Tuesday, May 29, 2012

New Comics! (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Batwoman #9:  Sorry, Batwoman.  I think I'm done.  As much promise as this series had in the beginning, as much as I wanted to troll Gotham's nightlife with Kate, as much as I wanted to support a gay superhero with her own book, I just can't keep pretending that I enjoy these issues.  WnB give us a more straight-forward issue than we've gotten in a while, with the various disjointed stories having more obvious connections to the other ones than they've had in previous issues.  But, I'm still not entirely sure how D.E.O. managed to get its hands on Sune, even though I'm pretty sure that we actually saw it happen in a previous issue.  I'm also not sure why Falchion and Medusa need more children even though, again, I'm pretty sure we learned why in a previous issue.  I'm all about complicated stories that take time (and several readings) to appreciate.  Even though I find Morrison to be too intentionally obtuse at times, I've always been willing to put in the work necessary to come to that conclusion honestly.  I'm also excited to get home and re-read the first four issues of "Winter Soldier," because I think issue #5 will be even greater when I realize how many previously seen sub-plots Brubaker manages to advance.  But, with both Morrison and Brubaker, I generally had a sense of what happened in a story while reading the issue in my hands.  It might've required a re-reading (or, in Morrison's case, several re-readings) to grasp all the complicated details, but I could at least follow the main plot without help from previous issues.  However, I can honestly say that, even in their most straight-forward issue to date, WnB fail to even manage that much.  I honestly have no idea what plot Medusa is trying to put into effect or why D.E.O. wants to stop it (let alone how it discovered the plot in the first place).  As such, unfortunately, it's time for "Batwoman" to go.  I'm trying to pare down my monthly costs to less than $75, and this series is unfortunately the lowest hanging fruit.  Good luck, Kate.  See you in "Batman."

Justice League #9:  Holy %$&^ing $&%#.  This issue is intense.  Johns pulls a David special here, taking a minor character from previous issues and turning him into a serious villain.  I'm sure that, at some point, we'll learn what deal with the Devil Graves made to gain the powers that he now has, since I'm pretty sure that an ordinary journalist wouldn't have easy access to whatever it is that turned him into the nascent badass that he is here.  I'm also sure that we'll learn why exactly he's seeking revenge on the Justice League.  Johns seems to imply that their relationship goes beyond just him writing books about them, but I'm still not sure why exactly he thought that they could help him cure his cancer (or that, maybe, they were responsible for it).  But, for now, Johns excels in making him a brooding menace, a foreboding characterization made all the more profound by Lee, who shows us the fear in the eyes of the Key and Weapons Master just at the mere mention of his name.  Along the way, Johns also manages to show us some great moments as he breaks the team into smaller groups.  We see Flash trying (and failing) to play bad cop, Cyborg showing that he can play with the big boys, and Steve fraying at the edges a bit before everything goes South.  To me, Johns' use of Trevor as the human lens through which we see the League has vacillated between feeling effective and hollow over the last few issues.  But, it's at its most impactful here, as Steve falls to a very human emotion, protecting his family, as he betrays the Justice League.  Given that it's, you know, the Justice League, I'm pretty sure that it's an acceptable calculated risk to them for Steve to set Graves on them and not his family.  But, Johns and Lee make it clear that it's a decision that's going to haunt Steve for a long time.  This series has been a drag lately, but I have to say that I enjoyed this issue a lot more than I thought I would.

X-Factor #236:  I thought that the most interesting thing about this issue was the fact that David seemingly wraps up the two-issue arc without actually resolving anything.  We still don't know why Scattershot decided to target the X-Ceptionals.  It seems logical to think that he was sent by Jezebel, the woman who told the Isolationist that she was doing as much in issue #234.  However, when I thought more about it, I wondered whether it actually happened that way.  I mean, why would she hire Mojo to send one of his agents to kill the X-Ceptionals?  Wouldn't it be easier to find an Earth-based assassin?  Would you really need a super-powered alien assassin to take out a bunch of non-powered vigilantes?  Did she use Mojo because she specifically wanted to raise the ire of Shatterstar for some as-of-yet unrevealed purpose?  If she didn't hire Mojo and wasn't referring to the events of this arc when speaking with the Isolationist (and Mojo just happened to move against the "superheroes" in Seattle at the same time), then what does Mojo want?  Plus, how is the ghostly (Mr. Tryp-ish) image who appeared to True-Sight connected to the events of this issue?  Is he working with Jezebel?  Or someone else?  We still don't have answers to any of these questions, but David, in his usual fashion, makes the ambiguity work.  He is clearly telling an ambitious story, and this small arc just sets the stage.  It doesn't it well, though I'll note the only off-note to me was the fact that Lord Defender seems a little, if you'll pardon the pun, cavalier in his responses to his dead friends.  By my count, he knows that three of his "colleagues" (the two killed in "X-Factor" #234 and the one killed in this issue) were killed in the line of duty, and all he's able to do is comment on how they deserved better and try to recruit the drug user that he (erroneously) believes that he saved.  (I wonder what his reaction will be to the death of True-Sight.)  Beside that weird characterization, this issue was a good read, whetting our appetite for the story that David is getting ready to tell.

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