Premature Evacuation: Justice League Dark #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers, and saying that backwards won’t make them go away.

We’re six issues into Justice League Dark now, and Peter Milligan is finally putting the actual team (mostly) together after an interminable rampup of what seemed like dozens of tiny solo adventures of the DC Universe’s most Vertigo-like heroes… just in time for a forced crossover with I, Vampire and Milligan leaving the book. Thanks a lot, Pete. Your timing sucks.

At the end of the last issue, we finally had Constantine, Deadman, Shade, Zatanna et al in one place… just in time for each of them to say, “Fuck you, Charlie” (Or in Zatanna’s case, “Eilrahc, uoy kcuf”) and disperse to the four winds. And now they’re all having nightmares; Constantine dreams of London on fire and it being his fault. Zatanna dreams of monsters putting fingers in her mouth (Meaning that, based on finger placement, her definition of nightmare has a lower threshold than mine). Deadman dreams that Dove is dead, unlike most comic fans who have been praying that Hawk would also take the dirtnap.

Adrienne, Warrior Princess: Review of Princeless #1 – #4

If you haven’t read any of the four issues of Action Lab’s comic series Princeless, stop reading this review and go buy them.  Right now, I’ll wait.  You back?  Good.  A princess who is fed up with the locked-in-a-tower trope opts to rescue herself, rather than wait for some charming irritating prince to come along.  That’s my kind of princess.

When her mother reads her a fairy tale as a child, Princess Adrienne is aghast, and makes it perfectly clear how she feels about the typical princess.  Cut to her teenage years, where she is now living the “fairy tale” life: locked in a tower by her domineering father The King, and guarded by Sparky (the cutest dragon ever!)  Shortly after berating and summarily dismissing her most recent suitor, she finds a sword hidden in her room and begins forming a plan to escape and rescue her sisters, who are locked in towers of their own.

Stone Cold Killer – Review Of The Flash #6

The Flash is another one of those books that finds its way into the house that I rarely get around to reading. It’s really Rob‘s thing, more than my own. Not that I particularly dislike the character; hell, I got a kick out of watching him run around the globe in order to pick just the right amount of steam to punch Lex Luthor in the face in Justice League Unlimited. However, my DC superhero tastes tend to run to characters with the word “bat” somewhere in their names and there is no “Batflash”…and if there was it sounds more like a euphemism for an evening of rooftop sex between Bruce and Selina that ends in disappointment.

With Flash issue 6, “Best Served Cold”, I find myself again picking up a book that is smack in the middle of a story arc. And, I do mean “smack” and “in the middle” – as the book opens, The Flash is engaged in an all out brawl with Captain Cold on a frozen lake (? – I always assumed Central City was somewhere out in fly over country), with a boat themed restaurant teetering from a giant stalagmite made from ice that is protruding from the lake’s surface. Will The Flash save the trapped restaurant patrons in time? And why does Captain Cold’s beef with The Flash seem so much more personal this time?

Ahead, prepare yourself for the cold fist of spoilers. Or don’t. Whatever.