All-Star Western #5 – Review

By: Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray (writer), Moritat (artist), Gabriel Bautista (colorist), Phil Winslade (feature artist), Dominic Regan (feature colorist)

The Story: Instead of seeing the situation as a death trap, Arkham, consider it an adventure!

The Review: I think the real fun of these buddy stories—although calling Hex and Arkham buddies is admittedly a stretch—is not only the misadventures they can get up to, or even the energy that comes from their interaction, but seeing how each one affects the other over time.  Obviously, that kind of thing works best when you have characters who are polar opposites, and you can’t get more polar or opposite than our two stars here.

In the long run, it’s doubtful Hex will change much under Arkham’s mild-mannered influence, but we can see that this extended companionship with the bounty hunter has definitely opened the stodgy recluse of a doctor to a whole new world of experiences: the numbing horror of hard exercise, the value of violence in a pinch, the rush of excitement and hysteria that you only get when you know death is imminent.  It might be too much to hope that Arkham will take to these things as habit, but he should buck up after a while, and grow hardier for it.

Besides, it’s great fun to see his usual, intelligent composure completely undone as he tackles the sweatier side of the emotional spectrum.  In short order, he expresses paralyzing fear (“Oh God…I fear I’ve soiled myself.”), biting sarcasm (“I should have anticipated your keen intellect would factor into our liberation from this hellish…”), and screaming panic (“Hex?  Where are you?  HEX?!?!”).  Breakdowns are often entertaining to watch, and Arkham’s is no exception.

As it turns out, Arkham’s outbursts turn out to be the saving grace for both men at the bottom of Gotham’s cave network, although the sudden appearance of the Miagani (Grant Morrison’s tribe of Batman-inspired natives) doesn’t really seem as such.  On the other hand, you got a cowboy in Hex and now a passel of Injuns before him—can circumstances be any more perfect?  Palmiotti-Gray aren’t the most inspired of writers, but this scene is very clever, and quite enjoyable, too.

All-Star Western #2 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Moritat (artist), Gabriel Bautista (colorist), Jordi Bernet (feature artist), Rob Schwager (feature colorist)

The Story: As long as there are donuts at the end of it, sign me up for the Religion of Crime!

The Review: At first, it wasn’t clear why of all the new 52, this one had the rare price point of $3.99 while even the most popular titles clocked in one dollar lower.  But now it’s clear that even in this latest era of DC comics, the co-feature has its place—which is fine, so long as their stories feel self-contained and substantial on their own merits, rather than novel pieces of filler material.

Unfortunately, the latter is exactly what “El Diablo” winds up being, with the titular character a mix between Hangman (of Archie Comics fame, star of a short-lived DC series) and your typical wandering vigilante who happens upon a frontier town in its hour of need.  A cowboys and zombies mash-up was only a matter of time, and here it comes off just as ludicrously as you can hope for: “Once the dead have been called, only a demon can kill the cursed.”

Not surprisingly, the co-feature, with forgettable art from Bernet, appears thin and uninspired compared to its bigger counterpart in this issue.  Given your druthers, you’d probably forego the distraction of El Diablo for more of Jonah Hex and Dr. Arkham’s mystery in early industrial Gotham.  This is especially the case when considering the interesting new developments in the story that don’t quite get to play out as far as you’d like.

Gray-Palmiotti do a good job linking up all of Gotham’s major historical threads together by introducing the Religion of Crime and its Bible into the investigation.  Speaking as someone who apparently never read the original work where these concepts came from, I appreciated the brief explanation Arkham gives us early on: “…a dark faith…of crime based on the story of Cain and Abel…”  It’s nice to actually have some substance put to the names.

Voulez-vous lisez des comics avec moi?

Although I’d discovered plenty of shops in Paris which sold les bandes-desinnées, they mostly consisted of French works (which, I can assure you, are created with as much care and finesse as their food) or manga.  It also occurred to me during my travels in Paris that French people care as much for us Americans as we do them, so the likelihood of finding a shop dedicated to our superheroes and comics seemed a bit thin, to say the least.

Still, I thought I’d take a go at it, especially since, as I mentioned yesterday, I needed to review The Spirit #16 and had no hard copy to look at.  Through some internet browsing, I landed on Avoid the Future!, a blog dedicated to international comics, which featured an interview with Philippe and Philippe, owners of Arkham, the most famous (and the only?) store in the city entirely dedicated to the comics of North America.

The shop is located in the 5ème arrondissment, a little ways southeast of the central, touristy parts of Paris.  I took several transfers on the Métro to get there, finally exiting off ligne 7 at the station of Censier-Dauberton to arrive at a very pleasant, quiet, unsurprisingly charming and pretty corner of Paris:

After proceeding a couple minutes south, I found myself on Rue Broca, the corner of which had a fruit-and-vegetable vendor with a grand, colorful display of seasonal produce, where I bought myself a particularly beautiful-looking peach.  Rounding the vendor, I immediately spotted Arkham by its Technicolor sign and the Jack Kirby art along its upper scaffold.

Superman/Batman #62 – Review

By Michael Green and Mike Johnson (writers), Rafael Albuquerque (artist), David Baker (inker)

The Story: Supergirl and Robin (Tim Drake) meet for lunch and reminisce about their first adventure together. The book then flashbacks to them being left alone in Gotham by Batman and Superman and having to respond to a prison break in Arkham. The inhabitants of Arkham are never people that settle the stomach, so these young heroes have a hard time, each in their own way.

What’s Good: The art is great. I don’t tend to like cartoony styles, but Albuquerque’s details of the inhabitants of Arkham was brilliant and reminded me a bit of Quitely’s style. Two-Face was creepy, the windows and capes shone, the fires glowed, and the faces expressed clear emotions. Albuquerque’s Joker was horrifying, wide-eyed, confused, and deranged. Croc and Ivy were sinister and threatening. A-class art all the way through.

The parallels in the stories were good too. Green and Johnson used reversals to bookend the Arkham adventure. In the beginning, Supergirl needs Robin’s advice, at the end, he needs hers. It worked for form’s sake, but lead into some problems.

What’s Not So Good: Supergirl and Robin face virtually identical personal pressures, so it’s not clear to me why Robin was hardened at the beginning. It didn’t make sense that he needed Supergirl to balance him at the end. As I said above, it made for a nice plot structure, but it is a false development and was difficult to swallow.

I also get that this issue of Superman/Batman is aimed at a younger audience and if it had used only juvenile material, I would be ok with that. However, showing lots of corpses, dismemberment (and dismemberings!), I’m going to make the assumption that the editors had also envisioned an older readership. In that case, I have higher standards of sophistication, which this book failed to meet.

For example, it is cliché pulp scifi power fantasy to have the police stand around waiting for a pre-pubescent boy to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. It is shallow superheroing. Moreover, I always have a problem with heroes that are extremely mismatched in power. In plain language, Tim Drake’s career as a hero could be ended with a sharpened stick. Only one of Supergirl’s powers (not including flight, super strength, heat vision, invulnerability, etc…) is super-speed and she tours the entire Batcave before Tim can finish a sentence. Tim would have had a hard slog cleaning up a prison break at Arkham on his own, but honestly, I have trouble seeing why Supergirl just didn’t go through at super speed and tie everyone up before they even knew she was there. Superheroes are diminished when the villain is not a challenge. In this case, the Batman villains filling Arkham should be no challenge for Supergirl.

Conclusion: This was an offering of filler and trivial character development that will have no effect on these characters in the DCU, but the art in the Arkham flashback was awesome.

Grade: C

-DS Arsenault