Looking at DC Comics Post-Convergence I: Dr. Fate, Doomed and Black Canary

I didn't think I'd write about anything post Convergence for DC (they're calling it "DCyou")....they were introducing roughly 20 new titles, many of which didn't look like anything remotely aimed at me (i.e. Batmite and Bizarro, for example). Then there were the titles that were no brainers (Red Hood/Arsenal, Starfire, Martian Manhunter and the return of the JLA). However....a lot of titles are falling into a weird, nebulous middle ground where I'm honestly not sure if they were worth pursuing. So, in the interest of being more optimistic than pessimistic I decided to at least check out the #1s on some of these. So far --3 for 3!-- they've got me hooked:

Dr. Fate

Khalid is on Earth Prime (I think) and therefore not the same poor soul who was tortured (like so many other heroes) with every issue of Earth 2. He is, however, drawing the attention of Amun-Ra and Bastet, as the Egyptian gods prime themselves for some sort of war on Earth as Anubis opens the floodgates....literally....on humankind.

The art style is leaning more on the light cartoonish side (similar to the new Burnside Batgirl, Arkam Academy and many other DC titles all of a sudden)....so they are deliberately eschewing the prior conformity toward anatomically heroic grimdark that's been a focus of a lot of New 52 titles. Like other contemporary titles specifically aimed at expanding into a new audience there's a bigger emphasis on the networked/social media interest of the characters, albeit more as a story-driver in Dr. Fate than it's sort of "flagrant, egregious and wonky" role in Batgirl.

There's a lot of opening build-up in Dr. Fate that suggests it will have an interesting internal storyline that is not reliant on what is going on in other titles. It is showing stuff that intrigues me but does not feel overly familiar....I can't point to other prior books and say, "I see where this is coming from." Good stuff.

Doomed

I was debating waiting to read this until I had finished my giant pile of Superman trades to get through the Doomed TPB but decided to hell with it, and glad I did. Here we have the tale of young up-and-coming STAR Labs intern Reiser who's just happy his first assignment is clean-up duty at the "clean room" in the bowels of the STAR Labs complex in Metropolis. When he's not working there (and accidentally taking his suit off in a risky location) he's also roomies with a pretentious fellow and on the prowl for a third roomie to afford the rent....in a building where it looks like Clark Kent also has a flat (no idea how this connects to the ongoing Superman plots lately, working through those now).

So....when Reiser turns into a monster that looks like a thin "Doom" creature, it looks like he's contracted that virus that Superman recently dealt with (in a very thick graphic novel compilation that I am getting too eventually). So....did he unwittingly get the Doomed virus from Clark Kent, or was it his omission in clean-up duty in STAR Labs? Does it really matter anyway, because it turns out he first transforms into the beast (in a DC-does-Hulk sorta way) only when he gets particularly excited....in this case when he's getting propositioned by the hot writer gal who he's taken a fancy to...

Lobdel's writing is solid and engaging. The art is more conventional (DC "standard") but the artist, Javier Fernandez, has a style I really like while still being less moody than some New-52 era titles. It's such a good read I really wish I didn't have to wait for #2.  I did not expect that.

Black Canary

Fletcher's story in Black Canary is a little obtuse, and it doesn't help that issue #2 gets Dinah into the role of songstress with a traveling performance band who have a young girl with them that can't speak and seems to have issues....it skirts around many questions that someone who hasn't been following Black Canary's many appearances in other titles (from Birds of Prey to Batgirl to various odd and sundry) might not be able to follow too easily. For example: I am still not entirely clear on how secret her identity is, how much of her overall role in the current continuity ties in to other characters, or where they are really going with her. She's got a lot of enigma to her overall backstory right now and assumptions about Black Canary pre-New 52 are going to trip you up.

One things is for sure: she's very solidly divorced from (heh) Green Arrow and in fact its safe to assume she's barely interacted with the New 52 Ollie Queen at all, based on what I've seen in that book and Black Canary's other appearances...plus that weird subplot about her ex-husband.

Anyway, despite all that the book focuses solidly on the ideas we need for a #1: Dinah is in a band, and she's using her tour to (in theory) get back on her feet after losing everything in recent issues of Batgirl. She's not really into the band thing, but she feels concern for her fellow musicians and the weird girl. While at a performance the girl reveals an ability to expose what look like (to me) some sort of daemonites which want the girl for something...and Dinah nukes the place in an effort to save the girl. In the end, the band is united to both play music and protect the girl.

I sort of wish the book had referenced where the girl came from (maybe the preview from Convergence showed this? If so hopefully that will make it in to the future trade). I hope the book manages to clean up or tighten the focus on Black Canary in coming issues....her character has the most potential with the least realization in the DCU right now.

One thing to note: though the art style is more "DCYou" and less "New 52," don't expect this to be fun and games like Batgirl....Black Canary's kind of a morbid title as of this first issue. Not bad, but a bit surprising considering this iteration of Black Canary spins right out of her forays in the recent Burnside-area Batgirl stuff.

Next: all those Robin titles and Martian Manhunter

Long Day - Rifts, Hasbro and DC's Convergence among other musings

Today is going to be a long day: 24 hours without sleep now. Long story, too much "other" for this blog but I am looking forward to crashing later for a few hours before game begins. Ai!!!! So a random medley post doay:

Rifts
The Savage Worlds edition of Rifts I mentioned really is a shocker. I still can't believe that Palladium consented to allow this. It won't quite feel the same though without a long monologue in each book from Kevin explaining that the original manuscript was amazing but he still had to rewrite it entirely to suit his vision of Book X.

Hasbro on D&D
Hasbro's news that D& D "on a real tear" was cool but I am still amused that it was also grouped with Clue, Candy Land and other games in the Hasbro inventory in terms of where it stands in the corporate report. This led me to wonder if maybe somewhere deep in Hasbro's corporate network is a division of 7 dedicated developers working furiously to make Candy Land new and innovative, all glaring over at the WotC team for setting the bar to a new high.

DC's Convergence
Anyone following DC's Convergence mini-epic running this month and next? No? I'm guessing a lot of older fans habitually dodge all newer iterations of an old product without compelling evidence to do otherwise, but I happen to be a fan of the New 52 DC universe and also still a fan of (most of) the pre-New-52 universe (I followed the post-Crisis DC from around 86 through to 2000 before I finally burned out). The Convergence event, which I am told is actually a cover for DC to move its headquarters to California and not worry about having their comic lineup interrupted, is a storyline about entire cities of various realms of the DC multiverse which have been kidnapped to a distant universe where Braniac is collecting "dead cities." This has been an recurring theme for several storylines now in DC's New 52, and pretty much most of the recent weeklies (New 52 Future's End and Earth2: Future's End) have been building up to it. Anyway, this frame gives the DC authors an excuse to revisit dozens of older DC universes and cancelled books. So far it's been a real menagerie, but an unusual number of their entries date to sometime in the mid 00's prior to the major universe-revisionism that went on or back to the late 80's, when I really got into DC. It's a fun trip down memory lane but in a modern context; the interesting thing is going to be seeing what changes, if any, this new approach has on other DC books going forward.

Marvel's doing something similar with its Secret Wars, which appears to be a muddy mess of various miniseries revisiting key moments in Marvel's history while using the end-of-the-universe event they've been building up to in the Avengers titles for years now as a frame. The end result, I predict, will look alarmingly close to the Marvel Cineverse, but I could be mistaken....still, I'm going to dodge most of the Secret Wars titles as it looks like a ridiculous mess and honestly I haven't been "back" to Marvel since the early 80's, so for most of these spin-off titles they are referencing events that took place during the decades that I was almost exclusively in to either DC, Image, or Jodorowksi comics.

Plus, there are a lot of comics for these two events coming out from Marvel and DC both. For the sake of my budget a decision had to be made: and I decided it was more fun to follow the Convergence.

Batgirl: The Darkest Reflection

When it comes to the comic reviews (as I get around to them) you may notice a trend: I have a fondness for the old Wildstorm characters, and the broader Batman Mini-Universe that DC likes to keep expanding on. It's getting hefty with costumed vigilantes, from old staples like Batman himself and Nightwing to the new younger Robin, Red Hood, Batwoman and...after roughly 24 years' absence (or presence, as Oracle) the return of Batgirl.

Barbara Gordon's stint as Batgirl ended in 1988 with the landmark The Killing Joke, DC's first effort at wedding the vile Joker seen from the Dark Knight Returns with the then-current era Batman comics, making Joker something more menacing and psychopathic than he had really been portrayed as, previously. Not that Joker wasn't psychotic, evil and demented already, mind you; but The Killing Joke was his first real damaging tale of villainy against the Bat-family, in which Barbara Gordon, alias Batgirl and daughter of Comissioner Jim Gordon, is shot by the Joker in a calculated act of violence. If I recall the Joker did it primarily to get at Gordon and his family, and was unaware of Barbara's role as Batgirl.

Barbara Gordon recovered, but was paralyzed from the waist down for the next twenty four odd years,* taking on the role of the shadowy Oracle, a behind-the-scenes information broker for the vigilantes of Gotham and sometimes beyond. It was a remarkable move on DC's part, because it kept her character interesting without ever retconning or negating The Killing Joke. Until now, that is...

There are two reasons to forgive the DC writers for fixing Barbara Gordon and letting her walk again. First: Barbara was the first but far from the last DC hero to get a broken back, she's just been unforunate enough not to get a lengthy plot arc for redemption and recovery (i.e. Batman). Second, her return in the hands of writer Gail Simone is extremely well done, and worth every moment; it's really nice to see the fragile but determined Batgirl return to action once more.

The Darkest Reflection is Volume I in the collected TPBs of the New 52 series featuring issues 1 to 6 of the new comic. It takes off right from the thick of it, with Batgirl's recovery something that happened previously (it may have been documented in another collection, not really sure). Batgirl starts off dealing with the Mirror, a fellow determined to kill those who have been fortunate enough to survive unpleasant fates under miraculous circumstances....including Barbara Gordon. Following the Mirror we have Gretel, a once good wannabe reporter turned victim, psychotic and psychic mind controller. Amidst this we get to see Batgirl reconnect with Nightwing (hint: it's awkward) and Batman himself (hint: it's rather touching). She deals with a new roommate as she moves out of her father's house (hard to sneak around as Batgirl when you're living with the Police Comissioner) and takes up room and board with a seemingly ordinary anarchist/professional cook, who also is happy to be her confidant...if Barbara wasn't consumed with the heroic secrecy bug, of course!

With great art, excellent writing and Simone's keen sense of meaningful dialogue it's a lot of fun to see Batgirl back in action. If you're addicted to Gotham vigilante stories Batgirl is well worth a look-see.

A+

*Fun fact: the first chapter in TGN establishes that The Killing Joke took place 3 years prior to issue 1 in the new 52 timeline, which means all of Oracle's activities over 24 years (minus retcons and "never happened" plots) were crammed into roughly 36 months....or about 1 year every 1.5 months.

Review: Team 7

Team 7 (issues 0 through 8)

When Team 7 (and it's sister title Team 6) came out as a set of miniseries during Wildstorm's "Still Part of Image" heyday (such as it was), it served as a sort of bridge between several characters and series, tying in a number of the more venerable characters in the old Wildstorm universe together, via a rather complicated backstory set during the Cold War and later. The Grifter, Lynch, Backlash and others were all part of this Vietnam Era team on which various experiments (a throwback to MK-ULTRA and such) led to a curious mix of war heroes with psychic abilities. The team survives a variety of harrowing encounters before splitting to the "present" of the nineties at the time, and to their own titles and future lives as costumed vigilantes.

Team 7 drags a metric ton of Wildstorm and DC characters into a potpourri in similar fashion, with Cole Cash (Grifter) rubbing shoulders with Lynch again (albeit for the first time in the New 52), along with a younger Deathstroke, a younger and thinner Amanda Waller (formerly of Suicide Squad last I checked), a younger Dinah Drake (alias the Black Canary) and more.....even Steve Trevor of Wonder Woman fame appears at one point (pretty sure its the same guy...he's a pilot and all that). This bizarre mixture of characters comprises an ongoing eight issue medley of madness in which the Wildstorm universe is mashed into the DC continuum.

Arguably some of this shift is necessary; there are plenty of DC characters that have backgrounds that fit the Team 7 dynamic well, and the book demonstrates this handily. Likewise, some of the old Team 6 and Team 7 characters are simply no longer with Wildstorm...some were properties of Top Cow and other Image Comics publishers; such is the hazard of the great and sort of failed Image experiment.

Anyway, Team 7 takes the potentially great premise (the secret history of various heroes in a sort of spec ops quasi-military outfit, filling out the backstory that helps explain the present) and manages to weave some great stories even as it makes mince meat out of certain characters....including characters many of us might have liked to see reimagined in the actual New 52 universe.

A few spoilers ahead: Caitlin Fairchild appears and is apparently assimilated borg-style by a rogue Spartan who actually appears to be a creation (?) of Gammorah's evil mastermind Kaizen. This same event leads to the creation and destruction (?) of Ladytron, who gets enough screen time to look vaguely like who she's supposed to be before either disappearing or dying. It's not that these characters are absolutely dead and gone....they could be....but this book left a lot of cliffhangers and "no explanations" to questions I can only assume may be answered elsewhere. Maybe I just have more reading to do. Still....this is not how I would have written Caitlin Fairchild (from Gen-13) or Ladytron into the DC universe.

In the end the plot and pacing gets really wacky as the tale progresses. At times I felt like the writer for this book was at best mildly familiar with many of the characters, and it was rather unsatisfying to see Lynch brought in (as an example) to found the team, yet his presence is all but eliminated before the book concludes...despite some hints that he's still around and alive. Foreshadowing? Maybe, but it felt more like "rushed, and couldn't wrap up the intended script," to me. I head this book may already be winding down....this could either be the reason for the feeling of rushed plots or a cause of such.

Anyway, if you're a fan of the old Wildstorm/Image era of Team 6 and Team 7 then this is going to be a pale shadow of what once was. If you're a DC fan who is not too familiar with the Team 7 notion, then you may find this book a lot more enjoyable as your stake in the Wildstorm characters abused here is not going to be as problematic.Indeed, the DC characters tend to shine, being placed in the more visceral environment of a Wildstorm-flavored plot, and when characters like Eclipso appear it's got a real nasty, interesting vibe to the whole tale.

I still can't believe that they brought in Spartan as some sort of Gammoran robot and Majestic as some sort of byproduct of being assimilated by said robot (it's becoming painfully clear that the Kherubim did not survive the transition to the New 52 universe). That entire plot was.....so poorly executed.....it's just beyond words how disappointed I am in this series' run through issue 8 so far.

Review: Voodoo Volume 1 - What Lies Beneath

Voodoo Volume 1: What Lies Beneath is the collected first six issues of the New 52 reinvention of one of the old Wildstorm universe characters. I was a big fan of the Wildstorm universe for as long as I could hang on, despite DC's nebulous mistreatment of it (though to be fair they may have been suffering from a combination of author issues mixed with low sales, so YMMV here). Voodoo as a half-daemonite from the Wildcats era was a fun character but she was also typically one of the eye candy heroines so prevalent in the Image era of comics. Later on she was developed into a more sophisticated character in later iterations of the Wildcats, but she never entirely came into her own. This series definitely changes that.

(Spoilers ahead.)

In What Lies Beneath Voodoo is reinvented as a rather more sinister hybrid daemonite, transplanted into the "New 52" era of the DC Universe and given an interesting make over. She's no longer a confused stip dancer laboring under the problems associated with a hybrid nature which she doesn't quite understand; instead she's a fully realized alien hybrid with an agenda, pursued by agents of the government (the Black Razors) and....at least in the first chapter....briefly masquerading as a stripper as a cover story. She's still Priscilla Kitaen, sure; but she's much, much more than just the human half of her nature, and she's allied with other hybrid daemonites who have a very interesting agenda, one which is complicated by being in the same universe as the Green Lantern Corps.

I won't dwell on the plot specifics, having already said too much in terms of spoilers, and this is a good book to go into reading "blind," but it's definitely got some fun plot twists as the story moves along. It reinvents the daemonites as a force of quiet alien invaders, leaving much of the daemonite intentions somewhat unclear (though secrecy to avoid being detected by the Green Lantern seems to be high on their list). The pure blood daemonites are reimagined as blue-neon tentacle monsters, and while we haven't (unfortunately) seen any sign of some of the original Wildcat daemonite foes yet, their ambiguous intentions, the ruthless nature of the government forces out to oppose them, and the legacy of the daemonites from prior Wildstorm series help to create a decent aura of building mystery and menace as the first six issues move along.

Bottom line: a good "quiet" alien invasion tale with a protagonist who is decidedly an anti-hero but more because she comes from a culture that is at best ambivalent towards humans and at worst fears them enough to exterminate them, several decent plot twists and a number of tertiary supporting characters that are interesting in their own right. Requires almost zero knowledge of the rest of the DC universe to properly follow (barring an appearance by Green Lantern and a hint of other interesting story elements in the Stormwatch series, which I may pick up next).

This series appears to take place before any creation of a Wildcats, filling out a back story for Priscilla Kitaen we haven't ever seen before, and which doesn't really contradict or destroy any of the known or key details about this character's prior iterations, and leaves future plots wide open to move toward some future meeting with Grifter and whatever New 52 iteration of the Wildcats we will (hopefully) see down the road, all while letting DC's writers incorporate whatever regular DC guest stars they feel like guest spotting.
A+