“Is all hope lost? Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?”
Frank Tieri is a frustrating writer, because he’s not really that good, but he does come up with some decent ideas, and when that happens, he usually spins a decent enough story. Why he can’t do this more often, I don’t know, but that’s what makes him frustrating. 
He and Inaki Miranda, who teamed up for a fun Godzilla story that they had to go and ruin in later chapters, are back with Whatever Happened to the Crimson Justice?, which sounds bland — a superhero disappears, but does he need to return in his city’s direst hour? — but which has some groovy things going for it. Eva de la Cruz and Ellie Wright color this, Dave Sharpe letters it, and it has three editors: James B. Emmett, Michael Raicht, and Ryan Carroll. It’s a Mad Cave book, it’s 100 pages long, and it costs $17.99.
The Crimson Justice (“Batman”) is the resident superhero of Empire City (his tagline: “Justice runs red!”), but he hasn’t been seen for several years, since a tragedy at a hospital in which, it seems, his nemesis Dr. Mayhem (“the Joker”) and his sidekick, Reddy (“Robin”) both died. CJ — John — now lives a quiet life owning a coffee shop, where he debates the merits of being a good Samaritan with his buddy, Willie. There is, of course, a young lady (“Batgirl”) who shows up as the junkie girlfriend of a scuzzy gangster, and while John wants to help his old teammate, he doesn’t want to get involved (it’s unclear early on whether he knows who she is, but later on, it becomes clear that he does). Of course, Dr. Mayhem shows up again, kills the ex-police commissioner (“Jim Gordon”) and some other people, and our buddy CJ feels like he has to come out of retirement. It takes him a while, because he really doesn’t want to, but the ghost of Reddy (or his own delusions) pushes him into it — he tries to stand up to the scuzzy gangster and gets his ass handed to him, and Dr. Mayhem kills some other people, but eventually John decides he needs to put the costume back on. 
He’s elderly, though, so, the tiniest bit hilariously, it goes poorly. He’s still able to do some things, but Tieri does a nice job making it clear that he’s not as tough as he used to be.
Tieri does a decent job with the story, but there’s nothing too surprising here, except, I guess, the injuries that CJ suffers because he’s old. The deaths are definitely planned to draw CJ out, and Tieri follows that through-line pretty well, especially when CJ is down and out late in the book. The plot trundles along nicely, and it doesn’t offer too much in the way of cleverness, but it’s still entertaining. What makes the book a bit more interesting is that Tieri writes Reddy as a big ol’ tool — he skeeves on women, checks out the latest porn mags (he’s been dead for a while, people!), and curses like a longshoreman — and it’s pretty funny. The age of CJ is always a nice touch — sure, Old Man Batman talks about how old he feels, but he still kicks ass. CJ uses a gun that shoots a debilitating mist (so he’s a bit like Wesley Dodds in this regard), so he can take some bad guys out, but once the fisticuffs start, things don’t go well for our hero. What this does is force CJ to outthink his nemesis, which is pretty neat. So, while the story doesn’t do anything too new, Tieri does do some nice things with it to make it work a bit better.
Miranda does nice work with the art, as you might expect. CJ wears a cool costume, and when he gets into action late in the book, Miranda does a good job showing that he certainly can still fight, it’s just that he’s old. 
He also does well with John, who sees the city decaying around him and doesn’t think he can do anything about it. Miranda shows the sadness and impotence in his eyes as he watches Sally get verbally abused by her scuzzy boyfriend, as well as her hopelessness as she allows it. Dr. Mayhem, despite simply dressing like a surgeon, is pretty creepy, so that’s all right. I did crack up at the black bars over the naughty bits of the women in the porn mag Reddy reads — the book has a good amount of cursing in it, so that’s all right, but Miranda can’t be allowed to show naughty bits!!!! Miranda, of course, knows what he’s doing, so the art is quite good.
I’m always interested in different takes on superheroes/costumed vigilantes, because DC and Marvel won’t let anything too radical happen to their characters. Tieri doesn’t screw with the template too much, but he does try some different things, which is appreciated. Whatever Happened to the Crimson Justice? isn’t a great book, but it’s pretty entertaining. There’s nothing really wrong with that!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
