More denting the backlog:
Birds of Prey: Gail Simone has an excellent exit, but that's no surprise; with her at the helm, BoP was DC's best superhero book. Good to see the Spy Smasher takeover plot ended so thoroughly, and so in character for the book's female-bonding theme. I loved the quadruple page of all of Oracle's friends and colleagues standing up for her.
Tony Bedard did a decent job writing some interim issues. Bad tidings, however, as it becomes clear that BoP has lost lots of its rotating cast to takeovers by other books, and other bad craziness.
Then Sean McKeever took over. The book sucks now. A mission goes BoP-typically south, and instead of turning into an escalation to a deeper mystery with higher stakes like it should for a caper book, it turns into a Superman cameo, in which he shows up and bitches Oracle out like he's a bad 90s Batman imitator* and she's an unseasoned amateur. So that sucks.
So getting bitched out puts a bug up Oracle's butt, and now she's acting like a bitch to everyone. So that sucks.
And then Misfit starts acting petulant and whiny, also completely out of character. So that sucks.
WTF?
*Seriously, why is it so hard to write Superman? Him and Captain America, just being in the same room should be inspirational, especially in a cameo.
Also, I have a question. Have we found out who's been killing the New Gods yet? 'Cause this was the first book I've read that actually dealt with any of their deaths, and let me tell you, it (to re-use a word) truly sucks to lose such a wonderfully matched hero-villain pair as Big Barda and Knockout in two issues.
And it truly sucks to lose Big Barda at all. I talk about superhero comics featuring the concretization of metaphor, and here you are. Barda's six and a half feet tall, she's muscled like a weightlifter, she's an aggressive physical combatant, and she uses a weapon called a Mega-Rod. Just by showing up, she puts gender roles and stereotyping in play so you can say anything you want. She's even better at it than She-Hulk or Power Girl because they're still operating with American cultural baggage, and even Thundra and Maxima are less effective because their gender cultural background is an explicit inversion of our own.
Dynamo 5 v1: Now this is a damn good superhero comic. My kind of origin story: In one issue, the characters are introduced, their background given, they get powers, they get superhero identities, and they're in costume fighting bad guys. Plus ominous foreshadowing. That's how you do it.
All five lead characters like being superheroes, like their powers, like working together, and like each other. They like their parents. They adapt to being superheroes quickly and fit it into their lives. Do you know how refreshing that is? Nobody's going Wah, being a superhero sucks!
Man, I hope the other issues live up to this standard. (And I really want to read Firebirds now, too.) I wasn't too impressed with what I've seen of Jay Faerber's other work--Noble Causes is OK, but it's all about the soap opera, personal life conflicts. But I'll have to keep an eye open. Good art by Mahmud A. Asrar; maybe a little heavy on the inks, but good, clear storytelling, and well able to handle as much stuff as Faerber puts into the pages.
Posted by Greg at March 16, 2008 9:30 PM
Firebirds is definitely worth reading if you liked Dynamo 5. I liked D5, but I also felt that it wasn't really targeted at my age group, as odd as that sounds. In any case, it's much, MUCH better than Noble Causes, a series I never warmed to.
Sean McKeever is already off Birds of Prey, and Tony "I'm Donna Troy, Bitch!" Bedard is back on. Normally I'd be unhappy about this, since Bedard has pretty much killed any critical rep he had with Countdown, and he somehow made the mistake of Shadow being Connor Hawke's mother, but you know what? That story about Zinda paying tribute to Big Barda? Muy excellente.
Apparently the Source itself, using the Infinity Man as a weapon, is killing The New Gods. And my love for Jim Starlin's work, too.
If my memory of current events in The Death of the New Gods is correct, the Source itself is killing them, acting through Himon. It's doing so in order to reunite with its dark self, the Anti-Life Equation, and create a new and more balanced Fifth World.
#1: McKeever's out? Two hips and a hooray!
#2: That sounds like the prophecy for Anakin Skywalker. Starlin and Lucas both believe that "bringing balance" is equivalent to "leaving no one alive"? That's an unusual perspective.
Sean McKeever has done two of the better comics of this decade--the Mary Jane series (under its various titles) and the Gravity mini, which, Greg, you would love. That, plus good runs on Inhumans and Sentinel put him on my "must buy" list.
But his DC work (BoP, Teen Titans) has not been anywhere near the standard set by those. I can only hope that once he's done with wasting time assisting on Countdown (all of the brilliance of Infinite Crisis joined with the thrill-a-second pacing of 52!) he will get better again.
There is a certain amount of "my life sucks" and "I hate my teammates" later in Dynamo5, but it's all pretty well justified.
I read the first three issues of Dynamo 5 and didn't get into it (although I was glad they got through the origin quickly at least). I am told that the series really picks up, so maybe I'll try the first trade if I can't pick up a few more of the back issues. None of the characters, nor the situation itself, caught my fancy, but many great series or runs on established titles have started slowly, so I'm willing to give it a second look.