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By now the first month of issue #1's for DC Comics' "New 52" have come out and opinions about them have sprouted up on the internet like weeds in your fall vegetable garden. I just thought I would add my voice to the chorus of reviewers out there talking about them. I am not going to look at all 52 #1's; instead I am just reviewing the select few I could afford to get that interested me or could get from my older brother. Remember that my opinions do not reflect those of the Editorial staff of the Collector Times and should be taken with all the seriousness of a pinata at child's birthday party. (In other words you can take my opinions and smash them open and take all the candy out of them if you don't agree.) First up, from the week of September 7th is Batgirl, Detective Comics and Justice League International.
Batgirl Batgirl was one of the books that I initially wrote off as just being another bad reset after I heard it was going to be in the "New 52." It was not until I read one of Ms. Simone's issues of Secret Six while I was at the local comic book store that I found I really liked her writing. What little I can recall of the character Batgirl from the previous incarnations of her is that she was once Barbara Gordon (before she was shot by The Joker and became Oracle) before someone else took over the mantle in the old DC Universe. This time around, the Batgirl is Barbara Gordon and she was shot, but recovered and is walking and fighting crime once again. The book starts out with some figure called The Mirror (what a bad name for a villain) coming up to this older man in his front yard watering his plants. The Mirror takes the hose from the older man and drowns him and asks as the man is drowning, "Why did you survive Mr. Carter?" When Carter's body falls to the ground we see The Mirror's hand scratch the name off of a list and the name below Mr. Carter's name is Barbara Gordon. Over the next three pages we have some internal monologue by Barbara in the Batgirl costume as she is looking for this gang of home invader killers. The third page of this one scene is a full shot of Batgirl swinging off of a roof with a smile on her face and lightning in the background. The next pages are of the home invaders who are dressed in costumes like you might find at a dollar store at Halloween time. The leader is wearing a spook outfit and holding a gun on the couple. These guys are so sick that they keep a scrapbook of articles in the press about what they did to the other homes they invaded. The one in the Dracula costume is more concerned about the weather outside rather than actually going after the couple. Just then Batgirl crashes in through a window and starts fighting the criminal scum. More internal monologue at this point about the feelings she is having fighting these guys after being gone so long. She dispatches the others in short order even though it took a bit of extra oomph to get the guy in the Frankenstein Monster outfit to stay down. There seems to be a moment of hesitation when Batgirl is faced with the leader who is holding a gun on the couple. There is more internal speech and regular snappy Simone-esque dialog and she knocks the guy with the gun over the balcony rails and pulls him back up and cuff's him to said rails. After many thanks from the couple, Batgirl takes off into the stormy night. We have another flashback that shows the Joker shooting her and some internal dialogue about the things she has gone through since she was shot. Then we see that she has moved out of her father's house and into an apartment she shares with a roommate who is an artist and a bartender at night. Not in the best neighborhood, but it is centrally located and she might be able to afford it. Interspersed with the Barbra moving in is the visit of The Mirror to the hospital where the guy Batgirl used a bat-a-rang to disarm is being mended . Batgirl makes an appearance in the room and freezes at the sight of The Mirror's pistols. This gives The Mirror a chance to push the man in the bed out the window and leaves Batgirl to face the wrath of the police Detective's partner who was killed by the Mirror earlier on in that scene and makes Batgirl just as culpable in the death of the home invader from the hospital. The art on the book is nice, especially the Adam Hughes cover. Nothing seems to be out of place or unnecessary in most of the panels. Adrian Syaf seems to think that the police in Gotham carry revolvers rather than pistols like most law enforcement organizations carry these days. The Mirror is packing two long pistols that short of all the Gotham police carrying magnum's, they are pretty much outclassed. The writing by Ms. Simone is spot on for a first issue. She gives us just enough of the back story of Barbara to show how this universe's Batgirl is different than the ones from the pre-reboot DC universe. It has the snappy Simone-esque dialog as well as the internal dialog that she has become famous for. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on something about one of the characters being gay. My money is on the artist/bartender roommate being the gay one. There was something about the dialog Barbra and the roommate had when Barbra was moving in that raised a red flag in my mind. I'll let you figure out that line on your own. I think this is a good introduction to Batgirl and give us a look at how subtle the changes from the old DC to the "New 52" DC can be.
Batman: Detective Comics The last time I picked up an issue of Detective Comics was some time in the early 1990's when it was somewhere around its 600th issue. It was the Clayface Saga and 14 year old Mathew really liked it. Now twenty years later, 34 year old Mathew has the chance to get in on the ground floor of Detective. How did I like this? Read on and find out. The book starts out with Batman investigating the death of someone who looks like the Joker, and then jumps to a two page spread of Batman going from rooftop to rooftop. Then we see the Joker and some guy in a fist fight with the Joker winning and starting to stab the guy to death as a bat spy bot sees him doing everything. Batman's silhouette breaks through a picture window just as Joker throws a duffel bag of explosives in his direction and it detonates. The Joker escapes out a window and just as Batman is about to go after him there is a civilian stuck under the rubble and he has to get her out. The police break into the building and see Batman and they tell him the basic police line of "drop it" and "hands in the air." Batman knocks out a couple of the SWAT officers and gives the girl to Detective Barnes so he can go after the Joker. After a police helicopter takes some shots at him he jumps out of the building. We then jump to a little bit later when Bruce is driving the Batmobile with little caption boxes of what is going through his head, and then when he pulls into the Batcave there is Alfred waiting for him. Alfred tells him that a lady Bruce was supposed to have a date with tonight called and sounded a bit frazzled. He tells Alfred to send her something nice and his apologies with it. I guess this is one of the hazards of being a hero and being on a single minded quest to get the Joker. He goes up to the giant computer in the cave and starts doing something about the latest man the Joker had killed. The next two pages are Batman meeting with Gordon after he's gotten the Bat Signal out and on. They talk then Batman disappears into the night. The next few pages has Batman staying out of sight as the Police raid a place where they think the Joker is holed up. It's not the Joker and they get blown up for it. The real Joker is running away from the scene to a train station and that gets Batman's attention. Batman gets on the train with the Joker and has everyone evacuate when the Joker releases his toxic gas from his umbrella A fist fight breaks out on the roof of the train and Batman takes two knives in the torso and even though the Joker hits him with this electric buzzer stun ring, Batman manages to capture him. The first of the last three pages show the Joker in an orange straight jacket inside a room full of doctors. Dr. Arkham and the others leave the room and the Joker fakes sleeping for a while until another doctor shows up and we learn his name is the Dollmaker. The Joker talks about killing the man the Dollmaker had sent the last time, but the Joker wanted the original and not some knockoff. The last page of the story is a picture of the Joker's old face hanging on a nail with blood running down the wall. What a gruesome way to end the book for the month. Tony Daniel did this book pretty much single-handed. There was maybe a separate inker and colorist, but the book was pretty much all Mr. Daniel's work. The writing is good and about on par with the average Batman story from the past. It shows in the scene with Alfred and Bruce that being a super hero can be bad for one's social life. The art is good in some places and bad in some others. There is one panel within a panel that has a detective talking over a police radio, and Tony does not choose the most flattering angle for this character's face. The drawing for that one panel makes me think that the artist was perpetuating the old chestnut of the police being pigs. I can't see how this book only garnered a 'T' rating. Between the bloody mouth of the Joker as well as the severed baby doll heads on the cover, and then the aftermath of the Joker's face being cut off on the last page I would have rated this an easy 'T+'.
Justice League International For those of you that do not have a memory of the 1980's and comic books, there was a book called Justice League that came out and then later became the Justice League International and then the Justice League of America. Most of the issues took a light hearted look at the team dynamics of the Justice League. It also is responsible for the greatest line in comic books ever; "One Punch!" when Batman knocked Guy Gardner (sans power ring) out cold. This is the reboot of the series by a different writer and artist team with all new team members. How does the books stack up to its predecessor? I'll leave that for you to decide and discuss amongst yourselves. The book starts out with a video conference and the formation of the team by high ranking members of the Russian, British and Chinese delegations by what I can only guess is the United Nations. The team is to be made up of super heroes that are easily accessible by the common man and do not wear a mask. The only one that breaks this rule that is Batman, but he is more like a liaison between the regular Justice League and the Justice League International. The team is Booster Gold as leader, Guy Gardner, August General in Iron, Rocket Red, Fire, Ice, Batman, Godiva and Vixen. In the last panel we see that there are people protesting outside the building the team will be meeting in before we go to the next part of the book. There is a UN scientific crew out in the jungles of Peru investigating some mysterious earthquakes. An earthquake strikes, a hole opens up below them, and swallows the three person team. Back at what we find out is the Hall of Justice, Booster Gold arrives to meet with the guy who set this whole thing up and Booster asks where Superman is. It appears that Booster has the mistaken impression that the Justice League he was joining was the one with all the big heroes and not one with some B- List heroes. The protestors are still outside chanting that the Hall belongs to the people. A couple of protesters seem to be making plans that night to "send a signal to the UN." Booster goes into the Hall along with the other UN People and meets the rest of the team. Guy throws a hissy fit when he learns Booster is the leader and walks away from the team while Ice tries to keep him under control. Guy goes up to the roof and there is Batman skulking around trying to talk some sense into the Green Lantern, but Guy being Guy takes off. The team gets to see their sweet ride (since most of them cannot fly that fast) and the UN head of the team said it was built by Queen Industries. I'm guessing that in this reboot of the DC Universe, Oliver Queen is the equivalent of Tony Stark in the Marvel Universe. Booster announces their first mission will be to Peru to find the lost UN scientific team and they all start loading up the plane. Rocket Red pulls Booster aside and tells him that he cannot work with the Iron General and he was taught never to trust the Chinese. Booster reassures him that Russia and China will be tremendous allies in the future. Booster and the UN envoy have a little chat and then the plane takes off. It turns out that Batman is flying the plane and not Vixen when Booster comes up to the cockpit. Batman gets them there and he finds the satellite phone that the team was using to contact headquarters when they fell into the hole. Back at the Hall of Justice, the two guys who said they were going to make a statement plant a bomb that one of them got from the Blackhawks ammo depot, and detonate it, setting the entire Hall on fire. Back in Peru, Rocket Red runs scans to see if he can find the crew and he turns up nothing. Godiva makes some smart ass remark about opening a dialogue with some monkeys while he was doing it and Fire tries to set her straight. Just then the ground opens up and some rock creatures come out and the team jumps into action. After a short fight the rock creatures retreat and everyone who can fly grabs someone who cannot and they all see the ground open up and a giant rock pile come out of it and a metallic robot-like thing comes out with energy coming from its hands. The art on the book is good and seems to remind me a little bit of the old JLI and for me that is a selling point. This is also probably the least dark books in the whole first week of release. All of the other books that I have reviewed so far have had very dark art and that is one of the things that can turn me off of a book if the writing is a bit iffy. The writing on the book is on the okay side. I would have liked to have seen more of the personalities of the team come through in this first issue. So far, the only ones that seem to have any personality are Booster Gold and Rocket Red. The writing also seemed to make it clear at least twice that the other members of the team have no idea what the powers of the other team members are. We do see a little bit of some of them in the one fight scene with Godiva grabbing some of the rock creatures with her hair which I guess would make her the equivalent of Marvel's Medusa of the Inhumans. Since I am kind of cash strapped right now, I'm not going to be buying the second issue of this book. I'll probably wait for a trade to come out of the first six issues before spending the cash. Here's a bonus review of Red Lanterns since I am in a giving mood.
Red Lanterns Now I know exactly nothing about the Red Lantern Corps other than they have a member who is a very angry kitty cat and another member that looks like a squished sideways sphere. I also know that they have their blood replaced with some sort of super plasma that they can spew out over their enemies and that their leader is an alien named Atrocitus who is the last of his kind. I guess I know a little bit about the Red Lantern Corps, but not enough to know what I am getting myself into. The book starts out with the blue lizard man aliens torturing another moloid alien when the pissed off kitty, Dex-Starr Red Lantern is brought into their ship through an air lock. The lizard men try to capture Dex-Starr and they do, but not without the cat putting up a fight. Atrocitus then makes his presence felt and takes out all the lizard men on the ship with an internal monolog about how he is the embodiment of hate, and how all of a sudden that hate has faded in him at the end of the two page spread he takes Dex-Starr. We then cut to Earth and see some young ruffian mug an old man for his phone in an alley in the United Kingdom. Back to the planet in Sector 666 where the Red Lanterns hang out. Some of them seem to be fighting amongst themselves and that Atrocitus seems to have lost his leadership of the Red Lanterns. At this point, we get some back story on the Red Lanterns and Atrocitus. I'll just leave that to you to read and move on back to Earth; where the two grandchildren of the man who was beaten earlier on in the book argue about how they both should have been there for his passing. Back to Sector 666 and Atrocitus reads the entrails of the universe and sees that there is a lot of hate taking place and that he and the rest of the Red Lanterns must be there. Unfortunately one of the Red Lanterns has risen up, the one that looks like a harpie, and has taken control of the rest of the group and he begins to wonder if the Red Lanterns need him anymore. The art on the book is outstanding and I want the original art of the two page spread of Dex-Starr that is page two and three of the book. The cover art is good as well giving us a look at what most of the Red Lanterns look like and what an oddball group they are. The art has a lot of splatter effects in it and I know that in my brief study of art so far, things like that can be really hard to do and get the effect that you want. There are some panels towards the end of the book that make Atrocitus look like a skinnier version of Darkseid. The writing by Ed Benes seems a bit condensed for a first issue. If I were a first time reader of this book (which I kind of am) I would be a bit lost on who the players are besides Atrocitus and his cat Dex-Starr. For example, who is the harpie that is leading the rise against Atrocitus' leadership, and what is his/her story? I guess that is something that I am going to have to find out through either internet research or just wait another month for the next issue. Also I am kind of curious about the whole Earth subplot where the two grandchildren are fighting over one of them not being there when their grandfather died. Are one of them going to be indoctrinated into the Red Lanterns in a future issue or was this just some example they are using for the violence that feeds the Red Lanterns? Overall this is a definite read.
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