Mainstream Reviews for Recent DC Releases

BEFORE WATCHMEN: MINUTEMEN

8/10

Not sure if Meta or simply well-played nose-thumbing.

Here we have a dilemma.  There are poignant ways to go about the process of homage, and it's a rare and delicate thing that DC Staffers or Corporate Masters have in mind for the controversial Before Watchmen series.  True, characters and plot-points in Watchmen were themselves derivative from previously created characters, and thus beholden to similar strictures of critique, but that is not to say that they are beholden to the exact same strictures as this series, indicative as it is of a more common malaise in this day and age: prequelitis.  

It's a polarizing issue.  On one hand, it seems like DC is cashing in, and some fearful pundits point to the injustice of Moore's (if not Gibbons) legacy being besmirched by inferior product. Another argument goes something like: "If the creator or creators of the project don't like it, they should look to how bad their predecessors had it. Besides, DC owns the characters, they can do as they like."  On yet another hand, there is admittedly rich territory to mine in the mythos that Moore laid out, perfect and self-contained as it is.  

This series was inevitable, however dubious it seems.  

I recently passed a copy of the graphic novel Watchmen to someone that had never read it before.  Our conversations concerning plot and character were in depth and appreciative of the aesthetics inherent in the comic's structure.  It's still a classic and deserves a classic's respect.  It's interesting to note that Alan Moore's manner of approach was then and in many ways still is a righteous example of the medium's potential unleashed. Pacing, segue, and breathtaking detail combine to create effects no camera could hope to capture, and no future savant could properly match.  This new reader asked about the movie, and then I told him about the Before Watchmen project, as magnanimously as possible. He then made the next logical cognitive leap and likened the project to Lucasfilm's dreadful prequel trilogy.  To an extent, he has a point, but the qualifier from the project, ambitious as it is, is this.  Each of the series are self-aware to a fault, and their style is distinct to each creator.  

The talent called out for these projects is solid.  The characters are familiar enough to the legions of fanboys turned pro calling the shots that a justifiable love becomes apparent, even if it can't match the stark intensity that Moore's project possessed.  There is plenty more to be said, but for the sake of some sense of brevity and in the interests of keeping from straying into either malignant critique or sycophantic praise, I'll give that the best example of the potential for the various series (thus far) is Before Watchmen: Minutemen, written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke.  Cooke's style is best suited for this particular trip back in history, with DC: New Frontier preparing him quite well for bygone idealism gone sour.   

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 11

7/10

Justice League of America, still in-fighting after years of teamwork and struggle. I'm falling asleep now.

Tedious splash pages and uncharacteristic actions lend a hot-headed spin for the whole team in Justice League of America (JLA).  The more I read JLA the more distant I feel from the characters I had become accustomed to for so many years, and more frustrated with their less charming simulacra.  My first true JLA experience was the first issue of Grant Morrison's supremely refined run, which took in all running plotlines at DC whole cloth and spun a series that lasted through multiple cosmic crises, without missing a beat on who these characters are.

More than archetypes or stereotypes, the heroes of this particular group need to personify the super aspects of their superhumanity, with their years of experience backing up their every action, while embodying the human side in as elegantly as possible.  Stories with the universe's big guns need to reach far and they need to matter.  Instead, the plots plod along with no sense of potential as a crew of people that still don't seem to know each other at all simply deal with and react to matters that possess no sense of history or weight.  There's no drawing out of tension in the story, feeling like an overproduced jog through styles.  It often seems an excuse to needlessly splash-page, and smacks of Jim Lee's influence far more than the minutiae macro-scripting usually provided by Geoff Johns.  The first part of the series involved an invasion from Apokalips that occurred "Five Years Ago"... but what's actually happened in the time between then and now? Blackest Night? Brightest Day? Final Crisis, certainly not. Final Night? Zero Hour, perhaps, but Crisis on Infinite Worlds? Has Superman died? Did anyone even care? Who knows? I understand the draw to "here and now" the New 52 seems dead-set on, but what's happened in the past five years in the New DC Universe?

It seems the new reader gets less bang but more importantly the years-long loyal fan hasn't got much to go on, either. The entire team bickers and plays out their roles like rusty parodies of themselves.  There seems to be no breathing room for personalities in the larger-than-life splashpage world, so each character degenerates into their roles as near-stereotypes fused with near-archetypes.  Flash seems overly timid, while Green Lantern seems little more than a jock with a ring, whereas Superman is more like a quiet boy-powerhouse than a force of nature, and Wonder Woman is an unapproachable too-foreign hothead.  Batman? Oh, he just slinks around commenting on what useless twats he's working with, not much use or insight.  Cyborg practically runs the show in terms of being a linchpin of the team's dynamic, their teleporter, their go-to guy, but even that feels forced.  Perhaps Geoff Johns (and even a fan or two) remembers that the real linchpin of the team was and always will be the Martian Manhunter (we get only a brief glimpse of the one time the JLA attempted to recruit him, a two page firefight, but maybe since he's recently ditched Stormwatch he may yet show up again).

Recent arcs are general and truncated awkwardly. There's a "new" villain with a vendetta against the team, but the vendetta is vague and silly, his powers emotionally manipulating but ultimately empty, because the punch they're supposed to pack relies on content that no reader of this series actually has (yet, I know, yet).  This is the fundamental flaw and underpinning critique I have for the series (at this time).  Perhaps one sticks with this series in part out of a pouty nostalgia and partly in vain hope that the comic might accomplish a difficult task: feeling something for these newly-minted replicas of characters that knew and understood one another in a discarded universe and have had years, decades, almost a century of history together, up in a puff of comic fluff.  Perhaps what I want out of this series will take years to get to, or perhaps in the attempt to please everyone punches are pulled by editorial restrictions.  Johns is a long-haul writer and a capable scribe, so perhaps forthcoming events will shape/round out the missing back-stories, or maybe, just maybe, issue zero won't seem like filler.

DIAL H 3
9/10

It's all a conspiracy. No, really. Kinda. Mostly.

Complex, quirky, and variable, we have a comic here in many ways like a strange gem with a spirit of Bosch inhabiting it. Dial H is one of the more fascinating new series to emerge from DC's stables.  When a fat chain-smoking schlub named Nelson Jent uses an alleyway pay phone to get help for his friend (who fell in with a real bad crowd), he accidentally dials up powers from a vast array of quirky characters.  Bitten by a radioactive concept originating from the 60's wash of surreal characters (the original Dial H for H.E.R.O), the series has a bent to it that reminds one of Morrison's old Doom Patrol run, while simultaneously owning the bits of backstory that new readers and even some old readers are likely ignorant of.  The story by China Miéville explores a ground-level classic format, that unfolds like Japanese origami to reveal layers quite unexpected.  The protagonist, Nelson, plays out a perfect down-on-their-luck fool, and we root for him against all opposition, which itself truncates and expands and gains texture as the story plays itself out, in simple and complex strokes.  The art by Mateus Santolouco is a perfect compliment to the progress of the plot, intriguing and complex enough to revisit again and again.  Each character presented is so weirdly bent and surreal you have a giddy expectation of the next transformation. A fun read, and self-aware enough to pull off what seems at first blush to be silly and atonal in nature.

Cerebral Superhero Movie Undercut by Tragedy and Political Farce

When blowhard weight-watcher Rush Limbaugh made the bold declarative statement a few days back that there was a liberal conspiracy tying Bane, the villain in Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, the final chapter of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy, to Bain Industries, the company that presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney retroactively retired from, those people capable of analytic thought and comic book historians all had a hearty chuckle.  But to postulate such a ludicrous decades-long-in-the-making conspiracy out loud is par for the course where people such as Rush are concerned, speaking without thinking, again and again.  He's since backed off of that assertion and now likens Batman to Romney, while Bane is an Occupy Wall Street villain.  This, again, is a crass distraction tactic grossly misrepresenting the intent of the film's creators, but acutely points out the major thrust of the film's message, nonetheless.  Batman as benevolent billionaire (an image that Romney would prefer to project, minus the Howard Hughes overtones gossiped about in the film's first act) and Bane, a genius terrorist displaying talking points of "power to the people" while holding a city hostage under threat of destruction via neutron bomb (very much a fever dream version of what the Occupy Movement ostensibly stands for in the mind of paranoid delusional neoconservative shills).

Then, on opening night, at a Century 16 theater in Aurora, Colorado, a gas-masked young man named James Holmes allegedly opened fire on a crowd of movie-goers, killing a dozen and injuring dozens.  News reports were murky and details were erratic surrounding this, the death toll and numbers injured rising and falling.  Hints at an MKULTRA or Manchurian Candidate-style implementation of psychotic outsourcing.  Rumors and politicization occurred immediately, mostly by ultraconservatives, raving about values systems without a hint of irony (or perhaps forgetting the automatic weapons they promote decent God-fearing Americans as having a right to bear, even if mentally unstable).  The suspect didn't shoot himself, as so many mass murdering lone gunmen are wont to do.  People say he calls himself The Joker, and his house, a booby-trapped mess of firearms and explosives, will likely be a rich resource of speculation for the weeks and months to come.  Sadly, out of all the confused news reports, attempts at aggrandizing oneself on the shoulders of senseless murder or pointing fingers in tearful anger, only The Onion actually nailed it on the head.  

This tragedy and the embarrassment of the aforementioned Limbaugh Flip-Flop (let's coin that, see if we can get a gif of a whale with Rush's face, beached and flopping, circulating throughout tumblr) unfortunately overshadow a film that stands at this point in time as one of the most cerebral superhero films to grace the silver screen.  

We all had a good time with The Avengers, though perhaps our misgivings about Nick Fury's secret shadow masters (remember, the ones that tried to nuke New York?) might have been directly addressed if the universe there operated as it does in Dark Knight Rises.  Bane's introduction is immediately engaging.  The cast of characters is introduced to us at a sane pace, their stories emerging more organically than many standard billing dramatic films.  The spice peppering the film is a simultaneous resentment and endorsement of entrenched power structures.  

The Dark Knight Rises is "a thinking man's" blockbuster cinema done right.  Bane's "Goatse" mask synths his voice into perfect Vaderesque villainy without immediate cries of shenanigans coming to mind.  "I am a necessary evil," he tells the nefarious industrialist before snuffing out his life.  Tom Hardy sells the role without the aid of facial expressions, getting a chuckle from the audience in the midst of outright carnage. Christian Bale does justice to Bruce Wayne, as was expected, and Michael Caine portrays his textured concern as Alfred Pennyworth with exceptional depth.  In fact, every single actor in this film (with one exception, catch phrase: "hothead") bring their roles to life quite skillfully. 

The movie goes through the checklist of superhero set-up but does not in any way seem rushed or slap-dashed together.  Nolan's choice of scenes inter-cutting throughout the movie make this a film about the subjectivity of each character's reality and the assumptions they make about the nature and circumstances of their reality, being acted upon. These are expressed continuously throughout the film, from Bane's constant nonchalant murders to Selina Kyle's most quotable potable whispered into Bruce Wayne's ear as she picks the valet ticket out of his dinner jacket: "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. … When it hits, you're all going to wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."

The class warfare promised by Bane's scheme is only blinked across the screen at certain intervals.  The idea of icons and symbols are tossed around nimbly, the old themes of fear and the brilliant undermining of realism and fantasy alike play themselves out in grander and more minute scales throughout.  It's a controlled game, with nary a chink in its armor.  Pacing is the watchword of this film. There's no lag or pause that was not well-timed or carefully planned.  What could have been an awkward clustering of special effects and villains (see: Spider-Man 3) instead hits home with a real sense of character and, more importantly for this film, palpable pathos.  

There's a bitter irony surrounding the fact that this movie, hardly an open advocate for gun violence despite the near-constant gun-play (remember, Batman hates guns), became the target of a gun-toting madman's murder spree, and there's an even more bitter irony played out in the doublespeak of the villain Bane being mirrored by pundits, politicians, and philistine pigs to serve their own dubious agenda.  These facts, and the facts surrounding the haul of critical accolades and worthy praise already resting at its feet (and that of the trilogy as a whole) secure this film not just as a fitting portrait for the cultural zeitgeist of America today, but quite possibly the high-water mark of superhero film-making as a whole. 

The San Diego Comic Convention is Virtuous and Good

Doczeitgeist: Reports from a being whose powers are able to warp reality as a lucid dreamer alters a dream. Doc Zeitgeist, the Parapersona Prime of the new and terrible aeon, tweeting live via astral projection from the San Diego Comic Convention International 2012. RVM interface/Begin feed:

1:
I'm in a small alcove in the San Diego Comic Con's shadiest section, selling bootleg copies of an inferior episode of The Dukes of Hazzard.

2:
LIVE UPDATE: My digital streaming reading of "Cagney & Lacey meet Simon & Simon" fanfiction has been cancelled. Meet me on the veranda.

3:
Met a guy at #CCI who gave me his business card, then wrote his real # on the back. "Motivational minute"? Looks like a used car salesman.

4:
CCI UPDATE: saw @warrenellis put a cigarette out in an ashtray made of Desolation Jones back issues. Four for a dollar. Supplies are limited.

5:
CCI update: Smoking bathsalts before entering the costume contest as Dr. Doom is NOT advisable. Attacked @reedrichards, attempted face-nom.

6:
CCI UPDATE: @mattfraction and @reggiewatts just gave a keynote speech in the sub-basement of Hard Rock Hotel San Diego. Topic: churros&soap

7:
CCI‬ UPDATE: Dana on Mission Bay may be 7 miles away from ‪#CCI‬, BUT they have no qualms about me building a campfire in my room.

8:
CCI‬ UPDATE: belay that last tweet. The fire has spread. Gonna run down the hall screaming "I will show you the life of the mind!" w/shotgun

9:
I knew felony charges would come with this ‪CCI‬ trip. When I saw Bradbury and Harryhausen in 2006 I bonked their heads together

10:
CCI‬ UPDATE: hotels in San Diego charge a Transient Occupancy tax of 10.565%. Bum bathing in a fountain told me this can be avoided

11:
CCI‬ UPDATE: Drank Old Crow with a guy that told me he was@tonymillionaire... I asked for an autograph and he tattooed the name OTTO on me

12:
Marvel panel will include extended sneak peek version of@Avengers 2 where Iron Man's actuary spends a half-hour weeping and drinking rum.

13:
SDCC‬ LIVE UPDATE: Just arrived at @TheLordDarkseidAFTERPARTY, found myself facing a wall.  CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

14:
AFTERPARTY‬ HAS TWO PARTIES, One Real, one fake!@TV IN A FISH TANK!! Kickstarting a ‪#hernia‬ and liver shutdown!

15:
CCI‬ UPDATE: Woke up in Barstow with new tattoo & quart of absinthe resting on my forehead. How? Caught ride back with migrant workers

16:
CCI‬ UPDATE: Patrolling panels: 10-4 You can't spell patrolling without "troll". You can't spell Saturday without "turd".

17:
CCI‬ UPDATE: Stumbled into room 25ABC thinking it was Scott McCould's CAC panel, discovered Q's about Zot! somehow still apply to Groo

18:
CCI‬ LIVE UPDATE: Preparing for an informative orientation session, complete with slideshow & condescension. THANK YOU RONALD REAGAN!

19:
SDCC‬:most disturbing event I'm scheduled to appear at is Twilight Fan Fiction group, 12-1. Sweetlolapops will oil me down with sparklejuice

20:
CCI‬: Dressed up as Danger Mouse to attend the Eisner Awards. Nobody got it until MetaMouse won one. I yelled BOOYAHWEH, then ran out.

21:
CCI‬ 2-3 @ImageComics Experience: Hope it tops the 2006 "Todd McFarlane talking about the time he hit Jim Lee in the Nuts" Symposium..

22:
SDCC‬ ‪#CCI‬: It's sad to watch the many tweets of people that aren't here scroll by, as I sit atop a pile of fangirls sipping from my chalice

23:
CCI‬: It seems like the @marveluniverse is always hinging on Cyclops' love life. That and resurrections. Lotsofem

24:
Axioms taken from ‪#SDCC‬ ‪#CCI‬ "The Tree of Comics must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of mainstream and independent failures"

25:
SDCC‬ When I get to Tromatize Yourself Panel, I'm gonna re-enact the old Mayor-disemboweling scene with the fattest ‪#Troma‬ fan in the room.

26:
CCI‬ LIVE UPDATE: ‪#Tarintino‬ crashed a ‪#BeforeWatchmen‬Panel, Twitter splodes.. I crash a ‪#HelloKitty‬ Panel (room 8AB) and nary a peep

27:
SDCC‬ I mistook the @Gameofthrones Panel for the @SkyrimPanel and started screaming DOVAHKIIN DOVAHKIIN / NAAL OK ZIN LOS VAHRIIN!!

28:
How is comic formed? They need do way instain editors who kill their comics, because these comics can't frigth back?

29:
Creator's rights? HA! In my day we got paid in bumblebee nickels and had to draw with onions tied to our belts. ‪#Comics‬

30:
Note to self: Clothesline entire room at Kickstarter Event, room 26AB. Hug the competition. Hug them until they beg for mercy.‪#notes‬

31:
SDCC‬ 3-4pm, Indiana Jones Fan Group, wherein grown men will openly weep, confess the trauma that was Indiana Jones & Crystal Skull crapfest

32:
CCI‬: I swear to God I am going to headbutt that Iron Man Extremis statue, just as soon as the crowd taking Instagrams disperses. ‪#Fun‬

33:
New Superman movie. Alienated and ... well, yeah. Alienated.

34:
CCI‬ 2012: Das Bosoms what wake me. Weak sauce:unstable particle symbiote suit. I milk cows on a farm. For justice. ‪#DrWho‬ panel. ‪#wah‬

35:
CCI‬ Axel Alonso did a breakdown for that reboot revamp jumpstart kickback for post ‪#AvX‬ continuity, @MARVEL NOW:http://www.newsarama.com/common/media/v …

36:
CCI‬ Update: Nothing better than sloppy wet pizza sitting on the tracks in front o the convention center. Free WiFi connected to‪#bums‬

37:
SDCC‬ ‪#CCI‬ 2012: To review, Neil Gaiman's writing‪#BEFORESANDMAN‬ but nobody is calling it that. ‪#DjangoUnleashed‬looks good. Godzilla's back

38:
SDCC‬ UPDATE: Ben Kingley has played a foul mouthed mobster, Gandhi, and now, the Mandarin. ‪#IronMan3‬ is gonna be glitterbombing cosmicstyle

39:
CCI2012‬ Gonna crash "Where do Ideas Come From? Banishing the Blank Page" and pass out rolls of butcher paper, pencils, and lead paint

40:
SDCC‬ 2012: Final @Marvel panel involves @DanSlott and it's happening forthwith. I'm going to ask about Rocket Racer. Where he at? Yeesh.

41:
SDCC‬ Somewhere in @Marvel offices someone loves that freakin' raccoon so much he's become a cornerstone of continuity.

42:
@doczeitgeist
Men who are comfortable with powerful women are more powerful men. — Joss Whedon ‪#Firefly‬ ‪#SDCC‬ quotes ‪#QnA‬ @NathanFillion

All-New Uncanny Impressions of Avengers vs. X-Men.

As discussed in prior installments, the megacrossover world shaker Avengers vs. X-Men is still in full gear, with the arrival of the Phoenix (and its subsequent fracturing) literally remaking the dynamic of the world as a whole.  Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus, Magik and Namor each share a fraction of the Phoenix's infinite energy (call them the Phoenix Five), and rather than prove the Avengers right (that is, destroy the world), they issue a declaration of Pax Utopia. The entire world receives free energy, ample food, clean water, and the annihilation of weapons of mass destruction. All military conflicts come to a halt. Deserts are irrigated. Sentinels are annihilated.  Food is plentiful.  The status quo so firmly established as a matter of course in the Marvel Universe 616 is deviated from strongly, and ably, thanks in no small part to the squad of extremely talented writers collaborating on this particular blockbuster.   

The various tie-in titles do a fairly good service to not upsetting the dynamic of reality and accenting the storyline (unlike, say, the truncated battle sequence depicted in "brawl title" AvX between Captain America and Gambit).  We see Emma Frost come into opposition with Avengers Academy, Rachel Summers (formerly Phoenix in her own right) calling her loyalty to the new world order into question, and Rogue scuffling with Ms. Marvel, who sows the seeds of doubt before being tossed into a Limbo prison.  Magneto serves as a John the Baptist.  Hope Summers trains in a mystical cityspace with the masters of Iron Fist and takes lessons from Spider-Man to prepare for confronting the Phoenix once more.

This twist has taken the Marvel Universe in a new and interesting direction and polarized fans in a fashion that simple slugfests never could.  Do you believe that the Phoenix Five's intentions are as pure as they seem, and that true peace can be established in a world where garishly costumed superhumans shatter concrete with wrist flicks?  Do you agree with the Avengers that such drastic changes always come with a cost, a backlash is inevitable, and that the more these mutants embrace their new powers, the more distant they will become from their core codes of morality?

There is also the notable issue of the Scarlet Witch at hand as well.  Her role in House of M (remaking the entire world to be one where everyone gets their heart's desire in a Magneto-run "utopia") has apparently been redeemed since, well, since for some reason every single Avenger has forgotten how badly she upset them and how dangerous her powers are, and oh yeah, she dismissed an entire race of beings with a fragment of a sentence.  Perhaps it's because she slept with Hawkeye that she gets a free pass.  It could also be that she alone seems capable of taking the Phoenix Five to task, and her connection to the Life Force (as established in Young Avengers: the Children's Crusade) is that common bond with the Phoenix that may prove interesting in the upcoming remaking of reality itself, not just the world, in a recently announced universal relaunch called Marvel: Now!

In more recent issues of the main title, we see the stark divide between the forces and note that the grey area (ha! as in, um, Jean) is vast on both sides.  In the most recent issue, Emma Frost nearly kills Hawkeye in a fit of anger (but don't worry, he's getting his own series soon, plus he'll completely forgive her once they have sex).  Internal strife among the Five will no doubt disassemble them (and Colossus is still the Juggernaut, in case you were curious). Charles Xavier's marginalization continues to expand and contract.  Captain America seems to have a born soldier's need for constant battle, his irrelevance in a world of perpetual peace perhaps an unspoken catalyst to his continually antagonizing the Phoenix Five.  Iron Fist's established ret-conned history with the Phoenix Force will grant him a +5 to his relevance.  Then again, maybe everything that's happened for the past ten-plus years in Marvel is about to be erased.  Or perhaps Hickman will simply set the Avengers out to "solve everything".

In terms of scripting duties, it's very interesting to note the emergent variations of style with each issue, and as every section of the story unfolds, the shift in artists seems fitting to the content.  Marvel, all foibles and wisecracks aside, is clearly bringing their A game.  Regardless of the final outcome, readers that have cared for and enjoyed each of the titular teams involved in this conflict are in capable hands.

What comes next, however, remains to be seen.  After years of established wetworks, continuity and character building, a relaunch (restart? reboot? revamp? remake?) of the Marvel Universe titles (Marvel NOW! NOW! NOW!) may cause fans to cry foul, or even worse, call "mimic", since as most comic readers are well aware, about a year ago the DC Universe erased its elaborately decorated chalkboard and started fresh (but in some spots shaky) with The New 52.

Regardless of outcome, the story continues to be intriguing and this reviewer, for one, will continue to buy it, if only to see where the trail leads.  If the end result proves ridiculous, then the purifying flame of my caustic wit will burn it away.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2009: A Gentlemen's Review

Their expressions pretty much sum it up, yeah.

Pull in close.  Warm your feet by the fire. Fancy a cuppa? We're going to take some time to explore the latest installment of comic book legend Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century: 2009.  It's penciled by the fantastic Kevin O'Neill (of Marshall Law fame) and co-published by wunderkind publishers Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics.  

The first thing to note before we delve into it is that this is in many ways a more sparse presentation than previous installments, owing in part (no doubt) to the fact that present day copyrights impinge on Moore's possibilities with literary cultural collage, one of his major strengths and a backbone of the series as a whole, since the initial premise is, after all, drawing from stables of established figures in various canons and re-imagining them in a world where they all live side by side.  Moore, of course, is fully aware of this limitation, and plays with it like a pro, but more of that in a moment.  

We arrive in this fictional parallel to our not-too-distant past with none of the orgiastic fanfare of previous explorations.  Orlando, the gender-switching immortal with three millennia under his/her belt, is a traumatized soldier in parallel reality Iraq (Q'Mar), set to receive a medal and a ride home after snapping and slaughtering not just insurgents, but also his fellow soldiers, all nearby civilians, and a dog.  Upon returning to the abandoned hideout of the League, the wizard Prospero orders her (gender-switch in the shower) to find Mina Harker and stop the Antichrist and his forthcoming "traditional Apocalypse", formulated by Crowley manque Oliver Haddo. 

Pause a moment and examine the litany of curse words that the Prime Minister's "Fixer" streams in the background on the telly while Prospero chews Orlando out.  Where is that convolution of Moore wit we've grown accustomed to?  That overwrought double and sometimes triple entendre hidden behind layers of homage and nostalgia?   Hiding under a thin layer of disgust with current trends of banality within the mediasphere, old son.  He makes very little effort to disguise it. 

A throwback to previous installments ties up certain plotlines dedicated readers might have lost track of.  The MI5 propaganda institution gives wry references to the James Bonds of times gone past (can you spot them?) and the Coote Institute (descendant of Volume 1's girl's school, directly referencing randy what-the-butler-saw-and-what-have-you's of Britain's erotic serial The Pearl) dovetailing with the Gallywag-oriented backup story and poor Mina's dementia. 

Grant Morrison's King in Yellow Mobius Strip Tease seems tame by comparison.

Clamor on through the small references to popular culture that manifest as vague asides throughout the streets of London as Orlando and Mina attempt to piece together their team (adventurer Alan Quartermain has degenerated into a heroin-addicted bum and coward) and the location/nature of the Antichrist.

Is that the current incarnation of The Doctor strolling through King's Cross with the first one? Surely not.  Orlando and Mina consult with Norton, the Prisoner of London, who directs them to a hidden train platform, gore-streaked and corpse-filled, hearkening, of course indirectly, to Harry Potter's magical train station leading to Hogwarts.  When Mina and Orlando take the train to the (decimated) "Invisible College"  an interesting point is made.  In the midst of theories about the relation/reflection of this blasted dreamscape to the real world, Orlando relates the magical school massacre they're traipsing through the aftermath of to the school shootings in America.  And suddenly, in a series where only the Prisoner of London got to make cryptic crossword comments relating to the "real world" while everything else related to a literary looking glass, we have a direct reference to our reality.  The parallels to fiction's inter-relatedness to fact has often been a point Moore engaged (notably in the wonderful series Promethea) but here we can feel his point bearing down with a certain bitter gravitas.  Flashbacks from the point of view of the Antichrist have Oliver Haddo look us (him) in the face and call him (us) a banal disappointment.

The AntiChrist has no sense of Feng Shui.

On first assessment, one could call this latest (last?) installment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the least fulfilling of the lot, yet Moore's covered even that base with the framework of the storyline as a whole.  Modern society, the banal Antichristing fly-harangued redundancy that it is, has become a dreary mess with little to no sense of purpose. The bustling over-populated chaos bustle of previously explored centuries and their dirty alleyways has been replaced with austere camera-lined bland streets (the spirit of this age embodied early on in the story with a passing glance over an album cover titled "Oh, Who Cares?").  Not even the eternally present black cat of previous League episodes can be found.  The fornicating faeries are all dead. The Blazing World has receded, and our only fully male hero of the series is an opiate addicted sot until the final act.  Even our villain, the petulant Antichrist (scarred, exploited, nameless) is little more than a grubby wanker with an eyeball problem. Yes, he's pretty much Harry Potter, if you want to be puerile about it. And yes, Harry Potter is pretty much Tim Hunter. And Tim Hunter is the oldest son of artist John Bolton, as much as Orlando is Roland. And so on.

There is texture, even in the sparseness allowed in this work.  At the climax we're given a curious confrontation between the Poppinsesque "final goddess" and the Antichrist. We're given a dozen tiny "in-jokes" (as opposed to the hundreds of Volume Two) and we are given a few hints of potential foreshadowing (including a potentially disastrous "Moriarty-sperm-repopulated moonman war" hint hidden at the end).  Is this the final step for the series, or just this volume?  Whatever the case, it's been a hall of floor-to-ceiling looking glasses, and it has reflected the arc of our own world's disintegration with the aplomb we have come to expect from Alan Moore.

If a forthcoming fourth volume is yet to be had, I'd welcome it.  The territory is still ripe, even if the content has to shift considerably.  The trip has been an interesting one, to say the least, and if it were to crack open a wider portal and bridge that rift between what is real and "not-real" then we would all be well-served.

Good Reviews for recent Comic Book Publications

EARTH 2 #2   - 9/10

You've no doubt heard by now that Green Lantern is gay.  Interestingly, the DC Universe has run just a tad bit behind in the new trend of catering (pandering...?) to the LGBT community, while Marvel has had minor mutant Northstar outed for quite some time, and soon to be married (to a black human!).  The reaction from the Evangelical community to these announcements was almost as predictable as the cascade of reactions from internet trolls.  In all seriousness though, the sudden surge of "newsworthiness" of a comic book character's sexual orientation seems to have come about in the tumult of a cultural zeitgeist where many serious civil rights issues, mostly centered around marriage between homosexuals, are playing themselves out in political arenas.  This trend has come to a dramatic head with the latest issue of Earth 2, where a character (Alan Scott, no longer a World War II relic) proposes to his lover Sam.  James Robinson heads up the script, taking the Alan Scott character he's loved for so long ("old universe" issues of JLA written by Robinson gave ample stage-time to "the original Green Lantern's" convoluted family, including his gay son Obsidian, now clearly null and void), while Nicola and Trevor Scott move the story along at a brisk pace with clean crisp artwork.  Overall, the plot in this parallel universe seems to be portioning  itself out, the previous issue seeing the death of DC's "Big Three", and this issue featuring the dying god Mercury transferring his superspeed to shiftless loser Jay Garrick. The proposal of marriage comes only at the end of this issue, immediately followed by cliffhanger catastrophe.  This revamps the whole idea of "Golden Age" DC heroes as relevant to the standards and practices of a tolerant tomorrow, which is of course today.

RED LANTERNS #10  - 9/10

For whatever reason, the DC New 52 saw fit to give The Red Lanterns and Stormwatch their own series in the universal reboot. This has not been a bad thing, in most aspects.  With Peter Milligan and Miguel Sepulveda (both extremely talented individuals with proven track records) teaming up on scripts and art, respectively, this issue of Red Lanterns crosses over with the previous week's installment of Stormwatch #9 quite nicely.  One part slugfest (Midnighter punches a cat) and one part progressive character development (Atrocitus is not the one note character he once seemed), this expands the scope of these relatively "unknown" titles and gives more depth and dimension to the potential "cosmic" impacts as yet unexplored (outside of Green Lantern titles, gearing up to a major forthcoming showdown with the Guardians of the Universe) within the New 52.  Pacing is solid, and the two part story wraps up neatly, leaving the future wide open for further engagements. As with all titles floating in cosmic flotsam and jetsam, these two are best served when they ground their storylines in concrete character development.  And of course... epic fight scenes.

SWAMP THING #10  - 9/10

The fantastic world developed over the past year within Swamp Thing has expanded rather well from the mythos developed during the legendary Alan Moore years.  To a great extent, we have series writer Scott Snyder to thank for that.  Yanick Paquette's art, a fluid organic complication, lent itself to the progress of the series popularity, but we can see Francesco Francavilla's art has played a crucial part in this issue... adding a texture to a beautifully colored flatness, akin to Darwyn Cooke, with old greenjeans returning from a desert war with the Rot (and Lord of the Rot, Sethe).  This issue features the official return of Anton Arcane, the arch-villain of Alec Holland and friends in times gone past.  The build up for all of this is a matter of course, and the story's pacing matches the ambitions of the creative team.  We almost catch our breaths after the epic arc that brought us to this point, and we can see that the Parliment of Trees, torched and hacked and rotted through at roughly the same time as Alec Holland's brutal chainsaw murder, have been revived as saplings.  Needless to say, Abigail Arcane will be facing off in a Rot-infused family reunion next issue, and further down the line we can expect connections to the Animal Man series finally (after much build up) resolve.

MIGHTY THOR ANNUAL #1  - 8/10

This issue, written by J.M. Dematteis, with art from Richard Elson, deals with troublesome and very abstract cosmic forces set to undo all of creation, plunging Infinity into Oblivion.  Pulling plots from beyond the scope of most fanboy's memories, Thor teams up with The Silver Surfer to curtail an invasion from Outwhere by The Other, playing the long con game-within-a-game devised, potentially, by The Other's counterpart and polar opposition, The Scrier.  Old times with Jim Starlin and the cosmic Marvel pantheon are faintly conjured, and an especially nice spot is where the Scrier calls forth thousands of parallel reality Thors and Surfers to rally against The Other... but the high power levels involved deflate most possibilities for reader relation, and in certain areas the vast scope makes dialogue fall somewhat flat.  Self-contained, as Annuals often are, the story still feels constrained, but for anyone more interested in flash over substance it's a rollicking good time.

New Impressions of Avengers vs. X-Men (Spoilers)

In previous installments of this series concerning the current globe-spanning mega-crossover epic of the Marvel Universe AVENGERS VS. X-MEN, currently in its fifth installment (not including the multiple main title tie-ins), we assessed the context, explored the basic structure of the plot and predicted (accurately) the progression of the storyline.  With the fourth issue, we have a twist on top of a twist.  Wolverine promised to take the "mutant messiah" Hope to the moon, and that he did (after a brief confrontation with a Shiar death squad in "Wolverine and the X-Men"), but not before contacting Captain America and the Avengers.  The issue ends with Thor being thrown into the midst of these heroes, forming a crater (running against the current continuity of New Avengers, which will no doubt catch up shortly)... and the Phoenix, after much build-up, has arrived.

Hope's mutant powers react, of course, and as has been the way with her since her introduction, we are treated to the old "I'm not ready for this!" effect.  In the course of events she actually manages to take out all the X-Men and the Avengers.  Terrified, she calls on Wolverine to kill her, again. Considering Wolvie has been slashing Captain America and Cyclops alike in the guts over the past few issues, he's more than happy to oblige.  At this point the stubbornness of Cyclops is bludgeoned over our head for the umpteenth time.    

The main issue that one might call forth as a critical issue with this series is the overabundance of talent.  With nearly a half-dozen contributors to the story and script (Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Jonathan Hickman seem to be trading dialogue duty with each issue), each and every panel and event feels polished to the point of being over-refined.  John Romita Jr. does a solid job, as expected from such a diehard professional, managing to balance out the art duties of an epic storyline with the repetitiveness of an overextended premise.  He's moved beyond the blocky standards of his early work and the inks/color/computer assists do a fine job of complimenting him in this series.   

At the end of the day, Hope is what the story hinges on, and despite valiant attempts at texture, she's entirely too shallow a character to pull it off.  A powerhouse of potential (a point driven home again and again, in each and every appearance she has ever made), she's hardly had time to be addressed as having human frailties (a few moments in Generation Hope notwithstanding).  A heap of ideals and expectations have been passed off onto her, and there's a degree to which she is an inherently unlikable character.  There's the overblown manner in which she addresses events in this series, in the past tense, as if telling the story after the fact (making references to the dropping of the atomic bomb on page one, referring to herself as a victim, like so many others, of the Phoenix, on the last page).  She takes few actions, and events happen to her.  This is her weakness as a character, being presented for some reason as a strength.

But despite that, you might ask yourself, at what point does this much-anticipated series jump the proverbial shark?

When Tony Stark equips himself in a giant Iron Man costume and shoots the Phoenix with a heretofore unheard-of deterrent weapon, a "Phoenix Buster Suit" if you will... he damages it, fractures it, and its power, rather than being transferred into Hope, is split among the X-Men present on the moon (notably removing the trademark Juggernaut helmet present on Colossus up until this point in the series, perhaps purging the demon Cyttorak?).

Really, who saw that one coming?

At best, Avengers vs. X-Men is breaking ground on the "next major plot point" to be bandied about in editor-notes on mutant-related titles for the next two to five years, potentially dovetailing with something catastrophic and "ultra-relevant" in the next two to four months (if the incessant and ever darkening foreshadowing narration by Hope is any indication).  At its greatest aspiration, this marks a storyline contending with The Dark Phoenix Saga or Civil War in terms of impact (until ret-conned by editors in an obscure limited series if or when fanboy outcry reaches its most strident peak and someone decides they never liked Emma Frost in the first place).  

Or, at worst, this series will play itself out like nearly all "hero vs. hero" slugfests up to and potentially including this point... an exercise in pulling punches.  You have to wonder if there is any writer in the Marvel stables considering the What-If issues that each step of the series could spawn, or the parallels of these "hyper-mutants" that a select group of X-Men become in issue five.  At its lowest point, it could be viewed as just another money-maker, with no real lasting impact on the characters involved.  The final verdict on that, of course, remains to be seen, but despite all the "major events" occurring, it's a possibility.

With the most recent issue of Avengers vs. X-Men, we have a crux, a tipping point, in which the final heft of the series will shortly be determined.  With the PhoeniX-Men "preparing" Hope the petulant brat messiah for her upcoming important/irrelevant role in mutantkind's final fate, it's in the hands of Marvel's finest writers to steer the ship of the series out of troubled waters and into more familiar channels, or venture into new unexplored islands of potential. A world-wide mutant "utopia"? A replay of the Civil War trope "heroes putting heroes in jail"?  It stands to reason that whatever comes next will prove profitable for the House of Ideas, regardless of its actual effect on the Status Quo.  Rock the boat even a little and you'll draw attention.

So, in short, the talent combining for this event is staggering.  Is it too big to fail?  Are the creator's ideas bigger than the reader's stomachs?  Fan reaction has been buzzing throughout message boards, but we'll have our final answer soon enough.

Charles Xavier's stepping out of the shadows, and clearing his throat. 

Spoiler Reviews for Comics released May 30, 2012

Amazing Spiderman Annual #39 - 9/10

Writer Brian Reed has put good use of Spider-Man's current position in the Marvel Universe into play with this Annual.  Shunting the webhead out of time during a experiment in Horizon Labs with the all-too-innocent chubby scientist Grady, we catch a glimpse of what the world might look like without Spider-Man. Penciler Lee Garbett does a solid job in all respects, giving a friendly tone to a world that seems in some ways better off (Norman Osborne cures cancer, Mary Jane Watson is a superstar) and in others quite ordinary (Spider-Woman and the Avengers seem much the same).  What makes this issue stand out more than anything is the temporary return of Uncle Ben, who Peter Parker couldn't help but visit. If you want to pick up just one Spider-Man comic this year, this would be the one.  It's clutter-free despite the chronal catastrophe at the outset, and it fleshes out characters without attempting to go overboard.  Nearly perfect in execution, and so far as "the new status quo" goes, well-placed in continuity, and Reed has clearly done his homework regarding key points along the Spider-Man timeline, played up throughout.

Animal Man Annual 1 - 9/10

Ongoing series writer Jeff Lemire has been running with the same "Animal Man's family on the run from the Rot" story for nearly a year, and this Annual, the first for Animal Man's new series, fits into that, hinting at the upcoming team-up with Alec Holland, Swamp Thing and last knight of the Green.  The story stands on its own, in a fashion, being in great part a flashback to a team up between warriors of the Green and the Red to stave off The Rot. This Annual features glorious art by Timothy Green, whose alternation between sparsity and complexity of line-work suit the story quite well.  The mythology brewing in the "Vertigo import" titles of the New DCU, Swamp Thing and Animal Man, has been venturing into interesting new places, breaking ground for newer and older generations of readers to enjoy.  So far as intrigue goes, it has come to a point where the final battle or battles will have to match or exceed the build-up, as lengthy and pleasantly meandering as it has been.  This issue, a pause of reflection, in some respects, compounds that feeling.  Still gloriously done. Leaves the future for these characters wide open in terms of potential development.

BATMAN Annual #1 - 8/10

Mister Freeze has not warranted a decent reappraisal since Schwarzenegger turned him into a joke so many years ago.  This Batman Annual, however, written by Scott Snyder and James T Tynion IV with impressive art by Jason Fabok, pulls us into the character with an ease that some might not expect.  Tying into the "Night of the Owls" storyline wrapping up all the Batman related titles at the moment, Mr. Freeze breaks out of Arkham in a somewhat novel fashion, goes on a brutal rampage up to and including the semi-legitimate Penguin's casino (to get his freeze guns) and returns to his object of obsession, his precious Nora.  In previous continuity, this was rather straightforwardly (read: dully) played out as his wife.  There is now a twist, potentially coupled with details of his family background, that gives the demented tragedy of Mr. Freeze a deeper resonance than was previously thought possible.  At the end of the day, of course, this can only wrap up in a limited fashion, but the trip to the inevitable end has some good and even surprising moments along the way.

Star Trek The Next Generation/Doctor Who #1 - 9/10

Here we have a crossover that fans of both series should take a moment with, something quite unexpected but highly enjoyable.  With storywork by Scott Tipton, David Tipton, and Tony Lee, the cross-over starts out in the Star Trek Universe (are we to assume both universes are one and the same? If so, would Q and the Doctor have an interesting interaction or what? Perhaps later issues will clarify this.) where the Cybermen have teamed up with the Borg and are laying siege to planets, Starfleet seeming helpless to stop them. We're carried to the Doctor's universe (with Rory and Amy) where they are just wrapping up a lovely set-to with ancient Egyptians and alien scum in disguise. J.K. Woodward's arts and colors have a clean yet almost ethereal quality to them, somehow fitting.  We finish this issue in what is quite obviously the anachronistic setting of early twentieth century San Francisco a la Enterprise Holodeck.  There were a hundred ways in which this story could go wrong, but it has a strong finish and looks to be well paced.  Here's to the future, eh?

Supercrooks #3 - 8/10

These days, Mark Millar writes superhero stories that seem as punchy as a wide-screen cinematic experience.  One-liners and dramatic fights play out amongst characters that could easily have celebrity sit-ins.  The premise for this story, obvious from the get-go, is "Oceans Eleven starring supervillains" making that last big score to get their old mentor out of trouble with a casino owner.  Since his work on Superior, also with Millar, artist Lenil Yu seems determined to make his characters and settings as clean and crisp as is humanly possible, even when covered in muck and gore.  This issue is the one in which the titular super criminals case the joint, in this case a villa for a retired super-villain known as The Bastard. From start to finish it's text-book longing for cinematic pick-up.  With each page you can practically see Millarworld spin off emails to grubby producers, pitches lined with clips where some textured baddie is growling and chewing the scenery.  Let's just never make another movie like WANTED. Please.

Wolverine #307 - 7.5/10 

With story by Cullen Bunn and art by Paul Pelletier, this issue marks another chapter in an ongoing arc involving Wolverine tracking down Dr. Rot, a homicidal surgical villain lurking behind the scenes for nearly as long as Wolverine's interminably normal boring girlfriend.  She's been looking for Wolverine with the Feds, who think Logan, James, whatever, has been going on a rampage.  Well, this issue, we get to meet Dr. Rot's "extended family" (Wolvie mercy-killed the dad and disemboweled a "cousin" last issue)... who are supposed to pack the same punch as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family, perhaps, but end up coming off ghoulishly unrealistic and flat.  When these second-tier blood encrusted yahoos manage to one-up Wolverine, lobotomize, brainwash, and give him a tour of their facilities, the reader, if not already numb, can pull out of the muck long enough to predict the final page, wherein Wolverine's girlfriend and the Feds are closing in on the Rot compound, and Rot gives Wolverine orders to kill them.  Let's predict next issue. Wolverine doesn't kill his girlfriend. He doesn't even manage to kill any of the Rot family.  Somehow these people, grossly brutal villains that he has let off the hook before, will be let off the hook again.  Then the next level of status quo will be eminently achieved when Wolverine's dull awful ethnically confusing girlfriend tells him he's not an animal, or something to that effect.  Dialogue's decent enough and some instances of old tropes replayed are even novel, but ultimately this gruesome tale can only be re-examined in so many ways.

Spoiler Reviews for Comics from May 23, 2012

ASTONISHING X-MEN #50. The gimmick of the week is here...

***

Ignoramuses are likely none too pleased with this turn of events, but Marvel Comics is making a bold and timely move with the gay interracial marriage of Northstar in the next issue of Astonishing X-Men.  The lead-up to it (oddly out of synch with "regular continuity" but understandably so) involves the corruption and eventual murder(?) of long-standing X-person and mind-dominator Karma, and the fifteenth death of The Marauders.  Overall, plot pacing is standard and the art is at times oddly discomfiting, but this series, kicked off by Joss Whedon and John Cassady, then carried by Warren Ellis for a time, is now in the hands of writer Marjorie Liu and artist Mike Perkins, who seem more than capable of handling this hodge-podge stable of mutants.  This issue stands out because Jean Paul proposes.  Interesting that the choice to make the subplot of Northstar's lovelife brings it to issue 51 rather than the more milestone-ish 50th issue.  Whatever happened to the days of silver foil fold out 50th issues? Ah, budget cuts.

PROPHET #25 - Hints indicating an interesting new take on an Image throwback.

****

Remember the early days of Image Comics?  It's possible you don't recall the first appearance in Youngblood #2 of a certain John Prophet, headgear-sporting quasi-religious fanatic with strangely disproportionate physical features, who went on to carry his own series for a time.  Well, he's back.  And with new issues, it would seem that the direction, in terms of storyline as much as art, has gone in the proper direction.  Issue 25 is part two of the new reboot, apparently being co-written by Brandon Graham, Giannis Milonogiannis and Simon Roy, with Giannis Milonogiannis taking a hand at the art, bearing hints of Barry Windsor Smith's good old days thrown in with something entirely new and different.  I'd long since written off Prophet as a goofy junket from the days when Stephen Platt's art was raging and crashing in useless storylines that involved no substance whatsoever. The story here is still a lot of scenery chewing and Heavy Metal type fantasy tech, but it has a surprising depth, intriguing enough for what it is.

THE MIGHTY THOR #14. Why is it that this happens EVERY time Enchantress makes you breakfast in bed?

****

When you see a writer in mainstream comic books working with characters that he loves, you have to wonder where he will head with the next step, and when he will run out of steam.  Matt Fraction, who spanked the whole planet with FEAR ITSELF, seems most invested in Iron Man (his run with Invincible Iron Man stands as one of the best Marvel's had for old shellhead) and Thor.  The Mighty Thor has been for some time running as the sidequest of Thor returning from death.  With the official return cleared up, we can see that he's exploring Donald Blake's character, apparently a construct by Odin to house the essence of Thor.  Bereft of these godly energies, he's gone in league with long-standing villainess Enchantress to regain his deity status.  As with every single bloody time that someone falls under the sway of Enchantress, he's going to suffer dire consequences.  Meanwhile, Thor is trapped in a dream by nightmare creatures that might take the world tree Yggdrasil by force.  Matt Fraction writes these characters with a steadfast love, and that lends the stories a strong sense of presence.

BATMAN INCORPORATED #1 : Sometimes, Grant Morrison's humor bleeds out all over the floor.

****

You would think that eventually Grant Morrison would run out of ideas for the dark knight. But here, years after reintroducing his son Damian as the new Robin, overseeing Batman's death and Nightwing's attempt at the mantle, and ongoing hints of a world-wide "Batman Incorporated"... we have, at last, Batman Incorporated. It's not immediately clear if it runs in pure current continuity on the "New" Batman comics (it doesn't tie into the Court of Owls), but that doesn't matter. Leviathan, a villain fit for a board room full of nervous supervillains, has set his/her/its sights on Gotham, and that means, in classic Morrison style, a lot of detective work, dramatic battle sequences, and dramatic cliff-hangers.  Keep this series going for as long as Morrison has the ability to write it. 

TEEN TITANS #9: Blah blah blah blah.

**

I swear to God, I'm not sure why I keep picking Teen Titans up.  Nostalgia? False hope? Stupidity? If you developed a drinking game for the comic where every time someone said "Culling", "Harvest", or "Ravagers" you took a drink, you'd be drunk in two pages.  I get that there are divergent writing styles and even divergent readers (perhaps the main audience for this title are teenagers who need plot points repeated ad nauseum), but the storyline in this new run of Teen Titans is abysmal (and the art, while flashy, is uninspiring).  Somehow a government agency has been co-opted by Harvest, a megalomania-flavored supervillain with zero common sense or character-depth, and superpowered teens are being collected and pitted against one another in "the Culling" to create a team called The Ravagers (coming soon).  There are few, if any consequences to actions in the comic, not counting the introduction and pointless death of Artemis.  A brief hint at certain elements of Vertigo's Doom Patrol (remember the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E.?) lured me in, but this exposition-addled constant slugfest (drawing in the conversely more interesting Legion Lost into its mess) has lost me for good.  I feel nothing for any character or action in the series, and the break-neck pacing and unnatural dialogue hardly gives a reader time to.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #9: Don't say the s-word.

****

This issue does a fine job of old-school comic book pacing mixed with the hard edge one should expect from Justice League Dark.  Steve Trevor enlists the aid of John Constantine and his occult friends in undoing the mystic dowager Jack Faust's schemes.  This issue also introduces Black Orchid to the team (last seen being brutally murdered in the pages of Swamp Thing long long ago), and reintroduces the Books of Magic to the DC Universe.  Jeff Lemire's script gives each character a distinct voice, and Mikel Janin's artwork lures us into re-evaluating each page over and over.  Still a solid comic book, despite a brief bump in the cross-over of previous issues, it seems like this title could outstrip many others in the universe in terms of captivating audiences with unexpected twists. Just don't call it "a superhero book" to its face.

IRREDEEMABLE #37: The final issue and a metaredemption.

*****

Mark Waid is evil. He said so himself. He plastered a comic book convention with the words.  The final issue of his interesting twist on heroes and villains, Irredeemable, was unpredictable but not in an upsetting way.  The villain of the story, once the world's mightiest hero The Plutonian, saves the day with assistance from his supergenius friend Qubit (now modified with Modeus), and in the end, after brutalizing the planet for issue upon issue, is somehow redeemed.  The manner in which this happens is reminiscent of the series penchant for metanarrative and lo-cal social commentary.  So far as superhero genre-busters go, this was a fine run for Waid, who when he finally got to the point (destroying city after city along the way), proved why he's an industry heavyweight who can stand apart from the mainstream and still genuinely love and invest in its tropes.

Remember when Grant Morrison had a similar scene in All Star Superman?