Phantom Lady #4 – Review

By: Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray (story), Cat Staggs (pencils), Tom Derenick (inks), Jason Wright (colors)

The Story: How do superheroes vent their sexual frustration?  By taking down mob bosses.

The Review: On the second day of my Property class, my professor told me that once we got more familiarity with the law, we’ll start seeing pop-up balloons, visible only to us, appear everywhere we go.  We’ll see a stalled car preventing someone from backing out of their parking space and a balloon will pop up: “False Imprisonment?”  A homeless person will squat on an empty lot: “Adverse Possession?”  That kind of thing.

I had one of those pop-up balloons reading this issue.  When Jen suggests that instead of risking lives (theirs and those of others) by amateurish vigilantism, they simply sneak into the Benders’ HQ and gather incriminating evidence, Dane protests, “None of that stuff would be admissible in court.”  Actually, it would, I believe (and if I’m wrong, that bodes ill for my prospects at passing my Criminal Procedure final today).  As far as I know, the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure would not apply to a private citizen, rather than a government official, who gathers incriminating evidence against a person.  But then, would you consider Dane and Jen as agents of the government?

Phantom Lady #2 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Cat Staggs (pencils), Tom Derenick (inks), Jason Wright (colors)

The Story: Doll Man teaches Phantom Lady that size really doesn’t matter—sometimes.

The Review: Anyone who’s followed this blog long enough knows I have developed certain prejudices—let’s not call them grudges—against certain writers and artists.  Some of them may be more deserved than others, but generally, I feel I make a good case for my hang-ups.  At times, though, I find it hard to reconcile my dislike for the Bedards and Levitzes of the world while still following along with the Grays and Palmiottis.

If I had to explain myself, I’d say one thing Gray-Palmiotti have over the creators I’ve dismissed is a source of ideas that still seems as if it has some juice left.  I’m not so sure that applies to the series at hand, however.  Without the superpowers, the story we have basically reduces down to your usual personal vendetta against the evil collective.

Phantom Lady #1 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Cat Staggs (pencils), Tom Derenick (inks), Jason Wright (colors)

The Story: Now you see her, now you don’t.

The Review: Against all odds, the Freedom Fighters keep coming back to the DCU, no matter how many times you might believe the door has shut on their antiquated patriotism.  They do have a certain campiness I find endearing, and Gray-Palmiotti play up to that quality in a big way.  Maybe that’s why they’ve been at the head of each Freedom Fighters revival, though so far, none has resulted in the big comeback the team would hope for.

If there’s any Fighter who can strike it big on her own, it will have to be Phantom Lady.  True, she’s earned most of her popularity as a sex bomb, but that doesn’t take away the fact that she’s the most recognizable of all her teammates.  Gray-Palmiotti, perhaps taking the relaunched DC a little too much like a blank slate, give her a complete makeover in this mini, much as they did with the Ray some months earlier, and the results are almost nearly as uneven.

Freedom Fighters #7 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Travis Moore (penciller), Walden Wong (inker), Allen Passalqua (colorist)

The Story: By the power of Paul Revere’s lantern, General Sherman’s sword, and the Arcadians’ helmet of war, I summon the spirit of America!

The Review: The sad truth is cancellations never have a direct relationship to the title’s quality.  Even if an ongoing series is awful, as long as it brings in good money, it’ll survive.  Cancellations only happen when a title doesn’t sell, whether it’s so infamously terrible, hardly anyone can stand it; so flavor-specific, its audience isn’t enough to support it; or so underexposed, it never got on its feet to start with.

Freedom Fighters honestly falls in the middle category.  As a title that enthusiastically embraces its “Rah-rah-America!” nature, it winds up very niche.  We live in an era in which most people aren’t much interested in everyday patriotism except for special occasions.  Comic book readers, being increasingly older, more intellectual individuals, are even less likely to take nationalism seriously, so this title can’t help but come across endearingly sincere, but inescapably silly.

Gray-Palmiotti also make their work harder by attempting to bring in actual politics to the story, which always risks messiness.  The more experience you have in real politics, the more you realize that it’s way more complex and rich than the divide between liberals and conservatives, security versus democracy, which gets played up here.  Being so oversimplified damages the title’s integrity: thoughtful readers dismiss it, naïve readers get misled by it.

Freedom Fighters #6 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Travis Moore (penciller), Trevor Scott (inker), Rob Schwager (colorist)

The Story: As it turns out, the Freedom Fighters discover, there may be some truth to the whole mutant sewer creatures thing.

The Review: With most superhero teams, writers claim from time to time that such-and-such character is the “heart” of the team—usually a few weeks before killing them off.  After the immediate shock and grief is over, the team usually ends up functioning much like it did before.  But Uncle Sam has been a staple of the Freedom Fighters for so long he truly their emotional center.  You really can’t imagine the team without that tall, lanky, bearded Yankee on their side.

So it’s been interesting seeing Gray and Palmiotti handle Uncle Sam’s absence from the Fighters.  The impact of his “death” kind of got lost at first, what with the team being forced to continue the mission at hand without him.  But with every issue, the team has lost direction, even under the capable leadership of Miss America, until now you’re just longing for Uncle Sam to come back and make everything all right somehow.

It’s great that Gray-Palmiotti are bringing back some of the sticky issues from their original Freedom Fighters miniseries.  After all, the team was formed by some abominably shady forces and for a time operated without much deference to justice or mercy.  Under Uncle Sam’s reformation, they’ve slowly made their way back to respectability, but their actions toward the Jailbreakers this issue show that they’re toeing the line to being ruthless operatives again.

The confrontation between Phantom Lady and Miss America hits all the right points, but there’s some confusion as to who’s to blame for what went down.  Looking back at those earlier scenes, it won’t occur to you Joan doesn’t try her best to be accommodating to their enemies.  In fact, since Stormy’s the one teleporting people to safety, it seems she’d be more responsible for whatever breach of integrity they might have made.  This vilifying of Miss America—especially her coercive attitude toward Doll Man at the end—just comes off a little sudden and forced.