Weekly Crisis Quick Shot Comic Book Reviews for 04/09/08

Oh, before we get started, you should check out this Dr Doom post from mike sterling's progressive ruin. After the recent Mighty Avengers' issue where he calls Ms. Marvel a whore, Mike did up an image intensive post full of random Doom monologues and put downs. After you read them all in a row, you'll see how far off Bendis is, in terms of dialogue, with regards to Doom. And hey, it's a bunch of Doom put downs and speeches. What's not to love?

For this edition of the Quick Shot Reviews, I think I managed to stay fairly close to the "quick" part of the title. The Titans #1 review is a bit long, but only because it was a #1 and I had some more I wanted to say about it.

Also, I'm thinking about going back through the archives and breaking up older review posts into individual reviews for each book and creating a proper index for each series. I'm not sure when I'll get around to doing this or if it's even worth my time to do, but I think it would at least provide an easier way to find, say, all Captain America reviews or all my reviews from DC, etc. I have some other personal projects I'm working on at the moment, so this is just something I'm throwing around at this time. Might get around to it by the end of the month or so.

Anyways, I've taken enough of your time with my yammering. Hit the jump for the reviews.

BOOSTER GOLD #8
Written by Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz
Art by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund

If you've been reading Booster all along, this is more of the same. With how fast Johns and Katz introduced and then killled off the resistance in this altered timeline and the general lack of emotion or slightest hint that it bothered Booster or Ted leaves me feeling like the last few issues were filler. Add in the fact it ends with Blue and Gold looking to track down the remnants of the old JLI and it makes me wonder why that wasn't the first step they took and issue or two ago. We're basically back to where we started when they first arrived in the future, no better or worse for the wear.

Now, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy this issue or the previous ones, but it just doesn't feel like any of this matters and you could skip the previous couple of issues and you wouldn't have missed a beat. Still a good book, but a far cry from the comedy goldmine the earlier issues were. I blame the severe lack of Skeets.

Verdict - Check It


COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #3
Story by Paul Dini
Story consulting by Keith Giffen
Script by Sean McKeever
Art by Ron Lim and Mark McKenna

Let's do a quick recap. Superman gives Darkseid a bloody lip after one punch. I know he's Superman, but it's freaking Darkseid they have jobbing to him here. In fact, it doesn't turn to Darkseid's favour until he activates the chip he put in Jimmy Olsen and uses his powers to turn Jimmy into a walking piece of kryptonite.

Meanwhile, Mary Marvel is evil and uses Kyle Rayner as a human club and bashes Donna Troy repeatedly until the two of them are out cold. WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP.

Finally, the Atom is inside Jimmy's head, breaks Darkseid's control chip and Jimmy then grows into a giant lizard-man thing and we end with him about to fight Darkseid. God, I hope the big conclusion to Countdown isn't an "epic" battle between Jimmy Olsen and Darkseid. I don't think I could handle it.

Verdict - Avoid It


GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY #7
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Cliff Chiang

By all accounts I should bash this book as much as I bash Countdown, as of late. It is very much a B-movie-esque title with some ridiculous occursances and explanations, such as an evil cloud killing Connor or aliens in a flying saucer attacking our heroes.

Well, the aliens turn out to be humans in rubber mask disguises. Seems Ollie didn't bother frisking or checking them out and called Hal Jordan in in what was, I'll admit, a pretty funny scene if you ignore the fact these people know are responsible or were at least involved in trying to kill Ollie's son and have rendered him brain dead.

The whole inappropriate response in light of his son's situation? Ya, Winick throws cation to the wind and has the Arrow clan tie the two men up and imply they are going to take photos and videos of them being forced to have sex with sheep, giant fat men and a 90 year old woman in a bunny suit. Go back and read that again. Who the hell approved this?

Considering the situation with Connor being kidnapped and critically injured, you'd think there'd be some sense of urgency or at least some emotion from these people. They're all laughing it up and by the looks of things, they don't seem to be in any hurry to find him, if they even recall that's what the point of this whole thing is. Under different pretenses, this could probably be a decent, light hearted romp, and the opening with Hal was perfect, when taken out of context, but right now, this boggles the mind.

Verdict - Check It


GREEN LANTERN CORPS #23
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Art by Patrick Gleason and Prentis Rollins

I've been reading Green Lantern for a while now, dating back to off and on stints around when Hal went crazy. Oh wait, I mean was possessed by a giant fear bug. What I'm trying to say is, I don't recall ever seeing the rings pull someone, whether they want to or not, back to Oa. Am I just forgetting this ability or is this new? Seems odd it would endanger innocents or prevent the robot GL from reforming his body, which seems like it would be a useful thing to have. However, it was funny seeing Guy getting dragged off by the ring while he was sleeping.

It's definitely good to be back to Tomasi's story. Mongul is busy cultivating those weird "dreamworld" inducing plants of his and has also been busy hunting down and recruiting, or killing, Sinestro Corps members, depending on whether they accept or decline his "offer".

The Guardians have noticed the disappearance of these rings and send the GL's they dragged back to Oa (why not just message them through the ring?) to investigate. This happens to be in the off limits to Green Lanterns Vega system and, as expected, leads to some complications. Ion, fresh off some sun bathing, gets taken out by one of the dream plants of Mongul along with Arisia and taken captive. Kind of sad seeing Ion taken out so quick. Seems to be suffering Sentry-itis where he's too powerful for a story so he gets taken out conveniently at the start.

Still, solid returning issue, but a little light weight, with it mostly being set up for upcoming issues. Definitely worth a read, though.

Verdict - Check It


TITANS #1
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Ian Churchill

I picked this up after a couple people asked me about it and, while I didn't hate it, the book didn't do much for me either. I was never a fan of the original Titans. Sure, I like Wally and Dick, but as a team, they don't do it for me and they always seemed to be fighting either Deathstroke or Trigon. Guess what this issue is about?

Ya, Trigon is back and trying to kill Titans. He was the one behind the Power Boy killing and putting the beat down on a bunch of other random Titans, like Cyborg or Hawk and Dove, back in the Titans East special.

This issue, he goes out of his way to attack the rest of the former Titans, including the current Teen Titans and the original team members, Starfire, Nightwing, etc. Don't ask why he tries to kill them when he didn't bother to kill anyone but Power Boy in the first attack on the East squad.

That's the issue. He attacks each member one by one and then, after they all survive, they meet up and the issue ends. Sure, we had a ridiculous monologue on how liberating being naked is from Starfire and some cheesecake from the Flash for the ladies out there, but not much else happened. I was confused with a few things though.

1) Dick is fighting what appear to be human or humanoid beings and he just tosses a sword through one of their heads. It was a bit too casual for me considering it's by Nightwing, but I don't know if it's a big deal or not.

2) Dick finishes talking to Batman and heads to meet up with his former teammates. He was just blown up and fought some demons. He gets to the rest of the team and he still has a bunch of glass shards in his back. Uh, no first aid kit in the Batmobile or what?

3) Donna and Kyle are in space. They get attacked by demon thing. I guess Countdown is over? On top of that, Donna's the only one that went back to join the Titans. After all this time together, Kyle didn't bother to come help or at least find out why they nearly died?

Despite some minor flaws or nitpicking, it's an average read. I don't have much affinity for any of the characters in a team setting and don't intend on sticking around for the remainder of this Trigon story, but that's more a personal preference and not a direct indicator of the quality of the book.

Verdict - Check It

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