Reviews of Many DC Trade Paperbacks
Jan. 25th, 2014 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroIn general regarding DC trade collections: I feel like they care less and less about giving you an entire story in each trade (a practice they gave up in the pamphlets decades ago). They make very little effort to account for the massive crossovers and, especially for the less-popular New 52 books, seem to be treating the trades as “shovelware”—get them out the door, ignore quality, six issues in every book, no exceptions.
I read a small stack of the latest pamphlets (mostly Green Lantern and Bat-books), but nothing really caught my attention. The fact that no single issue contained a complete story or even much in the way of noteworthy events, and I was missing both the lead-in and the resolution to any of them, played a big role.
The Fury of Firestorm Volume 2: The Firestorm Protocols – Over the collected six issues, they introduce the various Firestorms that have been created for the countries of the world as defense measures and kill them all off, don’t make any sense of the big mysteries they then hastily semi-resolve, then return the characters to the pre-New 52 status quo. Why did we bother with the “reboot”, again?
Teen Titans Volume 2: The Culling - This includes a Legion Lost crossover (that it helpfully summarizes the missing issues of), some random adventures ofImpulse Kid Flash with dinosaur people, and Wonder Girl's new origin. Oh, and foreshadowing of the inevitable Trigon storyline. The dino-people thing actually made me long for the old Impulse solo title. Bonus points for a cameo by Bloodlines character Loose Cannon, who maybe four other people remember.
Batgirl Volume 2: Knightfall Descends - I think I’ve decided that this was the most unnecessary and stupid part of the New 52 reboot: Oracle was a unique character, a non-powered, non-combat character whose purpose was to win wars with information, and one of the few physically disabled characters in comics. Batgirl, on the other hand, is a dime-a-dozen badass normal—there are no Batgirl stories you couldn’t tell with Batwoman, Robin, Black Canary, Huntress or a dozen others instead. (The fact that Barbara’s personality and skill set has basically been overwritten with Stephanie Brown’s doesn’t help matters.) In this case, we get the tail end of one story, a crossover tie-in without any useful supporting information, and then the introduction of a set of villains who are moderately interesting but would actually be much more appropriate for Oracle to try to foil. Ah, well.
Green Lantern Corps Volume 2: Alpha War - The Alpha Lanterns go too far and are shut down…due to the machinations of the Guardians. Guy Gardner’s family is threatened and he gets kicked out of the Corps… due to the machinations of the Guardians. Oh, and the Guardians unleash the third (or possibly fourth) DC zombie apocalypse in the past few years. It sucks to be a GL when the Guardians are so evil, hunh? (If you don’t like it, don’t worry, they’ve been evil before. After this, they’ll probably be good for a while, then dead/gone for a while, just like the last half dozen cycles.)
Red Lanterns Volume 3: The Second Prophecy - This includes some chunks of the Third Army and First Lantern crossover events, including (inexplicably but pleasantly surprisingly) Green Lantern #20, which concludes the crossover and gives a (presumably non-canon) far-future epilogue for each of the major players. For reference, the zombie apocalypse ends in a totally flat note when the First Lantern kills them all (he was being used to power them) and then we need a team-up of every lantern corps, Hal as a black lantern, Kyle as a white lantern, Sinestro as Parallax and a few others to defeat the First Lantern (Volthoom, named after the creator of Earth-3’s evil Power Ring). The Guardians end up dead but replaced with secret, hidden good guardians. Oh, and the red lanterns all get smart and learn new ways to channel their rage as a team, in case you cared about the actual title characters.
I read a small stack of the latest pamphlets (mostly Green Lantern and Bat-books), but nothing really caught my attention. The fact that no single issue contained a complete story or even much in the way of noteworthy events, and I was missing both the lead-in and the resolution to any of them, played a big role.
The Fury of Firestorm Volume 2: The Firestorm Protocols – Over the collected six issues, they introduce the various Firestorms that have been created for the countries of the world as defense measures and kill them all off, don’t make any sense of the big mysteries they then hastily semi-resolve, then return the characters to the pre-New 52 status quo. Why did we bother with the “reboot”, again?
Teen Titans Volume 2: The Culling - This includes a Legion Lost crossover (that it helpfully summarizes the missing issues of), some random adventures of
Batgirl Volume 2: Knightfall Descends - I think I’ve decided that this was the most unnecessary and stupid part of the New 52 reboot: Oracle was a unique character, a non-powered, non-combat character whose purpose was to win wars with information, and one of the few physically disabled characters in comics. Batgirl, on the other hand, is a dime-a-dozen badass normal—there are no Batgirl stories you couldn’t tell with Batwoman, Robin, Black Canary, Huntress or a dozen others instead. (The fact that Barbara’s personality and skill set has basically been overwritten with Stephanie Brown’s doesn’t help matters.) In this case, we get the tail end of one story, a crossover tie-in without any useful supporting information, and then the introduction of a set of villains who are moderately interesting but would actually be much more appropriate for Oracle to try to foil. Ah, well.
Green Lantern Corps Volume 2: Alpha War - The Alpha Lanterns go too far and are shut down…due to the machinations of the Guardians. Guy Gardner’s family is threatened and he gets kicked out of the Corps… due to the machinations of the Guardians. Oh, and the Guardians unleash the third (or possibly fourth) DC zombie apocalypse in the past few years. It sucks to be a GL when the Guardians are so evil, hunh? (If you don’t like it, don’t worry, they’ve been evil before. After this, they’ll probably be good for a while, then dead/gone for a while, just like the last half dozen cycles.)
Red Lanterns Volume 3: The Second Prophecy - This includes some chunks of the Third Army and First Lantern crossover events, including (inexplicably but pleasantly surprisingly) Green Lantern #20, which concludes the crossover and gives a (presumably non-canon) far-future epilogue for each of the major players. For reference, the zombie apocalypse ends in a totally flat note when the First Lantern kills them all (he was being used to power them) and then we need a team-up of every lantern corps, Hal as a black lantern, Kyle as a white lantern, Sinestro as Parallax and a few others to defeat the First Lantern (Volthoom, named after the creator of Earth-3’s evil Power Ring). The Guardians end up dead but replaced with secret, hidden good guardians. Oh, and the red lanterns all get smart and learn new ways to channel their rage as a team, in case you cared about the actual title characters.
