The Movement #5

The wealthy plutocrats of Coral City are upset that the Movement has been as powerful as it has been — and that it’s inspiring similar uprisings of the underclasses all over the world. Now they intend to hire superpowered mercenaries to restore their preferred social order. Meanwhile, Virtue meets with Captain Meers — he tries to talk her out of holding a televised trial for Officers Whitt and Pena on the charges of being dirty cops. But the trial goes on — Katharsis is in charge of the prosecution, Tremor for the defense, and Vengeance Moth presiding as the judge. Mouse goes after the Cornea Killer, Whitt and Pena discover that Vengeance Moth has powers of her own, and one member of the Movement decides things have gone too far.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots and lots of things going on. There are plenty of comics with only a small number of events going on, and they still feel like they’re plodding. This one had a lot of stuff happening, and nothing felt rushed, and everything felt exciting and fun. This is probably the best issue of this title so far.

Lazarus #4

Forever Carlyle and Joacquim Morray, the almost unkillable Lazaruses of their rival families, have been ambushed by Forever’s renegade siblings. A Carlyle family hit squad prepares to execute them, but a Lazarus is very good at surviving and killing. Once the hit squad has been dealt with, it’s time to track down who the family traitor is — but the Carlyles are almost as good at treachery and intrigue as Forever is at killing people…

Verdict: Thumbs up. All around excellent storytelling — and don’t neglect to read the future timeline in the back of the comic. It has a lot of interesting details about how this world turned out the way it did.

Today’s Cool Links:

• BLOG NOTICE: We’re having an unusually large amount of spam comments clogging the spam filter. So I’m gonna try to institute comment registration. Yeah, this is gonna be a bit trouble, and there may be some bumps. Hopefully, things will go fairly smoothly. If we have too much trouble, I may just go back to the old way, but I’d love to be able to frustrate a bunch of spammers…
• An 18-part crossover? Eighteen parts? DC Comics can go hang.
• Here’s a heart-breaking zombie tale for you.
• There’s politics, and then there’s coup attempts. One is how the world operates. The other requires serious, serious punishments.

Atomic Robo and the Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur #2

Atomic Robo and a small team of his Action Scientists are trapped deep underground, captured by the diabolical and loony Dr. Dinosaur, utilizing his beloved crystals to enslave an assortment of rock monsters. Dr. D plans to dump them all into a lava pit, just for the sake of being a crazy dinosaur, then blow up a giant nuclear weapon that he believes will dial time backwards to the age of the dinosaurs. But Robo manages to bluff him into thinking he’s stolen a vital component of his bomb, allowing the Action Scientists to make an escape, no matter how brief. Meanwhile, Majestic-12 is planning on shutting down Tesladyne permanently.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It should be enough for me to say “It’s Atomic Robo and Dr. Dinosaur,” but too many of you lunatics aren’t reading this. So basically, it’s hilariously written, there’s fantastic art, great action and dialogue and characterization, intrigue, suspense, cleverness… and it’s got Atomic Robo and Dr. Dinosaur running around the Hollow Earth. If you’re still not reading this brilliant series, you probably only read crap from Rob Liefeld and Greg Land.

The Movement #4

The cops of Coral City are getting ready to execute Katharsis, and the Movement and their allies invade the police department to get her back. And better than that, we finally learn more about the backstories of most of our main characters.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This book has had trouble finding its legs, but it definitely helps to learn more about who our heroes are and what makes them interesting. It’s too bad we had to wait four issues for this, but getting this out of the way is a good way for the comic to start becoming more interesting.

Today’s Cool Links:

• DC Comics is run by stupid people if they think they can survive by blowing off great artists because they won’t write for the Dumb White Manchild market.
• And the rot has reached a lot of prominent creators, who all seem to be afraid of writing for anyone but the Dumb White Manchild market.
• And the comic creators who aren’t complete cowards seem to be asshole sociopaths.
• Things in the comics biz have definitely gotten bad when you compare them to psycho clowns — and realize you’ve insulted the clowns.

Batman Inc. #12

It’s pretty much fightin’ from beginning to end! Batman vs. the Heretic! Bats vs. Man-Bats! Nightwing and Red Robin learn that the people who kidnapped Jason Todd are actually on their side! But who is their mysterious leader? Nightwing and the Knight vs. the Heretic! Talia vs. the Heretic! Also Batman vs. the Heretic! It’s pretty much everyone beating up on the Heretic for 20+ pages!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, it’s fighting all the way through, but it’s quite excellent fighting. There are still revelations we learn, and mysteries to be solved. And holy cheese, Chris Burnham’s artwork is just crazy-pretty.

The Movement #3

Katharsis tries to take down the police all by herself, and it does not turn out well for her. The rest of the team focus on fighting Rainmaker, and it mostly doesn’t go real well for them either. The cops who’d been “arrested” by the Movement try to get back at their captors, and the rest of the cops make plans to take down everyone else in town. And we may have learned who the serial killer is who’s been plaguing the city.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The action is quite good, and the characterization is improving. Of course, most of the characterization we’re getting are for Katharsis, who is unlikable, and Virtue, who is kinda not real interesting as a person. Mouse and Burden are still cyphers. I’d love to find out more about Tremor and Vengeance Moth — they seem to be the folks who most need some screen time.

Empowered: Animal Style

Empowered has taken a part-time job working overnight security for the 20th Annual International/Interchronal Alternate Timeline Superhero Auto Show. And as is typical for her rotten luck, it gets invaded for the first time ever by car thieves. In fact, it’s a team of villains wearing animal-themed powered armor who call themselves Animal Style. Emp is entirely outnumbered, so she’ll have to use her best superpower — brains. Will that be enough to let her save the day and avoid getting tied up again? Knowing Emp’s luck… probably not.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Extremely funny stuff all the way through — I can’t get enough of Terrorpin’s battle cry, and the glimpses we get of the alternate reality cars are just brilliant, especially Juicetice and Kato’s infamous White Superbronco and the Egyptian-styled car designed by Ed “Big Daddy” Thoth. And it’s also really cool to see Emp kick so much ass — it’s usually pretty rare, even in the full-length collections.

The Movement #2

The members of the Movement have taken some of the more corrupt officers of the Coral City Police Department into custody, which is leading to some concerns that they’re treading down the same path as the authoritarian police. And there are plenty of other conflicts tearing at the group. Mouse and Burden are thoroughly insane — Mouse swings from abject sorrow every time one of his rats dies to almost immediately wanting to eat the bodies raw, while Burden keeps flipping from emotionally abused religious fanatic to demonic hellmonster, almost at random. And all Katharsis ever wants to do is fight and kill the group’s enemies. So while Katharsis goes off on her own to fight the cops and their wealthy paymaster, the rest of the team sets out on the trail of the so-called Cornea Killer, which sets them up against the ominously-named Weather Witch.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Much better than the first issue, as we’re finally getting some clue about the Movement’s personalities. The action is quite good, too, and the interpersonal conflicts are excellently drawn. Having said that, I am a little curious how it’s going to work with two team members so thoroughly broken mentally. And I’m afraid I did let out an exasperated groan when we learned the true identity of the Weather Witch…

The Movement #1

The new high-profile book from Gail Simone looks to contrast a band of 99-percenter “people’s heroes” with Art Baltazar and Franco’s upcoming “Green Team” of superhero billionaires. So what do we have here?

Our setting is Coral City, a run-down hellhole of a city with a deeply corrupt police force and a serial killer problem. We meet the kids who are our heroes: the emotion telepath Virtue, demon-possessed Burden, winged warrior Katharsis (who previously appeared as a villain in Simone’s “Batgirl” comics), earthquake-inducing Tremor, and rodent-controlling Mouse.

Verdict: Ehh, I dunno yet. It’s not particularly bad. And it’s a first issue, where we’re introducing a bunch of mostly new characters. So that doesn’t give us a lot of time for characterization. Having said that — I sure wouldn’t want to have to write these guys. Most of them come across as deeply unpleasant people with powers that are either cartoonishly useless or much more useful for your average supervillain. I’ll be more than willing to give this a few issues to win me over — I’m sure the next few issues will have a great deal more characterization, for one thing — but I sure hope it gets more appealing quickly.

The Hypernaturals #11

With “Sublime-Lite” preparing to fire the Nephilim Fragment into the Network — an act that could potentially destroy the Quantinuum supercomputer and devastate the galaxy — the Hypernaturals embark on desperate plans to stop the looming disaster. Will the team manage to defeat the Hyper-Bads guarding the Sublime copy? Will they be able to prevent the Nephilim bullet from being fired? Will they be able to defend the Quantinuum AI? Or should they let it die?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great action, drama, suspense, revelations, surprises. This is entirely grand fun. I’m hearing that next issue may be the last for the series — I have my fingers crossed that it’ll continue.

Ame-Comi Girls #3

We meet the Ame-Comi version of Green Lantern — a blind Chinese girl named Jade Yifei who receives her power ring while climbing a mountain and being attacked by a supervillain called the Flying Guillotine. Elsewhere, Wonder Woman, Power Girl, and Steve Trevor announce that a Justice League will be formed in Themyscira, the Chinese government plots to get its hand on Jade’s ring, Carol Ferris get a purple power ring of her own and quickly gets into a conflict with Power Girl when she mind-controls Jimmy Olsen into falling in love with her.

Verdict: I’m going to thumbs this one down. Some parts of it are interesting — Jade’s character-shift into a blind Chinese daredevil, the more musical nature of the Green Lantern ring, Carol Ferris as an astronaut — but the anime-style art is getting more and more wearying. And the bit at the end where Power Girl, Star Sapphire, and every other woman in Metropolis is in love with Jimmy Olsen? That completely broke my brain, man.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Wil Wheaton has a message for all the nerdfamilies.
• City of Heroes, the best dang superhero MMO ever, is no more. But the people who loved the game have been inspired to create new games to replace it.
• The new Superman is ONE OF US.

And One More Thing:

• Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. Go get some free comic books, people!