The Ray #2 – Review

By: Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray (writers), Jamal Igle (penciller), Rich Perrotta (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Guess who’s coming to dinner?  The Ray!

The Review: I was thoroughly unimpressed with the debut of this mini last month, and was of a good mind to drop it immediately.  But I figured that since I already put the money in for one issue, I might as well check out the next one to see if things improve.  After all, it wasn’t so much that the writing or art of #1 was bad; they just felt commonplace and contrived, much more planned than inspired.

It’s not great that for the second time in a row, we open on a monster attack upon San Diego, with the Ray filling you in with some narrated exposition as he takes them down.  That’s par for the course, considering the six-issue constraint Palmiotti-Gray have on their story, but it still would’ve been nice to see more of the action taking place than having it told to us.  Besides, Ray always manages to defeat them so quickly, and with so little evident threat to his person, that you tend to skim past the scenes anyway.

At any rate, the meat of the story involves Lucien’s first meeting with Chanti’s culturally sensitive parents, whom he tries to please by getting into Indian costume and sucking up, big time.  At least he has the good grace to admit he was being an idiot (the title of the scene is actually “Yes…  I Am an Idiot”), because it is a monumentally idiotic move, one that would never, ever fly in real life for a second.  The idea reeks like a premise for a first/last-season episode of a WB sitcom starring Mindy Kaling and John Cho—which, sadly, I’d probably watch.

Final Crisis #6 – Review

By Grant Morrison (writer), JG Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Doug Mahnke, Marco Rudy, Chirstian Alamy, Jesus Merino (artists)

Honestly?  I love Grant Morrison’s work.  I admire his wild imagination and flair for telling chaotic stories that somehow always manage to make a strange kind of sense.  I loved The Invisibles, JLA, We3 and New X-Men, and even picked up his entire run on Seven Soldiers of Victory, a thematic prequel to Final Crisis.  I’m telling you this so you’ll know I’m not coming into this story cold.  I picked up every issue so far and followed the plot.  Sadly, I couldn’t care less for any of it.

And why should I, when DC has had a track record for over twenty years now of hitting the reset button with these massive storylines that promise to dazzle you with the illusion of change, only to be erased a few years later so that everything can be just the way it was before?  While I like the idea of Darkseid and his pantheon of Dark Gods gaining dominion over Earth, allowing the villains to finally win, I know things won’t stay this way long enough to make a difference, and if I know that then why bother reading?  Take this issue for example: do we really think the outcome of Batman’s battle with Darkseid is definitive?  How long before they reverse what they’ve done?

Also, why is it that these DC epics aren’t more friendly to new readers?  Why do they demand you to have a working knowledge of the last seventy years of DC continuity in order to understand them?!  Not only has Final Crisis not been friendly to new readers, it actively works to discourage and drive them away; seeking instead to cater only to those faithful elitists that have been reading DC comics for a long, long time.  The epic bullshit that Bendis writes for Marvel may be slightly shy of moronic, but at least his stories strive to be entertaining and accessible to new readers!

Ultimately, I can’t decide if Morrison is a victim of editorial slavery or an advocate of the bad storytelling DC has been pushing down our throats since Crisis on Infinite Earths. I can say with confidence though that this series was not meant for the casual reader.  It does not like you. In fact, it wants you to go away.

Grade: D-

-Tony Rakittke