It seems all I've done with this blog lately is post news about my edited books - nothing wrong about that - but that's really not how I wanted it to end up. I barely have time to read my comics nowadays, much less write about them, but I'm going to try...
(By the way, Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul comes out soon - make sure to check it out, and let me know what you think!)
I did want to mention two releases this week (SPOILER ALERT):
Detective Comics #845 - Another great entry from Paul Dini, but this one was special for several reasons. First and foremost, there was some much-needed catching up between Bruce and Selina (both in costume), with Selina commenting on the other women in Bruce's life, namely Jezebel Jet (from Batman) and Zatanna (from Detective). (Frankly, I was really pulling for Bruce to spend more time with Zee - he needs to date outside his inner circle or Gotham socialites.) Second, it showed Batman relying on an amateur detective chat room to generate ideas about a murder case - a nice way to tap into the collective knowledge of his community - open source crime-solving, if you will. (And it was even cooler to have some familiar faces among the other chatters.) Third, Dustin Nguyen fits this title more each month, and his varying styles to show flashbacks is fantastic. I wasn't crazy about his Superman/Batman arc, and was skeptical about his Detective run - but I have been proven wrong, and happily so.
Trinity #1 - Now this is how a weekly should be done! (I don't see why this even has to be limited to 52 issues - 52 and Countdown both had reasons to be a year long, but unless there's something we don't know, Trinity has the potential to be ongoing.) In contrast to the Big Three's conference in an other-dimensional cubbyhole in the JLA HQ in the last issue of Justice Leage of America, here they simply meet for coffee on a pier, and the way they order drinks from the waitress tells us as much about their personalities as anything has to this point. Kurt Busiek nails their voices perfectly (and Wally West, to boot), and the issue sets up the nature of the threat very well. Mark Bagley's fairly new to me, not having read Ultimate Spider-Man, but he does a great job - if he can keep this up for the next 51 weeks, I'll be more than happy.
But that's only half the issue - the second half, written by Fabian Nicieza with Busiek, didn't thrill me as much, consisting of the introduction of several baddies (one new, one generic) with way too much exposition. Scott Daniel's pencils looked fine, but he needed more to do (check out his old issues of Nightwing, recent Green Arrow, or the short-lived Richard Dragon series, to see what he can do). The "back-up," for lack of a better term ("parallel storyline"?) didn't get off to as rousing a start as the main story, but I'm sure it will pick up with time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment