The Bottom 11 These were a chore to read. Forty-two to forty-five have problems, but are down here largely due to personal taste. Below that, I found them either boring or stupid or both. Unlike the rest of this series I'm going to finish with the worst rather than the best.
42. Legion of Super-HeroesVol. 1 Hostile World (2012)
By: Paul Levitz and Chris Sprouse
The Legion of Super-Heroes has gathered after a disaster. They have to regroup before facing the threat of the Dominators.
A Volume 1 that is in no way a first volume. There are around 10-15 characters per issue and I managed to only recognize a few of them by the end mostly because of the name tags given to each character as they appear each issue. I feel this series would have been far better had they focused on Chameleon Boy, Chemical Kid, Dragonwing, Phantom Girl and Mon-El. The other characters didn't really do much except consume panels and provide fan service for old fans I guess. This volume is a nightmare for new readers. I definitely won't be reading more which is a shame since there was the potential for good characters and interesting story. They just needed to focus on a few characters and one story at a time then introduce the others as the story progressed.
4.5/10
43. Deathstroke Vol. 1 Legacy (2012)By: Kyle Higgins and Simon Bisley
Slade Wilson is Deathstroke a top assassin who's a bit past his prime. He's superpowered and has all the toys. When he feels he's being played with he slaughters his allies and goes on a hunt to find out who's behind it all.
Someone confused "badass" with "can kill everyone by running up and chopping their head off." Slade uses no smarts or tactics in this book. During the first half he seems nearly invincible and takes hails of bullets like they're nothing. He's like a bad version of Superman. In the second half when we see him start getting hurt it just makes him look incompetent. There is a weak father-son storyline about how he expected his son to follow him intot he assassin business, but his son is dead. I'm sure you can see the twist coming. Slade is also quite unlikeabl and seems to talk down to everyone. Then the last story just made him look even more like an arrogant jackass. They have rebooted this character for the worse. The art was okay and I guess you can get into this if you like mindless violence. I don't.
4.5/10
44. Mister Terrific Vol. 1 Mind Games (2012)By Eric Wallace and J.G. Jones
Mr. Terrific is the third smartest man in the world and he's used his smarts to become a hero. He fights inter-dimensional beings and struggles to keep control of his company.
I actually enjoyed the first issue, though there were a few awkward lines and scenes. After that however; I didn't really enjoy anything. Mr. Terrific seems unnecessarily racially charged. I understand being on point and funny, but some of the lines were just out of place. This does reboot the character, but I don't think it did a good job of introducing him. He was mostly awkward and boring. Brainstorm had a technological mind control schtick. Mr. Terrific is captured by some inter-dimensional aliens and must lead a jailbreak. After that he takes on the Tomorrow Thief, an invisible army and Digitus in rapid succession. This volume collects the entire series, but after ot was cancelled they just tossed him over to a Second Wave Series called Earth 2. So its not even a complete story.
4/10
45. Nightwing Vol. 1 Traps and Trapezes (2012)By: Kyle Higgins, Eddy Barrows and JP Mayer
Nightwing look into a murder when Haley's circus comes into town. An assassin targets him as he inherits the circus. He also has an old flame come back into his life. He travels around with the circus in order to overcome the mystery surrounding it.
This book is not a reboot, but it does revise and re-explore Nightwing's past. The biggest problems start right away with the death of two police officers while changing his costume. Nightwing doesn't seem to even care about this. This seems particularly callous considering Nightwing is meant to be a more light and fun character than Batman. I also felt that while the connection to the Batman Court of Owls event is interesting, this story is far more convoluted than that story. It also has a very weird supernatural turn in issue four that I always find weird, since Batman and his allies don't face a great deal of supernatural villains. Nightwing should be a great hero, but this doesn't show him at his best. Also, I hate the red eyes and logo on the new costume, Nightwing should not be a dark and gritty character! That's why we have Batman.
4/10
46. DC Universe Presents Vol. 1 featuring Deadman & Challengers of the Unknown (2012) By: Paul Jenkins, Dan DiDio and Jerry Ordway
This is a set origin stories for Deadman and the Challengers of the Unknown.
The Deadman story was okay... I thought the beginning was pretty interesting and the end was alright, but issues three and four could have been combined without much loss. It just got too much dialogue. Speaking of too much dialogue, DC Editor Dan DiDio gives us Challengers of the Unknown. I really wanted to like this one, but it turned out boring and stupid. An old team of adventurers has a reality show because that's "cool" and makes sense to older people I guess. However; the way they write off deaths and believe the weird crap actually happening is part of the show seem like a huge disconnects from logic even in a comic universe. If five people died on a reality show, that show would be cancelled. Also, the story about magical talismans and an evil zombie was just plain bad. This series is an anthology though, so their may be something more interesting down the road.
3/10
47. Detective Comics Vol. 1 Faces of Death (2012) By: Tony S. Daniel
A new villain called the Dollmaker comes to Gotham and his first act is a shocker. He removes the Joker's face. He then sets his sights on Commissioner Gordon to entrap the Batman! In the second story Batman must face the Penguin's shady dealings at his Iceberg Casino. There are also weird backup story about Two Face getting his DA job back.
The first arc shows some promise, but it quickly gets strange with some obvious twists involving a little girl and Commissioner Gordon. I also had some questions about why the Joker would go to this new criminal who we've never heard of. It does seem interesting and doesn't require too much to take in for readers familiar with the films. The Penguin story and the Two Face story are what brought this volume down so far. You can pick this up and read it as a standalone, but there a far better Batman series in the New 52. I suppose gore fans might find some dark fun here, but it isn't told with enough care.
3/10
48. Green Arrow Vol. 1 The Midas Touch (2012)By: J.T. Krul
Oliver Queen is a young entrepreneur who run Queen Industries and is responsible for many of its best products including the Q-Core which is similar to an I-Pad. He faces a group of young super villains who like to broadcast their crimes on the internet. Then he takes on the mysterious Blood Rose and her consort Midas.
He got the full reboot treatment, but we don't get a really good exploration of why he fights crime. It seems like he just has money and is quite bored. The characters take a backseat to the action which makes it hard to care about anything happening to them. The artwork was passable, but had a very early 2000s look and feel to it. With an even more pared down rich dude superhero concept, this makes Mr. Terrific look downright fun and interesting. I appreciate that they tried to make him look new and hip, but even the technology just wasn't well integrated into the story.
2.5/10
49. O.M.A.C. Vol. 1 Omactivate! (2012)
By: Dan DiDio, Keith Griffin, and Scott Koblish
Brother Eye, a sentient satellite, has transformed Kevin Kho into the One Man Army Corps. This O.M.A.C. must goes up against Brother Eye's enemy Checkmate and their allies including Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
O.M.A.C. does a highlight tour of DCU secret organizations. He faces Cadmus, S.H.A.D.E., and of course Checkpoint. It's almost like they wanted to point out the ten billion secret organizations that exist now, a fact that becomes very apparent if you read all the New 52 series. All the action leaves little time for story logic. Kevin Kho gets arrested and put in jail for hacking an ATM without any evidence. The criminal justice system is pretty hardcore in the DCU. This is a true reboot of the character and DiDio tries to reflect the old school style of Jack Kirby, who invented the character, but the main problem is that both O.M.A.C. and Kevin are uninteresting. O.M.A.C. is Hulk light and Kevin Kho spends most of the time whining about his old life rather than trying to get it back. This series does at least have a fitting, if depressing, ending. Thought that doesn't stop him from jumping over to another (now cancelled) series, Justice League International.
2.5/10
50. Blackhawks Vol. 1 The Great Leap Forward (2012) By: Mike Costa, Cafu, and Graham NolanThe Blackhawks are a covert government agent that faces threats that no one else can face. They must deal with internal disputes and romances among the team.
This comic reads like a bad action movie covert ops team. What kind of covert ops team puts their symbol on the side of their planes and then fights near a crowd of people with camera phones? This is one of the many examples of stupidity that this book excels at. They manage to make only one character even remotely interesting while the others remain action movie caricatures. Kunoichi, who gets a little more developed than the others, has her potentially interesting struggle against nanites that threaten her consciousness devolved into migraines and fighting them in a dream that lasts 4 pages. I am not surprised this clunker was cancelled and that this is the only volume. This is a reboot, but not one that turns out anything interesting. Their leader, Andrew Lincoln, even jumps over to the Voodoo series to make the second volume of that series far worse than the first.
2/10
By: Sterling Gates and Rob Liefeld
Hawk and Dove are the avatars of War and Peace respectively, they fight crime. Hawk's brother is dead and Dove is dating a ghost.
That's about all I got from these eight issues. This reads a lot like a Rob Liefeld series despite Liefeld not writing this. There is zero character development. The characters meander form villain to villain with little time in between. Rob Liefeld's style has 90s hair everywhere. The women look like they've been contorted into strange shapes and all had bad breast enhancement surgery. The villains all want power and to kill people just because. This book made Hawk and Dove look like terrible heroes to new readers. They constantly think about how they dislike working together, but in the end they still do for no reason. This doesn't even have the excuse of being a reboot since much of their continuity is carried over from the previous universe. Making new readers wonder why Hank's brother died and who the heck the corpse looking Deadman is and how he got together with Dove. This series has been cancelled after eight issues and I am glad. But wait... There's one worse than this? And it's a Batman title...
1.5/10
52. Batman: The Dark KnightVol. 1 Knight Terrors (2012)
By: David Finch and Paul Jenkins
Batman responds to an Arkham outbreak and finds his old villains pumped up and nearly unbeatable. He also sees a lingerie clad woman calling herself the White Rabbit before facing a supercharged Two-Face. He goes on to track down those behind the breakout.
Yeah, there's one worse than Gates' and Liefeld's Hawk and Dove. This depresses me immensely. The Dark Knight is
1/10
Only four of these were cancelled, but most of them switched writers soon after this volume. Detective comics switches writers after issue 12. Nightwing and the Legion of Super-Heroes are the only two with their initial writers still on them as of issue 16.
If I seem down on the reboot here than will rapidly change as I move up the New 52 hierarchy. Look out for further installments. I start the countdown to the top next!
41-32 The Low 10
33-22 The Middle 10
21-12 The High 10
11-1 The Top 11
No comments:
Post a Comment