52 WEEK TWENTY-SEVEN:
Written by“¦.Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid
Breakdowns by“¦.Keith Giffen
Pencils by“¦.Shawn Molls
Inks by“¦.Many
Colours by“¦.Peter Pantazis
Letters by“¦.Pat Brosseau
Edits by“¦.Stephen Wacker & Michael Siglain
Published by DC
“The Past Best Hope”
DAY #190 – Back over in Elsewhere, Mr Dibny and Mr Helmet pay a visit to The Spectre as part of Mr Dibny’s quest to bring Mrs Dibny back from the dead. The Spectre comes across as being far more malevolent and unwaveringly powerful than he has done in many of his appearances in recent years. Credit to Molls for some chilling facial expressions on the universe’s most intense hoodie. Spectre agrees to Ralp’s request but in return he wants Eclipso, a.k.a. Jean Loring, to suffer for her crimes. He can’t touch her himself because he currently lacks a host – though I’m not really sure why that should be the case, considering he is a magical/spiritual/mystical entity. Anyway, Ralph heads on over to where the Shadowpact trapped EclipsoJean back in DAY OF VENGEANCE and tries beating the shit out of her. Yay!
DAY #191 – Somewhere else, Waverider sits on the floor of his flat and hugs his knees. Then, something called a Time Commander turns up to yell at him. Then, Skeets turns up. This scene would have played a lot better had Waverider been sitting on the toilet reading a copy of VIZ. We get some handy exposition about Rip Hunte’s name being an alias and swiftly better it with some headache exposition about Skeets killing Waverider so that Waveride’s skin can be used to make Skeets in the future. It’s this sort of thing that leads to Skynet, you know.
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DAY #194 – In Nanda Parbat, which I think is somewhere near Tibet, Renee Montoya continues the path of her “Kate out of Lost but more sapphic” character arc with Richard Dragon’s training. It seems to mainly consist of getting knocked over a lot and breaking mirrors. Meanwhile, Charlie is dying of a cough and Renee, ever selfless, takes the news as a personal blow to herself. Geez, can Dibny come and beat her up too? Then, after Dragon’s assistant makes sense of Intergang’s crime-bible and deduces that they are going to attack Gotham (well, duh, they said that about twenty issues ago) and that Batwoman will die as part of the assault (again, duh, that’s always a risk whenever someone attacks Gotham), Renee gets on her selfish-soapbox and demands that they return to Gotham to save her ex. Otherwise she gets no make-up sex, see?
DAY #-590 – Yeah, that’s right. The Dib and The Jean battle one another back in time, to the murder of Sue. Ralph manages to make Jean sane enough to watch the scene unfold, see her actions and feel the pain that she caused. Of course, Ralph can’t keep watching the scene himself, so the magic aborts itself and he winds up back where he started with Spectre. Next stop: Nanda Parbat.
Also, there’s an origin for Black Canary. She’s a second-generation superhero now, apparently. It might well change in time. Such things seem to happen quite a bit. No mention of Green Arrow though”¦
Grade: B
52 WEEK TWENTY-EIGHT:
Written by“¦.Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid
Breakdowns by“¦.Keith Giffen
Pencils by“¦.Drew Johnson
Inks by“¦.Lots
Colours by“¦.David Baron
Letters by“¦.Rob Leigh
Edits by“¦.Stephen Wacker & Michael Siglain
Published by DC
“Beyond The Black Stump”
DAY #198 – In Gotham, Renee and Charlie conjure up a makeshift Bat-signal to get Batwoman’s attention. It would be better if they did that and then cut to Batwoman sitting on the toilet, reading VIZ. Unfortunately, she turns up without the awkward, lingering sense that they can somehow tell you didn’t wash your hands properly and they let her in on the shocking news that Intergang want to kill her.
Then, we’re off to Australia. Remember those few pages from way back when, where some Aussie aborigines had found Red Tornado’s body and where trying to repair him? Well, it seems their town has been taken over by Ridge-Ferris for a new mining operation and they’re getting evicted. They try to use the homemade Red Tornado to scare off the evictors, yet he just twirls around a little, mutters something about the number between 51 and 53, then they beat the shit out of him with a sledgehammer. I’ve seen Triple H matches that roughly followed the same plot. They take the Tornado’s head away in their truck”¦
Meanwhile, in space, Lobo rides a bike without a safety helmet. The Big Green Head shoots at him. Okay then.
DAY #200 – Still in space. Still Lobo on the bike without the helmet. Still the Big Green Head shooting. Also bits of flat dialogue between Starfire, Animal Man and Adam Strange. Righty-ho.
DAY #201 – Back in Gotham, Batwoman beats up Intergang’s green lizard thing (presumably not the same green lizard thing that Black Adam’s brother-in-law shared a moment with two weeks ago) while Renee and Charlie provide back up and scare away the Intergang head-honcho. Ho-hum-a-bum.
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DAY #203 – Back in space with the ship and the Green Head and the Lobo and stuff. Something about an eye. Hiding out in a big skull thing. The Green Head might be a Green Lantern. Starfire says “X-Hal”. Yeah. Lobo leaves. Rants about a Stygian Passover heading for Earth and killing everything. Care? I barely considered it.
And we get a back-up origin strip for Catman that’s just fine and dandy. This issue just went back down the slippery slope of “so-what?” after last issue’s decisive emotional tinkering with Ralph and Jean. The space plot is by far the weakest storyline in 52, the Red Tornado one is not much of an improvement, and the Batwoman material has been squandered potential on poor execution lately, so there’s really nothing to rekindle my hopes for the remaining weeks yet.
Grade: C
ASTONISHING X-MEN #18:
Written by“¦.Joss Whedon
Art by“¦.John Cassaday
Coloured by“¦.Laura Martin
Lettered by“¦.Chris Eliopoulos
Editor“¦.Axel Alonso
Published by Marvel
The Good”¦
– The opening page and its depiction of psychics battling synapses in a furious bid for mental domination of Emma Frost. Simple, effective and unusual all at once.
– Scott Summers, for now no longer capable of being called Cyclops, re-discovering the joys of his testicles. Not literally, of course. This is Marvel, not VIZ. He does get to act like a true leader and independent man, figuring out what is happening, coordinating his fragmented team, kicking arse and actually look as though he is having fun with it for once. A thousand hurrahs to Whedon for taking him beyond the modern trap of being unable to do anything without Emma/Jean/Xavier/doubt/guilt.
– The ball of wool. It’s not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as the can of beer from last issue but it’s still a great bit of plotting.
– The dialogue. You get a Whedon script, you get great dialogue. You know this already. I’ll just give special attention to Scott’s little speech about Emma’s guilt and hope it convinces the few remaining fools who still can’t understand their relationship.
The Bad:
– Scott Summers’ face. I know it’s difficult to show him without the visor or glasses but, c’mon, he looks like he should be in a schoolyard with a brown bag of sweeties and illegal intentions.
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– The baddies, Ord and Danger, are reduced to a comedy double-act. Hardly the best way to continue their plot thread, since we’re presumably meant to take them as a serious enough threat to carry the last six issues of this series.
– The pace. For all the crisp art and minimalist dialogue that these two very talented creators can offer us, this has not been a well-structured story. Cassandra Nova’s situation is extremely muddled and we’ve basically spent six issues watching the X-Men dance to her merry tune until the real plot, involving SWORD and the Breakworld, is ready to literally pick them up. The larks of Victorian Schoolgirl Wolverine aside, it really hasn’t been worth the wait.
All the same, it’s hard not to enjoy this book. It’s always fun, it always looks terrific and it is free from the sprawling mess of the wider X-universe or the joyless tedium of CIVIL WAR. We’re going to miss this when it’s gone.
Grade: B
TRANSFORMERS SPOTLIGHT: HOT ROD
Written by“¦.Simon Furman
Art by“¦.Nick Roche
Coloured by“¦.Liam Shalldo
Editor“¦.Dan Taylor
Published by IDW
Well, I could tell what Furman wanted to do here. I just can’t quite figure out if he managed it or not.
The basic idea is to present a moderate version of Hot Rod, just as has been done to pretty much all the Transformers at IDW. He’s still cocky, still hot-headed and clearly Kup still has not straightened him out yet (no, sadly, there’s no appearance by Kup here) but he seems far more aware of his actions and their repercussions here than he ever has been before. He’s caught between acknowledging the consequences of his actions and continuing to search for bigger and better thrills. He’s a loner by choice because he knows he couldn’t stand it if any of his comrades suffered by associating with him. Given time, it actually is quite easy to picture this guy becoming Rodimus Prime and leading the Autobots.
Regrettably, however, it is really quite difficult to picture exactly what is going on. The flashback scenes to Hot Rod’s most guilt-laden attempt at leadership consists of many anonymous characters running around and kind of fighting many nondescript baddies, topped off with technobabble dialogue. Take away the many anonymous characters and the kind of fighting and the scenes in the present are pretty much the same.
Still, at least the potential for better conceived follow-up stories has been laid here. For the first time ever, Hot Rod has actually been made into a character worth bothering with. That in itself is quite an achievement.
Grade: C
Next Week – 52 WEEK TWENTY-NINE, yeah, I’m giddy too”¦ LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #24, which better hurry up and provide some answers about Supergirl soon”¦ Y: THE LAST MAN VOL. 8 – KIMONO DRAGONS TPB, which will thankfully provide at least one worthy read”¦
