It’s the last week of the #1s! DC Comics relaunched its superhero universe with 52 new #1 issues and PW Comics World has reviewed them all! This week we review week four, the final week of new #1 issue releases. The comic books were randomly assigned and review lengths generally adhere to PW's review standards. Here are links to Week 1 and Week 2 and Week 3 reviews. Don’t forget to tell us what you think; speak up in the comments file at the end
All Star Western #1 by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Moritat ($2.99, 32p)
While this reviewer is old enough to still love Westerns, Jonah Hex is not helping the genre. In this tale, Hex, an Old West bounty hunter with a disfigured face reminiscent of Two-Face, shows up in 1880's Gotham City, hired to help the Gotham police stop the Gotham Butcher, a serial killer who is murdering prostitutes. Let’s be generous and call this story a tongue-in-cheek send-up of Jack the Ripper; how else to explain the one-eyed, teeth-clenched Hex, in Confederate uniform, walking his horse through the streets of Victorian-era Gotham. Apparently, he’s the only guy in 1880's Gotham that thinks to ask other prostitutes anything about the killer. Speaking in a cornball Western twang, Hex is accompanied by Amadeus Arkham—the founder of Gotham’s Arkham Asylum—who offers amusing pre-psychiatric diagnoses of Hex’s psyche: “a deep-seated rage, which is split off and repressed, lurks at his core; I am fascinated and terrified of him,” says the good doctor. While Arkham offers diagnoses, Hex is kicking ass and taking names, only to discover that Gotham may also be under the control of some kind of secret society. Yawn. Moritat’s art is appealing, but it’s hitched to a broken down genre wagon. - CR
Aquaman #1 by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Joe Prado ($2.99 32p)
From his early days as a Golden Age superhero to his 70s stint on Saturday morning swimming among the cod with Aqualad, to his name-checking as a James Cameron megahit on Entourage, Aquaman has had a hard time being taken seriously, and this debut confronts that head on. Arthur Curry is half human, half-Atlantean, son of a lighthouse keeper and an Atlantean princess. That makes him ruler of the underseas kingdom, but in this story all he wants to do is get a nice plate of fish and chips. After defeating some bank robbers—the default obstacle for all superheroes—while looking imperious, Aquaman repairs to a seafood restaurant for a hot lunch only to be stared at by the other diners and mocked by a citizen blogger who demands an on the spot interview. “How’s it feel to really be, y’know...Aquaman?...how’s it feel to be a punchline? How’s it feel to be a laughingstock?” Aquaman does not take this too well and stalks off to be moody and tell his ladyfriend, Mera, that he’s ready to give up Atlantis. Meanwhile, bad things are happening elsewhere involving scary fish-man, so we can be certain that Aquaman’s trident will be called on in he service of order very soon...maybe even in issue #2! Johns delivers a nice, punchy script with some great little character bits for Arthur and the bystanders, with the backstory woven in unobtrusively. The real star is Reis, though—he has a knack for handsome, heroic figures that captues that gives Aquaman the stature he deserves and plays off the ironic bits nicely. All in all, a classic first issue. —HM
Batman: The Dark Knight #1 by David Finch, Paul Jenkins and Richard Friend ($2.99, 32p)
Not much new here. Batman, shrouded in shadows, roams the rooftops of Gotham City by night; later billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne speaks at a fashionable event on Gotham urban renewal (he’s a job creator!). Later still, there’s a disturbance at Gotham’s Arkham Asylum for the criminally insane which gives Finch a chance to execute some kick-ass images of Batman in high Dark Knight mode: beyond grim, freakin’ ripped with muscles, cape stylishly draped as he emerges from the darkness—not to mention stark and quite vivid renderings of a mob of crazed psychopaths and monsters breaking out of Arkham. We also meet Jaina Hudson, a jaw dropping hottie in a skin tight mini-dress, making eyes at Bruce, who we assume we’ll learn more about later. This is standard issue Batman—not that there’s anything wrong with that—including offering up a classic villain with lots of noirish panache in a cliffhanger ending. Look for fights, the occasional hot girl and more “poster” images of Batman to come. – CR
Blackhawks #1 by Mike Costa and Graham Nolan ($2.99, 32p)
The Blackhawks, as reimagined for the DC reboot, are a hilariously flashy "covert" action group who fly into action upside down, guns blazing, as the book opens. Organized by the U.N., they have a remote mountain base called the Eyrie full of futuristic superplanes, a snappy little hawk's head symbol emblazoned on all of their super secret planes and gear and a variety of humorous nicknames: "The Irishman" is Ukrainian, "Canada" is from Atlanta and "Kunoichi" is not Japanese. If this is starting to sound familiar to you, yes, yes it is just like G.I. Joe with more planes. Which doesn't mean it isn't a lot of fun - writer Mike Costa and artist Graham Nolan do a great job of making it a non-stop candy-colored thrill ride, and even take some time to get to know a few of the characters. Kunoichi, this issue's protagonist, is a magenta-haired, high-spirited adrenaline junkie, wildly in love with her ground control partner Wildman and troubled by the secrets she needs to keep. And of course, there's a plot, full of daring hostage rescues, threats against operational security and some vaguely defined dastardly nano-tech. These aren't the same Blackhawks characters from the World War II comic, but they could easily be their successors, screaming across the page with a lot less gravitas and a little more flash. – KF
Green Lantern Guardians #1 Tony Bedard and Tyler Kirkham ($2.99, 32p)
Green Lantern Guardians, for better and worse, is a first issue that genuinely feels like a first issue. Tony Bedard actually takes the time to explain what a Green Lantern is - an intergalactic space-cop with a superpowered ring that can make anything its wearer can imagine and who Kyle Rayner is - a human cartoonist chosen to become a Green Lantern. The Oans, the Guardians of the Universe who run the Green Lantern Corps, lie dead on a battlefield and Ganthet, the last survivor, decides to pass on the last of their power as he dies. Immediately thereafter, aliens with yellow, red, violet (and off-screen, blue and indigo) power rings, which appear to work similarly to Green Lantern rings, lose them mid-fight. The rings immediately seek out Kyle, making him a human rainbow. Is it comprehensible to new readers? Sure, and that's worthy of note, since many New 52 titles aren't. Is it a great story? Well, no, not yet, since it had an awful lot of setup to do in twenty pages. Where is this going? Given the title and Ganthet's dying act, I'm guessing toward giving the cartoonist cosmic powers and making him a new Guardian of the Universe. So if you want that sort of book, this is the sort of book you want. – KF
I, Vampire #1 by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Andrea Sorrentino ($2.99 32p)
Talk about doomed lovers: Andrew is a vampire who has devoted the last 400 years to hunting down other vampires and preventing them from harming humans. Mary is his longtime companion, but now also the Queen of Blood. Two storylines intersect here—one a conversation between Andrew and Mary in the past where we learn she began to resent his attempts to cure her and curtail her power. In the present, we learn Mary is raising a vampire army to take on Green Lantern and other DCU heroes. (If this were a movie trailer, this is where we’d hear that record scratch.) With its complicated, multi-leveled storytelling, subdued, minimal art and emotionally charged horror storyline, I, Vampire reveals its origins nearly 30 years ago as a Vertigo series by J.M. DeMatties and Tom Sutton, a story that has renewed appeal in the Twilight Era. Andrew and Mary brood, make love (off panel) and turn into majestic wolves as they play out their power struggle. The stark, moody art by Sorrentino—reminiscent of Jon J. Muth at times—seems to present a ruined world. Even when we see Mary attack an entire subway car it seems like we’re watching I Am Legend from the vampires point of view—but all the more to put the romantic tension in the foreground. If the vampire genre isn’t yet played out, this is a promising beginning for what could turn into a sweeping storyline. —HM
Justice League Dark #1 by Peter Milligan and Mikel Janin ($2.99, 32p)
In the first issue of Justice League Dark, a young woman called June Moone wanders a city confused and alone, only to find out that other women who look exactly like her are swarming a highway and getting picked off by oncoming traffic. Batman and the sorceress Zatanna are on the case - and they're convinced it's the work of the rogue witch Enchantress, holed up on a remote farm and gone absolutely insane. Superman, Cyborg and Wonder Woman aren't able to stop her, so Zatanna decides that taking her down is a job for magic. With a title like Justice League Dark, it's pretty clear that a magical superteam is right around the corner. Indeed, the book keeps stopping the plot to introduce the future members: Madame Xanadu uses tarot and sees the future, John Constantine falls into the story through a hole in the time-space continuum, Shade can bend reality but uses it to make an imaginary girlfriend and Deadman is dead. Peter Milligan's story is workable enough, neither amazing nor terrible. Mikel Janin's art varies widely in quality - the book contains some absolutely beautiful work, but many of his figures have an eerie inhuman quality that looks exactly as if they were traced from the program Poser. A perfectly okay book for anyone who wants to read about a magical superteam. – KF
Superman #1 by George Pérez and Jesus Merino ($2.99 32p)
As our story opens, Superman is distraught over the attrition of print news outlets and the increasing globalization of the news via integration with multi-platform outlets. Or something like that. The Daily Planet has been taken over by a network, and its turning into a TV show, Lois Lane is the news director, and she has a boyfriend—who isn’t named Clark Kent. In the real world, everyone would just read about it on Media Bistro and update their resumes. Sincwe this is a comic book, a giant fire being attacks the Metropolis Astrodome, and Superman must defeat it while Lois tries to get career-boosting footage without endangering the life of the her news crew. Pérez, who wrote and did the layouts, is a superstar and fan favorite but his old school storytelling is the exact opposite of today’s decompressed style, with captions, dialogue and everything but thought balloons explaining everything that is happening in clinical detail. That might not be such a problem except that the dialogue itself is torn straight from the 80s, as well, making this a comic for people who enjoy Matlock reruns. Once you get by the distracting storytelling, there’s a decent set-up for Superman here—As Clark Kent, he’s having a hard time accepting Lois’s new relationship and the increasing irrelevance of his reporting job. While older readers may have liked the Pérez version, it’s all moot—Perez’s run has been announced to end with issue #6.—HM
Teen Titans #1 by Scott Lobdell and Brett Booth ($2.99, 32p)
Teen Titans is one of the few New 52 books to use the changed circumstances of the new DC Universe to really power the plot - in a world where superpowers are new and scary, superpowered teenagers are seen more as dangerous young hoodlums than teen idols. And with experienced adult heroes thin on the ground, most of them lack mentors or training, which presents its own problems. This is where Red Robin comes in, Tim Drake in all of his ruthless and schemingly moral glory, recruiting his own teen superteam in order to keep them out of the wrong hands, despite being a teenager himself. One step ahead of a shadowy organization called N.O.W.H.E.R.E., he swoops in to recruit an extremely reluctant Wonder Girl, mid car-theft, while quite literally under fire. A welcome relief from the grim and gritty soap opera of the post-Infinite Crisis Teen Titans, the new incarnation immediately gets down to business doing what Teen Titans does best, telling a genuinely exciting story about teenaged superheroes. However, while Brett Booth's art is dynamic and at times charming, it's also so anatomically impossible that the characters frequently look like aliens, and not in an attractive way. Despite this, Teen Titans is very promising - an age-appropriate book about teen heroes that teenagers will actually want to read. – KF
The Flash #1 byFrancis Manapul and Brian Buccellato ($2.99, 32p)
The Flash opens as Barry Allen is at a tech convention on his first date with his co-worker and longtime crush, Patty. Of course, a mysterious paramilitary force invades, and Barry needs to fight them off as the super speedster The Flash. Then, crisis over, he has to help investigate the event in his civilian job as a crime scene tech. There's a dead body at the scene, he has to prove The Flash didn't do it, and what's more, it may or may not be his friend Manuel, who may or may not be dead. In between flurries of action, the story lingers over Barry's scientist hero-worship, his date with Patty, his history with Manuel and his awkward encounters with reporter Iris West, who has a thing for Barry. Illustrated in clean, gentle lines by writer/artist Francis Manapul and shaded in soft pastels by his co-writer Brian Buccellato, The Flash is a curiously sweet, unassuming, restful superhero comic, much like Barry Allen himself.
The Fury of Firestrom #1 by Ethan Van Sciver, Gail Simone and Yildray Cinar ($2.99 32p)
As Van Sciver and Simone share the plotting and writing duties on this book, Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch must team up to become Firestorm, the Nuclear Man! Except one’s a jock and one’s a nerd and they’re going to squabble all the way. Ronnie is a star high school quarterback; Jason is the super smart guy from the student paper assigned to interview him. But things don’t go so well—Jason, who is black, detects some white privilege from Ronnie, which prompts both to go home and separately mope during dinner with their single parents (a mom for Ray, a dad for Jason.) However, Jason is also caught up with something called the “god particle”—and so are a brutal gang of thieves/terrorists we’ve been watching torture people for the rest of the book in quest of this particle. When the bickering high schoolers cross paths with this ruthless gang—who gun down half the teaching staff at the school—Jason is compelled to turn into Firestorm...but somehow, Ray is also turned into a flaming nuclear-fueled superhero. And they can even fuse, Transformers-style, into a dual-controlled giant called Fury. The character bits of this book are reminiscent of an Afterschool Special; Cinar excels at action and lots of it, aided by colorist Steve Buccellato. Some muddy storytelling doesn’t really detract from getting the basic premise across, and if you’re looking for some teen soap opera and action, Firestorm might just deliver. —HM
The Savage Hawkman #1 by Tony S. Daniel and Philip Tan ($2.99, 32p)
Originally launched in the 1940s, Hawkman’s got a long history and many revivals. He started as a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian priest and along the way was “rebooted” and became an alien cop from Thanagar, a prominent fictional planet-civilisation in DC Comics continuity. It’s difficult to tell what background history is driving this version. Hawkman is still Carter Hall, now a cryptologist working for a professor seeking out the remains of ancient spaceships, hired to decipher the ship’s inscriptions. The story opens with Hall declaring that he’s finished being Hawkman. He tries to burn his Hawkman outfits (including the Nth Metal, the mysterious substance that gives him his powers) which doesn’t turn out very well. The latest reboot of this series seemed completely aimed at hardcore Hawkman fans—if such a species exists—but frankly, it's baffling and not terribly entertaining to the rest of us. The professor does find an alien spacecraft and when Hall shows up to examine it, all hell—in the form of a mysterious life form—breaks loose. Decent art combined with a confusing story, a lame superhero and a goofy villain—you be the judge. – CR
Voodoo #1 by Ron Marz and Sami Basri ($2.99, 32p)
Orginally created by artist and now DC co-publisher, Jim Lee, for his Wildstorm line of comics, Voodoo may end up the surprise hit of the 52 relaunch. Priscilla Kitaen or Voodoo, has a really tangled character-history. The short bio: Voodoo’s a gorgeous exotic dancer—yeah, topless—descended from a race of reptilian aliens who can either shapeshift (which seems to be the case here) or take possession of humans and their forms. She’s been a heroine and an anti-heroine over the years but the setup for this story keeps her POV close to the vest. But it’s a cool introduction spectacularly illustrated by Basri with rich color, drop-dead, elegantly sexy girls and wild action scenes towards the end. Whatever Voodoo may be, she (it?) is being followed by two special agents—a boorish male agent who sees Voodoo and forgets he’s on duty and a tough female agent fed up with her partner’s unprofessional behavior—who know what “she” is but not what she’s up too. She may be an intergalactic spy or she may have an entirely different angle. Marz has written a tantalizing setup tale that ends with both a bang and a shapeshift that left this reviewer ready for more. - CR
