Books: DC Comics Reboot Week 2
Sep. 15th, 2011 07:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
woodwardiocomGood, bad, unremarkable, undecided.
The Good: Batman & Robin manages to do something new with Batman (which, after seventy years, is hard), when he decides to stop memorializing the day his parents died, in favor of their wedding day, thus celebrating their lives, instead of their deaths. Batwoman continues to be gorgeous. The Batman corner of the reboot continues to be very solid.
Green Lantern shows how Hal can't seem to get his life together as an ex-GL, and how Sinestro can't seem to handle being a GL. Red Lanterns is almost meta in that Atrocitus spends his time musing on how to manage a corps of acid-spewing berserkers, which is surely a question that went through the writer's mind as well. Plus, Dex-Starr is right in the middle of Alan Moore's "mad, beautiful ideas" territory.
The surprise delight of the bunch is Demon Knights. I wasn't expecting to like a period piece about Etrigan the demon. The opening caption, "Four centuries ago. The last night of Camelot," lowered my expectations straight into "contempt" territory. (Surely they meant "fourteen".) However, the plot is "Jason Blood, Madame Xanadu, and Vandal Savage walk into a bar, and are attacked by Morgan le Fay's army of sword-wielding velociraptors." Honestly, how could any sane man turn that down?
I'm also likely to pick up the first volume of Frankenstien: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., again largely on the basis of "mad, beautiful ideas" like the inclusion of the Creature Commandos.
The Bad: I was prepared to vaguely like Legion Lost, until the writers, with almost Robinsonian contempt, killed Gates. I'm a big fan of the adorable Marxist alien teleporting bug, and that's enough reason for me to step away from the title.
Regarding Resurrection Man and Grifter: In both, our hero takes a plane flight for ill-defined reasons, gets attacked mid-flight for ill-defined reasons, takes the fight outside, survives, and vows to figure out what's going on. Neither title is engaging, Grifter is actively confusing, and someone in the editorial staff should have ensured they didn't have the same plot or, at least, didn't come out in the same week.
The Unremarkable: Deathstroke, Mister Terrific, Suicide Squad. (I'm not liking the new Harley Quinn, and it's no substitute for Secret Six.)
The Undecided: Superboy. As with Green Arrow last week, this is a new character with the same name, and I'm having trouble caring.
The Good: Batman & Robin manages to do something new with Batman (which, after seventy years, is hard), when he decides to stop memorializing the day his parents died, in favor of their wedding day, thus celebrating their lives, instead of their deaths. Batwoman continues to be gorgeous. The Batman corner of the reboot continues to be very solid.
Green Lantern shows how Hal can't seem to get his life together as an ex-GL, and how Sinestro can't seem to handle being a GL. Red Lanterns is almost meta in that Atrocitus spends his time musing on how to manage a corps of acid-spewing berserkers, which is surely a question that went through the writer's mind as well. Plus, Dex-Starr is right in the middle of Alan Moore's "mad, beautiful ideas" territory.
The surprise delight of the bunch is Demon Knights. I wasn't expecting to like a period piece about Etrigan the demon. The opening caption, "Four centuries ago. The last night of Camelot," lowered my expectations straight into "contempt" territory. (Surely they meant "fourteen".) However, the plot is "Jason Blood, Madame Xanadu, and Vandal Savage walk into a bar, and are attacked by Morgan le Fay's army of sword-wielding velociraptors." Honestly, how could any sane man turn that down?
I'm also likely to pick up the first volume of Frankenstien: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., again largely on the basis of "mad, beautiful ideas" like the inclusion of the Creature Commandos.
The Bad: I was prepared to vaguely like Legion Lost, until the writers, with almost Robinsonian contempt, killed Gates. I'm a big fan of the adorable Marxist alien teleporting bug, and that's enough reason for me to step away from the title.
Regarding Resurrection Man and Grifter: In both, our hero takes a plane flight for ill-defined reasons, gets attacked mid-flight for ill-defined reasons, takes the fight outside, survives, and vows to figure out what's going on. Neither title is engaging, Grifter is actively confusing, and someone in the editorial staff should have ensured they didn't have the same plot or, at least, didn't come out in the same week.
The Unremarkable: Deathstroke, Mister Terrific, Suicide Squad. (I'm not liking the new Harley Quinn, and it's no substitute for Secret Six.)
The Undecided: Superboy. As with Green Arrow last week, this is a new character with the same name, and I'm having trouble caring.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 12:53 pm (UTC)I thought it was "lovely and pointless idea[s]".
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 01:12 pm (UTC)I hadn't tried the Lantern books; I might on the strength of this.
Right there with you on Demon Knights -- it goes on the trade list. I did read Frankenstein -- it's another "check issue 2" entry. The concept is pretty neat, the writing was OK, IMHO.
That's all I tried this week.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 01:31 pm (UTC)They are clear continuations of the pre-boot GL titles, so if you liked those...
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 01:20 pm (UTC)Dammit!