{"id":1050,"date":"2011-09-18T20:59:23","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T19:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2011-09-18T20:59:23","modified_gmt":"2011-09-18T19:59:23","slug":"dcu-week-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1050","title":{"rendered":"DCU Week 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone else may want to call it week three, but here at House to Astonish we’re choosing to pretend Justice League<\/em>\u00a0didn’t happen.<\/p>\n

And for those of you checking in late of a weekend: you’ll find this week’s X-book reviews here<\/a>, you’ll find this week’s podcast here<\/a> (with reviews of Pigs<\/em>, Ultimate Spider-Man<\/em>\u00a0and Demon Knights<\/em>), and you’ll find the wrestling preview here.<\/a>\u00a0 Content!<\/p>\n

The DCU titles I didn’t get this week: Batman and Robin<\/em>\u00a0(reviews suggest it’s okay), Deathstroke<\/em>\u00a0(sounds like I’m not missing much), Green Lantern<\/em>\u00a0(mixed reviews elsewhere, and nothing that makes me feel like I want to read it), Mr Terrific<\/em>\u00a0(seems to be getting a fairly muted reaction), Resurrection Man<\/em>\u00a0(ditto, and I never much cared for the book first time round), Suicide Squad<\/em>\u00a0(critical consensus: destroy) and Superboy<\/em>\u00a0(Al’s read it, and he says it’s better than you’d expect). \u00a0If you want to persuade me to give any of these a go, the comments thread is at the bottom.<\/p>\n

But now for the six I did buy…<\/p>\n

Batwoman<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– Originally solicited for, ooh, ages<\/em>\u00a0ago – the preview issue shipped last November – this is a book that was pushed back to coincide with the relaunch. \u00a0And, one hopes, to give J H Williams III a chance to get a few issues ahead. \u00a0Given that background, this wasn’t conceived as any sort of reboot, and it naturally continues on from the stories written by Greg Rucka last year.<\/p>\n

One of the big questions here was how Williams would get on when he became writer as well as artist. \u00a0And the answer is, pretty well. \u00a0He sets up a storyline about some weird mystical woman stealing kids (which resonates vaguely with the lead character’s origin story), he brings on some supporting characters, he sets up an odd relationship between Batwoman and her sidekick. \u00a0And he brings in Chase, a character he used to draw years ago. \u00a0There’s also a double-page spread ploughing through Batwoman’s back story – though, oddly, not to the point of actually explaining why she became a superhero or what connection, if any, she has with Batman.<\/p>\n

But the real draw on this title is the art, which is as spectacular as you’d expect. \u00a0It’s not just that Williams is good; it’s that he’s got range, and shifts style from scene to scene, sometimes even within a page, in a way that plays to the requirements of each scene. \u00a0Be warned that he’s very fond of swirly double-page spreads which are spectacularly unsuited to the digital format; this is one to buy physically or not at all. \u00a0This is a showcase for an artist at the very top of his game; the story is there to support that, but it gets the job done.<\/p>\n

Demon Knights<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– We talked about this on the podcast, but suffice to say it’s a pretty good debut. \u00a0If Paul Cornell’s voice seemed to get lost on the first issue of StormWatch<\/em>, it’s nice and clear on this book. \u00a0A team book set in the Dark Ages, even with established DC characters, seems like a tough sell, but they’re certainly committing to the idea; there are no obvious cheats here, it’s essentially a fantasy title. \u00a0The central figures in the first issue are the Demon and Madame Xanadu (with a cute romantic triangle set-up), and Cornell certainly sells them as fun characters to read about. \u00a0The Seven Soldiers version of the Shining Knight is also in here, and apparently still thinks she’s fooling people with the cross-dressing thing.<\/p>\n

The rest of the cast don’t get much of an intro, but they’re mainly being steered into place so that they can get a proper intro in the next issue, I suspect. \u00a0There’s a slightly arbitrary feel to the way everyone ends up in the same place, though I gather this works rather better if you read it as a joke about stock opening scenes for Dungeons & Dragons<\/em>\u00a0campaigns. \u00a0And I’ll grant that Madame Xanadu’s actions in the opening flashback are pretty hard to make sense of, though I’m going to treat that as a deliberate choice. \u00a0Good art from Diogenes Neves, who seems to be very happy to draw Dark Ages fighting and (ahem) “dragons”, and a pretty good debut which does the key job of making these guys seem like they’ll be entertaining to read about.<\/p>\n

Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– This is the Seven Soldiers take on Frankenstein, still around fighting weirdness in the modern day. \u00a0SHADE is a secret organisation full of mad scientist types, with the Atom of all people, floating around in the mix as well. \u00a0And in this issue, Frankenstein’s wildly eccentric boss, recently reincarnated as an eight-year-old girl, packs him off with the Creature Commandos to take on a bunch of weird monsters who’ve decimated a small town.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen some really good reviews for this one, but for me, it didn’t quite land it. \u00a0It’s basically a parade of seriously weird ideas clustering around a very straightforward plot, and I felt it never really made it past the stage of weirdness for its own sake. \u00a0It’s certainly a very different kind of book for writer Jeff Lemire; this is the one where he seems to be revelling in post-Silver Age quirkiness, and it’s well supported by Alberto Ponticelli’s deadpan yet over-the-top art. \u00a0I think the problem for me is that it’s so self-consciously oddball that it never really gives me a reason to care about the story.<\/p>\n

Grifter<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– Notionally an import of the WildStorm character into the DC Universe, in practice this seems to be a completely different concept tacked on to Grifter’s name and character design. \u00a0Cole Cash is a travelling conman (hence the codename), he gets caught up in some sort of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers kind of thing, and after escaping, finds that he can hear all the weird aliens around him posing as human beings. \u00a0Unfortunately, just because he can hear their voices, it doesn’t mean he can tell which person they’re coming from… and cue the paranoia and misunderstandings.<\/p>\n

I seem to be out of line with the consensus here, but I thought this was alright. \u00a0It’s a perfectly solid premise which would have made a decent Image title. \u00a0It’s also the premise of Rom<\/em>\u00a0and, to be fair, there’s apparently something long-since-dropped from the early days of WildCATS<\/em>\u00a0along vaguely similar lines. \u00a0It could have done more to flesh out Cole’s personality in the first issue; there’s an odd narrative stumble about whether he’s been missing for days or hours; and a closing scene where he puts on the mask comes across as a fairly desperate attempt to yoke this unrelated story to an existing trade mark. \u00a0And yet… I do kind of like the concept. \u00a0I’ll give it some time and see how it beds down.<\/p>\n

Legion Lost<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– Um. \u00a0Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods have done good work together in the past, and they’re usually solid storytellers, but I can’t help wondering whether this is one of the last-minute rush jobs. \u00a0Legion Lost<\/em>\u00a0was originally a twelve-issue series from 2000-2001, but from the look of it we’re mainly recycling the name here. \u00a0The actual premise seems to be that some of the Legion characters come back to the present day chasing a baddie, and get stuck here.<\/p>\n

Since that much is clear, the book technically does succeed in getting the premise over. \u00a0But there’s not much in the way of context for new readers, nor do the individual characters get much of a chance to shine, with the possible exception of Timber Wolf. \u00a0I guess the story is going for the approach of dropping us into the middle and letting us figure it out for ourselves, which is fine as far as it goes, but there isn’t really a character hook here to keep me reading.<\/p>\n

Red Lanterns<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– Oh lordy. \u00a0This one always sounded like a probable trainwreck – who the hell wants to build a series about a bunch of blood-vomiting lunatics whose defining trait is that they’re always very, very angry? \u00a0But it’s Peter Milligan, so at least there’s a fair bet he’ll try<\/em>\u00a0to do something interesting with it.<\/p>\n

From the look of it, Milligan’s starting point is that rage and vengeance are eternal storytelling themes, therefore it ought to be possible to use the Red Lanterns to do something with that. \u00a0Specifically, he’s really trying to write a solo series about Atrocitus, the one Red Lantern who actually has something approaching a personality – the story goes out of its way to make clear that the others are barely capable of stringing a sentence together. \u00a0Somewhere in here, there’s also a subplot about a really bitter and vengeful human, who’s presumably going to end up being a Red Lantern down the line.<\/p>\n

On a purely abstract level you can kind of see what Milligan’s going for here; just how angry can Atrocitus continue to be and still qualify as a character, and vice versa? \u00a0But even with Green Lantern, I’ve always had a feeling that later writers have been trying to nail drama onto a flimsy construct that isn’t quite up to the job. \u00a0With the Red Lanterns, it’s even more of a stretch; the Corps as a whole are basically anti-characters, and trying to do poetic tragedy with Atrocitus is just a horrid tone clash.<\/p>\n

On the bright side, fans of Ed Benes’ art will be pleased to know that the mere fact that he’s drawing a comic full of angry lunatics has evidently not dimmed his ability to find an excuse to draw arses. \u00a0And everyone else will be pleased to know that he’s drawing Red Lanterns<\/em>, a comic they probably won’t be reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone else may want to call it week three, but here at House to Astonish we’re choosing to pretend Justice League\u00a0didn’t happen. And for those of you checking in late of a weekend: you’ll find this week’s X-book reviews here, you’ll find this week’s podcast here (with reviews of Pigs, Ultimate Spider-Man\u00a0and Demon Knights), and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1053,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}