Booster Gold #3 (reviewed by Heather) ~ After waiting anxiously to see Booster in the old west, this one didn't disappoint. From the front cover, which was priceless, to the many twists and turns within, this was a great issue. One minor quirk was the art, which was...odd. Not bad, necessarily, just odd. Rip Hunter seems to have shed twenty years since the last issue. But anyway, onto the good stuff. Booster's surprising tolerance for whisky aside, the scenes with Jonah Hex were a lot of fun, and the "bulls falling from the sky" was one of the funniest visuals I've seen in a comic book for a while now. The alternate reality that would have unfolded for Superman without Booster's intervention was really creative, and Booster drunkenly rear-ending the Flashes was a perfect top-off for the issue. According to the "next time" blurb, we're supposed to find out who's travelling around in the Supernova costume messing with history, which'll hopefully be interesting. And maybe Daniel Carter will grow a brain before the next issue - joking about him playing Madden with 12 year olds gets kinda old after a while. Great stuff, though, all in all.
Mighty Avengers #5 ~ It's a damned shame Frank Cho's leaving this book, because this issue - again - showcases why his art is perfect for it. The action is bold, fast as lightning, skipping from tense moment to spectacle to cliffhanger and back again in double time - Cho's elegant, realist yet hyper-attractive art is the perfect complement to Bendis's very finely crafted writing, and the pair make Mighty a chic throwback to adventure serials, combining the nostalgic glow of the old with the high-tech polish of the new. Sadly schedules are schedules, and by his own admission Cho just can't keep up - kudos to him for raising his hand and bowing out (and as a parting gift he and Bendis have a one-shot Annual planned, featuring female Avengers versus female villains - carve that in stone on your standing order right now, 'cause it's going to be crazy good).
This issue continues the pattern of the previous ones - start from last cliffhanger, escalate, kick some ass, introduce a new cliffhanger - but there's the sense that things are starting to turn, and Ultron's plans start to run into serious opposition as the heroes ranged against her start fighting back in earnest. Ms. Marvel has a standout 'heroine moment', and Ares shows that, even though he shaves with an axe and talks like Conan, he's the god of war, not just hand-to-hand fighting, with some interesting flashes of insight (which is actually more Mars than Ares, who was just the god of wholesale slaughter, with Athena handling the intellectual side of soldiering). The issue ends, of course, on a 'holy crap!' moment that, like the best blockbuster twists, leaves you unsure whether to cheer for the good guys or laugh at the sheer audacity of the writer for coming up with the idea. All in all, good honest fun.
Justice League of America #14 ~ And from good honest fun, to... more good honest fun. JLA right now is reading like McDuffie's love letter to Challenge of the Superfriends, which is just fine by me - in spite of having ridiculous concepts and inane writing, those old cartoons had their heart in exactly the right place. McDuffie's JLA has its heart in the right place too, only now it's got awesome concepts and highly professional writing to back it up. Benes acquits himself well with the pencil, producing lively, powerful art no matter what's demanded of him as the issue spreads its arms to encompass a whole host of locations and situations and groups of characters. The great thing, though, is that McDuffie seems to have the knack for making JLA enjoyable no matter who's getting attention - obviously its the heroines on the roster, Wonder Woman and Black Canary and, to a lesser extent, Vixen, who I hope to see every month, but Superman and Black Lightning get the spotlight this issue, and I found I didn't mind much at all - they're written in an effcient, entertaining manner, with everything a newbie needs to understand them right there without being burdened by flat exposition. It takes a lot of skill to be this much fun; JLA's got it.
Marvel Comics Presents #2 ~ The anthology rolls around again, and it's essentially more of the same: Hellcat is highly quirky but quite entertaining, Weapon Omega is standard superhero material that I don't feel much for but don't hate, and Vanguard is heavy on style but delivers where it counts for substance. The latter, not burdened with prologues this time, is a meatier segment of story than it was in issue #1, with a couple of solid, lengthy dialogues that made the most of the few pages available. The fourth segment in this issue was a one-shot starring Taskmaster, which was fun, but all glitz and little substance - I guessed what was going on early with little effort, and given that there was nothing that strayed outside the realm of standard plot devices. The only real downside - Weapon Omega counting more or less as a no-score draw - is the price: I know there's more pages in this than in a standard comic, but with only four segments rather than five, and this supposedly being a title for new readers to check out to test the waters, US$3.99 is too high. I'll pay it, because I like the book and I'm not yet at the stage where I have to start looking for savings to make, but I think Marvel isn't exploiting the potential of this title the way it should - $2.99 mightn't make much of a profit on this book along, but I believe it'd help sell a lot of other Marvel titles, and pay for itself in the long run.
Cyblade: Pilot Season ~ The first of the Pilot Season one-shots I've picked up (seeing as Ripclaw is a male, and therefore not interesting to me), and I'm still on the fence about the idea. Like Marvel Comics Presents, there's the attraction of finding something new with little true commitment - if you don't like a story, there's no issue #2 anyway, so you're not missing anything. But if you do like something in Pilot Season, there's only the nebulous promise of a possible continuation, somewhere down the line - it leaves me regarding these issues as isolated and likely somewhat shallow, rather than potentially the start of an ongoing reading experience. Cyblade's effort was entertaining, introduced the character in a somewhat interesting way, and gave a few plot twists as it went, but on the whole I don't see a great future here - it's fun, but any comic store you care to go to will have boxes of 90s comics for 25c each that are pretty much the same as what you get here.
Manhunter: Trial by Fire ~ The second Manhunter trade continues in the style established by the first - see last week's review - continuing the plot threads put in play earlier, introducing some new ones of its own, and focusing mainly on two big set piece events, one the trial of Shadow Thief (coming from volume one's issues), and the other a new arc concerning the various Manhunters that have existed in the DC universe, which brings Kate Spencer further into the fold of superheroes in general. What's important, so far as the latter goes, is that she isn't becoming generic in any way - even though the superheroics are slowly becoming more integrated into the DC whole, Kate is still a distinct character, and her story is told in its own way, as it was from the start. This volume contains nine issues, so it's quite a big weightier than the first, and if you enjoyed that volume, you're more or less guaranteed to love this one too.
I also took a glance through The Brave and the Bold #7, but decided to leave it be, for now at least - it's a Wonder Woman/Power Girl team-up, which on the surface sounds like a hell of a good idea, but from what I could see the storyline was a fairly generic adventure/fight kind of thing, and PG's role fell short of the high standard set for her by JSA - that's the Power Girl I want to read about, and that's not really what B&B is offering.
