comickal: recently read, crusading edition

Mighty Crusaders #1 of 6 (Eric Troughtman and Brandon Jerwa/ Julian Lopez and John Lucas; DC)

So ... all of the Red Circle titles having apparently failed commercially -- even The Web, which was loosely affiliated with the Bat titles, and the only one of those that's doing anything like badly is Azrael -- it was decided to combine all of these heroes that nobody was following into one big miniseries ... All-righty then! The series seems to be mostly a coda to all of the other series and a reward to the readers of the previous series; there's no attempt at all to introduce the characters to a new audience. At least two storylines continue from the previous series; the Hangman dealing with an enemy he met at the end of his series, and Inferno wondering about who he used to be before he became a guy who caught fire.

The issue starts with our heroes getting introduced to the public by the US president as a team that's clearly meant, in part, to be a US version of the Global Peace Agency and also of Checkmate. They immediately start out fighting a bunch of bad guys that their government-issued manager seems to have cooked up purely to get them some good publicity for saving the president on the steps of the Capitol. This does not go over well with any of the heroes; their first action is to arrest said manager for ... well, it's not at all clear for what. Fraud, I guess. In the meantime, back in San Francisco, the Hangman, who is not officially part of the team, tries to save a senator from an assassination attempt, but fails ... and in the process discovers that the senator was an alien. In fact, it turns out that there's an entire alien civil war, quietly taking place on earth behind the scenes. And an admittedly intriguing ending.

I get that DC is simply resurrecting the group name as it was in the past (...Archie Comics? Really?) But there does seem to be a peculiar ... tone-deafness involved in calling a group under the direct command of the US government "Crusaders" in this day and age.

Apart from that ... It's OK. I can't recommend it to anyone who didn't read at least a couple of the previous Red Circle titles, particularly whichever one it was that had Inferno -- I think he may have been the backup title for The Shield, which I dropped after two issues, so I'm not certain -- and The Web and his backup The Hangman. Those stories seem to be the most important ones that are coming through, and it's going to be completely baffling to anyone without at least some of the background. If you have read the Red Circle titles, it might be worth it.

OK. No recommendation.

Zatanna #3 (Paul Dini/Stephane Roux; DC): I will admit, the end of this issue surprised me quite a lot. I didn't think that DC permitted writers to do something like that to their villains. That aside, it's an oddly lovely issue. Zatanna responds to Brother Night's challenge -- he kidnaps her staff and sics her father's enslaved spirit on her. She rescues her staff -- of course -- and deals with her father in a very interesting way. It's a surprisingly short arc to start out the continuing series, but a very satisfying one. I'm not entirely convinced that Stephane Roux is quite the right artist for Zatanna -- the art looks oddly cartoony in some places -- but we'll see.
Good; Recommended

Resurrection vol 2 #13 (Marc Guggenheim/Justin Greenwood; Oni Press):
...Well. That's one hell of a way to go into a hiatus. The alien that's been captured and which somehow kept Baltimore, alone of all US cities, safe from occupation and destruction gets re-captured and questioned at length by Bill Clinton and Sara, and tries not to reveal anything of consequence. He resists for a very good, if incredibly frustrating, reason. And then there's that last page, which will have longtime readers of the series saying, "What the HELL!? HOW?" ... and not getting an answer for at least several months to come, because Guggenheim and Greenwood are taking the next few months to produce "Stringers", a title in which Greenwood apparently has more of a direct investment than Resurrection. Which means that it will probably be at least a year before we find out how on earth that final page was even possible.
Excellent; Highly recommended, if incredibly frustrating.

Time Masters: Vanishing Point 1 of 6 (Dan Jurgens/Norm Rapmund; DC):

This title suffers dreadfully from not only being slaved to "The Return of Bruce Wayne," but also from being clearly very late to the stand. It's apparent from events in the story that it was meant to be published either at the same time or even before the first issue of "The Return"; it explains how and why Superman, Green Lantern and Booster Gold came to be searching for Bruce, and how they knew that he was lost in time -- Rip Hunter, the time hunter himself, told and recruited them. At the same time, an event happens that indicates that "The Return" is meant to be feeding back into "Time Masters"; Vanishing Point, a headquarters at the end of time -- DC's version of Milliways, only without the reputation for its cuisine -- itself is destroyed, and nobody seems to know why, but if you've read The Return issue 2, you know that Bruce himself seems to have destroyed it, to prevent the other heroes from finding him. Chances are that Return issue 2 was supposed to be published between Time Hunters 1 and 2 to give us the answer to that question. In other words, while the publication sequence really isn't clear, it's obvious that the two titles are locked together. "The Return" mostly stands alone, "Time Hunters" really doesn't.

Time Hunters also suffers from periodic lacks of story logic. For example, Degaton and Despero -- whoever they are -- manage to get into an utterly undefended Time Hunters HQ; no alarms, nothing. Except that it turns out that Goldstar, Booster Gold's sister (?), has been left behind. And while she should have known about the invaders, somehow they manage to take her by surprise; the only reason that they don't destroy Rip's time platform is that Supernova, who has been investigating the destruction of Vanishing Point, reappears just in time and stops them. Then, with Goldstar having signally failed to protect the time platform by herself, Supernova leaves her to do it again.

Really, at this point, Time Hunters just isn't very good. It may be that it can pull itself away from The Return of Bruce Wayne to become both its own thing and better. Right now, however, the issue feels like it may be the same sort of thing as "Blackest Night: Wonder Woman", something meant to fill in spaces between issues of another title where something happens that needs further explanation elsewhere.

Bad; Not recommended.

First Wave: The Spirit #4 (David Hine/Moritat; Marv Wolfman/Phil Winslade; DC):

... OK, I have just about had it with The Spirit in this incarnation.

The first story in this issue: Someone is spreading a new, deadly drug around the streets of Central City. The Spirit is investigating. Ebony and Ellen get involved. Ebony's part goes very very badly. Moritat's art is, as usual, quite spectacular. That's all you really need to know about that first story, in terms of plot.

What I'm getting irritated about is the way they're using the reconstituted Ebony. The Spirit and Ebony have appeared in both First Wave: The Spirit and in the main First Wave title itself. And I was mostly on board with how they decided to rebuild Ebony; I don't know that the "sass" made more or less sense in a woman than in a boy -- though chances are that it would get a boy either arrested or beat down in this day and age -- but I could get behind the name working better for a woman. I've known a few people with that name, and all but one were women. So that, at least, worked.

What grates is that, having made Ebony a woman, they've also made her the ogled, abducted and distressed damsel, and it's massively irritating. The character deserves better than that.

In the main First Wave title, The Spirit, badly injured, breaks into Ebony's home while she's in the shower, so the first time we see her, she's naked and covering herself with her hands. Shortly thereafter, she gets captured by the bad guys -- granted, because she followed the Spirit after being specifically told not to -- and used as bait to draw the Spirit into a graveyard, where he will most certainly be trapped into something or other. In the most recent issue of "First Wave: The Spirit", Ebony gets caught by the bad guys and injected with a theoretically lethal dose of the new street drug.

In terms of physical abuse, a writer can do a hell of a lot more with and to the adult Ebony than you could with the juvenile Ebony. Readers would have a hard time stomaching even this much abuse of a child. But the woman has had almost no agency at all in two different titles. She gets knocked out and abducted or drugged in both. Ellen Dolan, the Spirit's main squeeze, has been sort of abducted once, but managed to fight so hard and so much that she made it almost impossible to carry through, and wound up getting away. (Granted, partially rescued by the Spirit figuring out where Angel Smerti had taken her.) In this issue, she also takes on the drug dealers, but nothing bad happens to her. The dealers realize that she's the police chief's daughter, and since he's thought to be crooked and on their side, they let her go -- and right after they let her go, the Spirit arrives and beats the crap out of them anyway.

I'm not saying that they need to start embarrassing and abducting Ellen more so that what happens with her and Ebony evens out. However, take a look at Darwyn Cooke's previous revival of "The Spirit". The story really does work better with juvenile boy Ebony. His "sass" would probably get him in trouble, his name is all wrong, but he's frankly a much better partner for the Spirit than the woman Ebony, all because having made her a woman, the writers don't seem to have the foggiest idea what to do with her other than put her in danger as a draw for the Spirit.

Elsewhere in these First Wave issues there's also Imani. She's a kid -- I think she's supposed to be about eleven -- who skips out on school, keeps her ear to the ground, and passes on information to the Spirit. In short, she fills the role that the former Ebony used to have, with the sole exception that she doesn't drive a cab that the Spirit sometimes used as emergency transport. She also appears to be much more grim and street-savvy in a different way than the boy Ebony or the woman Ebony. Frankly, if you're going to have Imani, you really don't need the woman Ebony. Imani's a much better foil and a much better informant. They might as well let Ebony die of this overdose if they're not going to use the character better than that.

That rant aside, Wolfman's black and white done-in-one backup short "Connected" is a lovely little morality tale. It shows how the actions of one criminal, burning houses and putting people out on the street, can ultimately connect individuals in some very unexpected ways. And on top of that, a lovely nasty ironic twist at the end. Very classic style Spirit tale, well written, with Winslade's great artwork.

No recommendation
I can't recommend the first story because it makes me want to roll up the issue and beat the writers vigorously about the head and shoulders with it until they do better. I would rate Wolfman's backup story and Winslade's art in the backup and Moritat's art in the first as Excellent; Highly recommended, so those would be the reasons to buy it, if you're going to. Just prepare to be aggravated.