Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #4 ~ Like a proper Saturday matinee serial, last issue's cliffhanger - the villains making good their escape with British agent Sparrow on a train rushing towards a demolished bridge, trapped in the grip of a paralysed Robo - gets resolved without too much trouble (though it's clever enough not to render the cliffhanger pointless), and the pair of Allied agents get back on track, bickering all the way. Vanadis's 'Brute' cyborg-zombie-super-soldiers add spice to the issue, as they're capable of giving even the rough-and-tumble Robo a run for his money, while clever writing keeps enough going on with the human players that it doesn't just become a plotless slug-fest between Robo and the mecha-baddies. The five-page backup feature this issue is a first (I think), plotted by someone other than writer Brian Clevinger - though he's credited with the actual words, using artists Joshua and Jonathan Ross's story - and is a nice mix of period-specific styling with strong thematic links to the first Atomic Robo story. And it seems kind of appropriate that an Asian giant robot would wing up looking like something from Neon Genesis Evangelion - at least, it does to me. There's also two pinup pages, one stark black-and-white piece foreshadowing the backup's notion of Robo as a Cold War combatant, the other a lavish colour rendition of Robo taking on some kind of monster crocodile. All in all, it's another successful issue from a so-far never-fail team.
Red Sonja #39 ~ Sonja and her newly-recruited pirate band go on the warpath, leading to a showdown between the redhead and Lucan Martur - which is kind of the problem right there, since let's not beat about the bush, Lucan Martur is nobody. The whole conflict between his family and Sonja's, the murder of her husband, her... is Verona her sister, or something? I forget... Verona's betrayal, anyway, and this non-specific Blood Dynasty thingy they're all after, none of them mean a thing, because the very first thing this whole storyline did was skip all the groundwork, and jump straight to the finale. And there's a reason you do groundwork: because if you don't, the finale has no foundation, and feels as transitory and meaningless as this issue does. It tries, with shocking betrayal and swordfights amid burning rooms and a vague attempt at a battle, but... c'mon people, we've seen Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, not to mention the original Conan movie, we know what heroic fantasy is supposed to feel like, and this ain't it. You just do not skip the groundwork. Maybe writer Brian Reed (who you'd think would know better, since he's done good with Ms. Marvel, or perhaps someone higher up at Dynamite, just didn't trust readers to stick around for enough issues to build this 'new era of Red Sonja' storyline up properly, but if so - their loss, they made a mess of it. And I'm sorry, the idea that even someone having past-life hallucionations would strip off a full wardrobe and don a chainmail bikini, complete with shoulder armour, gloves, thigh straps, bands around her biceps, in the middle of a fire... that, I'm sorry to say, is Grade-A Stupid. Next issue is supposedly going to have Sonja learning some 'answers' about her current condition - I'll get it, but short of a miracle I fully expect it'll be my last. A damn shame, since I'm all for the idea of Red Sonja, but this just isn't a very good comic.
Terra #2 ~ Alright, let's get this out of the way: this issue features some of the most laughable eye candy I've ever seen, in the opening sequence where Terra wakes up and dons her costume. It looks like it's derived from the amusingly titillating bit reprinted in the Power Girl trade paperback, where Kara likewise dons her uniform after a medical exam, but it's just so overdone here that it's actually a weakness. Amanda Conner knows how to titillate with skimpy costumes and interesting poses - she does it often - but this level of would-be eye candy just drags the whole thing down to the level of Austin Powers farce. I buy Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose every two months when it comes out, I know what comic book nudity looks like - DC's not getting any points for this half-assed attempt at it. That aside - and I'm not just carping on about it, it really did make this issue difficult for me to engage with, since the first impression I got was "Hey reader, you're an idiot, so this should entertain you," - the use of Power Girl as a touchstone character was useful, since it gave me someone to side with while I waited for Terra to start making sense, or at least for some explanation of who she is and what she wants to turn up. But that aside, what I'm getting is something disturbingly similar to the Batgirl miniseries, which you may recall I gave up on - same reason, too much time taken up with meaningless fights, not enough storytelling, and what there was of a plotline was too wrapped up in its own backstory. I didn't buy this because I desperately wanted to see the latest chapter in the history of the Terra name, and how this girl will fit into the 'family' of Geo-Force and the previous Terra and so on - I just wanted a story about a new superheroine. This isn't a bad comic, but it feels like it doesn't want to just be a story in itself - it seems like there's a cringing inferiority complex making it cower beneath the protection of already-established continuity, instead of just telling a new story. I'm not hugely entertained by that.
Justice Society of America Kingdom Come Special: Magog ~ Like last week's Superman JSA Kingdom Come special, this one fills in the blanks of a key character in the 'Thy Kingdom Come' storyline, and it's both heartening to see its focus - David Reid, lately-a.k.a. Magog - fleshed out as a character, and a bit irritating that this kind of character-building material wasn't written into the actual issues of Justice Society of America itself. If I'd known this about Reid, the whole sequence of him being recruited to the JSA, killed, and revived/transformed into Magog, would've had so much more meaning and weight to it - doing it this way round is like not knowing Han Solo and Princess Leia had the hots for each other until after Han's been frozen in carbonite. Six pages of the issue are taken up with a potted history of Starman, which brings newbies like me up to date on who he is exactly, and sprinkles in a few plot hooks which I'm sure will play out in the future. But the main show (30 pages) is Magog's story, a little solo adventure he undertakes while he and several of the JSA are trekking along in the wake of Gog, who's stomping around Africa bringing morally-dubious benevolence to everything in his path. We learn about David Reid, everything I wish we'd learned already in JSA - where he comes from, what made him the man he is now, how he thinks and relates to people and the world, what drives him. It's a delicate balancing act done quite well by writer Peter J. Tomasi, because it makes Reid both admirable and scary: admirable because he's a good man, a good soldier and an honest patriot, the kind you'd be proud to know; scary because of those same qualities, his patriotism and unbending sense of right and wrong make him exactly the worst kind of person to be given superpowers and free rein to use them without 'older and wiser heads' giving him orders. On his own, he's a killer - a killer of evil men, sure, but a killer nonetheless, and the only thing in a position of authority over him is Gog, who's racking up quite a body count himself in the eye-for-an-eye retributive justice stakes. I guess I can't complain much about this not having been put in Justice Society of America issues - I've said all along that JSA contained much more character and story than could really be told in 22 pages per month - and I doubt any committed JSA readers will be skipping this special. Overall, a great story is being told, and I guess that's what matters, even if there are minor foibles along the way.
