Aquaman #20 – Review

By: John Ostrander (story), Manuel Garcia (pencils), Sandra Hope, Rob Hunter, Ray McCarthy, Wayne Faucher (inks), Pete Pantazis (colors)

The Story: Oddly, a girl who sees dead people is not the strangest member of the Others.

The Review: One of the best concepts Geoff Johns introduced on his run here has been Aquaman’s first team effort, the Others.  Johns not only managed to give each member a well-defined personality and design, he also gave them a strong team dynamic, as if they really had worked together for years.  Their intimacy was so convincing that it was kind of bittersweet to see them part ways when it was so tempting to give them a title of their own.

In this issue, Ostrander sort of tests the viability of the Others as characters in their own right, without Aquaman as their center.  Indeed, here Arthur seems more like a featured player in his own title.  Despite being their de facto leader (though the Operative may disagree with that assertion), he comes to them as someone asking his friends to do him a big favor, one he’s not yet comfortable presenting to his current team.  He stands equal to the Others, which in turn boosts their own standing.

Vibe #4 – Review

By: Sterling Gates (story), Manuel Garcia (pencils), Fabiano Neves (art), Sandra Hope Archer (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: It’s not every day you meet a cute girl while chasing after extraterrestrial travelers.

The Review: From the moment Vibe agreed to work with A.R.G.U.S., we always knew shis collaboration would end in bitterness and disappointment at some point.  No relationship can function without trust, and A.R.G.U.S. has never been upfront with Cisco about much of anything.  But once the truth comes out, as it inevitably must, what can he, the least experienced and most naïve member of the Justice League of America, do about it?

The title has done Cisco a favor by speeding up that inevitable conflict.  Given how obvious both Gunn and Waller have been in their deceptions, our hero would look pretty dumb if it took a couple arcs for him to catch on—especially with his brother, Kid Flash, and now a mysterious dimensional breacher (named Breacher, confusingly enough) all telling him A.R.G.U.S. isn’t to be trusted.