Flashpoint: Deadman and the Flying Graysons #2 – Review

By: J.T. Krul (writer), Fabrizio Fiorentino & Alejandro Giraldo (artists), Kyle Ritter (colorist)

The Story: Dang it, I thought you said you would never let go!

The Review: You probably have noticed in my reviews that I tend to spend a great deal of time talking up the written features of a comic, with only a perfunctory paragraph on art.  This is in no way meant to demean the artist’s contributions to a comic, but as a writer, I view the script as king.  If you have a weak script, it won’t matter what kind of visuals you put in.  It can be the most beautiful-looking thing in the world, but it won’t have much meaning beyond prettiness.

Krul has had a fairly diverse set of artists who’ve worked on his scripts, some of whom I’ve panned (Claude St. Aubin), and others upon whom I can’t lavish enough praise and respect (Nicola Scott).  But none of them, even the often faultless Scott, have managed to overcome what I view as Krul’s weaknesses as a writer.  You can paint a leaky roof like the Sistine Chapel, but it’ll still leak—and the damp will damage the painting anyway.

It’s become almost a mean habit of mine to call out Krul’s choice of dialogue, but as it stands, he still can’t produce an issue that isn’t riddled with pointlessly melodramatic lines, like Wonder Woman musing, “Are we defending ourselves from the Atlanteans?  Fighting for our survival?  Or are both sides racing together, side-by-side, toward the abyss?  Blinded by rage?  Doomed.”  As a rule, monologues have a place in fiction, but overblown, unsubtle, cheesy ramblings have the effect of making me ever so slightly nauseated.

Flashpoint: Deadman and the Flying Graysons #1 – Review

By: J.T. Krul (writer), Mikel Janin (artist), Ulises Arreola (colorist)

The Story: Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be amazed, dazzled, and inhumanly butchered!

The Review: When it comes to superhero team-ups, you have your classics (Batman and Superman) and your unexpectedly potent combos (Oracle and Black Canary), while the rest fall somewhere between predictable and pointless.  And then you have Deadman and Dick Grayson, a circus pairing that’s such a no-brainer you wonder why it hasn’t been done before—until you remember that Deadman is, well, dead.

The world of Flashpoint pretty much removes that minor obstacle, but in doing so, it eliminates altogether Boston Brand’s heroic identity (as it does Dick’s).  So now the question is: what kind of situation can Krul cook up to get the team-up we eagerly look for?  And with both characters devoid of their former involvement in the world’s major crises, how can Krul tie in their story to the Flashpoint drama at large?

As it turns out, the events of Flashpoint has no bearing on Boston and Dick themselves, but on one of their fellow circusmen, a sideshow act, no less, whose name is Kent Nelson but goes by his show moniker: Fate.  It’s him and his helmet the Amazons are after, and as their razing of an innocent Austrian town demonstrates, they’ll stop at nothing to get it.  It’s a clever way of dragging this nomadic circus into the—I’m gonna say it—fate of the world.

The plot has a lot of potential, but Krul’s limitations as a storyteller dampen your prospects for a completely enjoyable read.  One of his pitfalls as a writer is a worrisome love for melodramatic monologues, the kind that sounds great looped over a movie trailer, but cheesy in any other context.  Boston Brand’s narration as he performs his stunts: “I want to hear them shriek and gasp in terror.  Let them watch me step right up to the face of death—then walk away in total defiance.  It is the game I play.  And I always win.”

Young Justice Episode 7 – Review

By: Thomas Pugsley (writer)

The Story: YJ embarks on a psychedelic journey through the magical world of Dr. Fate—it’s exactly as weird as it sounds.

The Review: Here is what friends do: talk with each other about each other behind each other’s backs, argue about ridiculous, often inconsequential things, and make fun of each other’s weaknesses.  And when the friends involved are teens, these elements pop up threefold.  It’s not necessarily as bad as it sounds.  Without these things, much of the spice of life would be missing.

That’s why it’s such a relief to see the YJ-ers finally ranking and razzing on each other (that’s right—I’m bringing back lingo from the late nineties; in my defense, they were totally solid back when I was, like, eight).  I think Artemis has a lot to do with that.  Besides how she’s naturally sarcastic to begin with, she also allows for a clear separation between the girls and the guys, which opens up a whole new layer of intrigue to the team dynamic.

Up until now, Miss Martian being the only girl, and a sweet one at that, has kind of forced the guys to tiptoe around her a little bit.  But now she has a new BFF, it frees her to show some snap and self-awareness.  It also brings in the inevitable girl talk, which we all know is code for talking about boys.  Fortunately, their mutual attraction to Superboy hasn’t brought resentment to their early friendship—that’s a ship I’d be fine with not sailing.

The best part of Artemis’ membership is her banter with Wally.  Rom-com dialogue tends to lean toward the obvious, especially when writers are obviously pushing for a specific matchup, as they do here.  Pugsley wisely keeps things good-natured, rather than mean-but-secretly-loving-it, and he avoids having them squabble pointlessly over nothing, choosing instead to let Artemis pick at Wally’s hypocrisy in claiming to believe in magic just to impress Miss Martian.

Justice Society of America #47 – Review

By: Marc Guggenheim (writer), Scott Kolins (artist), Mike Ativeh (colorist)

The Story: Green Lantern in space!  Dr. Fate wrestles for Lightning’s soul!  Mr. Terrific experiences Flowers for Algernon firsthand!

The Review: When DC announced that it’d be holding the price line at $2.99 at the cost of cutting some pages from its titles, there was certainly a mix of emotions.  The jubilance over the savings was marred by the concern that each issue would have less substance to be engaging.  So far, most titles have taken the impact pretty easily, some even improving from the compression.  Others, however, have suffered from being forced to squeeze their stories into the more limited space.

Among the suffering seems to be Marc Guggenheim’s Justice Society of America.  This issue sees the team split up across literally cosmic distances, each with their own particular conflict to handle.  On the one hand, this sets things up so there’s no short supply of storylines filling up the pages.  On the other hand, with less page-time devoted to each, you’re left unsatisfied by all of them.  There’s just a strong sense that crucial parts of each plotline have been sacrificed at some point to fit them all in.

So instead of showing what’s going on, Guggenheim has to tell it to you instead.  Take Dr. Fate and Lightning in the spirit realm.  You don’t get to see how they get there; Jay Garrick catches Dr. Midnight up to speed and then Fate himself gives a thoroughly unsatisfying explanation of his work (“I took a few shortcuts, acted on instinct mostly.  I sort of…pushed things along…”).  And once all that talk is done, you get cut away to the next storyline, leaving you to wonder what the point of it all is.

Then you have Mr. Terrific’s supposedly degrading intelligence.  Instead of seeing symptoms of his dire situation, you get treated to two solid pages of Dr. Chaos’ obnoxious, know-it-all gloating.  Without actually seeing real signs of Mr. Terrific losing his smarts, the emotional impact of it is lost, making you feel as if he’s in no real danger.  But the worst handling has to be Alan Scott’s sudden jump into space.  Not only does it come out of nowhere, but it gets exactly one page to vaguely hint at the reason why it happens (the Starheart is in trouble—or something).