In with the new

Here follows reviews and spoilers for The Flash: Rebirth #2, Action Comics # 877, Robin annual #2, Booster Gold #20, and the Star Trek movie (which will be the last item so hopefully anyone who hasn’t seen it yet can easily avoid that part).

The Oracle mini is going to get it’s own post, once I’ve re-read it and digested everything. I doubt a second reading is going to bring it into a positive light.
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The Flash: Rebirth #2
The wall painting on the first page is lovely! I think that's my favourite bit of art in the book. I am really liking the role of this painting and am very intrigued as to how the gorillas are doing it.
I think the Russian lady speedster is from Wally's run as the Flash. We haven't seen her in aaaages, she's good though. Unfortunately she's now dead. Damn.
The flashback (haw!) to Barry's pre speed life was interesting, especially the origin of the bow tie and Iris's pursuit of him. Does he really say Flash fact? Isn't that incredibly pompous?
Bart was in just one panel (unless you count the wall painting), but the characterisation and art was spot on, for Bart himself and for Bart and Tim's relationship. 'Lil Iris and Jai were pretty cute too.
We finish the issue with Barry becoming the new Black Flash. In-ter-est-ing.

This was also the issue I noticed the speedsters have different eye colours. Sometimes, I'm slow.

All these adverts for blackest night promising a zombie Aquaman has resulted in me caving and I've placed the mini on standing order.

Action Comics # 877
Lovely cover, but I'm at a loss as to what it's got to do with the plot in the book. I'm really not keen on the art in the book. My tastes have changed and I find the pencils, done by Sidney Teles, to be a bit standard. The colouring is nice, done by Rod Reis, but again, a bit standard. Nothing special. It's all very 00s (as opposed to say 80s or 90s). Good issue, plotwise, though. We see some new Kryptonians robbing banks, I guess they are living on earth, because whyn else would they need earth money? Then again, if they are living on earth they are being a bit stupid because they'll get caught pretty soon. They may have murdered all witnesses but I'm fairly sure the DCU has CCTV.

Onto the DC Nation page, and we see a lush picture of Superboy, Connor Kent, flyignt owards us. It seems he'll be starring in Adventure Comics along with the Legion. So that'll be another title to add to my pull list then.

Now, right at the back of this issue was an advert for a kids book titled My Unwilling Witch goes to Ballet School. This strikes me as an odd advert for this comic, as I didn't think the comic was that (little) kids friendly. Am I wrong? It's published by Little, Brown who do 'books for young readers', and they also have a word search at the front of the book. Surely there are better books to advertise in than this one? Maybe, oh I don't know, any of the Johnny DC lines. Do they get any sales from these ads? Why would they advertise if they didn't get any sales?

Robin annual #2
I found this in a second hand shop the other day. It's a good read, a little dated in places - it features a group of hackers called the psyba-rats who are apparently also elite athletes, although they don't look remotely athletic. The group are of course led by a girl, and there's a spotty red headed geeky guy, and a fat black kid with glasses and it all reeks of tokenism. But, if you get past that, it's a good read. Especially if you're a fan of Tim Drake, because, y'know, the book is about him. Ahem.

Booster Gold #20
Written by Keith Giffen, him of the excellent Justice League run. Giffen would account for the Bwa ha ha ha from Booster and the enjoyable sniping between Booster and Rip. Good stuff.
In the story, the chronosphere has stalled and Rip is fixing it, Booster is bored and so shoots off to the 1950s to meet the Fonz. Instead he lands near an army base and gets involved with the Suicide Squad. He assists in the infiltration of the lab of a Russian scientist who also happens to be a Soviet spy, and prevents a space flight that would have screwed up the space-time continuum had it been successful. And it is as that point that I love this issue because it turns out the four pilots in the space rocket are the Fantastic 4, before they became fantastic!

Ok so it doesn't call them by name but that's definitely the Fantastic 4. Johnny Storm even makes a fire pun.

Lastly the other great thing about this is once Rip's got the time sphere fixed he brings Booster to the 1950s that Booster wanted and he gets to walk into a diner, hit the jukebox and go Eyyyy! With the thumbs and everything. And the girls in the diner think he's a jerk. Ha. good stuff.

And for my final piece..the Star Trek movie.
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It was fun! Fun fun fun! I'm not a big Trekkie, although I have seen all the movies and lots of The Next Generation and Voyager, I don't remember all the continuity details and I can't discuss it in depth. I mostly find Star Trek do to be fun easy entertainment. It's not groundbreaking but it's a pretty enjoyable way to pass the time.

This movie is really about Kirk and Spock, which was to be expected I guess, that's who everyone is interested in. Having said that all the other (main) cast members got their chance to shine and excel in their respective fields - doctoring, engineering, languages etc. They all had something to do that was important to the plot, no one was extraneous.

Now, onto Uhura. She is of course wearing the minidress. I have not got such a problem with that but it appears that Starfleet uniform for women is all miniskirts. Fuck. Off. How about giving them the options of a longer skirt or trousers instead of forcing them to look teh sex-ay.
Mini skirts are physically restricting - in order not to flash your nether regions to the world you have to be careful how you sit. You don't get that with trousers. *gnashes teeth*

They also put Uhura and Spock into a romantic relationship, and I didn't mind, in fact I thought it gave more depth to the story. Usually in movies women are just the love interests and not a lot else (hello there Watchmen), but in Star Trek the love storyline didn't restrict Uhura and actually added more to Spock. So yeah, it was great.

I remember a documentary on Star Trek on the telly, probably about 15 years ago. A black actress was talking about how when she was a kid in the 60s Star Trek was the only tv show that her folks would let her watch, because it was the only one that featured a black person not as a maid. I imagine they may also have been impressed that the universe of Star Trek they had black folks in the future.
Anyway, after the lady had spoke about this the show cut to a white bloke talking about Uura. He disparaged her as a glorified telephone operator and therefore not really important and said he didn't understand why people make such a fuss or thought it was such a great achievement that there was a black woman on the show. Yeah, I know, idiot.
Finally and moving on to my point, I thought it was really good that the film was explicit about Uhura's exceptional language skills. Glorified telephone operator my ass.