Young Justice, more Young Justice, Starman, Velocity, new Fables, and the latest Blue Beetle.
Employee’s Pick
[DC] Young Justice #9-14
Writer: Peter David
Pencilers: Todd Nauck (issues 9-10, 12-14), Angel Unzueta (issue 11)
Young Justice vs. small children! With knives! Kids around the world get brainwashed by the saccharine sweetness and subliminal messages of the Hugga-tugga-Thugees, an animated front for a cult of Kali worshippers seeking to bring the evil goddess back into our world. Red Tornado’s adopted daughter, Traya, is one of the victims. Unable to control her actions, she manages to push her mom out a window several stories up. No one catches her.
With her mother in a coma, the only one who can care for Traya now is RT. Or the state, who insist an android has no legal claim on a human child. The judge, having apparently never read Bicentennial Man, rules against Red, pushing the supposedly soulless machine over the edge. RT takes his daughter by force and dramatically flees the courtroom, only to run into a forcefield set-up by Fite n’ Maad to prevent just such an escape attempt. RT commands Young Justice not to interfere, so of course, they do. Out of costume, super sneaky style, using guile and subterfuge as much as their powers.
Then they go to Hell, also known as the 1970’s. Brrr! This, unfortunately, leads to a crossover with David’s Supergirl, leaving me with only half the story. So, um, Young Justice get mind-controlled and fight Supergirl, but they get better… somehow. Meanwhile, Traya’s mom wakes up, thanks to Secret, and just when they’re about to become a for real family again, Red Tornado gets hauled off to jail for that whole courtroom debacle. Secret starts to regain her memories, specifically the memory of her death at the hands of her brother, Harm, who makes his triumphant return courtesy of the Day of Judgment crossover. In typical tie-in fashion, we’re given little info about DoJ and no resolution. Have to buy the miniseries for that, kids! Hell froze over, dead people came back to life, something something demons… All very dramatic, you know.
Though the crossovers drag it down, the book continues to be entertaining, full of character moments, action, and advancing subplots. Also, refreshingly light on angst and random deaths.
New-Type Books
[DC] Fables #72
Writer: Bill Willingham
Penciler: Mark Buckingham
This isn’t as strong as last issue. Cinderella brags about how she’s the greatest spy ever because she’s had lifetimes to hone her craft. That may well be true, but I don’t want to hear it, I want to see it. Fortunately, there’s plenty of showing, and "greatest" or not, she’s still vulnerable, so it takes some doing to complete her mission alive. As usual, the gorgeous cover image isn’t random, it’s an approximation of an actual scene from the comic, of Cinderella in a brutal fight for her life.
[DC] Blue Beetle Vol. 7 #28
Writer: Will Pfeifer
Penciler: David Baldeon
The second of two fill-in issues before Matthew Sturges takes over as regular writer next month. Pfeifer doesn’t waste any effort on this story; it’s filler at its most inconsequential. Excitement is teased with the return of long lost villain Dr. Mephistopheles and a parallel story where Golden Age Blue Beetle Dan Garrett battled Meph and his pet monster in the 40’s, but it all goes nowhere. If this were a Marvel book, it would likely have taken the past two to three months off while waiting for Sturges. Of course, its sales aren’t great to begin with, so a break like that could’ve killed it. Neither Pfeifer issue is worth buying, and only barely worth reading, but they weren’t terrible. He filled space. Now we get back to regular storylines, real conflict, and, hopefully, a good dose of humor and three or four doses of fun.
Back Issues
[Image/Top Cow] Velocity: Pilot Season #1
Writer: Joe Casey
Penciler: Kevin Maguire
The inside cover helpfully informs me that this issue was part of a promotion in 2007 where fans voted for which of five series they wanted to see produced. Each series produced a single issue, a "pilot," then took the next several months off. Yeah… not the best idea.
The comic itself is good. Expressive art, good mix of action and downtime. A revenge-obsessed kook hijacks the chip in Velocity’s brain and runs her around for a while before she overrcomes his control. Perfectly good story. As a pilot, however, it fails. Velocity herself looks to be worth reading more about… in a team book. There’s nothing here to suggest she can carry a solo title. No supporting cast, no dedicated villains, no home town. It’s a self-contained story, establishing no direction for the character and casting aside all the new elements by the end of the story. There’s precious little here to build on.
She won, though, so she’s getting that solo book. I say "getting" because, despite the voting having ended in January, as of July the first issue has yet to be scripted. It’s scheduled for a November release, more than a year after the pilot shipped. Presumably, Casey will add some of those glaringly absent details once the series proper gets underway, but I’m not confident it’ll have any staying power.
[DC] Young Justice: Secret Files & Origins
Writers: D. Curtis Johnson, Joseph Illidge, Peter David, Scott Beatty
Pencilers: Ale Garza, Craig Rousseau, Todd Nauck
A collection of stories and profiles by various creators, including the book’s regular writer/artist team. First up is Take Back the Night, wherein Secret’s Young Justice teammates help her free kids who, as she was, are being held by the Department of Extranormal Operations (DEO) at a high security compound. It’s the sort of fun story Young Justice was known for, with enough drama to keep it from being unbearably light.
Click to enlarge.
A two-pager delineates Impulse’s Trip to the Justice League Cave. You can imagine how that goes. Another two-pager showcases so-called lost pages featuring the return of the Mighty Endowed. The final two-pager has Superboy take us on a tour of the Cave, showing off the various parts of YJ HQ. That last and the many profile pages scattered throughout give me the warm fuzzies; I loved that kind of stuff as a kid. Always wanted to know more about my favorite characters and the world they lived in. Rather, the neighborhood they lived in, as my world was small and I wanted theirs to be as familiar as the one I knew firsthand. DC did well with the Secret Files & Origins series. Good stories, neat info. A potentially bloated, throwaway special became an essential part of the collection in more than one case.
Trade
[DC] Starman Vol. 3: A Wicked Inclination…
Writer: James Robinson
Pencilers: Tony Harris (issues 17, 19-26), Steve Yeowell (issue 27), Guy Davis (issue 22), Chris Sprouse (issue 24), J. H. Williams (issue 26), Gary Erskine (issue 26)
This volume opens with a ghost pirate foiling a robbery. The scene has no bearing on the rest of the trade, all nine issues of it, and is only tangentially related to past events. It’ll come up later, though. Virtually everything Robinson put into Starman had some importance, some part to play. We see that clearly here as several plot threads are picked up from the previous two volumes. The Poster What Steals Souls is back, the fortune teller is back, the Golden Age Sandman is back. That’s the theme: everything old is new again, everything comes back.
But first, sex. Jack wakes up after a night of it, with a woman who promptly dumps him. I don’t think she’ll be back, but you never know. There’s a running theme of Jack running through women, who, after sexing Jack up, disappear, presumably never to be seen again. He’s good at starting relationships, but so far none have held together. The elder Knight inadvertently frightens off Solomon Grundy. We might not see him again, either. He played a part, but everyone’s part ends sometime. Jack talks to the fortune teller, Charity, again, while Shade and the O’Dares go after Damon Merritt, caretaker of the soulsnatching poster.
David Knight pays his annual visit to give Jack the best birthday gift ever. Then, in the four part Sand and Stars, Jack teams up with Wesley Dodds, the Golden Age Sandman to solve an old school murder mystery. Also, to retrieve The Mist’s Victorian Cross, which Jack gives to the senile old man as a way of proving he’s better than Nash, The Mist’s daughter. A gesture of kindness toward an evil man who arranged for his brother’s death and tried to kill Jack as well. That’s what heroes do, they rise above. And they fight, as Dodds does, ably for a man his age. Though he walks with a cane, he still commands respect with his words and deeds.
The Shade and Matt O’Dare, the latter the reincarnation of old west hero Scalphunter, manage to get themselves trapped inside the poster of soulsucking, so in Jack goes to save them. As in Sins of the Child, the three part Hell and Back, which pits Jack & Co. against a demon from Hell, has a peculiar ending. It makes a certain sense, and fortunately lacks the overlong explanation of Sins, but it doesn’t sit right with me. The heroes accomplish more than they were trying to, seemingly by making the wrong choice. Robinson certainly likes his gentleman villains. The Shade has metamorphosed almost entirely into a hero now, and this marks twice that a villain has told Jack "Good show. Ta ta for now," and they’ve parted amicably. Aside from the threat to return and menace Jack again, of course. They’re still villains. There’s also The Mist, too old to be a threat to anyone any longer, and Solomon Grundy, reincarnated with a childlike innocence. There are unrepentant villains, too, pure black hats, but Robinson prefers to paint in greys. Heroes who kill and commit adultery, if only in the heat of passion, and villains you can’t help feeling for despite their cold-blooded murders. Flawed but likeable, characters you can be mad at and happy for, whom you can cheer on and be disappointed by. Human beings.
Two long stories, four short. The last is a Christmas tale that sees Jack help Santa, where "Santa" is a homeless man in a "borrowed" department store uniform. It’s a touching story featuring yet another flawed character; a man to whom bad things happened, but also a man who brought misfortune upon himself.
Truncation
Young Justice – Fear the children.
Fables – Decent wrap-up of a good two-parter.
Blue Beetle – Filler.
Velocity: Pilot Season – A solid story that nonetheless fails at its stated objective.
Young Justice: Secret Files & Origins – Mmm, nostalgia.
Starman Vol. 3: A Wicked Inclination… – Reminding us that old people are useful, too, except when they aren’t.
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