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.

Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint #3 – Review

By: Rex Ogle (writer), Eduardo Francisco (artist), Stefani Renee (colorist)

The Story: Daddy dearest, don’t you know dark magic only gives you skin problems?

The Review: With any luck, we all reach a certain point when we get our acts together, when our moral and ideological compass stabilizes, when we figure out how to deal with everyday situations on a consistent—if not successful—basis.  But get your family involved, and bam!—all your certainty flies out the window.  No one upsets your comfort zone more effectively, for dramatic or comedic effect, which is why family relationships make such excellent reading.

But as Ogle’s portrayal of father and daughter Thirteen proves, fictional blood ties require a lot of craft to have a convincing life beyond the cliché, just like any other kind of character work.  Aside from their haphazard wielding of magic, the Thirteens never break the stereotype of a girl and father who just have a hard time understanding each other (insert eye roll here), and Ogle’s uninspired writing never fools you into thinking they’ll find that happy middle ground in the end.

So this issue mostly involves stalling until the inevitable sappy ending.  The whole tension of the story boils down to whether or not Dr. Thirteen will really let his death ray satellite obliterate a sizable chunk of the Earth and its denizens.  Only Traci has the power to sway his actions, an uncomforting thought, given her defeatist attitude and his extreme mood changes, going from tender to murderous quite instantly multiple times throughout the action.

To snap him out of it, Traci applies two of my least favorite tropes in comics.  First, we have the “crucial revelation dropped in the middle of battle,” which can work if the new facts are really game-changers.  Traci admitting her facial scars are the result of a resurrection gone wrong feels irrelevant to the story and an obvious attempt to puppy-dog her for easy sympathy.  Then we also have the “One World” maneuver, where you get all the different voices of the world to come together to convince whoever that the world isn’t as bad as it seems.  I have one word: blergh.

The clichés don’t stop there, however; we also get a Messiah Effect: when someone dies and the act of dying inexplicably gives them enough power and/or wisdom to save the day!  Again, this kind of thing only works if it’s earned, but here, Traci profits from the Effect without it being really clear what she gained or learned to deserve it.  Later she puts her experiences together to achieve the aforementioned “One World” scene, but her messianic moment just feels forced.

Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint #1 – Review

By: Rex Ogle (writer), Eduardo Francisco & Paulo Siqueira (pencillers), Roland Paris (inker), Stefani Renee (colorist)

The Story: I swear, if I had a dollar every time someone says “The end is near…”

The Review: With the main Flashpoint series driving itself through the plot as fast as it can, there hasn’t actually been much opportunity to get acquainted with this brand new world.  But even the handful of changes shown to us has been pretty juicy, making you (if you’re an altered-universe fan like me) eager to see more.  World of Flashpoint is meant to satisfy that curiosity, while at the same time deliver an important plot of its own.  This first issue delivers neither.

Setting aside the questionable decision to use Traci 13 as our guide, she simply hasn’t done a very good job of it.  She spends the whole issue in an underground bunker, except for a brief teleport to the streets of New York City, which aside from some petty street crime and panic doesn’t seem altogether too different.  Certainly, a couple kids stealing some food doesn’t feel like just cause for Traci to conclude “The world’s gone to hell.”

In fact, Traci spends most of the time repeating how doomed the world seems, without letting you see almost any of it yourself.  Besides, little of what she says goes beyond the major points you’re well aware of (e.g. the destruction of Western Europe and the UK by Aquaman and Wonder Woman, respectively), hardly shedding light on what else went wrong with this world.

Even worse, many of these tidbits (as revealed through a few vague anecdotes by Madame Xanadu) serve only to confuse you further as to how the world got to this state.  For example, she claims the original Justice Society never came together because “they were not powerful enough.  They needed someone…faster.”  Why the lack of a Flash made the JSA fall apart makes no sense; was Dr. Fate and the Spectre insufficient firepower or something?