Yes, it is. And we start this week with...oh, fuck...
Flash - Rebirth #2 (of 6)
Written By Geoff Johns
Art By Ethan Van Sciver
Suffering By Me
Okay, well, this is issue two of Barry Allen's return to being THE Flash, which I still think is kind of a bad idea, but hell, what are you going to do.
Geoff Johns seems to think that the best way to characterize Barry Allen is to give him some angst. He's wrong, though. As a practical matter, the last thing anyone wants to read about is another emo super-hero with a tragic past. One of the few things that was good about Barry Allen back in the day was that he was largely free of that bullshit. He didn't brood, he didn't have dark secrets, and that was okay.
Anyway, the Johns version of Barry Allen is that he's a cop (which doesn't seem that faithful to earlier depictions of him which emphasized the scientist part a bit more, but whatever) and that he believes his father to be falsely convicted of murder. I assume that part is a straight-up retcon, because I can't remember anything like that before hand. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that his father was really guilty, and that Barry will have to reconcile his black and white morality (as seen in issue #1) with his father's sins.
That or Barry Allen finally finds the evidence that his father was innocent and must confront the inadequacies of the criminal justice system of which he is a part. I can't say I care much either way.
But hey, if you ever said to yourself, 'Man, I'd really like Barry Allen to come back, except instead of being a boring nice guy, I want him to be a boring stand-offish guy, with a dark past...also, I want him to make sure everyone knows that he's a cop by dropping cop slang like 'perps' and 'contain the scene' every other sentence.' Well, then you're Geoff Johns and I can only imagine that this is some sort of punishment for not liking Superboy Prime enough.
Irredeemable #2
Written By Mark Waid
Art By Peter Krause
Iredeemable seems to a miniseries designed to answer the question, "What if a Superman-like character lived in the real world, with all of its attendant problems of celebrity and the like?" I suppose that's a fair question, but well, I'm not sure that's where this is headed.
Actually, I think I want to reserve judgment until it's over, although so far it really hasn't been that good. This issue seems to be showing us, "What would happen if you had a Lois Lane/Clark Kent/Superman love triangle sort of situation in the real world," and it works out badly, as you might expect.
It's average, which kind of makes it somewhat uninteresting to talk about.
Power Girl #1
Written By Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti
Art By Amanda Conner
I've been wracking my brain to come up with the reason for why people like Power Girl. I mean, her ever-changing origin story has gone from "obscure" to "faintly moronic" to "utter confusing" and finally stopped at "too convoluted for it's own good." And the character, more often than not, has showcased some rather unfortunate stereotypes of female behavior. At the end of the day, I am forced, with some reluctance, to conclude, that the only reason anyone has ever like Power Girl is because of her tits.
There, I said it. The sooner we all come to terms with that, the easier the rest of this review will be. (You can tell that this is a top-flight review blog, because I didn't make the rest/breast pun in the last sentence)
But before I begin, I'd like to showcase part of the book, which kind of makes my point for me better than I ever could:
First of all, if Power Girl doesn't want people to look at her boobs, why would she dress like that? Second of all, someone should do a running count on the number of boob jokes in this series. By the time it gets cancelled at about issue fifteen, I'm willing to bet that they've made over twenty of them.
Anyway, the premise of the series is that Power Girl is trying to start her life over and so has decided to become a corporate executive in order to help the world. I'd give them a pass for the lag between pitching a comic and it coming out, but even before the recession the superhero as a good-hearted executive was trite and not terribly believable. Then she fights the Ultra-Humanite, because Power Girl has no rogues' gallery, and they needed someone to fight her.
The art's good, the writing not-so-much, and it's kind of built on a foundation of sand anyway. But it's worth a shot, I suppose.
New Mutants (v4) #1
Written By Zeb Wells
Art By Diogenes Neyes
Well, here we go again!
In 1983, Marvel launched a companion series to the then super-popular Uncanny X-Men called New Mutants. For a time, it was really popular, then it kind of fell apart, then Rob Liefeld showed up, then the '90s happened.
I suppose the best way to explain why this comic exists is that Marvel figured that at some point New Mutants was a smash hit. For the last few years, they've been operating under the assumption that it was the concept of young mutants hanging out and occasionally fighting crime that made the book a success rather than the specific characters. After trying three times in a row to replicate even a fraction of the success of the original New Mutants, and failing each time, Marvel has decided to try something else.
So, now they're working from the other angle, figuring that it was the specific character that made the first incarnation of the New Mutants so successful. So, they've brought back as many of the characters as they could scare up, seemingly brought back on of their more notable villains and are hoping that it recaptures the magic, or at least puts up respectable sales numbers.
I'm in my early twenties, so when I was growing up, most of these characters had either fallen off the grid of were in X-Force, so I don't have particularly fond memories of any of them. And if you premise doesn't even appeal to people as old as me, what the fuck are you doing, anyway?
That said, it's fine.
Mini-micro-reviews: For when thought is too much to ask
X-Men: First Class: Finals #4 (0f 4): You could do much worse.
Marvel Zombies 4 #2: If you're bringing in the Midnight Sons, you've drained the idea well dry, and it's time to give it a rest. Incidentally, that lesson is more applicable to every day life than you might think.
Final Crisis Aftermath - Run! #1: On the one hand, it's not bad, on the other hand, propagation of crossover series must end, or all will be lost.
Warlord #2: In the savage world of Skartaris, no one has yet invented pants. Actually, this one isn't bad either, and it is written by Mike Grell, so I can only assume this is an official apology for the Bruce Jones miniseries.
Trinity #49: So...this is still going, huh? How about that. This issue, the earth explodes...I can only assume this means the end of the DC line.
Amazing Spider-Man #593: Hey, here's a funny story. in 1995, there was a crossover called "Underworld Unleashed" in the DC universe. The goal of the crossover was to reinvigorate villains via demonic grants of power. It was fine crossover, but the consensus is that it probably wasn't a very good idea. Even the writer of the crossover said as much in his afterword in the collected edition. That writer's name was Mark Waid, and seeing as what he does to the Vulture in this issue...
Dollhouse (The TV show): Here me people of geekdom, simply because a show was created by Joss Whedon does not make it worthy of being revered. This show isn't good, and for a show which essentially stars a tabula rasa and a bunch of villains, it always seems to take the easy way out. Case in point, an unstable guy who killed a bunch of people to escape from the Dollhouse is an good idea. Making him a cartoonish villain is not. Also, having the guy who spent the entire season trying to take down the Dollhouse decide in the span of one episode, "Well, I went to incredible lengths to take this evil organization down and rescue the girl, but I suppose doing the exact opposite couldn't hurt," is not good no matter how fucking clever you think you are.
Star Trek (The Movie): J.J. Abrams, you can either work in the existing continuity or you can start over, but having your cake and eating it too....man....
Anyway, I didn't like this movie, but it's not because it fucked around with continuity, it's mainly because...I don't know, it was a bit too slick for its own good.
I mean, here's the thing, the movie is basically a caricature of Star Trek with some high-end special effects and action sequences tacked on. They basically went through Trek, found out the distinguishing marks of each character and jammed them all in one film. So you've got McCoy with his, "I'm a doctor, not a...." line and Sulu fencing, and Chekov with the inability to pronounce the letter 'v'. And if your goal is to make Star Trek appeal to the broadest possible audience, this is exactly how you'd do it.
So while I can appreciate the technical skill with which the movie was made, I just can't bring myself to say I liked it,
Also, by my count Kirk received a sextuple-promotion at the end from cadet to captain. That's probably a bit excessive, especially since most of the members of Starfleet academy were on all those ships that Nero blew up before the Enterprise showed at Vulcan.
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