Green Lantern/Green Arrow

This is an important series, a landmark of comics history in which Dennis O'Neil, assisted most notably by penciller Neal Adams, transformed the Green Lantern series into a soapbox for social commentary and polemics, many of them voiced through GL's new costar, Green Arrow, who was recast as a modern-day leftist Robin Hood. It's a pretty astonishing transformation. Before #76, the first issue tagged as Green Lantern/Green Arrow, there was no regular writer on the Green Lantern ongoing, and O'Neil was just one of several writers doing an issue or two at a time, telling generic, disposable, instantly forgettable tales of GL facing off against monsters, aliens, robots, etc. There's nothing in the preceding dozen or so issues, including those written by O'Neil, to prepare one for #76's slap in the face, in which GL and GA face off against a corrupt landlord, and in which GL is famously confronted by a black man who accuses him of doing lots for aliens with purple or blue skin, but nothing for those on his own world with black skin.

Immediately, the duo take off on a trip across America, accompanied by a disguised Guardian from Oa, encountering racism, poverty, drug use, and other social and political issues. By today's standards, O'Neil's writing is preachy, unsubtle, and often rather ludicrous, and he has a tendency for trotting out Nazi comparisons at the slightest provocation. It's politics-for-dummies, in its way as simplistic and morally black-and-white as the GL vs. Sinestro stories that had earlier defined this title. But these are still important comics, elevating these characters beyond the repetitive, thematically threadbare stories that had previously contituted their monthly adventures, suggesting that comics, even superhero comics, could have real moral content and could deal with the real world, however clumsy these efforts often are at tackling these themes.

That sense of a stab at realism is aided in a big way by Neal Adams, whose grainy, gritty art is as much of a game-changer as O'Neil's new stories. With the first O'Neil/Adams issue, this immediately looks and feels like a whole different book, its new street-level themes mirrored in Adams' realistically rendered faces and love of shadowy textures. O'Neil, for his part, doesn't really maintain the same level of commitment throughout this sequence of issues. The initial burst of socially conscious stories lasts a mere four issues before the heroes are once again confronting cosmic menaces and supervillains, albeit with a pronounced allegorical undercurrent to it all. This synthesis is most powerful in a story that casts the villainous Black Hand as an agent of a sinister conspiracy to keep people docile through consumerism; elsewhere, O'Neil offers up muddled and incoherent satires of Nixon/Agnew and women's liberation, with the latter story nearly sabotaging the whole run by making feminists into (literal!!!) harpies.

But then comes probably the most infamous story of this series, the two-part tale in which Green Arrow's "ward" Speedy becomes a drug addict. It's easy to mock now, and there's no question that, like all of O'Neil's work in this period, there's a thread of camp outrageousness here, as well as an over-the-top preachiness that makes the moralizing speeches come across like an after-school special. At the same time, the story is remarkably candid about drug use, and remarkably sympathetic (given the tenor of the times) towards the addicts, who with exceptional self-awareness lay out their reasons for turning to drugs, saying that drugs help them forget the problems of their lives, help them ignore the racism and neglect they face from their elders and the rest of society. It's probably the most morally complex of the GL/GA stories, because though in the end the heroes catch the villain who's peddling the drugs, it feels like a pretty hollow victory, underscored by having the story's last pages take place at a funeral for an overdose victim. This particular villain is caught, but there's a sense that nothing has changed, that the problem is a lot larger and can't be solved with mere fisticuffs or simplistic ideas of "justice" — a pretty mature admission from the superhero comics of the time. Adams also turns in one of his very best sequences in the form of a harrowing page on which Speedy, withdrawing cold turkey, staggers around under the watchful and sympathetic eye of Black Canary, who's helping him through his pain. It's beautifully rendered but horrifying, Adams' expert handling of body language perfectly capturing the young addict's anguish in just a few nearly silent panels.

The O'Neil/Adams run ended with #89, a hamfisted but oddly compelling mash-up of Jesus' death with an environmentalist parable, notable for unsparingly making GL's girlfriend Carol Ferris kind of the villain here, and the story ends with GL blowing up one of her airplanes in a burst of righteous anger. The series blew up too — it won awards but apparently never sold well. O'Neil continued the saga with backup stories in The Flash, with Adams sticking around for the first 3 installments, long enough to give Green Arrow and Black Canary a relatively graceful goodbye before O'Neil started churning out GL solo adventures. O'Neil revived the series years later, but without Adams (Mike Grell drew many of the new issues) and without the social commentary. The issues O'Neil wrote from #90 on, starting in 1976, have very few traces of the earlier series' political ideology or issue-oriented themes. There are scenes here and there that reference poverty or race or drugs, but never in the sustained way that the earlier run had done. Instead, it's a return to space opera, alien invaders, alternate dimensions, and so on, and it's mostly a bore in comparison to the vitality and emotional excess of the original O'Neil/Adams run. There's some camp appeal here — Sinestro disguised as a jester; the bizarre saga of Itty Bitty, a flower-shaped alien who dies and comes back as a zombie flower; Hal Jordan as a trucker who mostly stashes his rig in space while fighting alien menaces; Hal hooking up with and nearly marrying Guy Gardner's psychic gypsy girlfriend. It can be fun, and silly, and Grell (in particular among the several pencillers who rotate through these issues) is a fine artist, but the series is always a pale shadow of its former identity, and it's never quite clear why exactly Green Arrow is tagging along on all these spacefaring adventures at all. His presence was really only required to be a voice of social consciousness and down-to-earth realism, both attributes purposefully missing from the rebooted series.

Green Arrow

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters (Mike Grell) - This was the start of what turned out to be an epic run by Mike Grell on this character, a three-issue miniseries that revitalized Green Arrow and attempted to introduce him into the new "grim and gritty" era of superheroes the same way Frank Miller had for Batman. It's an interesting, lovingly made work with some contradictions and problems that prevent it from being a total classic, even if it is still one of the essential GA tales. Grell wrote and drew the series, and his art is gorgeous, alternating between multiple styles: some panels pop out in hyper-realistic detail, others are sketchy and minimalistic, and others have more of an in-between, conventional superhero style. The contrasting styles work really well together, and it's all held together by Julia Lacquement's sumptuous colors, which look like they're done with a mix of paints and colored pencils. The book simply looks AMAZING, even if Grell is a better draftsman than he is a designer, and some of his page layouts are somewhat cluttered and confusing.

The story is interesting, too, and Grell gets a lot right. He establishes Oliver Queen (he's never really called Green Arrow in Grell's comics except on the covers) as a character outside of his superhero identity, an aging radical who still holds on to some of his idealism, as he wonders what he should be doing as he gets older. Grell also does a great job of setting up the romance between Ollie and his longtime girlfriend Dinah Lance, AKA Black Canary. The love and tenderness and emotional connection between this pair are richly developed in their scenes together. Probably the high point of the series is the moment when Ollie, feeling old and wanting to start a family, asks Dinah to have a child with him — her devastating response is framed by Grell in one of his hyper-realistic panels, her sad face highlighted by the bold, photo-like styling of this panel.

That emotional richness is one reason why it's such a shame that Grell ultimately can't think of anything better to do besides falling back on the clichéd old trope of having the hero's girlfriend kidnapped, tortured and sexually assaulted, causing him to go on a revenge quest. The fact that the damsel-in-distress here is herself a hero with a long history in the DC universe only makes it worse; Dinah, of all people, shouldn't be relegated to woman-in-refrigerator status, a mere victim to spur on her man's violence, especially since elsewhere Grell does so much more with these characters and their relationship. There's something shallowly "dark" about all this implied rape and sexualized violence, a sense that the series is just trying to respond to the era's imperative to make every hero grittier and more violent. Moreover, such excess isn't necessary: the series is most "mature" when it candidly deals with the main characters' feelings for one another and their conflict over starting a family, not when it resorts to shock-value violence and sexual torture. There's a lot to like here, in the gorgeous art and the compelling characterization — of Ollie, Dinah and also the new character Shado, who would become very important to Grell's GA — but the more violent and sexualized moments too often feel forced and unnecessary.

Green Arrow #1-80 (Mike Grell & various artists) - Following the success of Longbow Hunters, Grell moved on to write (but mostly not draw) an ongoing GA series for 80 issues. I read it in a condensed period of time, but still, by the end, it was all but impossible to remember why I had enjoyed it at the beginning of the run. There's no getting around it: this goes way downhill after a while. At first, though, it's pretty good, not without some of the same problems that marred Longbow Hunters, but still solid enough. Nice interactions between Ollie, Dinah and, at times, Shado, who pops up for arcs at predictable intervals. Some decent issue-oriented action with Ollie taking on street crime, prostitution, drugs, the environment, and all the kinds of often-hamfisted social issue stories you'd expect from a Green Arrow series.

Moreover, the first 34 issues or so provide a nice arc and a nice resolution to some of the issues raised by Longbow Hunters — notably, a sequence that mirrors the one where Ollie rescues Dinah, except with her taking the active role this time, thereby neatly calling back to the earlier scene and this time letting Ollie know how it might have felt for Dinah to be the helpless victim being rescued by him. There's also the heartbreaking scenes that follow this rescue, when Ollie and Dinah decide they might want to start a family after all. And then, well, it all goes off-track.

The subsequent "Black Arrow Saga" is promising but doesn't live up to its potential, sacrificing drama and action to introduce the annoying new character of Marianne and her especially annoying accompanying narrative boxes. Then Ollie goes off on his own for a year, wandering the world through a series of dismally boring and predictable adventures. When he gets back, it's not much better, and except for the inevitable appearances by Shado, who shows up about once a year for a four-part arc, the series trods through one forgettable two-parter after another. There are especially abysmal stories that riff on various pop culture touchstones, like clumsy takes on Shane and Cat People. There's a very odd story about the death penalty that ties itself into moral knots trying to deal with this issue in the context of a vigilante hero who has at times killed those he felt deserved it.

The series reaches its nadir in issue #75, which throws in a ton of guest spots and tries to stir up some cringeworthy drama out of nothing. It's all over not long after that. The run has its moments, mostly early on, but it never really rises to the level of greatness, and Grell keeps sabotaging the best attributes of the series, neglecting the great Ollie/Dinah romance in favor of disposable and rushed "issue" stories, while Dinah too often disappears into the background for long stretches. The big action arcs, often focusing on Shado or the morally ambiguous assassin Eddie Fyres, are better, with Grell spacing out just enough emotional beats to keep the series from ever becoming completely brainless. It's an important and often interesting run, and it contains the seeds of a truly great and revolutionary take on these characters, but Grell is never able to bring it all together into a satisfying whole for any sustained period.

Brave and the Bold: Green Arrow/The Butcher/The Question (Mike Grell, Mike Baron & Shea Anton Pensa) - A lousy six-issue spin-off miniseries that teams up these three fringe characters. The story is a mess, involving a conspiracy between the IRA and various Native American tribes, with weapons deals and rebellions and terrorist attacks, but rather than seeming like a twisty action plot, it's just a confusing jumble that never makes much sense or really deals with its underlying issues in an interesting way. It winds up just being an excuse for some lame action. But the worst aspect of the series is definitely Pensa's art, which just doesn't work at all on any level. It's sketchy and cartoony and stylized, which is fine, and there are panels here and there where I can sort of see what he's going for — a garish, cartoonish style reminiscent of Moebius' more humorous moments. For the most part, though, it's just hideous and unclear. Pensa's terrible at character definition, so the large cast is impossible to keep track of, the Question just looks like Green Arrow without a beard, and at one point there's a villain who looks exactly like Ollie. Dinah, meanwhile, looks like Mick Jagger. This isn't a good story to begin with but the ugly art just makes it intolerable, easily the worst thing to come out of Grell's entire Green Arrow run.

Shado: Song of the Dragon (Mike Grell, Michael Davis Lawrence & Gray Morrow) - In contrast, this is a really great spin-off, featuring Shado finally on her own, without Ollie around (he appears only in a brief flashback/memory). The story is somewhat formulaic, and indeed it drives home that Shado is a great character about whom there are a limited number of stories that can be told, and most of them just involve her fighting the yakuza. But this series finally allows her a moment to shine on her own, without being a player in a Green Arrow plot, and she definitely carries the miniseries, with some help from a small cast that's assembled around her. The story touches on the usual Shado themes — particularly the driving forces of honor and destiny — and surrounds her with other characters who have their own conceptions of honor, their own ideas of the things they must do. But the art is the real star: Lawrence inked by Morrow, for a style that's thoroughly realistic in its figures and faces, but stylized in the loose, free-associative page layouts. Lawrence also provides rich color washes that give the book a very sensual and almost abstract feel. There are some occasional data dumps about Japanese history or the characters' histories, so the writing isn't always that graceful, but for the art and the overall feel of this mini, it's well worth reading.

Green Arrow: The Wonder Year (Mike Grell & Gray Morrow) - Late in Grell's run on Green Arrow, he offered up this miniseries detailing Ollie's origin. It's his attempt to do a Year One-style take on the character, but like a lot of Grell's work on this character, it falls short of its aspirations and its promise. On the plus side, it's a great-looking comic, a worthy successor to Longbow Hunters in that respect at least. Morrow is mostly inking and finishing over Grell's layouts and pencils, and the art is sumptuous and richly varied. The regular Green Arrow series often looked very good, but Grell really trotted out the big guns, artistically, for these Prestige miniseries, and the amount of work that went into making this look so good is very apparent. It's a shame the story isn't worthy of such effort. Grell, during his run, disposed of all of Ollie's trick arrows and gimmicks and attempted to make him a realistic, street-level hero. This origin story fits awkwardly with that approach, constantly calling attention to how ridiculous it is to run around with a bow-and-arrow and a Robin Hood costume fighting crime. There's a level of suspension of disbelief that Grell has to overcome here, to sell the idea that this idle rich guy, changed by his experience of being stranded on an island, dresses up as Robin Hood and runs around fighting bad guys, and he can never quite get this across. The story is nothing much, either, riffing on the 60s and 70s radical student groups as a figure from Ollie's past gets tangled up in a conspiracy stretching back to a decades-old terrorist attack by one of those groups.

Weekly Comics: May 1, 2013

It's been a long time since I posted here so I figured I'd catch up with some weekly comics. I won't be posting these updates every week, but checking in every once in a while on what's new.

Age of Ultron #7 (Marvel) - Last issue, in which Wolverine and Sue Storm travelled to the past to kill Hank Pym, signalled a big change in this series, and this issue pays that shift off really well. The duo travel back to a present that's now been massively shaken up by the repercussions of that murder; it's great that Bendis is upping the stakes like this, pulling the rug out from under the alternate future that had dominated the first six issues, replacing it with a whole new alternate future. Lots of fun seeing two Wolverines sparring, and there are tons of tantalizing mysteries about the nature of this new reality and what happened after Pym's death to lead to this point. Carlos Pacheco draws the scenes in the past, and they're gorgeous, and then Brandon Peterson takes over for the return to the present, and that's somewhat disappointing. Peterson's faces are really inconsistent, and in particular he makes Sue Storm look really weird in quite a few panels, especially when he tries to make her show emotion and instead just makes her look deformed.

All-New X-Men #11 (Marvel) - A whole issue of people yelling at each other and getting just to the verge of fighting without actually going all the way. And it's pretty fun, actually. Bendis already revealed that the original, time-travelling Angel would join Cyclops' renegade X-Men in the last issue of Uncanny X-Men, so this issue is just an extended exploration of how exactly that happened. Lots of dialogue, most of it dramatic and shrill, but it's refreshing that Bendis doesn't really fall into his familiar rhythms too much here — in general, taking over the X-Men books seems to have freed him up to explore some new voices and to get away, at least sometimes, from his usual writing tics. Not the most exciting issue in its own right but it's another piece of the puzzle and has some nice character beats along the way, particularly between Kitty Pryde and Jean Grey. And Stuart Immonen does a good job of giving the chaos a cartoony sheen.

Animal Man #20 (DC) - Back when I evaluated the first month of DC's New 52 reboot, I predicted that I'd continue enjoying the New 52 "as long as they keep their current creative teams and level of quality." That's turned out to be a very bad joke as DC has squandered almost all the good will and potential generated by the early New 52 successes, constantly shuffling creative teams and generally allowing very few titles to remain or become great. Even Animal Man, which early on was one of the best DC titles, soon lost its distinctive artist Travel Foreman and, even worse, became mired in a boring, purposelessly elongated crossover with Scott Snyder's Swamp Thing. These two books basically took over a year and a half to tell one story, but now it's finally over, leaving Animal Man to (hopefully) recover. This issue is a good sign of that recovery, continuing the metafictional story of a movie that Buddy Baker had starred in. When the first half of this movie played out way back in Animal Man #6, it seemed like filler at best, a stall tactic to keep pace with Snyder's Swamp Thing for the impending crossover. Now, the story takes on new resonances and new meanings in the aftermath of recent events, and this story of a slacker superhero struggling to recover his fractured family weighs heavily on Buddy. There's no direct tie-in to Buddy's real life until the very end of the issue, but there doesn't need to be: every panel seems freighted with secondary meaning and emotion. Very good use of what had previously seemed a throwaway concept, and I hope Jeff Lemire continues to guide this book out of the slog of "Rotworld" with such assurance.

Copra #6 (Copra) - Michel Fiffe's Copra is one of the greatest superhero comics around, especially notable since he does it all himself: writing, art, and self-publishing. Fiffe boldly combines familiar superhero archetypes and tropes — many of them drawn from obvious reference points like Suicide Squad or The Punisher — with a hallucinatory, strangely beautiful art style that renders these action-packed comics fresh and strange. As one letter-writer notes in the back of this newest issue, it's the union of new and old that makes it so special. This issue concludes the opening arc of the series, which focused on a team of government commandos forced to go underground after a villain's destruction of a small town is blamed on the Copra team. This issue is the final showdown with that villain, Vitas, who Fiffe boldly stylizes as an interlocking set of geometric shapes, his head a triangle atop a bulky body with spindly limbs that seem to be latched onto the ovals of his hips and torso. Fiffe's character design sense is impeccable, and over the course of the series' first 5 issues he introduced a massive cast of heroes and villains, all of whom have distinctive individual looks, so that in this issue's all-out melee the characters are clearly delineated even if most readers won't have a firm grasp on names or personalities. The bold style of Fiffe's art and his gorgeous pastel coloring makes these clashes visceral and thrilling in a way that more conventionally realized superhero battles just aren't, and when he cuts loose — as he does on a few pages where Vitas' form is warped by contact with the alien artifact at the center of this conflict — the results are downright stunning. Also notable is the melancholy of this issue's ending, in which Man-Head's final battle with Vitas is overlaid with his captioned memories of the family murdered by the villain, climaxing with a simple, evocative image that the hero succinctly declares "not a stupid memory." Just a great book in every way, and this is a more than satisfying conclusion to the first arc.

Dial H #12 (DC) - This has been one of the best DC titles since its debut: really only Wonder Woman deserves to be on the same tier. China Mieville's dizzying tale of dial-a-hero shenanigans just keeps getting crazier and crazier, adding new wrinkles and new ideas with every issue, never once wasting a moment or settling into a status quo. This issue shakes things up yet again, introducing a whole new cast of dial-users who appear in a frenzied battle in the issue's second half, everything so chaotic that there's hardly a moment yet to absorb quite what is happening here. This is just such a fun book, loaded with humor, bursting with big ideas. While other New 52 titles plod along, repeating familiar stories with familiar characters, Mieville is concocting a whole new lively universe of concepts and characters, starting from the basic premise of an old, forgotten DC title but expanding it at every turn. Alberto Ponticelli seems to be settling in as the new regular penciller now that Frankenstein is gone, and he's a perfect fit, his slightly skewed figures and faces ideal for expressing this title's wild aesthetic.

Earth 2 #12 (DC) - The long lead time involved in comics makes me think that it's just a haunting coincidence that this issue opens with a fight scene staged in the sky above Boston, with the people of Boston looking on in awe and fear. Still pretty unsettling. Anyway, this is the conclusion of the Dr. Fate storyline, which has honestly slowed this book down a bit too much and detracted from its generally strong first year. Here, after all this buildup, the villain is dispatched almost offhandedly, so the story just sputters to a close, having now introduced Dr. Fate as one of the book's heroes. At least the ending signals that Steppenwolf has finally made his presence known, so things should pick up again next month; the Apokolips material in this book has been really good.

Green Arrow #20 (DC) - I'm willing to give Jeff Lemire the benefit of the doubt, but four issues in, his Green Arrow isn't really bad so much as utterly forgettable, with little of substance and little reason to care about any of these characters — the villain Komodo is arguably the most realized character so far, and even he's not too deep. Andrea Sorrentino's art is nice, all moody and shadowy, but doesn't seem especially well-suited to this story, either.

Hawkeye #10 (Marvel) - Matt Fraction's Hawkeye has had a really strong and coherent aesthetic, even when regular artist David Aja is replaced by fill-ins. Francisco Francavilla, this issue's guest artist, doesn't fit as neatly into the series' overall look, but that's appropriate since this issue is a bit of a departure, taking on the perspective of an assassin working for the "bro"-happy mobsters who have dogged Hawkeye throughout this series. It's gorgeous work. Fraction weaves together the assassin's tortured, unhappy past with the present, in which the man, undercover, exchanges some flirtatious banter at a party with the female Hawkeye Kate Bishop. The pages in the present have a warm, calm vibe, with pages laid out in neat rows of square panels, all closeups of faces and hands as these partygoers bond, Kate not realizing who this man actually is. The flashbacks are more fragmentary, with Francavilla's pages exploding into baroque designs, panels fanning out from central acts of violence, yellow and red and orange flowing across the pages to contrast against the cool midnight blue of the Kate pages. Great design, great art, and a haunting story. More proof that this is one of Marvel's very best comics.

Indestructible Hulk #7 (Marvel) - Mark Waid's new take on the Hulk as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent has been pretty fun right along, but it's reached new levels of insanity with this current arc — drawn by Walt Simonson! — in which Hulk time travels to the past and crosses over to the Asgardian realms, teaming up with Thor against Frost Giants. There's nothing here as wild as last issue's cliffhanger pinup of the Hulk lifting Thor's hammer (though that's paid off nicely with some unexpected humor) but it's just a solid, well-crafted issue of action. And seeing Simonson tackle Thor, one of his signature characters, is always a big pleasure.

Iron Man #9 (Marvel) - Kieron Gillen's Iron Man finally seems to be ramping up in a big way, and this is a promising start to what looks like it's going to be an epic new arc. Dale Eaglesham replaces Greg Land for this issue, and the difference is obvious. Eaglesham's art is as slick and shiny as Land's during the scenes of Iron Man and Death's Head stalking the android 451, all glistening metal surfaces, but with far more personality and weight than any of Land's stiff figures. Then, when Tony's confrontation with 451 gets upended at the end of the issue, and the android makes a big deal of using outdated film reels from the past, the shift in style that Eaglesham pulls off makes the effect as jarring and potent on the reader as it must be for Tony — the lush, shaded grayscale of those movie frames is a great contrast against all the shiny metal that dominates the rest of the issue.

The Movement #1 (DC) - Like a bad punchline, DC's tone-deaf attempt to cash in on the "Occupy" movement reeks of desperation. It's just silly, obviously the result of some out-of-touch editors trying to figure out what young people want, and winding up with teens in masks holding up smart phones and tablets emblazoned with the message "I C U." Gail Simone should know better, but apparently doesn't, so she gamely introduces all these generic teen characters amidst confusing and truncated fight scenes, while Freddie Williams II seems to have settled on a new style to imitate, channeling Sean Murphy and doing OK at it — the linework is decent, though the layouts are unnecessarily cluttered. But even a genuinely amazing artist couldn't really salvage such an ill-conceived project, and there's obviously little chance of this making it past its first year.

Swamp Thing #20 (DC) - Scott Snyder ducked off Swamp Thing after slogging through "Rotworld," leaving Charles Soule to pick up the pieces, with Kano providing the art. Soule's doing a pretty good job so far, dealing very poignantly with the aftermath of "Rotworld," which whatever else it did, left the title character feeling less human than ever, more adrift from what he once was. Here, Swamp Thing is trapped in a nightmare by Scarecrow's fear toxin, facing ghosts of the happy human life he might've had with Abby, while outside in the real world his plant powers run amok and nearly destroy Metropolis. There's a nice moment at the end of the issue where Swamp Thing points out that Superman, too, isn't human and only chooses to act human, though Soule has Supes respond in a pretty lame way, urging Swamp Thing to help people. Pretty good stuff, and Kano's art is more cartoony and clean than his predecessors, though he does ape the inventive layouts of Yanick Paquette, who himself was inspired by Steve Bissette's art on the old Alan Moore run. Nice sense of continuity.

Ten Grand #1 (Image) - The debut of a new series by J. Michael Straczynski and Ben Templesmith, distributed by Image on behalf of the new Joe's Comics imprint. It's a rather unexciting debut: Templesmith's art is fabulous, of course, and well-suited to the story's dark mood and supernatural content, his scratchy lines and eerie color work perfectly capturing the sense of menace lurking within this tale. The problem is that JMS substitutes a whole bunch of clichés for real characterization. The hero was a mob hitman until a rival violently cut short his lovey-dovey relationship with a sweetly generic girlfriend whose death now haunts the hero — and it was going to be his last mission before he ran away with her to live happily ever after! Really! The blending of noir/crime aesthetics with the supernatural reminds me in a general way of Fatale, and of course John Constantine too, so maybe with Hellblazer gone this will fill a hole for someone. But there's not enough in this first issue, beyond Templesmith's art, to really set this apart or suggest that it's going to be anything special.

Winter Soldier #18 (Marvel) - The Winter Soldier is so much Ed Brubaker's creation that it's hard to imagine anyone else shepherding the further adventures of the ressurrected Bucky, but writer Jason Latour and artist Nic Klein have done as good a job as anyone could expect. This series is fast approaching its cancellation — though it will surely be back around the time of the second Captain America movie — but it's been a fine continuation of the moody spy movie vibe of Brubaker's run. This issue marks the climax of a recent arc with Bucky trying to atone for one of his past assassinations, but when he comes face to face with the girl he orphaned, now known as the Electric Ghost, she doesn't seem interested in revenge or atonement or anything else you'd expect. In a nice twist, she spends the issue narrating her gradual process of separating from conventional human emotions, through a horrible childhood in a twisted training program, her life as a spy and assassin, her eventual revenge against those who had guided her life. But for Bucky himself she has no anger, and her rhetoric of transformation and transcendence makes her an intriguing villain. Klein's is fantastic throughout, switching between the moody blue-and-gray murkiness that has usually characterized this series' dark spy adventures, and a more cartoony style to illustrate the Ghost's childhood.

Worlds' Finest #12 (DC) - I'm not entirely sure why I'm still reading this companion series to Earth 2. It's usually just mildly pleasant, and it almost always features a whole squad of artists struggling to cobble together the visuals, but there's something about it that I find charming and enjoyable. The premise of these two women, in an unfamiliar world, taking different approaches to finding their own way in their new home, it's very poignant, and Paul Levitz has done a good job of exploring these characters and their friendship, even if not much has happened on the plot front. This issue is more of the same, though the war with Darkseid's creepy henchman Desaad seems to be heating up. Notably, here Power Girl gets her old costume back, "boob window" and all, which a lot of people will be excited about but I see as a step back — and I'm one of the few who had no problems with her sleek, streamlined newer costume. There's no attempt to explain the costume change here; in flashbacks she still has the old outfit and then when she suits up in the present she's back to the classic design. Meh.

X-Factor #255 (Marvel) - The "Hell On Earth War" is almost at an end now, and none too soon — Peter David's long run on this title has been going through a fallow patch with this arc, which suffers from being way too big for the book. David's X-Factor has excelled at smaller stories and character interactions, and its strengths are lost amidst a giant saga of demons fighting on Earth, even beyond the troubling question of why nobody besides X-Factor seems to have noticed all this city-destroying chaos. There's still room here for a few nice character beats, notably the bafflement and despair of Guido when he realizes that something is very wrong with Monet during their fight. Also, the understated sadness of Layla grieving for Madrox, and Tier finally making a decision. This title is ending soon, but thankfully David is promising some character-based issues about, among others, Layla and Longshot, after this storyline wraps up next issue, so hopefully this book will go out doing what David does best.

X-Men Legacy #10 (Marvel) - One of the big surprises of the Marvel Now initiative, Simon Spurrier's take on Professor X's son Legion has been thrilling and inventive and really cerebral. Literally cerebral, in fact, since much of it takes place in Legion's head, where he must contend with an unruly flock of alternate personalities, each embodying one of his many mutant powers, including a golden apparition of his father who seems to be the most sinister of the bunch. In this issue, Legion confronts another of the anti-mutant agitators who he's been tearing through of late, though this time the man — a victim of multiple mutant catastrophes, which have left him burned and confined to a wheelchair — is surprisingly sympathetic and reasonable in his anti-mutant agenda. Spurrier's been patiently building this story and it's really paying off: both Legion and his love interest/eventual antagonist Blindfold are now fully developed characters, and the sense of dread gradually accumulating like a black cloud over their heads is now really starting to thicken.

DC's New 52, Week 1 (September 7, 2011)

Beginning this month, DC Comics is completely rebooting its entire line of comics, starting every comic over from issue #1 and re-imagining their characters, not entirely from scratch but definitely making some changes. It's a move intended to bring in new readers to the continuity-heavy world of superhero comics, and since I've only occasionally read DC superhero comics myself, I figured this was a good time for me to check out what they have to offer. This month DC is unfurling 52 new issue #1s, and I'll be reading all of them and briefly reviewing them here, week by week. This week, I review the 13 first week titles, plus Justice League #1, which came out last week as the debut of the new line. I rank them below from best to worst; by my count there were 3 very good DC comics this week, a few more that were variably enjoyable and/or promising, and then some mediocre junk. Anybody else following this initiative?


1. Animal Man #1 - This book is just fantastic. I wouldn't be surprised if this winds up being the best out of all 52 comics when this month is over. It's a mix of family drama, horror, and superheroics, balancing all these different tones without seeming all over the place. Writer Jeff Lemire packs a lot into 20 pages, economically reintroducing this character, his family, and the themes and conflicts that will drive his story. And the art, by Travel Foreman, is amazing, especially since it shifts fluidly from sketchy domesticity to punchy superhero action to surrealist, horrifying dream sequences. This looks more like an indie book than a big DC superhero title, so the aesthetic is especially striking and invigorating in this high-profile context. The art is so attuned to the nuances of the storytelling, and the style morphs to fit each new wrinkle perfectly. This is a must-read book, one that already seems poised to match the high standard of Grant Morrison's classic run on this title.

2. Swamp Thing #1 - Definitely the second-best book this week, though not remotely in the same jaw-dropping way as Animal Man. Instead, this is just a solid introduction with some very good storytelling by Scott Snyder. I'm not very clear on what exactly is going on with this character, not having followed the pre-reboot DC universe, and in that sense this book doesn't seem as new-reader-friendly as most of the others. The character's history is left pretty vague and confusing, maybe deliberately since I sense that a big part of the book's early arc is going to be figuring out just what's going on with Alec Holland. But the essence of the character and his status quo come across and there are some great sequences of horror that really make me excited to see where this is heading. The whole scene where the big threat is revealed is chilling and creepy and genuinely frightening; I won't spoil it but it's true horror brilliance, wonderfully visualized by Yanick Paquette.

3. Action Comics #1 - I really dig Grant Morrison's new take on Superman as a populist crusader with an attitude, definitely a fresh perspective on the character. It's obvious that Morrison is deliberately taking a different approach from the mythic boy scout of his fine All-Star Superman miniseries. Even Superman's costume feels more approachable and human. The first half of the issue really pops as it introduces this new Supes in action. The second half gets a little jumbled and isn't as strong, but overall this is still quite good. It's also the most straightforward comic I've read from Morrison in a while.

4. Justice League #1 - This issue is actually from last week, since it was the debut of the new DC line. It's pretty good, nothing mindblowing or anything, and I don't know why the debut of a whole new reboot wasn't made more exciting, but it's still not bad. Mostly based around some amusing banter between Batman and Green Lantern, and then the badass new Superman shows up at the end. It's more a teaser than anything else and it works in that sense, but it's not much of a story. This issue takes place five years earlier than most of the other reboot titles (with the exception of Action Comics) so it's meant to show the early days of the new status quo, when the heroes are just getting to know each other.

5. Batgirl #1 - Just a fun, basic superhero story with a lot of heart and emotional complexity. I like that in restoring Barbara Gordon to the Batgirl costume, they've kept her history from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, so that trauma continues to haunt her even though she's regained the use of her legs. That darkness is contrasted against a refreshing enthusiasm in the dialogue and narration that's really infectious, and makes her seem like a girl who's just happy to be out kicking ass. Not exactly substantial, but pretty enjoyable nonetheless.

6. Stormwatch #1 - This is visually pretty interesting. Every few pages there's some slightly nutty cosmic concept that provides a very striking image. (Although the character drawings are a little stiff.) The problem is that the characters are all so flat and undistinguished, and writer Paul Cornell seems to know that a lot of readers will be unfamiliar with these characters, so virtually all of the dialogue is exposition and explanation. Lots of characters talking about themselves, explaining their powers, saying things to each other that they really have no reason to say except to explain something to the reader. That could get better now that the 1st issue is out of the way, but it still suggests a pretty unimaginative sensibility that jars against the visual imagination on display here. I'll check out a couple more issues of this to see which direction it heads.

7. OMAC #1 - A book that's totally in love with Jack Kirby. Not even a pinch of originality here, but it's fun enough, lots of Kirby dots everywhere, lots of superpowered enigmas pummelling each other. Entertaining and fluffy as hell. I imagine the Kirby pastiche will get old fast so I'm not sure how much longevity there is in this concept, but as a single issue it's a blast.

8. Detective Comics #1 - Pretty standard, even generic Batman stuff. There's lots of Frank Miller-style "I am the terror that flaps in the night" overwrought "gritty" writing. Not terrible, but not especially interesting either. And the Joker isn't funny, which is always a bad sign. The last page is nicely creepy, though.

9. Batwing #1 - Even more standard and generic than Detective Comics, despite this being about an African Batman, a protege of Bruce Wayne. Not exactly bad, but there's not much to it. It's one of those books where it's hard to point to what's missing except, well, anything that would differentiate it from countless other nondescript hero comics.

10. Justice League International #1 - I guess this is supposed to be the lightweight, fun, funny book where a bunch of D-listers hang out. The problem is that while it's certainly lightweight, it's not fun or funny at all, so it's pretty lame and pointless. Really bad dialogue, really bad all around.

11. Static Shock #1 - Yet another really boring one. It's trying for the light-footed teen superhero style of early Invincible, but its attempts at hip dialogue seem forced and the wisecracking tone doesn't produce any actual humor.

12. Green Arrow #1 - Not sure what to say about this other than it sucks. Totally generic, every line of dialogue is a clunkily delivered cliche, the art is static and bland, and all the Youtube references are obvious, desperate grabs for relevance that fall far short of the mark. This is somebody's laughable idea of "media criticism" I guess.

13. Men of War #1 - This. is. so. goddamn. boring. There were 2 stories in this, both straightforward war stories full of all the clichés you'd expect. I got through the first but my eyes started to glaze over just thinking about reading the second.

14. Hawk and Dove #1 - There might be 2 panels in this whole thing where someone isn't grimacing with that same damn I'm-squeezing-out-a-poop-right-now expression on their face. Actually, Hawk is the one who always looks like that. Dove, with her constantly gaping mouth, looks either perpetually surprised or like she's always ready to give a BJ. Rob Liefeld, man. This is terrible.