Green Lantern Corps #62 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Daniel HDR (penciller), Keith Champagne (inker), Nei Ruffino (colorist)

The Story: Love hurts…love scars…love wounds…and mars…

The Review: Boy, nothing quite like romantic squabbles to make for cheap yet reliable drama, huh?  A dose of it in can definitely spice up your fiction from time to time, though some people can handle far more than a dose.  I suspect for most of us, however, that kind of thing gets tiresome pretty fast.  As in real life, relationship craziness is often best left between the lovers, sparing bystanders from the awkward helplessness of something which ought to be personal.

That pretty much sums up the tense situation between Kyle and Soranik, a couple who have gone through plenty of turbulence together before, making their current rough patch seem forced.  It certainly does nothing for Sora’s credibility as a Lantern.  Personal issues have swayed other Lanterns’ behavior before, but in this issue, her lashing out (somewhat unjustly so) at Kyle in the middle of a firefight comes across unprofessional and borderline childish.

Since the animosity in their relationship seems entirely one-sided on Sora’s part, it makes sense Bedard would attempt to give her something worthy to get mad about with the revelation that Kyle lied about seeing her as his true love in Miri’s gem, some months earlier.  While deceiving Sora certainly wasn’t the wisest choice, Kyle’s reasons for doing so were reasonably, sincerely, even lovingly motivated, which should be as obvious to her as it is to us.

Green Lantern Corps #61 – Review

By: Tony Bedard (writer), Daniel HDR (penciller), Keith Champagne (inker), Nei Ruffino (colorist)

The Story: I don’t care where this gig leads, but I’m keeping the ring.

The Review: In the course of a splashy, eventful storyline, writers will throw in every twist in the book to keep up the momentum, and then neglect to deal with the consequences when it’s all over.  So commendations are in order as Bedard gives us a chance to check out the fates of all those temp recruits Mogo hired at the height of War of the Green Lanterns, what could’ve easily turned into one of those troubling questions that hit you a couple months after the fact.

Allow me a moment to cock my eyebrow at the notion that almost all the “recruits” would be so willing to give up their rings, except for the proactive Qurina.  You can understand why the injured folk would be raring to let their green outfits go, but surely there has to be a good handful of aliens who’d like to hold on to their new bling for noble or unscrupulous purposes.

That little wrinkle aside, Bedard writes a fairly credible guest protagonist in Qurina, a lady cop who sees her membership to the GLC as a major expansion of her jurisdiction and peacekeeping abilities.  Her respectable background makes it easy for us to sympathize with her reluctance to let go of her Lantern status—too easy in some ways, since at no point do you ever feel like she’s somehow less qualified than the other random aliens you’ve seen chosen for Lanternhood.

Qurina probably has a more intuitive sense for her duties as a Corpsman than most, explaining the slightly artificial obstacles Bedard places into her first mission.  Disarming the warring Tog and Vorrinians, after all, seems a very reasonable first step, regardless of whether diplomacy or coercion comes afterwards.  The Vorrinians’ decision to escalate the conflict in response seems less Qurina’s mistake and more their lack of “common sense,” as she accurately concludes.

Superboy #7 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (writer), Marco Rudy with Daniel HDR (artists), Jamie Grant & Dom Regan (colorists)

The Story: Superboy discovers what the fuss is all about with these hallucinogenic plants.

The Review: Ever since Geoff Johns wrote Superboy as the product of the world’s greatest hero and the world’s greatest villain, this dual nature has become a focal point of his character—too much so, in fact.  Ignoring the fact that genetics don’t really work that way, this plot point has infected almost every Superboy story since it first came to light, which has really cramped the Kid of Steel’s style.  It’s like writers are trying to wring the issue for all the angst it’s worth.

Superboy’s nightmare come to life falls under those lines.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with the way Lemire executes the story.  He actually keeps things clipping at a quick pace with his habit of jarring scene-cuts. You’re constantly shunted back and forth between Superboy and Psionic Lad’s present mystery in orbital space, and the future apocalyptic hellscape, which Connor apparently unleashes on the world.  It definitely keeps you invested in what the heck is going on.

Instinct tells you to think this is where Psi-Lad reveals his true colors.  You know he’s from the future, and that it’s a grim dystopia (or so he says), and he’s intended to turn on Superboy at some point, so all the signs for his betrayal get put in place.  But once Lori and Red Robin show up in this alternate timeline, and they don’t seem to get from Connor’s t-shirt/jeans get-up that he’s not the ruthless murderer they seem to know, you know something fishy’s happening.

The Legion of Super-Heroes #11 – Review

By: Paul Levitz (writer), Daniel HDR & Wayne Faucher (artists), Hi-Fi (colorist)

The Story: It’s like playing Where’s Waldo?, only with several dozen super-powered criminals across interplanetary space.  That’s fun, right?

The Review: It’s a common issue in comics that once you take a step back from the flashy action sequences and charged emotional scenes, you realize there’s really nothing happening beneath it all.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with the decompressed story arc, but unless the writer can pack each issue with enough compelling material to make it worthwhile, the whole thing can seem like a needlessly dragged out plot.

If you read Legion of Super-Villains, you quickly realize Saturn Queen is not only in complete control, but she also has all the answers to their long-term plans and goals.  Essentially, she’s the only villain we’re interested in, since all her subordinates act only to serve her.  That leaves little depth or motivation to the goons the Legion tackles in this issue; their only purpose seems to be vying with each other to gain Saturn Queen’s favor, and there’s little fun in that.

With such narrow-minded minions, it’s no wonder they come across so goofy—take Sun Emperor’s confrontation with Timber Wolf: “One dead Legionnaire will surely put me back in the queen’s good graces…two or three would be a surfeit of offerings!”

The Legionnaires don’t fare much better, since their action dialogue still induces uncontrollable cringing from you.  It’s as if Levitz feels they have to banter, so he injects these silly, forced riffs while they’re in action: “Now let the boys collect them.”  “Let’s not be sexist—that’s centuries out of style.”  “They didn’t mean anything, Ayla.”  “It’s called teamwork.  Get over it.”  When they act this nonchalant, it’s hard to take their battles seriously.

R.E.B.E.L.S. #26 – Review

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

The Story: Place your bets, folks—who’ll destroy the system first: a Starro invasion, or a rampage of Lobo clones?

The Review: By now, you should know the drill: with this title’s cancellation imminent, a step back to see where things went wrong can always be a valuable move.  For R.E.B.E.L.S., its biggest downfall has been it doesn’t live up to the kind of title it claims to be.  It’s a team title that spotlights only a couple characters and sidelines the rest, and it’s a cosmic title that seems less interested in traveling the stars and more interested in establishing a bureaucracy.

The first problem has been present and obvious in every issue since day one, and this one is no different.  Things weren’t so bad when Dox was Bedard’s only pet character, but once he brought Lobo in, the rest of the cast got reduced to nearly cameo roles.  Even with Dox under Starro control and Lobo distracted with fighting Starro’s henchmen, the rest of the team still only gets a couple pages total (cumulatively!) of panel time.

Instead of letting the other R.E.B.E.L.S. take more important parts in the story, Bedard fills the issue by fleshing out Lobo’s origins—and none too well, either.  If you’re at all familiar with the baddest alien in the galaxy, you already knew he caused his own race’s genocide.  It’s not as if Bedard brought much depth to that grim event: Lobo was different; his people outcasted him; he took revenge, somehow (we don’t see how) bypassing their own regenerative resilience.

And this origin story ends up having no effect on the plot, as Starro the Conquerer backhands Smite from feeding it to the Lobo-clones (in hope they’ll avenge their ancestors’ deaths).  It’s unsurprising though that Smite would try for such a desperate choice.  Dox says it best this issue: “Only Lobo can beat Lobo.”  It effectively sums up Lobo’s limitations as a character; he’s incapable of defeat, so you never feel danger when he’s on the job.

Not that there’s much danger to begin with.  With Starro, the plot spells itself out fairly predictably: a bunch of starfish on people’s faces, mass hysteria/paranoia, the heroes find a way to break the connection, celebrations ensue.  That leaves fairly little to look forward to as this arc wraps up, unless Bedard somehow brings a totally mind-blowing new twist at the eleventh hour, and there’s little hope of that—he can hardly keep track of the details he already has.  Blackfire offers her services to Director Sardath in defeating Starro, yet several pages later Sardath has been Starro-ed (we never see how it happens) and she’s nowhere to be seen.

Wonder Woman #605 – Review

By J. Michael Straczynski and Phil Hester (writers), Don Kramer, Eduardo Panasica and Daniel HDR (pencils), Jay Leisten, Marlo Alquiza, Wayne Faucher and Eber Ferreira (inks), Alex Sinclair (colors) and Travis Lanham (letters)

The Story: An interlude, as Diana returns home to relax, recover, and engage in some exposition and–amazingly–character development as well. The short slice of home life is cut short when Diana sneaks out away from her guardians, and comes face to face with a threat she may not be able to handle.

What’s Good: I’ll be honest, on reading this issue for the first time, I wasn’t a fan. It felt like such a huge and sudden shift in both setting and in character–from a dangerous desert wasteland to a penthouse apartment, and from a dark, gritty and confused Diana to a far more upbeat and happy Diana–with next to no actual transition. On the second reading, however, while these complaints still mostly stand, I started to realize that I don’t care. I don’t care if it takes a slightly awkward and mostly unexplained transition to get Diana back to where she needs to be; the fact that some sense of normalcy is being reestablished, and most of all, that Diana is acting like someone other than Conan the Barbarian, is enough for me, and I’m happy to put up with whatever small hiccups in storytelling are necessary to get it. This issue feels almost like a reboot (of a reboot?), and I can’t say that’s a bad thing.

Once things get rolling, the story is really quite good. We learn a bit about Diana’s childhood, the way she was sheltered by her guardians, and the way she discovered her need to fight cruelty and injustice. I don’t particularly love flashbacks, but this particular set was sorely needed to give the reader–FINALLY, after six bloody issues!– some idea of who this ‘new’ Diana is, and what makes her tick as a character. After six issues of the grim n’ gritty “damn the gods!” version, it’s comforting to hear her discuss battling injustice and using her powers to, y’know, help people in need. Those are absolutely fundamental aspects of the character that should never, ever change, no matter how much you may want to tweak her history and origin.

The Legion of Super-Heroes #8 – Review

By: Paul Levitz (writer), Yildiray Cinar & Daniel HDR (pencillers), Wayne Faucher & Bob Wiacek (inkers), Hi-Fi (colorist)

The Story: The Durlan assassination attempts continue, this time targeting their own people and the Legionnaires themselves.  As the team spreads even thinner to face the growing number of threats, they can only hope the newly elected Legion leader is up to the job.

The Review: If you ever become a fiction writer, in any medium, you’ll learn there aren’t many rules in the business, but here are two that are essential to the success of any story: whatever you’re writing, it must constantly be accomplishing one or both of two things—building character, or advancing the story.  This issue of Legion does none of the former and just a smidgeon of the latter.

In a way, it’s an achievement in itself how an entire issue can go by without accomplishing much of anything.  A new Legion leader is elected, but with no fanfare and without that leader (I’ll resist from spoiling even the leader’s gender) even present in the issue.  The Legionnaires fight several battles with more Durlan assassins and yet no new information about their mission or motivation really comes to light.  Well, except for Tellus’ telepathic probing of one of the murderous Durlans, which results in the following: “Even if only one of us lives, the United Planets Council will die.”  Dire as it sounds, it’s pretty much what the Durlans have been attempting to do the past couple issues without much success.

It’s really troubling how the characters show almost no personality in this issue.  Part of the problem is so much of their dialogue is expository, and that exposition only reiterates what’s already happening.  Their voices have so little character that you could pretty much replace any of the Legionnaires with any of the others and the story would hardly be affected at all.  All the dialogue has the same straightforward, urgent tone that lends well to melodramatically stating the obvious (“You are powerful, human—but you are not a true changer!”  “I can do anything you can, Durlan—and better.”)  I hate to use this word, but sometimes the characters simply sound stupid, as if despite the ten-century jump, their brains are as dry as croutons.