All-Star Western #12 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Moritat (art), Mike Atiyeh (colors)

The Story: Real women speak with their fists—and guns.

The Review: All-Star Western is yet another one of those titles you’d think I’d have abandoned by now, and yet here we are.  Considering that the western is hardly the barnburner of a genre it used to be, it’s even more remarkable this title has lasted this long on my pull list.  But maybe it’s precisely the rarity and specialized nature of westerns that has protected it from a more rigorous standard of judgment.

Then, too, Gray-Palmiotti have delivered some fairly original material on this series.  Hex in industrial Gotham would’ve been good times enough, but with the addition of Dr. Arkham as sidekick, as well as mixing it up with lineage villains like the followers of the Crime Bible or the Court of Owls, we’ve gotten a pretty lively title on our hands.  Gray-Palmiotti may not have done anything worth alerting the presses about, but they’ve got the guts to try new, interesting things on a consistent basis (Dr. Jekyll as Hex’s next client?  I’m game.).

All-Star Western #11 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Moritat (art), Gabriel Bautista (colors)

The Story: It’s like Yankees versus Red Sox, only with organized crime.

The Review: Now that the Court of Owls arc on Batman has reached its unforgettable end, it feels like a bit of an anticlimax to be reading a tie-in delving into the Court’s history after the fact.  Or, it would but for the fact that the Court of Owls is not meant to be a one-story creation; Scott Snyder clearly made it available to the DCU as a whole to mine its potential.  Palmiotti-Gray have an opportunity to enmesh the Court of Owls into the world beyond Batman.

It seems pretty natural, then, that their first thought would be to pit one Gothamite secret society against another, and you’d be a fool not to choose the Religion of Crime as the Court’s opponent.  Considering the biblical origins of the criminal cult, they have a venerable history which, as they claim with a condescending sniff, “predates Gotham.”  While the Court has already become an urban legend in the city, inspiring old wives’ tales and nursery rhymes of their presence, the European-born followers of the Crime Bible see the Court as American rookies in their game.

All-Star Western #10 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Moritat (art), Gabriel Bautista (colors)

The Story: Anyone care to guess the one thing that puts a merry smile on Hex’s face?

The Review: Don’t tell anyone, but I actually don’t care too much for these short features Gray-Palmiotti keep inserting at the back of this series.  This is no reflection on the concept of back-ups themselves; Nick Spencer’s Jimmy Olsen bit was a fantastic bonus to Paul Cornell’s already solid run in Action Comics, and was even better collected.  But the All-Star Western short features have been mainly jumbled, pointless, underwhelming at best and dull at worst.

The tale of Bat Lash generally follows in this vein.  Despite fun art from José Luis Garcia-López (colored by Patrick Mulvihill), the story makes only a weak attempt at fun by portraying Lash as the most hustlin’ swinger in the Wild West.  The idea isn’t bad, but Gray-Palmiotti just try way too hard to sell Lash’s bon vivant manner, to the point he just comes across as the dirtbag you don’t even care enough to hate: “Aside from my enviable gambling skills, did I mention that I am also devastatingly handsome?”  By the end of the feature, you have no idea why it exists in the first place, other than to take up space no one knew what to do with.

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.

Final Crisis: Revelations #4 – Review

By Greg Rucka (writer), Philip Tan (pencils), Jonathan Glapion (inks) and Hei Ruffino (colors)

The Story: Following the momentum of last issue, the slugfest between Vandal Sage a.k.a. Cain and the Spectre concludes in the utter defeat of the latter.  Savage than turns his wrath towards the Radiant, the Question, and the rest of the anti-life survivors holed up in a church.  After a successful rescue attempt by the Huntress, the survivors discuss the convoluted history of the Spear of Destiny.  Then, a last minute attempt of reconciliation by the Radiant results in a disastrous response by Savage who utilizes the Spectre’s power to deliver humanity to a new level of suffering.

What’s Good: As usual, Greg Rucka does an excellent job of capturing the personalities and emotions surrounding the various characters in this story.  The dialogue comes off as natural and authentic.  However, although perhaps a little too simplistic, the inherent religiosity of this issue compliments the Final Crisis event nicely. These religious themes are interesting and not overwhelming or preachy.

What’s Not So Good: Not a lot actually transpires in this issue and I’m not really sure if what the Spectre unleashes at the end of the issue actually changes anything. It was revealed in the most recent issue of Final Crisis that some people are naturally immune to the anti-life equation. This fact needs to be mentioned in this series because it looks very inconsistent that there are still individuals running around with free will.

Perhaps it is unfair to do this, but I feel inclined to briefly compare this series to Alan Moore’s Crisis on Infinite Earths (the first Crisis) tie-in during his epic Swamp Thing run.  The reason I feel this comparison is warranted is because both of these arcs are religious/spiritual back-stories to a Crisis events.

The jury is still out as this series hasn’t concluded, but as it stands, Moore’s story is clearly the better of the two. I believe the major reason for this is Rucka’s handling of religious themes comes off as a bit superficial because of an overtly materialistic interpretation of spirituality (I’m not reading into or positing anything at all about Rucka’s personal beliefs, just how his story is presented). At different times in the story, specifically when discussing Darkseid’s war against God, it seems that Rucka is casting this battle as two guys in a fist fight. The transcendental nature of God that Moore worked with that allowed for so much creativity and depth is unfortunately absent.  Moore’s godly muse was an energy force that channeled through all creation and the villain was an essential part of its existence. In the pages of Final Crisis Revelation, I get the impression that Rucka’s godly muse is an old man with a white beard, sitting atop a cloud somewhere concerned that Darkseid might come and drop-kick him.

Perhaps this issue stems from the fact that Moore incorporated many different spiritual and religious nuances and ideas, while Rucka seems to be only working solely from a Christian perspective.

Conclusion: This is a very good series that works well on its own and also compliments the main event. If you have been following these characters since 52, this series will be even more enjoyable. However, this issue stalls the momentum that Rucka has been building since the first issue. That being said, I look forward to the conclusion next issue. I am cautiously optimistic that the plot will be resolved in this series rather than being left open to be dealt with in the pages of Final Crisis.

Grade: B-

-Rob G