Let’s go ALL IN with DC … Week 5!

I skipped last week because only the Poison Ivy/Swamp Thing thing came out, and as I explained in my monthly review post, I didn’t count that. Let’s get back to the real ALL IN stuff!

… And, once again, the blog is wonky and won’t let me load images. I guess I’m lucky I’m able to actually publish this! Sorry about that – as usual, we have no idea what’s going on.

And, obviously, as of this morning (the 14th), I can add images. It’s always an adventure here behind the scenes at the Atomic Junk Shop!

Absolute Superman #1 (“Last Dust of Krypton Part One: Down in the Dirt”) by Jason Aaron, Rafa Sandoval, Ulises Arreola, and Becca Carey. $4.99, 34 pgs.

This issue feels like catnip to most comics reviewers, because it presents things as simplistically as possible, which makes it easy to digest and root for. Aaron, as is usual, believes literally everyone who “gets dirty” for a living is a saint and everyone who doesn’t is pure evil, so this is a rather predictable morality tale that takes two different cultures and reduces them to this kind of easily relatable pablum. Look, it’s crowd-pleasing, sure, but it’s also fairly boring. Aaron never met a city he couldn’t denigrate or a farm he couldn’t venerate, and almost every line in this comic is groan-inducingly dull in its Manichean worldview. The evil scientists who rule Krypton are bureaucrats who value “progress” above all and squeeze every last cent out of good, wholesome laborers like Jor-El and Lara (who, of course, are both scientific geniuses who criticized the ruling elite and were therefore banished), while on Earth, the Brazilian miners that Kal-El helps out are all wonderful, salt-of-the-earth humans oppressed by the evil Lazarus Corporation, because of course they are. I mean, I would quote some of Aaron’s writing, but it’s just so insipid that I just can’t. Back when DC rebooted everything in 2011, I noted that it would be interesting to see what a writer might do with a Clark Kent who was actually raised in the real Kansas, the Kansas that just overwhelmingly voted for Our New Fascist Overlord. This Superman doesn’t seem to have been raised in Kansas and I know this is “Darkseid’s Universe,” but Aaron is certainly deliberately making a connection between the rural goodness of Krypton as opposed to its urban evil, but we know that, in the real world, cities are far more progressive and tolerant than rural areas, so the fact that Aaron always tries to flip that is ridiculous. This is poorly written, it’s dull, it’s obvious (when I first saw Lois Lane – who is unnamed at the time – I thought, “Oh, I wonder who that could be?”), and it’s almost insulting. Maybe I’m in a bad mood about certain real-life events and that’s not Aaron’s fault, but I’m a bit fucking sick of writers everywhere (from the fucking Hallmark Channel to comics) thinking that all rural folk are just good solid people who are willing to lend a hand to their neighbors and all city folk are evil weirdos with no sense of community. Fuck you, Jason Aason and Hallmark Channel writers. Rural folk put the Racist Rapist in office, so they can just fuck off forever. More than that, though, this is a wildly simplistic story which, as usual with these kinds of stories, sets up a wildly simplistic villain just so Superman can knock them down and we can all feel good about ourselves. I mean, here’s an example: Jor-El, geological genius, is in a mine realizing that the planet is not doing well. Here comes Stupid Foreman, who actually belongs to the “League of Middle Management” (there’s no indication that Aaron is being facetious), to tell him that safety concerns mean nothing. Jor-El insists the shaft is closed, and Stupid Foreman threatens him with exile … and literally in the next second the mine starts to rumble and quake, proving Jor-El right. You know when karma arrives that perfectly? Exactly, never. But it’s a wildly simplistic comic, so of course Jor-El is proved right immediately and Stupid Foreman gets horribly killed by lava!

Aaron is a far better writer than this. Heck, just last week he had a Conan story published that, while still conforming to his “rural: good/urban: bad” storytelling axiom, was miles better at giving us interesting characters and some, you know, nuance. AbsSupes is just dull. Sandoval’s art is terrific, especially the fight between Superman and Lazarus, but basically, this is just empty calories. It tells us nothing worth knowing, it features cardboard characters, and it’s not original at all. Oh well. Maybe you’re willing to go ALL IN with Absolute Superman, but I’m certainly not!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Batgirl #1 (“Mother Part 1 of 6”) by Tate Brombal, Takeshi Miyazawa, Mike Spicer, and Tom Napolitano. $3.99, 20 pgs.

I wonder if we can refer to this as “old-school,” as it feels like a comic that showed up from the deep and distant past of 2000 or so, when Bendis was taking over comics and everything had to be a six-issue arc, because this is, yes, a six-issue story, and it feels like it’s going to be a loooooong one. There’s nothing really terrible about this comic, except that it’s boring. I mean, sure, ninjas show up to menace Batgirl, but they’re not very good ninjas, so they don’t really cause her or her … mother much consternation (the Inverse Ninja Rule is strong in this comic). No, this is boring because it’s basically 20 pages of Cassandra narrating about how she doesn’t like or trust Shiva, her mother. The issue begins with Cassandra confronting Shiva over something, and Shiva saying that someone’s out to get them and they need to work together. That could have been handled in a page or two, but Brombal just … keeps … hitting … it throughout the issue, even while they’re fighting lousy ninjas, and it just slows the entire book down and makes it, well, boring. We get it! Did this really have to be a six-issue arc, because given how slowly this issue moves, I don’t have high hopes for the rest of it. It’s nice to see Miyazawa drawing a DC superhero comic (unless he’s been doing them and I just missed it, but it seems like he’s been AWOL from comics for a bit), as his style works quite well in superhero stuff, but it’s not enough to make the story anything but inert. I imagine this will read better in trade, when we can just move on quickly, but issue #1 is just dull. Instead of going ALL IN on Batgirl, I’d like to go ALL IN to my bedroom so I can take a nap!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

JSA #1 (“Ragnarok Part One”) by Jeff Lemire, Diego Olortegui, Luis Guerrero, and Steve Wands. $3.99, 23 pgs.

The super-soft reboot is weird, mainly because unlike the nu52, DC is unwilling to throw the baby out with the bath water, so we get new creative teams on some books, new story arcs with the same creative teams on other books, one book (Power Girl) that feels like it ignored the memo altogether, and some new #1s, like this one. That’s all well and good, but this doesn’t really feel like a #1 issue of a new book. I know DC doesn’t stay away from the JSA for too long these days, so that’s on me if I don’t quite know what’s going on, but after the first few pages of introduction, Lemire just acts as if we’re in the middle of a story arc, as the O.G. JSA is trapped in Fate’s Tower and seemingly has for a while, and the replacements – the kids – are fighting Kobra and not getting along. After the intro, we get a few pages of action, then a bunch of pages of millennials bickering, then a few pages of the oldsters trapped, and then the stinger. It’s a serviceable issue, sure, but it just feels like it’s in the middle of a story. I assume it’s coming out of Absolute Power, and again, that’s on me for not reading that, but it seems like for a #1 issue for a new-ey kind of initiative, it would be more explanatory, maybe? As it is, it’s just kind of there. It does feature Johnny Sorrow, though, and Johnny Sorrow is awesome, so there’s that. It’s also weird because of the synergy between this and the now-canceled television show. Stargirl isn’t here, which is strange, but when Hourman, Wildcat, Dr. Mid-Nite, and Thunderbolt are all essentially the characters from Stargirl, it feels weird. To me, that is. Maybe it’s fine with you.

Anyway, the art is fine – a bit too much hatching on some of the faces, but nothing egregious – and it moves along. Lemire is far better than this, as we know, but it’s a paycheck, I guess. It’s a garden-variety superhero comic. Not much else to it, but maybe that’s enough to draw you ALL IN!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

Well, those were some uninspiring comics for the week in ALL IN, weren’t they? We shall see what’s coming in the next few weeks!