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 #3 – Review

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

The Story: They may be fighting zombies, but at least they’re doing it on a yacht.

The Review: For the Walking Dead fans, what I’m about to say is akin to blasphemy, but I’m getting pretty sick of zombies or any of their facsimiles.  I don’t know what has suddenly propelled them into the popular zeitgeist, but whether they’re your traditional zombies in The Walking Dead or The New Deadwardians, or Black Lanterns and Third Army drones in Green Lantern, watching mindless, unkillable beings infect others has gotten quite tiresome.

Which is why the appearance of zombies in this issue, even temporary ones, drew a groan from me.  Funerella (still a horrible name) already has plenty of formidable powers to her credit, including accelerated molecular degradation and, apparently, imperviousness to being killed.  The ability to make lumbering undead from scratch just seems like a cheap way to generate distractions for Dane and Jen.  The fact that the zombies return to normal upon some unspecified circumstance makes you look at our heroes’ killing them in a more questionable light.

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.

The Ray #1 – Review

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

The Story: Prepare to be blinded by the Ray—in more ways than one.

The Review: Here’s another beauty about the new 52: the opportunity to launch new characters or to revive old ones for a new generation.  So of all the myriad heroes of the DC canon to return to the forefront, why the Ray?  Nowhere in his history, from his origins in Quality Comics’ Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters to his brief stint as a member of Young Justice, did he ever have what you might call popular appeal.

And I’m not sure if this new version of the Ray will turn that trend around.  Truthfully, I’m not a fan of publishers artificially promoting diversity by having minority characters take up legacy brands, like Jackson Hyde and Aqualad, Jaime Reyes and Blue Beetle, Ryan Choi and the Atom, and now Lucien Gates, a Korean-American and newest incarnation of the radiant hero.

It’s also not great that Palmiotti-Gray have chosen a new person for the mantle when Ray Terrill, the previous Ray, hasn’t officially been wiped from active status, which the writers should know since they wrote his last appearance in last year’s short-lived Freedom Fighters ongoing.  As the only version of the hero who came closest to having a following (even getting a solo series back in the mid-nineties), you’d think it’d be smarter to use what was working rather than start anew.

But let’s set all that aside and take Lucien on his own merits, shall we?  As far as secret origins go, his come in one of the more traditional ways: a freak accident, in the truest sense of the word.  Sure, it doesn’t make sense how a misfired beam from the U.S. military’s experimental “sun gun” would randomly bestow powers on any organic thing it strikes.  Then again, if you can accept that a lightning bolt and a chemical cocktail can make a man super-fast, maybe you should just this “sun gun” thing go.

Freedom Fighters #9 – Review

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

The Story: Well, that gives new meaning to “blow up” doll.

The Review: There’s no point in naming names, but when you consider the pretty significant number of terrible titles on the stands out there, you have to wonder at the cancellation of Freedom Fighters less than a year after it launched.  It may have been a hard sell from the start, but it really can’t be considered on the same quality level as the series that deliver—in fact, will continue to deliver soul-sucking reads month after month.

Considering the open-ended finale to this issue, Gray-Palmiotti may have planned the Fighters’ disbandment all along, and if that’s true, this should have been the opening story arc.  The whole plot with the Arcadians took way too long and tried way too hard to give an epic feel, but never really gave a sense of danger or a cohesive tone to the series.

This issue immediately opens with a high-stakes conflict for the group: newly decommissioned, how will they fight the good fight now?  It seems the question has lit a fire under the team, as they act way more gung-ho and unified than they did the last eight issues.  It’s good to see them backing each other up, especially where Human Bomb’s more fragile status is concerned.  Their interactions have a comfortable familiarity that’s been missing for a while now.

Another missing element has been character growth (beyond Stormy and Black Condor shacking up, I mean), and this issue dives well into that.  Black Condor using his unemployment period to tackle crime in his reservation not only fleshes out his background and offers some fun moments (how dumb do you have to be to make locker room talk about your captor’s girlfriend in front of him?), it also makes a fitting political statement about his culture—without banging it over your head with nonsensical diatribes, Gray-Palmiotti’s preferred method of opinionating.

Freedom Fighters #8 – Review

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

The Story: What does the spirit of America do when it’s angry?  It punches you in the face.

The Review: By all accounts, this is the third series (the first two being minis) featuring the Freedom Fighters and written by the Gray-Palmiotti team.  The minis both had the problem of starting strong, then having the story fall part toward the end.  You’d think with that kind of experience, Gray-Palmiotti would have a firm handle on executing their plotting by now.

As it turns out though, this first story arc winds down just as anticlimactically.

Uncle Sam’s reappearance should have heralded the team getting its act together and taking down the Jester in all-American style.  Instead, his teammates spend the issue KO’ed while Uncle Sam has to finish the job himself.  And despite being a metaphysical concept come to supernatural life, Sam doesn’t have much in the way of skills and powers except a terrific right hook.  It makes for a fairly repetitive fight sequence, that’s for sure.

It doesn’t help Uncle Sam and Jester punctuate their punches with babble about American ideology and politics.  Let’s face it—very few people in general have a firm grasp on political science or the implications of their political beliefs.  If I may be so bold to say it, comic-book writers and readers probably have even less.  Can comics be a medium for political discourse?  Sure.  Superhero comics, not so much—check out Law and the Multiverse for just some of the wacky ways superheroes fly in the face our already jittery laws.