X-Men: FF (comics)

Writer: Victor Gischler
Artists: Jorge Molina, Will Conrad, Mirco Pierfederici
Collects: X-Men Vol. 3 #15.1, 16-19

So far the third volume of X-Men had been a fun enough read. "Curse of the Mutants" was decent enough for what it was. With Great Power was a hair better. There was an interim volume - X-Men: First to Last - but it wasn't anything special and I didn't have much to say about it. It wasn't by the regular writer anyways.

So that brings me to X-Men: FF, which is the first volume of the book that I feel outright failed.

The plots aren't anything special. The FF find some interdimensional bouy out in the Bermuda Triangle (Spider-Man is the one who discovers it, in fact, though for some reason that'll be the only time you see him). The FF call in the X-Men. They all go into another dimension on a rescue mission.

Unfortunately, the writing feels weaker than usual. The flow of the plot feels off at times and we have the by-now-expected issue of the characters not sounding themselves, Doctor Doom being the only real exception. This has been a consistent problem with Gischlers run on this book, but it's made worse here by the inclusion of another team of characters he doesn't seem to get.

This is not entirely unexpected; Gischlers run on X-Men hasn't had what you'd call great writing. It's competant enough to skate by when paired with fun plots. Problem is, FF is kind of a clunker. There isn't anything particularly interesting going on and anything new he introduces won't exactly qualify as original. I'm not entirely sure why it had to be another dimension the teams traveled to, as this story could just as easily have worked in the Savage Land. There are even dinosaurs running around.

Wonderful art has made up for problems with the writing in the past. Gischler doesn't have as much luck this time. The art is perfectly fine - hell, I'd go so far as to say it's pretty good overall - but there's nothing about it that might differentiate it from most of the artists in Marvels stable. It doesn't have the flair or uniqueness of a Paco Medina or Chris Bachalo, who both worked on earlier volumes, so it does not have as much luck drawing attention away from the iffy writing.

There's a point one issue stuffed in here as well - with the very short lived female Ghost Rider showing up - but it's completely forgettable. Something about ancient spirits. It's nothing you'll bother to recall when you're done reading it.

The Score: 5 out of 10

By far the weakest entry into the third volume of X-Men to date. It's self contained and affects nothing. Skip it.

Justice League: Rise and Fall (comics)

Writer: JT Krul
Artists: Diogenes Neves, Mike Mayhew and numerous others
Collects: Justice League: Rise and Fall #1, Green Arrow vol. 4 #31-32, Rise of Arsenal #1-4*

Don't let the title fool you. No one "rises" in this book and the Justice League has nothing to do with it. The only thing to be witnessed here are a couple downward spirals.

After the events of "Cry for Justice" - the most hated miniseries of the past five years - the Arrow family is in a bad place. Roy's lost both his arm and his daughter. Green Arrow has killed the man responsible and knows he's likely to lose everything. The elevator only goes down from here.

I actually have some sympathy for JT Krul and I'm willing to give him a bit of a pass for this. While the prospect of writing Green Arrow must have been enticing, he had to clean up a mess or two first. This entire volume hinges on the events of Cry for Justice, a story that essentially carpet bombed everything that had been done with Green Arrow in recent years. Krul was being handed the keys to a broken kingdom.

The Green Arrow half of the book finishes off whatever Cry for Justice didn't. There's a real feeling of "putting the toys back in the box" here. Connor Hawke reverts to resenting Ollie, his "family" of characters is splintering, his secret identity is blown, the Robin Hood motifs seem to be coming back into play and he's an outlaw in his own city. Oh, and Black Canary visits him in prison to leave her ring behind, telling him their marriage is over**. Yeah.

It's less a story and more of an epilogue to Cry for Justice. Obviously, the final act of that miniseries required some measure of follow-up, but I'm not sure this happened to be the most entertaining way to go about it. If they couldn't come up with anything, they could have just gone the Batman & Robin route with the new GA series; jump right in and give a few lines explaining how we got there.

Mixed is the best way I can describe my feelings. I got the impression this was DC's way of taking Green Arrow back to the old Mike Grell status quo. While that's not exactly a bad thing, I don't think all of this was necessary to get there.

The other half is "Rise of Arsenal". I don't even know what to think about this one. There's some merit to the concept, especially the relapse; it's pretty much fact that most recovering addicts will relapse at least once. It's a lifelong struggle; in Roys case the trauma he'd just gone through doesn't exactly help.

On the other hand, it isn't handled well; I can buy into his sorrows and nightmares over his daughter, but the book completely lost me with the hallucinations, which actually start way before he's back on anything. His worst one actually happens after he decides it would be a great idea to go chasing the dragon; I'm not particularly knowledgeable about drugs, but I'm pretty sure heroin is not supposed to cause a hardcore fight-your-best-friend-to-the-death hallucination. Not unless it's cut with something else, which doesn't seem very likely.

Some unintentionally hilarious moments abound, though. During the biggest hallucination, we find out that Roy nearly killed three guys protecting a dead cat he thought was his daughter. Better still, I'm this close to absolving this storyline of all it's sins for giving me the phrase "whoring through space with Kyle Rayner". It was directed at Donna Troy, but I can't help imagining the male version of it would be Captain Kirk and Kyle tag teaming any and all alien women across the galaxy.

That a comic of this does not exist is a crime; DC needs to call up IDW this instant and get a Green Lantern/Star Trek crossover going.

That said, little of this works if you don't care about Roy or his daughter. If you feel bad for him, you probably knew these characters beforehand; Roys actions over the course of the story veer further and further from the path of a hero. It's easy to grasp his sorrow and memories of his daughter, but without prior context there isn't enough here to tell you why you should care about him or feel bad.

Oh, yeah, then there's the fact that it all revolves around a dead kid, one that was cute as a button. All to give Roy a heel turn that went nowhere. I get that they felt the need to shake the character up, but come on.

The Score: 5 out of 10

There's no reason to buy this unless you really need to see Roy protect a dead cat and huff heroin.

* I wish DC would go back to printing the contents somewhere in the volume, because I'm getting really sick of having to go look it up. Sure, it only takes an extra two minutes, but it's annoying.

** Canary doesn't come off well here, but to be fair to her, none of the main characters really do.

Batman: The Dark Knight - Golden Dawn (comics)

Writer: David Finch
Artists: David Finch, Jay Fabok
Collects: Batman: The Dark Knight #1-5, Batman: The Return, material from Superman/Batman #75

Man, was this comic ever the ongoing joke of 2011. The delays were verging on ridiculous; it was originally solicited to start in the fall of 2010. Over the next six months, give or take, it only managed to get out two issues. It took something close to a year to get the five issue story finished; not only did they have to rush it just to finish before the relaunch, but it required Jay Fabok to pinch hit on the art.

So, nothing approaching high hopes for this book from me. Having a fill-in on art just made it worse. The book was launched as a vehicle for David Finch to do whatever he wanted with Batman; without his art, what was the point?

Anyways, one of Bruce Waynes childhood friends - Dawn Golden - turned up missing. Apparently she was the one who made him reconsider the whole "girl" thing as a kid; turned out they were pretty rad. Batman, thoroughly pissed off, decides to smack Killer Croc with a sign or two in the midst of his search. Then the Penguin decides to waddle his way in and Etrigan throws fire around while mystical elements start cropping up and I guess Ragman was possessed by a demon and things just kind of got out of control.

The writing is all over the map. Artists that double up have worked magic in the past. Finch isn't one of the success stories. The plot is a mess that lacks general consistency, with elements just kind of popping in for what seems to be no other reason than that's what David Finch felt like drawing that day.

The first half of the plot is essentially a kidnapping caper, but the whole thing - along with Croc and Penguin - is essentially forgotten the second Dawn is rescued. Apparently, it's irrelevant to the real issue - which makes you wonder why we blew two and a half issues on it - which is that Dawn is targeted for sacrifice. I guess Batman figured a giant Croc-man roaming the city wasn't a pressing issue.

Loose threads that go nowhere are all over the place, like an asskissing rookie gunning for Gordons job, some kid stealing the Batmobile, the demon Blaze vanishing from the story without even being defeated and so much more. Other questions involve how Etrigan got his status as a Rhyming Demon back midway through the story and just what's up with Ragman after having his body hijacked. Then there's what I suspect is a dropped plot point; on a certain page, the amount of emphasis on the amulet and linking it with the rage* from prior pages seems a bit too much to be a coincidence, but if there was a plan for it, we never see it. On top of all that, the story seems to just stop, like Finch was running out of pages and needed to "conclude" things with all due haste. This story explains absolutely nothing; there's no guarantee of a follow-up either, because I haven't heard anything about these plot threads returning in the relaunch volume.

The whole thing kind of resembles what you might get if you gave a kid a bunch of DC action figures and told him to come up with a story; any number of random cool moments, but nothing resembling structure or even coherency.

To top it off there's the central figure of the story, Dawn Golden. We don't get a sense of why Bruce is obsessed with saving her. I mean, sure, she was obviously the first girl Bruce wanted to, err, have relations with before he even knew what went where, but other than that, we have little idea what their connection was. Worse still, it's unclear why we should care about her; while the plot essentially revolves around her, we spend little time actually with her. The one hint of character we see comes from the flashback scene; the only thing we get out of her after the rescue is an infodump on why demons are suddenly after her with no prior warning in the story.

Now, this wouldn't be such a huge deal if David Finch did all the art. As important as story is to comic books, some folks will buy a book even if it's lousy if their favorite artist is on it. But as I mentioned earlier, delays forced them to employ a fill-in artist just to get the books solicited issues out there before the relaunch. Not that Jay Fabok isn't talented - he is - but a lot of the draw of this book to start was David Finch drawing Batman. With the story being something of a mess, it's left to the art to carry the weight. In this case, managing two thirds of five issues just isn't going to cut it; especially considering the fact that they gave it the Deluxe Hardcover treatment.

What's there is pretty though, I'll give it that. Since Finch is not on writing duties for the relaunched book and it's been hitting on time, I may check it out. His work is nice to look at.

Since the story ended up wrapping in five issues, the trade department apparently figured it would have been a good idea to throw something else in. On tap is a two page short story from issue #75 of Superman/Batman and the "Return" one shot Finch drew that served as a bridge between Morrisons Batman & Robin and Batman Incorporated. The Return has the opposite problem of Golden Dawn; the script's pretty good and sets up Incorporated well, but the artwork is Lesser Finch.

It's clearly there for no other reason than to pad the book out, though; the issue was already collected in one of the volumes of the story it's relevant to, so it's not like this is the only place to see it.

The Score: 5 out of 10

It's not that great. Way too many problems and not enough depth to any of the important parts of the story. Might be worth a look if you're really into Finchs artwork, but be forewarned that he only managed two thirds of the main story. Otherwise, I'd recommend giving it a pass.

* Seriously, we're talking blinding rage. He breaks Penguins limbs even as Penguin cries for him to stop. It was a very uncomfortable scene to read; it came across as unnecessarily cruel and not at all like Batman. I know Penguin was trying to kill him just a few pages prior, but it was completely overboard to the point I was feeling sorry for the Penguin.

Superman: Grounded vol. 1 (comics)

Writers: J. Michael Straczynski, G. Willow Wilson
Artists: Eddy Barrows, Leandro Oliveira
Collects: Material from Superman #700, Superman #701-706

God, I don't even know where to start with this. I have such conflicting feelings about this. On the one hand, this book is complete ass. On the other, it's fantastic in that it made me laugh. It's asstastic.

Look, we all know the story, right? It hit the mainstream news, for chrissakes. Superman takes a walk. Along the way he spouts half-assed philosophy and generally ignores legitimate questions about what the hell he's doing. I'm not sure that last part is on the back cover though.

As a Superman story - in regards to who Superman is, who the character has become, what he represents and how we understand him - this story is just so bad. Dude straight up hassles people, acts condescendingly and spouts the most cliched bullshit going. It's clear that the only villain here is the strawman Superman meets every issue to argue into submission. Well, that and the unbelievably blatant metaphors he comes across from time to time; I do not think a writer can lack any more subtlety than having actual aliens in the country illegally. He doesn't even play it for laughs, which might redeem the bit.

Even the way it starts off is patently moronic. A woman whose husband died from cancer slaps Superman for being off trying to stop a war between Earth and New Krypton instead of being there to cure her husbands cancer. Because, you know, dude should be focusing on the important stuff, right? A normal human being would shrug this moronic nonsense off, but Superman takes it to heart and decides the answer is to walk across the goddamn country.

There aren't enough words to describe how utterly dumb the premise is, much less how out of character this Superman feels.

Of course, it's possible that's the point and something is wrong with Superman. It's been hinted as much, though the rest of the internet takes that with the requisite skepticism. But to be fair to the book, there is just as many instances of Supermans loved ones expressing concern and all but outright saying he's acting goddamn weird. It could always be said that it's nothing more than JMS using a stand-in for readers or critics of the concept, but I'm not so sure. It seems a bit too... planned, I guess; like hints of something wrong to come into play down the line.

Unfortunately, this isn't one of those trades with creator interviews to shed light on the subject, so no one but the folks at DC knows for sure. Regardless, JMS is a better writer than this. I know he is. I don't know how this came out of the guy who wrote the book that got me mildly interested in Thor.

The other side of the coin is that because of the fact that Superman feels so wildly out of character the book is pretty hilarious. Superman is a complete dick to everyone in this book. The shining example that inspires humanity to be its best straight up holding a stalker by the ankle high in the air and demanding he never stalk a lady again is just plain funny. Not that the guy doesn't deserve it, but - and the story even points this out - that is a Batman tactic, not Superman.

He also burns drug stashes hidden in houses with his heat vision. In the middle of a neighborhood. Seemingly without thinking about either the smoke from the burning drugs or the fact that the houses could catch on fire and spread as, you know, fires are wont to do. Oh won't you be his neighbor?

It provides the kind of humor people built an entire website around. It's great, but not at all in the way they intended. If you don't derive humor from seeing Superman act like a prick - which I admittedly like in past books, but generally have no desire to see Superman books repeat - you'll probably be able to knock the score down three points lower than I gave it.

Of course, because it's JMS, whose every project seems besieged by crippling delays, there were fill-ins by a G. Willow Wilson. Not familiar with her work. She does well enough, considering her goal is to focus on supporting characters in order to kill time for JMS, who only did one more issue anyways before bailing to do a sequel to a more lucrative Superman graphic novel. These issues have almost nothing to do with Grounded, but considering Grounded isn't exactly the next great Superman epic I don't think anyone really cared about that.

Most of the artwork is done by Eddy Barrows, who actually manages to string together three consecutive issues this time. Considering he couldn't manage more than two in a row last time I read a project he was on, I'd say his workrate is improving. His work is much better here to boot. Doesn't save the book, but at least it's not ugly.

One last bit of hilarity: This trade has no cover quotes at all. Not all trades will carry them; material from more than five years back tend to lack them unless they're evergreen classics. But this story was given so much press it hit the news. When you've got a heavily hyped storyline you've gone out of your way to get in the public eye and come trade time you can't even muster a semi-positive quote to plaster on the hardcover, you've failed on so many levels.

The Score: 5 out of 10

As cripplingly bad as I expected? Not quite. It's just cripplingly stupid. If you get some jollies from Superdickery, give it a look. Otherwise, it's not really worth the time.

Dark Reign: The List (comics)

Writers: Brian Bendis, Jason Aaron, Greg Pak, Rick Remender and numerous others
Artists: John Romita Jr., Alan Davis, Adam Kubert and too many others to count
Collects: Dark Reign: The List - Avengers, Daredevil, X-Men, Punisher, Secret Warriors, Hulk, Wolverine, Amazing Spider-Man

Hoo boy. This book. There are so many problems with doing something like this. Let's you and me talk about why.

Essentially seven or eight one shots with an over-arching narrative, the conceit is that Norman Osborn is making a list. He's checking it twice. He doesn't really care who's been naughty or nice. He's just gonna shoot you in the face. Or more likely have you shot by someone else, since he employs a bunch of murderers as a team of Avengers.

I'm not really going to get into the individual quality of each one shot; as you'd expect, some are better than others and this really isn't the point of the exercise. There are about three different ways you can try and run something like this. The first option is to have the overarching storyline take precedence; this is the approach that would have actually necessitated a collection like this. The other way is to be light on the connective tissue and have each writer treat it as an extra chapter of whatever ongoing they presumably work on. The final option is to try and do both; this route very rarely works out, becoming a jack of all trades, but master of none.

This book takes the second approach, which results in a scattershot group of one shots that barely connect.

Talked up as an important part of the overall Dark Reign status quo, they try to tie everything together with the overall plot of Osborns list. It doesn't necessarily work, because only about three chapters actually involve the list itself or Norman actively going after his target. Each issue does involve him, but as mentioned earlier they're all basically extra chapters of different books across the Marvel line. Different vibes and tones follow, with the overall series not feeling like a cohesive whole. There are a few important scenes to affect the status quo, but it doesn't really work as it's own story, which is a big, big problem.

Since what we're left with here are extra tales of the given character or team, we're left with about what you'd expect for most of them. Quite a few of them involve the ongoing events of a given book, which means that divorced from said context they mean little. Why is Norman pissed at Namor? Who knows, but he's damn sure going to throw a hungry monster at him. What's Osborns beef with the Punisher? You might be able to take a guess, but if you haven't read the events of his ongoing at the time, you won't have the concrete answer. Why the hell is Hulk not the Hulk? Same deal.

In short, most of the one shots assume familiarity with the ongoing events at the time. The hope is to get your readers hooked and want to read those books. But without a given context, what we get is going to mean little to most of the people who read it. Even with people who are reading several of the given ongoings, few of them will have been invested in all of them.

Worse still, the entire exercise - and even this collection - is unnecessary. While we could have been in for an interesting story if Osborns downfall came from the fallout of the last one shot, Spider-Mans, it's ultimately inconsequential. The Siege event would come soon after, which led to Osborns downfall in a way that had nothing to do with the events portrayed here. Sure, Peter damn sure screwed up Osborns PR, but things would have come to the same conclusion with or without him. Which leaves the appeal to the writing and art, which are both admittedly pretty great.

As for the collection itself, as you can guess, each individual one-shot is also collected in the collections of the associated book. They fit in much better there and the events are separate enough that removing them from the rest doesn't hurt them. So, with the one shots all available elsewhere and the overall story remarkably flimsy... the point of this collection is what again? Aside from the obvious goal of a little extra money coming in from the sales of this too.

Really pointless volume overall.

The Score: 5 out of 10

Let me be very, very clear here; this score is for this volume as a whole. As a separate entity, this collection fails to be worth the time or money in every way. Many of the individual one shots themselves, however, are very good; several well written and several very, very well drawn by some of comics best. But you're better off reading them in the associated collections. There's absolutely no point in wasting the money on this thing. It means absolutely nothing if you're not already reading the given comics; and if you are, that means buying this volume would have you paying for the same comics twice.

By all means, skip this; you'll get them when you get around to the volumes of the ongoings they're collected in.

Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape (comics)

Writer: Ivan Brandon
Artists: Marco Rudy, Cliff Richards
Collects: Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape #1-6

As they usually do with events, DC decided to push out a few "aftermath" mini's in the wake of Final Crisis. Four of them, this go around. A funny thing I noticed in discussions is that the four tend to split people right down the middle. The average seems to be that everyone has two they loved and two they hated, with no one mini being universally hated.

Well, I can tell you this; Escape is not going to be one of my two.

So Tom Tresser, otherwise known as Nemesis, is drugged and abducted from his home. He wakes up in an unfamiliar place where the very laws of reality seem to have no hold. He has only one plan. To escape.

This is a tough review to do. Part of that has to do with being unsure that I really have anything to say that Iceberg Lounge and Collected Editions didn't say already; obviously, opinions are going to overlap from time to time, but I find myself skittish about reviewing something if I don't feel like I've got anything new to say. But another large part of the problem is that part of me just doesn't even want to think on it. This book is kind of like the kid who's a perpetual screw-up, but tries hard enough that you can't hate him even if you don't want to be around him because he's so freaking odd.

This is a hell of a difficult read. There's a very real feeling when reading this that what you're witnessing is just chaos birthed onto the comic page. But the difference between the good kind of difficult read and the bad is what lies in between the lines. The best kind are those that aren't linear, but at least have something under the hood. With similarly unconventionally told stories, there are meanings to everything and nothing is by accident. But this story feels the exact opposite.

The trouble is that the story doesn't seem to have a real plan in mind. Some writers have proven that the general framework of storytelling is very flexible as long as you get your point across and give everything the reader needs to figure it all out. Escape is way off on the other end of the spectrum, seeming to hold its cards too close to the chest and choosing to be complex for the sake of complexity. It's like a maze with no real path to the exit, the only way to get there being if you teleported to it.

The end result is one of the most unfortunate attempts at an nontraditional narrative I think I've read in a long while. Which is sad, as not everyone in the business really chooses to experiment. What makes the whole thing even more disappointing is that there were points in the book - like, say, when you realize what's caused the "jumps" from one scene to the next - where it seems like things are headed somewhere and that there's a solid foundation beneath, but eventually that feeling gives way. If there was a plan or point to all this, the writer tried so hard to make Escape a different kind of read that he completely obscured it from view.

Luckily, there is a positive quality or two to speak of. The cast of the book is good. Pretty much all of DC's spy characters and organizations are present, from Suicide Squad members to Checkmate on down the line. I loved Greg Ruckas Checkmate series, so even just seeing some of the characters again is nice. There's also a fair bit of fun continuity mining; though I'm not sure just what the hell the Kirby stuff had to do with anything aside from the fact that Final Crisis used it too. There's also some fun "meta" moments, as when it's pointed out that Nemesis has been nothing but a supporting player in someone elses stories while over the course of this story becomes something more; I'm pretty sure that's a clear jab at the then recently ended relationship he had with Wonder Woman that made him a regular presence in her book.

It's also worth mentioning that this volume at least attempts to follow the precedent set by its associated event. It's an unfortunate fact that aftermath stories tied to events don't always have a lot to do with what the associated event was trying to accomplish. Grant Morrison is known for being unconventional in his writing, which I've felt is a large part of why he's popular and why he also has detractors. This mini seems to try to follow his lead; I appreciate that the effort was made, even if it didn't work out.

The art's not so bad. It's held up by Marco Rudy, Cliff Richards and Neil Edwards, the last of whom would go on to do some of Johnathan Hickmans Fantastic Four issues. Despite the number of artists, they do a respectable job of mimicking one another, making it tougher to notice when there's an artist change without looking at the credits. There's the occasional exception - sometimes you may notice a face doesn't look exactly the same as previously, but for the most part it's seamless. If you're going to have more than one artist on a miniseries - which, mind you, I'd prefer not to happen - this is generally how it should be done.

The Score: 5 out of 10

It's unfortunate, but this mini feels like a spectacular failure. There's complex and then there's confusing; and this book is definitely the latter. Skip it. It's not worth the trouble.