Assorted Reviews (Because Something Needs To Go Here)

I went through a week and a half with no air-conditioning in my apartment. That led to less blogging for two reasons: the laptop overheated too often and comic-book-related thoughts had no chance of pushing out angry thoughts about a property management team that couldn't manage to fix the issue within a day or two.

I'll be getting back on the regular posting thing, but in order to put something up now, I'm going to share the pellet reviews I've done for the Best Shots team over the last few weeks.

Brightest Day #1 (Published by DC Comics): When #0 came out, I was fairly critical of it. I felt it jumped around haphazardly and had no flow to it. Whatever it was trying to do, it didn’t seem that successful at it. But issue #1? Much better. In his BSA of the issue, Troy Brownfield draws a favorable comparison between BD & 52…and I couldn’t agree more. This is due to fixing many of the problems in the #0 issue. Deadman seems more like a character and is used less clumsily as a transitional tool. We’re given a better sense of what the cast is going to encounter in the series. We’re shown that there’s something more than just observing a day in the lives of the characters going on here, which is better than what we were given in the initial issue.

Brightest Day #3 (Published by DC Comics): There’s something about how the different segments of this issue were weaved together that was not entirely satisfying. Each bit feels less substantial than the number of pages devoted to it suggest it should be. Without using Deadman as an obvious tool of the story, it seems like the team is unable to or unwilling (for some unknown reason) to make all of the scenes read like parts of an overarching story rather than a weirdly structured anthology title with possibly one too many stories than it can service in the room available. Which isn’t to say the book isn’t enjoyable. It manages to be well illustrated and entertaining enough to be worth purchasing and continuing to follow, despite the nagging feeling that it could be better executed.

Mighty Crusaders Special #1 (Published by DC Comics): If you can get over the feeling that this was made into a special just to be able to milk an additional #1 out of the upcoming series, it is an enjoyable read as a primer on the Red Circle characters. There are several writers involved in this special, but only one pencil artist…and you come away with the sense that it benefited from both of those creative choices. Each of the Red Circle characters seems to have their strong/unique voice (possibly made easier by the team of writers vs a single writer from the previous series), while a single artist helps make for a consistency to the visuals that was sorely needed. If more of the Red Circle titles had this type of artwork, I’d hazard a guess that they might have been more successful , ironically keeping this special from ever being needed.

The Matriarch #1 (Published by Arcana Studios): Richardson & Yarbrough craft a pretty enjoyable new character: a single mom, trying to balance raising her son with being a super-heroine and working for an ad agency. It’s a good, solid read, though, through the first chapter, that wasn’t my initial opinion. In that chapter, there seemed to be a rush to get as many of the character’s little hooks out on to the page as quickly as possible. While the urge is understandable (or would have been if there wasn’t so much room left in the book), it really hurts the character’s chance to naturally grow on the reader. Thankfully, the second chapter has a much better flow to it. It isn’t perfect, as the idea behind what the protagonists are fighting against could be more clearly defined, but we learn about the characters in a much more organic way than the prior chapter. The third chapter more closely resembles the first than the second, but creators were successful enough in the middle of the book for the good will to transfer through to the end. It’s worth a read if you can snag a copy. (edit: I didn't realize this had previously been a webcomic at the time of review)

Really Late, Yet Spoiler Free Blackest Night #8 Review

(I originally wrote the review below for the Newsarama Best Shots Extra coverage, but I got it in just a little too late for it to be included. I'm not going to flesh it out with specific plot point references and the like. Feel free to discuss "spoiler" bits in the comments section, as it has been out for 2 weeks now.)

Well, Blackest Night is over. That’s probably the only thing that everyone reading this issue will agree on. As conclusions go, I think this issue was rather weak and that it exposes some weaknesses in the event overall.

I normally strive to judge an issue on its own merits, rather than putting the weight of the rest of its arc on top of it. But, in this case, there are some elements of the larger story that you can’t ignore in looking at this individual issue.

With how many issues/pages were kept locked on the pitched battle with Nekron and his Black Lanterns, the resolution seems too neat, tidy, quick and unsatisfying. There are more costume changes that seem designed to sell action figures rather than service the story. The handling of the happy little side effects to the light beating the darkness, with each getting a few panels of attention, seems like just enough room to acknowledge that something happened and so little room as to boil down to kind of annoying quick hits. In a final issue of an event that already had a somewhat unmanageable number of characters and subplots to focus on, devoting eight (not always efficiently used) pages to reactions and “telling” instead of “showing” would appear to have hurt the ability for the first part of the issue to breathe and flow.

Now, I’m fully aware that the final issues of events often suffer due to having to tie a pretty bow on the wrap up. But I don’t know that it has to always be that way. In fact, I think that expectation has helped perpetuate the trend. Instead of languishing over making the flow tight, it is as if creators and editors are liberated by the idea that the audience will complain of a letdown to some degree regardless, so they put more of a priority on making sure they clearly spell out how everything has changed and what comes next. That they seemed to have failed to create much excitement for what comes next through how they presented it here just underscores the problems with this final issue.