshed and criminal-thumping that’s quite alarming. Most of the book is made up of uneasy father-son banter as they attempt to thwart a plot to blow up some uranium rods at the local college (which happens to have a research reactor sitting around.) An unknown villain with a scary/bondage-themed mask is lurking around on the last page, presaging more mayhem. Gleason’s art sticks to the Frank Quitely mold, but pulls off some powerful effects and sharp characterization, especially of Damian. Not much of a rethinking, this is a direct continuation of Morrison’s Batman work -- and why not -- it was pretty good stuff. - HM
Batwoman by J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman
Batwoman, who has no connection with Batman yet, aside from swiping his symbol, enters her own book on page 4 in a window-smashing flare of black and crimson, and the story's pretty much non-stop from there. It's not exactly a subtle book. Kate Kane is Batwoman, Kate Kane is a lesbian - see her asking out Detective Sawyer, Batwoman has issues with her daddy - see her fight with him about lying about her sister's death. There, now you're up to speed. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Artist and co-writer J.H. Williams' art is as gorgeous, stylized and unique as it was on Batwoman: Elegy, with the best layouts this side of Charles Vess, and Batwoman herself is a vivid, undeniable force of nature: strong, determined and totally adult, if not particularly experienced. While a starting place for a new reader, the book picks up where Batwoman: Elegy left off, virtually unchanged by the reboot. In fact, it's only used once, and then as a convenient bit of retroactive continuity - Bette, Kate's young cousin and new sidekick in training, is suddenly a former member of the Teen Titans. The actual plot itself is a bit slow so far, a spirit is stealing children and Batwoman has impulsively promised that she'll bring them back to their families, but that's Batwoman for you. It's really just all about style and character, which this book somehow makes work. - KF
Death Stroke by Kyle Higgins, Joe Bennett and Art Thibert.
All purpose hero/anti-hero Death Stroke, a super powerful mercenary/assassin figure that that has gone through multiple incarnations and identities in the DC Universe, returns as an aging but deadly veteran super-killer forced to team up with a group of young hipsterish operatives on a new mission. DS gets an assignment—“assassination and recovery with a twist” says his “agent” Christoph—to intercept a German scientist arms dealer delivering nuclear secrets to Iran by private plane. Forced to accompany the Alpha Dawgs, his callow but skilled kill-squad support team, Death Stroke basically ignores them before ultimately boarding the arms dealer’s plane while in flight and methodically carrying out the mission. Back aboard the support plane with the Alpha Dawgs, Death Stroke shows just why he’s called, well, Death Stroke. Framed in this new version as a super powerful special ops commando-for-hire, Death Stroke is professional and utterly merciless. The artwork is serviceable and—if you like that sort of thing—Death Stroke is rendered portentously dour, bleak and self-contained; he’s large, grim and granite-like, as if hacked from a block of wood. While this mission-story doesn’t last long and the heavily armed masked-guy with a handgun and an outlandish medieval sword is not generally this reviewer’s cup of tea, the starkly unsentimental and cold-blooded ending of the story does make the character attractive—if you like that sort of thing. - CR
Demon Knights by Paul Cornell & Diogenes Neves
The DC Universe has an awful lot of immortal characters who were running around medieval Britain. In Demon Knights, Paul Cornell asks the obvious question -- what if they knew each other and had adventures? Sorceress Madame Xanadu, Jason Blood and his demon Etrigan and a host of eccentric characters are in the same tavern in the same small town in the dark ages, when it's attacked by the horde of The Questing Queen and her baby-murdering, demon-summoning beloved Mordru. The assorted champions start to fight off the attack together, and undoubtedly will form something of a proto-superteam. The characterization is a bit sketched in, leaning heavily on Diogenes Neves' expressive art to lend force and substance: Vandal Savage is immortal and savage, Madame Xanadu has a thing going with both Blood and Etrigan, Al Jabr is a lively, humorous fellow who's treated like a dirty foreigner, Exoristos is a hot-tempered Amazon and Sir Ystin is considered something of a Celtic weirdo. The first six pages are taken up with Xanadu and Jason Blood's fall-of-Camelot origin stories, so the rest of the issue is a bit more rushed than it might otherwise be. Still, Cornell does an admirable job of setting up a rip-roaring sword and sorcery epic with his typical verve and enthusiasm, and Neves has a lively style that works with it perfectly. A genuine taste of variety in the back to basics New 52, and a book to look out for. - KF
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. by Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli
Another woman with four arms! (see Resurrection Man, below.) But this time she’s married to the hero! S.H.A.D.E. stands for Super Human Advanced Defense Executive -- a supernatural crime fighting cadre of misfits and supernatural beings who go by the name of the Creature Commandos. The crew is led by Frankenstein, whose philosophical attitude is belied by his hulking exterior. If all this reminds you just a tad of B.P.R.D., the similarly themed and titled spin-off of the Hellboy universe, well...it probably should. Lemire’s take is a lively one, however, full of goofy ideas. S.H.A.D.E. is headquartered on a 3-in wide sphere; people enter and depart via shrink ray, administered by Dr. Ray Palmer, who is also known as the DC superhero The Atom. Father Time, the scientist team leader, has changed his exterior to that of a spunky little girl, as he likes to randomly regenerate every 10 years. (Is he a Time Lord, too?) In this initial outing, the team is called on to investigate a small town invaded by demons— Frankenstein’s four-armed wife went to investigate, but now she might be dead. Ponticelli’s art is a little light on the characterization, but it’s agreeably loose and sketchy, and he’s aided by excellent coloring. This first issue does what it is supposed to do -- yet another “getting the team together to fight monsters” story, but the execution is quite a bit different from some of the other books. - HM
Green Lantern by Geoff Johns and Dough Mahnke
Green Lantern #1 appears to be an attempt to relaunch the title for fans of the movie without changing recent Green Lantern storylines. That's a tall order and Geoff Johns manages it fairly well, but it doesn't leave much room for storytelling. To match the status quo of the movie, Sinestro is de-eviled and a Green Lantern again, Hal bumbles day to day life on Earth despite being a superhero, and Carol Ferris is back to running an aerospace company and having disastrous dates with Hal. But that's it, that's all that happens in the issue, aside from Sinestro beating up a random Yellow Lantern, for it shares a less welcome trait of movie, namely, a surprising lack of plot. Doug Mahnke's art is strong except for a few odd moments when it strangely resembles the work of Steve Dillon, and Johns sneaks in a few moments of humor and clever dialogue. - KF
Grifter by Nathan Edmunson, Cafu and Jason Gorder
Unfortunately, this book came on the stack right after Resurrection Man #1, so you might want to go read that review first because reading two books in a row about a mysterious blond guy who gets attacked by a woman on an airplane and falls out of it is a bit much. Although he started out as a character in the slick superheroic world of the WildCATS in the 90s, here Cole Cash is a bit of a conman -- think Sawyer from Lost. He’s got voices in his head and mysterious people out to kill him. I’ve only read about 1/3rd of the new 52 line-up but that already describes about half of the books I’ve read. Cash also has a 17-hour gap in his life that seems to have involved getting mixed up with the wrong element. Artist Cafu has some of the fine lines of Travis Charest, who memorably drew the character in various WildCATS reboots, but a lack of backgrounds and details in others. For me, this book failed to establish a tone or character that I wanted to read....but maybe if I’d read it before the eerily similar Resurrection Man, I would have liked it better. - HM
Legion Lost by Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods.
Everyone has their limits. This book is where I first encountered mine. This is a horrible comic book, a totally impenetrable fight scene that is aimed solely at people who already like the Legion of Superheroes. The LSH is apparently a bunch of superhero teens from the future who here are trapped in the present. Or something. There is no beginning, middle or end to this book -- just a string of panels that pretend to tell a narrative. The book opens in the middle of a fight, with no set-up for new readers of who or what is happening. There is some exposition, but it’s ghastly dialogue such as “Luckily, between Chameleon Girl’s shapeshifting, Tellus’s telekineses and my harmonic manipulation--most of us can fly on our own.” You don’t say! Just the kind of thing someone would say in the middle of fighting for their life. This book would have been improved 300% by a simple “Who’s Who” page in the beginning. But then, the Legion has always been its own thing. If there is one bright spot it’s Pete Wood’s art, which leans ever so slightly to the cartoony and sets up the fight very clearly. This book seems to be aimed at hardcore Legion fans...everyone else is advised to stay well away. - HM
Suicide Squad: Kicked in the Teeth by Adam Glass, Federico Dallocchio, Random Getty and Scott Hanna.
The name—Suicide Squad—pretty much defines the plot of this extension of a 1980s/1990s DC series about a group of imprisoned super-villains, coerced by deadly technology and a secret agency to go on suicide missions for the U.S. government. They’re being held captive at in the Belle Reeve Penitentiary and sent out on deadly missions under the direction of African American government agent Amanda Waller, who has, in this new version, been slimmed down and turned into a typical superhero comic book chick—big surging bust and perfectly narrow waist. Previously rendered as a matronly, full figured black woman, the new Amanda Waller is causing some consternation among female Suicide Squad fans, who complain she’s been turned into yet another superbimbo. The new series opens with the Squad—among them Harley Quinn, the Joker’s homicidal beau, Deadshot, a super assassin and foe of Batman and King Shark, a villainous humanoid sharkhead and enemy of Superboy—being physically tortured and mutilated in the most graphic ways, clearly a mission gone horribly bad. But along the way we find out things are not often what they appear. The artwork is garish and the story is dark and brutal—but that’s a good thing—Suicide Squad has a certain appeal because of those qualities. Their next mission turns out to be pretty horrific on a grand scale—so we’ll have to check back next month—and how often do you get to root for Harley Quinn? - CR
Superboy by Scott Lobdell, R. B. Silva and Rob Lean.
Sometime in the 1980s during another DC Comics reboot, Superboy was taken out of the story of Superman. What that means for old-timey comic book readers like this reviewer is that Superboy is not the younger, uniformed teenage hero-version of the Man of Steel of today. DC took the character out of the Superman continuity, made him into an alien/human clone, a rogue experiment to create an all-powerful weaponized life form, and built a new series. The New 52 Superboy uses the same clone scenario, reintroduced by the creative team of writer Scott Lobdell with penciller R. B. Silva and inker Rob Lean. Superboy is introduced suspended in a high-tech cylinder, floating in a “neonatal amniotic solution” where he apparently has been growing in power and intelligence for the last 16 years. He emerges from the tank fully formed with a super-powered brain capacity that even startles him—“I have no idea why I know that,” he says after answering a complex mathematical question in school. He’s placed in a foster home in Kansas, a teenager growing up with a powerful secret—or so it seems. The new rebooted Superboy is hard to figure. The character is now a kind of Superman-related footnote, an editorial effort to expand the franchise out of an awkward continuity that clashed with the modern development of the Superman narrative (not to mention the Smallville TV show). The result is a dubious sci-fi/evil agency conspiracy trope that we’ll have to hope will get better. The artwork overall is carefully rendered, rich and colorful but the figuration seems stiff and mannered in a way not best suited for an action superhero comic. - CR
Mr. Terrific: Software Update by Eric Wallace, Gianluca Gugliotta and Wayne Faucher.
Mr. Terrific, a formerly minor character, is now part of the New 52 with his own series and a complicated back story. Michael Holt, African American super scientific genius with scores of PhDs, an Olympic gold medal and the founder of a billion dollar tech company, is the latest version of Mr. Terrific, originally a non-black Golden Age superhero known for similar talents. He’s mastered everything else so he might as well fight crime too. In this story he discovers an ordinary man who suddenly acquires the intelligence of a Nobel Laureate in a few hours—and his intelligence as well as his violent homicidal outbursts just keep growing. Something is sending the man’s mind into overdrive and before long, Mr. Terrific is acting terrifically strange as well, victimized by the unknown mind stealer. This new Mr. Terrific is kind of cool; he’s got a pretty good costume (it suggests a superhero uni as designed by Nike); he’s black, super smart and super rich—what’s not to like about that? He even uses the “fairplay” emblem from the Golden Age Mr. Terrific but in this case it’s tattooed around Holt’s bare arms. While the artwork is fluid and dynamic, it’s not always very attractive and all the characters seem to revert to a wobbly and universal ugliness whenever there’s a crisis. That said, while Mr. Terrific isn’t always so, he’s still worth watching. - CR
Red Lanterns by Peter Milligan & Ed Benes
Red Lanterns #1 is a gory, somewhat confused bit of Grand Guiginol. Most of the issue is spent on head Red Lantern Atrocitus soliliquizing about the source of his vast rage and bemoaning the fact that his life-defining anger seems to have cooled a little. His planet got destroyed, his family got destoyed and Hal Jordan killed the being responsible before he got the chance, but Atrocitus just can't get angry enough about it anymore. Then, while eviscerating the corpse of his long-dead enemy, as one does, he gets a vision of all the other bad things going on in the universe which require bloody vengeance. That's more like it! Now, he just needs to get his corps of equally bloodthirsty subordinates to follow his command. The book detours from Atrocitus's over the top tale of woe to relate the story of a family in Britain losing their grandfather to senseless street violence and for an interval in which some torture-happy aliens try to kill Atrocitus's angry superpowered cat Dex-Starr (they fail.) Current Red Lanterns fans will probably like it - nothing appears to have changed. New readers will probably be confused, because at no time does Peter Milligan's writing bother to explain what a Red Lantern actually is or can do, which is a rather huge oversight for a supposed relaunch. - KF
Resurrection Man by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Fernando Dagnino
Resurrection comic is more like it -- this character previously appeared in a critically-lauded, but low-selling bok by creators Abnett and Lanning back in the late 90s. It was a time of mild experimentation for DC’s main line of comics—some have said the original was “ahead of its time,” but DC’s output has been significantly homogenized since then. Mitch Shelley’s power is to be resurrected as various people -- as this issue opens, he’s just been resurrected as an employee of a morgue who has a plane to catch. On the plane, things get weirder, as a four-armed female demon throws him off the plane and he gets sucked into the jet engine, only only to be resurrected again. Meanwhile, two girls in sexy outfits are brutally questioning the other morgue employees, a fireman is possessed, and another better known DC character is also searching for Shelley. This issue is all set-up, but that’s what it does, introducing us to Shelley and his powers, and setting up the supporting cast. The confident script is matched by some stylish art by Dagnino, who is able to draw trippy action scenes, a variety of faces and body types, and Shelley as an appealing protagonist. In the manner of the best action comics, Resurrection Man seems to be blending a bunch of genres, and it's an enjoyable ride. - HM
