Justice League International 3 (January 2012)

It’s an action issue in the old Justice League tradition, two heroes break off and have a related adventure. Jurgens takes it even further, with the administrators teaming up too. Only Guy Gardner gets to play it solo.

The result’s a mixed bag. Batman and Booster Gold are good together, but only because Jurgens’s characterization of Batman as encouraging Booster is interesting. He sells the unlikely mentorship.

The Red Rocket and Ice though? Boring. Red Rocket’s a self-stylized ladies’ man. It’s weak. So is Fire and Vixen. Of some interest are the two new characters, the Chinese guy and Godiva. Their sequence is fine.

Lopresti and Ryan start rough, but have things mostly under control by a few pages in. They can’t handle the administrators, but they do manage the crazy scale of the comic. Giant Sentinel looking things, huge spaceships and sci-fi nonsense; they pull it off.

CREDITS

The Signal Masters, Part Three; writer, Dan Jurgens; penciller, Aaron Lopresti; inker, Matt Ryan; colorist, Hi-Fi; letterer, Travis Lanham; editor, Rex Ogle; publisher, DC Comics.

Green Arrow 3 (January 2012)

If you illegally download, you want to watch psychopaths murder people. Krul makes the world so simple. I was shocked Ollie didn’t break the fourth wall to tell any comic book downloaders they were killing him.

Then the comic ends with this lame “growing up” speech. Krul forgot to make Ollie Steve Jobs and turned it into the Iron Man movie.

But I still appreciate Green Arrow as one of the new DC’s less offensive bad comics. It’s simple-minded and Krul’s not willing to commit to much (oh, the people watching Green Arrow get killed on the Internet aren’t bad… they’re just lonely), but the art’s competent superhero art.

Jurgens and Perez continue to make Arrow look like a book from the nineties. It’s like a book people tell you to read; you do and you’re perplexed. Then they say, “Oh, I meant the back issues, it’s crap now.”

CREDITS

Green Arrow’s Last Stand; writer, J.T. Krul; pencillers, Dan Jurgens, George Pérez and Ray McCarthy; inkers, Pérez and McCarthy; colorists, Tanya Horie and Richard Horie; letterer, Rob Leigh; editors, Sean Mackiewicz and Pat McCallum; publisher, DC Comics.

Green Arrow 2 (December 2011)

What a dumb comic.

I mean, Krul’s a bad writer with bad dialogue and bad ideas. There’s nothing as strange as Ollie being Steve Jobs this issue, instead it’s Krul turning Paris Hilton into a supervillain. And then Green Arrow has a completely inappropriate conversation with her about whores or something.

Maybe if the art team were something new and hipster, it wouldn’t be so off, but it’s Jurgens and Perez. You’ve got classic DC artists–guys who drew comics when eight year-olds could read them without wondering what Green Arrow meant by “nasty”–and then Krul’s desperately modern scripting.

Besides the lame running around on rooftops sequence–oh, and in the New DC Universe, at least as Krul writes it, GPS is far from reliable–the art’s okay. It’s not good, but it’s that DC superhero stuff I grew up with. It’s inoffensively uncreative.

But Krul definitely offends.

CREDITS

Going Viral; writer, J.T. Krul; pencillers, Dan Jurgens and George Pérez; inker, Pérez; colorists, Tanya Horie and Richard Horie; letterer, Rob Leigh; editors, Sean Mackiewicz and Pat McCallum; publisher, DC Comics.

Justice League International 2 (December 2011)

It’s not exactly a talking heads issue. Instead, it’s an arguing heads issue. Oh, there’s action at the beginning, but it’s just to show the team isn’t a team. But Lopresti’s art doesn’t work for showing that failure. He splits up his pages into four tall panels (during the action scene), showing what the team is doing. It doesn’t come across like they’re outgunned.

And Lopresti does do all right for most of Justice League International. It’s just a superhero team book and he and inker Ryan handle it (though there are some problems distinguishing Booster and Guy Gardner and the chins are funny). But he can’t do nuance.

I never realized a Dan Jurgens book would require nuance, but apparently it does.

Some small problems aside, this issue’s really… pretty good. Jurgens moves past all the relaunch nonsense. It’s about people working together.

International is far better than expected.

CREDITS

The Signal Masters, Part Two; writer, Dan Jurgens; penciller, Aaron Lopresti; inker, Matt Ryan; colorist, Hi-Fi; letterer, Travis Lanham; editor, Rex Ogle; publisher, DC Comics.

Green Arrow 1 (November 2011)

Okay, I’m not recommending Green Arrow, but it needs to be read to be believed. Oliver Queen is Steve Jobs as a superhero and blond and young and single. Really. He made a “Q-Pad” and a “Q-Phone” and he uses the profits from those devices to run around the globe fighting really lame supervillains as Green Arrow.

Except, J.T. Krul apparently read a lot of Birds of Prey so he decided to give Ollie an Oracle stand-in. That’s right… the new Green Arrow is the old Black Canary. Only as Steve Jobs.

It’s a terrible comic—Ollie lectures the bad guys about wasting their lives and yada yada when he’s fighting them—but it’s so bewildering, it must be read.

And Dan Jurgens? With George Perez inks? It’s classic nineties DC, only with an idiotic “new media” bent.

If DC were really committed, Ollie’d have a Facebook.

CREDITS

Living a Life of Privilege; writer, J.T. Krul; penciller, Dan Jurgens; inker, George Pérez; colorist, David Baron; letterer, Rob Leigh; editors, Sean Mackiewicz and Pat McCallum; publisher, DC Comics.

Justice League International 1 (November 2011)

I can’t believe I’m saying it… but Dan Jurgens writes a pretty good Batman. Jurgens’s Batman is empathetic and can work with people. Having him be Booster Gold’s cheerleader makes Justice League International something different.

The book is mismatched superheroes against threats they aren’t powerful enough to overcome. Jurgens manages their personalities well enough–though he’s got problems with their United Nations bosses. It’s strange. His superhero dialogue is fine, his bureaucrat dialogue is not.

But Jurgens also goes so far as to deal with anti-U.N. sentiment in the United States–homegrown terrorists blow up the Hall of Justice. It’s a surprising subplot.

It’s not quite good, but it’s certainly readable. Jurgens introduces some new stuff–Batman and Booster–to the superhero team standards. It’s fine.

As for artists Aaron Lopresti and Matt Ryan? They get the job done. They could be better, they could be much worse.

CREDITS

The Signal Masters, Part One; writer, Dan Jurgens; penciller, Aaron Lopresti; inker, Matt Ryan; colorist, Hi-Fi; letterer, Travis Lanham; editor, Rex Ogle; publisher, DC Comics.

DC Universe: Legacies (2010) #8

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So, if Wein knew he had to cover the whole Green Lantern goes nuts thing, why is an earthling the best narrator for the series? In fact, the earthbound narrator is now the worst possible choice in a variety of ways.

It isn’t enough he wouldn’t know about the Oa stuff or Parallax (oh, Ron Marx created Parallax… things make so much more sense now), the narrator’s also blond. So the colorist is adding these hints of grey at his temples to show his aging. Because, given the series should now be taking place only a few years ago in DC Universe time… the narrator would be in his mid-seventies. His daughter’s age is even more inexplicable.

The issue also shows stupid nineties costume design should be forgotten, not repeated.

The backup—it’s the New Gods finally—is terribly written and makes no sense. Quitely’s efforts appear disinterested too.

DC Universe: Legacies (2010) #7

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It’s difficult to describe what Jerry Ordway inking Dan Jurgens looks like—Ordway definitely brings his sensibilities to it, but there’s the Jurgens underneath. Unfortunately, neither artist is in his best time, so the result is somewhat less than either on their own (in their prime). It’s like plastic-coated Jurgens and the last thing he needs is plastic-coating.

Wein skips over Millennium and some other crossovers and goes straight to Bane and Doomsday. Now, I never read the Batman storyline, but it seems goofy here. Especially with Bane running away in a mall. Not the most dynamic setting for a fight.

As for the Doomsday stuff… I haven’t read that issue since it came out, it seems like a reprinting. Boring. Lame melodramatics with the narrator too.

The backup, however, with Bolland art, is utterly charming. The Atom goes back to Camelot for a couple minutes. It’s wonderful.

Batman (1940) #359

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Well, Batman is having a freakout–over women he decides. Having to decide between Selina and Vicki (mind you, Selina hasn’t appeared since the last really good issue Conway wrote) has made Bruce lose it. It’s why he let Killer Croc go he decides.

There’s a bunch of eye-rolling logic this issue and the Dan Jurgens art doesn’t provide much diversion from them. With the Giordano inks, the comic looks good enough, it’s just really boring. Besides the Batman stuff, there’s Killer Croc consolidating his power (still) and his origin. Jurgens and Giordano do a good job drawing him, scary but palatable.

Then there’s the Todd family stuff. Jason Todd’s parents here are complete morons and Batman’s fine with them getting killed to further his hunt for Killer Croc (because he let him go… because of Selina). It’s amazing how little responsibility Bruce takes for himself. He’s a jackass.

Batman 359 (May 1983)

CREDITS

Hunt; writer, Gerry Conway; penciller, Dan Jurgens; inker, Dick Giordano; colorist, Adrienne Roy; letterer, Ben Oda; editors, Nicola Cuti and Len Wein; publisher, DC Comics.