May 16th RoundUp

posted by JediSheltie @ 7:42 PM

Lots this week, picked a few of the ole standbys. I've got some things to say about Jimmy Olsen in Countdown, but I'll save that for an 4-issue wrap-up.

Batman 665

"The Black Casebook" continues in this issue, where we learn what, exactly, said Casebook is. It's right up the alley of Grant Morrison, a guy known in the industry for "going big." His run on JLA was known for its epic story arcs featuring the "gods" of the DCU duking it out across the heavens in world spanning battles. Outside of Morrison's natural talent as a writer, the announcement he'd be doing a Batman title seemed a bit of a poor fit in terms of usual choice in story. Batman, after all, was generally not quite so well known for being involved with such large dust-ups outside of the JLA.

Morrison proves that things in Gotham can get just as epic without the help of the JLA. In this issue we see the as-yet-unidentified Venom user get hit by no less than 2 vehicles and nearly do what his "inspiration", Bane, accomplished in breaking the back of Batman. Bruce Wayne starts putting the few pieces together as he realizes the hulking Bane/Batman hybrid is meant to tap the fears that still linger from one of his more spectacularly unsuccessful fights. It's clearly spelled out here this guy is not Bane, simply someone using the same drug that gave Bane his size and strength.

Bruce realizes someone is taking pages from the Black Casebook, which is basically Batman's "X-Files." All the aliens, ghosts, para- and supernatural encounters he's logged are in the Black Casebook. The Joker is just a homicidal maniac with a bad facelift, after all, he doesn't have super-powers. There is a specific reference to an encounter in the casebook where this Batman/Bane hybrid was seen before, along with 2 other Bat-analogs, one of which has Bruce more concerned than the 9 foot tall hulk. Not having been a reader prior to Infinite Crisis, I'm not sure if Morrison is making this up. I doubt it, I'm just not familiar with the original story.

Giving Batman an "X-Files" is something that really seems to go with Morrison writing the title, as it provides a way to give the character those more "epic" encounters for which Morrison is so well known. This story and the solicits for issue 666 make it clear he's going to milk the numerical significance for all it's worth. The only oddity to the book is it veering off in last few pages back to Talia and his son, dropping the Black Casebook story entirely in something that seemed a bit tacked-on. The two stories will probably mesh next issue, but it did seem like a strange gear shift after the fight and the revelations about the Casebook.

Supergirl 17

Okay, so, apparently the sun went red in #16. I'm not sure I remember that, but now that I check, I think I just assumed all the redness on the last page was just an "artistic" interpretation of the dire events unfolding. Like the skies in all the, er... Crisis-i. It was that, too, perhaps, but now we know that Earth's sun is now red. This, as one might imagine, has a bit of a deleterious effect on the local Kyrptonian population at a rather bad time, namely when the ghosts of the Phantom Zone are loose and possessing most of the population of Earth.

Kara, who we learn has been napping for a month or so while the sun went red and the ghosts overwhelmed the Earth, finds herself still powered. It appears pop planned for just this kind of eventuality by implanting the sun crystals inside her body. As we've been learning, pop Zor-El planned for a lot of stuff that Kara's fuzzy memory is not very great at spelling out for us, the helpless reader. Finding herself alone on a ghost possessed Earth, Kara is confronted by the possessed versions of people and heroes she'd encountered over the past few issues, like Wonder Girl and Robin, before unsuccessfully seeking out Batman for a little bit of non-crazy fatherly advice.

Failing that, she has only one person to turn to.

Clad in what we assume is the Kryptonian equivalent of red-sun environmental armor, Clark is still trying to save the world. It's perhaps unintentionally ironic that we could assume this is something like the armor Superboy Prime used to feed himself yellow solar radiation upon his return to the DCU for the climax of Infinite Crisis. Clark's doesn't look like the Anti-Monitor inspired suit at all, but it seems to serve the same purpose.

Kara explains all her weird-ass dreams about whats going on with the ghosts to Clark and they decide to work together to save the day. Only, what I'm guessing is the reason the Auctioneer found 3 Kryptonian life forms on Earth back in Action shows up at the end to put the kybosh on that team up idea. I won't spoil it, but close perusal of World War III's few Supergirl related pages is all you need to figure out "who" shows up.

Kara's going to be on the new Teen Titans book, so all her major mental problems are going to be sewn up one way or another soon. This McKeever guy who's doing Teen Titans seems to like the character, and I'm almost disappointed they're throwing the main book to some relative unknown when this guy, who's known for doing good "teen" work, is now on the DC team. Maybe he'll get the book eventually. In fact, after my not officially writing down my Simone/Wonder Woman prediction, I'm going on record, here, now, as saying McKeever will eventually write Supergirl.

I'm banking on it.

Justice League of America 9

One of the problems with having a set of characters set 1000 years in the future of your current storylines is that, when your current storylines undergo massive revision, your characters 1000 years later are invariably effected. Thus the history of the "Legion of Superheros" is something constantly in flux with the myriad Crises and a retcons over the years. The current, Supergirl-assisted Legion is not the same Legion from the character's "heyday" of years past.

It seems the main upshot of this epic JLA/JSA "Lightning Saga" crossover so far, other than being a little confusing, is that all that stuff with "Superboy" and the Legion of Superheroes, perhaps the most famous part of "Legion" history, actually happened once more. Why else would Clark have statues of "old" Legionaries in his Fortress of Solitude? Not being a big fan or student of that period of Legion history, I'm assuming a lot of this designed to tug nostalgia strings for people a little more "in the know" than myself.

Outside of the LSH issues, the JLA and JSA's team-up is flowing rather smoothly, if also somewhat confusingly. Character beats with Powergirl and Hawkman seem an odd, forced aside to the main story. Though Arsenal's somewhat "meta" assessment of the team-up was one of the more enjoyable aspects of the script. He notes that it certainly is not proceeding by the usual team-up numbers, so to speak. This is certainly a plus, as the "meet them, fight them, team-up in the end" formula is, I've noted in the past, so completely overused.

Another moment of interest is the Legionaries describing the recent events in Infinite Crisis as the "middle" Crisis. Since this weeks issue of Countdown featured the fight between Batman and Karate Kid from last installment of the Lightning Saga, it's further evidence that something big remains on the horizon. The line could almost be overlooked as a throwaway, making the foreshadowing all the more enjoyable. Events from this crossover are going to have major implications for both Countdown and the DCU as a whole.

Which kind of makes me long for better understanding than I have had until this point. I was totally lost on the big "villain reveal" for instance. No clue who any of them were. I assume some names will be dropped sooner or later, but I feel I'm a bit in the dark about the overall direction of the story. Foreshadowing is nice, of course, but I'd like to have an accessible story supporting it.

Art's nice. People are complaining about Benes' Power Girl boobs, but they look just spiffy to me. I mean, it's a comic book, not an anatomy textbook. I have little patience for armchair plastic surgeons who moan about how they disagree with an artist's interpretation of the human form. I have a similar, and I think reasonably analogous, peeve about artists who can't draw military aircraft well, but I'm not going to hold their feet to the fire over it. It's my own little pet peeve, I understand that and move on. Sure, the human form might be more "elemental" to comics, but still, if you have that big a problem with it, just skip the book.