Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews for 06/18/08 - Updated

Just a quick update to kick things off with a solid three reviews, featuring Catwoman, Incredible Hercules and Guardians of the Galaxy. I'll have another two or three reviews up later tonight, but this initial offering should help satisfy your review cravings.

Also, since a few books I was budgetting for in this week's releases got pushed back, I decided to grab issues two and three of Trinity and that inspired me to post the new poll on the right, asking what you think of DC's Trinity weekly series so far. The poll will close on Sunday and I'll post the results for all to see later that day.

Hit the jump for this week's reviews.

UPDATE - Added Trinity #2 and #3 reviews.

CATWOMAN #80
Written by Will Pfeifer
Art by David Lopez and Alvaro Lopez

I really, really enjoyed this issue. Despite being hastily wrapped up, what with the book set being cancelled and the story being broken up by forced Salvation Run tie-ins, the end to the Thief storyline was a very satisfying conclusion that mirrored how it opened - where the Thief gutted Selina's apartment, safehouses and blew up her apartment with her in it, nearly killing her.

While I would have loved to have seen this storyline fleshed out, as opposed to being wrapped up in a matter of a few issues spread out over a year and treated like a subplot due to editorial interference, it was also refreshing to see a story told without all the excess "decompression" and filler most six issue arcs are forced to include.

Picking up from last issue, Catwoman, who faked her death at the hands of the villain, Repro, follows said villain back to his boss, the Thief, who was responsible for Catwoman's recent string of bad luck and eventual capture by the Suicide Squad and holiday in Salvation Run.

Selina arrives on the scene to see Thief kill off Repro in hopes that he can hide the body and avoid having Batman come looking for the man that killed Catwoman. Selina, too late to save Repro, snaps some incriminating photos of Thief moving the body and proceeds to systematically execute her payback on Thief.

She breaks into his apartment, goes over his plans to rob a random socialite and proceeds to stalk him on his job. Before he can even attempt to steal anything, Catwoman begins by beating and torturing the petty thief, rubbing in how little she even cares for him before leaving him with broken fingers, several gunshot wounds in his arm and, more than likely, a few broken bones.

Just as he makes his way back to his apartment, Catwoman executes her final bit of revenge by setting off the pre-rigged explosives, destroying his apartment in the same manner he did to hers almost a year ago. Watching everything he has go up in flames, he can only collapse as the police arrive on the scene, anonymously tipped by Catwoman with the photos and evidence she gathered earlier, to arrest him.

Verdict - Must Read. I thought it was a great ending that was a longtime coming. It would have been nice if Thief had ended up being someone more prominent or Catwoman's former archnemsis, Hellhound, but, for how little time was left in this doomed series, I think Pfeifer did an excellent job wrapping up the dangling subplots.


GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #2
Written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Art by Paul Pelletier

I should be enjoying Guardians of the Galaxy more than I am. It has all the makings of a great book - solid writing team I've enjoyed in the past, said team working on characters they've revitalized, lots of old continuity being referenced, such as the Church of Universal Truth or the old Guardians team, great art and so on - but something just isn't clicking

I had the same problem with The Order, which I've compared this book to in my previous review, and I'm not sure if it's the similarities in reality TV narrative or if it's the general popcorn flick action dominating the first two issues that has my faith wavering.

For instance, this isse starts us off with the team checking out the floating, frozen monolith that came out of another anomoly at the end of last issue. Instead of dealing with the return of former Guardians of the Galaxy member, Vance Astrovik, who reader, Cierdwyn2, correctly predicted was encased in the ice with Captain America's shield, we are treated to a quick splash page of him coming out of the ice and the rest of the segment was dedicated to fighting giant tentacle monsters just to, I assume, have stuff blow up and add some action to the issue. It just felt completely unnecessary to me and the time could have been better spent on reintroducing Vance to us.

I did love the bits with Rocket Raccoon and he remains the best part of this book. His opening scene with Cosmo, who saddly only appeared once or twice this issue, where he complains about his issues with "talking pets" was great and was probably the funniest thing I've read all week.

However, other characters, specifically Mantis, seem like completely different characters from their pre-GotG appearances. I find her clarivoyance to be extremely annoying and her manner of speech seems off, too, compared to her cute and cryptic Starlord and Annihilation: Conquest appearances. I also miss seeing her in action and think her current Pepper Potts role, for another The Order comparison, is a bad fit for her.

It was good to see the Church of Universal Truth subplot wasn't put on the back burner for the duration of this "team formation" storyarc and the issue ends the Guardians responding to a distress call only to find several cardinals from the Universal Church waiting for them. Their designs are very fitting and you could think of it as a cosmic Spanish Inquisition and no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

One of the other little nitpicks I have with the series that has yet to be resolved is the relative power levels of each character. Adam Warlock gets thrown around like a rag doll by most of the creatures in this and the first issue, yet Peter Quill, who has no powers to speak of, is going up against the same monsters and has yet to suffer any kind of injuries or set backs. Warlock then goes on to annihilate the creatures in this issue with a simple spell. Is he all powerful or not? I like Warlock's character, but his current encarnation seems to be Sentry-ized with little to no focus or direction for his powers and it ends up with him either being a push over or deus ex machina godmode power level to solve any problem.

This all ties into the cardinals that I spoke of. If they are going to be powerful enough to stand up to Warlock or Quasar, what are people like Rocket Raccoon or Peter supposed to do against them with guns?

Verdict - Check It. I was gushing a bit too much with the first review, but was genuinely pleased with the first outing. The second time around has the same narrative I hate and more cracks in the armour are starting to show. It's definitely still worth picking up, but this title isn't grabbing me like the original Annihilation or DnA's Nova on-going.


INCREDIBLE HERCULES #118
Written by Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak
Art by Rafa Sandoval

What Incredible Hercules lacks the depth of other titles, such as a Captain America or All-Star Superman, it makes up for it in pure, unadultered fun.

This issue continues the God Squad storyline and we get some fun interactions between the various deities that show off their personalities and motivations. The cut-out cards in place of the recap page was a nice touch, too.

The God Squad are travelling the Dreamtime in search of the Skrull deities. They don't have a map, so need to stop and ask Nightmare for directions. He agrees to give them a map, but only if they allow him to feed on the nightmares of gods.

Obviously, this wasn't the smartest idea and he betrays them. The team is saved, surprisingly by a combination of Mikaboshi and Cho's coyote pup, now officially named Kirby, who's howl awakens the team.

Nightmare didn't take too kindly to this and unleashed his greatest nightmares on the team, including the IRS, Mary Poppins, a rubiks cube, a chocolate bar, the numbers 4 and 2 and a legion of nightmarish monsters.

The issue ended with Hercules celebrating by "comforting" Snowbird in his private quarters as Cho's dog eerily watches on with glowing green eyes.

The only realy complaint I have about the issue is that, for how much fun it was, it felt like filler. There was no development on the Secret Invasion side of things and it's even revealed the gods have no clue where they are going and the plan was to stop and ask Nightmare, the lord of dreams, for directions and we end with the team stealing the map to the Skrull gods' location.

I would have preferred to see more interaction with the other God Squad members or something to do with the Skrulls over this little side trip, but I also get the feeling they are going for a Hercules and the Argonauts type of adventure with random sidetrips along the way, especially with Hercules comparison of each god to his former comrades and his greatest nightmare, as revealed by, conveniently enough, Nightmare, which may make the full story a much richer experience, but this early in the story just made it feel like padding.

Verdict - Must Read. It's just plain fun stuff that has the potential to be a very rewarding experience if Van Lente and Pak manage to blend this cosmic god slaying adventure with Hercules storied and mythic past adventures. However, if you are buying it for the Secret Invasion, you'll be disappointed, as there's absolutely nothing Secret Invasion related in this issue.


TRINITY #2
Written by Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza
Art by Mark Bagley and Art Thibert, Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens, Tom Derenick and Wayne Faucher and Mike Norton and Jerry Ordway

Note - This issue shipped last week.

Trinity #2 was a better outing than the first issue, but the series still lacks a driving force.

Yes, there's the whole Morgan and Enigma evil Trinity and the mysterious menace, but neither is at the forefront of the story nor have they interacted or really impacted our heroes in any tangible way.

There was a quick wrap up of the Trinity's magic based problem last issue that only really served to show off the different personalities and ways each character tackle similar problems, which has been done a million times before, but was entertaining enough as it is. I'm not sure why Morgan discounts Batman so easily, despite his complete rejection of the magical illusion with but a single word. For an ancient and supposedly intelligent magician, you'd think she'd consider his feat quite fearsome compared to how much difficulty Superman and Wonder Woman had with their trials.

The backup was actually more entertaining than the Busiek / Bagley intro. The second artist had a very similar style to Bagley and I'd almost reckon it looked better than Bags' work. That may have to do with it being a backup with lots of time to do his ten pages compared to Bagley's weekly schedule rushing him.

However, the similarity in art styles only made the disjointed feeling of the issues that much more apparent. Busiek's tale ended with Green Lantern defeated by Konvikt. Fabian's story goes back in time and shows us how he was defeated. With how similar the art looked, it would have been much better if they had spliced the two tales together into one cohesive story.

Konvikt did absolutely nothing for me and is one of the most generic and uninspired looking characters I have ever seen. As if Superman doesn't have enough dimwitted, musclebound Hulk knockoff villains to contend with, they couldn't find someone else to fill his role?

Verdict - Check It. It's not 52, but it's not Countdown either is about the best description of this series.


TRINITY #3
Written by Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza
Art by Mark Bagley and Art Thibert, Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens, Tom Derenick and Wayne Faucher and Mike Norton and Jerry Ordway

I was under the impression that Trinity would be about the, well, Trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. As such, I thought it would focus primarily on them with the odd guest star over the course of 52 issues.

What I didn't expect was for the first three issues to be riddled with nothing but guest stars and little to no actual story, as if all they want to do is showcase Mark Bagley's artwork romp through the DCU. If that was all they wanted to do, why didn't they just stick him on JLA and be done with it?

As it is, I decided to give the series a fair shake, after dropping it with issue one, since I had a lot of issues pushed back this week. After picking up both issue two and three, I can still see absolutely nothing has happened. The Trinity still hasn't really confronted or been introduced to the main threat (neither has the reader, for that matter) and the villains have yet to even hint at their master plan and the big, big bad still hasn't been seen outside of random dream visions. If I had to describe this series, it would be with one word - filler.

This issue picked up with the defeat of Green Lantern last issue. No, the Big 3 didn't come save John Stewert. That would be foolish. We need to have Bagley draw the JLA getting their asses handed to them by the worst new villain in years, Konvikt. He's basically the Hulk with a retarded little imp on his shoulder that won't shut up. Oh, and it sounds like he was named by a 12 year old or rapper that thinks its edgy and cool to replace perfectly normal spellings of words with k's.

Regarding the actual fight, Black Canary actually looked like a leader for the JLA, the first time I can say I've noticed that since she, well, became leader back at the start of the new Justice League series. That sounds like a compliment, but it's more a jab at the current treatment of the non-Trinity JLA members. Suffice to say, that newfound comptence didn't last.

After building up the competence of Black Canary, the minute the team is in trouble, the Big 3 show up to save the day and she immediately kowtowing and deferring to people that should be her subordinates. It completely undermined any credibility she had just built up as the "leader" and treated the League like replacement heroes for when the Trinity are unavailable.

However, in an attempt to "sell" his new big bad, Busiek writes Superman like an overly cocky amateur that rushes in, fists flying, and gets knocked out from one punch by Konvikt. I honestly expect the next issue will have him faking this or the "knock out" will be a complete hoax of a cliffhanger to try and lure people back in. Otherwise, it's just bad storytelling and make Superman look like a complete chump. If Konvikt was that strong, he would have killed the base level human and non-Superman strength class JLA members that he was fighting with up until now. As they all survived, I can't see how he magically got strong enough to do something no one has ever done to Superman before.

As for the back up, I tried reading it, but it was so dull and completely pedestrian that I literally ended up just flipping through it hoping something interesting would happen. It appears Tarot, the new young, relatable teenager Busiek tripe that is required in every story he tells (see Jolt in Thunderbolts for one example), received some development and that she either has magically protectors or uncontrollable powers related to her tarot card reading. All I know is a bunch of gangbangers got killed off panel in an alley when they tried to assault her.

Verdict - Avoid It. It's not as bad as Countdown, but the story isn't going anywhere and I'm pretty confident you'll be in for nothing but disappointment if you stick with this hoping for a payoff.

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