More New 52 Trade Paperback Reviews
Feb. 17th, 2014 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroGreen Lantern New Guardians Volume 2: Beyond Hope - Things go to hell with all of the Corps, but particularly the Blue Lanterns. They come up with a creative way to keep Arkillo functional as a Yellow Lantern despite Sinestro shutting down his Corps. They have a crossover with Blue Beetle that doesn’t tie in to the events in this book nearly as much as it logically should, given that the Reach are the Blue Lanterns’ big problem. Oh, and they finally reveal why Kyle got a stack of rings in the first issue.
Superman Volume 2: Secrets and Lies - Though bookended with a pair of a “Look how threatening Helspont is! I bet there will be a crossover featuring him!” stories, this features a couple of full and decent Superman tales that don’t really require much backstory knowledge. (I hate the artist on the last story, though. I hope he was only a guest for that issue.)
The Fury of Firestorm Volume 3: Takeover – Captain Atom’s book was cancelled, so his storyline gets resolved and he gets “killed” here. Then we get a couple of solid issues before the book completely loses track of what it’s foreshadowing (seriously, it sets up no less than four plots before eventually dumping them all to have Firestorm join the Justice League) and stretches a fight scene over two full issues. Also, the writers don’t seem entirely certain on what Jason brings to the table as the “brains” portion of Firestorm, because Firestorm doesn’t fight smart at all, even when Ronnie is listening to Jason. He mostly gets beat up a lot and, despite being an energy being, knocked out a lot, too.
Superboy Volume 3: Lost - This book has the “pieces of crossovers” problem in spades, running straight from the Harvest crossover with Teen Titans into the H’El On Earth crossover with the superbooks. You only get bits and pieces of what’s happening, which is particularly galling because it seems like all of Superboy’s big resolutions/revelations happen in other books. (It also puts Superboy’s powers on the fritz for the duration of the crossover, which is annoying because I like the New 52 approach to his TK as both a power set and a super-senses set.) The last story, which tells the secret origin of Harvest (and therefore of Superboy in the New 52) is interesting. I’m not sure they’ll use it well, but it’s an interesting hook.
Teen Titans Volume 3: Death of the Family - This actually does the crossover story right, in that it only has a few issues of Teen Titans in it, and instead attempts to collect the issues of Batman required to tell a complete story. I wasn’t particularly crazy about the story, but it’s all there. And then it jumps back to Teen Titans for another bit of the requisite Trigon foreshadowing.
Justice League Dark Volume 3: The Death of Magic - I have rather mixed feelings about this title in particular as the reboots go, because it’s trying very hard to be a complete reboot of all Vertigo material. On one hand, that’s very sensible because Vertigo material doesn’t jive into the main DCU well at all, and the continuity is a hellish morass if you haven’t been following it since the 80s. On the other hand, said material is generally very good and often better than what they do with it here. Case in point, this volume sees the rebooted versions of Tim Hunter (which clearly ignores everything ever published featuring him; and makes him a bland macguffin boy where he could be so much more) and Dr. Destiny (which gives him a new origin independent of Dream of the Endless and tries, but wholly fails, to make him scary in a different way). Also, every character in this book has the problem of having “magic” as their superpower, which makes power levels vary wildly and means there aren’t really definable limits of what characters can or cannot do.
Demon Knights Volume 3: The Gathering Storm - Did you know that “Adam One” of Stormwatch was actually Merlin of Camelot, and that the first Stormwatch was the Demon Knights? It’s a shame that was apparently the only collaboration the authors of the two books did. Otherwise, though, this is a pretty decent book. Tells some good yarns, and makes clever use of having a majority-immortal cast by including a decades-long time skip between issues, and letting characters play the long game. Also as (I think) a first in the mainstream DCU, the Holy Grail is actively referred to as “the cup of Christ”—oftentimes, writers try to avoid explicitly referencing Jesus or Christianity for fear of getting some right-wing group up in arms about it. I suppose in a book called “Demon Knights” they figured there wasn’t much worse any religious backlash could get.
The Savage Hawkman Volume 2: Wanted - This book is by Rob Liefeld. That should tell you everything you need to know about why it isn’t very good. (If it doesn’t, either you just need to know to avoid Rob Liefeld like the plague because you’ve never heard of him; or I really don’t understand why you read my blog because you think he can write or draw anything worth my time.) Turns out the New 52 Nth Metal is basically the Witchblade, and the reason Carter is such an asshole is because he’s actually an amnesiac Thanagarian…who’s also an asshole.
Superman Volume 2: Secrets and Lies - Though bookended with a pair of a “Look how threatening Helspont is! I bet there will be a crossover featuring him!” stories, this features a couple of full and decent Superman tales that don’t really require much backstory knowledge. (I hate the artist on the last story, though. I hope he was only a guest for that issue.)
The Fury of Firestorm Volume 3: Takeover – Captain Atom’s book was cancelled, so his storyline gets resolved and he gets “killed” here. Then we get a couple of solid issues before the book completely loses track of what it’s foreshadowing (seriously, it sets up no less than four plots before eventually dumping them all to have Firestorm join the Justice League) and stretches a fight scene over two full issues. Also, the writers don’t seem entirely certain on what Jason brings to the table as the “brains” portion of Firestorm, because Firestorm doesn’t fight smart at all, even when Ronnie is listening to Jason. He mostly gets beat up a lot and, despite being an energy being, knocked out a lot, too.
Superboy Volume 3: Lost - This book has the “pieces of crossovers” problem in spades, running straight from the Harvest crossover with Teen Titans into the H’El On Earth crossover with the superbooks. You only get bits and pieces of what’s happening, which is particularly galling because it seems like all of Superboy’s big resolutions/revelations happen in other books. (It also puts Superboy’s powers on the fritz for the duration of the crossover, which is annoying because I like the New 52 approach to his TK as both a power set and a super-senses set.) The last story, which tells the secret origin of Harvest (and therefore of Superboy in the New 52) is interesting. I’m not sure they’ll use it well, but it’s an interesting hook.
Teen Titans Volume 3: Death of the Family - This actually does the crossover story right, in that it only has a few issues of Teen Titans in it, and instead attempts to collect the issues of Batman required to tell a complete story. I wasn’t particularly crazy about the story, but it’s all there. And then it jumps back to Teen Titans for another bit of the requisite Trigon foreshadowing.
Justice League Dark Volume 3: The Death of Magic - I have rather mixed feelings about this title in particular as the reboots go, because it’s trying very hard to be a complete reboot of all Vertigo material. On one hand, that’s very sensible because Vertigo material doesn’t jive into the main DCU well at all, and the continuity is a hellish morass if you haven’t been following it since the 80s. On the other hand, said material is generally very good and often better than what they do with it here. Case in point, this volume sees the rebooted versions of Tim Hunter (which clearly ignores everything ever published featuring him; and makes him a bland macguffin boy where he could be so much more) and Dr. Destiny (which gives him a new origin independent of Dream of the Endless and tries, but wholly fails, to make him scary in a different way). Also, every character in this book has the problem of having “magic” as their superpower, which makes power levels vary wildly and means there aren’t really definable limits of what characters can or cannot do.
Demon Knights Volume 3: The Gathering Storm - Did you know that “Adam One” of Stormwatch was actually Merlin of Camelot, and that the first Stormwatch was the Demon Knights? It’s a shame that was apparently the only collaboration the authors of the two books did. Otherwise, though, this is a pretty decent book. Tells some good yarns, and makes clever use of having a majority-immortal cast by including a decades-long time skip between issues, and letting characters play the long game. Also as (I think) a first in the mainstream DCU, the Holy Grail is actively referred to as “the cup of Christ”—oftentimes, writers try to avoid explicitly referencing Jesus or Christianity for fear of getting some right-wing group up in arms about it. I suppose in a book called “Demon Knights” they figured there wasn’t much worse any religious backlash could get.
The Savage Hawkman Volume 2: Wanted - This book is by Rob Liefeld. That should tell you everything you need to know about why it isn’t very good. (If it doesn’t, either you just need to know to avoid Rob Liefeld like the plague because you’ve never heard of him; or I really don’t understand why you read my blog because you think he can write or draw anything worth my time.) Turns out the New 52 Nth Metal is basically the Witchblade, and the reason Carter is such an asshole is because he’s actually an amnesiac Thanagarian…who’s also an asshole.
