The Owls Are Not What They Seem: Batman #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers about Batman #2. Spoilers I wouldn’t have to reveal if the creative team had been a little more specific in Batman #1. You’ve been warned.

So there’s one theory down the shitter.

With one throwing knife from a dude in an owl costume, it appears we can bid a fond farewell to mayoral candidate Lincoln March and my prediction that he would become a supervillain named The March Hare. Which, I suppose, makes sense considering that DC has revealed that the villain in The Dark Knight #3 is going to be a chick called The White Rabbit (pictured here).

And while a crazed villain with the power of the mayor’s office behind him would normally seem somewhat more threatening than a top-heavy babe spilling out of a corset with two convenient handles on her head, considering since the New 52 started we’ve seen – literally, SEEN – Batman bone two different chicks with the same body type, I’m guessing we’ll see The White Rabbit be far more effective at making Batman go down. Er, taking Batman down. Whatever. I’m digressing again.

Batman #2, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, simultaneously continues the fine form shown in Batman #1 while showing the inherent weaknesses in writing comics for the trade, particulaly when that comic is a detective story.

For The Horde – I Mean The Sinestro Corps! DC Universe Online Legends #16 Review

If you’re one of those people who’s screaming self-righteously that there was no need for DC’s New 52 and that everything was fine in the old DC Universe and that your book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland will be available in paperback in November, you do still have an option available… kinda.

Since the launch of the DC Universe Online massive multiplayer online roleplaying game back in January, DC has been putting out what should amount to a three-dollar advertisement to the game: DC Universe Online Legends. It’s an old instinct for these MMORPG companies: people love the continuing stories in the game, so make some quick bank by putting out a comic based on the continuing stories in the game! It’s the kind of cross-media pollination to create market synergy that makes marketing people hard and other people want to set marketing people on fire.

Almost exclusively, these books fail on both a marketing and artistic level, because the publishers generally treat them like what they are: a financed, short-term cash-grab. Seriously: what talent are you going to put on a book with characters you don’t that’ll be canceled the day the game servers get shut down? Frank Miller? Yeah, try Francois Jean-Baptiste Charlemagne Milloirse, and even then only if he agrees to run his own script through Babelfish to save on translation costs.

So DC Universe Online Legends should suck… except DC owns these characters, they have a financial interest in how well the game does, and the marketing actually makes sense: if someone who never read comics tries the game (Let’s say his friends told him there were girls in there – there aren’t, by the way), there’s at least a CHANCE that they could wander into a comic store looking to learn more.

The upside to this for comic fans is that the development cycle of an MMORPG is significantly longer than it takes for Dan DiDio to say, “Fuck it! DO-OVER!”, which means that if you have a rage-on over the fact that Superman’s underpants aren’t on the outside anymore, this book has been a safe haven. In addition, since DC has a vested interest in making the book at least decent, they started out by putting A-List talent like Marv Wolfman on the book.

With that said, Marv’s arc on the book is over, and the game just put out an expansion pack containing a bunch of Green Lantern stuff, so DC Universe Online #16 is just a Green Lantern story. And since Green Lantern was hardly affected at all by the New 52 reboot, you’re not going to be able to tell the difference between this book and the DCnU proper.

Still, this is a pretty good book if you’re a Green Lantern fan.

Little Pieces Parts: Fear Itself #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. It’s a comic book where the good guys win. You have been warned.

Fear Itself #7, the ultimate chapter (Except for Fear Itself 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3, and don’t forget the Shattered Heroes followup) of Marvel’s tentpole event crossover of 2011 (Except for Spider-Island and X-Men: Schism), has everything you want from a book like this: a giant fight scene. Costume changes. A major character death. Iconic characters acting all iconic.

Yep, Fear Itself covers all the bases that the granddaddy of all crossover events, Secret Wars, threw down. It checks off all the boxes that Crisis On Infinite Earths put on the checklist. It mixes in all the ingredients that Civil War put in the recipe.

(Rob: Omit needless words. – Amanda)

Fine. It’s fucking formulaic, okay?

This Is Not The Event: Black Panther #524 Review

And, as often happens, here’s one last review from last week before the comic store opens with this week’s new books…

The Big Two publishers often wonder why so many readers complain about Event Fatigue. Well, here’s the best example I’ve seen of a major self-dickstomping problem with event comics in recent memory.

Last month, Marvel released Black Panther #523.1. The “.1” is meant to indicate that the issue is a self-contained one-and-done tale, unladen by continuity. The “.1” is Marvel telling potential readers that the issue is a safe “jumping-on” point for the book; that if you start here, you can continue reading future issues without confusion.

Black Panther #523.1 was a tight little story about a street-level urban crimefighter and his partner working with, and sometimes against, the cops in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen to apprehend a costumed serial killer. It was dark, moody, and maintained the tone that writer David Liss has been infusing the book with since he took it over after last year’s Shadowland event.

Perfect jumping-on issue, right? Let’s say you read #523.1, liked it, and came back this month to see what happened after last month’s brutal alley brawl. You pull issue 524 off the shelf, hoping for a little of the pulpy action the last issue led you to expect and…

Huh. So Black Panther has six arms now?

Pretty Colors And a Powerful Stink: Tom Morello’s Orchid #1 Review

Can’t… make an F-chord on the guitar that sounds like anything but shit.
– Stephen King, Misery

When it comes to Dark Horse Comics’ Orchid #1, I want to give writer Tom Morello the benefit of the doubt, the way I did a few years back when Scott Ian from Anthrax wrote a couple of issues of Lobo for DC Comics. I really do.

After all, based on Morello’s interview with Rolling Stone last week, he grew up a comic geek just like Ian and the rest of us. And what with me being a former FM rock radio DJ, I will gladly admit that Morello gets sounds out of a guitar that neither I nor Scott Ian could get out of a woman with a million dollars in blood diamonds, a vibrator and a non-Irish dick.

And Morello’s even coughing up an original song you can download with every issue, which Dark Horse is calling “a free piece of musical score by Morello,” which although harder to type, sounds a hell of a lot nicer than “multimedia bribery”… which WILL be the name of my Rage Against The Machine tribute band. But I digress.

But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that if Alan Moore showed up at Epic Records waving a copy of Watchmen and demanding a record deal, he’d be laughed out of the lobby just before and extensively after security mildly tased him for being an insane person. Dark Horse should’ve done the same when Morello knocked.

Won’t Someone Please Think Of The Children? – Review Of X-Men: Schism #5 And X-Men: Regenesis

I don’t know if you’ve heard but, Marvel doesn’t do reboots. No, they have their events, goddammit! And they’re going to stick to them, no matter how awful and convoluted they get what. Well, this past week, one of those events, X-Men: Schism, finally came to a head in X-Men: Schism #5 by Jason Aaron, with art by Adam Kubert. By the end of this book, Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, and Logan, aka Wolverine, finally have it out and break up the team with such force and drama as to make Noel and Liam Gallagher look positively civilized in comparison.

Also out this past week was X-Men: Regenesis, a one shot by Kieron Gillen, who will be writing the Uncanny X-Men reboot relaunch. X-Men: Regenesis also features art by Billy Tan. This book gives the reader a look at the behind the scenes arguments, wheedling and general drama that took place as the members of Utopia decide which dad to go and live with. Sure, you don’t need to read both to understand that going forward there will be two teams, one led by Scott and the other by Logan. You can get that from just reading one book or the other, or, you know the internet. However, reading them together, I found, really helped me cement whether or not I was Team Scott or Team Logan.

Have You Seen My Sword In This Light? Would You Like To? – Review Of Demon Knights #2

Are you reading Demon Knights by Paul Cornell and artist Diogenes “Best Name Ever” Neves yet? Why not? Do I need to come over there? Read this book, damn it!

I could stop there and make this the shortest review ever, but I won’t.

Here’s why you should be reading this book:
(*spoilery goodness after the jump*)

Every Picture Tells A Story (Badly): Ultimate Spider-Man #3 Review

Let’s start with the most obvious problem with Ultimate Spider-Man #3: the Kaare Andrews cover.

This cover looks like Spider-Man is trying, more successfully than most 13-year-old boys, to suck his own dick. While shooting streams of sticky goop from his general crotchal area. With his apparently gapingly spread ass shown more prominently and unobscured than his fucking head.

There are action covers, and then there are action covers, Kaare… I think Marvel picked the wrong issue of this book to hide in a polybag. Actually, I might have preferred receiving it in a lead-lined sack.

Let’s move on to the second most obvious problem with this book: More Goddamned useless widescreen visual storytelling. I’ve talked about this before, and go figure, it’s another issue of Bendis-written Ultimate Spider-Man that makes me bring it up again.

Pages two and three are delivered in a standard, read-page-one then read-page-two format. Pages three and four, however, are amongst the most egregious examples of fucking with format for no return at all I can scarely describe it.

Here: I will ruin the spine of this book on my scanner to show you what I mean:

Bastard Son Of A Thousand Comics: The Strange Talent of Luther Strode #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. If you decide not to read it, just go buy the book right fucking now, and we’ll leave it at that.

The Strange Talent of Luther Strode is the story of a high school nerd who buys a “Tired of having sand kicked in your face?” fitness book out of the back of a comic book, develops superpowers after reading it, and uses those powers to get a girl and defeat his jock nemesis in dodgeball and in a high school men’s room fistfight. Truly, writer Justin Jordan is one of us… or would be if he didn’t seem to know that people like us didn’t go into the men’s rooms in high school, because we generally didn’t need cigarettes or black eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s more going on than Geek Rage in this book. We open the book seeing Strode in a flash-forward where he’s masked, ripped and has the ability to stop loads with his chest and beat men down by jerking off some of their parts… which sounds like it would be yet another reason that I personally never went into the high school men’s room if it didn’t look like this:

Jordan teases that there’s some kind of reasoning behind Strode’s newfound powers, and that those powers might make him the target of a mysterious bearded dandy called The Librarian that will lead us to a greater story to take us through this six-issue miniseries, but issue one is all about a high school loser who gets superpowers… which is absolutely smart and compelling storytelling.

Because after all, it’s pretty safe to say that if you’re reading a comic book, you were either a nerd who had a hard time in high school, or you were a jock who suffered a grievous concussion. And if you were the latter, you’re not reading a book as smart as Luther Strode.

And smart it is, because there is a LOT of groundwork laid here, and if you’re not careful, you could miss it.

Pissed Men: Avengers: 1959 Review

Since AMC’s show Mad Men became a hit by turning mid-20th century nostalgia into a bankable commodity and by casting Vincent Kartheiser in his second role where I want to stomp his balls off, it was only a matter of time before the copycats started showing up. Much like Raiders of the Lost Ark begat Tales of the Gold Monkey and Bring ‘Em Back Alive, this year Mad Men has given us the creatively leeched Pan Am and The Playboy Club… with pretty much the same predictable results.

And so what with Marvel Comics hoping to bring in new readers and not being fools (Because Marvel doesn’t reboot! Marvel doesn’t NEED to reboot to keep their number one market sh… wait, what?), Marvel’s thrown their own hat in the Good-Old-Days ring with Avengers: 1959, apparently having missed the twin memos that the current trend is toward reliving the 1960’s, and that the last go-round with 1950’s nostalgia ended by jumping the shark. Literally.

Look: I’ve been around the block enough to know that the idea of a comics company sniffing for a bandwagon to jump on is hardly new. Let’s face reality: if Roy Thomas hadn’t snapped up Star Wars license, then Marvel would be the ones trying to pretend they hadn’t released Star Hunters – a comic so bad they pulled the “kill the hero and bring him back with a new costume to save the book” trick 120 days after the book started. Being a realist I know that if Mad Men was about Christopher Street in New York, Marvel would be releasing Avengers: What Price Glory Hole? right now. So I won’t try to hold the copycat feeling against this book.