Batman #711

Batman #711
2011 | English | 24 pages | CBR | 9.57MB
Batman acts on his suspicions of a newly elected political figure in Gotham City and finds himself in deep water. With piranhas. Meanwhile, Two-Face fights his way back from the brink of death to find an unlikely ally who will show him that there are two sides to every story.
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See MIRROR #2

Monkey Covers comic

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover!

The Justice League battles a giant gorilla on the cover of JLA #92 (2004) by Doug Mahnke & Tom Nguyen.



(Standard disclaimer about wrathful apes not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Grimm Fairy Tales: The Library #1 [First Issue's Day]

Grimm Fairy Tales: The Library #1
2011 | English | 33 pages | CBR | 18.6MB
Grimm Fairy Tales presents an all new miniseries that explores an alternate reality of the Grimm Universe. When fourteen year old Sela Mathers discovers an ancient magic book in a condemned library her and her younger brother cast a spell that unlocks the amazing worlds and characters from the books and novels around them. Hercules, Robin Hood and Pecos Bill all come magically to life. But heroes aren't the only characters in stories. Villains too are affected by the magic spell and soon the children find themselves in a race against time to reverse the spell as evil characters from all of literature threaten to take over the world. Their only chance lies with the heroes they've brought to life. But even that may not be enough to stop the Frankenstein, Baba Yaga and the Wicked Witch of the West!

DCnU Reviews, Week 3: Blue Beetle; Legion of Super-Heroes

(Back in June when the new DCU titles were announced, I ranked all 52 titles on my likelihood of buying them. Only fair then to look back and see if my initial assessments hold up. My plan is to review each of the new titles as they come out.)

Blue Beetle #1
by Tony Bedard, Ig Guara & Ruy José

Original Rank/Assessment: 13 (Yes, with Reservations) - Glad to see Jaime Reyes given another go. If the new creative team can recapture the charm of the original, this this will be a winner.

I'm not sure we needed to go back to the beginning with Blue Beetle. Sure, his origin story was tied in with the likely-no-longer-cannon Infinite Crisis, but those bits are easily ignored. I'd rather that this series pick up where the previous series (and the Booster Gold back-ups) left off rather than retreading the old stuff. But that said, this is still mildly good. It could do with a little more of the aforementioned charm, like some of the witty repartee that Jaime had with his friends, but for an origin story it does the job. The art is pretty good though it struggles at times on the edge of being too busy, and at times the orange coloring overwhelms. Still, worth sticking around for a few issues to see where it goes (hopefuly quickly away from the origin!)

Rating: 3 (of 5).

Legion of Super-Heroes #1
by Paul Levitz & Francis Portela

Original Rank/Assessment: 16 (Yes, with Reservations) - Looks like business as usual, so I'll likely stick around for a while.

How many #1s does this make for the Legion? I've lost count. And since the Legion tends to do its reboots at times when it doesn't renumber, this is pretty much a continuation of the previous Legion's iteration, though it appears that some time has passed since last month's issue. The effect is that out of all of the New 52, this is probably the most hostile to new readers. But then that has always been the case with the Legion: when I started reading it back in the 80s there was a huge cast of characters and tons of back story. I managed to deal with it back then, and I suppose new readers will manage now (on the plus side they have the Internet & Wikipedia; on the minus side, they have to deal with multiple reboots!) This is the classic 'for those of you who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like' comic. Portela's art is nice and at times very busy, but luckily Javier Mena's coloring saves it in places where it otherwise would be hard to distinguish what is happening. And a few more body types would be nice—do Chameleon Boy & Brainiac 5 really need to be so buff? (And a shout-out to the cover by Karl Kerschl, which has an appropriately sci-fi paperback vibe.)

Rating: 3 (of 5).

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover!

Alien gorillas are invading the Earth, and only one woman can save us on the cover of Weird War Tales #123 (1983) by Joe Kubert.

(Standard disclaimer about invading alien apes not really being monkeys applies.)

Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

DCnU Reviews, Week 3: Birds of Prey; Catwoman; Red Hood and the Outlaws

(Back in June when the new DCU titles were announced, I ranked all 52 titles on my likelihood of buying them. Only fair then to look back and see if my initial assessments hold up. My plan is to review each of the new titles as they come out.)

Birds of Prey #1
by Duane Swierczynski & Jesus Saiz

Original Rank/Assessment: 48 (Definitely No) - I've bought every single issue of BoP up to this point. And now? Ugh.

Through all its iterations, Birds of Prey has long been one of my favorite super-hero titles.  But Swierczynski seems intent on turning it into a generic action title whose only defining feature is that it stars a group of women, only two of whom actually show up in the debut issue. Saiz's art is okay but fairly generic; he only seems to draw one female body type, which is a problem in an all-female team book, and his action scenes are stiff and at times hard to follow. Of the three comics in the post it is the best, but that's really damning with the faintest of praise.

Rating: 2 (of 5).

Catwoman #1
by Judd Winick & Guillem March

Original Rank/Assessment: 41 (Probably Not) - The cover indicates that this is everything I don't want in a Catwoman comic.


Well, you can't fault DC for false advertising. The cover promises a comic that revels in exploitation, and it certainly delivers. Unfortunately, my preferences in a Catwoman comic run in the Ed Brubaker/Darwyn Cooke mode, and this is about as far from that as you can get. There are actually about three pages of pretty good comics here, but those are far outweighed by the seventeen other pages of exploitative nonsense. Which is a shame, as it shows that the creators are capable of producing a much better Catwoman comic; they just choose not to.


Rating: 2 (of 5).

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1
by Scott Lobdell & Kenneth Rocafort


Original Rank/Assessment: 49 (Probably Not) - Absolutely no appeal here.

After Lobdell's surprisingly interesting turn on Superboy last week, I held out the slimmest of hopes that maybe I was wrong about this comic. I needn't have worried, as this turns out to be just about as bad as I thought it would be. I've never cared about the Red Hood, rarely cared about Roy Harper, the Starfire here is far removed from the previous iteration and high on the 'ick' factor, and who the heck is Essence and why should I care? If there's any bright spot here, it's that Rocafort is trying to do some interesting things with the opening action sequence, which zings with kinetic energy. It's for Rocafort's efforts that the extra 0.5 point exists in the rating:

Rating: 1.5 (of 5).
 

DCnU Reviews, Week 3: Batman; Nightwing

(Back in June when the new DCU titles were announced, I ranked all 52 titles on my likelihood of buying them. Only fair then to look back and see if my initial assessments hold up. My plan is to review each of the new titles as they come out.)

Batman #1
by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo & Jonathan Glapion

Original Rank/Assessment: 17 (Yes, with Reservations) - I've really liked Snyder's writing on Detective as of late; I just wish he was being teamed with his 'Tec cohorts Jock and/or Francesco Francavilla here as well (I can take or leave Capullo).

So far, this first issue of Batman is one of the best surprises of the DCnU. I was expecting to like the story, having been greatly impressed by Snyder's previous work on Detective Comics. But he manages to step it up another notch here, giving us a great introductory issue with plenty of action and a few nifty ideas, like the holographic portable Bat-Cave. His Batman is still a creature of the night, but he's not all brooding and moody. An even nicer surprise is the art from Capullo & Glapion: there are some great layouts and the story flows easily. Capullo's McFarlane influence from years of drawing Spawn is still there, but he's made the style into his own. This is a very good first issue, and I'm definitely looking forward to the next (and pleased that there's at least one Batman title in the new 52 that meets what I want from a Batman comic).

Rating: 3.5 (of 5).

Nightwing #1
by Kyle Higgins, Eddy Barrows & J.P. Mayer.

Original Rank/Assessment: 47 (Definitely No) - My level of not caring for any aspect of this is pretty darn high.


This comic almost pulled off the impossible and nearly won me over. Higgins re-establishes Nightwing without ignoring the long history of Dick Grayson, and possibly even ties things in to this week's cliffhanger in Batman. But then we get an out-of-nowhere villain with Wolverine-like claws, who promptly slashes and disembowels two police officers. This is supposed to be a Nightwing comic, not Sabretooth. So back to the bottom of the pack this goes.


Rating: 2 (of 5).