The Rise of Magog

Justice Society of America #18

Well, he’s right there on the cover, isn’t he, so it’s not like this is a big spoiler — Magog, from the “Kingdom Come” series, has his big origin in this issue. Who is he? That’s a spoiler for a bit further down in this paragraph, so be warned, a’ight? Anyway, Gog has discovered that humans make war on each other, and he’s not happy about that at all. The JSA try to disarm the bad guys and keep them from taking hostages or killing anyone else, but Gog takes the villains out of the picture without killing them — he turns them into trees. Of course, that pretty much kills their consciousness and minds, so there’s not much difference, is there? Elsewhere, Citizen Steel is desperate to get his Gog-granted cure, Damage is enjoying his newly-repaired face, Hawkman is bloodthirstier than normal, and Power Girl is trying to find some allies in the weirdly hostile Earth-2. Oh, and David Reid, FDR’s grandson, gets hit with a rocket shell and killed. But with Gog around, that’s hardly likely to be permanent — and Gog likes improving people, too, maybe with a few cyber-enhancements and metal horns…

Verdict: I’m gonna thumbs-down it. This is getting stretched out more and more and more, and it’s way past time to start wrapping this up. I’m also not thrilled with taking a perfectly good character like David Reid and revamping him into the Kingdom Come Magog.

Fantastic Four: True Story #2

The Fantastic Four manage to save Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret, from Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” from hordes of demons, but the team learns that, here in the world of fiction, their own imaginations can alter the characters — Johnny accidentally starts Marianne talking in computer-jargon l33t-speak — and the fictional characters’ imaginations can alter them, too! Ben Grimm manages to save everyone, but the Dashwoods start re-imagining him as a heroic soldier of their own time period. So the FF, realizing they need some more allies, go visiting “Ivanhoe,” “Kubla Khan,” “Last of the Mohicans,” and “Frankenstein.” But the demons have other stories they can dig through, too, looking for their own villainous allies…

Verdict: Thumbs up. A bit confusing here and there, but I’m enjoying the ride so far.