Weekly Comic Review for 3/20/13
OK. Finally catching up here. After this, all I have left is last week’s books to finish up. So let’s get going on this…
All-New X-Men #9 – The original X-Men finally get to take a shot at the modern day Danger Room. They do miserably as they totally fail at working as a team. One fun thing is Iceman’s comment about how their Danger Room was just a bunch of simple mechanisms. Jean is getting out of control with her telepathy though, reading everyone’s minds and using it against them. Sabretooth and Mystique free Lady Mastermind which can only lead to some not so good things. To make matters worse, at the end, Cyclops and his team show up. This is just getting messier by the minute.
Archie #641 – When Worlds Collide part 1 – Dilton proves to be an even bigger genius than expected when he creates a device that can communicate across the dimension and he reaches out to Brittany from the TV show Glee. Yes, we have Glee in comics. Dilton looks at the comparisons between the people in his universe and the Glee cast. Of course, when he goes to visit Brittany, things go awry half the people from each group ends up getting transported to the other world. It’s the old cast of Glee with Kurt, Puck, Finn, Rachel and such. With Dilton on the Riverdale side though, who knows how they get back. The best part though? At the end of the issue (leading into part 2), Veronica gets Slushied!
Constantine #1 – Breaking out of Justice League Dark (and filling the spot of another cancelled book) is none other than John Constantine. He starts off running into someone with magical connections named Chris who points John in the direction of a magical compass that would be big trouble in the wrong hands. Searching for the first piece, John runs across the daughter of Sargon the Sorceror and shows that he doesn’t care what prices get paid for him to do what he wants to get done. It’ll be interesting to see how they expand on his character, especially since I haven’t read a lot of the JLD title.
Green Lantern: New Guardians #18 – Wrath of the First Lantern part 7 – Volthoom goes after Carol and Larfleeze next. Larfleeze is too caught up in the avarice power of the orange ring which makes him useless to Volthoom. Carol on the other hand just proves to be too strong for him just as Kyle was. Some of the stories are interesting but I’m getting bored with this “whose life can I change now” stories. Let’s just got on with this. I really hope this is the last GL crossover for a while.
Harbinger #10 – Faith saves the group as we get into Peter’s head, his thoughts narrating the story. In the end, he tries to let them all go their own way to save them but they stand by him as things lead into the upcoming Harbinger Wars. Overall, it’s pretty predictable.
Justice League of America #2 – As the JLA gets pulled together, so does the Secret Society of Super Villains. We start seeing how the various members react with each other and now they are treated by Amanda Waller and Steve Trevor as they start off on their first mission as a team. In a back-up story, we see the Martian Manhunter manipulate things in the background. I’m looking forward to seeing how this group meshes with young positive characters like Vibe and Stargirl along with darker characters like Hawkman, Katana, and Catwoman.
Justice League of America’s Vibe #2 – Both Vibe and his brother question Cisco’s place in the JLA and the agent enlisted to watch over him chides him for the way he is handling things. Meanwhile, an alien comes through a gate with a message. Vibe stops him but won’t kill him. The agent will though even though Vibe tells him he wasn’t truly dangerous. The message is for Gypsy who it seems is some extra-dimensional traveler herself. Looks like this Gypsy will be really different from the original.
JLA Liberty Files: The Whisting Skull #4 of 6 – The Whistling Skull tracks down the people who captured and experimented on the townsfolk. Big surprise — it’s the traveling carnival that was shown for no apparent reason before other than to set them up. To make matters worse, it’s a Nazi carnival.
Legion of Super-Heroes #18 – At least the art is better this time. The power is still out across the Galaxy and people are both turning to and turning on the Legion. Phantom Girl turns into a major wimp. Brainiac 5 works on building a new spaceship out of old non-quark parts but the Legion HQ starts falling apart even more. Everyone rushes for the ship but Star Boy doesn’t make it as the HQ tumbles and the ship takes off with him just outside the door. I’ve been a big Legion fan over the years but this series is just disappointing. If I pick up the next issue and find out they’ve killed Star Boy for no reason too, it will be the last issue I buy. He’s been one of my favorite Legionnaires and that would just be too much.
Nightwing #18 – The issue is one of the Requiem stories across the Batman titles about Robin’s death. We get flashbacks of Dick recently hanging out with Damien. Dick has a talk with Sonia and works out some of his demons regarding everything that has happened lately. Just as things look better, Sonia reveals a big secret. After his funeral and everything, Tony Zucco is still alive. (And after Robin just died, they do this? Gives us a lot of faith that he’ll stay dead, especially with his grandfather being Ra’s al Ghul.)
This week, there were a lot of mediocre books. A few books were interesting reads though. I’d say the top 3 for the week were Archie, Constantine, and Justice League of America. I find it interesting that DC is still using “New 52” on their series when it’s a year and a half in and 1/3 of the titles have been replaced already. I wonder when they’ll stop branding everything.
