Blogcritics Author: collectededitions

Graphic Novel Review: 52, Vol. 4 by by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen

collectededitions — Sun, 8 Jun 2008 02:51:09 EDT

The final volume of 52 brings closure for the various characters, though without the expected tying together of the storylines.
Worlds died and, for a change, worlds lived. I've finished reading 52, Volume 4, and I'd say that of the four volumes, this was my second favorite, just short of Volume 1 (with Volume 3 vying for the second spot, and Volume 2 in last place). In Volume 4 I think the team finally found the right balance between single-character stories and multi-hero...

Graphic Novel Review: 52, Vol. 3 by by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen

collectededitions — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 12:27:42 EDT

The third volume of 52 beats even volume one in terms of shocks, surprise, and emotion, demonstrating the true power of a weekly comics series.
So far, the third collection of DC's weekly series 52 is my favorite (beating even the super-cool scene in time-traveler Rip Hunter's headquarters from Volume One). Certainly this edition of 52 was the most emotional, and the all-too-real prolonged death sequence of the character The Question showed well the power of a weekly real-time comics...

Comic Book Review: 52, Vol. 2 by Keith Giffen, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid

collectededitions — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:05:27 EST

The second volume of DC Comic's weekly series brings more intrigue and a healthy does of cameos from around the DC Universe.
I was very impressed with the ongoing storylines in the the second collection of DC Comic's weekly series 52. Each of the five principle characters returned -- Renee Montoya, Booster Gold, Black Adam, Steel, and Ralph Dibny -- and I felt each of their plots progressed in an unexpected way, from Booster’s death to Renee and the...

Comic Book Review: 52, Vol. 1 by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen

collectededitions — Sat, 8 Sep 2007 18:17:31 EDT

The first 52 collection offers both great super-heroics and a behind the scenes look at the making of the series.
The first collection of 52 works especially well as a trade paperback. In part because the weekly book offered only twenty pages instead of the standard twenty-two, the writers pack each chapter full of short scenes with plenty of information -- sometimes, multiple plotlines are forwarded in separate panels on the same page. This makes an already...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Comic Book Review: Captain Atom: Armageddon by Will Pfeifer and Giuseppe Camuncoli

collectededitions — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:10:56 EDT

Captain Atom: Armageddon is a fantastic story, and speaks well for the Wildstorm titles overall. As with some previous DC/Wildstorm crossovers, this had the potential to be just a long heroes-fight-and-then-team-up story; instead, it's gripping, thoughtful, and remarkably true to Captain Atom's character, at least. As the Wildstorm universe crashes around it, Armaggedon takes a moment to ask what you trust more -- technology, or your senses -- and it's a fascinating question that pervades throughout.I appreciated how faithful writer Will Pfeifer was both to Captain Atom and to the Wildstorm characters. Atom's origin plays a large role in the story, with his "sitting on top of a bomb" carried through the series as a metaphor for the lack of control Atom has over his life. Even Atom's failed marriage to Plastique gets a mention (though not, unfortunately, his short-lived Extreme Justice team). Majestic and the Wildcats are explained more to new readers than the Authority (perhaps given the Authority's overall popularity), but as an Ellis/Millar Authority fan, seeing them pop out of Doors again was a thrill.What I liked in Armageddon was how ethically diverse Pfeifer showed the Wildstorm universe to be - from the everyman perspective of Grifter and the Wildcats to the ruling power of the Authority, with Majestic trying to find a moral ground in the center. There's a danger here, as with DC/Marvel team-ups, to portray the DC Universe as "happy" and the Wildstorm universe as "dark" - there's some of that here, but Pfeifer also shows how the heroes of the Wildstorm universe attempt to strive under difficult circumstances. The Engineer's mixed feelings about being instructed to kill Captain Atom, and especially Majestic and Jack Hawksmoor's ruminations about the end of the universe, show "shades" to the Wildstorm universe that may not always be so apparent when reading individual titles.One of the main differences between the DC and Wildstorm universes, Pfeifer posits, is the Wildstorm characters' reliance on technology instead of know-how. Everyone consults a computer here, and most of them turn out wrong; when Atom implores the Engineer to trust her heart over her technology, she goes with the technology. There are larger world-bending questions here: How do we know what we know? How can we be sure we really know anything at all? And I applaud Pfeifer for tackling them.Armageddon becomes more than a simple crossover - with romance, mystery, and moral ponderings, it's a weighty and satisfying read.

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Comic Review: Checkmate - A King's Game by Greg Rucka and Jesus Saiz

collectededitions — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:38:40 EDT

Checkmate feels like the series, more than Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, or even Gotham Central, that Greg Rucka came to DC Comics to write. Letting alone that the series contains a number of characters that Rucka created elsewhere, including Sasha Bordeaux, Jessica Midnight, and Jonah McCarthy, the tone of politics and espionage in Checkmate: A King's Game more closely matched Rucka's Queen and Country than anything before. Additionally, in DC Comic's somewhat kinder, gentler continuity after their Infinite Crisis series, Checkmate offers a fascinating dose of moral ambiguity.At seven issues already, Checkmate is an especially thick read, perhaps the most dialogue-heavy comic I've read in a while. While there's action here, certainly, there's perhaps even more politicking. Unlike the White House action of Ex Machina, Checkmate takes place in the UN, and there's an almost alarming amount of discussion here of resolutions, vetoes, and national policies. DC Comics, to be sure, takes a risk in that Checkmate's intellectualism will turn off the casual reader, but presented here in trade form, I was pleased to find a comic that expects as much as Checkmate does from its reader. In addition, Checkmate's plodding deliberation helps to balance some of the death and destruction caused by the team elsewhere in the pages of A King's Game.From the first pages of A King's Game, we see the team -- including former Justice Leaguer Fire -- kill their enemies. To be sure, no one who dies is ever completely innocent, but the amount of killing is shocking all the same. Rucka offers Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott as the voice of moderation, working within Checkmate to minimize casualties. Scott references Wonder Woman's murder of Maxwell Lord as an example of how people lose faith with murdering heroes; former Suicide Squad leader Amanda Waller, as his opposite, suggests that the more dangerous world that we live in requires more dangerous solutions. The audience, of course, is more likely to side with Scott, though we get the sense that by associating with Checkmate at all, Scott is himself already sullied; that Scott is then voted out of Checkmate leaves the moral future of the team that much more ambiguous. Like the Outsiders, Checkmate is a glimpse of the darker side of the DC Universe; while nothing to aspire to, the questions raised by Checkmate are fun and interesting nonetheless.I lost a little interest in Checkmate in the last two chapters, which was more a Suicide Squad tale than Checkmate. Though Suicide Squad certainly enjoys a wide following, the story builds upon quite a lot of Suicide Squad lore that I just wasn't that familiar with, and it made it hard to be all that engaged. The first five chapters certainly are good enough to balance out the last two, but hopefully the next trade remains more on course throughout.

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Comic Book Review: Outsiders - The Good Fight by Judd Winick, Matthew Clark, and Art Thibert

collectededitions — Thu, 5 Jul 2007 16:55:53 EDT

The Outsiders truly are back and better than even. Outsiders: The Good Fight, the fifth volume of Judd Winick's Outsiders series, reintroduces the team after jumping a year forward in time as part of DC Comic's "One Year Later" event. With this trade, writer Judd Winick returns to the premise of Outsiders, a team of rogue heroes taking a proactive stance against villains, and the premise works better and feels more natural than it did even when the series started.With The Good Fight, Winick has cut a lot of dead weight from The Outsiders, and what's left is more interesting by far. The Outsiders team began from the ashes of the Titans, at times a sidekick support group, when the Titan Donna Troy died. Though Titans Nightwing and Arsenal formed the Outsiders to create a team without emotional bonds, the characters often second-guessed themselves because of Troy's death. With Troy returned to life, the Outsiders now have at their core only their mission of hunting bad guys, and it serves to make the stories both more focused and more fun.The new Outsiders shrinks a sometimes large cast down to just six heroes, allowing for greater focus on the individual members. Nightwing returns in the lead after leaving the team, and Katana, a member of an earlier incarnation of Outsiders, works as his second-in-command. The former villain Captain Boomerang appears on the side of the heroes; that his father killed the father of the current Robin will undoubtedly be addressed. Winick's creations Grace and Thunder are back, and Thunder seems as different -- sporting a new costume and more confident attitude -- as Grace seems unchanged, at least until we learn the two have started a relationship, and Grace may not be entirely human. And Metamorpho joins the team, replacing his shape-changing clone Shift, as Winick drops hints that Shift may have been responsible for a crime during the missing year. These characters are far more genuinely "outsiders" than the original team, and their quirky nature only adds to the book's appeal.Winick portrays the Outsiders as a team truly willing to bend the rules in order to get results, a goal professed but nevcer achieved by teams like Extreme Justice and the former Outsiders incarnation. Over the course of The Good Fight, the Outsiders both overthrow a dictator and blow up a nuclear reactor, gaining the attention of both the Checkmate spy organization and Superman himself. The scene where Nightwing threatens Superman with a box of kryptonite that everyone believes is fake, but turns out to be real, is especially effective. Outsiders: The Good Fight is a true black ops superhero drama, the likes of which only barely seen before in Joe Kelly's excellent Justice League Elite, and I'm eager for the next volume. My sincere hope is that Winick can keep up this same tone and pace as the series continues.

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Comic Book Review: Batman - Face the Face by James Robinson, Don Kramer, and Leonard Kirk

collectededitions — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:41:32 EDT

Batman: Face the Face, part of DC Comics's soft-relaunch of their titles following the Infinite Crisis crossover, feels thankfully more like a continuation than a starting over. Batman here, returning to Gotham City after a year-long absence, is still making up for his past sins, and it adds a sense of continuity to the character, instead of forcing readers to accept an unnecessary reboot. The slate for Batman hasn't been wiped clean, and the most interesting thing may be watching Batman work toward redemption.While the easy route might have been to let this trade start a "kinder, gentler" era for Batman, writer James Robinson instead portrays Batman's new outlook as a work in progress. Even though Batman appears perhaps over-nice to Robin and to Commissioner Jim Gordon, he still snubs a rookie police officer in the first chapter. I took this as an indication that the new Batman was a softie, but no pushover; however, later Batman apologizes and explains himself to the officer. In another scene, Batman agrees to give formerly crooked cop Harvey Bullock a second chance. Both of these apologies show a Batman with faults, still liable to make emotional mistakes, but now willing to atone for them.Of course, this new "make-nice" Batman may take some getting used to. Robinson offers a reminder in nearly every chapter as to what a strong team Batman and Robin have become after their year away, as if concerned when this story came out in monthly comics that the casual reader might have missed the beginning. We end up with a virtual Batman and Robin praise-fest. Though a bit overwhelming, it is nice to see the two characters getting along after a contentious relationship of late. They share a nice moment in the end that won't be surprising to readers who followed the Robin title before Infinite Crisis, but is an appropriate turning point in the characters' lives nonetheless.Batman: Face the Face does a great job reintroducing Batman's villains. No less than nine villains appear here, but each plays an integral role in the plot. Robinson deftly gives each an interesting backstory, and seamlessly blends both classic and new Batman villains; the one-note villain Orca, for instance, has never been more fascinating. If there is one false spot, it's in Robinson's choice of the story's mastermind, a character more obscure than obscure. I'm not too keen on another villain running Gotham's gangs from the shadows, a plot used many times before, though it also remains to be seen whether the Batman writers following Robinson will even use the character again.Batman: Face the Face reads like a solid Batman comic book, one that could be easily shared with a casul fan. The level of quality here portends well for Batman in DC Comic's new "One Year Later era," offering a fresh take on the Dark Knight while classic elements remain intact.

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Comic Book Review: Superman - Up, Up, and Away by Geoff Johns, Kurt Busiek, Pete Woods, and Renato Guedes

collectededitions — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:30:05 EDT

Superman: Up, Up, and Away, like the newly de-powered Man of Steel featured in this story, does not soar, though it does leap a few tall buildings in a rather impressive manner. Up, Up, and Away is a soft Super-relaunch, tasked with reinvigorating the Superman comics line in the wake of DC Comic's mega-crossover Infinite Crisis, without actually restarting Superman's continuity. The trade, written by DC superstars Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek, hits all the right notes and revitalizes all the right characters--Jimmy Olsen is loyal; Perry White's the gruff. cigar-chomping boss; Lex Luthor's the villain -- and atones for plenty of Super-sins of the past, but at times the writers' apologizing gets in the way of the story itself.One year after Infinite Crisis, Clark Kent is still without powers, though he's made great strides in regaining his previously lost Daily Planet job. Clark is investigating Lex Luthor and the Intergang criminal organization, making him a target for both, and a stream of his enemies, including the Prankster and Bloodsport, come after him. Clark is able to overcome his mental block to bring his old powers back (and some new ones), in time for Lex to take revenge on Metropolis with an ancient Kryptonian warship. Superman defeats Lex, receiving the crystal necessary to build his Antarctic Fortress of Solitude.Up, Up, and Away has all the trappings of both an origin story and a classic Superman tale. The protagonist, our Clark Kent, starts out de-powered and unsure of himself, and finished confident and Super. The villain, of course, is Lex Luthor, as it should be, and the story's mystery is tied to Superman's Kryptonian origins. There are salutes here to both Superman Returns and the Smallville series, and aspects of the plot strongly mirror the movie. Moreover than the somewhat disappointing Superman Returns: The Prequels comic book released around the same time as the movie, Up, Up, and Away is a comic I'd be comfortable giving to a fan of the Superman movies and knowing they'd enjoy it.One of the main tenets of Infinite Crisis was to rebuild the camradery between the superheroes, and Up, Up, and Away demonstrates this almost immediately. Supergirl swoops in to save Clark Kent without any of the previous awkwardness in Superman and his cousin's relationship. Green Lantern and Hawkgirl fill in for Superman at one point, and at another, a whole army of heroes tries to come to his aid. This is comforting, on one hand, as the great mistrust between the superheroes had become grating, but at the same time, I found myself skeptical that so many heroes would be allowed to know Superman's secret identity. Before now, Superman barely seemed to know Hawkgirl, but here she joins him on a secret mission. I was surprised that we did not see a reunion with Batman here, though that might have taken away from Superman's "return," and I imagine the authors were holding that for the beginning of the new Justice League of America series.Unfortunately, Up, Up, and Away, an eight-part story, is about two parts too long, and I can tell you which parts, too: the fourth and the fifth. Back in 2002, Geoff Johns helped write a Superman crossover called "Ending Battle," where just about every existing Superman villain, and some newly revitalized old ones, attacked the Man of Steel. This is trademark Geoff Johns, who made his name on The Flash and JSA with his "villain renewal" program, but unfortunately, many of his new villains weren't used in the Superman series or its associated spin-offs again. Johns and Busiek take the opportunity in Up, Up, and Away to bring three or four of these villains back, but surprisingly without any of the characterization that Johns usually brings to his villains. Instead, the villains are hurled en masse at Superman in an ultimately unresolved subplot dealing with the Intergang criminal organization, and Superman's two issue fight with these one-note villains takes away from his more interesting conflict with established villains Lex Luthor, Toyman, Metallo, and the new Kryptonite Man.Part of the criticism leveled at the Superman titles in the past has been their portrayal of Clark Kent as a wimp, and Lois Lane as a shrew. Johns and Busiek are obviously aware and concerned about this, and I appreciate the respect with which they treat both the characters, but one could get a toothache from all the saccharine leveled at Clark Kent in this story. Lois praises Clark; Jimmy praises Clark; Perry praises Clark; Lex Luthor singles out Clark to drag him into an alley and beat him up, such a good and effective reporter he is; and at one point, the entire Daily Planet newsroom applauds one of Clark's scoops. The alternative, certainly, could get worse, but it borders on ridiculous and adds to slowing the story. The writers portray Lois as initially content with Clark's new human state, and then make her supportive (almost incongruously so) when Clark's powers return. Obviously Johns and Busiek are trying to repudiate the "Lois-as-neglected-wife" syndrome even as they try to grant that Lois might prefer her husband at home than risking his life. This playing both sides of the fence doesn't quite work for me; ideally, I would think, Lois should be even more in favor of Clark being a superhero than even Clark is. The awkwardness shows in a strange soliloquy that Lois gives for Clark's super-hearing, where she explains that even thought she said she was happy when he didn't have powers, she's still happy now that he does have powers. As long as the writers stick to that second part, however, I'll accept a little awkwardness getting there.In the course of regaining his powers, Superman is now gifted with "super-intelligence," which he possessed in some of his earlier incarnations. My concern is that the Superman writers will misuse this, turning Superman into a know-it-all or using this as an aspect of competition between Superman and Batman. In a Newsarama interview, Busiek described this as Superman's brain working "faster and more precisely ... His memory's sharper, more encompassing." I'm hard-pressed to imagine this as more than a one-note plot device, where Superman sees something in the beginning of a story, and then super-remembers it later. Given these writers' treatment of these characters, I have faith that they'll use Superman's new powers wisely, but I'll be curious to see whether this was a necessary addition.

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Comic Book Review: Y - The Last Man: Paper Dolls by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Dudzuka and Jose Marzn, Jr.

collectededitions — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 02:05:16 EDT

Y: The Last Man has been called a road trip story, but one danger of a road trip in serial fiction is the audience beginning to feel like they're just not getting anywhere. Such is the problem with Paper Dolls, volume seven of Brian K. Vaughn's tale of Yorick Brown, the last man on Earth after a mysterious plague wipes out everything with a Y-chromosome except Yorick and his male monkey Ampersand. Though some notable events do take place -- including the Y series' first instance of male frontal nudity - I couldn't help but feel like this trade was for the most part treading water.In the main story of the trade, "Paper Dolls," an unexpected stopover in Australia on the way to Toyko to rescue Ampersand from kidnappers affords Yorick an eight-hour window to search for his missing fiance Beth, last seen in Australia. Yorick -- his gender hidden to protect his safety -- is quickly discovered by a tabloid journalist who takes a picture of Yorick and tries to return with it to the States.Much of these three issues involve Yorick and his protector, Agent 355, chasing the reporter through generic-looking Australia, and when they catch her, ultimately Yorick resolves to let her go, thinking no one will believe what they read in a tabloid. There's some discussion of tabloids and rumor mills here, as well as a conversation as to whether women continue to read trashy magazines when there aren't any men around (the question itself is slightly ridiculous), but for the most part the issue of journalists in this new apocalyptic world goes unexamined. I felt there was great potential here for an exchange of ideas that Vaughn replaced with a couple of action sequences instead.What was surprising, however, was the full page image of the photograph that the tabloid reporter takes, of Yorick completely naked and shown as such on the page. Arguably, it may be even more surprising that it's taken forty issues for male nudity to be shown in a story that focuses primarily on the last man alive on Earth. There's irony, to be sure, that a book that has as one of its themes an examination of women in society and how they're treated and portrayed, has shown breasts "on camera" for most of its run, but never a penis. Until it happend, I actually thought that the creators weren't allowed to show Yorick naked, and the fact that they can makes me wonder why they waited so long. Certainly, this is an instance where Yorick is exposed, both in a literal and journalistic sense, and the nudity here makes that point greater. In a later chapter, however, a female assassin's breasts are shown while she's exercising, in a scene where she could just have easily have been clothed, making it seem like the creators have a conservative streak for one gender but an exploitative streak for the other.None of this is helped by comments from Yorick which, even given the comedic undertone of the series, seem fairly unbelievable. Though Yorick has been the last man for over two years and has supposedly matured some, and even as the reporter's photograph threatens his safety, Yorick still complains that he wasn't erect for the photograph. It's too easy a joke on Vaughn's part, and one that makes his character seem silly rather than interesting.The final three chapters of Paper Dolls each contain a revelation about the series, though the lassitude of the trade's first half seeps in here, too. We learn that a woman that Yorick had sex with is pregnant, but another protracted action sequence leads only to learning that the child is a girl. There's a flashback to Agent 355's past, though it doesn't reveal more about her secret agency than we already knew. We learn that Ampersand may be a genetically-altered monkey, with much of the weight of this impeded by confusing dialogue.It's certainly established that Y: The Last Man is destined to be a classic, but even as the series approaches all the right notes, this particular volume just doesn't shine. The next, Kimono Dragons, suggests that Yorick and his friends will finally make their way to Tokyo, and hopefully more will happen once this road trip finds its destination.

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