Archie Sunday: Betty and Veronica get Hosed

I know that I said I was going to write about the Norm Breyfogle-drawn story in this week's Archie Double Digest #200, but honestly I have nothing interesting to say about it after reading it. Unlike the other "New Look" Archie comics, it wasn't embarassingly shitty, but it also wasn't awesome. Once I got past the fact that Breyfogle, who drew many of my favourite 1980s issues of Batman and Detective Comics, drew this story, it was really just a pretty ok Archie story with unusual art. I have nothing entertaining to say about it.

So instead I am going to post this panel, also in Archie's Double Digest #200, of Betty and Veronica spraying each other with hoses. So don't say I never did anything for you, Chris Sims.

Back Issue Roulette: Wonder Woman No. 248

Well, I may be older but I am certainly no wiser. This week contained exactly zero post-related thought on my behalf, so today I wandered down to my friendly neighborhood comic shoppe and rifled through the back issues until I found the most interesting-looking one I could, so that I could glean wisdom from it. The winner:

Wonder Woman No. 248, "Crypt of the Dark Commander!" How, I ask you, could I resist the sight of a member of the US Armed Forces siccing a giant barbarian zombie on everyone's favourite princess? Plus! Battling Amazons!

Understand that I took a lot of this from context, but as far as I can tell Steve Trevor has died and then been brought back to life by Aphrodite. In a brilliant bit of subterfuge, Steve and Wonder Woman dyed his hair black, changed his name to Steve Trevor Howard and gotten him a job at the UN in the... let me check to make sure... yes, the security department.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Steve has been picked up by some intelligence types from the Army, who want to know just what his deal is. They take him to a top-secret base below a car wash and subject him to the most advanced of interrogation techniques:

Yes kids, the secret is to shout "WHO? WHERE? WHO? WHERE?" at them for four or five hours. But by all means: mix it up a bit if you want to know a "why" or "how" question.

In any case, this is all fairly reasonable: a man you think is dead, working at the UN with a cheap dye job? That spells "International Incident Waiting to Happen" six ways to Sunday! Military Authority Figure is merely looking out for the security of the US and the world at large, right? So he had to pick him up!

I know what you're thinking. Consider, though, that just because a man has a crazy giant skeleton warrior that he apparently worships squirreled away under his secret military base doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't love his country. It could just be a hobby, or a coincidence. He works toward national security from 9-5 and then tinkers away in his crypt until bedtime. You have to keep busy, after all.

Once more I am disappointed by a comic book character.

All I'll say about this scheme is that I know plenty of military types and not one of them would get excited by the thought of perpetual war. You want to get the Lieutenant on your side, buddy? Promise him perpetual, glorious beer. And barbeque.

Anyway, the Major manages to hook Steve up to a machine that transfers his not-being-dead energies into the Dark Commander - who at some point led demons in constant battle somewhere in the vicinity of prehistoric New York, remember - and the big guy comes back to life!

It was a low trick, what the Major done, but I guess I can understand his excitement - it's always a thrill when a big project comes together. Resurrecting an ancient embodiment of evil combat must have really put the fizz in his whiskers.

But of course nothing ever goes according to plan: the glue melts on your matchstick Eiffel Tower or the ant colony springs a leak or the tropical fish you were going to breed turn out to be gay... in the Major's case he just didn't consider that a demon with a sword might just go ahead and stab him. In all fairness: he was an idiot.

Never fear, though, as Wonder Woman soon shows up and wrecks the Dark Commander. Sadly, Steve Trevor Howard dies a second time as a result of the whole ordeal. We are left with this oddly dichotomous final panel:

I mean, isn't that little yellow box incongruously cheerful? It reads like Wonder Woman maybe took five minutes to grieve, then slung Steve into a dumpster and went out for ice cream and some time with the Sinister Seeker of Secrets (I looked ahead and it's crazy. Maybe I bought the wrong issue...)

BONUS: Just in case you were wondering, the Battling Amazons promised on the cover are from a series of tales about the history of WW's people and their voyage to Themiscyra, kind of like the backups in old Thor comics about what the Norse gods got up to back in the day. It's, well...

Well, I'd have to say that it's pretty T&A-riffic. I have no clue how fun or interesting the rest of this backup was, but one thing's for sure and that's that this installment contains what is hands down the best giant talking spider ever:

That's right, it's a super-depressed talking spider! It lives in a strange void between the worlds, spinning webs to capture its prey and have a good chat with them. This is possibly the most horrific thing I have ever read of - it's still going to eat you but first you have to listen to it tell you about how lonely is is and how it wishes that it had gone to business school while it could still get in on a football scholarship... Pure terror.

I'll leave you with a few final words from the spider, after having its head set on fire during a daring rescue. Good evening, folks.

This Week's Haul: Wednesday Comics Forever!

Wednesday Comics #1

This is one of the most creative and ingenious ideas DC has had since their short-lived Solo series (which, by the way, should be collected in trade format please). You take a bunch of the coolest comic creators and pair them up with a bunch of DC's coolest characters (many of which are underused usually) and print it in an awkward-yet-fun-to-read giant newspaper format. I am having a hard time choosing my favourite strip, but the Superman one was absolutely beautiful to look at, and probably had the best cliffhanger.

Amanda Conner obviously draws an awesome-looking Supergirl (and Super-pets!). I also really liked the Catwoman and Demon comic because it's nice to see Selina Kyle being Selina Kyle again. Man I miss that Catwoman series.

Green Lantern #43

I'll say this: Doug Mahnke was the perfect artist choice for this issue. If you need something gross and scary drawn, call up Doug Mahnke. We get a background story for the Black Lantern, who will be playing the part of our villain in the upcoming Blackest Night summer blockbuster event. We're gonna see a bunch of dead DC characters (heroes and villains) rise from the dead, and this issue gave us a refresher on who those characters might be. Dr Light might live to rape again!

I hope I won't have to see some sort of evil zombie Johnathan Kent. That would be terrible.

Uncanny X-Men First Class #1

This is the first issue of a new series that continues Jeff Parker's X-Men First Class series. This time it's written by Scott Gray. Where the first series was about the very first X-Men team, this series is about the dawn of the Uncanny X-Men era, with the expanded line-up of Cyclops, Wolverine, Banshee, Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus. I really like this idea for a series because it serves as an updated introduction to this era of X-Men for new/young readers. It's all-ages appropriate, and the stories are fairly simple and funny. The characters are introduced and explained in very clear ways without being boring (I was impressed with the introduction of the Inhumans in this issue). Roger Cruz, who drew most of the issues of X-Men First Class, is the artist on this series as well, so that helps tie it all together.

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36

In this issue Peter Parker goes to Boston for Aunt May's engagement dinner. He gets to meet May's extended family and immediately gets the hots for his female cousins.

Really?

I like to think that Peter Parker would be more happy for his aunt being reunited with her estranged family than being all "Hot cousins! Boiiiiing!" The joke goes on for pages. It's disappointing.

The rest of this comic is ok. That's the best I can do.

Superman: World of New Krypton #5

I know that I am not stupid, or inexperienced at reading comics, so I am not embarrassed to say this: did anyone else have a hard time reading the panels of this comic in the correct order? It was all double-page spreads but none of the pages looked like double-page spreads. It was weird. But that doesn't take away from the fact that I am enjoying this comic a lot. I love Pete Woods' art and I am a big Superman movies/Zod nerd. The Gary Frank cover for this issue is absolutely beautiful.

The Nobody

I haven't had time to read this yet, and I really want to savour it. I will say that it is probably the nicest-looking Vertigo book I have seen. I flipped through it and got excited and had to put it down because I knew I didn't have time to read it. My Friday night plans include reading this and maybe watching a bunch of Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes. And ignoring the fact that my beloved Saku Koivu just joined the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (more like the Mighty SUCKS!). I mean really, Montreal, he buys cancer treatment equipment for your hospital and you let him go?

But I digress. The Nobody looks amazing.

Archie Double Digest #200

What's this? A gripping epic Archie storyline about our teen hero having to move away from Riverdale? And it's drawn by Norm Breyfogle?! Stay tuned for more details in this week's Archie Sunday post...

Showcase Presents Bat Lash vol 1

Judging from the size of this thing, I am gonna say that there won't be any further Showcase volumes of Bat Lash. This Showcase is about half the size of a regular one (and $7 cheaper). I'm kind of into that. It gives me hope that more characters with limited runs will get Showcases. Maybe I'll get my I...Vampire or Scalphunter Showcase. Or Rose and Thorn. At any rate, Bat Lash is awesome and this is going to be a fun read.

John Buys Comics

Red Robin No. 2

This was one of those comics that I was on the fence about after the first issue, right? I was all set this week to institute a new feature called the SECOND ISSUE OF JUDGEMENT specifically for these kind of situations, but dammit, I'm still on that fence. The good and the bad, my friends, are fairly balanced. Shall I run down the list? Indeed I shall.

The good: The Red Robin costume was one of my favourite redesigns in Kingdom Come, so it's nice to see it get used. Let's see... lots of good fights, a look at the DCU outside of the US... Tim's narration is written well and there is some decent writing overall, particularly the dialogue from the three League of Assassins goons, which is nicely on-character.

ON THE OTHER HAND

The bad: While the premise of the series (Tim doesn't think that Bruce Wayne is actually dead, charred corpse or not) is fine - you and I know that it'll take more than a couple of Omega Beams to keep the goddam Batman down - the execution is really painful. Now, I haven't watched much teen drama since my university girlfriend made me watch a lot of Dawson's Creek, so I'm not really up-to-date on the tropes of that genre. Nevertheless, that's all I can think of when reading the parts of this comic that deal with the events leading to Tim's Bat-quest. "Pacey, everyone's worried about you." "Dammit, Joey, don't you mean that Dawson is worried about me? God, you won't tell the truth about anything. I can't trust anyone. Everything is very dramatic!" Tim gets into a snit (possibly about Damien being Robin), pushes away his entire supporting cast, and lights out. It's infuriating and painful and so incredibly unnecessary. Here, I'll write an alternate prologue:

"Hey guys. I know that you're worried but I'm okay. I have millions of dollars and was trained by Batman and I'll be back in a bit. I just have to go do this thing for my own peace of mind. Remember, I'm the most rational and intelligent of the Bat-family - I won't act like an idiot all the time."

OR

"Hey rest of people who care about me but who I am not specifically mad at. Yeah, dick move on Dick's part, haha. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll work it out after I get back from looking for Bruce. Sure there was a corpse, but Barry melted and he managed to come back. Okay, see you in twelve issues or so."

OR

"Man, I need a vacation."

Minimize all of that over-dramatic stuff and this might just become a pretty good series. Seriously, the only people who act like that are the semi-crazy.

North 40 No. 1

This is the comic that was previewed in Wildstorm titles a couple of weeks ago - happily, it looks like they've stopped slapping a big notice on the front of every comic that has a preview inside, possibly due to the fact that every comic that DC puts out nowadays has a preview inside. I'd complain more but the ones this week look like they could be pretty good. Just wait until the preview for Cry for Justice II: Hush plays Starcraft and I'll let loose.

Wildstorm is putting out some pretty good comics nowadays! I'm not sure what makes a comic Wildstorm versus Vertigo - are Wildstorm titles creator-owned? In any case, I approve of the trend: North 40 is completely filled with potential for delight. Now they just need to make the whole "first issues are a dollar" thing a company-wide policy and I will be a happy man. (I looked it up: WildStorm is editorially distinct from DC proper and features creator-owned content)

In this first (more than a dollar) issue, a goth and a nerd (handily pictured on the cover) abuse the interlibrary loan system and acquire a Lovecraftian tome of ancient evil, complete with cephalopod cover. They neglect to follow rule 1 of dealing with cosmic horrors: never open any book with an octopus embossed onto the front, particularly if it projects more than three inches out. Something horrible happens. Their entire small town loses consciousness for a day and when they wake up a lot of them have been changed, mostly in really horrible ways.

This is a great set-up issue, as the residents of Conover County try to figure out what's happened to them and some sort of extra-horrible event, possibly involving a tentacled Outer God, looms in the future. Sides are starting to shape up, there may well be feuding monster hillbillies at some point, and there might be more of that goth chick later on (I am evidently a sucker for goth chicks). Aaron Williams and Fiona Staples knocked this one out of the park for me - we meet a lot of characters in this issue and they all get a distinctive look (particularly after they get monsterized) and an effective shorthand sketch of their personality. I was going to say that it reminds me of a really good television series that I might obsess over but just now realized that it's also very reminiscent of the movie Tremors in that it involves a lot of interesting characters in a small desert community trying to deal with a really horrific situation. It also looks fantastic and has a really nice, setting-appropriate and atmospheric colour scheme.

Hooray!

Wednesday Comics No. 1

I don't tend to follow the comic book news too closely, partially because I read a lot of DC comics and Dan Didio exhales spoilers instead of carbon dioxide and partially because I am very lazy, so while I had heard about this I didn't really know anything about it until the ad for it ran last week. The ad made me very excited. Fifteen stories featuring a lot of great characters and serialized at a (quadruple-sized) page a week? This could be very good. And this week I bought it and it was! The creators seem to have had free reign, as far as I can tell, with stories being set whenever and featuring whoever and thus hopefully never having to tie in to any giant crossovers or whatever. I will bet a dollar that a lot of these will eventually be collected into trades. A quick rundown of the stories:

Batman: Looks like Bruce Wayne-style Batman is going to solve a mystery. This one looks fantastic - lots of very effective panels with atmospheric colour and lighting. (Azzarello& Risso)

Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth: This one looks very nice, with plenty of shots of ruined future New York. No indication on what the story is about due to it being a bit of a "the story so far" episode, but I have a feeling that Kamandi will get to fight some anthropomorphic animals next issue! (Gibbons, Sook)

Hawkman: Hawkman vs. a plane! This is the classic Silver Age alien Hawkman, and the story is being told from the perspective of a flock of birds. A comics first? (Baker)

Deadman: Deadman also gets to solve a mystery, and looks good doing it. Boston Brand is a great character who doesn't get enough time in the spotlight to himself, so I hope that this mysterious murderer has some good tricks up his fairly natty sleeve. (Bullock, Heuck)

Green Lantern: Possibly set in the New Frontier universe and definitely set during Hal Jordan's Sixties heyday, the first episode is mostly concerned with his supporting cast, which is always a good sign. Plus: it looks really nice. (Busiek, Quinones)

Superman: Superman fights a really excellent-looking alien. This will either be an unrelenting sock-fest or some sort of quest for identity. (Arcudi, Bermejo)

Metamorpho: Neil Gaimen writes Mike Allred in a story set firmly in the Haney years of the Metamorpho saga. This is possibly the Wednesday Comic that I am most excited about. Looks great and reads great, plus the Element Girl is going to return (Neil must feel guilty about bumping her off in Sandman). Now hopefully the mystery villain will be the one that never ended up getting revealed in the original series. (Gaimen, Allred)

Teen Titans: Another one that's a bit of a set-up for later episodes and one of the few that are definitely set in the present, or at least with the current Titans line-up. Some chump tries to kill the Titans. Not my favourite art style but better than usual against the white background. (Berganza, Galloway)

Strange Adventures: Very cool-looking Adam Strange tale. This is the Wednesday Comic that looks the most like something out of an actual comics page, only bigger. Set on Rann and fulla old-school space adventure. And mandrills! (Pope)

Supergirl: As far as I can tell, this is the Silver Age Supergirl - her costume features no exposed belly and no headband, at least - dealing with some misbehaving super-pets. Looks very nice with some terrific facial expressions. Should be a lot of fun. (Palmiotti, Conner)

Metal Men: Another one that presents the Silver Age version of the characters, as Doc Magnus takes the Metal Men out to observe humanity and is an asshole to them. Either set in the Sixties or showcasing the Metal Men's poor senses of fashion. Or both. (Didio, Lopez, Nowlan)

Wonder Woman: Teenage Wonder Woman getting ready to leave Paradise Island? I think? I was a bit confused by the narrative in this one, I must admit. The talking pigeons were fun though, and the Graeae swapping one glowing green eye was a nice touch. (Caldwell)

Sgt. Rock: WWII-era Sgt. Rock, vs. Nazis, by Kubert and Kubert. Yeah! (Kubert and Kubert, like I said)

The Flash: Barry Allen, pre-disintegration. Gorilla Grodd is in this one and written in a much more fun way than usual (seriously: Grodd has been savaged by the grim and the gritty almost as badly as Batman was). Featuring a neato format where it is subdivided into two subcomics: "The Flash" and "Iris Allen". I predict drama. (Kerschl, Fletcher)

The Demon and Catwoman: An odd teamup, but it looks like it's going to be a good time. Catwoman's going to steal something from Jason Blood and crazy stuff's gonna go down! This one looks really nice. (Simonson, Stelfreeze)

And that's that. I think that this idea has a heck of a lot of potential, as long as DC doesn't give up on it before it has a chance, like they so often do with such projects.

BPRD: 1947 No. 1

Man, this was a great week for comics.

BPRD: 1946 ended with a very ticked-off vampire vowing vengeance for Nazi experimentation on his kind. Now, one year later, it looks like he's carrying out his threat on various surviving SS officers and the like. Now here's the really good part: Doc Bruttenholm is concerned and so he sends a team in to investigate this vampire's past.

He sends a team!

This is great! The team is made up entirely of new characters - former soldiers and the like who were assigned to the BPRD at the end of the war - and they're all brand new, the most new protagonists in a Hellboy-related title since maybe Wake the Devil. So: we've got new characters without much in the way of a paranormal background bringing an interesting perspective to the whole thing, a very interesting little mystery for them to ferret out, nice spooky art coloured by Dave Stewart, World's Best Colourist... I am content.

Also: young Hellboy in pyjama pants is adorable.

Back for more:

Demon Cleaner No. 3 - I still like this comic, but dag nabbit it's a quick read. I finally figured it out why with this issue: the art is very nice and clean, with a Mignola-esque simplicity, but the main character is a taciturn SOB. So unlike an issue of, say, Hellboy, which is just crammed full of text, Demon Cleaner is filled with mostly pictures. Very nice pictures, mind you, but I can read a page pretty damn quickly. $3.99 for two or three minutes worth of entertainment might be a bit too steep for me... maybe I'll wait to see if the next issue features a little more exposition, as I have to figure that anybody who dreams up a restaurant where the rich gather to eat demons for their health should have a pretty good backstory for their main character.

Batman No. 688 - Not bad, Winick. This issue is something of a this-is-the-state-of-things checklist, with looks at Gordon and Alfred and the relationship between Dick and Damien. Highlights are seeing Batman grinning while fighting crime and Two-Face and his smart thug having a chat. A nice complement to the Batman and Robin series.

Booster Gold No. 22 - Time travel fun abounds, as does Teen Titans T&A and really flimsy cover stories. If this seres goes on for long enough then every hero in the DCU is going to have a story about the time they met Booster Gold and he was doing something weird. Dude needs a disguise shop like Spider-Woman had. The Blue Beetle backup is getting really fun - robots galore! I'm so glad that Jaime is still around.

Green Lantern No. 43 - We're almost at Blackest Night! I think that this is the end of the Prologue portion of the festivities, so get ready for your regularly-scheduled comics to be filled with power ring-weilding zombies, possibly. Sinestro Corps War didn't invade the DCU too severely as I recall, but then again there were all of those "Omens and Origins" backups a couple of months ago... Ah well. I'm excited for this one, and not just because I'm tired of seeing Scar vomit up black stuff and hopefully she'll get over that by the end. This issue is all about telling the horrible life story of William Hand, the Black Hand, and is not bad, if depressing and gross. Heck, they even kind of account for the cliche-spouting loser that Black Hand used to be back in the day.

R.E.B.E.L.S. No. 6 - So Starro the Conqueror is a man/starfish hybrid axe-wielding interstellar warlord from another galaxy, eh? I like it! This series just keeps getting better and Vril Dox just keeps getting more bastardly. And Amon Hakk is my very favourite Khund. Hey, and they seem to have done a pretty good job of exempting this series from any Blackest Night malarky, if I'm any judge. Good job!

Ag, it's bedtime. This is what happens when people invite me out to dinner - you are deprived of my opinions. The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft and Unwritten remain great! 

Good night!

Wednesday Interview: Jeff Lemire

Ontario-based cartoonist Jeff Lemire is the award-winning creator of the Essex County Trilogy (Tales From the Farm, Ghost Stories and The Country Nurse) and Lost Dogs. Essex County, Lemire's beautiful story about hockey, family, and rural Ontario life, is being collected into a hardcover edition later this year.

Despite his affinity for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jeff Lemire is one of my favourite comic creators right now. I love his distinctive thick-lined artwork and his ability to create powerful emotions using very quiet storytelling (I have cried real tears while reading his books). Lemire was recently drafted to the big leagues, with an all-new hardcover book, The Nobody, being released by Vertigo today. He will also be writing and drawing a new ongoing series for Vertigo starting in September called Sweet Tooth. I did a little interview with Jeff to find out more.

Can you describe what The Nobody is about in your own words?

The Nobody takes the protagonist from HG Wells' The Invisible Man novel and reimagines him in a modern small fishing village. It's about paranoia and rural clausterphobia and how outsiders are drawn together.

The Essex County trilogy was, I think, an amazing accomplishment. The storytelling was beautiful, and I actually had tears in my eyes when I finished reading the second book. Is The Nobody going to be a major departure from the Essex County series, or do you think there will be elements that readers will recognize from your previous work?

After finishing with Essex County I needed to try something new. Those books were obviously deeply personal, and drew from a lot of my own life.  I wanted to do something a bit darker, a bit pulpier and a bit more genre-based. So, in a way The Nobody is almost the flipside of what I was exploring in Essex County.  While those books looked at what pulls rural communities together, while The Nobody looks at what can tear them apart. But, having said that it still has the same earmarks and storytelling style of EC.

A lot of your work, including your upcoming Vertigo projects, is set in small towns or rural areas. What is it about these settings that appeals to you?

I just think that 99% of movies and comics are set in New York or a New York-like big city. There are so many others stories to be told, so why not explore smaller town and bring other perspectives to the table. Also, on a visual level open fields are easier to draw than buildings. (kidding)

One of my favourite things about Essex County is how Canadian it is. I know that your upcoming series, Sweet Tooth, is set in America, but it has a Canadian look to it, if that makes sense. How important do you think it is for Canadian creators to tell Canadian stories?

Very important. This is a rich and beautiful country full of diversity and character. I love mining it for my stories. Plus, I write and draw what I see and know. And both Vertigo books are not officially set in Canada, but unofficially they are to me. Sweet Tooth starts off in Nebraska. I chose that because it looks the most like southwestern Ontario.

I am really looking forward to reading your ongoing series, Sweet Tooth. Is this the first time you have told a story in serialized issues?

Yes it is, it was a challenge to try and maintain my style and voice and still cram it into 22 page chunks, but I think I've made the transition successfully.

I am guessing, given where you are from, that you are a Maple Leafs fan. Does that make it hard to get up in the morning?

It makes it very, very hard. But I have hope, because without hope you're just a Senators fan.

Yawn For Justice

When Justice League: Cry For Justice #1 hit the store last week, there was a brief but animated conversation amongst my fellow LBW pals about who should get to review it, since no one wanted the hassle; blame the talky, grating preview that ran in the DC books a few weeks back, and the book’s super-lame sub-title, which sounds like a made-for-TV movie about child abduction starring Joanna Kerns. Being a glutton for punishment, and as someone who’s more than willing to read just about anything with the words “justice” and “league” in the title, I volunteered for the job. After all, this series is written by James Robinson, and features nicely painted art by newcomer Mauro Cascioli (the last few issues of Trials of Shazam), so how bad could it be?

Short answer? Pretty bad. Long answer? Well…

The story goes that Hal Jordan is pissed that the Justice League of America is doing nothing to avenge the deaths of Batman and Martian Manhunter. He argues, perhaps rightly, that Libra and his Secret Society of Super-Villains have gotten away with murder, since no one is actively tracking him down. Superman and the other Leaguers wring their hands and try to calm Hal down, but he’s not having it, so he quits the team that he’s not even really on anymore to go seek sweet, sweet revenge, with old pal Green Arrow in tow. We’re then treated to a series of scenes introducing various other heroes on similar quests. Ray Palmer is mad that Prometheus killed a scientist buddy of his, and he declares to current Atom Ryan Choi that he wants…JUSTICE! But wait, there’s more. Mikaal Tomas, aka the blue alien version of Starman, learns that his ex-boyfriend was accidentally killed during a super-villain showdown with the cops. He storms out of the funeral home, hungry for…JUSTICE! Not enough? All right, then, how about Congorilla? A bunch of his simian pals, along with African superhero Freedom Beast, just got murdered by poachers or something. A situation like this calls for…JUSTICE! I’m not exaggerating here—each of these sequences ends with the hero running off to seek…JUSTICE, whether declared by themselves or the over-enthusiastic narrator. Yep, a literal Cry For Justice. It’s already annoying, and we only meet half the cast in this issue. My guess is it won’t get any less irritating with the introductions of Supergirl, Batwoman, and Freddy Freeman next month.

This comic has a lot of problems. To begin with, it’s a spin-off of a book that is bleeding readers every month, a book that’s locked into a creative tailspin as the happenings in various “event” books dictate who can appear in it, not the writers. This has already led to the high-profile dismissal of writer Dwayne McDuffie, and the announcement of new writer…wait for it…James Robinson. Does this mean that, if Robinson’s Cry For Justice is the book where heroes go out to actively seek…JUSTICE (sorry), that his Justice League of America will be the book for heroes who…I don’t know, sit around watching America’s Next Top Model or something? Back to the point, though--this is an unnecessary tie-in to a book that is in serious trouble. More attention should be paid to fixing what should be one of DC's top titles rather than trying to squeeze even more money out of its dwindling readership.

Which brings me to the larger problem—the faulty premise. What exactly does it mean that they’re going to actively go out and seek…THE J WORD? Are they going to act as judge, jury, and executioner? Probably not, as this is a DC book and not an Ultimate Marvel book or something, which begs the question—what sets it apart? What, exactly, is the big deal that makes this book stand out from the gazillion other super-team books out there? It seems to me that every few years, some writer hits on this as a selling point. “My guys don’t just sit around waiting for the Trouble Alert, they go out and they get the bad guys!” Kurt Busiek and Alan Davis introduced this idea in The Avengers about eight or nine years ago. It lasted for all of one (admittedly cool) issue, but then the book got embroiled in a fifteen-issue Kang epic that represented Busiek’s swan song on the title. More recently, Judd Winick and Tom Raney tried a similar approach in Outsiders. It was a bit more successful, but only because it was revealed that Deathstroke (I think?) was manipulating the team into taking his criminal rivals off the board. Pretty clever for a Judd Winick book, but the jig was up for the premise after that. My point is, no matter how you try to spin it, it's still just another super-team book; there's not enough that's different or exciting about it to justify its existence.

Now, the art in this book is nice enough, in a lifeless, Alex Ross-y kind of way. The real disappointment here is Robinson, who doesn’t seem to have his heart in it. His Starman is an important classic, and is rightly being celebrated in DC’s new omnibus editions, and his Superman work has been enjoyable if not excellent, but a book like this feels like a money job. He’s assembled a very weird assortment of nostalgic favourites, corporate-mandated newbies, and genuine curveballs, and come up with a yawn-inducing premise to bring them all together. At the rate this book moves, by the time the team is assembled and established, its six-issue length will be finished. But I guess by then he’ll be writing the flagship JLA title anyway. Is there no…JUSTICE?