THINGS COMICKAL AND RANDOM

You know ... I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, Straczynski ... isn't a good match for continuing series with DC characters. On the one hand, people (including me, the few issues I read) pretty much absolutely adored his The Brave and the Bold run, where all of the issues were one and done. On the other hand, the reviews I've seen for his run on Superman have been wildly mixed -- and there's already a fill-in issue because "Grounded" seems to be slipping a bit in the schedule. And then there's Wonder Woman, which ... honestly, he seems to be writing half-issues. Half of the issue seems like terribly unnecessary filler, and the other half is dynamic action that moves the story forward. And you could chop out the filler -- which, granted, this issue includes things like the origin of this particular villain, but it could have been much condensed, given that only one tiny bit of it actually matters. There's also the small fact that this is the guy who killed almost all of the Amazons and Diana disposes of him all by herself ... sort of. Oh, sure, maybe we'll discover that the particular trick pulled by another character is something he's capable of, and maybe he'll be back later ... but given that something resembling the previous status quo or a fusion of these two histories has to be the end game of this volume of WW, probably not. And if Diana is powerful enough to deal with him on her own, surely all of the Amazons, even though they were under attack by a large group of people, could have handled him. (Especially since Diana kind of ... doesn't. And no, I can't explain that without spoiling the one truly neat bit of the whole thing, even if it does make you want to say, "Now how in hell could THAT happen?")

Any road, the core of this issue is about Diana vs the villain who killed all the Amazons. There's also a bit about the lasso and rediscovering one of her abilities. There's also something to do with her mother which I will not reveal because, honestly, that particular device is kind of fantastic. But, again, almost all of that is the back half of the issue. The back half is Excellent; the first half is Meh. I suppose that all combines to an overall Good, though it kind of shouldn't.

Something of a side note: without that 80s styled jacket, the new costume is actually kind of ... bitchin'. I mean, yes, it would be nice to have a spangle or two starred here or there -- judging from the illustration below, they're apparently on the shoulders of that hideous jacket, but that's quite literally the only time I've seen them there -- but otherwise, it's a very effective redesign. Hopefully, she won't find that jacket again any time soon.

And another interesting note: turns out that Straczynski is no longer the principal writer for WW or Superman. Both titles had issues with delays and fill-ins as his schedule filled up with other things. He's being replaced on WW by Phil Hester. (Ought to be interesting. I have no real experience of Hester as a writer for corporate owned characters; I only know of him writing his own stuff for Image. And his stuff for Image -- principally The Athiest and its successor Antoine Sharpe -- were ... plagued by delays. To the point that the final issue of The Athiest simply never appeared; it was just incorporated into the trade of the series. And "Antoine Sharpe" vanished into the ether after its second issue, never to be seen or referenced again. That said, his most recent series, "Golly", didn't have too many delays, and the last issue actually came out, so there's that. I'm assuming and hoping that he's better with corporate titles than with his own; after all, a creator-owned title does give you the luxury of being able to do stupid things with the deadlines, and the only person you're really hurting is yourself.

This story gets hamstrung out of the gate, and never recovers.

First, neither Teshkeel nor DC laid the groundwork for this issue properly. The 99 has had a miserable time getting distribution in this country -- I remember seeing and reading the first three or four issues, and then it disappeared, never to be seen again. For this story to succeed, you need background. DC should have helped Teshkeel print and distribute a trade of the first volume or two so that people would have gotten a grip on who these characters were, what their background is -- why they should care about or notice this team-up, in other words. And this matters very much near the end; it's clear that part of what happens with one character comes out of The 99 continuity, and it gets sorta kinda very briefly described ... but to the extent that it gets described, it undermines the story. (More about that in a bit.)

Second, it's set, to the extent that it matters, against DC continuity. Current DC continuity ... except not really. This means that we're dealing with the classic JLA, with the DC trinity: Batman/Bruce Wayne, Wonder Woman and Superman, along with the other usual suspects. Wonder Woman is shown in the costume she's got over in her own title (sadly, she seems to have located the jacket). The problem with THAT is first, the current JLA shouldn't know that this Diana even exists; she's been wiped from their memories, and she certainly wouldn't be doing something as high-profile as appearing at the UN with the JLA. (It's reasonably clear that DC must have a mandate that if you're going to use Diana in your title, it's going to be the current version, no matter how problematic that may be. Otherwise, they'd have let Teshkeel use the older version, which would be a better fit for the story anyway.) Second, if it's the current JLA, Superman is off going walkabout across the country and shouldn't be involved in anything the JLA is doing at this point. All pure continuity wonk stuff, I freely admit -- but only DC continuity wonks and Teshkeel fans are going to pick up this thing, and it's not improbable that a Teshkeel fan might look at that version of Wonder Woman and not have any idea who she is.

Anyway, the story itself: basically, a villain has done something to turn the world against superheroes. All nonpowered people are suddenly seized with a powerful and irrational hatred of superheroes, to the point where they'll cause near-riots to try to drive them away or attack them. At the same time, someone -- possibly that selfsame villain -- is causing various natural disasters to occur. Then we run across a former member of the 99, a teenager in a wheel chair. He's been affected by whatever it is that turns the world against superheroes. (A digression: each of the 99's powers were granted by something called a Noor stone, and the powers can apparently be invoked at will.) And whatever it is, it make his Noor-stone induced powers go insane ... except that, judging from the other members of the 99, simply having the Noor stone should immunize him against whatever the villain is doing. And even if it didn't initially, using the Noor stone certainly seems to protect against it, and the virus or whatever causes him to use his stone, which should block the effects of the virus which ... and so on.

No recommendation; I may or may not come back to this when/if DC puts it into a trade to see if it hangs together better than this difficult start would otherwise imply.

In the "Life with Betty" story, Mr Lodge's plan to make Archie and Betty's life miserable looks to be going slightly awry. He gets Betty fired by financing the loans that save Sacks from bankruptcy, but she winds up landing on her feet (for the moment), and helping Archie land on his. He gets Archie's friend Ambrose and his new club/bistro investigated by all -- and I do mean all -- of the relevant licensing authorities in NYC, in such a way that it not only gets the club shut down before it opens, but it also rouses the curiosity of a friend of theirs ... who, judging from his clothes and earpiece, is something like an FBI agent, so this will clearly not go well for Mr Lodge.

In the meantime, back in "Life with Veronica", Veronica and Reggie continue to innocently act in ways that lead people to think they're having an affair. Archie continues to try to investigate what Mr Lodge is doing behind their back, but Lodge is just barely one step ahead. (Interesting side note: this is the ringtone on Archie's cell phone.) Jughead and Midge are entering a marriage of convenience, ostensibly to get a small business stimulus loan -- apparently the application process favors couples over singles -- only to discover that they actually care for each other.

Reggie Mantle, obnoxious relatively well-off teenager of the past, is now pretty solidly something of a failure in both stories; he's certainly been humbled and become ... kind of a nice person, actually. In the "Life with Veronica" section, he's genuinely trying to help her and Archie, much to his own surprise at himself. In the "Life with Betty" section, his own father thinks he's become a gigolo/kept boy for the seriously depressed Veronica. This being Not That Kind Of Story, those words are never mentioned, and Archie's alleged audience would be utterly clueless as to what he's talking about.

I continue to be impressed at how dark the writers are willing to allow this story to get -- within limits, of course; this is still Archie, after all. I've seen the solicits for future issues -- some of which unfortunately give away key points -- and I do know that this continues at least through issue 7. I do wonder how far this is slated to go. And will we see whatever happened to Kevin Keller? Granted, he's a brand new character, but still...
Excellent, Highly recommended.

After the reaching the heights with the "Commissioner Gordon" issue, "The Road Home" fell back to earth with these. You'd have thought the Oracle issue would be about, say, Barbara kicking ass in her own distinctive way, much as her father did in his issue, and Bruce either watching or helping out. But no: this is mostly about how Bruce inspired Barbara to recover after "The Killing Joke." She apparently just laid there like a lump as though her life was over until Bruce gave her a kick in the behind. And, yes, OK, people almost giving up after catastrophic life events until someone shakes some sense into them is a storytelling trope for a reason. But then it turns out that she made herself into Oracle to make Bruce proud of her. Not even her father, but Bruce. Not for herself, but for Bruce. So, hey, way to rob Barbara of any agency in restarting her own life, you know? Yes, she did all of that herself, but she didn't do any of it for herself. Which doesn't match the Barbara Gordon we've seen over the past few years.

The Ra's story is even more of a mess. Basically, he's trying -- sort of -- to kill Vicki Vale because she doesn't deserve to know Batman's secret identity. Not because she does, but because she is not a worthy vessel to carry that secret. (We'll ignore the fact that pretty much anyone who cares to seems to know, shall we? Let's shall.) Ra's is also worried because, between simply living a very long time and the odd moment of Lazarus Pool induced insanity, he's beginning to lose some of the details of his past. Apparently, if you live forever, you can still worry about getting old. Who knew? The end of the story is pretty much profoundly unsatisfactory on every level -- suffice to say that we discover why Vicki's been doing all this, and the reasons are insultingly inadequate; Ra's decides to let her live, and Bruce ... well. Doesn't do much of anything, really. But now he's home, and he knows that everyone except the Outsiders pretty much actually did better without him, and isn't that what was important about all this? Yes?

No recommendation, because they're parts 5 and 6 of something that was allegedly a series of independent one-shots that turned out to be no such thing. Also, five of the six issues were, frankly, not particularly good.

In which Morrison takes his leave of this series, Bruce is shown to be home, the Joker deals with Dr Hurt in an impressive yet jawdropping way, and Alfred gets the line of the issue when he says, "Can that please be the very last time I have to grieve needlessly?" (But you know and I know and he knows that it won't be. Though, assuming that Batman Beyond is in continuity, Bruce does manage to outlive Alfred. And who'd have laid bets on that? But I digress.) A close second for line of the issue would be Professor Pyg saying, under circumstances which are not quite what he thinks they are, "I made you to love me but remember! I'm not wearing protection, my darlings!" (Yes, what you're thinking is EXACTLY what he means. No, that really really wasn't the sort of protection he needed at that particular point in time.)

Oh, and Dick spends almost the entire issue running around with a bullet in his brain. That is, in fact, something of a weak point in the story; how do you do brain surgery on a guy wearing a cowl? And yet apparently, the "world's foremost brain surgeon" does exactly that. Either that, or there's someone out there who is not Leslie who knows Dick's secret identity.

Three different artists handle this issue. Part of it is to show the difference between what happens in the past and the present. I'm not sure why you need to show stylistic differences between inside Wayne Manor and the Batcave in the present and the outside world (barely outside, in one case), which is what the other two artists do, for the most part. It may be as simple as the fact that these are the artists, along with Frank Quitely, who handled many of the issues of this title, so Morrison wanted to work with them on the title one last time. Assuming that they're listed in order, Cameron Stuart handles the bulk of the issue, the front end, in which we get the actual origin story of Dr Hurt, at last. Chris Burnham and Fraser Irving work around each other in the second half, with Irving doing the parts with Professor Pyg and the Joker, and Burnham handling the parts inside stately Wayne Manor and the Batcave, as well as one panel dealing with Commissioner Gordon that was utterly and profoundly unneccessary. Apart from the Gordon panel by Burnham, I also kind of hated Irving's art at the end, especially the frame showing Bruce standing with (I think) Dick, Tim and Damian, with Alfred off to the side. Irving made them all look very much alike and very much like Dr Hurt -- no doubt on purpose -- but the effect, especially with all the golden coloring on the background was just ... weird.

And at the end, Bruce announces that he's been financing Batman all along. (Which, in fact, would answer an issue that I've idly wondered about from time to time: how does Wayne Associates hide the really quite substantial amount spent on Batstuff in their accounts? Apparently failed research and development would only account for just so much, after all.) And he launches the brand new day of Batman, Inc.

Very good, if also very very weird; Recommended

Man, I love this title.

In this issue, Thomasina goes to save her sister, and we discover that her sister has a future after death. (It's very very clear that death is rarely the end of anything in Tranquility.) The mayor and his wife go to deal with their son, and the mayor takes some unilateral action. And then there's a concert. We also begin to learn about the history of events between Thomasina and Derek, and why he seems to be targeting her and hers.

I will admit, I'm not at all objective about this title when it's working, as it is in this miniseries. I love Thomasina as a character; despite being one of the few people in Tranquility without super powers or super devices, she manages to be essentially the most kickass person in town. Domingues' art matches Simone's writing perfectly. Interestingly, there are fewer of the ads and comics from the past this time, probably in part because we have genuine flashbacks embedded into the story this time.

Excellent; Highly recommended. I hope that this series survives somehow now that DC's killed the Wildstorm universe.An occasional miniseries or graphic novel would be just about perfect.

Hey, Bruce is back! And yes, this is last in the list of recent Bat stuff because that's the order in which it got published. And, you know, he's his usual awesome self.

The issue itself is a weird mix of really interesting concepts and really strange execution. The construction of the story and of Darkseid's trap is very very clever. It depends on Bruce's preternatural detective ability; if he doesnt figure out what's going on, the trap doesn't trigger, precisely. Parts of it do -- it's amazing how easily Darkseid's technology defeats the members of the Justice League in very specific ways (although it's completely unclear what it does to Donna Troy). Until he runs into Tim, who refuses to fight him. That sets off a battle, of sorts, between Bruce and Darkseid. In his head. Mostly.

And it all connects really beautifully ... to all the stuff that was supposed to come after this issue, but that got published in the month before it. It does clearly show the shift in how Bruce thinks that makes Batman Inc. possible. You can see how this title would have worked really well, coming entirely before the last two issues of Morrison's Batman and Robin run, as planned originally. Alas, for scheduling slips.

No recommendation, given how spectacularly late it was and how compromised by other titles

Based on a 1962 short story in a collection by Robert Bloch, this story takes the idea that Jack the Ripper is alive -- for certain values of "alive" -- and well -- for certain values of "well" -- and living in Chicago and runs with it. Jenny, whose last name we never learn despite the fact that she inherited and runs a local newspaper and serves as its photographer, is out taking photographs of a crime scene. A young woman has been brutally murdered and partially eviscerated. The police have apparently called a local psychiatrist to the scene to profile the murderer. The psychiatrist goes back to his office to discover Sir Guy Hollis awaiting him. Hollis' father investigated the original Ripper murders, followed him across Europe until his death, when Sir Guy took up the chase. He followed Jack across the ocean to the US, investigating serial murders in New York as well as Cleveland's Torso murders (along with Eliot Ness of FBI fame) and thence to Chicago, where the Ripper may have struck again

This may be a story that reads better in one than as the miniseries it's been created to be. As it stands, everyone but Guy Hollis gets a surprisingly cursory introduction -- and that includes Jenny, who seems as though she's going to be a principal investigator, and also probably bait/a potential victim at some point.We do, surprisingly, see Jack in all his glory in the first issue, and it's clear that the story is headed firmly into the supernatural. It's pretty much required; as one of the characters notes, the Ripper would be over 80 years old when the story starts. I do like Colden's art, which mostly seems right for the story, except when it comes to depicting Jack himself -- and that's a story issue more than it is an art issue. Overall, I kind of like it, but I really do think it's going to read better in one than as a serial. Which, considering that it's deliberately harkening back to an older serial storytelling style, is kind of surprising.

OK; wait for the trade.

I'm guessing that this issue works far better if you've been plowing through the World of New Krypton/War of the Supermen arcs that have taken up the last two years of Superman. I picked it up because, despite the recent immersion in all things Bat and Green Hornet, I like the big blue boy scout, and the impression was that 700, as a mega anniversary issue and the place where Straczynski would be first starting his trip with Supes, it would be a good place to step back on. And it is, kind of. Kind of.

The first story, "The Comeback", by James Robinson and Bernard Chang, is the explicit close to the New Krypton arc. It begins with Superman rescuing Lois, as he does, and then features the two of them talking a bit about what they've been through over the past two years, but mostly just reconnecting.

"Geometry", by Dan Jurgens, is a fun little story of Superman's earlier years, and his first meetings with Dick Grayson as a very underaged Robin. Dick gets himself in over his head and needs to be rescued by Superman. It's a fun, frothy little bagatelle of a story of the sort that has been utterly absent from Superman's corner of the universe of late.

And then we have "Grounded: Prologue, The Slap Heard 'Round The World", Straczynski's first story with Superman ... which does not quite fill me with confidence about the future. Basically, "Grounded" is going to be Superman walking across the country, trying to reconnect with the people who feel he deserted them for New Krypton. And ... well, fine, but the trigger for that is a woman who is furious because Superman wasn't around to help save her husband; he had a type of cancer that was difficult to operate on, and if he'd been around, Supes might have helped guide the surgeons. Never mind that at the time, Kryptonians were expressly forbidden to set foot on earth. Never mind that, in defiance of that ban, Supergirl and Power Girl were around. Never mind that this is the type of thing that Superman rarely did, because he can't focus on individuals at the expense of saving more people. It's all Superman's fault. And this makes him realize that he needs to trudge across the country to reset his roots, so to speak.

Geometry is the most enjoyable of the stories, because it's the frothiest; The Comeback is probably deeply satisfying to people who followed the last two years; Grounded: Prologue is ... worrisome.

OK; no recommendation

The issue which restores Wonder Woman's original series issue numbering -- rather nonsensically, as it turns out.

"Valedictorian", by Gail Simone and George Perez, leads off the issue. The superheroics involve Professor Ivo and her siren robots, versus Every Female Superhero in the DCU. ALL OF THEM. Frankly, it's kind of awesome. I didn't even know who some of those women were. Poor Bulleteer even gets to show up again, and has a couple of lines; the last time she was seen outside her Seven Soldiers title was as a part of the background in a fight in Final Crisis. The second part of the story involves Diana attending a graduation for someone who first appeared in an issue back in 1986. Overall, it's a really nice story that shows what makes Diana who she is; she calls, and people follow, but she can also connect at a more personal level.

Amanda Conner writes and draws "Fuzzy Logic", featuring Wonder Woman teaming up with Power Girl and a Batgirl to fight Humpty Dumpty ... OK, his proper names are either Chang Fu or Egg Tsu, but still: he's a great big egg. Thus, Humpty Dumpty. After the big scramble, Diana helps Power Girl with a more personal problem. It's a light, frothy silly confection of a story. (Something of a side note: who on earth was that Batgirl? She didn't talk like Cassandra Cain, and it clearly wasn't Stephanie Brown or Barbara Gordon.)

Louise Simonson and Eduardo Pansica team up for "Firepower", which also brings together Wonder Woman and Superman to fight Aegeus, a magic user who stole Zeus' thunderbolts. It does show how they work well together, but that's about it.

There are also several pinups of WW in her traditional costume. They all range from striking -- Nicola Scott's pinup -- to awesome -- Phil Jiminez' centerspread -- to confusing -- really, what on earth is going on with Guillem March's picture? -- to the creepy. Strangely enough, the most pulchritudinously creepy isn't actually Greg Horn's but is instead Jock's; it doesn't look remotely like his usual art, is heavily, heavily photoreferenced -- frankly, it looks like he painted the costume onto a real woman, with a weirdly vapid expression on her face.

And then there's the final story, written by both Geoff Johns and J. Michael Straczynski. Technically, Johns' story is separate, but it's a hard lead-in to Straczynski's, with the gods discussing the reasons why Diana does what she does, and how she's undervalued by the world, and how they plan to change that. Abruptly, we're in "Odyssey: Prologue: Culture Shock", with Diana suddenly much younger and in a different costume, fighting lots of guys in suits who are trying to kill her. She defeats them -- sort of -- has a confrontation with the people who raised her, then goes to visit the Oracle. We see where she lives now, which appears to be a very grungy, downtrodden industrial area. And the oracle tells her that all was not always as it currently seems to be.

As a purely practical issue, the new status dictated by "Odyssey" can't last. The previous version of Diana is simply too integral to too much in the DCU and it changes far too much for her to be like this for very long. You don't even have to be a continuity wonk to realize that a lot of stuff goes very wrong without her -- at a minimum, Final Crisis works out very differently at the beginning and the end. I imagine this was primarily a way to raise the character's profile, increase interest. It also allows Straczynski to make sure that she gets kept out of any crossovers for the foreseeable future -- that was, after all, one of his major disputes with Marvel. I would imagine that during "Odyssey", Diana won't be seen in any other DCU titles, including JLA; it would make dealing with the continuity bible far too confusing. It will be interesting to see where this goes and how long it lasts. Honestly, I only started reading WW because Gail Simone was writing it; I don't feel strongly loyal to the character as such. That said, Straczynski's "Ladies Night" over in The Brave and the Bold inclines me to trust him enough to see what happens; even though that was primarily a Barbara Gordon/Zatanna story, with Diana as a sort of bystander, it was still pretty damn awesome. So we'll see what happens.

But really, DC. You restored the version numbering so you could blow up the 599 issues that preceded this one? What sort of logic is that?

Good; Recommended

Greg Rucka Finished At DC, Off Batwoman [Wondercon]
Apr 2nd 2010
By: David Brothers (comicsalliance.com)

During his spotlight panel at Wondercon, moderated by our own Laura Hudson, Greg Rucka dropped a bombshell. He has been out of exclusive with DC Comics for three years, despite spending those three years working exclusively with DC, and his time with them is over. He just turned in the last of his DC work for the foreseeable future, and his time with Kate Kane is done. He reiterated his love for the character, saying that walking away from her was an incredibly hard decision to make, but one that was necessary....


The Complete Greg Rucka Wondercon Panel Transcript [Wondercon]
Apr 5th 2010
By: Laura Hudson (comicsalliance.com)

[...]LH: I solicited questions from Twitter, and they overwhelmingly asked the same question: What's happening with "Batwoman"?

GR: I don't know. I finished my last of my DC work yesterday, and I'm not currently doing anything for DC right now. I love the character; I would love to continue working with the character, but at the same time I'm sort of needing to step back from my DC work in general. I suspect that we'll come back to her at some point. I don't know if that's going to be something that Jim and I do together. I am not sure what Jim's plans are. I want to keep working with him, and I believe that's mutual. There is more to tell. There's a whole five-part story broken down that is really the last of -- "Elegy" was supposed to be four issues; there were supposed to be three issues that were "Go," and then there was a five-part story that Jim and I had, but because of a variety of things in-house at DC, we were moved out of "Detecitve [Comics]" and we couldn't tell the story there. So there's a concluding story that's basically Alice's origin story. It's what happened to Elizabeth. I don't know if we'll ever get to do it. I have been around in this industry long enough to never say never....


Nothing More, Nothing Less (gregrucka.com)
April 3rd, 2010

[...] So, if you’re a fan of my work in the field of comics, you’ve most likely heard the news that I’m no longer doing work for DC. I’m told that speculation is flying fast and furious as to why this is, and apparently, even despite my on-the-record comments, it continues.

There is no drama here, folks. It is as it appears. I’m stepping away from DC to pursue different opportunities. Nothing more nefarious than that. Nothing less sinister. Time is a commodity that is as precious to me as it is rare, and there’s simply not enough of it....

...OK, look: I don't read the main Blackest Night title -- aside from one stray mention in "Red Robin", it hasn't quite made its presence felt in the Bat corner of the DCU in a way that makes it necessary to pay attention (though given that "Batman and Robin" is on hiatus to keep its story from getting ahead of Blackest Night and DC has announced a forthcoming miniseries called "The Return of Bruce Wayne", I assume that everyone's about to figure out that Bruce isn't dead). So to a certain extent, I expected "Blackest Night: Wonder Woman" to lose me here and there. The surprise about issue #1 was that it didn't; if you knew the general shape of the main series -- that Nekron is sort of raising and reanimating the dead of the DCU, killing really quite remarkable numbers of superheroes and then raising them as black lanters -- then you could follow BNWW #1 just fine. She fought undead Maxwell Lord to a standstill -- she thought -- and left him without weapons or fighters, but with him saying that she didn't know how bad things were about to get for her. So I expected issue 2 to somehow, kind of vaguely follow issue 1 in a comprehensible way, but since the main BN title had moved along, I wouldn't have been surprised to be a bit more lost. I did not, however, expect that hot mess.

Issue #2, I suspect, bears the same relationship to "Blackest Night" as the two Final Crisis issues of Batman had to that event series; something happens in the main series that doesn't make the slightest sense without those particular tie-in issues, but at the same time, you can more or less muddle through the main event without them. In this case, I'm guessing that Diana gets killed somehow in the main series, becomes a black lantern, but then miraculously becomes a star sapphire, without any explanation of how that happens. (From what I can tell, this happens in Blackest Night #6.) BNWW Issue 2 is that explanation. Unfortunately, the issue doesn't make any sense on its own. More impressively, it doesn't even make sense as a follow-up in its own miniseries; the action is so completely detached that it leaves you trying to figure out how it even could connect to what came before. (It doesn't. Don't even try.)

More seriously, the character is just painful to watch. She's rampaging all over, having a long drawn-out fight against Nera, killing Cassie and Donna, killing Hippolyta. We see at the same time not only the black lantern thoughts in the foreground, but Diana's own thoughts in the background, appalled at all that her body is doing, which is actually a rather nifty gimmick, although she's not all that articulate, so it does get a bit repetitive. (I would note, as well, that this is the second time in as many Crises that Diana's body has apparently been taken over by the bad guys and used against everyone. Superman and Batman get to save the universe -- or at least be dead during a crisis -- but apparently Wonder Woman's role is to be the weak link in the DC Trinity, involuntarily (if briefly) helping the bad guys. They might want to work on that.) And what brings her out of the black lantern killing rage? Not the love of her sisters. Not her love for her mother. Remembering that she loves Bruce, the dead guy, as he takes her into a deep swoony kiss. (Despite being dead, or at least profoundly absent, yes. Really, just don't ask.) This allows Aphrodite to activate the love in her, or some such, and turn her into a star sapphire lantern. Never mind that, canonically, she's had a boyfriend recently, and it wasn't Bruce. Never mind that there has not recently been even the slightest hint that they might have felt that way about each other. Never mind that you'd think that she'd love her sisters and her mother enough to snap her out of that killing rage -- over in her own series, she has defied and killed gods to save her mother and the Amazons, but somehow, that's not enough. It's love of the dead guy that does it for her. Oh, and then it all turns out to be a dream. No, really, a dream.

I get that as a tie-in, BNWW has to service the main miniseries, I really do. But honestly, that would have been a rocky issue on its own merits even without the "no, really, just a dream and now you're all fixed!" resolution. I really can't tell you how glad I am right now that Gail Simone's run on WW is structured in a way that lets her serenely ignore the various crises; I can for now just pretend Blackest Night doesn't exist. (One wonders how long the DC brain trust can let one of their flagship titles keep ignoring the rest of their universe. Blackest Night has raised the sales of almost every series it's touched, however briefly; you'd think they'd take a look at WW, and think, "Hey ... maybe ...")

BAD; Not recommended

In which the character of Bat Boy from the now defunct Weekly World News supermarket tabloid gets a role in a series. The main character, however, is Ed Anger, "right minded columnist for the Weekly World News". And by "right minded", they mean really really really really really right-wing columnist. He's pretty much anti-everyone, but especially those "illegal damned aliens". By which he means not only the more usual type, but also the extraterrestrials among us. He tried to warn us about them, in his columns in the WWN and also through interviews and rants on the WWN television network, but people still insist on being friendly to the aliens and taking them at face value. The humor in the issue comes from watching Ed utterly fail to cope with the various changes in the world around him ... although one of the gray aliens starts feeling uneasy himself, trying to tell Ed that there's something about to happen. Ed, being Ed, doesn't really listen. At the very end, there are also mockups of WWN pages, which may or may not show future stories in the book.

Robinson's art and Smith's coloring are perfect for the story; just a touch exaggerated and cartoony, but very expressive. The story is a lot of fun to read.

Excellent; Highly recommended.

I think I am, in many ways, absolutely the wrong audience for this title. Part of the issue is that I studied Far Eastern history and politics -- seriously, got the degree and everything -- and there are times when it's just really difficult to put that aside and remember that the DCU has nothing to do with the real universe in that way.

I got somewhat thrown out of the story immediately by what the premise seemed to be. Chinese gods were coming to answer the prayers of the Han Chinese people who have been oppressed by the Communist government and are protesting. Said government is trying to use the Great Ten, its superhero squad, to put down the protest, which drives the gods to act. And where is this protest? Outside a temple in Lhasa, Tibet. Given history and current politics, you'd think that if any gods would be responding, it would be Tibetan gods. So there's that, which I really did have a problem with in the first couple of issues. Given developments in issue 3, it looks as though what's actually going on may not be quite what it appears to be. Intertwined with that is the utter inability of the Chinese government to deal with modern media -- despite a very firm clampdown on all outgoing television, radio, internet connections, the rest of the world finds out about China's difficulties in really just a few minutes. While it may have been true that the Chinese government was that incompetent at one time -- vide Tienanmin Square -- the rather tight control of information in and out of Beijing during the Olympics would seem to indicate that they've figured that sort of thing out. But, again, fiction.

There are supposed to be ten issues, and it's clear at this point that they're going to show the origin of each member of the Great Ten, wrapped around the greater storyline of the group trying to battle the gods -- or not, as the case may be. Some of the group derive their powers from the gods and are, understandably, having a few conceptual difficulties. The tone of each issue varies wildly according to the origin of the character. Accomplished Perfect Physician, who gets his power forced upon him as a sort of penance for having accidentally (sort of) killed the man to whom it was supposed to go, and given that he is a physician, has a miserable time justifying the violence the government asks of him. Celestial Archer received his power from the gods after hiding in just the right tree from people who wanted to kill him; he's actually met the gods and walked among them, and has massive difficulties now that he's asked to fight against them. Thundermind (Thundermind?), who is a living Buddha, gained his powers through reading a page that induces a perfect moment of enlightenment, and gets the most unspeakably goofy storyline; he's a teacher, madly in love with a coworker who can never know his true identity (so, very early Superman/Lois Lane, and the deliberate parallels to Superman are pretty much thrown at you nonstop), and for some reason, the entire country is worried about the immodesty of his costume, which pretty much fully covers him. His story doesn't really match the seriousness of everyone else's origin story, and is really jarring against the broader battle against the gods story. The ending is not only goofy, but lunatic and an irritating delaying tactic; Thundermind apparently knows what's going on, but before he can tell his colleagues -- and, perforce, the reader -- has to zip back to protect his secret identity (in a way which should actually cause more suspicion; he has absolutely no business being there at that point in time, given what's happened everywhere else)

Honestly, I can't recommend this series. There are some interesting ideas here and there inside it, but they're being carried out in some very irritating, lazy and truly silly ways.

OK; Not recommended.

Yi Soon Shin tells the historical tale of a long-ago war between Japan and Korea. According to the frontmatter in the book, the Korean army had thought, until that point, that their navy was mostly unnecessary, and there was a great deal of political infighting, trying to get the navy under the control of the army to disband it. General Yi Soon Shin fought against this. In 1592, Japan attacked Korea, hoping to take it and use it as a way to invade China. The other Korean generals burned their ships and retreated to try to defend on dry land, which was what the Japanese generals had thought would happen, and their infantry was far superior to the Korean. The Korean king fled, and his own people were so furious that they looted and burned his palace.

Issue 1 tells the story of how Yi Soon Shin, the disregarded general, figured out the tactics that made it possible for his vastly outnumbered force to fight the Japanese at sea. We start out in Japan in 1591, where their generals are planning their war of conquest. We then jump to invaded Korea in 1592, where the Japanese army are committing various atrocities on the town they've captured. They then discover that the remnants of the Korean navy have surrounded that harbor, but aren't afraid, because they have the Koreans so seriously outnumbered. The Japanese then discover that they are up against a superior tactician -- and, oddly, superior armament. It seems that the Japanese didn't arm their ships with cannon, and Yi Soon Shin did, so the tiny Korean navy shreds the much larger Japanese navy.

Yi then has to deal with the aftereffects of battle. He's got internal problems, because another admiral feels that he should have been in charge. He then takes his men onshore, to try to find the remnants of the Japanese force and deal with what's left of the village that the Japanese attacked. And then at the end, he discovers something truly horrific.

The storytelling in this opening issue works very well. Even though they don't go into a lot of background on him at this point, you get a feeling for who Yi was, that he was brilliant militarily, and a man who could get his men to follow him. That said, the one storytelling weakness I would identify is that there's too much in the written frontmatter; we should have seen at least some of those things that he went through to get where he was. Given that it seems to be a self-published comic, I'm guessing that cost issues were a factor in simply telling us all that; that said, it does make for a relentlessly exciting first issue. Timpano's artwork and De Los Santos' colors are bloody gorgeous, as well -- quite often, literally bloody gorgeous, as this is a war comic and, well, there's a lot of blood flowing here and there. The title sems to be on a three issues per year publication schedule, so it's not going to end until January 2011 or so, which is unfortunate only because I'd really like to see more and faster. (I'm kind of surprised that this is purely self-published and not coming out of a smaller press like Archaia; it seems like it would be right up their alley, somehow.)

Excellent; Highly recommended.

In which we see how Kate started her work as Batwoman, and how she sees it not as the sort of crusade that most of the Bats seem to, but as an extension of the same ethic that took her to the military. Her father discovers, rather easily, what she's doing, and is not at all amused, but when Kate makes him understand why she's doing it, he helps her with his connections, money and vision to make it happen. The three scenes with her father are, in fact, the heart of the story -- the first where she convinces him that she can do what she's trying to do, and he decides to help, the second where it all comes together and she gets her uniform ("Pop ... are those heels?"), and then the last scene, where we find out exactly what her father did when she was kidnapped, where they break each others' hearts. (In fact, as far as the colonel goes, his reasons for what he did provide the one somewhat false note in the entire story so far; his reasons for doing what he does simply don't match the character as we've seen him to date. He took away hope, however futile, for a false certainty. It will, of course, turn out that his daughter has, quite accidentally, given him exactly the same false certainty -- and we get confirmation of that on the last page.) Williams' art is, as usual, stunning; the first two thirds of the story look as though they're drawn by a completely different person, and the last third in that striking style he's used for the modern part of the story.

Rucka and Cully Hammer's "Pipeline" Question backup story hits a very interesting point, as Renee and Helena appear to have made a rather dramatic mistake in their attacks on the cartel that's been trafficking in people and drugs. (It does bring up the question of exactly how secret identities work, if it's that easy for something as low-rent as a regular criminal cartel to figure out who the Question is and where she lives -- getting Helena at the same time was simply the lagniappe.)

Excellent; Highly recommended

(NB: As has been seen elsewhere, this is the last of the Rucka/Williams "Batwoman" stories in Detective. Rucka and Jock will be writing and illustrating Batwoman in Detective 861-863, and that story will appear to be unconnected to what's come before. In the new Batwoman title to start in 2010, after a new issue 1, they'll pick up with the final five issues of the "Elegy" arc, which was planned to break around "Go" originally. The Question co-feature will continue, and was in fact scheduled to become the primary story for a few issues after "Elegy"; whether that will happen earlier is unclear. It's also unclear whether Batwoman will be an ongoing title, or whether that will be only a 6-issue miniseries.)

In which the threads started in "Bad Blood", "Rise of the Olympian", "Genocide" (somewhat) and "Warkiller", as well as the odd issues between those major arcs, are finally pulled together and concluded. Given that all of this has taken well over a year -- in fact, nearly two -- it would have to be one hell of a kickass issue to feel at all satisfying. And you know what? It kind of ... is. We finally understand, for example, what the hell happened to the Greek gods after the end of Amazons Attack and Countdown, when they seemed to have been rescued, but then disappeared for the entirety of Final Crisis; we find out where they were and why they weren't around to keep Olympus from being desecrated by the New Gods. We see gods abused, gods who were killed and resurrected, gods who weren't really dead. We find out what's behind all the strange pregnancies of the Amazons. We find out the truth of Diana's engendering. We get to see Diana, Hippolyta and even Achilles kick quite a lot of ass. Lessons are learned by the most unexpected people. Donna gets her sanity back. A lot happens, and it pretty much all works. Everything isn't completely wrapped up, of course, but that's to be expected. It really is a very satisfying ending for such a very long story arc.

Something of a side note: I would really love to know how Simone managed to get DC to allow her to run for such a long time without paying even the teensiest amount of attention to the ongoing crises of various sorts in what is supposed to be one of their major titles. None of this arc would have happened without Countdown, of course, but there have been two major events in the DCU since then, and this title hasn't taken any notice of either of them.

A side note to the side note: I wonder if we're going to find out what happens to the resurrected Olympians. As things are left, there doesn't seem to be a plan to send them back to Hades. And given what Simone has said about him, I'd love to see a miniseries with Achilles, just to see what he would do in today's world.

Very Good; Strongly recommended.

Honestly, neither awful, nor terrific, though there were both awful and terrific moments scattered throughout. Mostly, this title seemed to be about how Bruce's rather spectacular miscalculations brought ruin to Gotham and more specifically to Jason Todd and the other Bats. Bruce seemed to feel that Nightwing and Robin could handle crime in Gotham, and we find out in the third issue that he specifically directed Dick/Nightwing not to take up the cowl, that Batman should be allowed to stay dead. Unfortunately, he didn't take into account just how much he'd manage to terrorize the criminals of Gotham into behaving, just by his mere presence. Take that way, and all hell broke loose. Black Mask, a villain long thought dead, has come back and managed to destroy both the Penguin's and Two-Face's criminal enterprises. (Why he isn't dead, despite Catwoman having killed him, nobody knows as yet.)

Another of Bruce's fatal miscalculations was in sending personal "in case of my demise" holographic messages to all of the members of the Bat crew, including Jason Todd (who, when last seen, had decided to leave Gotham because it wasn't good for him. Why is he still here, you might be wondering. And well might you wonder!) Jason's message, which we see in the third issue, implies quite strongly that some truly terrible things happened to Jason before Bruce took him in -- not even addressing the whole death/buried-semi-alive/resurrected by a villain thing that he had going for a while. No, all of Jason's damage was caused by some horrific things that happened to him as a child which he has resolutely not thought about for most of his life, and which Bruce allowed him not to think about, because he's a firm believer in the "repress and take it out on any criminals that cross your path" method. (Seriously, to say that Bruce, Dick, Jason and Tim are all massively screwed up is a spectacular understatement -- that Dick has somehow come out of it all fairly well adjusted is something of a miracle. But I digress.) As a result of being forced to "confront" (if that's quite the right word) issues for which he is not prepared, Jason decides that he should become Batman the way he thinks Batman should always have been: fully armed, and entirely willing to take out them what needs killin'. Collateral damage to civilians not an issue. Along the way he manages to take out both Tim and Damien, leading to a final showdown with Nightwing.

The main problem with the "Battle for the Cowl" title itself was that it was relentlessly overplotted. There was just too damn much going on, with the destruction of Arkham (again), Two-Face and Penguin at war with each other, Black Mask dictating that war, the struggle between Dick, Jason and Tim to determine who should take on the mantle of the Bat. That latter should have been given a bit more weight; Dick winds up deciding to become Batman in essentially two pages at the end of the third issue, after having resisted all the way through. It's not that we don't understand why he does it, but after something over 70 pages of Gotham ripping itself apart, to have only two pages where the decision is made, with no real discussion, feels very ... anticlimactic.

So ... yeah, that really wasn't very good at all.

The Calculator is searching for the antilife equation because he feels that it will return his comatose daughter to life. In a thread that I missed the first issue, but which becomes more apparent in the third issue, Barbara Gordon is searching for the Calculator and the antilife equation, not just to stop him from loosing the equation on the world again, but because, somehow, she feels it will restore her legs to her. Why the Calculator feels it will help his daughter, or why Babs feels it will help her legs, is never explained; we have never seen the antilife equation do any such thing -- in fact, it seems to be a rather effective way of taking over someone's mind or causing death (hence the whole "antilife" thing), but not so much with the resurrection and the healing. Most of the pursuit takes place in virtual environments, so that Barbara's lack of mobility isn't as much of an issue. (And the idea that what one does in virtual environments will be reflected in the real environment is very neatly handled. Being as most of what gets reflected is some spectacular murder and a very improbable attack on someone's immune system, it's hard to say that it's fun, exactly, but it is interesting.)

Babs does eventually defeat the Calculator, of course, and there is, inevitably, a twist at the end of the tale. The art, for the most part, is very good -- although there is a very odd focus on Babs taking a shower at one point -- but the story ... eh. It shows what Babs is doing during part of the Battle for the Cowl ... though when this is supposed to take place, considering that she's guiding the Network back in Gotham during all of the rest of the Battle, heaven only knows.

Batman Dead? (Fabian Nicieza; Dustin Nguyen, Guillem March, ChrisCross, Jamie McKelvie, Alex Konat, Mark McKenna)
Basically, a series of quick shots across the city, different people whom the Bat has touched, in one way or another. Several people return to the city, including long lost Vicki Vale and also Leslie Tompkins, in what feels like an attempt to rehabilitate her from the character assassination perpetrated against her in the whole War Games mess. We also see Bullock and Stephanie and The Veil and a few others. Of all of them, only Leslie gets left in a situation that is both dangeous and unresolved through the entirety of the Battle -- one assumes, for the sake of argument that she'll get rescued during "Batman Alive", since that would be appropriate symmetry.

Commissioner Gordon (Royal McGraw/Tom Mandrake, Guy Major): In which Gordon takes on Mister Freeze and is awesome. Really, that's all there is to it. The story starts with Gordon being held prisoner, and the bulk of it is a flashback showing how this came to be. Among other things, Gotham's district attorney is murdered, which will eventually bring Kate Spencer's Manhunter to Gotham. But for now, it's just Gordon against Freeze, and Gordon realizing that, unlike most times in the past, Batman isn't there to save either him or the city. And then Gordon figures out what to do, and, as mentioned, is awesome.

The overall purpose of this series is to set up the new Azrael ongoing title. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Azrael and the previous holder, or how Michael Lane was brought into the Bat titles as a GCPD officer who turns out to be the "Third Ghost", whatever that means. This is the one title where not knowing enough about what's happened both early in Morrison's run and before it is perhaps a handicap; there is a sense that a lot of history is being pulled into this story. That said, part of the confusion may be due to it being a slightly confused story; it essentially gets a reboot at the end of the first issue, when the first person selected to wear Azrael's armor and carry the sword gets killed.

Michael Lane gets selected to replace that person -- sort of; there are two competing factions trying to create their own angel of death for various reasons. Lane figures out, with surprising ease and for no real reason, where the Batcave is, thus producing a smackdown with Nightwing. His memory gets wiped (don't ask), and Nightwing and Oracle eventually decide to leave the swords and armor with Lane, to see what happens. There's also the rather surprising revelation of the leader behind one of the factions trying to run Azrael, and the reappearance of Ra's al-Ghul, who is Not A Happy Camper. And who can blame him: stuck in Arkham and drugged out of his mind, vulnerable to all the other psychos.

Irving's artwork on this series is simply spectacular; I hope he's the artist on the ongoing title, as his work has a very distinctive look, quite unlike anything else in the Bat-section, now that Simon Dark is gone.

...Huh. So Morrison did have a good reason for naming her "Jezebel Jet", after all. But, given context, he still probably shouldn't have.

That aside, Morrison does indeed seem to deliver on the premise of the arc's title, one way and another. It's not definitive -- and I would think that Warner Brothers would have had a massive snit fit if it had been -- but you really can't say that he didn't deliver. And it becomes even more apparent this issue that Morrison really meant it when he said that he viewed everything through RIP as one big book unto itself, with callbacks to everything that's come so far in this one arc. The Club of Heroes even makes an appearance, in a way that may be indicative of the way forward after "The Battle for the Cowl". Batman even gets "help" of a sort -- if that's at all the right word -- from the Joker, of all people. And Batman winds up going much much farther in his pursuit of ... well, in his pursuit than he's ever gone before. I will say that the revelation of the identity of the Black Glove himself, while tying in to the entirety of Morrison's Batman to date, does leave you sitting there scratching your head and thinking, "Huh? What?" And there's no real reason for him to have undertaken this horribly complex plot, other than "he's barking mad."

Morrison's been quite clear that RIP predates Final Crisis. Wonder what that means for the whole RIP idea, or, more precisely, what exactly he meant by it? The epilogue takes place well after the body of the issue, so it's clearly post-Final Crisis, and probably post-"Battle for the Cowl", for that matter.

Roxy wants to be a DJ. In fact, she is a DJ, but she wants to be a great one, not just a good one. She starts investing more of herself in finding out just how to do this, spending more time with her friend Atsuko, who is a very good DJ, with her friend Dominic who is both a DJ and a recording engineer. This causes conflict in her romantic relationship with her girlfriend Hannah, who wants Roxy to spend more time with her. At the same time, Roxy gets some unsolicited but very good advice from this guy whom she's never met before. After doing a little research, she discovers that he's Philippe Robicheau, a one-time luminary on the club DJ scene who self-destructed in a haze of drugs and sex, among other things. She starts working with him, absorbing his knowledge to make herself a better DJ. In the meantime, her relationship with Hannah pretty much implodes, and Roxy's forced to make hard decisions about her life. How much does she want to give to her work? How much to a relationship? Where does she want her priorities to lie? Just how much does she want this, anyway?

Sizer does a very good job of depicting how it feels to be a young adult, just beginning to take your work seriously, deciding just how driven you are and how successful you want to be, and what sorts of sacrifices it takes to get where you want to be. Roxy gets portrayed a bit inconsistently -- in most of her life, she's forthright and assertive, but when it comes to the breakup of her relationship with Hannah, she just takes the hits without pointing out that Hannah's doing the same thing that she's doing, prioritizing her career over the relationship. That really is the one character quibble I do have about the story. Sizer's New York is also very inclusive -- it takes place in a New York with all sorts of people, as opposed to the "Friends" New York, for example. The colors are strong and vibrant throughout, with a playlist running along the bottom of the book for evocative music. The one place where the artwork has a few -- a very few -- problems comes in his depiction of faces; there's something about a few of the faces where he's drawing them full-face or close to it where they look clunky and squished; a perspective issue of some sort. Again, that's in a very few places; otherwise, the faces are very expressive and distinct.

BPM is a very enjoyable read. Older teens and adults who like stories about music and the people who work in that world might like it very much. Highly recommended.

...OK, I will admit that the end to issue 10 took me completely by surprise; I would not for even a second have expected them to go there. Issue 11, I'm sort of "meh" on. Partly, I just wish this goddamn zombie plot would be DONE. I hate zombies. I am one with the hate of zombiekind. But I can deal with the plague of zombies in this title, because I love it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. On the other hand, not entirely loving Thomasina's characterization in issue 11; it really does seem like her reaction to discovering what became of her grandfather was ... off, a bit. Granted, I understand her feeling that the information was sort of irrelevant, and that she just wants to know what she needs to defeat the zombie plague. Still, given that the information about what happened to him wasn't coming directly from him, but from someone else she trusts, it really does seem like she should have given it at least a little more credence.

Something of a sidenote --I ran across the following at Occasional Superheroine's weblog:
Anti-Semitic Comment In "Countdown" #32?...right off that bat, if you want to make comparisons between different characters in your comic and you put the Old & New Testaments in there, you're already sort of in the danger zone in terms of offending someone. If the symbolism was indeed there in this "Countdown" story that evil Eclipso = Old Testament and Good Spectre = New Testament, then you've got some problems. [...] It's verrrrry complicated. We tended not to use overt religious stuff in our books at DC. This is why.

Tranquility has now gotten rather explicitly religious, probably as part of the lead in to Armageddon/Revelations.

DC's Countdown is headed to Final Crisis by way of a miniseries called "Salvation Run".

The entire Wildstorm superhero universe is headed to its own final crisis via the paired, title-abolishing miniseres "Armageddon" and "Revelations".

I think DC may have decided that they really don't care about offending people's religious principles any more. I'm not saying that's bad, necessarily; it's certainly unexpected.

As far as can be told from solicitation copy, Welcome to Tranquility may have been stealth-cancelled, without official notice in Previews; on the other hand, they may be delaying it to figure out what to do with it once Simone takes over Wonder Woman. One can hope anyway. I do think the title has been rather spectacularly mishandled ... but more about that elsewhere, elsewhen, belike.

I had what turned out to be an odd advantage coming to this title. I'd never heard of Gerard Way, never really paid attention to My Chemical Romance, so I didn't come to it with any particular preconceptions about whether or not he could write, as others seem to. And that turned out to be a good thing, because this is definitely a fun read.

On the same day, dozens of mutant children are born in an instant to women around the world, many of whom hadn't actually been pregnant until that moment. Professor Hargreaves adopts as many of these infants as he can find, eventually winding up with seven children to raise. It becomes fairly clear that Hargreaves is a rather dreadful father; mostly he wants to use them to demostrate his scientific principles regarding their superpowers. Then we jump 10 years into the future, where the kids are fighting the renegade Eiffel Tower. (No, really. Renegade Eiffel Tower, rampaging through Paris.) Then we jump forward another 20 years, where the group is gathering to find out if it's true that their father is dead. Issue 2 takes up from where issue 1 leaves off, with everyone gathering for the funeral. It's clear that there was some sort of dramatic break between the children and with their father; they can scarcely stand the sight of one another. Their mother, or rather, Professor Hargreaves' wife -- she at least seems to have been married to him -- she's very ... well. She's quite unusual, let's put it that way. And, of course, it turns out that she'd been estranged from the professor as well. And the seventh child, Vanya, whom the professor thought untalented turns out to have a very subtle power; she was so profoundly alienated, however, that she didn't even return for the funeral.

Ba's art is absolutely perfect for this series. I honestly can't imagine that anyone else would do better or be more appropriate for a story that's simultaneously this loopy and this serious. It wouldn't work with a more realistic style -- the characters would look utterly absurd drawn in a more realistic way. His art brings out the humor in the characters without making them ridiculous.

It's really a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

I would like to make a suggestion to the big companies. Whenever you have one of those mondo-crossover events, and you decide to compile an individual title's issues, if the character has been off doing something in another title, please insert two or three pages summarizing what they were doing, maybe with a frame or two from the other titles. "Manhunter: Origins" is sharply discontinuous in one section; they don't even put in a note saying, "To see what Kate was doing, you need to read 52 or Crise du Jour" or whatever title it was she was doing ... whatever she was doing. In any event, apart from that, it's an interesting read.

This volume takes its title from its bookend stories. The first concerns the origins of the Manhunter uniform and weapons; the last the origins of Kate herself. The latter story is, understandably, much more interesting.

It's very strange to have one of the DC universe's heroes who really has very few qualms about killing off the villains. Moreover, the other DC universe superheroes she comes in contact with don't necessarily seem to mind all that much. You do wonder, though, why it is that she seems to be able to do this almost without personal consequence. Most people would find it more difficult to kill than she seems to, even knowing what those people have done. Another oddness; almost everyone on the planet seems to know that Kate Spencer is Manhunter,including the odd villain, yet nobody seems to be telling. And even so, her loved ones wind up in harms way with surprising frequency.

Her supporting cast is great. Chase and Dylan have their ... whatever it is they're doing, in which Dylan is mostly amused and grateful, and Chase is terribly confused. Damon and Todd continue their relationship, and to the best of my knowledge, nobody's dead or creatively mangled as yet. And it's fun to watch Kate squirm when she gets forced to defend one of those villains in court. All in all, highly recommended. Someday, volume 4 will come out. And, in theory, someday there will be more issues of Mahnunter, which DC says is being stockpiled so that it can have a more continuous printing schedule. (One wonders why they don't do that with their other titles.)

Ah, well. We can dream, can't we?

....Welcome to Tranquility, a planned community where super-heroes can retire in peace, without being hounded by enemies and fans. But don’t let Tranquility’s sedate surface fool you. Because when a series of murders is committed, a conspiracy is exposed that may endanger the lives of everyone who lives there. Kicking off in December, Tranquility is a new, monthly series written by Gail Simone and illustrated by Neil Googe.

GAIL SIMONE: ... for the most part, superheroes either die, or get frozen in ice, or are artificially young. They don’t really get old, in the creaky, sometimes uncomfortable, often diminished way that regular people do. So the idea of a town where we’d get to show that phase of their life just seemed really appealing. [...] The story has a huge mystery, and Tranquility itself is very much a small town. It’s deliberately been built and designed to reflect a happier time for these superbeings, and both heroes and reformed villains are welcome. Most of the story is told through the eyes of the female sheriff, Thomasina Lindo, who’s sort of a no-nonsense woman who has grown up with these people and goes out of her way to protect them.

Beyond that, a lot of the retired heroes and villains have children and grandchildren, so the town has a few superpowered vandals and shredders, as well. [...] But of course, it’s a town with a secret. So there’s a bit of Twin Peaks in there, along with the Opie and Aunt Bea.

NRAMA: And then…a murder?

GS: There’s a murder, and there are some secrets. This is absolutely the most intricate mystery story I’ve ever written. If you dug Villains United, there’s a lot of twists and turns like that book had, and lots of saucy violent wrongness, thank goodness.

As I said, the main character is a smart, tough, pretty African-American Sheriff, whose grandfather was the first public black superhero. She adores these people and recognizes them for the heroes they (mostly) are. In return, they adore her, as well.

The normally publicity shy town allows a network reporter to do a story on Tranquility, to show it in the best possible light, and things go wrong from the minute the cameras start to roll, starting with a plane crash and leading up to an unexpected death.

The sheriff’s in over her head, and there are forces who don’t want her to find the truth. It’s fun stuff....

thete1