Saturday, March 19, 2011

Really Quick Hits! 3/19/11 edition

Over the course of the past two days I have managed to... instead of review, let's say summarize 14 comic books. After looking back at the books I wrote about, I'm pretty disappointed... The highest score any of these books got from me was a 7 1/2, which is a score I give to a comic that was only SLIGHTLY above average. As a matter of fact, many, if not most, of these books were below a 6, which means they were below average reads. That's really pretty bad... Interestingly, 9 out of the 14 books were DC titles, which I guess explains why the scores were so lackluster... On a positive note, this is my 100th post of the year! That's about the only good thing about this post...

Wonder Woman #608:

What Happened: Cheetah, Artemis and Giganta(who are Amazons now) beat Wonder Woman: The Teenage Amazon down for a while because they want to kill her as revenge for Wonder Woman abandoning them, or maybe they wanted to capture her for the mysterious Morrigan... I really don't know, or quite frankly care. The Morrigan themselves seem like they now suddenly DON'T want WW to join their ranks, and we end this one with Dr. Psycho saving WW from the trio of phony Amazons.

Thoughts: What can I say here that I haven't hit on before? I just can't get into this story at all. I think we're 8 or 9 issues into J. Michael Staczynski's WW story, and I honestly have NO idea what's going on. I mean after nearly TEN issues of this story, shouldn't we have SOME idea of what the hell is going on, why WW is now a Teenage Amazon, and who/what the Morrigan are all about? Every issue it's just more and more confusion... I don't get it.

Score: 4 1/2 out of 10.Look out, Wonder Woman: The Teenage Amazon! It's Cheetah: The Sudden Amazon!!!


Titans #33:

What Happened: Deathstroke, Cinder, Cheshire and That Worthless Junkie, sneak onto an island to kill some guy named Drago. Unfortunately for Deathstroke, Drago knew Deathstroke was coming. How'd he know? Because That Worthless Junkie and Cheshire have finally turned on Deathstroke. After an extended fight scene, Cinder is knocked out and Deathstroke is captured and brought before Drago, who pulls out Deathstroke's eye... With his bare hand... Really.........

Thoughts: I... I don't even know what to say anymore. I mean after that last page, what more is there TO say?! What's the purpose of having some feeb LITERALLY pull Deathstroke's eye out? What's the endgame here? Is Slade gonna go all Daredevil and do his thing blind? Is he going to simply... I don't know, stick his eye back in his head and carry on like nothing happened? I thought this series was on the upswing, I recall enjoying the past few issues, but that sure came to a screeching halt with this issue. Ah DC... You find new ways to depress me every single month...

Score: 4 1/2 out of 10.Yoink!


Superboy #5:

What Happened: This is the second ever, or as DC is calling it, The FIRST EVER Race Between Kid Flash and Superboy!!!!!!! issue. The two agree to race with the proceeds going to benefit Smallville. So the two teenage heroes run around the globe, inexplicably staying neck and neck the entire time, and then Krypto wins the race.........

Thoughts: What the hell did I do to deserve this?!?!?! Is it because I said Dan Didio sucks?! Is it the way I've been insulting Chairman Johns lately?!? I mean seriously, why is this happening to me?!?! *sigh* Okay X, take a deep breath and calm down... This is one of the few times I finished a comic book and literally cursed aloud after reading it. It was that incredibly bad. Not only that, it was insulting. I literally felt insulted after reading this comic. First off, Bart Allen has already proven that he is light years faster than Superboy. Don't believe me? Then CLICK HERE. But as I was reading this I was thinking, “Maybe Bart doesn't want to embarrass SB too badly in his hometown.” Sure, it SEEMED like Bart was giving the race his all, but like I said, maybe he was holding back. So as the issue rolled along, I figured we'd get a tie or something. And then Krypto, who wasn't even a part of the race won... I don't even want to talk about this anymore. Needless to say, this series just lost a reader.

Score: 0 out of 10.Go to hell, Krypto.


Batman and Robin #21:

What Happened: Some new villain named the White Knight is running around killing off the families of anybody who has ever been incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. By the end of this issue he's managed to kill Victor Zsasz's brother and the Mad Hatter's family, stymie the Gotham Police Department(big shock there!) as well as leave Batman(Dick Grayson) and Robin in his dust.

Thoughts: Hey, somebody sound the alarms, this was actually a GOOD comic book! After the past three DC comics I read/posted about, I REALLY needed something like this. The story is really strong, with Dick and Damian managing to figure out what the White Knight's game was(killing off the family members of Arkham's infamous), but not knowing who the Knight was going to strike against next, since it could be almost anyone. The fight scenes were good, the story was good, the art was good, the dialogue was good, and Commissioner Gordon didn't rough Damian up this issue. I have no complaints here.

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.My current Windows background!


Captain America: The Korvac Saga #4(of 4):

What Happened: Captain America(Steve Rogers) manages to convince future Galactus to give him the Ultimate Nullifier to put an end to the threat of Korvac. Cap confronts Korvac with the Nullifier but is unable to convince himself that nullifying Korvac was the right thing to do. Korvac takes advantage of Cap's hesitation and snatches the Nullifier, but since his mind wasn't properly focuses, it nullifies Korvac, ending his threat. With that, Galactus sends Cap back to the 21st century and we can call this mini-series a wrap.

Thoughts: Eh, no complaints here. I mean I doubt I'll remember this mini-series a week from now, but as it was, it was an okay way to spend a few minutes. This issue, like most of this mini-series was good. And hey, good is better than bad!

Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.That Galactus is such a class act!


Batman Incorporated #3:

What Happened: Batman(Bruce Wayne) heads to Argentina to dance the Tango of Death and try to convince Gaucho to join his Batman Inc. initiative. Gaucho turns Bats down, even after Bats assists Gaucho defeat a few of his Argentinian enemies. In the end, Bats and Gaucho are trapped by the thought-to-be-dead villain, El Sombrero, which literally translates to “The Hat”...

Thoughts: I literally have no earthly idea what I just read here. None. There were blue scorpions, a hot air balloon, Batman pretending to be Bruce Wayne in order to dance, and a villain whose name is literally The Hat. The Hat! If ever you need proof that Grant Morrison is insane, then read this comic book.

Score: 3 out of 10.Yup, Batman returned in order to dance.


Batman: Streets of Gotham #20:

What Happened: Dr. Death thinks back to his origin while he's working on some drugs for his new boss, Hush. However, Hush figures out that Dr. Death was going to double-cross him, so he knocks Death out and steals Death's drugs.

Thoughts: I honestly had no problem with this comic. I can imagine that some people would, since this storyline was supposed to be about Hush, and he only appeared on maybe three or four pages, but I actually enjoyed Dr. Death's origin enough to overlook the lack of Hush. I think there are only two more issues left before this series is being canceled, so I'd have to hope that Hush(finally!) takes center stage next issue and reveals exactly what he's up to here.

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.Man are they OLD!!!

16 comments:

  1. List of things I mark out for: People being called feeb's, The term Yoink due to The Simpsons, Roy being only referred to as "That Worthless Junkie", You telling Krypto to go to hell while Bart has the most determined look on his face he's EVER had, and dastardly villains named The Hat. God this post ruled so much, happy 100!

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  2. I'm glad my mental anguish could bring you some enjoyment, JT. If you enjoyed this post, just think, I still have an issue of Brightest Day to read/review this week!

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  3. Oh yeah, there's that to. So as of now you'v recently dropped Flash, Green Lantern and Superboy right?

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  4. Yes, yes and almost definitely yes. Maybe after a week of cooling down I'll change my mind on SB, but as of now, I NEVER want to read that title again! I think I saw that Yost is going to be writing an arc(or becoming the regular writer) for X-Men, which means I'll be dropping that as well. Besides that, I can't think of anything else I'll be dropping. I'd like to drop Batman, but it's Batman, and the last issue of JLA saved that title from the chopping block.

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  5. Damn, if Yost is in town it's time to drop. And yeah, I dropped JLA about a year ago and never looked back. Has Jade accomplished her White Lantern thing yet? Cause she's yet to appear in Brightest Day at ALL....

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  6. Huh, damned if I remember... I'm gonna guess yes... I can kind of/sort of remember her accomplishing it during that horrible Starheart storyline, but I can't say for sure because that storyline, you know, sucked.

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  7. Haha, yeah so sadly JLA continues to remain stupid. And I don't know if Boomerang or Hawk did their yet, if so I haven't seen it. So I'll be happy when this is over.

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  8. Hmm, good point about Boomerang and Hawk... Why HASN'T that happened yet? You'd figure they'd have gotten that out of the way MONTHS ago. Weird...

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  9. Yep, so unless it happened in the soon-to-be-cancelled Flash series which I doubt, I guess they'll quickly throw it in BoP or something....

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  10. Capt. Boomerang will suddenly run on-panel in the middle of an unrelated BoP storyline and throw a boomerang at Dove, at which point Hawk will jump in the way and catch it. Then Huntress will knock Boomerang out and everybody will act like it never happened... God, what happened to DC?!?!? They USED to be good...

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  11. The sad thing is I could LITERALLY see it playing out just like that... sad sad sad day in comics.

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  12. I totally forgot WW existed for 2 seconds lol. The only awesome thing about that review, was well the scan. Lol. Thank you for the wonderful art X.

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  13. You weren't kidding about these reviews being "really quick," but I also really enjoyed them! Something about the succinctness of them made them a fast, fun read for me.

    As disturbing as that image from Titans is, your caption was great. So was the review of Superboy, which had me laughing. Do these writers bother to do ANY research before they write these stories? (Not that it would have mattered even if they'd never raced before, since it sounds like it was an awful story anyway...but still.)

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  14. Slight correction, JT... A sad day in DC comics, because, imho, Marvel is rolling along as strongly as ever.

    I wish I could forget WW existed, Lisha! :P I'm so over WW right now it's not even funny.

    Yeah, it seems sometimes less is more, Marc. Even when I was proofing this post, I was surprised by how quickly I went through it, especially considering it contained 7 comics in it.

    "Do these writers bother to do ANY research before they write these stories?" EXACTLY!!! I mean I knew that SB and Bart raced before, hell, I even POSTED it! And granted, who really remembers Superboy and the Ravers, but if you're going to write a SB comic, SHOULDN'T you have a good grasp of the character, what he HAS and HASN'T done, etc? Is that really too much to expect? Sure, the ending STILL would have sucked, but I would have appreciated it way more if the REAL first race between Bart and SB was acknowledged, even fleetingly so.

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  15. X I think we're both over WW. I am dreading this Flashpoint crap but I REALLY hope they fix WW with it. And kill Barry Allen. Lol

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  16. You had me at "kill Barry Allen", Lisha! :D

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