Here we go.
Black Panther #25 ties in with Civil War - giving us a side view of some of the goings-on, including an amusing alternate angle on the Clor/Hercules fight.
Civil War : Frontline - reveals the traitor in the pro-reg side and pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of the Marvel Universe as a home for “heroes”.
Green Lantern #17: Okay. That scene with Batman? That was just cool. Of course, if the Ring was already in Gotham, there’s a lot of people I would have chosen over Amon, who is kind of a goober. I mean, Prof. Crane has got to be writing an angry letter, or something.
Action Comics #846: Ick. Kryptonians anywhere. One thing that I liked from the Byrne revamp was the insistence that Kal-El was the last. Period. Now they’re common as dirt.
52 Week 43: Yeah, saw that coming. Kid shoulda read his mythology. And a Sun-Eater? This can only end in awesome.
The Flash The Fastest Man Alive #9: Oh, thank you God. It’s good. Some actual hints of wit, and both Bart and the girl have a personality? Yes, please. They’re working well with Bart’s central problem, he’s brilliant but inexperienced.
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-heroes #27: Good, but overall just empty calories. Nice tribute at the end, though.
Blue Beetle #12: This is promising.
Damn, you’re quick.
Well, given that Sobek was a friend to both Osiris and Amon (when he wasn’t treated as an aspect of Ra, as Amon was), I doubt that would have helped him avoid this fate. Now, if he’d gone with Amut, like I suggested they do from the start, THAT would have been a tip-off that Amon should have caught.
I post the same reviews on another board. It’s just a matter of copy/paste from whichever gets the discussion up first.
Yes, but I was being a heck of a lot more simplistic. Crocodile and all. Unfortunately, he’s already used his “Isis puts him back together incomplete” card.
52 #43: Here’s hoping that this means that Isis is going to live, since Osiris has bit the… well, was bitten unto dust And, yikes on the sun-eaters.
Green Lantern #17: Finally an explanation for why Hal has been so idiotic the past few issues. I’d agree that they didn’t do enough to set up Amon as fearsome (or fearful).
Supergirl and the LSH #27: Like the tribute, and willing to give the story a pass since it seems like that might have taken up a few more pages they could’ve used to flesh stuff out.
Action Comics #846: I’m willing to go along with the plague of Kryptonians, given that it’s a Phantom Zone story… but it’s a story that feels like I’ve seen it before. So they need to make it a bit more fresh, IMO.
JSA Classified: Well, I like Dr. Mid-Nite, but this? not so much. Muddy art, and it reads like Krul thinks he’s hipper-than-thou. Um, dude? You write comic books. Casting aspersions on the goth, D&D, and LARPer subcultures is not a bright idea. Your sales depend upon such a subculture, and one with a huge overlap with the subcultures you’re poking at.
No comments on Justice #10?
This is the second week in a row that DC has given Ralph Dibny the props that he deserves. Good for them.
52 Week 43 - Poor, poor Osiris. A number of people on this board predicted, months ago, that Sobek would go bad and hurt Osiris, but I don’t think anyone predicted that Sobek would turn out to be the fourth horseman, hunger. The hints were all there, though. Excellent surprise.
Supergirl and the Legion # 27 - Moves plot along, but no sense of fulfillment. The ending wasn’t even much of a cliffhanger. The best thing about the issue, aside from the Cockrum tribute, was Brainiac 5 (as is frequently the case).
JSA Classified # 23 - I like Doctor Mid-Nite, but I hate the art in this issue, and I don’t see the shock value in the villain turning out to be a real vampire (if that ends up being the case, which they seem to be hinting at). Mid-Nite’s not a committed atheist like Mister Terrific is, so having met the Spectre and Doctor Fate and the like, he shouldn’t be assuming the villain isn’t a real vampire. (Speaking of Mister Terrific, I think we’re overdue for a JSA Classified spotlight on him. And yes, I know he’s prominent in Checkmate.)
I actually know several people who called that weeks ago, right after The Horsemen were introduced and Famine was missing.
I’m not sure it’s correct, though.
From the emphasis on the Sins this issue, I’m wondering if they didn’t get free, and if Sobek’s not possessed by Gluttony. Besides the ‘Sins this, and Sins that’ aspect, he’s rather scrawny for a Horseman, and his hunger seems more excess than starvation - so, my (very small, with only this evidence) bet is right now on Sobek being Gluttony, not Famine, with the real Famine still to come.
52 #43: Crikey!
Blue Beetle #12: Very nice.
Supergirl Legion #27: Meh. Brainy awesomeness and we figure out what that thing on Theena’s back is. “Fiffdee-tu?”
GL #17: Thirding Amon not being worthy.
Heh. Good one.
Connor Hawke : Dragon’s Blood - finally gets to the crux of the matter this week, but I’m still at a loss as to why Ollie wasn’t invited to the tournament.
X-Factor - A very interesting piece with Jamie finding one of his “lost” doubles.
Blue Beetle - Fascinating. The Reach will be interesting.
Firestorm - Picked it up because of the New Gods tie-in which seems to be part set-up for the next big arc. Still don’t care one whit about the main character. Nice to see Orion, and an acknowledgement of Scott Free, even though the Mr. Miracle here is Shilo. Curious references to earth elementals though… (by which I presume they mean Earth elementals, as in Terra, because Professor Stein was a fire elemental.)
52 - A bit gruesome for my tastes, but the Animal Man bits are solid gold, and have a brilliant use of his powers. I even like the Plastic Man Origin 2-pager.
Green Lantern = Easily my favorite of the week, what with that first attempted recruitment for the Sinestro Corps.
Warning: blackout post ahead
[spoiler]Sobek’s hunger was deliberately referenced several times before they even entered the Rock and encountered the Sins. And Captain Marvel can hear the Sins, and should know if one suddenly went silent. And there’s the fact that the illustration of Sobek in this issue definately went from cute-and-pathetic to malevolent, from the very second frame.
Additionally, the second-runner-up for Hunger – Skeets – still doesn’t make sense. He may have eaten the Phantom Zone, but he’s doing so in the wrong storyline, no where near the other Horsemen.[/spoiler]
Appropos of nothing, with the Phantom Zone showing up in Action, shouldn’t there’ve been some mention of Skeets having eaten them all, only a year ago? Seems like somebody might’ve noticed that.
Flash - Haha! Impulse! Storywise, pretty good. Character actions, generally OK. Dialogue - awful. Bart seems vaguely off, Roy and Dinah are WAY off. Art, uneven, but generally not bad. Bart looks quite good, for the most part, Tim is hideous, Hal looks like he’s wearing body armour.
Action - Mmm. Phantom Zone.Yummy. Aside from the fact that it does, again, bring up something that’s generally bothered me about the Phantom Zone. Jor-El saved Kal-El’s life, gave him all this nifty Kryptonian history and gear…
Sooo, why not just include a Phantom Zone projector, or the instructions and basic materials to build one, and project as much of the population of Krypton that he can into the Zone, with instructions for Kal to get them out once he’s old enough to handle the PZP?
Legion - Dooooominaaaaators! Sweet, sweet Dominators. The arguments between Mekt and Cos were well done… The Dave Cockrum tribute pages were oddly timed - it’s been more than 3 months since he passed…you’d have thought they’d have gotten in sometime before now. Still, a nice tribute.
Flas shows major signs of improvement, but I don’t know if it will be enough.
Legion was good, but - was maiming Lyle really necessary?
Uhhh… he did include a Projector for Kal-El. And the reasons for not projecting much of Krypton into the Zone were elaborated on in the Superman Animated Series, where he had precisely that plan.
1.) Nobody believed him.
2.) It was kinda sudden.
3.) The few who did believe him wouldn’t allow him to carry out the plan - it would cause a panic.
4.) The idea of sharing potentially eternal bunkspace with their worst criminals didn’t appeal.
CandidGamera:
They did heal him already.
Crappy copout - better to save their lives and deal with them being grumpy about it than let his entire species die.
Not sudden enough to stop him saving Kal-El and actually working out plans to save the planet, argue the matter repeatedly, and under current continuity, prompt Zod, Ursa, and Non to rebel, have their rebellion stamped out, and send THEM into the Phantom Zone. Lousy excuse.
Again, crappy copout - anyone who would want to stop him has to be sent anyway - just send them when they start to act against him. If a panic is started, rather than that just being the Science Council being pussies, well, so be it - better some chaos in the process of saving as many lives as possible, than to doom the entire species save for one infant, and a bunch of criminals, because if they died in ignorance, they’d be calm and peaceful until the last stages of the disaster.
Almost valid, save for being inconsistent with Jor-El’s ‘life is precious’ spiel. ‘Getting stuck with the criminals’ is a lesser evil than ‘extinction’.
That’s Jor-El’s viewpoint. Apparently not one shared by other Kryptonians.
It’d be a valid argument as to the illogic of why Jor-El didn’t save Laura and himself, though. Or why he didn’t launch an automated robo-Projector to Earth while his whole family waited it out in the Phantom Zone (rather than relying on his infant son to manage springing them).
See the counterargument to ‘they don’t believe him’. Jor-El isn’t even willing to let the worst criminals Krypton’s ever spawned die. Letting ‘but we don’t want to!’ stop him is inconsistent with his views on the preciousness of life. Better to annoy them by PZing them against their will and save their lives, and deal with the consequences (which Jor-El doesn’t seem to have any problem with doing) than to let them die.
You’re assuming that he could do that. Krypton was, in this telling anyway, a fascist state, and Jor-El was already on thin ice. He could get, what, a dozen or so people before he got jumped by two dozen soldiers? Probably less, since they’d be ready for him.