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March 2014 Collection of TPBs
The Ravagers Volume 2: Heavenly Destruction - This book is really New-52 “Titans East” meets “Gen-13”. (With a splash of Doom Patrol—Niles Caulder and the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man make appearances!) Beast Boy is red, Fairchild might be a clone, Rose is still Deathstroke’s daughter, Terra’s going to become evil, Harvest has lots of plans. Nothing particularly noteworthy or new.
Dial H Volume 2: The Exchange – Secrets revealed! The Dials are from the wreckage of an interdimensional society that created dials for every purpose but was then destroyed by invaders. The final survivor built a “doom-dial” to get revenge, but the party of crazy dialers team up and cross all the wires in “The Exchange” to stop him. Despite China Mieville channeling a little Grant Morrison at points, it plays much better than it sounds. (And I’m not going to lie, I kinda love the secret origin of Open-Window Man.)
Supergirl Volume 3: Sanctuary – This volume is mostly Supergirl’s side of the “H’El On Earth” crossover (and has the same problem the Superboy collection did: it doesn’t actually resolve the plotline, and just jumps to the “picking up the pieces” aftermath). I hadn’t quite realized it in the other books, but H’El has pretty much every power the writers of all the books wanted him to have: Full Kyptonian set, teleportation, force fields, illusion-casting, shrinking, telekinesis. Dude has more powers than Amazo. Also, the Supergirl / Power Girl dynamic in the new DCU (where they’re the same person from different Earths) is generally well done, and their battle with a rogue AI is Portal-esque and hilarious.
Constantine Volume 1: The Spark and the Flame - Given the problems Justice League Dark has had as a book, this is surprisingly decent. They get the essence of the character pretty well, just de-aging him and putting him into the mainstream DCU to interact with superheroes. I’m not wild about Sargon, Zatara and Mister E being rebooted as villains, but it is what it is.
Strange Adventures - A collection of two smaller collections of short stories of sci-fi weirdness (Strange Adventures and Mystery In Space). Includes short previews of Spaceman and Saucer Country. Some of the stories are okay, but nothing leaps out as particularly noteworthy.
Swamp Thing (by Brian K. Vaughan) Volume 1 - This was the short-lived series from 2000 that focused on Tefé, and to my knowledge hasn’t been collected before. It is, among other things, leaps and bounds better than Andy Diggle’s character-assassinating work that followed it. The volume (and the original series, I think) tells the story in a piecemeal, anachronic order and features a bunch of different artists, but it’s reasonably easy to follow despite occasionally wondering if Vaughan was just as uncertain where things were going as Tefé is.
Dial H Volume 2: The Exchange – Secrets revealed! The Dials are from the wreckage of an interdimensional society that created dials for every purpose but was then destroyed by invaders. The final survivor built a “doom-dial” to get revenge, but the party of crazy dialers team up and cross all the wires in “The Exchange” to stop him. Despite China Mieville channeling a little Grant Morrison at points, it plays much better than it sounds. (And I’m not going to lie, I kinda love the secret origin of Open-Window Man.)
Supergirl Volume 3: Sanctuary – This volume is mostly Supergirl’s side of the “H’El On Earth” crossover (and has the same problem the Superboy collection did: it doesn’t actually resolve the plotline, and just jumps to the “picking up the pieces” aftermath). I hadn’t quite realized it in the other books, but H’El has pretty much every power the writers of all the books wanted him to have: Full Kyptonian set, teleportation, force fields, illusion-casting, shrinking, telekinesis. Dude has more powers than Amazo. Also, the Supergirl / Power Girl dynamic in the new DCU (where they’re the same person from different Earths) is generally well done, and their battle with a rogue AI is Portal-esque and hilarious.
Constantine Volume 1: The Spark and the Flame - Given the problems Justice League Dark has had as a book, this is surprisingly decent. They get the essence of the character pretty well, just de-aging him and putting him into the mainstream DCU to interact with superheroes. I’m not wild about Sargon, Zatara and Mister E being rebooted as villains, but it is what it is.
Strange Adventures - A collection of two smaller collections of short stories of sci-fi weirdness (Strange Adventures and Mystery In Space). Includes short previews of Spaceman and Saucer Country. Some of the stories are okay, but nothing leaps out as particularly noteworthy.
Swamp Thing (by Brian K. Vaughan) Volume 1 - This was the short-lived series from 2000 that focused on Tefé, and to my knowledge hasn’t been collected before. It is, among other things, leaps and bounds better than Andy Diggle’s character-assassinating work that followed it. The volume (and the original series, I think) tells the story in a piecemeal, anachronic order and features a bunch of different artists, but it’s reasonably easy to follow despite occasionally wondering if Vaughan was just as uncertain where things were going as Tefé is.