Hey comic fans! Do you like reviews of comics? You do? Oh good. Then I’ve got a good post in store for you.
But first: KITTENS! AND MORE KITTENS! AND MORE KITTENS!!!!!
So with that out of the way, RATINGS:
0: Uwe Boll will direct the adaptation of this comic
0.1 – 1: Burn upon touching
1- 1.9: Abysmal
2.0 – 2.9: Art. Writing. Editing. All bad.
3.0 – 3.9: You’d be a masochist to pick this up.
4.0 – 4.9: “I’ll give it another month…but that was not good.”
5.0 – 5.9: “Really? The Watcher? In the face? I guess it was fun.”
6.0 – 6.9: “Hmm. That was decent.”
7.0 – 7.9: Well made but a few problems
8.0 – 8.9: Nearly flawless
9.0 – 9.9: Outstanding
10: Perfection. Issue of the year contender
This week my reviews include Shadowland #4, Return of Bruce Wayne #5, and Untold Tales of Blackest Night. That’s 2 penultimate reviews in just 1 post! Holy wow!
Click behind the cut for my thoughts.
Shadowland #4
Shadowland is slowly coming to it’s finale, and with the death of Daredevil in the distance the book couldn’t be more instance. It is quite literally a race against time to stop the Beast in his transformation to Daredevil, and the question of which one of our heroes will be the one to cross that moral line is becoming more and more in question. Of course, it seems that the pattern for this book so far would state that the fourth issue of the series would ultimately fizzle – so did it?
Kinda, sorta, yeah. Not to knock the book down any kind of pegs – because I really am quite enjoying this Daredevil event for what it is – but the issue just felt like a paint by numbers issue. And to a certain extent, it knew it. In fact, in the opening of the book Kingpin states that this is the final move where all the pieces are to be set up, and that’s precisely what this is. The heroes all enter Shadowland for the last time to confront Daredevil/the Beast in the hopes of stopping the resurrection of Bullseye, and it all ends with a final panel that you can see coming fairly easily. Ever since the Beast was brought into the situation, it became pretty obvious what would happen – and when we knew Daredevil would “die” at the end, that fizzled it a bit more.
It’s still a strong issue overall. Diggle and Tan work together to bring some rather exciting fight sequences here. The first one with just Elektra is chaotic and wonderful, and the final fight of the issue is marked rather poignantly through it’s setting. While the story doesn’t really move beyond essentially being “fight, chat, fight” mode, it still runs forward at full speed as an event to it’s finale. Of course, Ghost Rider and Moon Knight are definitely missing from the big picture (although one will definitely return in the next issue), but it’s a small price to pay to get to see Luke Cage and Iron Fist team up and kick a little ass. So it’s a rather action heavy issue, but it’s a good looking one at that.
I suppose that ultimately spoilers is what kept this book down. We knew Bullseye would die in issue 1. We “knew” Daredevil would die before issue 3. These are things we don’t need to know, and these are things I don’t think Marvel should be working so hard for us to know. Granted, some of it has to be said for the purposes of solicits and retailers, but even so. The surefire way to kill an events steam and plot twists? Tell us it’ll happen before it does.
Final Verdict: 7.3 – Buy
Return of Bruce Wayne #5
It’s all coming to an end. Bruce Wayne is ever so close to his own time period, but he has to make a stop off first – at the night his parents were murdered! In all honesty, that pitch makes the issue sound kind of hokey, as if it were a comic you’d read from the Golden or even Silver Age. Instead, it’s a comic that came out this week from Grant Morrison as part of his epic Batman story – and in it’s madness, it actually makes the most sense out of any issue in this series.
So some people have complained about the scattered storytelling apparent in Morrison’s spreading out of his tale. To accurately follow Batman and Robin, you really do need this additional comic, and the knowledge of all of Morrison’s previous Batrun is assumed. There’s a lot of knowledge that you are assumed to have before this issue, but if you have it – there are so many pay offs it’s ridiculous. Whether it’s Marsha or her reference to John Mayhew, the issue is full of callbacks both to Batman and Batman and Robin as well as earlier this issue as the endgame becomes much much more clear. While I will refrain from spoiling anything, now would be the time to get out your secret Morrison decoder rings, because there is a lot to find here.
My favorite bit that hopefully others will notice is the strong resemblance to this issue and the penultimate issue of RIP. There is so much in common with the way the story begins to reach it’s ultimate climax, it makes the entire scope of this project that much more intriguing. There are other sites who break down the issues much better than I ever could for you, but needless to say – the issue is full of clever dialogue, and Bruce’s “the plot’s got a few holes, but I think it’s starting to make sense” is one of the best moments I think you could ask for in a story of this magnitude.
Of course, the curious note of the issue is that we have two artists: Ryan Sook and Pere Perez. I’ve heard through the gossip mill that the scripts are coming in a tad late, not allowing for time for one artist to finish the book alone. I suppose a better pairing between Perez and Sook you could not have, because the exact crossing point between the artist’s work isn’t even entirely clear. If you actively look for it, you’ll notice – but other than that, it’s an excellent blend between the two. Sook and Perez both capture that 1940’s style that makes Bruce an actual detective quite well, and the story flows well against the influences it’s intimidating.
In summation, Return of Bruce Wayne – and honestly, this whole Batman story as a whole – could very well end up being one of the most mind boggling and brilliant things I’ve ever read. I can already tell at the end of this issue (which is a doozy in and of itself) that this whole story is something I’ll need to re-read to get a better grasp of the nuances that have been laid out for this path. Truth be told, I don’t think anyone could ever ask for anything more with their comics: a lifetime of re-readibilty.
Final Verdict: 9.1 – Buy
Untold Tales of the Blackest Night
I was a tad skeptical about getting this addendum to the Blackest Night story, because truth be told I’ve kind of had it with the gloomy colored lanterns. The story definitely wore out it’s welcome by the end there, and the sequel to it hasn’t provided me with too much to geek out about. However, Blackest Night (and Siege) were the last events that I said I’d get every tie-in for, so I decided what the heck and gave Untold Tales a shot.
As a whole, the issue does make itself feel relevant to the overall stories – to an extent, at least. The opening and closing sequences written by Peter Tomasi add appropriate book ends (pun intended) to the larger story here, which is that Lyssa Drak is being pulled through the book that trapped her and is being forced to relive moments of the Blackest Night. This includes two deleted scenes from Geoff Johns, both of which I read and said, “Yeah, I can tell why these were deleted.” While the attack on Ragman was an interesting one, it’s one that really served no purpose since Ragman played no part in the story, and the other story about the obscure Flash rogues also just seemed rather gratuitous. It was neat to see what hit the cutting room floor, but you can understand why it wound up there.
Continued belowThen there are the other stories. The first story about Animal Man by Adam Schlagman was easily the best. Animal Man had a very small (very small) role in Blackest Night as basically a background character, and this story helped to illuminate why he was there at all. While I’m sure this kind of story was just written at the last second as an addition to this book, it also served as a neat way to tie loose ends together – and give a brief tease of what might be coming. Was that an event tease? An Animal Man mini/ongoing tease? I’m not sure, but I hope it’s something that DC decides to work with, because otherwise that was a waste of an otherwise good short read. After that, JT Krul picks up the pen to add some more time to his story from Blackest Night, which was one I didn’t really find good the first time around and can’t say I enjoyed more this time around. While I can see why he wanted to elaborate on the story (if nothing else, it gives Cassie a boost), the only really good thing about it was the Ed Benes art. Outside of that, the story just kind of … was there. This is followed by a Scarecrow story by Jeremy Love and Brett Booth, which was short and rather entertaining overall. The story was essentially Scarecrow doing what he did throughout all of Blackest Night – craving fear and then getting it. It’s just this particular scenario offered up an amusing tale.
The worst story of all though was unfortunately Ethan Van Scivers. I’m normally a huge fan of his, and he handled both writing and art here, but I think he tried to focus on a character that really hasn’t been that emotionally relevant to us for a while. Karu-Sil certainly had her evil pages in the Sinestro Corps War, but now she’s not one of the Sinestro Corps that we’ve wanted to focus on, and Van Scivers story here doesn’t really add anything to anything. If this member was someone who I felt needed more screen time, I’d probably feel differently, but as it stands this was the most throwaway story in the bunch.
So Untold Tales is a decent anthology. The only really worthwhile parts to it were Tomasi’s teases and the Schlagman Animal Man tale, so I can only hope that more will come from Animal Man in the future. Granted, Animal Man hasn’t been seen anywhere in the DCU these days, so I doubt we’ll get anything from that. But if nothing else, the comic does offer a nice enough little coda to all that was during Blackest Night.
Final Verdict: 6.7 – Pass
