The Rich Are Very Different: The Green Team #1 Review

The Green Team is one of those comic book superhero teams that is destined to become part of comic book history. By which I mean, in about 20 years, some hotshot, big idea comics writer like Neil Gaiman was in the 90s will ressurrect them and try to treat them seriously as an archetype of a particular type of comic, written by middle-aged adults about adolescents, trying to capture the zeitgeist of a particular period of history. And that purely theoretical comic book writer of 2028 or 2033 will be heralded as a genius for finding a way to take The Green Team seriously, the way that Gaiman was when he wrote Prez into Sandman #54 20 years ago.

But that will happen in 15 or 20 years. Today, The Green Team feels very much the way Prez did back in 1973 (before my time, but I remember the series getting some play in DC Comics house reprint ads in the mid, late 70s, maybe as a giant sized gallery reprint, and even at that age I thought the idea was ridiculous): an effort by someone too old to be part of youth culture, trying like mad to grab bits and pieces that they either do understand or that they’ve read about, to make a book to appeal to them… and ultimately feeling like its trying too hard and mising the mark.

And maybe that’s my problem; after all, I am old enough to remember Prez, which means that my only relationship to youth culture is related to the things I would do to Lindsey Lohan if I had a double-strength condom and an iron-clad fake name to give her. But the trials and travails of a bunch of rich kids with Twitter trying to prove themselves to daddies who want them to grow up to become bougouisie douchbags like themselves (mission accomplished!) somehow doesn’t land home with me.

Plus: we’ve already got an Iron Man, guys.

If You Have To Explain The Joke, There’s No Joke – Suicide Squad #7

In order to do due diligence for this review of Suicide Squad #7, “The Origin Of Harley Quinn”, I was going to re-read 1994’s The Batman Adventures: Mad Love by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. Dini, after all, created Harley Quinn and, frankly, my first reaction after reading the conclusion to Adam Glass’s reboot of her character was that I wanted to read the original. However, Mad Love doesn’t appear to be on any of our book shelves at the moment – which means it’s in any one of 23 separate, unlabeled long boxes that are stashed in the closet of the Home Office’s second bedroom, and I just don’t have the patience to go digging.

You know what is out and easily accessible on the book shelves of Home Office Command Central? Batman: Son Of The Demon…just in case Rob wants to get into a drunken pissing contest with a 12 year-old who has a theory that Batman is gay and that Damien was grown in a petri dish in the Bat Cave.

Stranger things have happened. Both here and in the Bat Cave. But, I digress…

The thing is, this issue, and most of the Suicide Squad run in general, isn’t bad. Some of it is pretty good – but it’s not as good as what Dini and company first came up with, even if it’s trying for darker, edgier, clown car…ier, whatever. Perhaps that just my own failing that I can’t get past that.

Or is it? Spoilers and whatnot after the jump.

Blue Velvet: Blue Beetle #6 Review

Blue Beetle #6 is a weird book. Good, but weird.

First off, I still maintain that, of all DC’s first round of New 52 books, Blue Beetle is one of the best at accomplishing its supposed mandate: making the hero generally relatable and understandable to not just new readers to the title, but to new comics readers in general. This is a series in general where you don’t need to know almost anything about the DC Universe at all to enjoy it. And this particular issue, while still part of the overall origin arc, functions as a pretty decent one-and-done that tells you everything you need to know to enjoy just this issue if you want a place to jump on.

Unfortunately, some people are going to have trouble enjoying this issue because, frankly, it includes some action that’s likely to disturb and upset some readers, no matter how good and self contained the issue is in general. This book includes scenes of the hero smacking around a teenaged girl and threatening a mother and her child at gunpoint. Now, if your reaction to that description is immediate and context-free outrage, just hold on and I’ll get to that. If your reaction is to mutter “Awesome!” or to find a discreet place to masturbate, fuck off and find a different comics site, okay? Or better yet: find a different hobby; no superhero’s power is a donkey punch, you spastic.

Tangled Up: Blue Beetle #1 Review

This is the story of Jaime Reyes, a normal teenager living in suburban New Mexico with his best friends Paco – a gangbanger with a sense of humor and a heart of gold – and Brenda – a redhead who happens to be the niece of La Dama – a female crime lord with a stable of superpowered minions. Jaime finds himself fused with the Scarab – a piece of alien technology from something called The Reach – that bestows upon him a suit of powered armor that he doesn’t know how to use and might be operating under its own agenda.

Sound interesting? It should: it’s the plot of Blue Beetle. Written by Keith Giffen and John Rogers. In 2006.

It’s ALSO the plot of Blue Beetle #1, written by Tony Bedard and penciled by Ig Guara, released last Wednesday. And that’s the problem.

Don’t get me wrong: Blue Beetle is a well-executed and entertaining origin issue. It lays out where the Scarab comes from, it introduces all the main players, gets the Scarab on Jaime, all in 20 pages. Of all the New 52 books from DC, it probably meets the stated goal of the reboot, to create an entry point for new, non-comic readers, most effectively. Sure, there’s still a writing-for-the-trade feel since Jaime doesn’t become Blue Beetle until the last page, but Bedard tells us what we need to know without requiring any knowledge of continuity. It’s somewhat refreshing… or it would be if Bedard DIDN’T require a fluency in a second Goddamned language.

There are at least ten or eleven panels in this book that include Spanish or Spanglish – to the point where Bedard puts the ol’ footnote asterix next to the phrase “La casa de Amparo Cardenas” to tell us in caption that it is “Translated from the Spanglish”… except he NEVER FUCKING TRANSLATES IT. He might as well have wasted panel real estate with “Translated into Spanglish from Klingon by way of Helen Keller’s homemade tappity language.” For all I know, Jaime spend half the book saying, “You, reader, are a racist, provincial dingus.”