I'm having a lot of fun going through these collections. The '80s tone where a lot of characters and costumes still had old school goofiness to them eI'm having a lot of fun going through these collections. The '80s tone where a lot of characters and costumes still had old school goofiness to them even as the plots started orienting around real world political and social issues is an interesting era that makes for some wild stories....more
I'm having a lot of fun with this Ostrander run. It's a great example of that late '80s stuff where they were sometimes mixing more serious political I'm having a lot of fun with this Ostrander run. It's a great example of that late '80s stuff where they were sometimes mixing more serious political topics with full on superhero silliness so Ronald Reagan is a supporting character as the Suicide Squad gets missions like trying to kill the leader of a South American drug cartel, but then there's another story that involves going to another dimension and battling weird demonic creatures.
Captain Boomerang continues to be both the most ridiculous and annoying character. I'm pretty sure that Amanda Waller just keeps sending him out on every mission hoping that he'll be killed someday. Fingers crossed.
There's also a couple of appearances by Batman, and the way he's portrayed here reminded me that DC was in the middle of that phase where he had to be an absolute asshole to everybody. Because it's gritty and mature!...more
The surprising thing about this for me is that ‘Suicide Squad’ is just the team’s nickname. Officially, it’s supposed to be known as Task Force X. So The surprising thing about this for me is that ‘Suicide Squad’ is just the team’s nickname. Officially, it’s supposed to be known as Task Force X. So this has obviously had to be put out by DC in the days before Marvel apparently got a copyright on the letter X.
I didn’t read this back in my ‘80s teenage comic book nerd days, but I’ve heard good things about this run by Ostrander for a while. James Gunn saying he was using this version as his template for the new movie was enough to finally put some on hold at the library, and I’m glad I did.
There’s a lot of fun to be had with the idea of the government using a bunch second tier super villains as disposable operatives in the DC universe. Sending this motley crew to wipe out a super terror cell or rescue a political prisoner in the Soviet Union has that realistic in a comic book sort of way mentality that I enjoyed in the better stuff of this era.
And that outfit that Captain Boomerang is wearing is something else!...more
Way back in the ‘70s when I was a kid who rode his pet dinosaur to school I started reading and collecting comic books. One of my favorites was a supeWay back in the ‘70s when I was a kid who rode his pet dinosaur to school I started reading and collecting comic books. One of my favorites was a super-sized Batman collection that featured his first encounter with Ra’s al Ghul, and I probably reread it at least a hundred times. Later, when I was in my 20s, a broken water pipe at my parent’s house soaked some stuff I had stored with them, and that comic was one of the things that was ruined. Oh, and that book which had sold for $2 originally now goes for around $150. More’s the pity.
I didn’t fully appreciate how important that book was in my journey to full blown comic book nerd until much later. Not only was it the introduction of a major Batman villain, but it also came at a time when Denny O’Neil was in the middle of rehabbing the Caped Crusader’s image after he’d become a symbol of camp goofiness. As a stupid kid all I knew of Batman came from Superfriends cartoon and Adam West TV show. So this darker, more adult version of crime fighter driven by childhood trauma was shocking to me.
I also didn’t realize until later how the Neal Adams art locked an image in my brain that became the default setting of MY Batman. To this day that’s what I measure all other versions against.
Revisiting the story after all these years was a treat, and I was shocked at how so many of the panels were burned into my brain. This has some additional early Ra’s stories as well, and while I still think the ones with Adams’ art are the best there’s a lot of fun stuff here courtesy of O’Neil’s writing.
There’s some dated ‘70s silliness to the stories, but this was an important transition phase from the days of Batman using a handy can of shark repellent to the super gritty Dark Knight Returns. It was a great stroll down memory lane for me, and I won’t be storing this copy under any water pipes....more
As an oversized hardcover comic collection with over 1000 pages, this is the kitten squisher to end all kitten squishers. Seriously, if you need some As an oversized hardcover comic collection with over 1000 pages, this is the kitten squisher to end all kitten squishers. Seriously, if you need some kittens squished, this would be the book you’d want to use for the job.
It’s taken me months to get through this thing, not just because of how long it is, but because it’s so big that I had to be in the right mood to sit at the kitchen table because it's not like you could read it while laying on the couch or in bed.
Another funny thing about this one, it’s a DC crossover event that was originally published in 1994. I’m much more of a Marvel fan than DC (Except for my boy Batman.), I think crossover events are generally stunts to boost sales that have seriously hurt storytelling, and this came out at a time when mainstream comics had gotten so bad that fans quit reading which nearly caused the entire industry to implode. And yet I asked for this as a gift last Christmas.
Why? I’m not really sure myself. I’ve been watching a lot of the DC television shows and cartoons they do these days so that has my interest up. Plus, Zero Hour was right about the time I bailed on reading comics back in the ‘90s so it’s kind of a time capsule to go back to. It just sounded like an interesting artifact to re-examine.
So how was it? Weeelllll….. As I said before, this was kind of a bad time for superhero comics, and there is an incredible amount of material about characters that never caught on who I”m pretty sure have been left to the discount bin in comic books stores. So there isn’t nearly enough of the major characters like Batman and Superman to suit me. Plus, this was yet another huge part of DC’s obsession with repeatedly trying to revamp their continuity and create a timeline that ‘made sense’ which is something they insist on doing once a decade that looks more and more like a fool’s errand every time they try. The plot revolves around a big timey-wimey crisis that is ending all of the DC realities as we knew them, and it’s pretty much complete nonsense, even by comic book standards.
The most interesting aspect is that because it’s about worlds colliding, we get a lot of different versions of characters over the years at times, like Superman running into a whole bunch of different Batmen or Catwoman getting a glimpse of her various incarnations. One of the best side stories involves the Tim Drake version of Robin meeting and working with the much younger Dick Grayson as Robin to catch a thief.
My favorite was an absolute gem of a Green Arrow issue in which the entire story is done without captions or dialogue and shows via clever structure of the panels two parallel stories in which GA pursues a criminal, but ends two different ways. I could have used a lot more like that one in this.
Overall, it’s a big mishmash of ‘90s DC characters doing a lot of different stuff so it’s not without it’s charms, but anybody who didn’t know anything about the characters’ histories would most likely be lost. It’s also going to be a fairly big investment so not recommended for casual fans unless you find it cheap or get it from a library.
Still, I had some fun with it, and it did take me back to the days when Superman had come back from the dead and Batman had recovered from a broken spine. Not a bad trip down memory lane overall....more
This is an almost perfect example of what I both like about a well written modern comic as well as the things that make me think I’d be happy never reThis is an almost perfect example of what I both like about a well written modern comic as well as the things that make me think I’d be happy never reading another superhero book from a major publisher again.
Scott Snyder came up with a great concept of Batman trying to get Two Face to a destination almost 500 miles away in the hopes of finally curing his split personality. The problem is that Two Face has offered a huge amount of money to anyone who frees him as well as threatened to release all of the dirt he’s accumulated over the year as both Gotham’s DA and a criminal kingpin. This pretty much sets every villain in Gotham on their trail as well as turning some of his most loyal allies against Batman.
So it’s a classic road story like a Midnight Run with Batman being attacked by villain after villain with even average people he encounters ready to pick up a gun and take a shot as he drags Two Face across the countryside. That’s a fantastic idea for a Batman comic that I haven’t read before.
Yet because this is a modern comic we can’t just have a cool superhero story. It’s got to be tied into a secret history of Batman somehow, and this involves a childhood friendship between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent when they were both put into a private home for wealthy troubled boys.
I guess this is also tied into this Rebirth stuff that DC is doing, but I’m not gonna touch that with a ten foot pole. If it would have stuck to that cool core idea then it would have been an easy four or five stars. The Bruce/Harvey kid stuff knocks it down a peg as does the bland stories padding out the length of the paperback. And I’m not a fan of the art of John Romita Jr. although the characters look a little less like Lego blocks than his usual square edged stuff....more
Full confession: I have not been keeping up on Batman in a while. Part of it is due to simple fatigue of all the rebooting and retconning that both DCFull confession: I have not been keeping up on Batman in a while. Part of it is due to simple fatigue of all the rebooting and retconning that both DC and Marvel are doing these days. A larger part was that Batman v. Superman managed to kill my bat-enthusiasm for the character. (A feat that even Batman & Robin didn’t manage to do. Nice work, Zack Snyder.) But I saw Lego Batman recently, and it pepped me back up enough to give this a go even though I had no idea what the recent Rebirth did to bat-world.
As expected, I was confused. Who is Duke Thomas? Is he a new Robin? His outfit doesn’t look like Robin, but he seems to be filling the Robin role. Wait, Bruce references Dick Grayson so I guess he still used to be Robin? Oh, there’s the Jason Todd outfit in the memorial tube so that probably means that the Death in the Family storyline happened, right? Or is he back from the dead and a bad guy again? But if he’s back from the dead then why does Batman still have a memorial to him?
Putting aside all that nonsense this wasn’t half-bad. After a one issue fight with Calendar Man the larger story shifts to Batman meeting two very powerful superheroes calling themselves Gotham and Gotham Girl who seem dedicated to helping him protect the city. Since the first thing they do is save Batman’s life things start well, and Batman kinda likes the idea of having powerful allies not named Superman around to help out. But it’s Gotham City so things go sideways and all hope is destroyed.
It’s a decent enough story, and it ends on a cliffhanger that’s got me interested in what happens next. The art is pretty good and I like this new Bat-suit. (It is new, right?) This also is a version of Batman that walks the line between dark avenger haunted by tragedy and an actual comic book superhero who does comic book superhero kind of things. The dynamic between Bruce and Alfred was a very well done, and I particularly liked a scene in which they’re essentially saying goodbye as Batman is in what he thinks will be his final moments.
Not too shabby. Now I just gotta figure who the hell Duke Thomas is....more
This is kind of the mixed nuts version of Scott Snyder’s Batman with several mostly stand-alone stories from various points of his run on the title puThis is kind of the mixed nuts version of Scott Snyder’s Batman with several mostly stand-alone stories from various points of his run on the title pulled together. If you aren’t familiar with the revamped history courtesy of the New 52 and Damian Wayne getting killed (And being a Robin is seeming more and more like being a Spinal Tap drummer.) then these may not make a lot of sense to you because they’re just moments that occur during events like the Zero Hour storyline.
If you have been keeping up with the latest bat-happenings then there’s a lot to like in these side stories. I particularly liked the ones that showed Bruce struggling to cope with the death of his son. Snyder even manages to make Superman seem almost cool when he pops in to see how Batman is coping with the this latest Robin murder, and the adventure they have sparks Batman into admitting in his own gruff way that Superman is a friend he counts on. Maybe somebody should tell Zach Snyder that? ...more
Barry Allen gets the New 52 reboot treatment here, and I gotta admit that as a newbie inspired to pick up Meet the new Flash. Same as the old Flash.
Barry Allen gets the New 52 reboot treatment here, and I gotta admit that as a newbie inspired to pick up Flash comics thanks to the TV show, it’s nice to get a story featuring just one speedster as the hero rather than small army of them I found in Rebirth. I also appreciated feeling like I didn’t have to read Wikipedia entries to learn decades of history.
Even though it’s a streamlined story that goes back to the relatively early days of Barry as Flash, it jumps into the deep end of the pool fairly quickly as far as bringing in familiar characters with new twists as well as digging right into the more timey-wimey aspects of the Flash universe. Frankly, I could have done with a bit more of getting to know Barry as a character, and the gimmick of having an old friend come back as a new villain with accompanying Flash-backs (Flash-backs! Get it??) just didn’t do much to help with that.
I really liked the art, and I’m interested in seeing where they go with this. But overall it just felt like they dumped readers into this revamped version without bothering to tell us exactly why we should care about it....more
Barry Allen wakes up from a nap to discover that the world he knew has radically changed. BOO!
But his murdered mother is now alive and well. YAY!
But BBarry Allen wakes up from a nap to discover that the world he knew has radically changed. BOO!
But his murdered mother is now alive and well. YAY!
But Barry’s dad is still dead. BOO!
But Barry’s dad wasn’t wrongly convicted of his mother’s murder and lived a long happy life. YAY!
But Barry now doesn’t have his Flash powers. BOO!
But Barry realizes that no one has ever heard of Superman. YAY! (That’s not a mistake. Superman is boring as hell.)
But Barry learns that Atlantis and the Amazons, led by Aquaman and Wonder Woman, are at war and have killed millions of people and destroyed a big chunk of Europe. BOO!
But Batman is still around. YAY!
But Batman is not Bruce Wayne. BOO!
But Batman is Bruce’s father Thomas who survived the mugging that killed him originally. YAY!
But young Bruce was killed instead. BOO!
But Thomas loves the idea that Barry comes from a reality where Bruce survived so much that he agrees to help set the world right. YAY!
But then things get sad. BOO!
But saving reality reboots it and serves as a jumping off point for the New 52. Yay? Boo? I’m really not sure….
As other reviewers have noted, this feels kinda short and rushed for being such a major event. For example, a huge chunk of time is devoted to getting Batman on board with trying to stop the war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman because he’s such a super awesome tactician that no other super powered people will sign on unless he’s the man with a plan. However, his brilliant scheme is that they all go to London and start punching people. Hell, I could have drawn that up. Maybe it pays off more in the Batman Flashpoint books, but it seems like a pretty big missing chunk of plot here.
And while there are some genuinely moving moments to this, I saw the ending coming a mile away. As will anyone who has seen a certain episode of classic Star Trek or about a thousand variations on it in sci-fi. ...more
Barry Allen, the original Flash, has been dead for years after sacrificing himself to save the universe. However, it’s been well established that all Barry Allen, the original Flash, has been dead for years after sacrificing himself to save the universe. However, it’s been well established that all comic characters have the super human ability to resurrect themselves. Barry just took a little longer than most before crawling out of the grave.
The story is that Barry was caught in the Speed Force, an extra-dimensional energy that has been tapped into by so many characters that only a fool would challenge anyone to a footrace in the DC universe. Everyone is delighted to have Barry back, but as celebrations and reunions are planned Barry questions why he has returned and has the nagging sensation that something is very wrong.
I’ve always been much more of a Marvel than a DC guy except for following Batman, but I’ve become such a devoted viewer of TV’s versions of two of their heroes with Arrow and The Flash that I was inspired to start reading up on them. (Well played, Warner Brothers. Well played, indeed.)
That means that I don’t know much about Flash other than the odd tidbit picked up from other comic nerdlingers and what I’ve gotten so far from the TV show. Which makes reading this a problem since it is heavily steeped in the history of The Flash and despite a fair amount of exposition and recapping it’s pretty confusing for a relative newbie. Seeing just how convoluted the history of this one character and all his off-shoots has gotten made me realize why they felt the need to reboot again with the New 52 that this helps set up. (Although a once a decade retcon seems to be standard operating procedure for DC.)
It’s a fairly entertaining story overall, and I really liked the artwork, especially the ways that they manage to convey a sense of speed in drawings. But the emotional punch of the return of Barry Allen seemed lacking to me as a relatively new fan since I saw him on TV just last week. ...more
I love Scott Snyder writing Batman, but this is one of those cases where he tried to put 10 lbs. of story in a 5 lb. sack.
The rebooted origin continueI love Scott Snyder writing Batman, but this is one of those cases where he tried to put 10 lbs. of story in a 5 lb. sack.
The rebooted origin continues with a fledgling Batman trying to stop a complicated scheme created by the Riddler involving Doctor Death that leaves Gotham devastated. He’s also struggling to figure out where Bruce Wayne fits into his vigilante plans as well as coming to terms with characters like Jim Gordon and Alfred.
As I noted when I reviewed Zero Year - Secret City, Snyder wisely sped by the standard points of the history of Batman. Bruce Wayne’s parents are murdered in front of him, he travels the world learning crime fighting skills, he realizes that he needs a symbol to bring justice to Gotham, yada, yada, yada. Those are the fixed points in the Batman universe, and while you can tweak them, you can’t change the basics.
Snyder treats Bruce donning the cape & cowl as the beginning of this rather than the end point, and that’s the best part of the story. Seeing a younger, reckless and more arrogant Bruce think he can wage a one-man war on crime with no help and getting taught some harsh lessons is great stuff. The character interactions between an angry young Batman and Jim Gordon and Alfred were some of the best bits. Snyder also continues to deftly weave in some nods to past versions of Batman like things will remind fans of No Man’s Land, The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Rises movie.
Unfortunately, the story starts collapsing under its own weight and at times feel like it’s descending into a Grant Morrison level of confusion. I would have preferred if Snyder would have focused in on a young Batman dealing with one major villain rather than two and operating in essentially a post-apocalyptic Gotham for a large chunk of the story. I guess you could make the point that it required something that catastrophic to get Batman recognized as a force for good by the city so that the cops aren’t constantly chasing after him, but it really feels like way too much is going on at times. ...more
Treasure of the Rubbermaids 23: Rival Companies United!
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containerTreasure of the Rubbermaids 23: Rival Companies United!
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
The Coca-Cola Company doesn’t have to worry about trying to come up with a crossover concept to Pepsi to make fans happy. Ford and Toyota don’t have to design a new car together.
But Marvel and DC both manufacture stories about superheroes which means that any kid who ever picked up a comic book wondered what would happen if Marvel Hero A met DC Hero 1, and since both these companies generally would murder their own stockholders to make a buck, they’ve put these crossovers together every now and then. The problem is that’s when the lawyers get involved, and you can almost see the contractual language in the dialogue balloons that guarantees that one hero isn’t going to win a fight between them or that one will be allowed to outshine the other.*
That’s what you get here when Doctor Doom cooks up a pretty ambitious scheme to take over the world that involves freeing the Parasite. Superman and Spider-Man end up working together to stop the threat with guest appearances from the Hulk and Wonder Woman (Who both feel kind of shoehorned in her for no real reason.).
This is all early ‘80s comic book cheese without even a nodding acquaintance to reality in it’s twists and turns, but it’s not horrible as these things go. There’s actually a few nice bits like the always turgid Doctor Doom saying that all his monologuing is recorded and that he reads his own transcripts at night looking for inspiration. Which just seems like the kind of thing that Doc Doom would do. Or Spider-Man feeling useless for a chunk of the book because what’s climbing some walls when compared to the Man of Steel? While that power imbalance prevents Supes and Spidey from having one of those Heroes-Meet-And-Have-To-Fight-For-Reasons things, there are a couple of battles between the Hulk and Superman and Wonder Woman and Spider-Man which of course both end without a clear winner.
The real oddness and what feels like a missed opportunity is that Clark Kent and Peter Parker don’t meet. While Superman and Spider-Man are on a completely different power scale and don‘t really have all that much to say to each other, I could see Clark and Peter having some things in common.** But for some reason the plot has Clark moving to New York and going to work for The Daily Bugle just as Peter goes to Metropolis and ends up free lancing at The Daily Planet. So they both interact with each other’s supporting cast, but never meet face to face. It’s a weird decision that makes the story kind of unsatisfying as far as fulfilling fan boy wishes.
* DC and Marvel would let their heroes engage in combat with winners and losers in the mid-90s as part of a crossover done as a desperation move when the comic industry was swirling the toilet bowl after the artificial collector’s bubble they created burst. Let‘s just all keep pretending that it never happened. Amalgam Comics? What‘s that?
** I guess this is the second crossover between Superman and Spider-Man, and the first one is even referenced here, but the impression is given that Clark and Peter didn’t meet in that one either....more
Fun free comic that DC threw together for Batman’s 75th anniversary. It reprints the first Batman story from Detective Comics, and then does a modern Fun free comic that DC threw together for Batman’s 75th anniversary. It reprints the first Batman story from Detective Comics, and then does a modern re-telling of the same tale. It also includes a short bit from Scott Syder that’s a great look at what the future of Batman could be. It’s worth a look for Bat-fans....more
When I saw that there was going to be an origin retelling of Batman I had the same kind of disappointed feeling you get when you’ve been eating the saWhen I saw that there was going to be an origin retelling of Batman I had the same kind of disappointed feeling you get when you’ve been eating the same leftovers. Sure that meatloaf was tasty the first night and it reheated well for dinner the following day, but when you pull it out of the fridge the next time it’s not looking very appetizing.
Fortunately, Scott Snyder shows up and takes that cold brown lump of blah with its congealed sauce, reheats it perfectly, slices it, adds a few secret spices and then serves it up on some toasted sourdough bread to give you one damn fine meatloaf sandwich. Yeah, it’s still leftover meatloaf, but now it doesn’t seem like the same thing you’ve eaten twice already.
Instead of rehashing the murder of Bruce’s parents Snyder smartly realizes that we know that already and there really isn’t anything to be gained by once again showing us the Waynes getting gunned down. Instead he picks up the story as Bruce, declared legally dead following a long unexplained absence, has secretly returned to Gotham where he plans on waging an underground war on crime using the skills he’s picked up traveling around the world. He may know how to fight, but he doesn’t have a strategy so Bruce’s attempts aren’t going so well. Making things worse is a crime wave started by the Red Hood gang with its leader embarking on a campaign seemingly designed to make life in Gotham worse for everyone.
One thing that helps this origin reboot out is that it probably was actually time to overhaul it. Frank Miller’s Year One has stood as the definitive story of how Bruce became Batman for over 25 years now, and Christopher Nolan used it as a template for the Dark Knight movie trilogy. However, DC has decided that it’s OK for Batman to be a comic book character again so revamping things to tone down the dark troubled vigilante vibe and play up the more colorful aspects was probably necessary. Snyder himself outlines this in the opening to the script that’s included in this volume where he notes that Year One is a comic classic, but that this needs to be something different. He still manages to incorporate a nice nod to Miller’s story with the sequence of Bruce’s bat inspiration though.
Another element breaking from the Miller way of doing Batman is that Bruce Wayne is treated as more than just the cover persona Batman uses. Here, Bruce originally plans to continue playing dead and doesn’t want to reveal himself to the public while fighting crime. His eventual realization that Gotham needs more than a guy punching criminals in alleys is a large part of the character arc.
This not only gives us a fresh and less grim take on how Bruce decided that wearing a cape and a mask with pointy ears was the way to fight crime, it also does a great job of introducing characters like the Riddler and James Gordon as well as this guy leading the Red Hood gang who seems like he may be important in some way later…
Oh, and there’s also a tease of things going to hell in a major way in Gotham shortly into Batman’s career that I can’t wait to see play out. ...more
I have a new appreciation for Gotham Central after watching Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD because apparently this idea of telling stories about ordinary pI have a new appreciation for Gotham Central after watching Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD because apparently this idea of telling stories about ordinary people investigating things in a superhero universe isn’t quite as easy as Rucka and Brubaker made it seem.
In this final volume that follows the Major Crime Unit we find out just how hard it is to be a good cop in a bad town with four major stories. In the first, a couple of dirty patrol cops accidentally kill a homeless girl while shaking down a drug dealer, and their story illustrates how the rest of the force holds the MCU in contempt for not being ‘real cops’, and it also demonstrates that Gotham City often has its own brand of justice. Then a dead young man dressed like Robin kicks off a media firestorm and has one detective’s frustrations with Batman boiling over. A tie-in to DC’s Infitine Crisis shows how a couple of detective face the potential end of the world. The final story is also the finest as the investigation into corrupt crime scene technician Jim Corrigan takes a devastating toll on Renee Montoya and the rest of the squad.
As with the entire run of this series, the characters and crime stories are great comics by themselves and makes the incidents where they have to deal with Batman and super villain shenanigans seem that much more realistic and yet bizarre at the same time.
Gotham Central was a critically acclaimed series with lousy sales that only got 40 issues, but from what I’ve read, DC would have been OK with continuing it. It was the creative team leaving that brought it’s run to a close. Based on what the ever reliable Wikipedia is telling me, I’m strangely OK with this because it seems like trying to continue it after the New 52 stuff would have required retconning some key elements, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
So it gets placed on that same shelf of stories that couldn’t get any love while they were being produced only to see their legend grow after they got the ax like Firefly or a Terriers....more
Apparently there are two methods on how to survive if you find yourself marooned on an island:
1) Go almost crazy from loneliness and start talking to Apparently there are two methods on how to survive if you find yourself marooned on an island:
1) Go almost crazy from loneliness and start talking to a volleyball.
2) Teach yourself to be a master archer using the bow and arrows you cobble together.
The first alternative will get you an Oscar nomination while the second will enable you to become a superhero with your own TV show.
Wealthy Oliver Queen is a feckless thrill-seeking playboy. After embarrassing himself with a drunken incident at a charity auction, Oliver decides to lay low by taking a business trip on his yacht. Unfortunately, things don’t go quite as planned, and he ends up washed ashore on an island. In order to eat, Oliver makes a bow out material he scavenges from a deserted village and becomes a hunter. But when he discovers a gang of criminals using the island for heroin production, Oliver finds himself taking a stand for the first time in his privileged life.
This was a great comic that updated the Green Arrow origins while still being a highly enjoyable story by itself. A spoiled billionaire becoming a socially conscious crime fighter isn’t the most believable character on paper, but Andy Diggle and Jock do a great job of establishing pre-island Oliver as a bored guy seeking something bigger than himself so that the transition flows naturally. The story is just gritty and violent enough to have some heft, but not so overwhelming that it makes it less fun.
This was obviously a big influence on the CW series Arrow in tone and the way that the island changes Oliver. (The show named a prominent character ‘Diggle’ as a nod towards the comic’s writer.) Any fan of the TV series looking to read Green Arrow’s comic adventures would probably find this one a very satisfying read even though there are significant plot differences between the two....more
When I reviewed the Batman: Court of Owls collection, I noted that while I liked what Scott Snyder did with the character, that I wished he’d turn hisWhen I reviewed the Batman: Court of Owls collection, I noted that while I liked what Scott Snyder did with the character, that I wished he’d turn his attention to some of the classic bat-foes like the Joker.
Be careful what you ask for because Snyder just might deliver and creep the living bejesus out of you with it.
After a year long absence from Gotham the Joker returns crazier and more homicidal than ever. Just how crazy? Well, his face got sliced off and he now wears it stapled to his head like a mask. How homicidal? His opening move is walking into a Gotham police station and killing multiple cops while taunting Commissioner Gordon.
As Batman tries to find him Joker leaves a trail of clues and traps that run through his earliest crimes and culminate with a threat to all of the Bat-family including Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin, and Batgirl. (Yeah, I know that Jason Todd is in there as Red Hood, but I like to keep pretending that he’s still dead.) With the Joker saying that he knows their real identities Batman tries to reassure the others that it’s all a mind game, but that claim starts to look hollow as the attacks hit closer to home.
The story asks some of the enduring questions that come up between the two. Why does the Joker take such delight in death and destruction? Why does Batman hold to the vow of not killing Joker despite the fact he could have saved countless lives by doing so? Is there some kind of bond between the two arch-enemies? And the biggest mystery of them all, who is the Joker?
With callbacks to other Joker stories and bits of Batman lore as well as one of the darkest and most violent schemes since the The Killing Joke, Snyder has delivered an instant classic that will probably go down as one of the great Batman tales.
This made me feel extremely schizophrenic because I’m a big fan of Scott Snyder, and I really like the way that he writes Batman. However, the story eThis made me feel extremely schizophrenic because I’m a big fan of Scott Snyder, and I really like the way that he writes Batman. However, the story engages in something that I despise in comics in that it tries to overlay some kind of secret history onto a well-known character.
The set-up here is that an ancient secret society known as the Court of Owls has been lurking in shadows of Gotham City for centuries and that they’ve gone public with a series of attacks against influential citizens like Bruce Wayne by their army of henchmen called the Talons. As Batman and his allies fight to stop the Talons' murder campaign, Bruce learns some potentially disturbing news about his parents.
There’s a lot to like in this collection. When the Talons attack Wayne Manor, Bruce has to fight them off with a combination of bat weapons and artifacts from the cave along with a little help from Alfred. It was a great combination of the newly 52-revamped Batman with the established character bits to make a fun and exciting sequence. Another non-Owl related story shows how Batman has secretly wired Gotham so that he can control the security cameras on the streets and keep himself from being recorded. That was a very slick idea that shows just how well Snyder understands what makes Batman work.
However, the whole notion that there has been a powerful secret group manipulating Gotham makes Bruce look kinda stupid since he never discovered it in all his years of batmanning. Plus, trying to manufacture some drama out of hinting at conspiracies involving Bruce’s parents and Alfred’s father is the kind of stunt crap that nearly killed comics in the ‘90s. Frankly, I expect more from Scott Snyder during a Batman reboot.
My favorite part in this was an interlude where Mr. Freeze breaks out of Arkham, and we get a revamped origin story for him that feels very much like the Freeze that we know, but Snyder puts a wicked twist on this new version of the character that makes you look at him in a whole new light. That’s what a retcon like 52 should hopefully do, and I think Snyder is the perfect guy to be writing Batman during this phase. I’d just like to see him working on more things like that and less trying to make it seem like Gotham City is just one vast conspiracy that has fooled Batman for years....more
The police detectives of Gotham City’s Major Crimes Unit continue the struggle against the ‘freaks’ who like to commit their crimes while wearing costThe police detectives of Gotham City’s Major Crimes Unit continue the struggle against the ‘freaks’ who like to commit their crimes while wearing costumes, and now they’re doing it without Batman’s help.
There’s three main stories in this collection of the gritty comics. First, Detective Allen saves his partner’s Renee Montoya’s life when they get caught in the middle of a gangland assassination attempt by the Black Spider, but missing evidence threatens Allen’s career afterwards so Montoya tries to clear him. In the second, Josie Mac and Charlie Driver investigate a murder in which Catwoman is the prime suspect, but Josie is keeping secrets about why she thinks Catwoman has been framed.
The third and most powerful story involves a patrolman who gets caught in a booby trap left by Doctor Alchemy. With the cop painfully mutating into some kind of monster, Montoya and Allen have to journey to Keystone and deal with the arrogant Doctor Alchemy who is in jail. A cop getting hurt by a super villain would be just a story set-up in a Batman comic, but once again Gotham Central makes the damage done to an ordinary policeman a tragedy. A subplot with lesbian Montoya still dealing with being ostracized by her family for coming out is another moving story and great character development.
Hanging over all these stories is the subplot from War Games in which Batman has pissed off the Gotham PD so badly that they take the bat signal down and now consider him a dangerous vigilante, not an ally. While many of the cops don’t entirely trust Batman and resent the way he seems to inspire the freaks they have to deal with, there’s a nice vibe of uneasiness built up among the characters who think they may be turning their back on the best weapon they have.
Another great volume that tells first rate crime stories in a super hero universe. ...more
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