Scott KolinsReseñas

#3 in a series of 4 hardcover collections of this story arc, and not quite a standalone. The Avengers are falling apart, members have left - including Hawkeye - and She-Hulk (Banner's cousin) is on the loose and uncontrollable. Destroying a small town already affected by Banner's anger, it takes the Avengers pulling together to pull it all back from the brink.

Illustrations are good (was a bit worried by the coverart), but suspect I'm missing out on some of the emotional depth by coming in near the end

Put me in the 5% (of people who gave this 5 stars) because this was awesome! The first half wasn't as exciting as the second, it was more setup and I'm not sure at all why Blue Beetle was included or that "god" guy. But the Star Hawkins/Ilda stuff was amazing, their banter was hilarious and the Larfleeze stuff had me laughing the whole time too. The art totally rocked with random aliens walking around in the background all the time.

The serious stuff was cool too. The "Hunted" plot seemed like something you would see as a movie plot, the twist ending was amazing, and I LOVED K-Rot. More please. You can leave out the Lanterns if you want, except Larfleeze

1308

964

1186

1494

Definitely worth the time. Best DC I've read in a while.

This was REALLY dark and gritty, which totally makes sense for a villain vs villain story and also for a villains on the run from a really angry superhero story. I didn't have access to the 2 earlier comics from this graphic novel until today, but I went back and looked over the original 3 (that I had read in March) and it all made sense. Love the background of Captain Cold and how it kind of wraps up in this mini-series.

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

This volume collects the entirety of Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a modernized take on the Star-Spangled Kid that began slightly before and ran alongside the Robinson/Goyer/John JSA revival of 1999. Our main character is Courtney Whitmore, a teenager who has recently relocated to Blue Valley, Nebraska because her mother has remarried, to Pat Dugan, who back during World War II was Stripesy, sidekick to the Star-Spangled Kid. She ends up becoming the new Star-Spangled Kid, eventually dubbing herself "Stars" and then "Stargirl," while Pat operates as her sidekick in a robotic suit called S.T.R.I.P.E. (As the cover of my edition indicates, it eventually became the basis for the CW tv series Stargirl starring Brec Bassinger.)

As a concept, it's great. Definitely a good storytelling engine: you have high school stuff, secret identity stuff, interpersonal stuff, legacy stuff. Courtney is ultimately the inheritor of the Star-Spangled Kid mantle and the Starman mantle. But I ended up feeling like Geoff Johns might not have been the writer to successfully pull off his own idea. The idea here is that Courtney becomes a superhero to annoy her stepfather, and then sort of grows into it... but I felt like this is an idea that we were told more than we actually saw on the page. The interpersonal dynamics were often crowded out by the superhero plots and the crossover storylines; some of Courtney's development as a hero was seemingly happening over in JSA, not here. I never really got a feel for her and Pat's relationship in a meaningful way.... but of course this is Geoff Johns. Great idea, but hand the execution over to, say, a John Rogers or a G. Willow Wilson, and I think this would have soared.

Still, it's entertaining stuff. Johns picks up on the kind of "legacy" work Roy Thomas was doing in Infinity, Inc., and the result is strong. I liked the story about Courtney interacting with Starman, for example, paralleled with a flashback adventure about how the original Star-Spangled Kid became Skyman, and also tying in how Star-Spangled Kid got the cosmic converter belt way back in the very first story I reviewed for this project, Only Legends Live Forever. I don't know if this kind of storytelling is meaningful to people who haven't been reading JSA comics nonstop for over two years now, but I dug it.

The Teen Titan appearances were fun. The story delving into the post-Crisis version of the JLA/JSA/Seven Soldiers of Victory crossover that brought the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy into the present day was fun... almost certainly better than the original story, actually! (Although, since when was the Crimson Avenger's sidekick, Wing, a kid? In the Roy Thomas version, he was the chauffeur!) I liked the occasional conversations between Pat and the original Starman, Ted. The villain being an evil cheerleader was good. The only "legacy" element I disliked was learning that Danette Reilly, Firebrand in All-Star Squadron, was fridged off-panel sometime in the decades since WWII in order to give the Shining Knight some angst. She is too good a character to deserve that, but apparently has made no post-A-SS appearances except in the All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant.

Overall, this is fun, and I look forward to seeing Courtney shine in JSA. But I can't help feel that somewhere in the multiverse there's a version of this comic that rivals G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel!

The Justice Society and Earth-Two: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

I found Stargirl to have a consistent storyline, with a few fun time travel twists. The villains featured in this comic, primarily green aliens, were less complicated than I expected them to be. I read this to see if I would be interested in the new show on CW and I probably will watch a few episodes to see how the storylines differ, which I imagine they will fairly quickly.

Now, this is a bit more like it. $15 gets you the wonderful "Time and the Batman", which cleverly dovetails Silver Age Batman into high Morrisonian weirdness, two issues that fill in the missing pieces between "Batman RIP" and "Final Crisis" (pretty nicely, although I think I still have questions), and what seems to be the requisite side story for the collection actually turns out to be a pretty nice piece about Dick, Damian, and Bruce (through the lens of crime-fightin', of course). This is way shorter than the other Morrison Batman collections; however, it's probably the most cohesive of the post-Final Crisis ones (that I've read so far!)

Wow, I just wrote way more about 50ish pages of comics than I ever have about any novel.

Tricked into taking part in the murder of Bart Allen, the Flash's Rogues plan revenge on Inertia, the evil Kid Flash from the future. Inertia in turn has been recruited by Zoom, the current Reverse-Flash, who is attempting to indoctrinate Inertia with his twisted philosophy of making heroes "better."

Villains are usually what makes these kinds of comics fun, and this miniseries features nothing but villains. I enjoyed the contrast of the conflicted Rogues with the super-evil Libra, who still wants them to join his Secret Society, and with Zoom, who thinks he is doing something ultimately good by forcing heroes to experience tragedy.

While this book continues from past events and ties in with the Final Crisis, it fills you in on everything you need to know and shouldn't be confusing if read on its own. In addition to the three issue Rogues' Revenge miniseries, it also includes the Rogue Profile issues on Captain Cold and Zoom. I don't know why the Heat Wave issue was left out.

I've never been a fan of Morrison, nor do/did I enjoy his Batman run.

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Threshold was DC's first attempt at a "New 52"-era space-based ongoing comic, and The Hunted is its first and last volume. Threshold is the creation of Keith Giffen, co-creator of two 1980s space-based DC ongoings, The Omega Men and L.E.G.I.O.N. I don't know why it's called Threshold, but The Hunted is like the Hunger Games in space, sort of: it's a reality television series in Lady Styx's domain of Tolerance where political undesirables are forcibly enrolled. They have bounties placed on their heads, and are then let loose in Tolerance, and anyone who kills them gets the prize money. Anyone can take a shot, but popular groups of professionals have evolved. The longer you avoid being killed, the higher your bounty goes; L.E.G.I.O.N.'s Stealth appears as a long-time survivor of the games. The main character is Jediah Caul. Caul is a Green Lantern who sells out a trio of other "spectrum warriors" (purple, blue, and yellow) to The Hunted, but when they escape the game, Styx's people replace them with Caul.

Caul's not a very nice guy, and we watch him try to survive as he encounters 21st-century reworkings of a lot of old-school DC space characters, like Space Ranger and Tommy Tomorrow and Captain Carrot and Star Hawkins and the Star Rovers. Plus characters like the Blue Beetle show up, too. This was what made the book difficult for me: there was a lot to keep track of, and given that these characters were mostly created in the 1950s, most of them were generic white dudes. It seemed like there were too many for Keith Giffen to keep track of, too, as ideas and characters would be set up that went nowhere, or popped up sporadically.

I just could never get into the book as much as I would have liked. Too many characters, a premise that came across as both thin and overegged, a main character I never really enaged with, and too much sub-Firefly future slang that reminded me of the kind of thing Kris Straub parodied in Starslip. That's not to say it was bad: I liked Captain K'rot, and the whole Brainiac subplot was kind of interesting, but at times it was a slog that didn't seem to be going anywhere.

That said, there were two things I enjoyed. The first is the Star Hawkins backups, ten-page strips about what Tolerance's worst P.I. and his robot secretary (who has the mind of his ex-wife) are up to while Caul's on the run. They have some legit laugh-out-loud parts.

The other was the last issue, where Giffen provides a meta-commentary on the whole series by cancelling The Hunted. Blue Beetle even shows up to complain he didn't have anything to do with anything, and a spin-off is proposed, disposed of on the second-last page, a new spin-off is proposed and disposed of on the same page!

The sheer brazenness of the last issue made it hugely enjoyable, especially the way Giffen dovetails the last Star Hawkins backup into the main story, but I think if the best part of your comics series is the issue where you complain about being cancelled, you kinda had a problem from the very beginning.

DC Comics Space Heroes: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

It seemed to me that the volume of The World of Flashpoint featuring the Flash would have the most to do with Flashpoint proper given that it features the Flash, which I think is why I read it last. Actually, it doesn't really shed that much light on Flashpoint. (I don't think so, anyway-- keep in mind I actually haven't read Flashpoint yet!) There's a short "Reverse Flash" story written by Scott Kolins (a longtime collaborator with Geoff Johns on The Flash) which seems to be laying some groundwork for what will come in Flashpoint, but also is somewhat redundant with the Reverse Flash story contained in The Road to Flashpoint (which was illustrated by Kolins). I'm not well-versed enough in Flash lore to know how much of what is contained here-- the Reverse Flash manipulates the Flash's childhood a little bit-- is new information, and how much is a reminder of old information. I did quite like Joel Gomez's artwork, however; it reminds me of Kolins, as well as other frequent Johns collaborator Francis Manapul, and the stuff featuring kid Barry Allen is especially cute.

The other story that seems to be directly tying into Flashpoint proper is "Kid Flash Lost," about young Bart Allen winding up in a dystopian future ruled by Brainiac alongside Hot Pursuit, who in Road to Flashpoint was an alternate-Earth Barry Allen, but whose equipment and identity has been taken by Patty Spivot, a forensic scientist who also appeared in Road to Flashpoint. This story doesn't take place in the world of Flashpoint like most other World of Flashpoint stories, but rather has Bart jumping through time, trying to find Barry Allen and help him put time back together. It's nothing incredible, but Sterling Gates writes a decent little story of an optimistic little kid maintaining his outlook in the face of a pessimistic universe and doing what he has to do to help his idol put things right, complete with Crisis on Infinite Earths throwback. I assume this will tie into Flashpoint in some way, like Bart shows up at the climax and tosses Barry some speed force. This seems to also be an ending point of Bart Allen, a character I don't know much about, but do know was sorely mishandled in the period between Infinite Crisis and Flashpoint.

The other three stories here are mostly just more glimpses of the alternate world of Flashpoint, and I didn't find any of them terribly interesting. "Citizen Cold" shows us that in a world without the Flash, Captain Cold is instead "Citizen Cold," hero of Central City, but despite some quality Scott Kolins art (he also writes the story), the story doesn't really say anything interesting: the alternate Cold is still an asshole who is cruel to women.

Even more unpleasant to read is "Legion of Doom," one of those World of Flashpoint stories that's basically just about how cruel people are in the world of Flashpoint. Like, do I really need three issues of this gross shit? It is nice to get a glimpse at how heroic Cyborg is in this world (he's been a side character in tons of these stories, but this is the closest he gets to the spotlight), but other than that this tale produces little of value.

The same goes for "Grodd of War," where we learn Grodd's gorillas control all of Africa in the Flashpoint timeline. It's most more gratuitous, uninteresting violence.

So, in the end, the balance of this collection is a little odd: two stories (four issues) that might or might not add something to our understanding of Flashpoint, three stories (seven issues) that seemingly don't, and none of them are really standouts. At this point, though, I just want to get to the real deal!

DC Comics Crises: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Absolutely loved this!
1:26 pm 27 September 2016
Blue Beetle: Rebirth (2016) #1 (Blue Beetle (2016-)) - Scott Kolins, Keith Giffen
I was charmed by the banter, and while there was plenty of action, this seemed character driven. It's all about being a hero when it's forced on you and you don't really want to be and how you cope. It's all about friendship, along with the ugly verbal sparring and how that's all dropped when there's a serious situation.

Funny, even when it was seriously into the action.

I just might have to start following a new character.
Graphic Novel DC read in 2016

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

You might have expected Final Crisis to be the end of my reviews of DC's Crisis books. It was, after all, about the Final Crisis, and thus far, DC has actually kept to that claim. But there have been a couple events since that seem to be Crises in all but name, so I'll be tackling those next, starting with Flashpoint.

This is the lead-in to Flashpoint, featuring the Flash. The Barry Allen version, recently returned from beyond the grave during the Final Crisis, and slipping back into his old life. The book opens with a standalone story about Professor Zoom, a.k.a. the Reverse-Flash, and for me, this was the most effective part of the book, a creepy tale of an obsessed man rewriting his timeline to make himself the man he was, removing any obstacle to his goals. I don't think I've read anything substantive with the Reverse-Flash before (he did turn up in some of the Infinite Crisis tie-ins, I think), but I enjoyed this.

The rest of the book is less focused. Barry is having trouble settling back into his old life now that's he's undead. (Former sidekick Bart is also undead, thanks to the events of Legion of 3 Worlds. I think Wally West is also resurrected? Didn't he die during the Infinite Crisis?) In the meantime, a Barry Allen from one of the other 51 Earths has appeared in Central City, riding a motorcycle around, plus there are some murders. To be honest, the contours of all this were a bit vague. I wasn't sure what Barry was doing that was so bad it required an intervention, and the book's superhero plot was pretty simple. Guess what: the mysterious newcomer in town is the murderer. Then at the end, Zoom turns up, there's a lot of shouting, and a mysterious lightning bolt indicates the coming of Flashpoint.

I hope that when I read Flashpoint, the point of much of this will be more apparent. I must say, I did really like the artwork from Scott Kolins and Francis Manapul, which was human and dynamic, and the coloring is above average as well.

DC Comics Crises: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

This is the last of the during-Final-Crisis tie-ins in my readthrough-- there are still some "aftermath" titles to review, though. Like Legion of 3 Worlds and Revelations, this story seems to primarily be using the events of Final Crisis as an excuse to catch up with some other characters, the basic hook here being that Libra is trying to recruit the Flash's Rogues Gallery into his organization (this is before Libra is revealed as the herald of Darkseid), but the Rogues want nothing of it: they just want to lay low, since they're still on the run for the murder of the Bart Allen Flash. They plan to take out Inertia, the evil speedster who co-ordinated their murder of Allen.

I don't have much familiarity with the Rogues, unlike the characters featured in Legion of 3 Worlds and Revelations, which definitely hindered my enjoyment of the story; all I really know about them comes from their appearances in Countdown to Final Crisis (where they're also on the run for Bart's murder). In reading Rogues' Revenge, I felt like I was on the edge of reading a good story, it was just that I didn't have the emotional investment in these characters that the story wants you to have. Johns doesn't do much to introduce the reader to them, but rather throws you in at the deep end of their characterizations and histories. What I did grasp had me interested: these are a group of messed-up criminals, to be sure, but they're people, not supervillains cackling and trying to take over the world. Captain Cold especially is put through the emotional wringer here, but he seems to emerge the stronger for it. You do get those Geoff Johns splash pages that seem designed to excite someone who knows more than me; "I'm Kid Zoom!" shouts Inertia triumphantly, as if that has some kind of intrinsic significance.

Scott Kolins's art is very good; he does interesting things with panel layout that are occasionally hard to follow, but usually work well in establishing the oppressive tone of the book; it's really on tone where this books succeeds, between Kolins's art and Dave McCaig's colors, everything is appropriately gloomy. There's the occasional flashback scene that's not clearly marked as such, but if such a technique is good enough for Chris Ware, then I'm sure Johns and Kolins can use it too. The pasts of the Rogues very much live on in their presents.

There are two extra stories in the back of the book, "Absolute Zero" and "Rogue Profile: Zoom," which lay out histories for Captain Cold and Zoom, respectively, both reprinted from Johns and Kolins's 2000-05 run on The Flash. I ought to have read them first, as they make stuff in the main story much more clear. I have Johns's Flash Omnibus volumes on my shelf, waiting to be read; perhaps I'll reread Rogues' Revenge once I have the grounding in Flash lore the story obviously expects.

DC Comics Crises: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Batman's all about the mystery, or he used to be, and boy is this TPB a mystery. There seem to be a few different story lines that get told, and all sort of have to do with time. There's a 'missing' story from the RIP story line which gets inside Batman's head even more, and sort of connects the RIP story line to the Batman Returns story line. And finally there was a Batman and Robin story about who Batman really was, frowny not bendy law and order guy, or someone who sees the whole person and their greys too. Not a bad collection of issues, it's just that the stories seemed a little too random to me to be put together into one TPB.

Barry Allen is back again. And generally, these days at least, that means that something pretty catastrophic may happen. And since Zoom, aka the Reverse Flash is also back it will be super catastrophic since he's trying to unravel time (I think).

This TPB is the run up to the crazy last thing DC did before they semi-restarted most of their titles with the New 52).

And as for the art I mostly liked it (though I'm still unsure why Reverse Flash seemed to sometimes be super Dark Red and sometimes in his Yellow suit). They looked like who they were supposed to look like and didn't all look alike, both pluses in comic book art in my opinion.

Needs more Wonder Woman. :) Batman definitely gets the center stage here, which makes this WW fan a little grumpy.

Both plots deal with the nature of identity, with Batman nearly going native in an attempt to defeat the Ventriloquist, and Wonder Woman having her identity briefly stolen by Clayface, a borrowed Batman villain. The writing is high-quality and the art is also good, but Batman gets a deep, dark character arc while Wonder Woman doesn't have enough space to delve too deeply into character.

Recommended for Batman fans; Wonder Woman fans will probably be a little disappointed.½

It feels like a collection of bits. Because it is. But some of the bits are quite good. Others only seem...necessary. To fill us in on stuff that wasn't clear. But it helps set up "The Return of Bruce Wayne", which so far seems great fun, so that's good.

I guess I was a bit underwhelmed after the brilliance of Morrison's Batman & Robin, but the "future Batman" stuff is still interesting. Of only there were more of it!

Billed as one of those "secret origins of" stories that seem to be cropping up all of the time, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes details the "behind the scenes" events that occurred during the Avengers' formative years (in this case, the first year).

These comics read more as a companion to the original Avengers issues (through Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch joining the team). If the reader doesn't have knowledge of those issues, then this is really only half a story. And even if the reader does have knowledge of those issues, there isn't much added here. Iron Man has to work with the government to get clearance. Captain America, once recovering his memories, is haunted by them. Quicksilver is overprotective of his sister. Thor comes off as a jerk sometimes, but that's because he's a deity. Hawkeye is a "bad guy" trying to do right. And really, that's all been explored before, and in better stories.

I'd probably only recommend this to die-hard Avengers fans. If you're not familiar with the Avengers at this point (especially the early issues), I'd recommend reading those first before even trying this one (Essential Avengers Vol. 1 has those reprinted at a good price).½

Perhaps not as good as the first volume, but still fun. You can see the beginnings of Geoff Johns comics career here, which is enlightening. It's clear he had a healthy appreciation of DC Comics' past, as this volume brings in even more of the Star Spangled Kid's and Stripesy's histories with the Seven Soldiers of Victory and the Justice Society of America. The title only ran for 14 issues (plus a #0), but in that short time Johns was able to create a character who both paid homage to a Silver Age legacy and forged a new legacy of her own.

An intriguing but convoluted story in which the Beyonder, or a close copy thereof, repeats his schtick from the "Marvel Secret Wars" series, and transports a motley crew of superheroes and a few baddies to a battleworld somewhere in deep space, telling them to "slay their enemies and all you desire shall be yours". Spider-Man is along for the ride again, along with one or two other repeaters. Many of the rest are heroes or villains I'd never heard of, and I wonder if any of them are debuting here. There are quite a few plot twists and surprises, and to tell the truth I was less interested by the larger picture of the plotline than by the interaction among the participants in the contest. Adequate artwork, nothing special.½