Action Comics #12 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Rags Morales, Cafu, Brad Walker (pencils), Rick Bryant, Bob McLeod, Andrew Hennessy (inks), Brad Anderson & Gabe Eltaeb (colors)

The Story: Superman gets his hands bloody and finds a potential new career path.

The Review: Much of what this title has been about is building up the legend of Superman for a new generation of admirers, if there are any to be had.  While Morrison’s changes to his powers and mythology can’t be overlooked, it’s the re-definition of Superman’s character that’ll prove most crucial.  Quite frankly, the iconic hero of yore had become avuncular and preachy, too far prone to lecture us and remind us of our smallness.  It’s hard to connect to someone like that.

The new Superman is a guy who hasn’t got it all figured out just yet, so he can’t really hold himself above the people he helps out.  At the same time, the very core of his being gears so tightly to goodness that even by instinct alone, he just always does the right thing.  Who else would not only put himself in harm’s way to save the people who just beat him down seconds earlier, but doesn’t even hesitate to do so?  I mean, what a guy—what a hero.

R.E.B.E.L.S. #27 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciller), Scott Hana (inker), Rich & Tanya Horie (colorists)

The Story: Prepare to be sucker-punched—and by sucker-punch I mean getting a telepathic starfish in your face.

The Review: A big cast can be a handful to write, but their usefulness to fiction is invaluable.  The more well-developed characters you have, the more opportunities you have to mix and match them up to see what kind of reactions you can get out of them in various situations.  If you give them a chance, they can practically build their own stories for you.

So it’s not a shocker that when Bedard gets more of the R.E.B.E.L.S. involved in the plot, the issue instantly feels more active and invested.  The back-and-forth chatter among them has an energy and dynamic that’s largely absent when it’s just Vril Dox condescending to whoever manages to get his attention that moment.  It’s also plain refreshing to see the team acting like—well, a team.

Even so, they still get comparatively little to do, what with half of them beaming back to Rann to counter the Starro invasion, and the other half going off to find Brainiac (a mission which proves virtually worthless as the first team winds up accomplishing both).  Really, it’s Vril’s son and lady-friend who get the most page-time, with Lyrl devising a method to free the Starro-infected, and Blackfire facing off against the Conqueror himself.

Lryl’s use of Tribulus to disinfect the Rannians from the possessing starfish is quite ingenious, although the science behind it doesn’t get explained very well.  It also seems a bit too easy, as the invasion barely feels like it’s started (mostly because Bedard’s focus in past issues has been on Starro the Conqueror and his Lobo clones).  On top of that, the whole plot has been executed predictably; Starro stories rarely go any other way, after all.

R.E.B.E.L.S. #25 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciller), Scott Hanna (inker), Rich and Tanya Horie (colorists)

The Story: The return of Starro the Conquerer!  Or, more technically, the return of the return of Starro the Conquerer!  By the way, it’s raining Czarnians.

The Review: There are generally two kinds of villains: your garden-variety, day-to-day thugs who might end up occupying our heroes for half a day, if they’re lucky; and then you have your big-momma, criminal masterminds who will push the good guys to the brink of defeat before inevitably giving way.  No matter which you end up, they all end up like bad houseguests: no sooner gotten rid of before they’re back again.

Starro the Conquer certainly fits the bill; since his introduction, he’s served as the main baddie of now three story arcs in R.E.B.E.L.S. Considering the series is still relatively young, at twenty-five issues, this feels like one arc too many.  Although the initial concept of a humanoid Starro offered some interest at first, by now we all know that besides a giant axe and super-strength, he follows the same M.O. as all Starro plots: possessing people by throwing starfish in their faces.

It all boils down to predictability.  Bedard writes the issue competently enough, but you just can’t help having a “been there, done that” attitude about the whole thing.  After all, Starro is still after taking Brainiac 2 for his own, and he’s still all about galactic conquest.  Since his motivations aren’t any different than before, and neither are his means for carrying them out, half the premise has been recycled from previous stories—not exactly thrilling.  Still an army of Lobo clones (male and female, interestingly enough) has some potential for thrills, though it’s unclear how they’ll be used in this arc.

R.E.B.E.L.S. #24 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciller), Scott Hana (inker), Rich & Tanya Horie (colorists)

The Story: With a bout of peace at last, our R.E.B.E.L.S. finally have some time to work on their romantic entanglements.  These are…the days of their lives…

The Review: With the last issue focused mainly on the Vega sector’s Green Lanterns, the R.E.B.E.L.S. haven’t had much opportunity to develop their characters and show their stakes in this whole operation.  Unfortunately, that’s been the case for most of the series’ run.  Despite a great cast of cosmic personalities, Vril Dox continues to get the lion’s share of page-time and big moments, and that’s really no way to keep up the integrity of a team comic.

This issue does some work to reverse that trend.  Sure, once again Dox’s burgeoning relationship with the edgy Blackfire gets the biggest showcase, but at least you also get touching scenes with Adam Strange’s wife and daughter (still one of the most well-adjusted families in the DCU), Captain Comet trying to drink away his problematic crush on Starfire, and even Lobo getting some action.  These are all good moments to give the characters some drama besides cleaning up whatever mess Dox has gotten them all into again.

On the other hand, Tony Bedard tends to be a little too talky with his writing.  He does pen some good dialogue, especially where his pet characters (Dox and now Lobo) are concerned.  But too often the characters talk about their problems or recall events instead of having those things shown, and that’s a pretty lame use of a visual medium.  For example, Strange and his wife spend two pages talking about their past and their friends’ love lives, all in panels of various close-ups, like the storyboard of a soap opera.  It doesn’t make for very lively reading.

And after all that, you still don’t really get much of a new handle on these characters than you did before.  Comet’s still a lovesick dog, Strange an adaptable family man, and Lobo—well, he’s still Lobo.  Dox still gets the most profit out of the issue as his evening with Blackfire show the semblance of his sensitive side—possibly even a genuine one.  It’s still pretty clear, however, that there may be some plotting happening from both parties.  These are probably the scenes that get the best treatment and have the largest stakes in the long-run for this series.

R.E.B.E.L.S. #23 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Claude St. Aubin (penciller), Scott Hanna (inker), Rich & Tanya Horie (colorists)

The Story: John Stewart, along with the Vega rookies, arrive on Rann as a delegation from the Green Lantern Corps to make nice with the R.E.B.E.L.S.  But with Vril Dox scheming on how to turn the photo op into profit on his end, both the ancient and new orders of peacekeepers may not be enough to save the system from total annihilation.

The Review: For a while now, R.E.B.E.L.S. has been the only title offering adventures from the cosmic corner of the DC universe that aren’t Green Lantern-centric.  That’s changed with the current story arc, which pits Vril Dox’s capitalist police force versus the newly-minted Lanterns in the same sector.  The crossover makes perfect sense for the story, and given that Tony Bedard’s writing duties now include Green Lantern Corps, the characterization of the Lanterns works very well against the more pragmatic R.E.B.E.L.S.

The downside is this issue feels more like a Green Lantern title.  God bless them, but there are already plenty of series about the Corps without them poaching the one dedicated to the rest of the universe.  Their guest shot had a mixed effect; on the one hand, they injected a good feeling of liveliness and direction to the story, but they also served to highlight just how aimlessly R.E.B.E.L.S. has been wandering around lately.

Bedard just hasn’t given the R.E.B.E.L.S. much to do.  Since their defeat of the re-imagined Starro the Conqueror, most of their work has involved butting heads with each other or with established cosmic villains, like Blackfire or Brainiac.  These aren’t bad choices for antagonists; they just feel done to death.  This title has access to everywhere in the DC universe that isn’t Earth—the motherload of story potential.  Every issue that crutches on previous material instead of introducing new characters, world, or concepts wastes the opportunity to generate a sense of adventure, the lifeblood of cosmic titles.