New Comics Day - Post your Reviews 12 -15-2010

Dec 15th 2010's previews

what's in YOUR stack?

Mine is a short stack:

John Byrne's Next Men #1

Darkwing Duck #7 - Morganna vs. Magica! Darkwing vs. Negaduck! Gozmoduck vs. everybody else! All that plus the secret origin of Quiverwing Duck, and the menace that's been terrorizing the waters of St. Canard is finally revealed!

Brightest Day #16 - Most of the issue focuses on the new Aqualad learning his origins and interacting with Aquaman. There's also a framing sequence dealing with Firestorm's situation, along with a peek in at Deathstorm (aka Black Lantern Firestorm) and the abducted Prof. Stein and Mr. Rusch.

Green Lantern #60 - Hal and crew vs. a Parallax-posessed Flash and the being responsible for hunting down the Entities, whose identity is revealed at last on the final page. And in a nod to events in GLC, Sinestro seems to finally be responding to his daughter's abduction by the Weaponer in that series.

Some of the comics I bought:

Brightest Day #16: Mainly a character building issue. Nothing much really happens. Aquaman gets Aqualad ready for action, Deathstorm plays mind games with Prof. Stein and Jason's dad, and Ronnie and Jason hope their sudden power surge as Firestorm hasn't just blown up the universe.

Green Lantern #60: Parallax has possessed Flash, which makes Parallax pretty darn dangerous. But the little guy in bandages who has been collecting the emotional spectrum entities shows up. He claims he once controlled all the entities, and is working to get them back. Other members of the rainbow Lantern crew show up, including a couple more entity-possessed people, and the entity collector proceeds to kick butt. The collector's face is revealed, and we've seen that face before. He goes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back with the Guardians of the Universe! And not in a good way!

Green Lantern Emerald Warriors #5: Somebody is mind controlling Green Lanterns, and tricks them into thinking Guy Gardner and pals are Sinestro Corps members. When they fail to capture/kill our heroes, they commit suicide. Frankly, I'm getting tired of the Green Lanterns getting slaughtered left and right, and this slaughter had weak justification. But the story soon ties into Green Lantern #60, as Atrocitus warns Guy that he needs to help stop that entity collector.

Green Lantern/Plastic Man: Weapons of Mass Deception (one-shot): Aliens and Earth gangsters working together! And the gangsters look like human-sized ducks. It's an oddball story that has nothing to do with anything else going on in DC Comics right now, but it's fun, and it's nice to see Plastic Man in action again. Plastic Man shows that he's still savvy with the gangster crowd, but needs Green Lantern to clobber the aliens.

Superman #706: It's a character building story for Perry White, newspaper boss guy. How often do we see that? And it's just as exciting as it sounds. Well, maybe not quite that exciting.

Batman #705: Lots of interesting characters running around.Sensei of the Lague of Assassins. Peacock, an unusually colorful costumed character for a Batman comic. I-Ching, who helped out Wonder Woman a really long time ago. Riddler and his daughter Enigma. Say, can we someday get the powers that be in DC to set a standard for Riddlers face? Just a bit of a consensus? For somebody who's instantly recognizable by his outfits, it's amazing how artists can't seem to agree on what his face looks like. (He even had extensive plastic surgery to change his appearance some time back, and it didn't help; artists still can't draw him consistently.)

Looks like Batman and Robin #18 and Batman #705 for me. Might also pick up Spidey #650 (and the issues just before to catch up on the current arc). Read OMIT a while back, and I can see why everyone hates Joephisto, but I still like Spidey (don't know if I should put a or ).

Here's the titles I'll be reading

Batman (#705)
Green Lantern (#060)
GL Em. Warriors (#005)
Brightest Day (#16)
Batman and Robin (#018)
Birds of Prey v2 (#007)

And here be a better list... http://www.comicvine.com/new_comics/?

This was a Geoff Johns week for me:
Green Lantern
Emerald Warriors
Brightest Day
and scooping up last week's Flash

Green Lantern

Perhaps its simply that so many bits of the story came out at once, but the recap page that opens this issue really makes it feel like Johns is ready to start pulling Brightest Day together. There's a lot of Parallax/Flash fight here, but the big point here is the reveal of the cloaked figure collecting the entities. Not a surprise reveal by any means, but its certainly a nice return that gives the series a firm direction once more.

Emerald Warriors

Our psychic mastermind pits a bunch of GL rookies against Guy and company. It's sort of a frustratingly hopeless fight, but again, this issue is about giving the title some foundation, and the last few pages of blood spray collages certainly do that. Simultaneous events across the 3 GL books have really started to pull things together again.

Brightest Day

Some really nice character work with Aquaman/Lad really make this book. The cover fight happens and comes across entirely unnecessary, but it certainly leads to a great bit of dialog that gives the new Aqualad a solid foundation. The other half of the book is made up of Fire/Deathstorm shinanigans that are certainly solid, but feel more like a work in progress. I really hope next issue gives Firestorm the same kind of footing Aqualad received.

Flash

Last week's news, but kind of a filler issue. Basically a Secret Origin for Captain Boomerang that's got some neat ideas, but ultimately exists to move the series forward but lacks what's great about it. Barry is sorely missed, as is the creative use of his powers.

On the Marvel front, I had one book:

X-Factor

Another one of those, "the team puts aside their differences to survive" kind of chapter. Quite the strong conclusion to the Vegas storyline, with a fun use of Thor, Princess Bride references, and a neat use of Darwin (I do love that this entire book is full of characters with deus ex powers). Probably the most frustrating thing is that all the action crowds out the character work that makes the series great. Also GREAT to the far more consistent quality, both in storytelling and art. Hopefully the series can get another big setup soon.

I finally got around to reading the first 3 issues of the recent Amazing Spider-man arc, "Big Time." I stopped buying Spider-man back when Straczynski made the terrible decision to bring Gwen back and creepify her. I was like, "Yeah, I'm out." Then Brand New Day's wrongheadedness happened, so....

These were given to me because the writing is good, I was told. And it is. Dan Slott is firing on all cylinders and except for a bad panel here and there Humberto Ramos' art isn't as goofy as I remember it. The Hobgoblin is completely badass, Kingpin is appropriately Machiavellian and Peter is all genius-y. The story is snappy and moves right along and whenever I got to the end of an issue I thought, "Was that only 5 pages long?" The introduction of the black suit actually makes sense, and Slott spent two entire issues setting up the reason for its existence. Of course, there's no real story reason for the suit to look any different, it's mostly just to remind the reader that Peter is switching things up. It's always nice to see him using his brains as well as his brawn. The arc starts with Spider-Man leading the Avengers into battle against Dr. Octopus' giant octopus robots -- 40 of them! -- rampaging through NYC, and Slott has little mysterious introductions which pay off later. I really like it when writers clearly have a master plan and reveal hints as they go along.

Really good stuff. 5 stars.

Batman (#705)
Green Lantern (#060)
GL Em. Warriors (#005)
Brightest Day (#16)
Batman and Robin (#018)
Birds of Prey v2 (#007)

my opinion of these titles is that...well nothing really happened.

Batman learned more about something happening
Hal Jordan had a nice chat with Paralax and learned more about something happening
Guy Gardner learned more about something happening
Aqualad became Aqualad
Firestorm "might have destroyed the universe"
Batman and Robin learned more about something happening
Barbara decided too many people know about Oracle and has decided to kill herself off... after setting up the whole Oracle thing which means the whole thing is stupidly conceived...

Basically it was just a parts of a whole story that without knowing the full story is hard to judge...so this week was more or less nothing happened.

Well I picked up the 3rd issue of "Big Time", and went ahead and read through it. The writing seems better, but the art needs some work. It just looks kinda cartoon-y compared to some other comics. I'm hoping I can find the first two issues soon to get the whole story so far.

It's Ramos, who does cartoony art. But he's really toned it down. At some points in the past the characters' feet would be half the size of their torsos, which was really ridiculous-looking.