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.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (2011) #4

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Now there’s a big surprise. Spencer was pretty cute the way he diverted attention from it; it works. Unfortunately, the issue is the first weak one in the series. Not because of the twist, but because backup artist George Perez apparently wasn’t hired to draw anything important.

Instead, Perez draws the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. orientation tour. It has nothing to do with the story itself. Maybe Spencer wanted to use it to distract the reader, but it’s not s good move. It’s suspicious. Like they wanted to have the Perez art whenever they could use it as a fill in.

Also, the twist leaves the series on somewhat unsteady ground. If Spencer’s messing with the reader about something so integral to the story so far… what’s next? There’s no point getting invested if anything goes.

It once again feels like an espionage thriller and not one set in the DC universe either

DC Universe: Legacies (2010) #6

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Perez inking Ordway produces a good result and, even though Wein’s writing has weakened again, the issue is moderately successful. Wein’s basically recapping post-Crisis big events here—mostly Legends and the reforming of the Justice League. As far as a summary, it works pretty well—though I think they’re leaving out Millennium or whatever.

But the narrator again takes center and his story gets even lamer. First, his reformed crook brother-in-law is crippled, making the pair very annoying as they form this homoerotic codependency. Second, the timeline is all messed up again. The character looks like he’s in his mid-thirties, but if he was born in the 1920s… he should be in his sixties.

The backup, with Giffen and Milgrom on the art, is a Legion thing. The writing’s lame and Giffen draws teenage Superboy like he’s fifty. Maybe Giffen should be drawing the series protagonist.

DC Universe: Legacies (2010) #5

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This one’s Crisis issue and easily the best writing Wein has done on the series. It’s hard to decide why it’s his best though. My first thought was because this period—late seventies to mid-eighties—is when Wein was writing comics and he’s able to work well in that period. My next thought had to do with his stupid narrator and his convict brother-in-law. This time, Wein gets it taken care of in the first few pages, so there’s no waiting for it to rear its ugly head.

But maybe it’s even more simple—the majority of the issue is a “new” Crisis sequence. Lots of disaster, lots of superheroes, George Perez drawing. It just works.

The backup, with Simonson art, is some nonsensical space hero team-up thing, but Simonson, even as disinterested as he appears, does a fine job.

Easily the best issue so far.