Arrow S02E07 – Review

By: Marc Guggenheim & Drew Z. Greenberg (story)

The Story: Vertigo’s out of order, Moira’s out of order, this whole city’s out of order!

The Review: Moira Queen is an interesting figure within the Arrow universe.  Central as she is to some of the show’s most important storylines, she’s never been much of an active player in any of them.  This is partially the fault of her character makeup; as an upper-class socialite with few discernible skills, she has little choice but to fall back on classic feminine wiles to exert her power.  She deceives, schemes, bargains, but rarely do you see her actually do anything.

Yet even in this limited capacity, Moira does far more than other characters in her position, which is mother to our hero.  Usually, these women are relegated to little more than sounding boards for their children’s exploits and had Moira been trapped in this role, she’d have a much smaller presence in the show.  As she is now, her sole purpose seems to be generating drama for the other principals to grapple with, a function which she serves very well.

Green Arrow #24 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Andrea Sorrentino (art), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)

The Story: Green Arrow wonders how many more shirtless villains he’ll have to deal with.

The Review: And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Lemire was one of the few writers who managed to use his Villains Month offering as simply another chapter of his ongoing series, which is all well and good.  It’s just kind of unfortunate that the story had to center on Count Vertigo, who has turned out to be a less than impressive figure, even just within the Green Arrow canon.  Even Komodo, a newcomer on the scene, has had more impact.

So I’m not sure we really needed to have another encounter with Vertigo so soon after the last one, in which the villain all but whimpered and curled into a fetal position once his disorienting powers were removed.  For his second act, Vertigo basically uses the exact same strategy as before, only on a wider—specifically, a “half-mile”—scale.  A blunt sort of strategy, but as a blanket response to archers, an effective one.

Green Arrow #23 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Andrea Sorrentino (art), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)

The Story: Count Vertigo will be thinking of Evander Holyfield a lot tonight.

The Review: Some years ago, I had aspirations to get into the acting biz.  Of course, this was before I realized my face wasn’t suitable for popular entertainment, but I digress.  During that blithely optimistic period, I realized all the classes and workshops were real big on the concept of “motivation.”  They were always asking what motivated such and such character to do this or that, often repeatedly, with increasing insistence, until you felt motivated to just leave the room.

Obviously, I now realize the question of motivation is not only essential for the art of acting, but for fiction—and real life—as well.  The question reminds you that it’s easy enough to see when someone wants something, but it’s much harder to dissect what makes them want it, and it’s this latter point which makes a character (or person) interesting and unique.  The more a writer leaves the motivation question to generalities, the less dimensional a story becomes.  If you want a textbook example of that problem, look no further than this issue.

Green Arrow #22 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Andrea Sorrentino (art), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)

The Story: Kissing the same woman seems like one father-son tradition that can go away.

The Review: As a reviewer, I try not to let little details get to me.  A critic’s only as good as his credibility, and he’s not going to have much of that if he should start questioning the accuracy of every minor defect in the story.  But I’m only human; I’ve got my pet peeves and “things” like everyone else.  One of them is when a character says one thing, but does (or has done) something else which contradicts that—and without any self-awareness about it.

In this case, it’s hard to tell if it’s with irony that Ollie sidles up the pathway to Count Vertigo’s castle in a ridiculous, flapping cloak and robe, only to immediately get confronted by two guards.  “Well, so much for the quiet approach,” he remarks.  I apologize, but I had an inexplicably difficult time getting over this silliness.  The thing that gets me is how he makes absolutely no attempt whatsoever at subtlety.  I’m just saying, for someone whose talents take advantage of distance and surprise, Green Arrow embraces direct and close combat a bit too much.

Arrow S01E12 – Review

By: Wendy Mericle & Ben Sokolowski (story)

The Story: No one tries to put Green Arrow’s little sister in the slammer—nobody!

The Review: Although it’s taken some creative fudging and narrative necessity, the show has finally established a somewhat enduring familial relationship between Ollie, Thea, and Moira.  Time will tell if the Queen family dynamics can carry the show over the long term.  For now, it’s enough that you get a sense of sincere affection among the trio, though tested by frequent, sudden switches in their personality or temperament.

Ollie’s vacillations between caring and coldness have become second-nature by now, but Thea’s unpredictable attitudes seem patented for the sake of injecting conflict and drama as needed.  She begins the episode pale and nervous about her court hearing, is visibly shaken when the judge rejects her plea agreement,* but all of sudden displays a rather condescending, jerky side to Dinah when the older gal offers her an alternative to prison time.  All this to get back at her mom, which only makes Thea seem a bit petty and lame.

Young Justice Episode 20 – Review

By: Jon Weisman (writer)

The Story: When he says “Speedy delivery!” he really means it.

The Review: Since each of his teammates have had a spotlight episode to themselves, the time was ripe for a Kid Flash-centric show.  The Kid established his personality early on by serving as the team’s comedy relief, but besides the jokes, it was also fairly easy to catch on to his shtick because he comes closest to being the teenage everyman: a stereotypical adolescent male who can never get enough to eat and who thinks of girls every moment he’s not thinking of food.

As a natural consequence, Wally comes across less focused and driven than the rest of the team, someone in the superhero business more for the thrills than anything else.  He also has a tendency to come across more immature than the others—which isn’t much of a sin, so long as you can respect him as well.  From the get-go of this episode, he proves he’s worthy of respect, and he only grows in your estimation as the story proceeds.

First off, he handles the discovery of Miss Martian and Superboy’s relationship with surprising restraint, if with mortified dismay (“Oh, man!”).  Then, despite the unfortunate circumstances that leaves him out of Young Justice’s first-ever team-up with the League, he takes on his special mission from Batman with admirable stoicism.

And of course, since Batman’s the one giving the order, there’s a very good reason why Kid Flash gets picked out for this particular task.  It would’ve been easy for Weisman to make a gag out of the episode by giving Kid Flash utter busywork to do, only to, in some implausibly fortuitous circumstances, become a matter of incredible importance (e.g. Booster Gold getting crowd-control duty then subsequently saving the world from destruction by human black hole).  But this series has too much respect for its young characters to treat them that dismissively.

Young Justice Episode 14 – Review

By: Kevin Hopps (writer)

The Story: You have to hate it when villains catch on to the value of teamwork.

The Review: Over the course of this series, we’ve seen a lot of interconnected plotlines, a neat feat for a cartoon, one for which the show’s writers should give themselves a hefty pat on the back.  We’ve seen elements featured from early episodes, like the Blockbuster formula and Bane’s Venom, pop up again in later ones, developing into much bigger sources of tension.  We also know almost every foe the team has faced has some connection to the mysterious Light.

In this episode, the official halfway point of the series, almost all those elements finally get put into play when the Injustice League (or Society or what-have-you) launches attacks around the world.  It’s a pretty powerful group (Count Vertigo, Black Adam, Wotan, Ultra Humanite, Atomic Skull, Poison Ivy, and the Joker), but their particular method of collaboration is what proves most ingenious and challenging, not only for Young Justice, but their mentors as well.

Indeed, as much as our stars get to do, we see nearly as much action from the Justice League, which may draw out some wistful nostalgia for all you Justice League Unlimited fans.  Besides the usual suspects, we see appearances from some very surprising members.  Some are fun delights (Plastic Man), others interesting choices (Blue Devil and Guy Gardner as Green Lantern), and some just throw you for a loop (Milestone heroes Icon and Rocket).

But what of our young heroes?  While the big guns tackle the big, imminent threats, Batman entrusts YJ to take down the villains at the source, with no help or supervision whatsoever.  A major mission, to be sure, one that feels a tad early since the team still feels pretty rough around the edges.  At any rate, this should shut down any further accusations about being babysat and doing only grunt-work, once and for all.

Suicide Squad #67 – Review

by Gail Simone & John Ostrander (writers), J. Calafiore (art), Jason Wright (colors), and Swands (letters)

The Story: It’s Suicide Squad vs. Secret Six as Amanda Waller decides she wants Deadshot back and won’t take no for an answer.

What’s Good: As an issue of Secret Six, this really is a lot of fun.  There’s a scene that brings the bizarre Bane/Scandal relationship to new heights, as Bane interrogates Scandal’s date and essentially acts like the girlfriend father from hell.  Meanwhile, Ragdoll of all people finds himself in the hilariously awkward position of being the voice of reason.  The entire scene is absolute gold, largely because of how deadpan Bane is through it all.

This month also marks the first time we see Black Alice in action as a full member of the team, and sure enough, she fits quite nicely, bringing a brash, utterly unsubtle element to the team.  Simone and Ostrander also bring back her diary narration, which is just as fun as last month.  Her perceptions of her new teammates are all really enjoyable, particularly her summary of Jeanette.