Batman #66
W: Tom King, A: Jorge Fornes, Dave Stewart
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. There’s no denying that the timing of the recent The Price crossover was…unfortunate, at best, completely breaking the flow of the already weird Knightmares for a month. But now we’re back, and I’m given cause to reiterate what I said back when the infamous “Wedding” issue came out – if you don’t think Bruce and Selina are going to end up together by the end of Tom King’s run on Batman, you’re crazy.
The issue is, Tom King decided to write a longform epic with his Batman run, he just didn’t make that clear until the midway point. Reading King’s Batman has been a bit like watching Babylon 5 – you’re trucking along, enjoying these good, but largely unconnected stories, then you start realizing that all the stuff you thought was relatively insignificant early on is intrinsic to the long game being played. I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories, so I can honestly say I’ve never enjoyed Batman more than I’m enjoying it right now.
I’m impressed by newcomer Jorge Fornes picking up art duties this issue (a quick google search tells me he also did issue #60, but I didn’t notice him till now). He’s purely aping the style of Gotham Central-era Michael Lark, but I don’t really see that as a bad thing, because he does a great job with it, and it totally fits the story. Overall, great issue, and though it’s clear this is just place-setting for the upcoming confrontation with Thomas Wayne, I’m still here for it every step of the way.
The Dreaming #7
W: Simon Spurrier, A: Abigail Larson, Quinton Winter
My initial feeling on this issue was not particularly enthusiastic – a hard left turn into a completely different story and art style, when I’d been thoroughly enjoying the first six issues. But by the time the issue was over, I realized that The Dreaming had just hit a whole new level of greatness, delivering the first part of a story that genuinely feels like it could have come directly from Gaiman’s Sandman.
All four of the Sandman Universe books have been extremely well-done (frankly, DC’s just been hitting it out of the park on all of their “pop-up imprints” ever since Gerard Way’s Doom Patrol), but it’s obvious that The Dreaming is the flagship, and the one you absolutely need to be reading if you ever wished there was just a little bit more Sandman in the world. I don’t want to talk too much about the plot, because there’s a lot of people I know who should be reading this book and aren’t, but suffice it to say we’ve brought in Daniel (which is something I believe they said they weren’t going to be doing outside of the Sandman Universe #1 Special), and we’ve brought back a fan-favorite character from the original Sandman that we haven’t heard from in quite some time.
I was not a particularly big fan of Abigail Larson’s art this issue – it fit the story fairly well, but I was enjoying Bilquis Evely’s art so much on the first story arc that it’s hard not to be a little disappointed at the shift. That said, though, this is still an absolute must-read.
Justice League #19
W: Scott Snyder, Jorge Jimenez, A: Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sanchez
It’s a Mxyzptlk story! Those are always fun, right? Well, this is largely no exception, even in the middle of the experiment in just-how-big-can-we-possibly-make-these-stakes that has been Scott Snyder’s Justice League. It says something about what this run has consisted of that a story like this one could come across as a nice, back-to-basics Justice League tale.
After thoroughly retconning Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, and Lex Luthor’s origins over the last five issues or so, now we’re returning to that old chestnut of “Superman gets split from the rest of the team, so the rest of the gang has to deal with an extradimensional threat without him”. Snyder does well with Mxy’s dialogue, and Jimenez’s linework has a nice loose quality to it that works for a story with buildings coming to life and trying to eat everything.
There’s not a whole lot more to say about this issue – like a lot of beginnings these days, it’s pretty slight on plotting, more there to set up the hook of the story, the whole “who are these future Justice League guys?” thing – anybody else getting a serious Justice Lords vibe from these guys?
Paper Girls #26
W: Brian K. Vaughan, A: Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson
Wait, is it end-of-the-world time already? It’s always a good sign when a book makes ready to end on its own terms, and usually its the ones, like Paper Girls, that have me thinking ‘how could they possibly wrap all this up in just four more issues?’ that manage to pull off the most satisfying landings. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see on that, but so far, Paper Girls is a book that, after a somewhat shaky start, has consistently gotten better with each subsequent issue.
Of course, because we’re ending the series with the sixth arc, that means there’s a lot of periods we haven’t time-travelled to yet, so now we’re splitting the girls up, and sending them to all the Doctor Who standbys – Erin gets sent to 2019, where she runs into trick-or-treaters dressed as various examples of how the 80s nostalgia that allowed this book to exist permeates our present day, KJ to 1958 to befriend a squad of scrappy paper boys straight out of Newsies, Mac goes to the end of time to reunite with the inventor of time travel, and Tiffany ends up in an unknown time period, but one where the “old-timers” seem to have been defeated.
All of which is largely table-setting for the inevitable showdown that’s sure to occur over the next few issues. I’m anticipating some kind of cosmic reset button that will allow time travel to have never been invented, meaning Wari and Jahpo live out their lives peacefully, and the temporal cold war never gets off the ground. I suppose we’ll just have to meet back here in four months to see how close I was.
The Wild Storm #20
W: Warren Ellis, A: Jon Davis-Hunt, Steve Buccelato
Well, it took 20 issues, but we finally get to see Apollo and Midnighter in action. The further we get into The Wild Storm, the more evident the book’s purpose as a launching platform for a new Wildstorm line becomes apparent. At this point, DC could easily launch WildC.A.T.s, Gen 13, The Authority, Deathblow, Wetworks, and Backlash once The Wild Storm wraps up. In all likelihood, it will be treated like some of their other “pop-up imprints” and we’ll get four of those (in all likelihood, no Deathblow, since he already had a standalone miniseries – Wetworks or Backlash would be the other likely cut, although I don’t know which).
It’s probably far too much to hope for, but I dearly hope Ellis stays on for one of the new books, provided they move ahead with them. He’s clearly having a blast revisiting and reinventing these characters, particularly the Authority characters that he created in the first place.
Not a whole lot to talk about plot-wise regarding this issue, it’s much more slight than the last few. We largely just get to bear witness to the execution of Bendix’s plan to abduct a midwestern town for Helspont’s experiments, and Apollo/Midnighter’s swift, brutal deconstruction of that plan. Here’s hoping there are no further delays with the book, and that they announce some of it’s successors soon.
Other stuff on the pull list for this week:
Champions #3
Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #5
The Green Lantern #5
Ronin Island #1
Witchblade #12
Young Justice #3
Other stuff I read:
Wrath of the Eternal Warrior
W: Robert Venditti, A: Raul Allen, Patricia Martin, Juan Jose Ryp, Robert Gill
This week’s Graphic Fiction Appreciation Society book is a personal favorite of mine, and (if you’ll permit me to brag a moment) selected by my wife. It’s always a pleasure going back and revisiting Valiant books from before the DMG era, and this will likely always be the definitive Eternal Warrior story. Reading it all at once, the transition to Robert Gill art for the final arc was much more jarring than it was reading the issues as they came out, and it’s a shame that Allen and Martin couldn’t have finished out the series, since their style is so strong, and is so identified with the series. Still, the strength of the series is in how well it nails it’s ending, so I’m glad we talked the group into going ahead and reading all three volumes. Speaking of which, I need to go ahead and post this so I can make it to the group meeting on time!