Arrow - Honor Thy Father

The second episode of Arrow was as strong (and as weak) as the first. We get a bit more progression of what happened to Ollie on the island and an indicator of where the scars came from. There's a colorful and equally skilled villain for him to face off against in the white haired Asian woman China White. We see the bodyguard Diggle being actually useful and showing some ability himself. Quentin Lance is probably the most interesting of the characters, with more sides to him as his relationships and motivations logically differ depending on who he's interacting with: overprotective parent of Laurel, disapproving and dislike of Ollie, honest cop and upholder of the law against vigilante. It helps that Paul Blackthorne manages to wring some worth out of rather hokey or cheesy dialogue and seems to be about the only actor in the show that really knows how to act with more facial expressions than just glower.

With Ollie, we get a lot of the character conflict that helped Smallville as well as similar themes in how to best honor the wishes of the father. In Smallville a large part of that conflict was due to Clark having two fathers often with opposing goals, as well as the excellent John Glover playing the part of Lionel Luthor, Lex's father. Here, the conflict is out of the type of man the father was, a flawed businessman who made big mistakes and whose dying declaration is for his son to fix those mistakes. Ollie is trying to make good on that mission without actually exposing to the world the type of man his father really was. Redeem those mistakes so that in death, his father's legacy will be the truth of what it was pretended to be in life. And, we see Ollie struggling here as it means he's forced to maintain three identities: the driven and enlightened to his self and the ways of the world, the masked vigilante, and the false shallow playboy from before. And, this episode shows he recognizes that it is a juggling act and that he has to become more comfortable with the latter identity, the one that's more false than the others, if he's going to be successful as the second. But, it's a juggling act he's not good at because when in private with people that he likes, it's the new, enlightened Oliver Queen they see.

The episode falls apart mainly with the resolution. In stereotypical superhero fashion, Oliver shoots arrows around the bad guy while interrogating him, all the while secretly recording the man's confession. He then gives this to the cops and this somehow clears up the investigation/trial with the clear implication that the confession is sending the man to jail. This is a cliche and it's a bad cliche, especially considering one of the writers used to write for Law & Order! There's no way a coerced confession, especially by a vigilante, would ever be admittable in a court of law. If anything it would make the case more difficult, not less. They want to distance themselves from superheroes and be considered a bit more of a crime/action drama, these are the slack storytelling cliches they need to avoid. It's not the costumes, names and powers that sink superheroes. It's the bad storytelling that often goes hand-in-hand, that as soon as the creators see that it includes costumes or powers, it gives them a pass to be sloppy.

The show is already beginning to show some chinks as well. Turns out that it's not the name changes that's annoying but the disregard towards names. We've seen this in the superhero movies. Black Widow not being called that in Iron Man II, Hawkeye not being called that in The Avengers, Catwoman never being called that in Dark Knight Rises and her friend Holly Robinson is not called by name in the film or how the British member of the Howling Commandos in Captain America had his name changed to Brian Falsworth but not actually called by name in the movie... it's a name change via credits only. Some of this is just basic bad storytelling, not giving us the names of people as they appear in the movie despite giving them names in the credits. In many cases though it's the people being afraid of the source material. The show is called Arrow but the show goes to great lengths to not call him by name. He's referred to twice now as "Robin Hood" and as "the archer". I can possibly understand the reasoning behind changing the name of the show, but avoidance of the name in the show itself smacks of shame. The name "Green Arrow" for a character didn't seem to hurt Smallville any. Likewise, the Triad villain in this episode. If she was called by name in the episode I missed it. For all I knew, she was a tv version of Cheshire or Shiva. Had to look it up on IMDB (interestingly, the actress has voiced Cheshire on Young Justice). Next week's episode features Deadshot. Will he be called that.

The other chink is from the pics, it looks as if all the superhero/villain characters go to the same tailor with a large surplus of dark leather. Personally, I think both Deadshot and Deathstroke not only have striking costumes, but ones that could translate fairly faithfully. Dull the colors some, downplay the latter's boots but make them distinctive beyond a few trinkets. The Marshall Rogers and George Perez designs are strong, distinctive designs which would look wonderful as faithfully realized.

There is a bit of irony that a show that is trying so hard to distance itself from the term of "superhero" and seems embarrassed by the characters is racing to include as many comicbook heroes and villains as it can. Deadshot next week, we already have seen hints of Deathstroke and is promised soon. Somewhere soon is the Huntress and in the wings in the distance Black Canary and Merlyn cannot be far behind.

The last chink is one of repetition. The show has a dual mega-story it's telling. What happened to Ollie on the island, and the redemption of his father's name by going after people in the notebook. This gives the show some depth and mystery, a well to draw upon for stories. But, it can also choke a series to death. Tie the story too closely to the mission and you run into future problems such as the show becoming a caricature of itself, unable to move beyond the mission. Richard Kimble cannot find the one-armed man, Jack McGee cannot uncover the truth behind the Hulk, Fox Mulder cannot discover the whole truth, Sam and Diane/David and Maddy cannot become a couple, etc. Eventually the episodes are covering the same beats, the same monotonous tone week in and week out. More importantly, we are seeing that mega-story series fail as often as they succeed. For every Lost, there seems to be about a dozen The River, The Event, Alcatraz etc. Instead, the model should be for the mega-story be more about concept that allows a variety of stories with smaller, major arcs that can be threaded through it such as Persons of Interest. While there are episodes and recurring themes that reveal more of the mysterious backgrounds of the principle characters, it's organic and allowing for many different types of stories. The other major problem of making the show too much about the mega-story is that it becomes impenetrable to casual or new viewers. Miss a couple of episodes and you are lost. Too much effort to get back into.

Maybe I am judging the last a little too harshly based on just two episodes, but I see that this kind of plotting and storytelling driving comics of the last couple of years. A year into Aquaman and we're still on the same mega-story. So far the episodes of the tv show are better at being done-in-one while furthering the ongoing sub-plots, but here's hoping we'll see some of the main plots of the episodes having nothing to do with the mega-story or sub-plots of the same episode, that not everything is connected. For it is there that you will find variety and opportunity for the show to grow beyond its basic setup.

CW's Arrow

The CW aired their pilot of Arrow, the tv series of Green Arrow. The show has received quite a bit of flak (some of it deservedly so) of comments made by show's creators concerning the distancing from the character's superhero roots. Especially since two of the creators have written comics and the show IS about a superhero. And, they choose to bring in other superhero/supervillains into the mix. Like Smallville before it, it wants to be a superhero show while escaping from the stigma of the show. Thankfully, the trailers released for the show made it look more interesting and taking itself more seriously than most superhero shows. Forget Smallville, No Ordinary Family, The Cape and Birds of Prey. This is more tonal in quality to shows like Supernatural, and Alphas. It's still a superhero show, no bones about that. But, it's more back to basics with the concepts of superheroes.

Overall, I liked it. Very pulpish take which is fitting, considering the roots of the character and superhero comics. It starts off with playboy Oliver Queen who's been marooned on an island for five years and presumed dead rescued. He is welcomed by family (mother and sister) and best friend and they seem eager to have Ollie back. Only through flashbacks, we learn that he's changed. Before he died, his father charged him with correcting the mistakes he had made, that dear old dad was not the saint that people thought he was. His girlfriend is not happy to see that he's returned as Ollie was on the boat with her sister and who went down with the ship. He pretends to embrace the old lifestyle while he uses mad skills that he gained on the island to carry out the mission his father charged him with.

On one hand, this is fairly faithful as far as comic adaptations go. The marooned origin is basically the Silver-Age Simon & Kirby origin of the character. Although Oliver having an extended family and surviving members of it are new. I can see where they don't want to get into the teen sidekick but are using his kid sister nicknamed Speedy to touch on the responsibilities he feels now as a role model and how he has not lived up to it in the past.

The most annoying aspects really are the name changes. Laurel Lance is using the secondary names of the heroine known as Black Canary which prompted me to try to explain the convoluted history of the character. If there's no GA or previous Black Canary, there is no reason for her last name to be Lance. Heck, it might have been MORE interesting to have her as Dinah Drake (her original pre-crisis name) and Paul Blackthorne's character be rival love interest Larry Lance. Having him be her father instead and then changing his name to Quentin Lance? I guess Larry would have been too close to Laurel... but again, why is she going by her middle name? I'm hoping maybe there is a plan for Black Canary, that her mother was a masked heroine. Although, if they go the Black Canary route, they should have switched the actresses playing her and playing her sister. The sister has the build for the costume.

What will probably kill the show for me will be the lack of faith in having costumes. Bringing other superhero characters in, but in variety of plain clothes styled costumes. The Green Arrow outfit works. It's kept in shadow, obviously leather which makes sense and not too different as an amalgamation of various costumes he's worn. Could stand to be a little more green though. When you start bringing in the likes of Deathstroke and Deadshot among others, you need to go a little larger than life than trenchcoats and leather jackets. The colors still can be subdued, but don't name them after costumed villains if you aren't going to use them. You can have the codenames, powers and costumes without being cheesy. Look to the Dini & Timm animated Batman series. It managed to encompass all the tropes and still wring pathos and solid stories out of them. It is possible to take yourself too serious and lose the fun aspect of the show. Speaking of Deathstroke, did I see his mask on a stake when Ollie got rescued in the beginning?

Which is where this show is going to be interesting. There's a lot of background, mystery, plot and character development and interaction going on here. It reminds me a bit of Crusoe only in reverse. There, the mystery that was slowly unfolding was the plot and machinations behind the scenes that lead to him getting marooned on the island. The immediate mystery of the flashbacks here will be what he discovered on the island, how he it changed him beyond simply his father giving him a mission. How he developed these skills, not just the skill with the bow but the ability to fight and take out trained men bare-handed.

In regards to how the ship went down, I think this show will go there as well, especially with the reveal at the end. That ship didn't simply go down in a storm and flashbacks will show just how corrupt his father's business dealings were. A twist on the Batman template of which Green Arrow is built. He's not out to avenge his father's name but redeem him and himself.

A shame that this show and Person of Interest has better fight scenes than the big budget Batman movies. Of course, part of that is they don't put the characters into outfits they can barely move in. But, in the pilot episode alone and I get the feel that he could kick movie Batman's butt. In that regard alone, this show is already more of a superhero story than the movies have been in that they haven't forgotten that at the heart of it, it's supposed to be an action story.

Not my favorite tv version of Green Arrow. That would probably be Justice League Unlimited, where they got the swashbuckling, fighting for the little guy, and stubborn s.o.b balance down pat. But, this is still early in the character's career. Hopefully, we'll see some of that come out as he learns to let some joy back into his life. For the most part, I liked Green Arrow in Smallville. In the later seasons, he was often the better part of the show and played as a complicated character. Their biggest mistake was he rarely actually used the bow and arrow but instead crossbows. But, I thought the actor did a good job with the character and it's a shame that he couldn't continue in that role. A pity the comics featuring the character aren't near as good to any of the small screen appearances.

The naming of the show and the design of the character, the cynic in me says part of it was to secure the tv trademark as it is very similar to this guy who's public domain but the comic book trademark is currently claimed by Dynamite.

Forget a Reboot, can we get a Reset?

I was in Target the other day, getting some dental floss and fishing line, but otherwise browsing. Takes me about 30 minutes, my wife 3 hours and then she can go back in a week. Me? I'm good for a month. Anywho, I'm cutting through the aisles from the back of the store and end up going through stuff for school kids where I see a couple of floppy binders for papers based on comics. One is Wonder Woman. The other is the Justice League. Only, it's a Justice League cover by Perez from 1983! It includes some other marketing artwork from about the same time (judging by the appearance of Starfire). The source of the Wonder Woman artwork is not readily apparent, but the design also places it from about the same time period.

It highlights a problem with much of the DC comics. Here's material marketed for kids. But, it's material from almost three decades ago! Makes sense, because that's the last time that most of these characters still looked iconic. Hawkman hadn't been changed to wearing body armor with mechanical wings. Firestorm hadn't gone through his transformation into a fire elemental, much less other changes. Aquaman hadn't had worn his blue costume much less grown long hair, a beard, lose a hand and become the sour underwater character. Hal Jordan hadn't yet gone crazy and been replaced nor taken on the job of the Spectre. Elongated Man hadn't gone through a succession of bad costumes, was still alive and not more or less replaced by Plastic Man. The Atom was still happily married and the second and latest person to make use of the name.

Marketing obviously recognized something that the people writing the comics don't. Building a brand demands a bit of consistency. Not knocking creativity and trying different things, but there's inherent problems when trying to shake things up and write creative stories. If you go too far, change too much, you weaken the brand. Take Aquaman. When fans talk about what they think it will take to make the character successful and what they want out of the character, it's divided. Some people want the pre-Crisis Aquaman. Others want the Peter David version. In an effort to modernize the character and get away from the jibes the character often gets, the David version ultimately proved polarizing. It was good for short-term sales, but now it's an "either-or" proposition. Despite the acclaim of David's series, the Aquaman that's marketable is the one in orange and green. Kyle Raynor as Green Lantern did the same thing for that franchise. You can see the polarizing of fans over Blue Beetle and Firestorm, only with the added fuel of racism charges if you so happen to like the original versions over the newer ones. Or those that like Morrison's Doom Patrol versus the ones that didn't. Truman and Ostrander's Hawkworld proved to be damaging to the whole concept of the DCU as a shared continuity that the character nor company fully recovered from.

I'm not saying that the modern versions were badly done. But, they were badly thought out. When Superman became the electric blue Superman, it wasn't thought to be permanent. Likewise the death of Superman that launched several new characters. They were temporary changes to the status quos that allowed some character exploration. When John Walker took over the identity of Captain America while Steve became the Captain, it was obviously nothing more than a chapter in the ongoing story. Status quos were reset in about a year's time or less.  Peter David claims that he was going to restore Aquaman's status quo when he was done, but there was no sign of that in the actual book. When Morrison was done with the Doom Patrol, every previous member was dead or completely changed into an unrecognizable character and the team hasn't been able to recover.

DC seemed to recognize that a little bit. Hal Jordan was made Green Lantern again. Barry Allen returned as the Flash. Somewhere, Ray Palmer is the Atom. Recently Aquaman was brought back in his green & orange suit. Hawk and Dove returned. But, for each course correction we get Firestorm struggling out a compromise solution between the Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch fans. PC versions of the Question and Blue Beetle. Roy Harper (Speedy/Arsenal) becoming villainous and a cyborg. Green Arrow killing criminals again, still ruining his relationship with Black Canary. Hawkman maiming opponents. Wonder Woman gets a badly designed costume. Superman and Batman both absent from their core books for extended period of time at the same time. Redesigned and "revamped" versions of the Red Circle and pulp heroes to the point they have little to nothing in common with the source material.

So, I was thinking, "What DC needs is a reboot of all characters to about the 1983 continuity."
I was a bit surprised when it was announced that DC was indeed rebooting their line. With talk of making characters a bit younger, stories accessible. Sadly, it also carried buzzwords like "modern". In fact, what makes sense about saying Jim Lee is going to redesign 52 characters so that they are more modern and recognizable? How do you redesign Wonder Woman, the Flash, Superman or Batman to make them MORE recognizable? The very nature of redesigning an iconic look is the EXACT OPPOSITE of their proposed intent. Then, there's the inherent conflict of goals. Making something modern doesn't make something necessarily recognizable. As I started off with, the problem is that DC has some iconic designs, but they and Hollywood seem intent on moving AWAY from them when what they need to do is move back towards them. The designs of the characters have stood the test of time for decades with minimal tweaking. I have no problem with redesigns, if the character truly needs it. But, the goal shouldn't be MODERN. It should be TIMELESSNESS. There's a reason when talking about character designs, people mention words like "iconic" and "classic". Most costumes are iconic because they are timeless. This usually means there's a simplicity and instantly identifiable and reproducible elements to the costume. Don't know who said it, but a comment I liked was a good costume should generally be akin to one that an eight year old can reproduce in his own drawings. The recent Doom Patrol relaunch had new uniforms for the team, with piping and such. Not bad designs per se, but instantly forgettable in they were not only generic but needlessly busy with extraneous details. When redesigning costumes, one should look at a few factors. Has this costume been worn for two decades or more and do you understand the difference between "classic" and "dated"? Was it designed by Gil Kane/Steve Ditko/Jack Kirby/Dave Cockrum? If the answer is "yes" to either of these, then the answer to redesigning the costume should 95% of the time be "Hell no".

The other problem is that they have ONE artist and writer redesigning the line. On the artist end, it's an artist whose last design has met a lot of resistance and who has yet to produce a design that can be said to stand the test of time. Not to say he isn't talented and produces pretty pictures. But, a less than zero track record. On the writer end... the concept of a "planned" shared universe just doesn't work. Every company that has tried to launch a planned universe with a central vision has ultimately failed. EVERY. ONE. Valiant. Dark Horse. Marvel's New Universe. Malibu (with two different universes). Defiant. DC doesn't even have to look any further than last year with their Pulp and Red Circle launches. Yes, I know. Red Circle was within the context of their regular Universe, but it was still formed, linked and sold on mainly one man's name who had nothing to do with it after creating the bible and the first issues. Not saying go in without a plan. But, what made DC and Marvel work was that it was organic. Continuity was built by telling stories, usually trying not to conflict with events elsewhere. It wasn't about continuity in and of itself. However, launches like this ARE about continuity, even when it's trashing old continuity and establishing new ones. (There actually is ONE exception: Marvel's Ultimate line which is still going strong. However, it's a shared universe that is built on the concept of a previous one, not an all new continuity. Even when it's going somewhere different, it cannot help but be a reflection of the main line. I don't read the comics, but I've never seen any advertising for pushing a NEW character in the Ultimate Universe that didn't already exist elsewhere.) Unless you're Kirby, one creator generally doesn't have that much creative variety in him to really fuel a whole universe. And, even Kirby's Fourth World books didn't succeed.

The first descriptions and covers of the relaunched titles further shows that while they seem to recognize that the line has problems, characters too convoluted and written into corners to the point of not being viable, they don't seem to realize the source of the problem. From indicators, Captain Atom has nothing to do with any previous version, visually or story wise. Striving for a compromise with Firestorm, he is now Ronnie Raymond AND Jason Rusch who are high school buddies. The Hawkman description tells us a little about Carter Hall but not anything about Hawkman himself, other than it seems to be an all new take on the character with some nods to original elements. It was messing with the concepts to begin with that lead to he mess we're in. It's partly why Red Circle and the pulp line failed as it sacrificed built in readership and built in character identification. It's why Target has binders with artwork of the characters as they were 30 years ago. Green Arrow and Mr. Terrific sound like they could be all right, but the redesigns are horrible. The latter looks like he stole a costume from the Emo-LSH and reflects none of the character's legacy and history, but otherwise he didn't need a new universe setting to launch a book. It looks more like change for change sake in his case. Green Arrow's costume looks like it came from Hollywood and is overly busy and looks fated for early shredding and return to a more classic look. The fact that Green Arrow has been written into corners twice now by being taken too far from center and requiring a resetting and looking at what's being solicited with other heroes, doesn't bode well that the creators have learned anything from the past.


If anything, the ability to reboot and reset seems to allow writers the freedom to continually move characters in extreme directions as well as the freedom to just ignore or contradict what a previous creator wrote just last month. Every writer that came along felt the need to redefine or rewrite the origin of Powergirl, Donna Troy. Or a new Legion of Superheroes every couple of years after previous writers kill off several characters. We're not seeing anything in the new reboot that DC has learned from that, instead just the opposite. With new and ugly designs, more casual rewriting of some pasts and leaving some in place (such as Blackest Night), it's setting up for more of the same mistakes they've been making and the problems that have plagued DC since post-Crisis on Infinite Earths. The exact opposite from what they need if the goal is to make the characters memorable. Want them to be memorable, don't make long term lasting changes every time the wind blows. Get back to telling compelling action and adventure stories using continuity as a tool and backdrop but not making the stories be about continuity. The one book that looks the most appealing to me is Aquaman. In part because his costume is the least re-designed although now he seems to be incomplete unless he's carrying a trident weapon, much as Bucky now must always be shown with a gun. Ironically, the title will be by the artist I took to task for not knowing how to draw gloves and drawing his gloves inconsistently from one panel to the next.

The Firestorm description makes me wonder if Blue Beetle will be the same. I think we can safely assume it's NOT going to be Ted Kord, the question is will he still be dead, a mentor to Jaimie or just written out of continuity altogether?

Disturbing trends.

It's been awhile. A confluence of events forced a little break: on the road a bit due to some health and family matters and amidst that, trying to avoid the April Fool's computer virus resulted in a week of hell trying to fix what the solution did to the computer.

Twenty years ago and some change, Jim Shooter had an idea of a story and had founding Avenger Hank Pym suffer a breakdown, slap his wife and betray the team. Today, the character still routinely suffers from that storyline, not the betrayal of the team so much as him slapping his wife. Writers were unable to just let it go and move past it and instead kept revisiting it, trying to explain it away or to further mire the character.

Just a year or two back, Black Canary punched Green Arrow during a spat. Barely anyone made a comment. Black Canary is a trained martial artist, one of DC's top fighters. And, she lost her temper enough with Green Arrow to punch him. Not slap him. Balled up fist and punch to the jaw. This month, she does so again, both in JLA AND Green Arrow/Black Canary with even less provocation than before. Neither story gives any solid reason why Black Canary should be angry enough to even slap Ollie much less haul off and punch his lights out. And in the latter we actually see some spittle of blood from the punch. Again, this passes by with little fanfare, little outrage. I'm cancelling both of these titles from my pull list. Not just because of these scenes. They're just indicative of the bad writing that has plagued the books.

I had high hopes with a new writer for Green Arrow as Winnick seemed to just be spinning his wheels, as if he really didn't know what to do with a married Green Arrow. The new writer sets out to create a few new villains. Good. However, he does so by having Black Canary be a loose cannon with her powers, injuring innocent bystanders. He also commits the sin of building up his Mary Sue villain Cupid at the expense of other characters. This character who couldn't even defend herself in an abusive relationship, has the resources and abilities to track down various bad-guys and KILL them and even go toe-to-toe with Black Canary? Lazy and bad writing. And, while Green Arrow doesn't have the most impressive gallery of villains, it's a complete waste of characters to just kill them off panel instead of trying to find ways to make them interesting.

JLA has been suffering for awhile. And, I tried to give McDuffie a chance. After all, he inherited a whole bunch of subplots from a previous writer who had no intention of following up on any of the mess he made and then obviously editorial making the book a vehicle for introducing various characters and storylines to be continued elsewhere. It has gotten so bad, that Hal Jordan (and Green Arrow agreeing) has decided to appear in a different JLA book under a different writer that is at least promising the team will be doing things. This too is probably editorially driven, but WE JUST HAD THE TEAM BREAK UP AND REFORM! It's too soon to just all of a sudden announce another break up, with another reforming of a new team with new team members. Instead of giving us a whiny issue reaffirming what a load of crap the book and the team basically has been since the relaunch, actually write a god-forsaken story where the team is doing something, facing a huge threat. Ultimately, the only reason why the book has been floundering is that the storytelling has been lacking. The two-parter with the Milestone characters made little to no sense, it did a poor job with setting up the characters and explaining who they were and how they fit in. Their inclusion into the JLA may have been an editorial decisision, but it doesn't mean that there couldn't have been a good story to do so. Even the worse JLA-JSA crossovers made more sense and at the very least, told a complete and coherent story (even if you suspected the writer eating some bad mushrooms). Instead of Black Canary whining about the loss of Superman and Wonder Woman, show her be a person of strength. Have her a) be understanding about the concerns and issues that have made a bunch of the team leave or b) basically fire them for being undependable and seeking members to replace. Even with the wholesale slaughter of secondary and tertiary characters of the DCU, there are still bound to be enough characters left to draw upon, especially with MILESTONE and MLJ being folded in. It's not as if the whole team left, she is left with a good core group consisting of Vixen, Dr. Light, John Stewart, Hawkgirl, Zatanna. And, it's only McDuffie's writing that insists on having Red Tornado unavailable. Go to teams past and recruit the original Hourman (who stays out of the picture mostly in the JSA anyway), Lionheart, Maya, Major Disaster (in his old costume please), Fire, Ice, Guy Gardner, Connor Hawke.

Flash: Rebirth. Dead at the starting line. Starting off with a graphic murder scene, Johns delivers a mopey and dark comic. He doesn't tell us why we should be excited that Barry is back. He shows us why the characters in the book are excited for his return but not why we as readers should care. If McDuffie used Hal Jordan as a mouthpiece to express just how lame the JLA book has been, Johns uses Barry Allen to show how depressing comics have gotten as he ruminates about his rogues and the villains and things that have happened since. Len Strazewski did something similar in his JSA series, where various characters had recognized how much darker and dangerous the heroes and villains had become since their day. The difference being that he had the heroes recognize this and choose to be something more, to show a better way. Barry Allen on the other hand chooses to be the wet blanket on everybody's parade. This is supposed to be interesting enough to make me want to come back to a second issue and read about this character? The only hopeful thing about the storyline, if Savatar was able to escape also from the Speed Force (and Bart elsewhere), can we hope that Johnny Quick and Max Mercury nee Quicksilver won't be too far behind?

I will give props to Van Sciver's art. It has dramatically improved. It is still as detailed as ever and a merger of the similar styles Perez, Bolland and Jimenez. His storytelling is better though, his setting the scenes and letting each panel tell its story without the detail obscuring the message. His figures are more dynamic and natural.

Recognize the dapper fellow to the right? That's Deadshot in his first appearance. The Secret Six misses a chance to acknowledge the character's past for the sake of the humor of Floyd Lawton not having enough social skills to even recognize a decent suit (he was going to wear a Johnny Thunder reject of a green plaid jacket). Whatever suaveness the character has had, he is now just a plain sociopath. As much as I like Gail Simone's writing, I realize that comics have gotten to the point (especially with my economy), that I just don't care enough about these characters to really continue. It's a funny and often insane book with creative characters and concepts and wild action. Yet, the characters are for the most part ones I don't really care to spend money and time with each month. It's a sad decision to have to reach for what is one of the best written and best drawn books out there. It's just not my cup of tea.

Similarly, I've decided to draw to a close with Guardians of the Galaxy. In this case though, it's because while I normally would like these characters fine, I just don't identify with any of them, they are all too greatly changed in both looks and demeanors from previous incarnations. I don't care for the structuring of the stories around the de-briefings. Once in a while would be fine, but it is proving to be the rule and not the exception. And, there seems to be an illusion of stories happening. What we've had was events and subplots progressing and unfolding, but the big storylines seem to have been hampered by them and the various little cross-over stories happening. By dropping it, I don't even have to pretend to care what's going on with the War of the Kings crossover-itis.

Interestingly, in Captain Britain and MI:13, the illogic of the vampire base on the lighted side of the moon is actually brought up (don't really recall what their answer was other than "magic"). Think they may read this blog? Nah, probably not. It's an otherwise well-crafted tale, really setting Dracula up as a master planner and threat with logical goals for an undead vampire living on the moon. A pity that Spitfire has to be made just a bit more pathetic of a character.

Looks like the Sci-Fi channel has decided to go the same route with the Phantom as they did Flash Gordon. With probably about as much success. Arbitrary changes to the character (new names for him and his love interest) and a costume that is similar to the original in only that it is purple. You can change everything (such as their Battlestar Galactica) but it's an uphill battle from there. You have to make sure that what you are producing is so good that the changes are accepted (such as hot Asian Grace Park in the role of Boomer instead of an overweight guy). Let's face it, the Batman movies succeeded and failed despite the suit. In fact, once the stories became noticeably bad, the jokes about the suit became more prominent. The recent Batman movies would have been just as good if not better with the more iconic suit. The internet video of Batman vs. the Predator actually shows that the suit DOES work and makes all the efforts of Hollywood second-guessing and showing they know better than the creators of the character just look completely ridiculous. Likewise, the problem with the Billy Zane Phantom movie wasn't the suit. Although the scenes of him with the mask showing that he clearly has black grease paint on underneath that seems to magically appear and disappear when he puts on and removes the mask was annoying for its stupdity. And the movie had a good cast of actors. The problem was a story that erred too much on being campy and over the top with a supernatural menace that came off more ludicrous than threatening. It's possible to treat subject matter in both a fun and respectful manner, that takes itself seriously without being too serious or pretentious. Look at The Rocketeer and The Iron Giant for examples. Or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Dynamite is doing something similar to Buck Rogers. Granted, Buck never really had a costume per se other than being associated with jet packs. And he's been away for awhile, so I can guess some upgrading can be forgiven. However, he also has the problem that now plagues DC's Legion of Superheroes. He's been "updated" several times now. This gets to be a problem when it starts diluting the concept of the character, that readers are never sure how much of the characters they know are actually "true." It's why for 40 years, most characters were invisibly rebooted, there were changes in the backstories but with readership changing and continuity not meaning then what it does now, people were never really aware that the Superman or Batman they were reading was substantially different than before. The Blondie strip today just doesn't make mention of the fact that Dagwood was rich and disinherited and that Blondie herself was a flapper in those pre-WWII days. Invisible reboot as opposed to a story that tells us a whole new backstory, that they no longer have any kids and are now newlyweds, etc. Invisible reboots are generally concerned with what was the status quo last month, and continue on from there as opposed to just chucking everything and starting over. However, in the 80's, thanks to the fallout from Crisis on Infinite Earths, the latter style of reboots became the norm. For every one that worked, there were multiples that didn't. And, once you started that precedence, it became the norm to just do a reboot with little to no provocation. And, because you could just reset things, then it was ok to deviate from the median as much as you wanted, because the odds are that a writer or editor after you wasn't going to like what you did and reset it anyway. However, as I noted, this weakens the characters and concepts. It's difficult to impossible to hold to the semblance that these characters are in any way "real", that they exist outside of their reality (which is ironically the whole point of why you have continuity).

Buck Rogers already has this problem as he's a multi-media property and has been re-translated a couple of times. There was the original pulp story, the comic strip (which had some steady evolution of styles ie invisible reboots over the years), the Gil Gerard series which completely recast the character, and then the selling of the character to TSR which resulted in a novel with a new origin by Martin Caidin alongside an updating of the character for paperbacks, comics and RPG's by TSR themselves. All I can say is that 1) I've been less than impressed with Dynamite overall as a publisher and their heavily decompressed storylines that seem to sap the sense of wonder and fun out of their characters for the sake of "realism" and 2) with all the changes of the character, it might be time to take the character a bit more back to his actual primal roots. Everybody knows the name, present the characters in a manner that befits that iconic nature. I'm not really clamoring for something nostalgic but classic, not something that looks merely like the flavor of the month. A big step, would be not re-inventing the wheel. Don't start from the very beginning; just give a brief synopsis of the character, the history and status quot and introduce the new/old threat (such as bringing back Killer Kane to bedevil him).

Some old fashioned Comic reviews

Haven't really talked about specific comics that I've been reading in a while, so...

The Faces of Evil at DC are a mixed bag in that it seems to have been left up to the various writers how to handle it. In the SECRET SIX, the cover spotlights Deadshot, and while the issue does focus on him a little bit in the beginning, the book really focuses on Bane if any single character. And, the story continues along organically as it would if there is no event whatsoever going on. If you use the cover to go by, you might be disappointed. The Vigilante cover features... the Vigilante. It doesn't even go for the effect of the villain's name overprinting the title. Whereas the JLA with Starbreaker is clearly focusing on the character and his "new" history and pretty much hijacks the title (though it does tie in to the ongoing storyline in the end).

The Amazing Spider-Girl #26: This book will be ending shortly as Spider-Girl will find a new home in the anthology Spider-man Family. Sad for me, as I have no interest in the other features of that book thus won't be picking it up. I can only hope that maybe her features will be collected.

The cover is very striking with a limited color scheme and painterly effects that don't overwhelm the fine lines. The story is nearing the end of what is a long plotline for this book. There are two Spider-Girls, one a clone the other not but which is which is unsure. The girl we've been following is just recently returned to her own body after Arana had hijacked it but she is still being aided mentally by a youngish Aunt May (who has long since died in this reality). Peter Parker has been taken over by the mind/spirit of Norman Osborn, while all of his and his daughter's friends and allies are trying to find him. Practically non-stop action and body-swapping all wonderfully rendered by Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema.

BPRD: The Black Goddess #1: On one hand, this is part of the larger ongoing plot as the world is going to heck and the BPRD are looking for Liz Sherman, mainly by trying to get some info on the Yellow Peril menace that kidnapped her and seems to have all the information. However, it is compellingly told by tying it in to the history of Lobster Johnson. One group is searching through his headquarters while another agent talks to the Lobster's last surviving aide. I love the bit as we see from Guy Davis' artwork that Lobster Johnson's headquarters has fallen into decay, metal is rusted and warped, debris and dust everywhere. Not just that, but it looks "real", leading to the comment by one of the BPRD team that they'd thought it would be "cooler looking". This has been one of the better monthly issues in a while that doesn't really leave you wishing you'd waited for the trade.

The Brave and the Bold #21: This has been an interesting storyline looking at an alien culture and we don't really see the Phantom Stranger much in sci-fi stories, especially on alien worlds though he works pretty well in that Doctor Who type way. The art team gives the book a wonderful painted look with a lush feel. However, part of the attraction of the B&B stories has long been the idea of single-issue stories and various team-ups. So, this story that seems to be a four parter with Green Lantern and Phantom Stranger teaming up, seems to be getting away from the point of the series, it could have been it's own mini. Waid had seemed to hit upon a good formula of being able to have smaller stories with different characters each month but tying into a larger storyarc. Another big flaw is the cover. While beautifully done, it tells you the team-up is between Green Lantern and Green Arrow. While GA is in the book, it isn't until near the end with him on Earth on a mission given by the Phantom Stranger.

Captain Britain and MI13 #9: The crew must fight their way out of a dream dimension. Various characters that I have no idea who they are and their abilities. Such as Pete Wisdom and Alistaire Stewart who seem to have magical abilities and knowledge when needed. Captain Midlands started out as a seemingly interesting low-budget Captain America for England riff, but ends up being a traitor and broken down old man, a scrawny one at that. Sadly, Blade seems to be there to stay despite his joining the team in order to kill one of them. The most interesting part of the whole story is the ending with Dracula on the moon and suggesting a team-up with Doctor Doom.

The Death-Defying 'Devil #2: This issue is a marked improvement in the Project: Superpowers books in that the story has a bit of pathos, a real reason for a hero-hero battle and the lurking menace of one of the biggest supervillains of the golden-age, the Claw. The Dragon is obviously one of the Little Wise Guys that hung around with Dare-devil in the past, only he has somehow been rejuvenated and given a costume and skills that are a reflection of Dare-Devil's. He thinks the returned hero is a fake usurping the hero's name and identity (as the returned heroes are framed by the government to be murderers and terrorists) and thus has set out to take him down. The 'Devil can't really set him straight because since his return he has been rendered mute. We also have the return of two other heroes that fought the Claw, Silver Streak who is as loquacious as 'Devil is quiet and the Ghost.

The art really doesn't seem to be up to par though, the work often looks more sketched than finished or solid and the colorist filling in big spaces with cool color blends further robs the book of vitality. The Silver Streak's original costumes were hardly iconic and had no silver (the name actually came from the race car he drove in his first appearance and referenced here), but this costume designed by Alex Ross is wretched. I don't know what the deal is with his fondness for the masks that go up the sides and back of the heads but leave the hair and most of the face visible are, but it is a terrible look. The artist does a better job with many of the quiet moments of the book and the appearance of the Ghost Plane.

One of the problems of this line has been the changing of the characters abilities and such with nary an explanation that establishes who and what the characters were before their time in the urn. Such as 'Devil's muteness. He gets another change this month, a healing ability that apparently includes his costume. Most of the changes, I have been aware of because I've read some of the original comics featuring all the characters that have so far been involved. Not so with the Ghost and if it continues in the same vein as the others, I will be at a loss to know where the original character ends and the Superpowers one begins. I know he fought the Claw and he had a plane and his look was somewhat similar to what we see here, but that's it.

The muteness of the lead character is also problematic. While the plot hinges on it, it prevents us from really getting to know the character at all. He ultimately has zero characterization, he's defined by how others react and refer to him. Even with Man-Thing and the Heap, we got hints at the tortured souls due to solid storytelling and narration. But, there's no narrative here, no thought balloons to direct us. There's no real reason to like this character as a character.

Green Arrow and Black Canary #16: Not one of Ladronn's better covers, it veers a little too much into Scott Kolins territory in style which doesn't really impress me much. The story and art are passable, but there's not really much meat to the story. While the cover is a "Faces of Evil" cover spotlighting Merlyn and he's the chief villain of the piece, he remains a cypher for most of the comic, just a paid assassin good with a bow and arrow. Some of the shots are outrageous, even for a comic. The shot through the bus is along the lines of the bus jumping the gap in the bridge in the movie Speed, enough to throw you out of the story. Neither story nor art sell it as a scene: why does he shoot through a moving bus when an easier shot is available? The angle is all wrong as he's ontop of a multi-storied building and is shooting at an extremely downward angle. And then on top of all that, the arrow is able to not only go through the body, but through a telephone pole as well. And, a word of advice, Arrow? Villains lie. Even if he tells you that you have no more arrows in your quiver, you might want to check as the art clearly shows there is one (and no mention as to what happened to the almost dozen that were in the quiver just on the previous page and he hadn't shot any more).

And, after the final battle and it's revealed who hired Merlyn and all, nothing is done with that. Did he run away during the battle to get apprehended by the cops? Who knows. Of course, the reason behind this is the whole story is NOT really about Merlyn or the theft of a green engine for autos and such. It's a set-up encounter and not really meant to mean much despite the cover playing Merlyn up. It's really about a girl that Arrow had saved in an earlier issue who has developed a fixation on him and is to become his Poison Ivy only she's called Poison Arrow and will be in the next issue. It's all about the readers seeing just how creepy she is and to set up for her big debut next issue. In a sense, Faces of Evil just occurred a month too early for the book.

Justice League of America #29: In this case, the Faces of Evil event does mean something. The cover is particularly effective in showing off the JLA villain of Starbreaker. Starbreaker is one of those cases where DC creates a villain similar to one at Marvel but the character comes off as being pretty hokey and deserving of ambiguity, in this case Starbreaker is their version of Galactus. He talks himself up a good deal in this comic and gives the reader his "new" back story with the League thanks to all the reboots and such. The writer is Len Wein who wrote a good many of the JLA tales back in the day and the art by Chris Cross is wonderfully old school dynamic. There are a few scenes that made me think of a couple of Silver-Age Neal Adams covers. The art does have a few problems. This takes place very early in JLA history apparently as it is Batman without the yellow oval. However, it's Green Arrow in his Neal Adams designed look which was quite some time after the "new look" for Batman. However, it's great seeing classic Aquaman treated seriously and looking impressive. And, lest readers are wondering exactly what happened to the ongoing storyline, the final page ties into the final page of the last issue, to show that this isn't a complete aberration.

Phantom Annual: A full blown team-up with Mandrake and he gets a slightly updated look, though I could do without the soul patch. But, at least he's not going into the jungles in full formal dress. The storyline is decent as Mandrake and Lothar start off investigating the murder of Lothar's cousin and get involved in a bigger plot of a criminal trying to find the location of a plant that can be made into a drug that will give him complete mind control over the subject. The story ultimately falls in the details. No effort is made to explain Mandrake or his abilities for anyone not at all familiar with the character. Like the artist in The Death Defying 'Devil, the artist here is mostly capable but at times doesn't really seem ready for the big leagues. In this case it's in his storytelling that renders various scenes and scene changes confusing. All in all, enjoyable if you're already a fan but nothing to really recommend it to others.

Solomon Kane #4: Wonderfully done cover by John Cassaday, moody and spooky. The sketchy artwork continues to work for this title, giving the comic a pulpy look over all, with a feeling for texture and a slightly flayed look of anatomy dummies. The biggest drawbacks continue to be the dried dead fish look of the skin-tones, especially Kane himself.

The Spirit #25: I'm looking forward to the creative change on this book. DC a month ago put out a comic with a few of Eisner's stories (even though at least one was originally written for a different character) but reading it and the regular monthly back to back illustrates where the book has gone wrong. Eisner had that cutesy way of naming his women that Kirby often had with characters, and his artwork and storytelling also had this kind of less than serious quality as well. But, it wasn't dated. He's a legend not because he did stuff in a nostalgic style but because he was cutting edge in his storytelling. His storytelling verged on satire and parody but it was also about life. His women were sexy, sultry and practically subversive. The Spirit was the equivalent of John McCain of DIE HARD only in a suit and mask. There should be this balance between the fairy tale of the character to the realness of crime and poverty, arbitrary nature of life and death.

In many ways, this book is more like a character DC already had access to and published off and on, Jack Cole's Midnight. Midnight WAS a parody and satire character of the masked man set. Midnight was all about poking fun at the juvenile nature of comics, he was the classic type to go into a bar and order milk and be gosh-wow earnest about it all despite the surreal nature of the rules of the world he operated in, that would make a talking monkey possible. Where the Spirit seemed to be trying to elevate the form, to write something that would on the surface seem juvenile but aimed at older readers, Midnight and Jack Cole was about taking the form to its extremes and bringing out the outrageous and ridiculous side of it.

So, the book looks good. I liked the cover and the suggestion of a villain and scene that unfortunately doesn't appear in the books. The insides are all well-done, an enjoyable all-ages type story. There are two artists which might explain the somewhat schizophrenic feel in the artwork or it could be just because of having to juggle some of the more caricaturistic styles of Dolan and the Spirit's lantern jaw with the depictions of the other characters. At times though the art seems to find its own pulpish style vs conforming to the pastiche style the book hews to.

Vigilante #2: It's great seeing Rick Leonardi doing a superhero comic again and Wolfman writing a character that he seems to naturally have an affinity for. I don't know anything about this incarnation of the character and the first two issues aren't really illuminating although this issue goes out of its way to say it's not Adrian Chase. Part of me just wishes Wolfman took advantage of all the reboots of the DCU and ignored all the issues after he left the character and just picked up where he left off. We have the current Vig going undercover as an inmate in a prison to uncover some information about the ordering of some bombings. Meanwhile, the Electrocutioner is on death row in this same prison and has been hired to take the man out. Great use of some minor league villains like Electrocutioner and Tobias Whale and yet making them capable and dangerous. Leonardi's artwork has bit of that John Romita Jr feel to it. He lacks JrJr's sense of weight and power and laying out a scene but there's more expression, atmosphere and detail. The insanity and evilness of the Electrocutioner when he survives his execution is palpable.

Golden-Age Heroes unite!

After many man-hours, I finally "finished" the heroes pages at my site detailing the various golden-age heroes (mostly from comics, but a few obscure ones from other sources popped up) that don't make up the Timely/National/Quality/Fawcett/MLJ publishing empires. I use "finished" in the loosest terms possible. It means, everyone I currently have notations on or came across while in the process of building the pages. And, there are quite a few bare-bones entries. And, while I got Copperage's permission to use the micros from his site as a way to illustrate the looks, there are quite a few he doesn't have examples of. There are other sources of micros of course, but they are an artform in and of themselves, I don't feel comfortable making use of other people's work without citation, and I really don't want to footnote where each one comes from.

I originally wasn't going to do a site for the heroes. Way back when, I was doing a little bit of fan-fic with public domain GA characters. There were so many though. I started compiling notes from reprints, the few GA books I had and what I could glean from some of the resource books such as Jeff Rovin's superhero encyclopedia, Ron Goulart's various history of comics, and the two volumes of Steranko's. I ended up with fifty pages of notes and realized I had in my hands a resource not available anywhere. I toyed with the idea of putting it up on the web but I knew nothing about web design. And, then one of those rare coincidences occurred that happens with comics. Jess Nevins put up his site focusing on GA characters within weeks, almost at the same time I decided to start actually teach myself Dreamweaver. And, he covered the non-public domain ones as well! I had some he didn't have, he had a few I didn't know about. And, judging by the wording on a couple, we obviously had some of the same resource materials as well.

I asked him if he was going to do one on the villains as well, as they were woefully under-covered and he expressed no interest in that project. I knew I had a bit of information on the villains as well contained within the bios of the heroes, it just meant going back over the same stories and materials as before but looking at them from a different angle. Thus, my site was born. Although in retrospect, I often regret choosing Cash Gorman as my yahoo email name and thus the name of my pages. Although, I could make the argument that enough time has passed with nary a peep from Street & Smith, that it constitutes trademark abandonment but those type of cases usually come down to who has the most money to drag it out.

Jess Nevins' own site is very nice. But, it doesn't contain publishing dates, something that I found very useful as I was also compiling a "History of the Universe" timeline and it helps keeping various characters straight. Because characters would move from one company to another, sometimes the name would change, sometimes not. Whole stories would be lifted, sometimes with completely new heroes and sometimes they'd just change the name of the character. He also limits the characters to how he defines the GA time-span. So, a few interesting characters don't show up. And as he has focused lately on getting paid for his research and putting it into book form, regular updates went by the wayside. Finally, I noticed a few other heroes sites, but they often contained some eroneous information because they just copied the information from a few other sites. Such as the popular misconception that the Red Blazer and Captain Red Blazer are the same character. The information I had originally, had practically doubled since I first put it all together.

So, with the renewal and interest in GA characters thanks to projects from the various companies, I thought it time to possibly put my notes and information out there. I tried to be as accurate as possible, though I still rely on some second-hand sources. I can only say, I tried to verify information by cross-checking from various sources, and double-checking my information when I came across original reprints.

The GCD is a great resource, but quite a bit of eroneous information does make it in there from name spellings to actual incorrect information. As much as I like AC's reprints, Bill Black makes a habit of deliberately changing names and such as well, so a lot of that information also has to be double checked for accuracy (Overstreet's price guide also deliberately puts in false information). Even the afore-mentioned superhero encyclopedia by Jeff Rovin has several errors. Nothing replaces the actual reading of the comics themselves. But, just because you read one story with a character doesn't mean that the info from another source is wrong. Because, they were not anal about continuity back then. Lance Hale is a good example. Depending on what story you read, he's a jungle hero, a science-fiction hero, a generic adventurer type. Dan Hastings was at three different companies at least and stayed superficially the same, but specifics changed with each company. Chesler meanwhile often recycled character names or just put out different versions such as Dynamic Boy. I can only claim that there is no deliberate misinformation, not that it is error free. I try to draw attention to places where confusion could arise such as the Red Blazer - Captain Red Blazer. And, I will continue to cross-reference and double-check as I can now get back to regularly reading "new" old comics.

Comics

Amazing Spider-girl #24: A classic style cover with the central action going on and the heads along the border watching and reacting. Although, it was usually DC that always did this. Things come to a head as May and her clone finally meet and various plots and subplots advance. Which is really which though remains to be seen and there's plenty of superhero action all along the way to balance things out. A few of today's top-notch writers really should be reading this book and pay attention to the way it does plotting and sub-plotting and balancing things out. Defalco may not be a master of realistic dialogue, but he's great at juggling multiple stories and keeping it all very dynamic and flowing

B.P.R.D.: The Warning #3: A wonderful moody cover by Mike Mignola. And the usual excellent Guy Davis artwork, it's a great example of choosing the right people for the job. Unfortunately, this series of mini-series has fallen into the continuity trap. Each story is basically a continuation of what went before, more hunting of frog-men and such. This storyline seems to be even drawing together a few other past stories to the point that the characters themselves make note of it not really making much sense. The giant robot things look cool but it would be nice to see them going somewhere quite a bit different than tying everything into one long convoluted story.


El Diablo #1: I got this because I like Phil Hester's art and I like trying new characters on occasion, especially if they are kept separate from the event driven comics. Another big part was the fact that just because this comic is called El Diablo, it in no way invalidates the fantastic though short-lived Gerard Jones/Mike Parobeck comic and character. Wouldn't mind it if he pops up (and he'd be a natural for the JSA) but I'm happy just knowing he's still alive out there these days.

Other than the great art, the rest of the comic is a bit "meh". As another reviewer noted, it's very derivative of Marvel's Ghost Rider in concept, from the original mystical Old West hero to a spirit of vengeance and even the visuals of the cover. Add to it that other than the actual mystery of wondering what exactly is going on, there's no reason to feel any sympathy for the lead character. He's basically an unrepentent bad-ass. When by the third chapter of the issue they try to paint him as being a bit more complex (he uses some of his blood money for charity), it falls flat as we have already seen him having no compunction to kill anyone and everyone in his way.

Green Arrow and Black Canary #12: I have to give Winick props in that he came up with a completely logical and believable reason for Shado to be involved and a natural explanation for the kidnapping of Plastic Man. As long as you don't look too closely. There's a lot of people involved in this plot as well as a whole lot of technology and resources. While a very good fighter and assassin, she's not Lex Luthor. And, while Sivana's very cool, you have that kind of money and you need a doctor, would you really want to go to him? He'd be up there for robots, super weapons and super armies (witness what he does here), but as an MD? There's still a lot of trust put in to the vampire that can tell when people are lying but fell for the hologram.

Plus, frankly for a book called "Green Arrow And Black Canary" there's really not much done with them. Come on, the storyline involves a newly married couple, they are tracking down one of the husband's illegitimate children and discover the person behind it all is the woman that slept with him while he was delirious and incapacitated just so he could father a child with her, and the wife doesn't react at all? Winick really seems to have just lost what the focus of the book should be, he doesn't really know how to write both characters.

I'm conflicted over the artist Mike Norton. On the plus side, his artwork is very clear and easy to read from panel to panel. He doesn't skimp on the relevant detail and good on the action. No problem telling the characters apart. Yet, it's all so antiseptic, too clean and perfect, too restrained with no real atmosphere or sense of texture. Like he's drawing a coloring book. An artist should love to draw this book in that it has a ninja, archers, one of the company's most sexy characters, plastic man, batman, a vampire, and a bunch of other super-types and masked henchmen. He's better at the basics than many that are working with more acclaim, but he needs a little more oomph to it. The vampire, Shado and Batman should look dangerous, Sivana should give a creepy older uncle feel, Plastic Man zany, etc.

The Secret Six #1: Almost note by note perfect by writer Gail Simone and artist Nicola Scott. great cover with a sense of actual graphic design sense to it with stylized elments and color cast to it. Gail manages to introduce a new villain and his chief lieutenants in a scene that is full of colorful and humorous dialogue but laced with an atmosphere of absolute terror and menace.

The story moves organically and flows naturally, introducing us to the various characters and within the scenes and dialogue, we understand what each character is about, what their status quo is: Ragdoll is zany Plasticman gone to seed, Deadpool is an unrepentent killer and cynic with a great sarcastic wit, Catman is conflicted, Scandal is mired in depression over her personal loss, Bane seems just simple muscle with simple outlooks (don't know what one reviewer's problem was not recognizing him without his mask, he's called by name in the very first scene he's in).

Nicola Scott's artwork is what Mike Norton's needs. It's very clear in its scenes and storytelling, every bit as detailed where it needs to be. But, there's atmosphere and texture. Seedy scenes and characters are seedy looking. The emotion on Scandal's hung-over depressed face is palpable. The use of color is also wonderfully done, setting proper moods. Like the cover, the limited color scheme when we are introduced to the bare room and crate that Junior calls an office helps build the feeling of isolation and menace. One feels the heat off the African veldt. The yellow flourescent lit convenience store. The meeting room lit and warmed by a fireplace. The darkness of Gotham City.

However, I said "almost" note by note perfect. The coloring/printing is a little too dark in places, a common ailment these days. Scott has a wonderful attention to detail, not as slavish as Weston in drawing each and every brick, but still very detailed artwork. So, the special effect that puts a flat plaid pattern on Junior's two henchmen is very, very jarring in how obvious it is a special effect applied to the artwork. This would work on someone whose artwork is heavily stylized like Miller, Mignola, or Wagner. However, it is out of place with someone whose artwork is more realistic and organic. It throws you out of the artwork and story because you see the hand of the artist more than you do the art.

The problem with the story is a very basic one, a very basic question that isn't addressed at all. Why? There's the backstory of how they came together, a bunch of rogues that didn't want to be part of the big army of the big crossover a couple years back. However, that doesn't address in the least as to why are they still together. Every organization has a purpose. Superheroes get together to fight criminals, protect the innocent with a few other little twists added to the concept: the FF are an extended family and explorers, the X-men are basically adopted family banding together to protect themselves and others like them, the original DP a mix of the two, the Teen Titans and Legion of Super Heroes are teenage clubhouses and banding of friends. Likewise your villainous groups have purposes as well that are easily understood. However, as shown by the dialogue between Catman and Deadpool, we have two characters with long term incompatible goals. Catman is struggling with the idea of reforming. Deadpool wants to kill people and mocks Catman's struggle. The threat that brought them together really no longer exists, so why are they part of this group, what does it offer them? The group itself should be like a corporation in that it too should be treated as an individual and character: what are its goals and reasons for being? Where does its position in the scheme of things?

And, why the Secret Six? What does that name actually mean? They are hardly "secret" and in this issue they aren't even "six". It's a waste of a great name. Like the Suicide Squad, they were for DC a non-powered group*. In this case, they had a secret leader blackmailing them and they solved undercover cases. It is a great concept and could still fly today. Look at the popularity of USA's Burn Notice, that is the type of thing that the title "Secret Six" works with. A "Mission Impossible" vibe. The old tv show, not the movies. Costumed characters aren't really about people trying to work in secret. Even Giffen's defunct Suicide Squad title fits in better as it swopped out characters and operatives based on the cases.

*The Secret Six and Suicide Squad actually predate DC. Both were actually names for teams in the pulps. There, the Secret Six were a bit like DC's take in that they were an eclectic mix of individuals that worked together to solve bizarre cases while the Suicide Squad were a trio of G-Men that took on extremely dangerous cases. Interestingly, the Secret Six go back even further to a real life group of businessmen that organized together to take down Al Capone and then even further back to the Civil War as a group of businessmen that funded abolitionist John Brown.

The Twelve #1/2: A reprinting sample of the original stories of several of the cast, specifically Fiery Mask, Mr. E. and Rockman. There's a whole lot more action than in all seven issues of the title so far and one can see how these characters are heroic, especially as they have had next to nothing to do during the storyline. The Mr. E here is full of potential and comes across as a cool character while he comes across as nothing special under JMS' modernistic realist story-telling. Nice painted front cover though the colors are too dark/dense unless they are all are supposed to have sunburn. The cover with the supercar is a nod to the Daring Mystery cover that purportedly features the Fiery Mask. Weston's is technically superior but there's more sense of movement and speed from the original. Not a fan of the greenish gold trim either. Realistically, that is the way it would actually look, especially when dealing with print. But, it's not really what our brains tell us is the color of gold and when you see it in print like that, it registers more as "green" while Fiery Mask's shirt is translated as being "gold". Some of the arts in the back pages, there's some great use of textures by Weston, especially in the center panel of the Black Widow page or the botom panel of Electro. But the rest suffer from just being a bit too overly rendered, as he shows every nook and cranny in the backgrounds with the same level of detail as the foregrounds while he Blue Blade looks dwarflike. Notice that with the painted cover, Weston doesn't make the mistake with the buildings in the background, and the effect works. The foreground stuff pops out, even in the b/w drawn version of the pic in the inside back cover. The Black Widow piece on the back looks gorgeous. A beautiful sexy femme fatale with the suggestion of something inexplicably evil.

The War that Time Forgot #5: More of the same as from the past issues. I'm loving the covers by various comic masters and this one is a great one in terms of design and impending action as the Viking Prince is about to take on a tyrannasaur as done by Walt Simonson. What's especially nice is that the covers do illustrate a scene from the book.

Some ole Comic reviews

Thoughts on comics from the last couple of weeks

The Amazing Spider-Girl #23: Have to give Tom DeFalco credit. His little corner of the Marvel universe allows him to play around with the company characters and concepts. He's been titling this arc as "Brand New May", playing off of the "Brand New Day" slogan for the new Spider-man status quos. Meanwhile, the story also wryly touches on an era and concepts that most Spider-fans wish to forget, clones. Like that saga, at the heart of the storyline is the question as to whether the character we've been following for years is the real deal or not. He juggles this against the backdrop of the soap-opera of May's school life, romantic intrigues, and the issues of bigotry and hate groups using the Marvel chestnut of mutants. Ron Frenz continues to deliver on easy to understand yet dynamic artwork. Special kudos also to Irene Lee who has a little fun in designing a re-cap page that perfectly fits in with the tone of the book and shows that even the most humdrum of things can be done with a little bit fun and whimsy.

There's an ad in the book, apparently tiring of zombies, Marvel is borrowing a page from Silver-age DC and going ape with MARVEL APES. Guess the promotion department isn't up on their zoology as their slogan is "with great power comes a prehensile tail". Hmmm. That would be monkeys, not apes. Different animals. The art gets it right though, none of the heroes-turned-ape have tails.

Avengers/Invaders #4: Captain America vs SHIELD's LMD's, the original Human Torch flips out, Namor has growing up to do, Toro's identified as a mutant and Bucky isn't having a good day while Doctor Strange conjures up a Vision from the past. Meanwhile, editorial hasn't seen fit yet to fix the problems with the coloring and too heavy inks (adjusting the penciled art too heavily for shooting from the pencils?). Even the Ross cover is a bit of an eyesore.

Captain Britain and MI:13 #4: A fun book that manages to be enjoyable enough to forgive its oversights and flaws. Like Avengers/Invaders, there are production issues. In this case, it's the fact that pages 1-3 of the story are actually pages 4-6. At least in the copy I got as well as the copy that the person got that posted the online previews as they had the same problem of not quite making sense. The Black Knight has a stone heart? If that were true, that would hardly be the only thing that didn't make sense about his body as Faiza was trying to mystically knit him back together. I had hoped that maybe with her powers, she'd remove his link to the curse as well (seems with everything else she could, healing a stone heart wouldn't be too difficult).

The emphasis on a no-kill clause and Captain Britain's forsaking the sword for someone who hasn't killed doesn't quite make sense after slaughtering all those skrulls and considering the sword Excalibur's own bloody history. Factor in you have another member a man who wears a sword and a half-vampire. I know the skrulls are a special case, it's a war after all, but there seems to be an odd dichotomy that's not really addressed.

Faiza's drawing Excalibur, I couldn't help but wonder about the female Captain Britain that Chuck Austen created. I thought she was a character with potential, it'd be good to see her again even if not as Captain Britain. Likewise Captain Britain's speech about the flag and all, where's ole Union Jack during all of this. He also has links to the Pendragon, a former love of Spitfire and ties to Britain's intelligence community.

The emphasis on Britain's link of magic still doesn't quite carry the weight it should. It raises questions about other areas of magic and other types of magic. Even though the skrulls are stopped here, what about the other places? By addressing this one front, it opens the door for others. And, just because they stopped the invaders here and rigged things to prevent other incursions, the war itself is hardly over, but this suggests that these guys aren't really worried about the rest of the world's problems. A problem by tying in the opening story to a mega-crossover event, it's hard to give a plausible ending in one book while the event is still going on. In for a dollar, in for a pound.

FX#6: Wayne Osborne brings his mini-series by John Byrne to a rocking conclusion as our hero, his not-his-girlfriend and the heroes of the team Front Line storm Olympus and face down monsters and the big villain in efforts to save the soul of his friend and the lives of kidnapped friends and family. Whew. For a first time writer, Wayne does a wonderful job telling an old-fashioned superhero story with likeable characters and manages to introduce us organically to his larger superhero universe, actually making it seem large and with a history and past that the hero FX is linked to. By playing with archetypes, he is able to make the new characters and guest-stars seem familiar enough that we don't need a lot of exposition to get us up to speed but different enough to intrigue us. In fact, if there is a flaw with this issue, I really want to see Home Front in their own series, see more villains. I'm just glad that at the end we see a return of the ghost-knight.

Green Arrow & Black Canary #10: Reports are that with issue 15 there will be a new writer on board. While I liked Winnick on Green Arrow, I think he did a fine job in helping emphasize Green Arrow as a superhero, I think he's a bit tired on the book. Since the relaunch, he never seemed to really grasp Black Canary and the book has become more of a team book, especially in the recent issues, completely losing the focus on the leads. This particular story has been especially drawn out. This issue is mostly exposition, tying the past issues together. Or at least trying to, the kidnapping of Plastic Man makes no sense with what is revealed, this group of would-be assassins are fleshed out but still coming off inept. One character is revealed as a vampire but isn't the least bit scary or have any of the trappings that would make him memorable. It seems tacked on, to give an easy explanation as to why he can tell that the hologram of Ra's al-Ghul is telling them the truth in that he didn't hire them or meet them. However, if he is so good at reading people, how did he fall for the sham-Ra's al-Ghul then? Winnick sets up a big job for himself in explaining he mystery villain's motivation after the big reveal at the end.

The Last Defenders #6: The book ends where it should have started or at least been around issue #2 or 3. If this storyline had been part of an ongoing, it might have worked, but for the most part, it just feels like a "why bother?" To completely deconstruct the team, take Kyle Richmond out of the costume only to put together a new team at the very end? And, anyone reading comics for any length of time can bet how long that will last. If a writer or the company doesn't have concrete plans for a new character or group, they fade away as soon as the mini or series is done. Just as Casey felt like he had to create his own team and completely discard the previous members, what makes him think this will have more lasting power? Especially as he didn't do anything with them as a team or even really make them work together beyond cosmic fiat that is basically a fictional stand-in for "because I'm the writer and I said so". Thus, Krang is a better choice than Namor, Joaquim is a better Nighthawk than Kyle (conveniently ignoring that Kyle has powers and was created to be able to go toe-to-toe with Captain America). For five issues we've seen Kyle being torn down as a character, a complete putz who cannot get his act together, that the conversion in the final issue is as unconvincing as the rest. A waste of some good characters and opportunities.

Star Trek/Assignment: Earth #4: John Byrne's artwork is top notch in this series. Wonderful attention to detail, especially in portraying period detail. And each issue has been a complete story. The only short-comings really have been the lead characters still come across as cyphers. Beyond his job, we don't really know anything about Gary Seven. He comes across almost as unemotional as Spock, totally dedicated to his mission but with less of a sense of humor.

Superpowers #5: Some great superhero action. The painted coloring has improved, giving the proper mood though still too dark at times. Especially odd is a scene of Pyroman flying on page 3 where the bottom half of his body is missing. But, that's a minor quibble. Krueger steps up the story and the problems for the heroes as Dynamic Man manages to maneuver the situation that paints them as turning bad. And, at least Kruegar has seen fit to leave Hydroman, the Flame and Pyroman largely intact as their GA selves despite Pyroman's misleading moniker. Even Ross didn't feel a need to heavily re-design them.

The Target and the Targeteers aren't so lucky. The three are linked, talking and acting as one. It's an interesting gimmick, but the characters already had an interesting gimmick. They were part of a small sub-set of GA heroes, where (usually 3) men put on similar costumes and fight crimes. They had the added wrinkle that the leader of the trio was a pseudo Doc Savage in that he better at many things overall than the others as well as being a scientific genius and designed the bullet-proof costumes they wore (hence the large targets on their chest).

Turns out it was V-Man who got the abilities to transmit some kind of disease and not Miss Masque, playing on Poe's "Masque of the Red Death". It's hard to find a more obscure patriotic hero than V-Man and an odd story-direction for the character with a cast of so many characters and many we haven't seen yet. Considering that the Face cannot take off his fright mask and seems to have some powers, the 'Devil is now mute, maybe Krueger has a problem with non-powered heroes and feels the need to change them to give them each his own defining characteristic?

A nice look at the giants of Superpowers: the Green Giant (notably, his name ISN'T changed), Phantasmo, Boy King's golem Giant (with the normal sized Boy King standing on his foot) and the villainous Claw.

The Twelve #7: The plot moves forward. The police investigate the killings of the last issue coming after the most likely suspect, Dynamic Man. And, he has an iron-clad alibi as I already figured it would play out. He was conspicuously hanging out at the mansion right by a clock showing the time. As a mystery, it's fairly obvious that he's using Electro. Being an android, Dynamic Man is probably aware of the surveillance the team is under thus setting his alibi and is able to control Electro without the use of any devices. Although it could reasonably play out that he's unaware he has the link with Electro and the robot is carrying out his sub-conscious wishes. Being the obvious choice, it's always possible that it's someone else, but JMS would have his work cut out to make it plausible other than a deliberate and complex frame job. Because for that to work, the police have to be aware that Dynamic Man is an android and could control Electro, that his alibi is not sound. In that sense, JMS really could be going after a Watchmen vibe as each hero is undone. Electro is hauled off by a descendant of its owner, Laughing Mask is sent to prison (maybe not a coincidence the police still had that old evidence), the Phantom Reporter is about to find out the Black Widow's dark secrets that could have dire results for one of them. Then, the arrows would point to Mastermind Excello, as it still hasn't been addressed how they happened to walk conveniently into a Nazi trap that he didn't foresee that would put them in suspended animation into the future.

Otherwise, the story is more of the same as Captain Wonder is visited by his old sidekick, emphasis on old. And, it's yet another sad story. This is JMS being literary and realistic as the emphasis in storytelling is all on character flaws and the negative aspects of life. Yes, you live long enough and life will deliver pain, heartbreak and loss. But, life has joy, fun and beauty as well for most of us. There's none of that here. Those that seem to get any kind of joy or fun out of life in this storyline, it's either a bit delusional (the Blue Blade), or the kind a bully gets from beating up his favorite wimp (Dynamic Man, Laughing Mask).

Meanwhile, Laughing Mask, the Witness, and Mister E are completely absent from the issue and the Fiery Mask is barely there.

And, this is the writer Dan Didio thinks is perfect for reintroducing the MLJ characters to the DCU?

The War That Time Forgot #4: I love Russ Heath's artwork and it's a beautiful dinosaur cover. Yet, looking at it, it looks more like "The Love That Time Forgot". At least it does accurately illustrate a scene in the book. The book continues along with shifting status quos and alliances as people from such different backgrounds time periods are unable to work with each other for any length of time. Jones continues giving most of the face time to his Mary Sue characters when Tomahawk or the others could just as easily been used. Still a fun book if you're tired of Final Crisis/Secret Invasion stuff.