Cartoon animated world

That’s pretty much the situation happening in this title.  Since issue one, nothing much has changed in the status quo of the plot except Superboy discovering he is not fully human (which we all knew from the beginning) and that “Red” is actually Caitlin Fairchild, formerly of Wildstorm’s Gen13, which is a surprising development to be sure, but not one that has much of an impact other than removing yet another of Superboy’s sparse supporting cast. Caitlin’s confrontation with Superboy  [ Read More ]

But when a writer does make an effort to enforce a shared universe, the results can be quite thrilling, like Tomasi’s use of Martian Manhunter in this issue.  The green man’s appearance can’t come at a better time, as Guy Gardner makes little headway in interrogating his captive.  Even after stripping the enemy’s armor and getting some face-time, Guy and Salaak’s “good cop, bad cop routine” goes nowhere, as even the Guardians have zero data on their prisoner. We don’t  [ Read More ]

This arc of Hickman’s Fantastic Four, and issues like this one, show that Hickman succeeds where these events have failed.  In this issue, for instance, he manages to tell a story with universe wide implications and a fairly large cast, but at all times, there is an emotional core to the story that makes it all meaningful and gives the story heart.  Hickman balances the large-scale events with personal emotions in his characters, and the result is what I’ve been  [ Read More ]

For the most part, Azzarello stays true to the conniving, scheming world of the Greek pantheon.  Ever since Apollo’s oracles revealed Zeus “doesn’t exist,” a truly astonishing pronouncement if you ever heard one, you’d think there’d be some kind of uproar among the divinities, or at least some kind of inquiry as to how this could possibly happen.  But we’re talking about the ultimate mafia family here, so when the head of the household disappears, power plays abound. To that  [ Read More ]

Tony sacrificing his sobriety to Odin.  On the one hand, it seems sort of cheesy.  It also seems unbelievable that after one night off the wagon, Tony’ll be back to his hard-drinking ways.  That said, while I have mixed feelings about this stunt in general, I can’t argue with Matt Fraction’s subsequent portrayal of Tony this month and the accompanying, drunken dialogue. On the one hand, there’s no denying that drunken Tony is pretty funny to watch.  Sure, there’s a  [ Read More ]