I have gone on record numerous times on this website that I have a problem with how Warner Brothers portrays their super heroes and how they’re handling their franchise. There is a reek of desperation about their need to catch up with Marvel’s success but you can’t fast-track what Marvel have accomplished. Especially with the gloomy movies DC have been making.

Zack Snyder is directing again so I’m not thrilled going in to this but the cast is pretty great with Affleck and Gadot returning along with the debuts of Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, and Ray Fisher.

– Aquaman

Jason Momoa is cool as balls and I don’t understand why he doesn’t get more work. I hear he can be difficult on set, and that’s fair enough, but I think it’s a good trade off.

This scene is silly. Like, King Tide? He’s says that like it’s a thing. And isn’t it kinda messed up if Aquaman is delivering his buddies to be eaten every winter? Wouldn’t he be against eating fish? I don’t know.

– Wonder Woman

Once again, she doesn’t get to feature much in a trailer (although I suppose having her own makes up for that) but her interaction here is fun and a nice breath of fresh air considering what BvS was like.

– The Flash

What’s this? A happy person in a Warner Bros super hero movie? Surely it can not be! Ezra Miller is a pretty cool actor and often goes intense/weird with his performances so it should be interesting to see what he does with this.

I’m slightly confused why the lightning effects are necessary when he literally just steps out of the way. I understand they are part of his power but I always thought they were a result of him moving so fast and building up so much friction and static electricity.

Also, why is Bruce using his Batman voice out of the suit? That seems unnecessary.

– Cyborg

Blink and you’ll miss him. Cyborg almost takes on The Flash’s abilities he’s so quick to disappear in this trailer.

I understand he’s not as big a name as the other guys but still… it’s glaring how little they care about him. Who is he? What are his powers? We hear both about Aquaman and Flash, why not Cyborg? #WhyNotCyborg

———————————————————————————————————————

Overall: It’s nice that they had a more upbeat feel to the trailer but at the end of the day, I don’t know who or what they’re fighting and I don’t know anything of the plot other than Bruce Wayne is trying to find friends. That trailer was a bit of fun but it didn’t really sell me on anything.

Note: I wrote this about a month ago and because of scheduling problems (read: laziness) I never posted it. Issue 13 didn’t really change much about my feelings. They still treat Steve Trevor like crap, all of the characters are written strangely, if not poorly, and despite a fairly entertaining story, I find myself not caring at all about DC’s flagship title.

After a year’s worth of books, (the zero issue doesn’t really count because its about Captain Marvel/Shazam) I have a few of problems with this new version of the Justice League that Lee, Didio, Harras, and Johns have given us. The book is still fairly young, nearly in it’s adolescence in terms of comic bookery, I suppose, but when it’s their most popular book, the most important to the new 52, and they still manage to burn a few panels an issue making a dumb joke or referencing a Martian Manhunter fight that seemed painfully irrelevant and a wasted use of character, I feel that I have a foothold to complain. Don’t get me wrong, its been an entertaining book. Lee draws some damn pretty comic books, the first six issues were pretty damn solid as far as a team introduction, and the narrative hasn’t been lacking for action or effort, but there are still quite a few problems.

They’re still not a team:

I thought the entire idea behind starting Justice League 5 years in the past was to establish how they all met and became the League, but we find out that they still are immature and don’t really realize what their doing. Aquaman even says in issue 12 “It’s time to be the team they thought we were instead of the team we’ve been these last five years.” What was the point of introducing Darkseid if not to make them a team? What was the point in referencing Manhunter “testing” them if not to make them a team? You could have done this conflict in issue 6 and saved everyone a lot of forced drama. Apparently, at some point the league decided that Batman was in charge, cool, that’s fine, he’s the smartest one there so he should act as the general. However, how they’ve decided to portray everyone is completely contrary to this. The characters that are written in this book would not have voted for Batman to lead them now, let alone 5 years ago when they had just formed.

Wonder Woman + Superman:

I don’t know. It doesn’t really affect the story at all. It just was a very forced romance, and a very forced move. Like much of the “big events” in the new DCU, they’re trying to create sensation without building up a story at all.

The relationship between Batman/Superman and the world has always been one of good cop/bad cop and in this new universe it has become aloof cop/detached cop, completely negating the friendship and relationship that they had.

Superman works best as a character when he is that boy scout, when he is entirely alien and uncomfortably powerful but his soul and everything that drives him is more human than any other hero or character in the universe. He needs to have that attachment and desire to help his fellow man, because Superman was never the man, Superman was the mask that Clark Kent, the human, used to be a hero. Its something that has been explored in every great Superman story, its currently being explored alongside Justice League in Action Comics and even in the Superman main title, but that whole plot idea is ignored in this book.

Conversely, Batman has been written best when he is detached, driven, and possessed by his crusade. He is, at his core, oriented to the pursuit of justice to the point of self-destruction. He operates in shadows and removes himself from the world, wearing the mask of Bruce Wayne because he no longer identifies himself as properly human. Even the “family” that he surrounds himself with is kept at a great distance because affection is so unnatural to him. His desires and his purposes are higher, and it is an effort for him to put on a show of normal. Again, in counterpoint to Clark, Bruce is the mask that Batman uses to be “human”.

Superman and Batman’s friendship was compelling because Superman was the boy scout who knew without a doubt that Batman, a man who fought using fear as a weapon could be trusted implicitly. Batman, on the other hand, knew that while Superman was an alien and powerful enough to destroy the world and everyone in it, he was the one person who would never do that because his entire being was so grounded in compassion and honesty. They both distrusted the rest of the league for various reasons, but they never truly doubted each others resolve to be good.

In this new version of the league, there is a shadow of that relationship. The DC powers-that-be have decided to maintain Batman and Superman’s friendship, but alter the individuals to the point where it doesn’t work anymore. Yes, we are missing 5 years of history that this new DC timeline has hopscotched for the sake of storytelling, but the league is very different. Superman isn’t the moral compass of the League, he examines everyone else, afraid to let them know him (except for Batman). Instead, Batman has become that morality, the humanity of the team. Their roles have been reversed, or at the very least both steadily pulled into the intervening gray area between their once polar characteristics in a massive divergence of each character’s core conception.

The rest of the league is largely there as space filler:

In a complete relaunch, there could have been a massive move made to restructure the social power of each of the characters, but they have all nearly become the least compelling and least effective versions that they could be. (These are not my opinion of a perfect character, but just ideas that might have at least given some variance to the old model).

Cyborg:

Cyborg was great when he was a member of Teen Titans, but he’s never been a particularly compelling character on his own. I’m still not sure why they chose him to be in the league or what role he’s intended to play but I haven’t seen really anything of significance from him yet. There are plenty of roles that he could have played within the league: he could have been the voice of youth, acting as a conduit for introduction and explanation, or he could have been the moral compass when the others are jaded and overconfident. Instead he receives a watered down version of Superman’s regular story where he is struggling with his humanity. They could have even taken his machine nature a bit further, trying some legitimately interesting scientific concepts (that Marvel is doing quite well all of the time these days) making his consciousness digitally transferable, commenting on his nearly infinite processing ability which would make him think and analyze battle faster than the Flash, or giving him the ability to create, interface directly, and/or control any number of machines with his incredible knowledge. That would have been at least interesting, but he just coldly makes remarks about being relatively omnipotent and proceeds to be surprised/defeated by a sadness monster.

I really don’t understand why they expect anybody to care about Cyborg or his subplot when he is the only League member who doesn’t have his own book and therefore doesn’t have any of the back story necessary for any emotional connection.

Green Lantern:

Johns’ Green Lantern has been growing steadily more disappointing over the past few years. He took the spirit of Hal Jordan, the one that made a regular man worthy of the power of the ring and at every opportunity made him seem like a (for lack of a more accurate term) assbag. Hal was never encumbered by an overwhelming desire for planning, which was his greatest flaw, and he would rush into a situation without heed of why or what he was going to do, but he did so because the idea of sitting back and not taking action against an enemy was offensive to him. To Jordan, inaction was the greatest sin.

However, Johns has transformed that impetuousness and misdirected chivalry into a rampant egotism and suppressed self-loathing that makes Hal oppressively dislikable. They tried to redeem him in issue 12 and they might have succeeded if it wasn’t such a late effort. Hal takes on the “hero we deserve, not the one we need” mantle from The Dark Knight and takes the blame for the league in-fighting, but he does an insubstantial reason, with no allowance of discussion, and which makes no mention of the 4 other Earth-based Green Lanterns that already protect Earth and the sector.

Flash:

Flash, for the most part, has remained solid. I’m not a fan of them writing out Wally West, even though I see the logic behind the move on a creative level, but Barry Allen as an individual has remained very strong and has even improved through the reboot. The Barry/Iris relationship is gone and replaced tenuously by a Barry/Patty Spivot relationship which I guess makes just as much sense and affects the character on the same emotional level without having to bring in Wally, and he still cracks the same jokes and brings a good amount of sanity to the team. The character, though, is much more focused on the forensic analyst and detective this time around, which seems redundant for the league that has Batman, Cyborg as a techno-forensic-analyst, Superman as an investigative journalist, and Green Lantern who is also a galactic police officer (with whom he is friends for vague, unsubstantial reasons).

All of this is irrelevant, however, as for most of his page appearances he is relegated to the fast, funny guy for the team with the on-page depth of a potato, albeit a very quick potato.

Wonder Woman:

Possibly the most disappointing secondary member of the league, mostly because her appearances and role in the book have been used as a development tool for Steve Trevor. In the first few books, every character has their bad-ass first appearance moments, but then were all put backstage while Batman and Superman did all the hard thinking and had all of the interesting conversations. For a character that was raised on a magic island with an army of warrior women and who has fought with and against gods and other supernatural weirdos on the regular, you would think that her opinion would be more important. What happened to the Trinity?

It is fairly wonderful when the most powerful and significant female presence in the entire DC universe, possibly the most prominent female superhero in existence, and possibly the only prominent one that has been (at times) portrayed as a sexually ambivalent entity is, in the flagship book, completely viewed in relation to a man/men. And even when she leaves that man in issue 12 for almost entirely selfish reasons, she immediately moves on to Superman with whom there was extremely sparse relational history for no reason other than super-powered loneliness. She clearly has already experienced the events from her main title, because she knows that Zeus is her father, but she has also clearly forgotten everything that makes her character strong in that book. Johns doesn’t seem to know what to do with her, remembering her strength only when she needs to punch something and completely abandoning the character’s willingness to stand up to her entire nation, including a number of gods, for the sake of justice.

Steve Trevor:

Steve does only slightly better than Wonder Woman, having been given some fairly good character moments in his own right and already displaying more moral fortitude and strength than anyone in the actual league during the issues where he was captured/tortured. I actually care about this Steve Trevor who was nearly non-existent in the pre-reboot DCU. Fair play to Johns & Co. for writing him well, but they quickly rectified that good move by moving him to another book.

Aquaman:

DC almost fooled me. They almost made me believe that Aquaman was going to matter in the new DCU. Sure, in his individual book he is pretty awesome. He gets stuff done while bearing the weight of the entire world while everyone (including his former aqua-squad teammates) seems to dislike him. However, in this issue 12, which was widely advertised as “Aquaman steps up and takes charge” he gets berated and insulted by pretty much every single league member in the immediate area. Aquaman taking charge amounted to him putting his name in the hat for being the leader and being immediately and very patronizingly denied that opportunity. He seem to have been doing the superhero gig longer than anyone else in the league. He even has a dark past where he beat up ocean-themed enemies with a team of artifact-laden super pals. Cool. At every turn, Johns has consistently shown us that public opinion and even the opinion that the rest of the league has of him is still that of a joke while simultaneously Johns is trying to convince us that he is everything but. His joke-superhero reputation doesn’t seem to be based on anything but non-comic book preconceptions by the general public and the writers are doing nothing to try to change this by making jabs about talking to fish.

Aquaman has been seen as useless in past years because he has been written that way, he was never given the positive modern reworking that Batman, The Flash, or Wonder Woman was given (or attempted). Very few arcs in his nearly 72 year career have garnered significant acclaim and even great writers like Kurt Busiek and Peter David were only able to have minor revivals before experiencing sharp declines in quality. Instead of a proper story trying to re-imagine the character (its worked for Namor, it can work for Arthur Curry) he was given silly themed pets, a hook hand, and a beard. He doesn’t have that anymore. He’s interesting. He’s useful. They need to stop writing him as a burden and using him well.

Actually, my biggest problem in about Aquaman is that one man can create two very different versions of the same character, in the same universe, at the same time, and not seem to realize he’s doing it. New DCU Arthur Curry feels far too much like old DCU Hal Jordan. Maybe Johns is only good with one character model.

I get it. Batman and Superman are the most popular characters and are, in turn, going to get the best character moments and do the coolest things, but after 12 issues of the league standing around and talking about how awesome they all are, the most significant things anyone else has done is to watch admiringly at Bats & Supes, saying “Look how good he thinks!” or “Look how hard he can punch!” while fighting secondary baddies.

Have I mentioned that I hate that Superman doesn’t walk anymore?

The future of the series:

The hints at the end of issue 12 don’t leave me much hope for the book to improve.

• Amanda Waller might be my least favorite character in all of DC Comics. She is an entirely unlikable version of Nick Fury who operates under the sole assumption that the best backup plan is to find a way to kill everyone that can actually help. Her appearance gives me only apprehension.
• Apparently Gary Frank is taking over drawing duties until David Finch steps in, or at least that’s what it looks like. I should really read the news more.
• Wonder Woman and the rest of the league, if not written poorly, should never have a problem subduing someone like Cheetah.
• Aquaman is going to decide to try to save the world on his own with the Atlanteans, or he’s just going to attack the world Namor-style because nobody will take him seriously.
• I’m slightly interested to see the proper introduction of Captain Marvel …Shazam into the universe but I haven’t liked how much of a little jerk that they’ve been writing Billy as.
• A dangerous JLA? I’m glad that Manhunter is being brought into the fold, And Hawkman and Green Arrow are always good parts of the team. I love Stargirl being in there, but I wonder at her role because she was drawn sans-cosmic staff. I can even understand putting Steve Trevor and the new Green Lantern Baz in there, but you don’t need Catwoman on this team, you don’t need Katana on this team and you certainly don’t need Goggles McCrouchstare (Vibe) over in the corner…wasn’t he dead a couple times.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–

By the way, I call the Martian Manhunter fight irrelevant for a few reasons.

1. The flashback fight carries no importance, because we know that they beat him (kinda…at least they survive).
2. It would have been much better served as each of them meeting him separately, being beaten by him and them all having to fight him together later to realize that they need to work together. They could have actually used Manhunter as a Justice League proving ground.
3. The fight has no importance, because we know he’s not actually a bad guy (see: Stormwatch).
4. If it was a test by the Manhunter of the league’s preparedness to be the league, why would he only test them once?
5. Manhunter was always misused on the league because he was essentially a green Superman who could shapeshift. His main difference being one of the very few telepaths in the DCU. Instead of making him a villain, they could easily have changed up his power set and made him the watcher in the tower who coordinates their attacks. I don’t like an agressive, hostile J’onn J’onzz

All images were pulled through Google. None are my own scans of the comic.

Reviews of AQUAMAN VOL. 1: THE TRENCH and TEEN TITANS VOL. 1: IT’S OUR RIGHT TO FIGHT

The New 52 marches on with the release of two new revamped series. First, the long-mocked defender of the deep and King of Atlantis faces a horde of sharp-toothed wrenches from the briny depths. Then, N.O.W.H.E.R.E.’s hunting down teenage metahumans. Why? None can say, but Red Robin and his comrades rise to the occasion and the superpowered teenyboppers fight back.

Aquaman Vol. 1: The Trench

Whoo, boy, does Geoff Johns love writing generic white guys.

Between reviving Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, two characters who, while not originating their roles, certainly dominate public consciousness when anyone thinks Flash or Green Lantern, Johns has fallen into a slump of writing for your archetypal straightlaced male, whiter than the driven snow with the most blasé or typical of backstories. So it seems a natural move for Johns to write Arthur Curry, alias Aquaman, the half-Atlantean king of Atlantis. He’s blonde, he’s white, he’s blander than mayonnaise on white bread, and, hey! he even has daddy issues! After all, Johns has created some fantastic storylines using characters that initially died more or less because readers’ interest in their bland as paste personalities bottomed out. He takes the bland and makes it interesting. The same seemed to be coming true for Aquaman, so Johns seems a perfect match to pull Arty out of his slump and build an epic storyline for one of DC’s most underrated and underappreciated of heroes.

Of course, that wasn’t always the case. Indeed, many writers made the most of Aquaman’s badass potential, epitomized in the be-mulleted, hook-handed era of the character which ultimately made it to the Justice League animated series. This is a guy who can command great white goddamn sharks, krakens, and orcas for pity’s sake! Not to mention he’s the king of an entire underwater kingdom and has one of the greatest archenemies ever in Black Manta.

But, sad as it may be, Aquaman will never live down the legacy of Super Friends, the Hanna-Barbera produced cartoon which brought the Justice League of America to life and singlehanded proved Aquaman is the most useless superhero ever. Riding around on a giant seahorse, talking to fish through concentric circles, completely useless if separated from the sea and ocean life.

New 52 Aquaman operates under the assumption that both readers and the fictional public in-universe are only familiar with Aquaman via the Super Friends television series or, in fictional context, a reputation that amounts to such. In the first issue, Johns sets about dispelling several myths about the character. No, he doesn’t “talk” to fish, he commands them. Call him weak, he’ll flip an armored car over his head. No one’s “favorite superhero”? Since when have adulations meant anything to a true hero? Indeed, Johns goes out of his way to demonstrate how and why Aquaman is such a badass, leading one to wonder how he gained such a lackluster reputation in the New 52 universe if his actual actions in no way reflect his real life Super Friends reputation. But that bit of inconsistently swiftly gets shoved away as terrors emerge from the deep to combat Aquaman…

The book opens strongly with Aquaman thwarting a robbery in a small east coast town, surprising robbers and police alike with his unexpected feats of strength. We learn that this is Arthur Curry’s hometown, the place where his father raised him, long before he discovered his Atlantean roots and superpowers. Seeking to reconnect with his roots, Arthur takes up residence at the town’s lighthouse with his Atlantean bride Mera (their child and the majority of their history seemingly retconned out of existence). Meanwhile, strange humanoid creatures emerge from a deep water trench, their alien language speaking only of hunger and food. They fall upon a fishing vessel before, devouring its crew while marking others with bile, soon setting their sights on the sleepy seaside village where Aquaman has made his home.

Sound interesting? I would think so, too, but, sadly, the book is undone by its greatest weakness: Aquaman himself.

While Johns manages a few jokes at the expense of Aquaman’s Super Friends rep in the first issue, subsequent issues fail to establish any sort of personality for the guy. We get frequent flashbacks to his father — and a rather forced dream sequence of his father’s ghost taunting him about his origins and duty (the dialogue here causing physical pain) — but, beyond that, there’s dangerously little character belying the king of Atlantis. He’s supposed to be torn between his landed humanity and his Atlantean side beneath the sea, but we never see this struggle. Aquaman at one point seeks out the assistance of a man who once tried to kill him but, again, we never see this conflict. Rather, it’s told to us in dialogue and narration and the events that follow barely reflect these dramatic circumstances.

Moreover, Arthur’s interactions with people — police, local townspeople, etc. — feel stilted and awkward and it’s not quite clear how much of that awkwardness is intentional and how much of it is Johns’ inability to correctly convey stoicism. This doesn’t feel like the same character from Justice League. This doesn’t feel like the guy who summoned a horde of sharks to devour parademons mid air just to put Green Lantern in his place. This feels like some socially awkward weirdo (with an inexplicably hot girlfriend) found Aquaman’s costume and trident.

I use the phrase “generic white guy” to describe him and by that I don’t mean to say that non-white characters are inherently more interesting or more identifiable than white characters, only that Johns’ Aquaman falls into an archetype that has haunted comic books since Superman’s debut. Tall, straight-laced white males who, by whatever means, receive superpowers and become heroes while simultaneously maintaining a complete lack of personality or individual character. Typically, they have jobs which are inherently interesting — Hal Jordan’s test pilot background or, going further back in Lantern history, Alan Scott’s engineering background — but ultimately these professions serve to supplement a personality that simply isn’t there. Aquaman falls victim to this trap, focusing on the character’s external attributes — his history, his power, his reputation, his place in the DC universe — at the expense of the internal conflicts which drive the character, which motivate, which build a special relationship with the reader as they identify and grow alongside the character.

Fundamentally, the book’s emotional core is barren. If you don’t care about Aquaman, you don’t care whether he succeeds or fails. There’s no tension, no intrigue, no commitment. By no means is he actively reprehensible, but by no means is he interesting either which, in this case, is just as bad.

But it’s Aquaman’s longtime love interest, Mera, Queen of Atlantis, who gets the greatest disservice here. Reduced to little more than a soundboard for Arthur’s own struggles (what little of substance there is), she exhibits the same lack of personality while at the same time rests what few character traits she does have on Aquaman. Early on, when Aquaman abandons his duties as king of Atlantis (we never even get to see Atlantis) in favor of reconnecting with humanity, Mera, native Atlantean, alien amongst land dwelling humans, accepts this and joins him with no argument. Seems a bit convenient, wouldn’t you say? Her entire character is defined by her relationship to Aquaman and little else.

And, to add insult to injury, that relationship goes horribly underdeveloped. When did they meet? Why are they together? How did they fall in love? What do they adore about each other? What keeps them together despite coming from two very different societies? Johns refuses to give the reader any insight into how these two work as a couple or why Mera would give up her life in Atlantis for a life above the sea with the man she “loves”.

To give some credit, she does display a great deal of strength, at least physically, and can seemingly hold her own without Aquaman, fighting alongside him against the trench monsters. A recurring joke even has people constantly referring to Mera as “Aquawoman,” which annoys both Arthur and Mera, implying that Mera is defined by more than just her relationship to Aquaman (never mind that her other actions undermine that at every turn) and is no mere sidekick.

Of course, this is undone when Johns gives Mera her own issue in the latter half of the volume, a whole adventure amidst the alien human world that surrounds her. But while Aquaman gets to battle monstrous sea beasts from the abyss, Mera battles — what else? — sexism! Beginning with Mera’s sexual assault at the hands of a supermarket manager, she goes on to combat a wife killer holding his daughter hostage. Mera stops short of calling any male a “sperm bank” (thanks, Frank Miller’s Wonder Woman!) but the intentions here are obvious and no less insulting.

Because, as ever, some writers just can’t get it out of their head that female characters don’t always have to combat “women’s issues.” While Aquaman’s lack of personality leads only to boredom and disinterest, this reduction of Mera’s character is outright offensive, especially given the rank caricature of the sexual offender (honestly, even for a comic book, this guy’s behavior is way too transparent and sleazy) and the dramatic convenience of the wife killer. Just a bad day to be a woman in a sleepy seaside town, I guess. (A sleepy seaside town…which regularly encounters armored car heists and hostage situations…huh. Where the hell do these people live!?)

The only saving grace here is Ivan Reis’ artwork which depicts the trench monsters with terrifying detail and visual personality. Action scenes ring with force and panache, although his background characters leave something to be desired. It’s just a shame that penciling this good is propping up characters this flimsy and poorly developed.

It’s sad to see that something like this deserves a hardcover release in DC’s eyes while Swamp Thing can only be found in paperback. Worse, it’s sad to see DC’s chief creative officer’s talents waning so obviously. Johns has had his ups and downs before but between this and Batman: Earth One, he’s clearly running out of ideas. And the lack of interesting, high concept ideas leaves Johns’ typically weak, uninspired, and workmanlike dialogue fully exposed. Of all the Justice League member books yet published, this is the most forgettable and easily overlooked.

Teen Titans Vol. 1: It’s Our Right to Fight

Between Superboy and Red Hood and the Outlaws Scott Lobdell has demonstrated why he isn’t the best fit for these characters. He has no or little respect for their legacy and no grasp on the clashing ethos between DC’s stable of teenage heroes and the wunderkinds Lobdell wrote over at Marvel during his Generation X days. So, it should come as no surprise that Lobdell’s Teen Titans are composed of characters that could easily pass for Marvel archetypes. Almost all of them are runaways, one of them is a time traveler, one a mutating monster, and another a thief. Throw in an alien for good measure and you have the latest Marvel team-up.

Perhaps that’s an unfair comparison. After all, the DC universe isn’t bare of aliens, mutants, and heroes physically scarred by their superpowers, much less any previous Teen Titans incarnation. But then there’s also things like tone and character to consider. And from a tonal perspective, this book doesn’t feel like a Teen Titans book. The characterization doesn’t feel like DC characterization. Like Lobdell’s Superboy, we again have people goaded into heroism rather than pursuing it of their own volition, the defining trait of most every DC hero including the Titans.

But…is that so bad?

Again, we have the reboot to consider, the goal at the heart of it, to inject new life and new perspective into old characters and old teams. To do away with the stale and the bygone and substitute the new and the fresh.

Nice of Bruce to pose for this photo with Tim. It’s not often you can wrangle him into a Sears portrait, but, when you do, he sells it.

In that regard…we have a bit of a mixed bag.

It’s Our Right to Fight chronicles the assembly and creation of the first Teen Titans team (something that will clash with the continuity of Lobdell’s own Red Hood and the Outlaws but we’ll get there). Of course, these aren’t the teens we’ve known for so many years, seen as an impetuous Kid Flash causes a backdraft in a burning building, endangering himself as well as the firefighters as arrogance overrides scientific brilliance. Meanwhile, Tim Drake, alias Red Robin, monitors not only Kid Flash but several other teen heroes, all of whom he believes stalked by the secret organization N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (which you may remember from Superboy). Soon enough, N.O.W.H.E.R.E. agents track down Drake and force him out of hiding. Now on the shortlist, Red Robin embarks on a search for fellow teen heroes to unite and combat N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and their mysterious backers. These heroes include the returning Wonder Girl/Cassie Sandsmark and Solstice/Kiran Singh, as well as new characters Skitter and Bunker/Miguel Barragan.

Compared to Lobdell’s previous outing with Superboy, Teen Titans succeeds more often than it fails. Whereas Superboy remained insular and rarely interacted meaningfully with supporting characters around him, remaining suspicious and dissocial, Teen Titans focuses much more on the interpersonal relationships building between our team members. Each Titan has a well defined personality and we get a fair number of bonding moments between them throughout the book, though not as many as one would like for a new team just getting to know each other. In particular, Bunker barely rises about a caricature, flamboyant and sassy as any poorly written gay Hispanic male. (Try not rolling your eyes when Bunk exclaims “Fabuloso!” without a tinge of irony.) Nevertheless, Kid Flash’s veneer of arrogance eventually drops, Solstice displays a caring, nurturing side, Wonder Girl holds some typical thief-with-a-heart-of-gold traits but pulls through for the team when the time comes, and Tim Drake feels like Tim Drake, leading the team ably though with a cold edge, something he will no doubt combat and settle in following volumes.

The Titans’ conflict with N.O.W.H.E.R.E. earns some suitably action heavy moments, such as Superboy’s battle with Wonder Girl and the Titans’ assault on N.O.W.H.E.R.E.’s base. N.O.W.H.E.R.E. leaves something to be desired as a villain, however. They’re certainly no Trigon, but as their ulterior motives become more apparent with Lobdell’s coming Culling crossover event, they may have a few tricks to pull yet. In fact, that’s another thing Teen Titans has in its favor that many New 52 books seem to be missing: narrative direction and focus. This story feels like it’s going somewhere, building to something, whereas too many books hopscotch between one-off stories and incomplete narratives hinting at future plotlines without any forward momentum regarding character or plot development (see Resurrection Man…on second thought, don’t see Resurrection Man — it sucks).

What this book lacks is heroism. The Titans spend more time combating N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and its agents than fighting crime (albeit, most superheroes nowadays make their living battling clandestine organizations with vaguely evil motives than street-level crime). And, granted, N.O.W.H.E.R.E. isn’t the most benevolent of organizations but it would have been nice to see the Titans save a life or two that wasn’t their own. Again, this feels like an X-title: mutants protecting mutants — or meta-teens protecting meta-teens in this case. Little in the way of do-gooding, more in the way of self-preservation. Would it kill someone to rescue a kitten from a tree!?

Overall, the book has a very light and fun feel with none of the heavy-handed angst teen books easily fall into. There’s nothing overly offensive or moronic but the book doesn’t measure up to previous Titans runs and under Lobdell’s guiding hand, it likely won’t rise above the Generation X-lite status it earns in this volume.

For any longtime Teen Titans fan I can’t recommend this book; Lobdell either changes the personalities of established characters too radically (Superboy) or reverts them to points readers had long since past (Bart Allen/Kid Flash). The book doesn’t evoke any of the spirit or character that earned previous series their fanbases. Though that isn’t to say it lacks spirit or character and, for any new readers, particularly anyone making the jump from Marvel to DC, there’s still plenty to enjoy here — lighthearted action, fun characters, and a well-plotted narrative.

The day of the reboot has come. It was largely a disappointment, but I don’t really know anyone who was expecting it to be anything other than complete garbage.

I suppose I’ll start with the end, rather than the beginning.

Flashpoint #5
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art by ANDY KUBERT, SANDRA HOPE, and JESSE DELPERDANG

In a word…or three: I hate it.

This was a mess. Let me just start out by saying SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS because if you don’t know the story and conclusion of Flashpoint, you’re going to in a second. Secondly, TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE because it was everything I really wished it wasn’t.

The buildup that started way back when with Flash #1 in June 2010 was actually very good and pretty interesting. Barry Allen of the future kills the Mirror Master because he was going to kill Iris or some such. It was actually the Top whose motivations are to stop his ancestor’s criminal record from getting him barred from becoming a time cop (which he already was) and some such that I don’t really remember but it was an interesting little mystery story. The end of that 6 issue arc referenced some changes to the timestream and some things going on that made it that led directly in to Flashpoint. Now, problem the first, the changes to the timestream seemed to be limited to Wonder Woman having a different costume, Darkseid sending Bruce back in time with the Omega effect, Lex Luthor meeting Death, Deadman with the White Lantern Ring, and what looked like the Dread Pirate Roberts fighting another pirate…not a lot that spells out “TIME DISASTER!” to me. Even if you take into account the mess that was Time Masters: Vanishing Point to try to explain everything, you only get the idea that Darkseid messed something up. None of the other items belong on that board really. Does a costume change really mean a glitch in the timesteam?

Now, I suppose we’re supposed to believe that there are two, distinct timelines being viewed here, or at least 2 of the 3 mentioned in Flashpoint #5. This, however, is unclear, because in a splashpage in #5, we see what looks to be the rebooted timeline (#1), the pre-reboot timeline (#2), and the Wildstorm timeline (which is not, in fact, a timeline but is apparently another universe of some sort) (#3). I must note that nowhere in this mix is the actual timeline created during Flashpoint (#4). So that leaves us with at least 5 “timelines” (including the broken one from Flash #6 from whence Hot Pursuit came) . This is either a gross oversight by the artist, poor planning, or evidence that they don’t know what the frak they’re doing.

To quell some argument: Yes, I’m being this picky. No, this isn’t being overly analytic of the comic because Flashpoint, JLA, The Flash, and Brightest Day are all written by the same man who has a responsibility to keep his damn story straight or let somebody else take the reigns.

TL;DR: It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Now, the book itself. The issue is mostly a huge argument between Flash and Reverse Flash about how the Flash ruined everything by trying to change time. The entire reason for Flashpoint’s existence is explained pretty swiftly over two panels. Barry Allen was sad because he learned that Rev. Flash killed his mother in the past. In a flashback that we never actually saw in comic books and is referenced for the first time on page three here, we see The Flash go back in time to stop The Reverse Flash. Apparently, Allen did some hooba jooba with the Speed Force and caused a massive timesplosion that created the Flashpoint universe.

Now, to the weakest part of the story, the part where Eobard Thawne reveals that he’s an absolute dick. He wanted Barry to remember, he could do it at any time and make him suffer in the knowledge that he caused all this. He could have done that before Barry had the help of Batman and could have done it without anyone’s knowledge and thus made the entirety of Flashpoint obsolete (because, honestly, the end of the issue does that anyways).

Rev. Flash also pointedly states that he is now immune to time…apparently. Because of the fact that he was traveling through time when Barry changed it, the rules of time no longer apply to him. To make a point, THAT’S NOT HOW TIME TRAVEL WORKS! I get it, comic books have free reign over the laws of physics and the rules of the universe. The second you travel through time, you become immune to time travel. You create infinite alternate universes every instance that you step out of the normal stream of time.By the simple act of going back in time to kill someone, you would create a universe in which you kill them, while leaving the original completely untouched.

Thawne uses this new knowledge to beat the Flash to a bloody pulp (because The Flash, trained fighter with the Justice League, suddenly cannot fight worth a damn). He claims that he now has eternal double jeopardy for Barry Allen and there will never ever be any repercussions for killing him. However, Batman, once again proving to be the only effective hero in the DCU, Bat-impales him on his Bat-sword.

Some other stuff that doesn’t really matter happens. Superman/boy shows up and punches people, Flash runs really fast to stop himself from running really fast, and a creepy phantom lady head tells the Flash that he done messed up. Time hits the restart button, Barry wakes up and makes Bruce Wayne cry with a Bat-letter from his future/not-future daddy.

Rating: 5/10 (If only because Reverse Flash gets Bat-sword-ed)

FIN.

Justice League #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art by JIM LEE

Similarly messy to Flashpoint #5, was its progeny, Justice League #1.

Now, this story takes place 5 years prior to any of the events of the rest of the reboot. This doesn’t immediately condemn the story to being awful because you can do a few “how they met” episodes and I’ll be just fine. It didn’t bother me in Lost and it don’t bother me now if they want to show me how they first met. DC wants new fans and I won’t begrudge them the effort, but as a long-time fan, don’t expect me to fawn over another gorram origin story.

An origin story that feels terrifyingly similar to All-Star Batman & Robin. However, this is a story without the goddamn Batman and lemonade, this story has a dickish (but still kinda awesome) Batman and a jerkass Hal Jordan. It also reveals pre-Cyborg Vic Stone for 4 pages of awkward father issues, and a Superman that might need a high-five for hurtin’ the face of Johns’ baby GL. Still no sign of Wonder Woman or Aquaman, though I really quite liked the rejected sketch in the back of the issue with Aquaman’s crustacean armor.

In relation to the rest of the reboot, this book doesn’t tell us much. The world seems to be a bit more hostile to superheroes in general, which I’m ok about, I guess it explains why there are so many “covert-ops” teams in the 52. Hal seems to have a much better grasp on being a Green Lantern, which might make some interesting reading for the main GL series. Bruce is a bit of an ass (Jordan DID deserve it) but at the end of Flashpoint he seemed like an alright dude when talking to Barry. Does he soften up a bit in the 5 years between Justice League #1 and now? Does Damien warm his heart to the cold, cruel world? Do rhetorical questions ever solve anything? The answer to all is a big ol’ MAYBE.

Final Thoughts:
1) GCPD has some damn nice equipment. Gatling guns, at least three helicopters, state-of-the-art body armor and uniform decals, irrational prejudice, Stormtrooper-like aim, real karate chop action, etc.
2) WHY IS BATMAN PUNCHING THE BUILDING WITH HIS CAPE!?!?INTERROBANG?!?!
3) Alien’s fire-breath-thingy also seems to be fire-butt-thingy.
4) By removing Hal’s ring, did Batman realize that the fires all over Gotham aren’t being put out anymore.
5) Bonus: Hal Jordan’s ring constructs show a bit of imagination.
6) I get the feeling that the little boxy thingy that they pulled out of the wall is going to be a portal for Darkseid/Reverse Flash/anyone they want because its a plot loophole/Nekron to return and for Hal Jordan to get heroically whisked away into not-being-around-land.
7) I’m going to stencil “Hustle, Hit, Never Quit” on my wall.
8) Superman’s punch is strange to me. Its blue and red, so it must mean that he flew into Jordan. However, he is seen walking out of the building a second later, so it seems that he is being intentionally deceptive about his speed to hide how fast he is.
9) In the confrontation with Supes, Bruce is clearly in the middle of an open area, but in the last panels, behind him is seen building, and he’s looking at Superman who is framed by building. This new DC universe has Chia-like buildings “Just add superheroes, and watch them grow!”
10) Every individual character sketch but Superman’s has a better costume/look than the final that they went with.

Rating: 6/10 (There is potential here. Somewhere beneath the madness, there is potential)

Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll post another bit about the books this week that I liked. Warning: there will be fawning over the ground that Warren Ellis treads.

Sorry I’m late everyone!

Most of these reviews have been me expressing my grave hopes that the writers/artists don’t screw it up. I want these books to succeed. I want them to be good, and I want these characters to thrive, but I absolutely have no idea about how they’re going to be. I say “I don’t know” a lot because there’s no way that I can know if Jim Lee will put out more than 4 books a year because he’s busy playing WOW, or whether Scott Lobdell is going to give us another Onslaught or (hopefully) another Generation X. All I can do is sit back and try not to cry as I wait for DC to implode or shine.

18. Red Lanterns #1
Written by PETER MILLIGAN
Art and Cover by ED BENES and ROB HUNTER

Peter Milligan has done a lot of books that I’ve really liked. Hellblazer, Shade, and Human Target were all great books under him and I’m excited as all get out for Justice League Dark. However, my excitement does not carry on to Red Lanterns. He’s a more-than-capable writer and I’m sure that he can put out a great story with this book, but I’m just not interested in the the book to begin with. A polished turd is still a turd, as the saying goes. Ed Benes doesn’t do much to help my spirits about Red Lanterns, either. There aren’t nearly enough scantily clad women for him to be entirely happy drawing it, so I imagine that Bleez is going to get a lot of page-time, and she’s a poor character to begin with.

The idea is flawed from the start because The Red Lanterns simply aren’t interesting enough to carry their own series. People will pick this up to see Dex-Starr (Sharp-O, I’m looking at you) but Atrocitus & Co. are going to be superheroes that straight up murder people? Don’t advertise the book as a “hero” book if they’re not heroes.

Verdict: NO DOOM FOR YOU!

19. Animal Man #1
Written by JEFF LEMIRE
Art by TRAVEL FOREMAN and DAN GREEN

Essex County, The Nobody, and Sweet Tooth are all books that I’ve read and loved. I’m enjoying Superboy at the moment for what it is, but I think that Jeff Lemire has a while to go before he knows exactly how to handle a superhero book. Superboy is written well because its small-town rural and that’s what Lemire does best. Animal Man, at least the re-imagining that Morrison masterminded a while back, was small-family ideals but he dealt with some off-the-wall kind of madness as a superhero.

Animal Man became an examination of comic book writing under Morrison. Something that Milligan tried to distance himself from slightly, while still maintaining that this book was more about the nature of being a superhero than it was about actually being a superhero. With this in mind, I think Lemire can do some great things with this book. I can see great stories coming from Buddy dealing with his daughter having superpowers, and trying to be a father, something that wasn’t really addressed in Morrison’s issues (he dealt with the husband aspect more). I probably won’t pick this book up for purely budgetary reasons. I just can’t justify it enough to read it without knowing anything about it.

Verdict: POSSIBLE DOOM!

20. Swamp Thing #1
Written by SCOTT SNYDER
Art and Cover by YANICK PAQUETTE

Not much in comics can compete with Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. Not much in anything can really compete with that run. Snyder has proven himself to be a damn good writer. I already sang his praises in the last book so I shall avoid being repetitive so I shall avoid being repetitive (*snicker*). The first exposure that I had to Yanick Paquette was in Batman Inc. and I wasn’t really a fan of his chin work but other than that it was some damn fine comics.

I like the direction that DC is taking by bringing Holland back to life, because why not? No death is sacred, even if it is fairly key to the character’s origin. I can promise you that it is the only reason Uncle Ben hasn’t come back to life. I’ll pick this book up just to see where Snyder takes it, but probably not for long.

Verdict: DOOM!

21. Legion Lost #1
Written by FABIAN NICIEZA
Art and Cover by PETE WOODS

Nicieza gained a fan in me during Red Robin. Pete Woods gained a fan in me during Deadpool and more recently Action Comics. His art was by far the best thing about the New Krypton arcs in Superman. I have no worries for either of them. The story is what bothers me.

Legion Lost is about a team of randoms from the future who come back to be a secret superteam of randoms from the future. The team consists of Wildfire, Dawnstar, Tellus, Timber Wolf, Tyroc, Chameleon Girl and Gates. I am not a Legion academic, so I have very little (read: none whatsoever) idea who these characters are. Doesn’t matter really, it actually makes me want to read the book more because its something absolutely new to me, much like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (by the way, where the hell is Nick Spencer in this whole mess?). I’ll probably mooch a copy of a friend who I know loves the legion and stay up to date that way, at least until I know if its good or bad.

Verdict: POSSIBLE DOOM!

22. Birds Of Prey #1
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Art and Cover by JESUS SAIZ

Duane Swiercskfealknskalkndkszyki has done mostly Marvel work, so this is going to be his first shot at a DC property, but aside from O.M.A.C. this might be the weakest title that DC is offering in the reboot. His comics are generally solid, but there haven’t been many long arcs in his history. His novels (which I haven’t read) seem to get some good reviews for having strong female characters…so there’s that. Jesus Saiz doesn’t stand out in my mind. I know I’ve read his work before, but it wasn’t anything that made me remember his name. I’m guessing that says enough but maybe it says that I need to do more research before I give unqualified opinions on art that I couldn’t possibly do myself…maybe…(I like ellipses).

The team is sans Oracle and sans Huntress, but it has Katana and what looks like Poison Ivy but who I’ve heard is not actually Poison Ivy, or at least the Ivy that we know. I hear lots of things. I have many hands in many rumor-filled soups. This book will probably be bad. I can’t see how it won’t be.

Verdict: NO DOOM FOR YOU!

23. Teen Titans #1
Written by SCOTT LOBDELL
Art and Cover by BRETT BOOTH and NORM RAPMUND

Oh, the cover. So much has been said about the cover of this issue. From the terrifyingly bad Tim Drake wing-costume, to Kid Flash’s lightning aura, to Superboy’s unexplainable tattoo and “kick-me” sign on the back of his cut-off muscle shirt, its just a whole lotta bad. The preview revealed more to be scared about as Wonder Girl is now a “powerhouse thief” and the team is now characterized as “tortured teen heroes”. Scott Lobdell is starting out at the bottom of a well of awful ideas and I don’t think he has it in him to climb out of it.

With just the cover alone, Brett Booth has me on the defensive. He, as a Wildstorm artist, comes from the Liefeld school of “angry faces and lots of detail lines = AWESOME” which I’m okay with sometimes, really. I’ve read some of his work and quite enjoyed it. If Anita Blake was written better, I might have considered reading it regularly. I just don’t know how I feel about this book. Half of me screams in terror to run as fast as I can away from it. The other half desperately wants to continue reading a book with Tim Drake in it. I wish they had continued Red Robin instead of Superboy, because honestly, it was the best book DC was putting out over the past 3 years.

Verdict: POSSIBLE DOOM!

24. The Savage Hawkman #1
Written by TONY S. DANIEL
Art and Cover by PHILIP TAN

Tony Daniel, no thank you. Philip Tan, on the other hand, I really like. I wish he was paired up with a more compelling writer on a better book.

Hawkman is one of those DC Wesley characters. They’ve tried to reboot him so many times and met with failure every time that there has to be some sort of conspiracy. He hasn’t been interesting since the Rann/Thanagar books a few years ago and even then, he took a backseat to pretty much everyone else. It looks as though this is a complete reboot of the character, so no Shi’ara and no conflict with Hawk-gods that took up so much space in Brightest Day. They realized how much of a dead end that storyline was, why is he even still around.

Verdict: NO DOOM FOR YOU!

25. Blue Beetle #1
Written by TONY BEDARD
Art by IG GUARA and RUY JOSE

On one hand, Bedard wrote R.E.B.E.L.S. which I really enjoyed (and hate typing out), on the other hand, he wrote a run on Green Lantern Corps that (along with Geoff Johns’ insistence on Hal Jordan) made me give up on the Lantern books altogether. I think he will do great things with Jamie Reyes if he has the freedom to do it. Guara has done a lot of work on Hulk and Pet Avengers which will lend well to the more comedic and less polished character that is Blue Beetle. A surprisingly solid choice for this reboot.

I’m absolutely thrilled that Reyes is getting his own book again. John Rogers and Cully Hamner, and Keith Giffen put together an interesting character that should, in all honesty, be a part of the Teen Titans. I think him and Kid Flash would play off each other in the same way that Booster Gold and the old Blue Beetle would. DC seems to hate him though, might be DiDio and his unabashed evilness pulling against minority characters or it might be a grand statement about the prejudiced subconscious mind of the average American and their disinclination towards any change, even positive…but probably more the DiDio thing.

Verdict: DOOM!

26. Supergirl #1
Written by MICHAEL GREEN and MIKE JOHNSON
Art and Cover by MAHMUD ASRAR

Michael Green and Mike Johnson haven’t done anything to win me over, but I like them anyway for being named so very well. Asrar isn’t named as well as us…them, but he has drawn Dynamo 5 which makes him a winner in my book.

I really want to read this book, but again, this might be a casualty of my lack of unlimited funds. I don’t really mind the costume change, as odd as it is. The way the promo reads, it looks like she’s going to have quite an antagonistic relationship with Earth, which makes me wonder why she’s around in the first place. If she dislikes the people of Earth, and she’s already a moody teenager, then why give her a book. Develop her in someone else’s book as a background character, then give her something of her own.

Verdict: POSSIBLE DOOM!

27. Wonder Woman #1
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO
Art and Cover by CLIFF CHIANG

Yes. Absolutely yes. This was one of the few books (the others being Stormwatch, Demon Knights, Voodoo, and Nightwing) that I absolutely knew that I was going to pick up from the get go. Azzarello has had some bumpy experience with superhero books (Superman) but he also wrote the hell out of Batman in Black & White and Joker, and 100 Bullets is enough to make me trust everything he puts out. Cliff Chiang, well I don’t know what to say other than I will read anything that he’s drawn. He’s amazing.

So, yes, despite not caring much about Wonder Woman and not having read very many good stories about her, I think that I am going to love this book. Cheers to DC for this, honestly. They finally got their heads out of their ass and decided to give Wonder Woman the attention she deserves.

Verdict: DOOM!

28. Fury Of Firestorm #1
Written by ETHAN VAN SCIVER and GAIL SIMONE
Art by YILDIRAY CINAR

I love Gail Simone. I’ve said this. I stand by this. Yildiray Cinar has done some great work on Noble Causes, which I read because of a vehement friend. I have a few of those. Van Sciver, I’m less familiar with. I read his Flash: Rebirth books, but that’s all of his that I know.

Firestorm himself has long been one of my favorites. Ronnie was one of my favorite characters during my long trek through back issues to catch up on DC history. Jason brought a new dimension to the character that I liked. Very different relationship and I’m glad that both of them are still around. I’m gonna miss the doc, but both of them together, figuring everything out sounds like a good match. I’m also pretty OK with the age change on both of them. It makes a bit more sense than Ronnie being mid-twenties and Jason being a teenager.

Verdict: DOOM!

29. Aquaman #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and Cover by IVAN REIS and JOE PRADO

Johns has steadily become crazier over the past few years. Not just crazier, but more insistent that whoever he likes, everybody should like and that I cannot abide with a happy heart. However, I am a glutton for punishment and I will continue to read his books until they become unreadable. Reis, is wonderful and lovely and squishy and I’m a fan. I would read something he drew just for the splash pages.

I’ve wanted Aquaman to have a book where he isn’t a chump for a while. I don’t know what version of him they’re going to use for this, some amalgamation of Flashpoint Aquaman and regular old Arthur Curry, but I’m glad he seems to be on the right track to be a leading, dynamic character.

Verdict: DOOM!

30. Mr. Terrific #1
Written by ERIC WALLACE
Art by ROGER ROBINSON

No interest in this book. Whatsoever. Wallace hasn’t written anything that I cared about. Robinson did a lot of good work in the late 90’s & early 00’s, and The Web was a fun read, but its not enough to bring me to read it.

The cover is pretty, and Mr. Terrific is a great addition to any team. But when does the third smartest man in the world need his own comic book. Marvel is already doing the science superhero and I gotta say, I don’t think that this is going to be any better than the Fantastic Four has been, or even Amadeus Cho, or even Hank Pym in the Mighty Avengers. DC is trying to do that, but I just don’t know how well this was thought out. This seems like more of an effort to fill their deeply dry coffer of minority characters. Some work, this doesn’t.

Verdict: NO DOOM FOR YOU!

31. The Flash #1
Written by FRANCIS MANAPUL and BRIAN BUCCELLATO
Art and Cover by FRANCIS MANAPUL

When I heard that Manapul was going to be back on The Flash, I was excited. When I heard that it wasn’t going to be Geoff Johns writing it, I was even more excited. But I’m on a cosmic treadmill of excitement at the moment, speeding forward to nowhere, waiting and hoping that this book is not going to be more of the same Barry Allen worship and frustrating bull-puckey that led into Flashpoint. I loved, absolutely loved the first 6 or 7 issues of the Johns/Manapul Flash, but that quickly turned into more vagaries and references to how important Barry Allen is and how much you should forget Wally West (Wally who?). I’ll drop this book quicker than a Robert Kirkman plot twist if they go back to that. By the way, Manapul, not a tested writer, Buccellato, also not a tested writer. I don’t know where DC is going with this, but I hope that it works out, because they’re putting a hell of a lot of faith in these artists to carry DC out of the red.

In regards to the story, I still don’t care very much about Barry Allen. I miss Wally West with a passion because he was MY FLASH; just like David Tennant is MY DOCTOR and no other Doctor Who will probably be the same, because he was the one who I experienced as I formulated my idea of who The Flash should be. Wally West was fun, and exciting, and entertaining and Barry is just dour and methodical and a boyscout. I don’t want to read about a boyscout. I WAS a boyscout. I don’t need to live through that again. I will, however, read this book for an issue or two if only because I hope to see more scenes of The Flash running across some helicopter blades to catch a baddie.

Verdict: DOOM!

32. Green Arrow #1
Written by J.T. KRUL
Art by DAN JURGENS and NORM RAPMUND

J.T. Krul. What can I say that hasn’t been said better by other people? Like here, and here. I’m sure that he’s done some good comics work at some point, I just haven’t read it. I stopped reading Titans when he was on it. I stopped reading Green Arrow when he was on it. Its not some causal link other than I just plain dislike how he writes. Its heavy-handed and so very on the nose sometimes. I so very much want him to surprise me with something, and not something like The Rise of Arsenal. A good surprise. A “extra slice of bacon between my pancakes at Denny’s” surprise. Jurgens is a solid artist and I trust his penciling much more than his writing most of the time.

As a character, Green Arrow never really interested me. My childhood summation of him was “Batman, with a bow and arrows, and he’s a jerk.” Maybe simplistic, but my opinion of him hasn’t really changed in that I like the idea of him much more than I actually like him. He does well in books like Identity Crisis where he shares the spotlight, or in Justice League books, but not so much in his own series. The only arc of his that I can remember enjoying is Kevin Smith’s and that’s mostly because its the only arc that I’ve actually finished. If someone can recommend a series of his that would make me a fan, please do, because I’m at a loss on Mr. Queen.

Verdict: NO DOOM FOR YOU!

33. Justice League International #1
Written by DAN JURGENS
Art by AARON LOPRESTI and MATT RYAN

Dan Jurgens has done quite a lot of writing that, despite flaws, I’ve enjoyed. I certainly liked the original Justice League International stories, so while this is a fresh sort of look, I like that he has quite a bit of experience with the attitude that it should have. His Booster Gold run was fun throughout, his short arc of Metamorpho was pretty fantastic, his work on 52 was great, and I even enjoyed his little Time Masters thing last year because it actually explained some things…but then of course you have The Death and Return of Superman, Superman Red/Blue and Zero Hour which were all fairly messy to say the least. I just hope that he can put out some quality while being artist on another book because that’s certainly something I’ve never seen done. As for Lopresti, I usually like his work a lot more pre-ink, but that’s not really his fault, and Matt Ryan is an unknown factor for me (but the quick Google search yielded some pretty nice results).

Okay, so DC is obviously treating this team as though Justice League International has never happened before. This is the first time that the Justice League has been petitioned by the UN to form a standing team in Europe, and Maxwell Lord seems to be nowhere at the moment to give them sponsorship so they probably won’t be strapped for cash. The team seems to be a bit slapdash, however, made up of the “original” International team plus whoever hasn’t already been scavenged from Checkmate. They’re obviously trying to fill their quota with the International superheroes, which I suppose is the right direction for this team: Tormented-and-bemetalled Chinese August General, stereotypical Brazilian model Fire, generalized Norse-woman Ice, slightly-less-generalized African Vixen, painfully-Russian Rocket Red, Batman, Guy Gardner, and Booster Gold. There might be some great stories to be told with this team, but I’m not sure if I want to put out the $2.99 for it.

Verdict: POSSIBLE DOOM!

34. Captain Atom #1
Written by J.T. KRUL
Art by FREDDIE WILLIAMS II

J.T. Krul…no. Freddie Williams, If you’re reading this, and I know you are, I’m sorry. You’re a great artist and I love your style, but I’m just not going to pick up a book with a writer who is so clearly off his rocker, I tried that with Alan Moore and Neonomicon.

I’ve always been kind of intrigued by Captain Atom. Mostly because for the longest time I had no idea who he was. The 90’s incarnation of him, when I started reading comics as a young’n, was a bit…Silver Surfer meets Booster Gold. He seemed mostly useless in any fight, but in dire moments was seemingly all-powerful. I just never really cared to find out who he was. After a bit of research in my earlier comic book days, I was very right to not care. The talk about this book leads me to the same jokes that everyone has been making, but all the same, I can’t help but imagine this Dr. Manhattan-analogue swinging throught-manifested cat-nunchaku around on the surface of Mars. That is not a pleasant thing to be floating around in ones head when one is in a staff meeting trying my, I mean one’s, hardest to be a good employee and not be distracted by shiny things on the wall. Not one bit. If you’re at all wondering, I won’t be picking this book up. J.T. Krul has done me wrong in the past, hell, he’s done comic books in general wrong in the past. I’m going to have to hear some major praise by quite a few of the right people to give this a second look; unlikely, as no reader that I’ve talked to has suggested even a passing interest in paying for this book.

Verdict: NO DOOM FOR YOU!

TOTAL FOR BOOKS:

DOOM! – 13
POSSIBLE DOOM! – 11
NO DOOM FOR YOU! – 10

Nothing new from this second batch. Just more team books, and more books that are a bit premature.

Join me next week as I tackle the final 18 books and give my review of JLA #1.