Comics Reviews Week of 3/25

Hey, if you think my reviews are poorly written, then consider that maybe this is all just a stealth parody of comics review sites and I'm a comedic genius.



Batman - Battle For the Cowl - Oracle - The Cure #1 (of 3)
Written By Kevin Vanhook
Art By Julian Lopez

Now here's the thing, Birds of Prey lasted for over ten years, and it was, for the most part, a pretty solid mid-tier title. At the same time, I can't say I really cared when it was cancelled because, well, its concept of "let's put a bunch of female superheroes together" wasn't exactly ground-breaking.

But as a practical matter, anything that lasts that long is going to be relaunched again and again under the theory, "Well, it worked once, damnit!" And that brings us to this miniseries.

Anyway, this issue wants you to know two things: a) the Calculator has devious plan that involves the anti-life equation (which incidentally means that in addition to this being a follow-up to Birds of Prey, and a crossover with "Battle For the Cowl," it also is connected to Final Crisis as well) and that b) Oracle is a cripple.

On the one hand, that whole "handicapped" angle has basically been the most identifiable feature of Oracle for the last twenty years, but on the other...it's really not that interesting.

Without giving away too much, however, the end of the issue for some reason kind of made me laugh, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to. I think that ultimately, there's really no way to make someone's head exploding dramatic, if only because the very act itself is so hyperbolic that it's kind of hard to take it seriously.

However, I'd like to think that Vanhook was making an allusion to the ancient Hindu Upanisads where Yajnavalkya, the learned Brahmin, told a truth so profound it literally caused a man's head to explode from the sheer scope of the insight into the universe.



Ms. Marvel (v2) #37
Written By Brian Reed
Art By Patrick Olliffe

As I was reading this book a few questions came to mind:

1. Ms. Marvel has lasted 37 issues?

2. Really?

3. How the fuck did that happen?

4. So they're killing Ms. Marvel?

5. Or at least making it look that way?

6. Does anyone care?

I suppose that ultimately, if I cared about Ms. Marvel, and if her death were more than just, "and then her powers abruptly went out of control and she exploded," it might mean something more, but, as it is, I just kind of want to shake my head and move on.



War Machine (v2) #4
Written By Greg Pak
Art By Leonardo Manco

Oh, War Machine, ten minutes with you and it's like it's 1994 all over again.

This issue of War Machine is all about why warriors kill. Oh, the philosophy isn't very good, and odds are that when you're reading it you'll probably be thinking, "Listen War Machine, either blow someone else up, or blow yourself up, but no matter what you do, please stop pretending that anyone reads War Machine for its insights into the human condition."

But why does War Machine need to explain his motives to special guest-star Ares? Well, it turns out there's a virus that gives people super-powers....and the desire to kill everything, and only War Machine can stop it. But, at the same time, he must decide whether or not he wants to remain as the increasingly ridiculous-looking cyborg he has become, or have the surgery to once more be a normal human being.

Of course, since it's issue #4, and it usually takes at least 12 issues for anything to be cancelled, I would imagine it's setting up for an ending where a speech along the lines of, "Oh, to be human once more...but no, for I must fight injustice wherever it is found, and thus I will reman the WAR MACHINE!" Or something along those lines.

Are you happy Greg Pak? You took a book about a cyborg with a fuckton of guns and turned into a whine-fest. I don't know how you did it, seems like this title should basically be "War Machine learns of evil plot, War Machine blows up bad guys, War Machine says pithy line." But no, you've somehow got into to your head that this title is served by giving characters emotional depth, which I suppose would normally be laudable...but not this time.

Skaar - Son of Hulk #9
Written By Greg Pak
Art By Ron Lim

Wait, wait, wait, wait, you're telling me that in addition to writing a comic that is essentially a poor man's Iron Man, Greg Pak also writes a comic that's a really, really poor man's Conan, too? And he manages to fuck up that genre as well?

Okay, Pak, listen carefully, the whole Barbarian concept stops working the second you start thinking about the ethics of it, because, at the end of the day, the whole point of reading a comic about a guy with a sword is watching him use to fight people, not think about whether or not it's right to kill in service of the greater good. Again, this isn't rocket science.

Also, I'm not sure why this comic even exists, I mean, I understand that Planet Hulk was a relatively popular storyline, but this comic features exactly two characters from those issues, and one of them's only a ghost, so why? It's just, you write a comic that with characters that no one cares about, and then load it down with half-baked morality, and the I end up tired and depressed, and it makes me wonder if there's any point to living...

...Okay, I guess I don't care quite that much, but still...


Battlestar Galactica in general
Written By Ronald D. Moore and an undercover team of Luddites...and maybe the Amish.


You know, Battlestar Galactica was a great show...and then the finale happened and tarnished my memories of it forever.

But I'm kidding, I think that Ronald D. Moore make a trenchant point about man grappling with the rapid technological advances of our day.

No, actually, I was kidding about kidding, because the finale was shit. First of all, these people who came from a technologically advanced society are fine with the idea of giving it all up and becoming stone age farmers? Really? I can't help but feel that the members of an industrialized society wouldn't really be down with the relatively short life spans, back-breaking labor and material scarcity that pretty much defined early agarian civilization.

And even if that were believable, what conclusions am I supposed to draw from the series? Is man's greatest flaw his inability to foresee that androids from a long dead race may help create human-looking robots that will infiltrate and destroy humanity? I would imagine that Moore is trying to say that humanity was killed by its dangerous use of technology, but that's not really what happened.

Actually, I think what happened is that Moore decided to add in the Final Five at a later date, and then needed to give them a suitably important backstory, but by doing so shifted the cause of the apocalypse from the folly of man to the folly of androids advancing the technology of robots in such a way that the relatively limited technology of man left them no reliable way to protect themselves.

So, if you work it out enough, I think Moore really is trying to tell us to either return to the forests, or to make sure that we stay one step ahead of the extraterrestrial robots that have lived among for centuries.