Friday, October 17, 2008

Comics read this week

Spoilers ahead for Superman and Batman vs Vampires and Werewolves, DCU Decisions, Booster Gold 13, FC Rogues Revenge 3, and the Kon-El Superboy run.
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Superman and Batman vs Vampires and Werewolves \1
Yep, this was rubbish. And no Superman. Did have Wonder Woman though, being very kick ass and warrior like.
Stupid bloody premise though. Why did I buy this. None of the Supes/Bats VS books have been any good.

DC Universe Decisions \3
Heh heh heh. Loved Wally's contribution to the campaign, and Hal's and Ollie's reactions :) and Dinah butting in.
I'm not entirely convinced that Diana's politics boil down to a strong military state that fights for freedom throughout the world and I don't' think she'd align herself with someone solely on that basis. I think Diana's rather more complex than that - what about the candidates views on women? On health? Education? The economy? She's not just a warrior and is quite clearly based on Pallas Athena, so it really shouldn't be hard to do some research. *grumble grumble grumble*
Having said that I guess that you can take the view she's playing on the candidate's stupidity in order to get close and figure out who's doing the killing. I did like the scene of the big 3 plotting. Very dark, very serious.

FC Rogues Revenge /3
Well thank god they got Inertia. The art is wonderful in this mini. Captain Cold has fast become one of my favourite DC characters, he's fully fleshed out and complex.
I'm still not gonna buy a Flash comic till they bring back Bart.

Booster Gold /13
Fun, fun fun. :) Great cover, Starro is a brilliant character and when you've got Booster being thrown into a pool of thousands of little Starros it's giggling time*.

I forgot to pick up the Brave and the Bold, I'll probably get it tomorrow, if only to annoy myself about the Kara origin debacle.

Superboy - Kon El version
Not as good as I expected. I expected dumb, but with more effort. And I can't quite get past
Superboy aged about 16, having a girlfriend aged, possibly..ooh.early 20s? She's a successful TV reporter, she can't be a teenager.
Wrong wrong wrong.
Still, I've got about another 80 to read through and I think they'll improve.



*Like Hammer time, but with smaller trousers.

2 comments:

James Meeley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James Meeley said...

Superman and Batman vs Vampires and Werewolves \1
Yep, this was rubbish. And no Superman. Did have Wonder Woman though, being very kick ass and warrior like.
Stupid bloody premise though. Why did I buy this. None of the Supes/Bats VS books have been any good.

I wouldn't say it was total rubbish. Tom Mandrake's art was superb and prefectly reflected the tone of the story. I also liked seeing Batman actually do some detective work for a change.

Still, the issue had a lot of problems. Firstly, I agree on the lack of Superman. His name is in the title and his image in on the cover. He should have been in the book, even as a cameo as Clark Kent.

Also, Kevin VanHook (the writer) spent way too much time trying to set the mood and atmosphere (nevermind that Mandrake's art does that better than all of his captions ever could), but failed to give us a proper reason to care about this or even fully understand what is going on.

Lastly, I couldn't disagree more about Wonder Woman's appearence. Yeah, she kicked ass, but the words she was saying are hardly what you come to expect of her. "Come out and take it like a man!"? Really? Since when is she so "street." She sounded like a bitter and overzealous feminist harpy caricature of herself. I mean, it was almost as bad as Frank Miller's "move it sperm bank" stuff from ASBAR, except I could laugh and enjoy that, knowing it is not cannon for the actual Wonder Woman character. But this mini-series is (at least, I think it is supposed to be).

So, the art carries the book so far. I hope VanHook can get up to speed quickly. I really want to like this, as the premise sounds very cool.

My rating: 5 (out of 10)