Countdown - Arena #2 Review

COUNTDOWN: ARENA #2 (OF 4)
Written by Keith Champagne
Art by Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens

Arena continues to roll along, but the art seems to have gotten worse, if that's even possible. I'm not usually a big stickler on art, and, at this point, I'm not sure if it's McDaniel's fault or the inker and colourist's, but, considering it's showcasing all the various characters from across the Multiverse, you'd think the art could do the characters a little justice.

As for what happens in this issue, it's more of the same this time around with several more fights taking place. The little rebellion being formed by Dark Knight Returns Superman was quickly put down by Monarch. If he's that powerful, why does he even need these guys? Bob routinely gets taken captive or defeated in Coundown, so the Monitors are obviously no physical threat to him. Why doesn't he just kill them all himself?

Concerning the fights, the first up consisted of encarnations of The Ray, which included a Ray Palmer and Apollo, of Authority fame, for some reason. I guess they were light based powers or something? The no-name Ray tried to escape the arena and was promptly killed by Monarch while Palmer shrunk down and took down Apollo from the inside.

Next up was a battle of the Blue Beetle's. One that looked like Jaime Reyes was complaining about his scarab the entire issue and during the fight, the scarab left him and joined the Blue Beetle that looked like a swarm of beetles. The swarm then flayed the flesh from the human's bones. The other beetle-like Blue Beetle did his best, but was easily devoured in a similar fashion by this swarm monstrosity.

Finally, as the cover shows, the battle of the Green Lantern's turned into another non-fight as they all created a bubble in the arena to block out Monarch's sensors. Monarch is angered and goes into the arena himself as the three Lanterns try to take him on. The Batman Green Lanteren suceeds in rupturing Monarch's containment suit and the explosion kills all but one of the GL's, making the near dead survivor the victor of this battle.

It was a pretty generic set of battles and, with the exception of the shock value killings in the Blue Beetle battle, were all fairly disappointing. Only other thing of note from the issue is the ending with the Gotham by Gaslight Batman (I think it's GbG Batman, but art is a little hard to tell him apart from the other Batman) 'surviving' his apparent death at the hands of Red Rain Batman and became a vampire himself.

Verdict - Avoid It. Not much to see here and this series is quickly turning into a quick cash grab from DC. I could see if the fights were decent, but it's basically warp them in and watch them die or try to escape. There's very little variation and I don't really care about any of these characters, which makes this a less than enjoyable issue.

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