The Attack of Evil Lincoln!

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1

It’s the day after the Umbrella Academy defeated the White Violin and the Orchestra Verdammten. The Seance is still an acclaimed hero, The Rumor is still unable to speak, the White Violin is still paralyzed with no memory of what happened, and Professor Pogo is still dead. The Rumor takes her ultimately futile revenge on her brain-damaged sister by making her watch news video of the chaos her attacks caused. Spaceboy is enjoying a little reality TV. The Kraken is back to beating the snot out of criminals. Number Five is losing money at the dogtrack and getting attacked by — and slaughtering — legions of goons from the future. But do any of them stand a chance against… Hazel and Cha-Cha?

Verdict: Thumbs up. More great stuff from Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. Perhaps the most fun thing about this issue is the flashback to the Academy’s childhood, when they fought the mystically animated statue of Abraham Lincoln from the Lincoln Memorial. The Rumor’s method of dispatching the evil presidential statue is exceedingly cool.

Blue Beetle #33

The Teen Titans are helping Blue Beetle and Peacemaker watch over a “Day Without Immigrants” protest in El Paso. Emotions are high — and for some reason, that’s when a bunch of Dr. Polaris’ magnetically-powered goons show up to attack all the protestors. Once everyone realizes this is just a diversion to distract everyone from Dr. Polaris’ real scheme at White Sands, how is Jaime, with his established weakness to magnetic fields, going to handle the magnetic villain all by himself?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I found myself wanting to dislike this, but there’s just too much good stuff. Peacemaker worrying that he hangs around too many kids, Kid Devil enthusing over breakfast tacos, more great patter from Paco and Brenda (and namedropping Hellboy, too!), Wonder Girl getting off an unusual number of good one-liners, and Jaime once again using science to defeat bad guys.

Wonder Woman #26

The Greek gods return to Olympus to find that it’s been creatively defiled by Darkseid’s New Gods. Elsewhere, Diana Prince and her team of agents from the DMA respond to an emergency call at a shopping mall to find a lot of destruction and a lot of dead or dying civilians. When Wonder Woman investigates, she finds something calling itself Genocide, something that appears to be a god, and it effortlessly beats the snot out of her.

Verdict: Ehh, not sure yet. Wondy getting her butt kicked is rare enough in this comic — are they going to come up with something good to go along with it, or is this just another cheesy tie-in with “Final Crisis”?