Academy Awards

GothamAcademy1

Gotham Academy #1

Holy cow, a new DC series that’s teen-girl-friendly? Stuff like that happens mighty rarely.

Our setting is, natch, Gotham Academy, a high-class prep school operating out of a building that looks like Arkham Asylum. Our lead characters are Olive Silverlock, a silver-haired second-year student with an anti-authority attitude, and Maps Mizoguchi, an incredibly innocent first-year student who Olive has been assigned to as a mentor to get her accustomed to the school. There follows a great deal of teenaged angst — until Olive decides to take Maps on a tour of the strictly-forbidden North Hall, just before the evening’s school assembly, featuring a speech by school benefactor Bruce Wayne. Unfortunately, the North Hall and its tower are “structurally unsound” — and it’s a long way to the ground for a couple of teenagers.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I didn’t love it as much as some folks did, but it’s a nice story, it’s got excellent characters, and it’s got great art. If they work it right, it’s got promise of becoming something transcendental — something that’ll become one of those sleeper hits no one really expects, that comic fans, non-comic fans, and future comics creators will talk about in reverent tones. But it’s got to do a bit more work to get there. For now, it’s a very fine debut comic, and it’ll be fun to see where it goes from here.

TinyTitans-Return5

Tiny Titans: Return to the Treehouse #5

The Titans travel to Paradise Island to find a new treehouse, but the boys aren’t allowed to touch the ground, so they have to wear pink slippers. Cheetah decides to hide Wonder Woman’s invisible jet by painting it camouflage colors… which works perfectly! Meanwhile, back at Sidekick City Elementary, Trigon has decided to hold a practice run of the demonic takeover he plans for the Earth once Raven has her 18th birthday. And there’s a discussion of the many different kinds of alternate earths there are…

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s as cute and funny as we always expect the Tiny Titans to be, but I’ll admit my favorite bit is everyone’s complete inability to see the invisible jet once it’s actually visible.

SilverSurfer6

Silver Surfer #6

The Surfer and Dawn Greenwood are leaving Earth — well, they’re leaving Earth slowly, because Dawn needs to eat, then she needs to go to the bathroom, then she needs to eat again, then she needs her tonsils out, and because she’s gotten her tonsils out, she demands ice cream — the greatest ice cream in the universe! That leads them to Planet Prime, a planet even the Surfer has never visited before. All the people there strive to be the most perfect at whatever their job is. So there’s one perfect architect who designs all the buildings, one perfect builder who builds all the buildings, one perfect painter who paints all the buildings — and one perfect warrior to defend the planet from cosmic-powered aliens. Can even the Silver Surfer defeat Warrior One?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Really nice art, as always, and a fun story. It probably hits its peak early on, with the Surfer’s growing frustration with Dawn’s human limitations, but the rest of the story, though contrived, is nicely done.

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