Publisher DC Comics - Review

Catwoman 1

Can we get a little more face time? No, seriously, it’s around page 4 before we get a good look at our heroine’s face, though we see plenty of the rest of her, predominantly boobs and butt as she throws together a few valued possessions before fleeing her home pursued by criminals whom she’s managed to piss off.

Red Hood and the Outlaws 1

I was blindsided by this. Wonder Woman was the comic I fully expected to hate this week. But Red Hood I didn’t expect much of, and demanded less; I could handle Roy Harper being without a daughter as long as he had both arms and didn’t have the stupid and implausible relationship with the murderess, and this promised that, so I went in with low expectations.

Hawk & Dove 1

Presumably whatever DC was hoping for with this slightly demented line-wide relaunch, it wasn’t to instil a feeling of dread in the reader. Yet that’s exactly what welled up within when gazing upon the first page of Hawk and Dove 1. In fact I had to put it down, make a cup of tea and try again later.

DC Super Friends: Potty Time Power

Sam, our young protagonist, is deemed old enough now to step out of diapers and into the world of big-boy pants, but first he must master the skills of potty-training, and who better to teach him than the Super Friends?

Action Comics 1

… Best of all, it avoids Morrison’s two greatest faults – weak piddle-away endings that don’t match the strength of his opening concepts, and a propensity for being up himself to an extent, well, usually seen only on very specialist websites…

Justice League International 1

Remember the underwhelming, yet massively-hyped Justice League 1? Well this is the opposite – in that the entire team gets together in five pages, they interact with each other and actually do something! Yes! That’s still possible to accomplish in a comic, in 2011!

Justice League 1

I thought All-Star Batman was vile. It was vulgar, self-consciously ‘controversial’, and only borderline competent, despite some admittedly pretty illustration. It was the comic-book equivalent of monkeys in the zoo flinging poo at the patrons because they’re bored. But at least it aspired to some content… as opposed to the hollowed-out All-Star Batman that is Justice League 1.

Flashpoint – Deadman and the Flying Graysons 1

DC’s Flashpoint series seems to be latest attempt to simplify the DC universe and make it accessible to a wider readership. It happens every few years: some big, earth-shattering crisis that levels years of cross-continuity and increasingly self-referential storylines. Maybe it even works, for a little while, but it’s a doomed mission. Plotlines and characters accumulate again, history becomes baggage, and the comics become incomprehensible to a casual readership.

Strange Adventures 1

On the one hand, I’m all for a revival of DC’s ancient SF anthology; on the other hand, this is Vertigo, and I often get exasperated with them. Unfortunately the balance comes down on that side, for me.

DC Comics Presents Batman: Dark Knight, Dark City

This is a comic-format collection of four twenty year old Detective issues by Milligan, a three-parter and a one-off. Both stories are very good ones, and at eight dollars it’s good value too.