Justice League #33 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Doug Mahnke (pencils), Keith Champagne (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: Luthor and Caulder see who can out-mad scientist the other.

The Review: Thank heavens one title at least is spared the Futures End treatment this month. It’s aggravating having to read issue after issue of comics without any certainty that it even matters. It reminds me of when I used to create marketing presentations for products still in the R&D stage, always aware that at any moment the design could be dropped and all my work wasted, always torn between necessity and pointlessness.

Anyway, my point is Justice League offers a very much appreciated break from Futures End in addition to all the new tidbits of troubling information about Caulder. While he insists that his work with the Patrol and their ilk is noble, Luthor exposes past experiments, not only on the unfortunate Karma and Scorch, but on Celsius and Tempest (who went into hiding), a former “war veteran,”* the “Negative Twins” (indicating Larry’s only the latest product of Caulder’s Negative work), and even Caulder’s own ex-wife. Even more disturbing is the accusation that a virus Caulder once cured was one he introduced himself.

Justice League #31 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Doug Mahnke (pencils), Keith Champagne & Christian Alamy (inks), Rod Reis (colors)

The Story: What to do when your secret identity’s discovered.

The Review: I’ve heard somewhere that Johns is not a big Batman fan, but I think it’s more accurate to say that he doesn’t worship Batman the way many superhero readers do. People have built up Batman’s stature to the point that he sometimes coming across as less human than his actually inhuman peers. This goes against Johns’ grain, since he’s a writer who likes to bring characters down to Earth in an occasionally misguided attempt to make them more “relatable.”

Perhaps this explains why Batman in Johns’ hands is hardly the mighty figure we’re used to seeing. Compared to the vicious Batman who appears in the works of Scott Snyder or Pete Tomasi, Johns’ Batman is mostly hot air, a bit flimsier and more ineffectual. We saw this in his laughable attempts maintain control in Forever Evil, and we see it again here as he tries to fake his way out of Luthor’s discovery of his identity: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Luthor. I’m not Batman.” The only way he could be more unconvincing would be to add a stutter and several exclamation points.

Justice League #30 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Ivan Reis & Doug Mahnke (pencils), Scott Hanna (inks), Rod Reis (colors)

The Story: The bar for League membership gets a lot lower.

The Review: The history of superhero comics is so long and involved that I seriously doubt any kind of plot that appears in the genre is truly original anymore. All I can say is Johns may be onto something we haven’t seen in a while with his latest vision of the Justice League. Secret traitors and double agents have been done before, but I don’t remember the last time known villains have joined a team of such repute as the League, especially one as notorious as Lex Luthor or as smalltime as Captain Cold.

Of course, your first thought at the very idea of Luthor joining the League is he’s got to be planning something. Make no mistake, he’s playing the game amazingly. “If there’s anything I want people to take away from the tragedy that befell our world,” he says in his first statement post-Forever Evil, “it’s that even with aliens, Amazons, and Atlanteans among us—a single human being can still make a difference. Police, firefighters and soldiers risk their lives every day to help others without the benefit of super-speed or a magic ring. I’m humbled to stand alongside those brave men and women.”

Justice League #27 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Ivan Reis (layouts), Joe Prado, Jesus Merino, Vicente Cifuentes (finishes), Rod Reis (colors)

The Story: When your computer crashes, that means it’s time for an upgrade.

The Review: Here’s some totally unsolicited, presumptuous advice to comic book writers: be very careful when making indirect references to the far-flung past of continuity.  Not all your readers are going to be Type-A, obsessive-compulsive critics for Weekly Comic Book Review who feel deep-seated anxiety if they feel like there’s information they’re missing.  Normal people won’t have that same instinct and they’ll simply miss the reference.

With Johns’ revival of the Doom Patrol, missing the reference will definitely diminish your appreciation for this issue’s opening, and may even defeat it altogether.  His decision to introduce the new members of the Patrol then—spoiler alert—have then perish within the span of four pages would seem pointlessly cruel (or cruelly pointless) if you didn’t know he was referring to a similarly short-lived Patrol from the late eighties.  Once you do the research, you’ll notice how Karma and Scott even have similar personalities to their previous incarnation.  Destroying the Patrol this quickly at this moment is thus a deliberate choice that weaves in continuity in the way only Johns can.

Doom Patrol #22 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Ron Randall (penciller), Art Thibert (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: The Doom Patrol takes back their base, D-Day style!

The Review: Having been ignored, maligned, and mistreated not only in the DCU, but also in the real world of comics readers, it’s fitting the Doom Patrol would use their final issue to make one last, desperate attempt to gain some self-respect.  Getting kicked out of their home and turned into house-crashers (with a reputation for terrorism) overnight stung, and they’re determined to sting back for once.

That said, other than to give them a splashy mission for their last hours in print, the reasons for them retaking Oolong Island aren’t really there.  Up until their forced departure, they spent plenty of issues bemoaning how Oolong had gone to the dogs, the crazies they had to deal with regularly, and the country’s shady political alignment.  Maybe they plan to reform the place on their own terms (and recover their heroic status in so doing), but we’ll never get to see that.

We also haven’t seen enough of how Mr. Somebody (in the body of Veronica Cale)’s handled things in their absence.  I mean, how much worse can an unscrupulous, extradimensional entity run a corrupt island of mad scientists and their illegal experiments anyway?  Even by this issue, Mr. Somebody hasn’t managed to earn the respect of Oolong’s security head yet—it doesn’t look like he’s in any danger of taking over the world any time soon, as he boasts to General Immortus.

Mostly, you get a lot of action in this title’s series finale, though only parts of it offer much excitement: Cliff diving into Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man’s head and pulling a root to short him out is pretty good times).  But by and large, the blandness of the battle reminds you what little firepower the Patrol really has.  If not for Danny the Island’s (a big promotion from his “the Street” days) interference, the Patrol probably would never have pulled this off.

Doom Patrol #21 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark & Ron Randall (pencillers), Art Thibert (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Robotman reflects on the many incarnations—literally, it turns out—of the Doom Patrol.

The Review: With cancellation imminent and the last two issues to go, it’s no wonder Giffen wants to take the opportunity to wax nostalgic about the Doom Patrol’s history.  It’s very smart of him to write this retrospective in the penultimate issue rather than the final one.  The Patrol, after all, is not a team of thinkers.  For them, the most fitting way to go out is to go with a bang, which leaves this issue as the calm before the storm.

This issue also acts as a much-needed character piece on Cliff, who’s always been the most centered member and as such the one you have the least handle on.  Rita’s the self-loathing one and Larry’s the smart-alec, but as it turns out, Cliff has more internal conflict than perhaps any of us believed.  His oft-repeated phrase says everything about why he’s the Patrol’s acting leader: “What’s important here?”  Giffen cleverly uses this mantra to analyze Cliff’s loyalty to the team.

Since the Patrol got revamped by Geoff Johns after Infinite Crisis, and even more so under Giffen’s work on this ongoing, the team has steadily lost more and more of their humanity.  Rita went from your usual size-changer to a protoplasmic shapeshifter; there’s no telling what’s underneath Larry’s bandages; and now Cliff reveals he’s almost purely robot—even Cyborg has more organics than that.

Yet despite losing the things that makes them biologically human, the Patrol remains the most human of all the superhero teams because they are also the most fallible.  They have no agenda other than to try to make the best of the lot life has given them, and they suffer constantly from feelings of insecurity and inferiority, especially compared to their more beloved peers.  They’re the X-Men of the DCU—the heroes most likely to be called freaks and criminals.  As Cliff realizes, they need each other because they only have each other; no one else can really relate.

Doom Patrol #20 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark & Ron Randall (pencillers), Art Thibert & John Livesay (inkers), Scott Clark with Dave Beaty, Jose Luis, Scott McDaniel (guest artists), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Wanted—studio space for four (one miniaturized), open access to power grid, appliances included.  Must love freaks.

The Review: With Doom Patrol’s cancellation imminent, it’s worth reflecting on the series’ possibly dooming shortcomings.  Of course, it’s a niche title, with a peculiar cast of characters.  It leans more towards comedy than drama—always risky, as comic book humor tends to be very hit or miss, as D.P. frequently is.  But the title’s biggest weakness is it has always been more interested in its character interaction than actually giving those characters things to do.

This issue serves as a good example: it’s one of the strongest of the series, yet basically involves nothing more than the Patrol looking for a place to crash after getting kicked off their base.  The interest comes from how each member’s particular brand of social awkwardness rubs off on the DCU’s more mainstream characters.  The ultimate unfruitfulness of the team’s efforts serves as a good reminder of how out of place they are in their world, and with readers in general.

You just can’t get a handle on these characters.  They’re ostensibly heroes, but as Beast Boy and Congorilla astutely point out, most of the Patrol’s endeavors to this point have come across more terrorist than heroic.  They’re more a gang of losers who can’t catch a break; most of their misadventures involve them acting out of self-preservation rather than for a good cause.

Doom Patrol #19 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark & Ron Randall (pencillers), Art Thibert & Sean Parsons (inkers), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: A mercenary group of ne’er-do-wells facing off a team of super-freaks on the beautiful shores of Oolong Island as a volcano explodes?  Can someone say reality show?

The Review: Given the outcast nature of the Doom Patrol, it’s no wonder team-ups are a rarity for them.  On one side, they’re pretty much outmatched in number and power by almost every other team in the DCU—even the Outsiders.  On the other side, their specific dynamic doesn’t mesh well with conventional superheroes.  The Patrol serves best when left to their own devices, and not mixed up with characters that call attention to the small scale of their doings.

The one exception may be the Secret Six, who are nearly as weird and antisocial as their Oolong opponents in this issue.  Besides creator of the Secret Six, Gail Simone, one of the few writers capable of delivering the special chemistry of the Six is probably Giffen.  He doesn’t have the subtlety of Simone, being broader and leaning more toward slapstick, but he gets in a pretty good joke here and there (upon being beset by the Science Squad, Scandal remarks, “I think we’re about to be attacked by the chess club.”).

Still, despite having few dull moments between the two teams’ battle royale, some noticeable flaws keep the story from achieving the quality it should have, given the promising premise.  Being a crossover plot, if you happen to not be a Secret Six reader (though, on that note, why wouldn’t you be—it’s only totally awesome), you’d be hard-pressed to get exactly what’s happening here.

And if you did read the first part of the story, you’ll notice how truncated that story seems in this issue.  After all, S.M.A.S.H., the Six’s current employers, basically come to annex Oolong Island as their own, then end up fleeing with their tails between their legs in the course of four pages.  It just feels like the story never gets to build up before it winds down.  There’s little hope the next issue of Secret Six will continue the story, as the Six aren’t likely to work again with people who abandon them to the mercy of their enemies.

Secret Six #30 – Review

by Gail Simone (writer), Jim Calafiore (artist), Jason Wright and John Kalisz (colors), Travis Lanham (letters)

The Story: A young, sociopathic nerd is granted a wish at an opportune moment, Bane attempts to act civilized, and the Doom Patrol go fish.

What’s Good: Boy, does Simone know how to write. Although she seems to have the most pure fun with Ragdoll, Simone does her most exceptional writing and characterization of this issue with Bane. The formal, but frigidly cold, way he attempts to initiate courtship is simultaneously hilarious, and pathetically sad. It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who has one great one-liner after another for a good two or three pages, though. I can’t remember the last time humor in a comic was simultaneously so deeply revealing of character. I’m not quite sure how Simone manages to put herself so effectively into the heads of the twisted and demented folk, but she sure does a hell of a job.

In the art department, Calafiore continues to kick major ass. The character’s faces–arguably the single most important thing any comic artist draws–are detailed and expressive, and the backgrounds, while not particularly unique, serve their purpose well enough and don’t distract from the significant amount of action taking place in, around and through them. Speaking of action…

Doom Patrol #18 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark and Ron Randall (pencillers), John Livesay (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Things just get ickier for the Doom Patrol as the Aristocrats demonstrate the “hobbies” they’ve gained over the last century or two.  Hint: not stamp-collecting.

The Review: One of the flaws of the Star Wars prequel/sequel trilogy is how much time it spends pontificating on intergalactic politics.  It seems a little petty for a disturbance in the force.  The same thing applies to comics.  It’s ambitious of writers to insert some socio-political texture to the superhero world, but they’re not exactly the savviest individuals where world affairs are concerned.  The result, as in the recent string of Star Wars films, is a lot of oversimplified political concepts that never really seem like good motivators for superhero fare.

That’s the stumbling block Keith Giffen ran into last issue as he devoted a good half of it developing Oolong Island’s foreign policy (and bashing on North Korea).  Thankfully, the action this issue leaps into the red-hot zone as Keith Giffen sets aside those political intricacies to focus on giving the Doom Patrol some serious brawling to do.

Fast and furious seems the best pace for these characters to work at.  Their jokes fly better, or at least they seem to.  It’s the Laugh-In effect; before you have time to decide if the punchline is funny or not, you’re already pulled along to the next bit.  The friendly friction among the characters also have more to play with when they’re punching the lights out of immortal sadists than when they stand around ranting over the multitude problems in their lives.  The Patrol don’t do soul-searching very well.  They’re better off facing freaks even worse off than they are, and gleaning perspective out of the experience.

That said, the Aristocrats aren’t the most terrific opponents.  Physically, the ‘Crats have nothing on an energy being, a shapeshifter, and a robot.  They don’t bring much to the table in terms of motivating characters either.  Giffen writes them well, with all their excessive politeness on top of their lust for pain (theirs and others’), but he doesn’t embellish their history very well, nor why exactly they serve “Beloved Leader.”  And because they seem to have few stakes in the story, the stakes for the Patrol are even less.

Doom Patrol #17 – Review

By: Keith Giffen (writer), Matthew Clark and Ron Randall (pencillers), John Livesay (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Fresh from yet another confrontation with the Chief that has now left them leaderless, the Doom Patrol reluctantly agree to accompany their newest benefactor to a gala in North Korea that’s more like a who’s-who of crazed sadists.  Worst among the violent weirdoes are the Aristocrats, an old family of considerable poise, history, and bloodlust.

The Review: The Doom Patrol is among the last surviving relics of DC’s legacy of exploring the weird.  They truly are an oddball group, with a grab-bag of low-key superpowers and a vague agenda pitting them against the other freakazoids of the DCU.  The Doom Patrol flourishes when writers avoid remaking them into more standard superhero fare, and embrace their inherent strangeness.  Small wonder Grant Morrison worked wonders with them under his pen, and now under Keith Giffen’s, they’re slowly gaining the semblance of liveliness again.

Giffen’s offbeat style is on full-speed from the first page, a “Previously, on Doom Patrol”-type brief written in Dick and Jane syntax (“Now the Chief can fly. / Fly, Chief, fly.”).  It lacks the cleverness that sells Greg Pak’s and Fred Van Lente’s “Previously” pages over on The Incredible Hercules, but it definitely sets the irreverent tone for the rest of the issue.

The self-mockery the characters go through occasionally feel forced (“Does this outfit make my thighs look chunky?”), but what’s really winning about this series is the interaction of its slew of eccentric characters.  Cliff, Rita, and Larry have had plenty of time to develop their voices, but it’s impressive that Giffen manages to make even first-timers sound fully realized from their first appearance.  As far as I know, the Aristocrats are completely new, but from a few exchanges (helped by an extensive expository piece at the issue’s start) you really get a strong sense of how disturbed they, how aware they are of their own twistedness, and how very little they care.

Doom Patrol #4 – Review

The Story: The world’s strangest super-heroes return home to Oolong Island just in time to be attacked by old teammates and lovers under the control of the Black Lanterns.  In the second feature, the Metal Men must contend with the creation of three extremely dangerous – and cranky – new robots.

The Doom Patrol in “Dead Reckoning” by Keith Giffen (writer) Livesay & Justiniano (art)

What’s Good: Although the writing wasn’t much to my liking, Justinano’s artwork fell into the win column for me.  I wasn’t aware that regular artist Matthew Clark was taking a break for this arc, but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised that was the case.  I’ve never been a fan of Clark’s, but I have been one of Justiano’s.  The artist has a dark, sharp style that suits this tale of zombies and shadows and he was a great choice to fill-in on this issue.  His design of Black Lantern Negative Woman in particular gave me chills.

What’s Not So Good: It was with some trepidation that I picked up this issue of Doom Patrol.  I’d given the new series a chance once already with the first issue, but didn’t find anything enticing enough to make me want to continue collecting the series.  The shadow of the DC juggernaut that is Blackest Night, however, has fallen over many of the publisher’s output this month and I decided to give this comic another try.  I wish I hadn’t bothered.

Giffen certainly tries to take advantage of the opportunity he’s been given as a result of the crossover to interest new readers in the title.  He brings us up to date on the history of the Doom Patrol itself, while simultaneously using that device to inform us as to the identities of the deceased characters that make their return.  It’s a good idea and one that should have worked when it came to eliciting an emotional reaction in the reader when the past and present D.P. members confront each other.  Except that it doesn’t.  Placing what is essentially an info dump at the beginning of the story only served to turn me off from the book.  The Doom Patrol is one of those titles that people usually saddle with being too difficult to get into due to it’s heavy continuity baggage, and this introduction does nothing to combat that criticism.  I appreciate the writer’s ambition in bringing new readers up to speed, but I suspect he would have been better off simply concentrating more on the present.

Another problem with the script is the lack of any emotional reaction from the cast when confronted by the ghosts of their past.  If it weren’t for the fact that we can see what they’re feeling through the eyes of the Black Lanterns, I’d be hard-pressed to guess that they were feeling anything.  If the characters don’t seem to care about who has come back to haunt them, then why should the reader?  To be fair, this might be the fault of the artist, but it’s also reflected in the dialogue, so I assume that it wasn’t because of a miscommunication between the two creators.  Giffen comes close to overcoming this with his last page reveal and Robotman’s reaction, but it falls too late in the story for me to care.

The Metal Men in “The Coming of… The Clique!” by Keith Giffen & J.M. Dematteis (writers) & Kevin Maguire (art)

What’s Good: The first thought that comes to mind when reading Giffen’s & Dematteis’ smart, funny adventure of the Metal Men is “Why isn’t this the lead feature in this comic book?”  When you get a look at the amazing art of Kevin Maguire, the next thought is inevitably, “This NEEDS to be the lead feature of this comic book!”  The writers do in this eight-page back-up what the lead feature didn’t manage to in twenty.  I’m immediately caught up on what and who the Metal Men are, what the story is, and I care about what happens next.  The fact that this is all successfully accomplished when you consider that the stars of the strip only appear in four out of the ten pages is impressive.

What’s Not So Good: There’s not much wrong here, to be honest.  If I were to nitpick about anything, it would be that Maguire’s design for the members of the Clique keeps him from utilizing his greatest strength: facial expressions.  While I understand what he was going for with the mannequin-esque design, I did find it a little underwhelming.

Conclusion: Hopefully someone at DC will realize that this comic book needs to be called Metal Men.  Dematteis and Giffen and Maguire are producing a fun, humorous piece of storytelling that is unfortunately stuck in the back of a comic book not worth buying. It’s a shame, really.

Grade:  D

-Joe Lopez