Yes, it’s another quasi-reboot from one of the Big Two, and I figured it had been a while since I got every “issue #1” of the new era, so, yes, I’m going ALL IN with DC! Let’s take a look at the comics that came out on 2 October and see what’s what with the brave new world!
ALL IN Special #1. “Alpha” by Joshua Williamson, Scott Snyder, Daniel Sampere, Alejandro Sanchez, and Steve Wands; “Omega” by Scott Snyder, Joshua Williamson (see what they did there?), Wes Craig, Mike Spicer, and Steve Wands; center spread by Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain. $4.99, 52 pgs.
This is a cleverly designed yet kind of stupid comic, in that it tells two parallel stories in flip-book fashion, meeting in the middle for a big “what comes next” reveal – yes, this book leads into a different one (JLA Unlimited, I guess?), so it’s not really a story, just an advertisement for the new ALL IN initiative. (And yes, I will use all caps every time I write that, in case you were wondering.) Remember how in Countdown to Infinite Crisis, DC decided to pretend that Ted Kord was a serious character because Geoff Johns, I guess, was so mad that Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis dared give him a sense of humor and so Johns made him a super-genius who, you know, gets shot in the head? Well, DC must have decided that they were tired of Booster Gold having a sense of humor, so this time around, he’s turned into a super-serious character who, thankfully, does NOT get shot in the head, but he does end up in Darkseid’s dimension with no way home, seemingly, so that sucks for him. Booster is the focal point in “Alpha,” in which Williamson and Snyder give us a Justice League ready to accept literally every hero who ever walked the face of the DCU (including, I would assume, Monikka Wong and Zapatak and Off-Ramp – come on, DC, dig deep!), and while they’re having a nice kumbaya meeting, Darkseid shows up, bonded with the Spectre. Well, that can’t be good. They attack him, of course, and seemingly defeat him, but all is not what it seems! In “Omega,” we learn it’s all a big scheme of Darkseid to … well, it’s kind of stupid and doesn’t make much sense, but it’s stupid because the real reason he does it is so that DC can create a dimension where their “Absolute” heroes can now live. Sigh. Hey, remember when DC simply just let their creators do “Elseworlds” stuff without worrying about how it fit into the grand tapestry of the “regular” DCU? THOSE DAYS ARE DONE, FOOLS! Now, there needs to be a convoluted and stupid reason for the “Absolute” versions to exist, and this is the book that tells you why they do. I mean, honestly, who gives a shit? I guess some people do, but those people are not to be trusted and not to be heeded. Those are the people who actually argue over whether Hulk or Thing would win a fight between them. Those are the people who would wonder where “Absolute Batman” fits into the “real” DCU instead of, I don’t know, enjoying the fucking comic that’s right in front of them (I mean, if Absolute Batman is any good). Gadzooks, people, just enjoy the comics!
Anyway, Sampere does his nice, relatively bland superhero work, and Craig is, to me, a good choice for the Darkseid story (his art on that is, honestly, superb) but still seems like an odd choice by DC. I mean, Craig doesn’t really fit into the aesthetic of a superhero universe, so it’s weird to see him on so high-profile a book. I love it when it happens – it’s like, every so often some higher-up at DC or Marvel discovers an artist who’s been quietly doing their thing for years, and whether or not that artist is good for “superhero” books, they get assigned to big-time comics until the mouth-breathers who want all their women pneumatic and anorexic and their dudes pec’d-out rebel and that artist goes back to Image or Dark Horse and Brett Booth gets the call to replace them. We’ll see how long Craig’s time in the sun lasts!
Obviously, because I hate DC and Marvel and superheroes and anything good, I’m the contrary grump about this comic. Cronin liked it, for instance, and most of the reviews I’ve seen are pretty positive (although I did see a roundtable discussion on one site that savaged it). It’s an ad. That’s really all it is. Do you need to spend 5 bucks for an ad? I don’t think so.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Batman #153 (“The Dying City Part One”) by Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jiménez, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles. $4.99, 22 pgs.
Boy, “holding the line at $2.99” seems like centuries ago, doesn’t it?
As you might recall, I’m not the biggest fan of Zdarksy – he can do some very good stuff, but too often it seems like he’s smelling his own farts, and I don’t need that in my life. I’ve heard both good things and bad things about his Batman run, and the one issue I did read – #900 – spurred me to create a new category on this blog focused solely on my rage at certain comics, so you know that can’t be a great thing.
Anyway, this is the beginning of a new arc, and it’s fine. There’s a lot more Bruce Wayne than usual, which I dig, and there’s a lot about how Bruce has been helping clean up the city, which I also dig, and Batman thwarts a crime in broad daylight, which is always cool to see. Given the name of the arc, I can’t imagine this “nice city” will last, but still. This is very much a set-up issue, as Zdarsky throws a bunch of balls in the air and we’ll just have to wait and see how he juggles them. The mayor is apparently about to get divorced (the least of his problems, as we discover), Edward Nygma is running some kind of computer company, someone in Bruce’s company is plotting with Nygma to merge with the Wayne businesses (I can never keep track of when Bruce is a billionaire or not – I thought he had lost his fortune?), there’s a gaudy new hero in town decked in an American flag motif and kissing the ass of the police commissioner (I’ll get back to him), Leslie Tompkins is apparently young now because there’s a weird ageist vibe running through all of DC’s comics, and there’s a bombshell at the end which, I’m sure, will be stupidly explained because it’s COMICS! There’s nothing too great about this issue, but there’s nothing too bad about the basic plot, either. Only some nit-picks:
VANDAL FUCKING SAVAGE IS THE POLICE COMMISSIONER OF GOTHAM?!?!?!? What the fuckity fucking fuck? I mean, I guess the mayor was pressured into it by the Court of Owls, and the Court of Owls (blech) has too much influence, but, I mean, come on. There’s no hero – Superman, for instance – who showed up and said, “Hey, maybe putting an immortal conqueror whose name is VANDAL SAVAGE in charge of your police department might not be the best idea”? Jeebus.
Ok, so the Riddler. As you know, I have long been keen on making the Riddler a non-criminal, and Paul Dini made him a private investigator in a brilliant move which didn’t take (I will still write a E. Nigma, P.I. series for you, DC!). In this comic, he’s a cryptography dude, I guess, but it’s clear that Zdarksy is going to keep him a bad guy even though he’s running a business. I don’t have too big a problem with this – I think the Penguin works much better as a shady but quasi-respectable nightclub owner than an out-and-out villain – but it still feels off, mainly because of how villainous DC has made the Riddler over the past decade. As the mayor points out, he’s a murderer, and Batman is seemingly ignoring this. One reason I thought it would be neat for the Riddler to sort-of go straight is because he wasn’t a murderer – Batman could let him off the hook for his crimes, because they were all about heists and such. Famously, when Peter Milligan had the Riddler murder people back in the day, Batman and the Riddler’s henchpeople were shocked by it. Now, it seems like he’s a serial killer, and I don’t think Batman is letting that slide. So that’s kind of frustrating.
Meanwhile, the art is very good. I don’t have anything bad to say about it.
I think it’s very cool that Zdarsky is focusing on Bruce Wayne and Gotham, even if I have no idea how long it’s going to last. I won’t be keep buying this, because it’s FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS and I don’t trust Zdarsky too, too much, but if you’re the kind of person who wants to buy Batman, this is a decent enough issue. Are you ALL IN on Batman?!?!?!?
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Birds of Prey #14 (“Bird Undercover Part 1”) by Kelly Thompson, Sami Basri, Adriano Lucas, and Clayton Cowles. $3.99, 20 pgs.
I think I first saw Sami Basri’s art in the DC nu-52 days, when he drew the first issue of Voodoo, and I wasn’t too impressed. It was fine, but it was a bit too sterile – his lines were too thin and precise, and his figure work was a bit too stiff. For a comic set in a sleazy strip club, it felt far too clean. He’s gotten better in the intervening 13 (!) years, and his work on BoP #14 is quite good. He’s using a slightly – just slightly! – rougher line and just enough hatching to add some nuance to the characters, which is really all he needed. His action scenes still aren’t perfect, but they’re a lot better than they used to be, which is nice. Digital coloring has gotten better, too, so Lucas’s coloring is very good, adding nice shading to the line work so that it makes Basri’s art look a bit more three-dimensional. It’s good to see.
I didn’t love the first volume of BoP, as you might recall, but I trusted Kelly, and I’ll get the second volume when it comes around. This issue feels much more like a “Kelly Thompson comic,” which I dig, so I enjoyed this issue. Like Batman (and, I imagine, most of these ALL IN issues), it’s very much a set-up, but it’s an interesting set-up and there’s nothing in here that makes me drop my beer, like VANDAL SAVAGE, POLICE COMMISSIONER (ok, now that I write it that way, I’d very much watch a gritty crime drama with Savage as the PC, but he’s so over-the-top ridiculously evil that it almost becomes a comedy?), so it’s fun. I mean, in the middle of it, Barda has a sparring session with Onyx and Grace Choi, and it’s seven (7!) pages that are A) kind of pointless? and B) kind of awesome (in a 20-page comic, remember), but because they’re awesome, I can overlook the pointlessness of them. The main story involves a sinister corporation (I mean, come on – in comics, are there any other kind?) called the Ninth Day, which Nubia, the Amazon queen, thinks kidnapped some Amazons (I mean, who are we kidding – of course they did!). Barbara sends Cassandra Cain in to check things out, and most of the issue is Cassandra proving how utterly cool and deadly she is to the corporation’s higher-ups so that they let her into the inner sanctum, where she finds the Amazons. We don’t know what they’re doing yet, but Thompson drops some hints about it because of what the corporation does, and it seems fairly clever. That’s it for the plot, but Kelly is still a terrific dialogue writer and creator of characters, so the joy of the issue comes from the way the Birds interact with each other, from Barbara telling Dinah why she’s not on the mission to Barda having a good time with her sparring session. In the first volume of BoP, there was some of this, but it felt like Kelly was trying so hard with the plot that it didn’t really sparkle in the non-plot elements, and this is much better. I’m waiting for the trade, but you might want to go ALL IN on Birds of Prey!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Poison Ivy #26 by G. Willow Wilson, Marcio Takara, Arif Prianto, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. $3.99, 22 pgs.
I like Wilson, for the most part, and this is a pretty decent issue … but it doesn’t hit me in the right spot, I guess. We begin with Janet, who’s apparently Ivy’s girlfriend these days (I very much like the fact that she’s not with Harley anymore), trying to grocery shop for Ivy, which is harder than it sounds (and if Ivy’s that damned picky, she should do her own damned grocery shopping), when the store explodes (luckily, Janet is in the parking lot, so she’s only slightly injured). Apparently, there’s an ecoterrorist group called the Order of the Green Knight (who I guess you could call a symbol of nature if you want, but it seems like it’s stretching it a bit) blowing things up, which forms the backdrop to this story (and comes back around at the end of the issue). Meanwhile, Ivy heads to the wetlands of Gotham to check something out, and she finds a town that wasn’t there a few days before. She thinks it was a sunken town – I mean, it’s built in the wetlands! – that somehow rose above the surface again, but there’s some weird graffiti on some of the walls that freak her out. That’s basically all there is to the plot.
It’s fine, I guess, for a set-up issue. It’s an intriguing mystery, and there’s the ecoterrorist group causing problems, and Ivy and Janet seem to have a good relationship, and Killer Croc is there being reasonable (I guess he’s a quasi-good dude these days). It’s all fine, but it doesn’t really thrill me. Wilson’s dialogue, to me, has always been just a touch off, as if the people speaking the lines were using a script that they ad-lib off of, so sometimes it feels a bit too arch even though sometimes it sounds fine. It’s frustrating reading Wilson’s comics for this reason, because they’re usually pretty good, they just don’t always “sound” right. Takara is a decent enough artist, too, and some of the work is terrific – Ivy standing in the marsh as she “speaks” to the plants is very nice – but too often, it feels a bit undercooked, as if it could stand slightly more detail to make the world feel a bit more real. It’s not bad art by any means, but like the dialogue, it feels just off enough that it doesn’t work completely for me.
I haven’t been getting Poison Ivy because I’m not that interested in the character and, while I like Wilson, her presence isn’t enough to draw me in, but it’s not a bad comic. It just doesn’t quite do it for me. Perhaps you’d like to go ALL IN on it, though!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
Shazam! #16 (Welcome to Our Overlords!) by Josie Campbell, Dan McDaid, Roberto Poggi, Trish Mulvihill, and Troy Peteri. $3.99, 20 pgs.
McDaid gets an inker, which is why, I assume, his work looks very little like it usually does, as I assume he did light sketches and Poggi filled it in. McDaid usually has a fairly rough style, with lots of hatching and thicker lines, but this is very clean – the lines are thinner and there are very few extraneous lines, which makes me think either McDaid is just trying something new or this is more of a “layouter/finisher” type deal rather than “penciler/inker.” It actually fits the tone of the book quite well, and the final page looks more “McDaid” because it has to, so there’s not really anything wrong with the art … it just doesn’t look like typical McDaid art. Interesting.
This is just an old-school superhero yarn, which I suppose is what DC is trying to stick to once Waid wrote the first arc (I know he wrote more, but that’s all I’ve read!). There’s a giant robot terrorizing Philadelphia, so Billy, Freddy, and Mary go to fight it, and at the very end, we find out a little more about what the robot is doing. Freddy and Billy are basically fighting the robot to impress a girl (I mean, they probably would anyway, but they’re still trying to impress her), because Freddy is out and about being a superhero (kind of a douchey one) and Billy is trying to prove he’s still more awesome than Freddy is. Oh, such boys. Meanwhile, Billy’s foster parents are having money issues. Oh dear. The book hums along nicely, as Campbell does a pretty good job with each teen character, making them idiotic teens (teens are, after all, idiots) but giving them unique voices, and the fight with the robot is well done, as we get the heroes being heroes but also kind of being jerks (well, Billy and Freddy – not Mary). It’s not something I’m going to rush out and buy, but it’s not bad. Of course, you have to decide yourself whether you’ll be ALL IN with Shazam!*
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
One totally Airwolf panel:
All righty-o, that’s the first week of DC’s ALL IN initiative. The Big Guns begin coming out this week, (AbsBats arrives!), so we’ll see what we can see. I’m trying not to be cynical about this, because who doesn’t love new beginnings?!?!? Have a nice day!
* Yep. Every. Damned. Time.
This is the first DC relaunch I’ve been excited about since Rebirth so I’ll be getting all of these when they come out in trade. Looking at all the previews that’ve come out, I also have high hopes for the Absolute line and Thompson’s Wonder Woman might be the break out book.
Just saw a rumor that Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee are returning to Batman in the spring so it looks like Zdarsky’s run is going to get cut short which kind of sucks but Lee drawing Batman again is a no brainer commercial wise.
I’m selfishly fine with Zdarsky’s run being cut short (even if he’s been balancing his good stuff with his cape stuff fairly well, I want MORE), but I feel like they can’t possibly trust Loeb on an ongoing book?
A maxiseries along the lines of “Hush 2: Electric Boogaloo” seems more likely.
Also, I really liked Infinite Frontier, which finally accomplished the premise of Rebirth by letting the writers pick and choose whatever the hell they wanted for their runs!
Taylor’s Nightwing, Cloonan’s Batgirls, Williamson’s Robin, Ram V’s Swamp Thing, Adams putting Wally back as the Flash, Waid starting World’s Finest…
I agree, the line has been strong under Javins’s stewardship. I am buying so many titles. Wish there was an Aquaman series, though.
I’m not in love with the Zdarsky Bat-run, but I will definitely skip a return of Loeb and Lee. Oh well. I still have PKJ coming onto B&R and Taylor on ‘Tec.
Taylor on Tec is really exciting…and I’m loving that it’s Waid’s turn to have a mini-run on Action, even if I wish he was getting the full run of the book!
Since they did a new 5 page coda for the Hush 20th Anniversary TPB, Loeb and Lee are definitely going to do Hush Here We Go Again. So I’m guessing no more than 12 issues and they’ll get the whole band back together again and do it in the main Batman book.
I appreciate you doing this experiment, Greg. I think the last few years or so for DC have been their strongest in decades, but I still remain trepidatious about the All-In and Absolute rebrand. But I dig that throwback trade dress and triangular legacy numbering.
Even I don’t know who Monikka Wong and Zapatak are. Deep cut.
I ordered the All-In Special (with the Wes Craig variant) and it should be in my next shipment. I don’t expect to like the story for the same reasons you cite– these event books are so often empty calories. But I do expect to like the art. I guess I like Sampere more than you. Craig has been doing great work on his Image book Kaya, which is like a Kirbyfied Tothy colorwashy Saturday Morning Cartoon science fantasy adventure thing.
I finally read Batman #900, so I’ll have to go back to read your rant. I’m three trades into Zdarsky’s Bat-run now, and hemming and hawing about whether I should drop it. Surprised this new issue is only 22 pages– did they drop the back-ups but keep the higher price?
I think they gave Bruce his money back recently, in comics I’ve yet to read. My pet peeve with that plot point is that they did nothing with it– nothing about the stories was any different from the ones where he was rich(er). This is my same pet peeve with putting Superman’s secret identity back in the box. It didn’t seem like a big deal that his ID was public in the first place, and then when Luthor magically made it secret again, they didn’t take advantage of any storytelling opportunities– all his friends and family still know who he is, so literally nothing interesting or different occurred. Isn’t there a story in Lois suddenly not knowing who he is, and him having to keep it from her or she’ll die? Or his allies in the JLA forgetting, and it causing trust issues? And Luthor still knowing and toying with him? If you’re gonna make big status quo changes, they should actually change the status quo!
I’m currently getting Birds of Prey and Shazam in trades. I planned to drop Shazam once Waid and Mora were off, but McDaid jumping on interested me. Not sure about this style switch-up, though. Josie Campbell’s the showrunner on My Adventures of Superman, which I adore, but her comics work, for me, so far, is missing some of that snap that maybe the pacing and voice acting of cartoons can bring.
Monikka Wong was in Tad Williams’s The Next, from … 2005? 06? Pretty good series, never heard from again.
Zapatak is, of course, from Xenobrood!!!!!
Sampere’s work on Wonder Woman is excellent, but this feels a bit blander. I checked, and it’s a different colorist, so maybe that’s it, or perhaps he was a bit rushed. It’s not bad, certainly, but it’s just less good than his work on WW.
You made me go back and check my page count, and yep, it’s 22 pages, with no back-up, for 5 bucks. There are no ads breaking up the story, which is nice, but DC is running a multi-page advert in the backs of these issues for AEW (it’s in the form of a comic, hence the “multi-page” aspect of it), so that takes up the space for the back-up story, I guess, and maybe it’s just this once that there’s no back-up?
Yeah, I hate changes in the status quo that doesn’t affect the status quo at all. I mean, why even bother?
Action this week has a backup *and* and AEW ad.
Sure, but they’re going weekly for a bit, so they built in multiple stories!
Based on comics.org, looks like Batman had 30 story pages as of the previous issue. But I imagine this is just some shrinkflation– Superman and Batman & Robin are also 4.99 for ~22 pages. Getting some extra from some of their more popular books? Marvel’s done the same.
” Now, there needs to be a convoluted and stupid reason for the “Absolute” versions to exist, and this is the book that tells you why they do.” I’ve always suspected that DC restoring a multiverse is just an excuse to get even sloppier about continuity — “Oh, you don’t think the Joker’s arc where he’s molesting children fit the character? That’s because it’s the Earth 827 continuity, dumbass!”
Agree about Vandal Savage as commissioner and the Riddler should not be a killer.
I really enjoyed that Waid undid a lot of what Johns did to Shazam — just making him “the Captain” works better as a name.
I am completely unethused about another system reboot. I will never be all in on one of those things again. Not even on the DC app.
80s Tranvestite Serial Killer Darius Dax strikes again!
Anyway, I’m all for being loosey-goosey with continuity – it’s a tool, not an end in itself!
Writers should pick and choose what they like to inform their take on the character, rather than slavishly adhering to it.
(LOVED the take on it in Public Domain, this week)
On the one hand, I agree with you, and that’s fine. On the other hand, DC and Marvel like to *claim* that continuity is important, so *they* should take it more seriously. That’s the only reason I get bothered about it – either throw up your hands and say “It doesn’t matter” or enforce it more regularly. They say they’re going to be vigilant about it, but they’re not. That bugs me. But only a little, because ultimately, I don’t care all that much.
Depends. There’s a boundary between “I won’t let some minor point from Green Lantern #167 get in the way of this awesome story!” and the “They’re not real! None of this stuff ever happened fanboy!” argument DC pulled after COIE. Without some degree of continuity it’s hard to get invested in a continuing series.
Marvel is pretty much stuck using their continuity as a selling point even if they only pay lip service to it these days. There would be riots in the streets if they ever rebooted their universe.
I still think DC made the right call with COIE even if they threw the baby out with the bath water. DC’s continuity was pretty fast and loose up until the early 80s anyway. Post Crisis DC from 1986 to 2005 is still their best era creatively.
COIE was great and while I think Marv Wolfman was right that starting everything from scratch might have worked better, I agree the era that followed was excellent. Then came Infinite Crisis and the unending reboots that followed.