Justice Society of America #20
...I don't get it.
I mean I get how it works, I just don't get the point.
So we find out that the Earth-2 Power Girl is just a massive freaking ***** and that everyone on Earth-2 is a ******. A fight happens for no real reason (KC Superman's explanation just makes it seem even more ridiculous), some forced irony occurs (zomg Todd why are you so
dark in this universe wat happen
), and in the end
our Power Girl just got ****ed by the long dick of the cosmos*,
yet again, and learns some important lesson about how her real home is here because...her
old real home sucks and is filled with gibbering ******s who cosmically replaced her.
Or something.
This was supposed to be our reintroduction to Earth-2?
This? If Johns' intent was to capture the charm and spirit of the original Earth-2 within fandom's nostalgia, well then I'm sorry but this was a pretty epic fail. After reading this, all I feel is damned glad that their universe got eaten for twenty years and hopeful that we'll never see these ****ers again. Unless
that was Johns' intent, to show Earth-2 at its absolute worst and most unsatisfying. In which case kudos! Perhaps Johns is really just a well-disguised troll.
*Thanks, Apatow.
(3.3 out of 10)
Checkmate #26
Uh, I mean...Final Crisis: Resist
Sasha?
Wait, really? Sasha?
I hate Snapper Carr. It's just something I've realized over the past several appearances from him. He's one of the luckiest people on the planet with opportunities that most people could only dream of throughout his life, and yet for some reason he's this bitter, cynical sort of person who acts like his **** don't stink like everyone else's. He acts like he's entitled to some sort of unspoken debt that all the "heroes" owe him but because he never speaks it, no one knows what to do about it. He's bitter, and it's fine for him to be bitter about
something, but it just seems like he's bitter about
nothing. So yeah, I hate him.
But this comic! This comic I do not hate. Rucka is absolutely fantastic and I think it's high time for
him to join the likes of Johns and Morrison to write The Giant Event of some sort. His grasp of character, narrative, pace, action, and continuity is in no way inferior to theirs. The intro, the scenes, the ending...it all works so well. I do have to say it's kind of ridiculous that this comic feels the need to block out Cheetah's naughty bits, considering that for the past twenty years pre-Heinberg she was functionally bare-assed naked on every single panel and simply didn't
have those bits. Infinite Crisis: Adds Nipples and Vagina.
But that brings us to a sensitive area.
Uh, so to speak. A lot of readers, even those who were gigantic Rucka fans and loved his Wonder Woman run, bemoan the fact that he doesn't really get Barbara Minerva. A big deal is made over the fact that she is reduced to being a flaccid femme fatale under his pen. I definitely do agree that Rucka has oversexed the Cheetah -- two out of three of his depictions of her have jumped the bones of strange men that she barely even knows -- and that was certainly
not a part of her character before. Urzkartaga certainly was never a god of fertility before this very issue. This strange notion of making her sexualized due to her bestiality -- wow I wish there were better ways of saying that -- hurts the character far more than it helps her, in my opinion.
On the other hand, I do have to note that people who think that Cheetah is some sort of strong villainess with any sort of character stability at all over her twentysomething years of continuity are pretty much just fooling themselves. Cheetah's personality has been a freaking ping-poing match through the years, even moreso than Wonder Woman herself, who is hardly a bastion of character stability. It sucks because she is WW's foremost iconic villain, far more than Ares is, and writers just cannot agree on what the hell to do with her. To say that Rucka diminishes her character implies that there was any character there for him
to diminish in the first place. Which, I mean yeah, there
was. But it's not some sort of sacrosanct, iconic persona like the Joker or Luthor or something.
(8.9 out of 10)
And now for the counterargument...
Secret Six #3
See, now this is high-larious 'cause it makes me take back almost everything I just said. Gail Simone writes a
kickass Cheetah who is not only kickass, she's recognizable too. This Cheetah definitely feels like she's ripped out of the pages of cluster**** continuity that came before, but she
kicks ass. This is someone who could conceivably be Wonder Woman's longest-running rogue, and this makes me look forward to her upcoming appearance in WW all that much more. It makes sense, considering that Simone's WW run so far can be summed up as "fix the past two goddamn years."
And the rest of this comic? Awesome. The plot, characters, dialogue, everything was awesome. A common complaint about DC is that they don't have good villains. That complaint is wrong, and this comic is why.
Oh, and that ending. Totally didn't see it coming, it was
brilliant.
(9.6 out of 10)
Vixen: Return of the Lion #2
For all that haven't been reading this, know that it's actually pretty darn good. Art is
gorgeous and writing is solid. Story is generic but effective. If you're like me and have soured on Vixen over the past year of JLA inexplicably being JLV instead, read this to, uh, unsour yourself on her.
(9 out of 10)
