DC - Review - FA Online

Aquaman 1

For more than a decade, Aquaman has been the joke of DC Comics. Although mentions in TV shows such as Entourage and Big Bang Theory have helped keep him in the public consciousness, it’s been as a figure of ridicule, universally derided as the most useless hero in DC’s pantheon. Geoff Johns takes all the major Aquaman jokes and slaps each one soundly round the face as he dismisses it, hopefully forever.

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.

Sweet Transvestite

Supes faces a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ as he auditions for an all-girl super-team!

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.