Reilly2040's Blog

Most people this week will be going bananas over New Krypton #1, but to be honest, I don’t think I can really afford to commit to a storyline that’ll be going through the Superman titles for the next year. Once the titles decouple a bit I’ll maybe pick up some of the books (I quite like the Nightwing and Flamebird mystery for example), but at the moment, its just too much of an investment to pick up a story that’s coming out 3/4 times a month for the next year. However, I have been really enjoying the Superwoman arc in Supergirl, since that’s been a nice standalone story using the New Krypton basis.

Instead, for me the big DC release this week was Strange Adventures #1.

Replaying the pages seen in the preview, Adam is on (Old) Rann scavaging supplies and technology needed for New Rann, before he and his team level all the cities on the planet to ensure that Thanagarians can get any of their technology. On Rann meanwhile, the vote to bring criminal charges against Adam for Rann’s destruction is shot down by the council, thanks in part to Prince Gavyn’s testimony that Adam had no choice, since Rann’s destruction was unavoidable anyway.

Not long after Adam returns to New Rann, a scavenger ship is tracked entering the system. Knowing that they have to convince people that Throneworld is still populated despite Lady Styx attacking them, Prince Gavyn and Adam use some of the remaining Throneworld ships to head off the scavengers, noting that they hope that once they head off a few more, world will spread that Throneworld was not in fact attacked (whereas we know that it was, and the residents are now the Rannians).

Meanwhile Comet (I still miss the Captain part) is back on hardcore station, but also runs into trouble. He’s approached by some local heavies who saw him at lunch with Tigor the previous day. Sadly it turns out that Tigor was scamming them, and led them to believe Comet was his cohort in obtaining some data for them. They manage to surprise Comet with their telepathic defenses, but fortunately his new teleporting ability allows him to retreat to the Hole once again (I wonder how long its going to take before his teleport power becomes common knowledge? He’s not been that shy in using them). With people tracking him on Hardcore, Comet once again discusses with Tyrone the possibility of heading away from Hardcore to lie low for a while.

Using the same format as Mystery in Space, we also have a backup story, that I’m assuming will dovetail with the main story as things go on. The focus here is on Deacon Dark, who is attempting to locate and learn about the Aberrant Six, as he knows they’re important to Synnar. However, the spell he casts goes wrong, and he instead sends Bizarro to another dimension, who is informed by someone who appears as Superman (I’m assuming its Synnar), that the timelines have been altered and Bizarro must replace Hawkman as the warrior in the Aberrant Six.

Its a great start to the series, and I’m glad to see the cast greatly reduced, as to be honest, Holy War really felt too busy, with its large cast. Here the Mystery in Space backup helps a lot, as it allows Starlin to develop the story as two separate (for now) plots, and keep the cast members separated. Which also means the main story is allowed to focus on Adam Strange and Comet, which I’m very happy about as they were my favourite characters from the previous minis.

It is a bit of a shame to see Comet being chased off of Hardcore so soon however. The same thing pretty much happened in Holy War, but I enjoyed Hardcore as a setting in the Mystery in Space mini, so I’d like to see it being used more. However I can also see that the situation with New Rann is possibly going to offer more story possibilities with both the rebuilding effort, and the attempt to keep the true nature of the population secret (and talking about the rebuilding, that’s a heckuva city that’s already sprung up – I was sure Throneworld had been virtually levelled).

The backup storyline follows up the Holy War threats with Deacon Dark and the Aberrant Six, but is possibly a bit less interesting than the main storyline.  However I expect this to change as the two plots crossover more (in the same way the Weird backups became more significant as he got more involved with the Church, and their prescence was more felt in the Comet main during Mystery in Space).   It is interesting to see how Hawkman has been removed from things however.  I felt Bizarro was much more interesting during Holy War, and the Hawkman special seemed to put off a lot of readers by muddying up Hawkman’s origin once again.  I’m guessing the events of that special will end up as Synnar messing with Hawkman’s head, and quietly forgotten.

So overall, a really good start.  The art’s really nice, and the reduced cast is very welcome.   Looking forward to issue 2.

It was a really quiet comics week this week, which was a bit of a relief after 2 weeks of monster pull lists consisting of Bat-titles, Dark Reign and New Krypton. Still no sign of GLC #31 in my local shop annoyingly, so I may make the trek to the other shop this afternoon and brave the shoppers.

Highlight of my very light pile this week was probably the conclusion to Rann-Thanagar Holy War. It was nice to see Adam get back into his Planet Heist outfit a couple of issues back, and the conclusion to the war surprised me, with the people of Rann faking their own deaths, and relocating to the decimated Throneworld (now called New Rann) to escape the Thanagarians. The lingering love of Lady Styx is quickly lost once they see her in person (well, over a monitor screen) and realise the monster she truely is.

The only thing that really rang false for me was that, after Adam and Prince Gavyn’s big speeches about how the people of Rann have a lot of rebuilding ahead of them, all the other characters upped and left. A bit better explanation was needed there I think (although thanks to the solicits we know that at least some of them will be meeting up again in next year’s Strange Adventures title, also by Starlin).

I’ve enjoyed this series on the whole, and over the last few years, DC have done a great job of bringing more focus to their stable of cosmic non-GL characters. If anything though, it might be nice to see a bit of GL intervention in the next series. Given their prescence in the DCU, it did seem odd the way they were completely absent from all the Synar/Lady Styx stuff. Especially the way Lady Styx’s fleet decimated Throneworld without the GL’s intervening. Although I guess that’s a concession that has to be made to allow these characters to be built up.

Perhaps including a new GL character in the next series could be an idea. You presume the sector GLs would be slightly baffled as to how Throneworld is populated despite the kicking it took.

I’m also slightly surprised that no one twigged that Comet is the original. I guess that’ll be a plot point for a future series.

Overall though, this was fun.   I’m really enjoying these various mini-series focusing on the various space characters.

Another enjoyable issue of Rann-Thanagar this month.

Lots of stuff from Captain Comet and the Weird as well, I must admit, it may just be me, but this issue felt almost like a follow up to Mystery in Space that the Space Team just happened to be in. Don’t know if that was just me or not.

However, we get a lot of our heroes taking a kicking from Deacon Dark and the newly resurrected Synnar. It doesn’t take Comet long to figure out that they don’t have a chance against the pair of them and a strategic withdrawal is required. Adam Strange however is determined to destroy the Deacon’s time manipulator first, before it can cause more havoc on Rann. Its here that the seemingly separate Bizarro storyline ties in nicely, as Adam learns of Bizarro’s prescence on Throneworld and immediately Zeta beams over there to nab him, to add a powerhouse to their team. Its a decision however that comes with a heavy price, as Starman needed Bizarro’s help with Lady Styx’s fleet, and with him gone, it provides Lady Styx’s forces enough time to decimate the Throneworld.

The destruction of Throneworld, and Adam’s part in it was a big shock. He’s forced to see that he was so blinkered about Rann’s problems that he was ignoring the rest of the picture. When his friends are taking a kicking from the Deacon’s forces he’s the one refusing Captain Comet’s call for a retreat. It’ll be interesting to see what direction they take with the character in the second half of the story.

This issue also sets up an Adam Strange special. While I’m happier picking up an Adam Strange Special than a Hawkman one (as I’m more invested in the character), I’m still not hugely pleased with this idea of launching tie-ins off of mini series. Heck, truth be told, I’m not convinced at all about DC’s tie-ins this year, but that’s probably going to be part of a post on the Legion of 3 Worlds (I cracked and bought issue 1, but I’ve not read it yet). I’m not great at budgeting, but still I would like to try and cut down the number of titles I buy.

However, to more balance my whinging about tie-ins, its worth me talking about Robin.

I wasn’t buying this title until a short time ago, where I got pulled in by the RIP logo on the top. Fabian Nicieza is a great writer. I loved his stuff on Cable/Deadpool so was interested to see what he would do with the character of Tim Drake. After 3 issues, I’m a convert.

Like Nightwing, I believe this title has struggled to find its feet over the last couple of years, and, like Nightwing, I get the impression that its in the hands of someone who really gets it. Ditching the RIP logo this month, we find Jason Todd stirring things up bigstyle in Gotham, as he unites various different gangs under his own leadership in an attempt to clean up Gotham in his own way (by running the place basically). Robin finds himself under threat from the Penguin, who isn’t pleased that his payment for helping Robin in the last story has gone missing, with evidence linking the theft back to Robin.

Meanwhile someone knew has entered the scene, wearing the Red Robin costume Jason Todd threw in a bin at the end of Countdown (and interesting to see someone picking up on a plot point from that series, rather than ignoring it, as most writers seem to be doing).

I really enjoyed this issue. Its very much a first issue for the new story arc, with various mysteries being put in place (Who is the new Red Robin? Why is Spoiler taking out a contract on Robin?), but there’s a strong feeling that Fabian knows each of these characters. His version of Jason Todd harks back to the Under the Hood storyline, which I’ve mentioned before is the characterisation they needed to get back to, so that’s a welcome development.

So there you have it, sometimes, getting suckered in by a tie-in can put you onto a title you really enjoy. So for all my whinging about tie-ins, its goes to show how little I know

Rann-Thanagar Holy War isn’t even an “event” mini-series. So how come its managed to spawn a tie-in one-shot?

Well, according to an interview with writer Jim Starlin, DC had decided that Hawkman as a character is broken and needed fixed. Now, I’m not a big Hawkman fan. He’s not a character I’m bothered about, but I’ve enjoyed his use in the Rann-Thanagar stuff as someone with ties to Thanagar who can see the bigger picture.

I know the basics of his origin as well. I know how Zero Hour had completely muddled his character and left him a confused mess until Geoff Johns sorted it all out in the JSA series, explaining that he’s the reincarnation of an Egyptian Pharaoh, with the memories of Katar Hol, a Thanagarian and the Silver Age Hawkman, due to the properties of the Nth metal used in Thanagarian technology (at least, I think that’s right). My perception of the character had been that Geoff Johns had pretty much managed to make the character usable again, so the announcement that he was again needing “fixed” struck me as odd.

Curiousity got the better of me. I’m not a big fan of tie-ins to non-event series. If I’m picking up an 8 issue mini, I expect to pick up 8 issues. But still, it was a quiet week, and I’ve enjoyed what Starlin’s been doing with Mystery in Space, and Rann-Thanagar Holy War.

Thank God I’m not a Hawkman fan. As I said above, I’m no expert, but it seems to me that this special has accomplished the exact opposite of “fixing” the character. All the Egyptian stuff was fake? The Nameless is calling him Katar Hol? Going by the reference to the multiverse, I can’t help but presume that this current Hawkman is going to be revealed as Katar Hol, with the Golden Age Carter Hall being worked back in as a separate character. However I can’t help but wonder that if they are planning on separating the two, then perhaps doing it the other way round would’ve made more sense. Leave this Carter Hall as the reincarnated Pharaoh, and bring back in Katar Hol through another route.

Needless to say, going from some of the online reaction I’ve read, Hawkman fans are up in arms. For myself, I enjoyed the story on its own merits, but even I could see that it was going to damage the character rather than help him.

The only hope I can take out of the story for Hawkman fans is that the Nameless is a guy with skulls for knee-pads. A sure-fire sign of evilness. Maybe its going to be revealed as him messing with Hawkman to try and take him out of the fight?

Well, some of the others that caught my eye anyway

First off, Rann-Thanagar Holy War #6.  Its back!!!! Going from the cover, Adam Strange has his Planet Heist kit back.  Yay

JSA #20 features the New Earth JSA and the Earth-2 JSA with Power Girl torn between the two.   I’m really looking forward to this storyline, as is probably most of DC fandom.  But I’m still really intrigued to see how this Earth-2 JSA is going to be approached.    As I’ve mentioned before, the Earth-2 JSA shouldn’t be the Golden Age JSA, so I’m wondering how they’re going to reconcile this.   Earth-2 in 52 was shown to have some kind of link to events on new Earth (both Kryptonians missing), but it also showed differences to the classic Earth-2 we see here.  Of course, there was obviously something going on with Earth-2 during Infinite Crisis (it was the only unpopulated world, E-2 Lois and E-2 Wonder Woman seemed to hint at being drawn somewhere – in the trade at least), so I wonder if this story arc will start to address that.

Booster Gold has a new writer in October in the form of Rick Remender. I’ve not read any of his other stuff (off the top of my head), but I love the sound of this arc, with Daniel unwittingly being possessed by Starro. It sounds like the kind of light-hearted adventure that suits this series down to the ground.

The Tangent Comics crossover is another mini I’m really loving (although it has been pointed out that the JLA really didn’t come out of the last issue looking that great. Powergirl versus Powergirl should be an entertaining matchup and I’m really intrigued to see where this series takes the Tangent Universe. I’ve been really enjoying the trades they’ve been releasing and re-casting Superman as the villain makes a lot of sense for the character.

Finally, the Superman titles explore the fallout of the Brainiac story, with 100,000 Kryptonians living on Earth.    Sounds like a really interesting story setup.  I guess I’ll be picking up the titles for a little while after the Brainiac arc ends.  It certainly gives them a lot of scope to really dig into where Clark sits in between both cultures.  Supergirl’s part in the story should be incredibly interesting, as I imagine she’s going to be really pleased to be around Kryptonians again (especially since this iteration of the character has really struggled to find her feet on Earth).

Yup. October’s going to be an expensive month for this DC fan.

After last month’s slightly slower issue, issue 3 kicks things into high gear, with the Holy War itself being kicked off, and the space team all coming together to investigate what’s going on (leading to classic scene where the Weird suggests they all form a permanent group like the JLA, only to be ignored).

I’m still finding Captain Comet’s character in this to be a bit of a departure from how he was portrayed in Mystery in Space. There was was fairly typically heroic, whereas now he’s almost cowardly, relying on Tyrone to set him right. Its an understandable shift though. Next to the rest of the space characters, some of them are going to start looking quite generic without changes. Aside from his telepathy, there’d be a real danger of Captain Comet and Adam Strange being inter-changable. And the character shift has resulted in some amusing scenes (Comet realising that by going to Rann he’s actually jumped right into the middle of trouble, rather than avoiding it for example).

I also found a scene at the end interesting, from the point of view of my “Why has Adam’s revamp been retconned” rant. Adam Strange’s suit clearly has the ability to manifest the same hardlight weaponary that he got in his Planet Heist revamp. Since in Countdown to Adventure it was explicitly stated that Adam’s suit was his old one, we can only assume this suit is new, but with a deliberately retro look.

It still irks though that they ditched such a good revamp.

There’s a nice little aside aside with Animal Man admitting that he’s not told his wife that Kory’s there. That gave me a laugh.

On an unrelated note, this week’s DC Nation is hilarious. Especially in light of the recent “Didio must go!” online witchhunts.

Well, I’m struggling to stay awake after a long shift at work, but I thought I’d still chuck up some comments on this week’s comics (at least the ones I’ve read tonight).

While I was saying last month that I was thinking of trade-waiting on JSA, I still ended up getting this month’s issue.  And I’m glad I did.   While the Kingdom Come stuff is stuff not working as well as I might’ve liked, the appearance of Gog, a soul surviving God of the Third World is an interesting idea.  Especially with us witnessing the birth of the Fifth World Gods over in Final Crisis.

Also I found it interesting that Gog seems to have been the mystery “burning man” from DCU #0.  Although I’m sure it was said somewhere else that that was supposed to have been Darkseid, the description also seems to fit Gog, going by what he said in this issue.

Unless its hinting to a parallel between Gog and Darkseid?   Its fairly cliche for these seemingly benign Gods to turn out to be nasty in some way.   It’ll be interesting to see how this arc plays out.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, this week brought us Secret Invasion #3.  I must admit, this event is doing a cracking job of keeping the issues flowing.  The fact that the two Avengers books are so closely tied in is really helping keep up the momentum on this one.

That being said, I don’t feel either issue 2 or 3 has had the same punch as the first issue.  I’m really enjoying the story, but the main title’s been lacking that really epic feeling an event should have.    Saying that, I am pretty tired at the moment.

I don’t really buy the idea that Iron Man’s a Skrull.  While I thought Civil War was in many ways a badly-handled event, I’ve always felt that registration made a lot of sense, and the whole thing had left the Marvel Universe a more interesting place.   While it’d be nice to chalk some of Tony’s more dubious actions up to “he was a Skrull”, I think it’d be a real cop out.  Especially since the creators have said previously there was no unseen force manipulating the Civil War.   I think Skrull Spider-Woman is just messing with Tony’s head.

Did we really just see Echo getting killed off though?  That was unexpected.

Rann-Thanagar Holy War #2 didn’t grab me as much as the first issue (again, I’m knackered, so I suspect that is colouring my enjoyment of the books a bit tonight).  This felt very much like an issue which was just slowly moving things along, and introducing a main part of the mystery (the anomalies appearing over Rann).

I was really happy to see the Weird turn up though.  Admittedly, in light to the fact this series is a direct sequel to Mystery in Space, this makes a lot of sense.  But still, when he was revealed, I was slightly kicking myself for not realising who the ghost was.

My main interest in this series is still currently the Captain Comet plot.  We’re doubtless going to see him face something that forces him to confront his demons, but I’m interested in seeing where it goes with the subplot of him pretending to be his own nephew.

I’ll also be very interested to see if this series does resolve the Rann-Thanagar War, once and for all.  Its been running since Infinite Crisis, so Final Crisis does seem the logical place for it to draw to a close.  However, I do feel its invigorated DC’s non-GL space titles, and I’d like to see more of a cold war-style conflict replace the out-and-out inter-galactic war we’ve had for the last few years.

It would be good though, to have a series really focusing on the war.  While its been used to spark a few titles, it doesn’t feel like we’ve really delved into it in any way since the original mini.  A mini-series really playing up the fact that this is a huge inter-galactic war could be interesting.  There’s still some untapped story potential here I think, but I do also think it needs to move on soon, before it becomes stale.

Quite a big comics week this week for me, and strangely the first comics week in years where the Marvel stuff has vastly outnumbered the DC stuff.

So, I’ll probably do a couple of comics posts this week, but first up is the first issue of Rann-Thanagar Holy War.

I loved the Mystery in Space and Countdown to Adventure series, so picking up this title is a bit of a no-brainer. It surprised me how much it was a direct continuation of both series. Obviously I was expecting to see the fallout from the Countdown to Adventure series factor in heavily, but I was surprised to see the return of the Church of Eternal Light, having setup shop on Thanagar with the Deacon still clearly smarting from his defeat by Captain Comet’s hands.

We also see the space team getting back together. The residents of Rann are still worshipping Lady Styx, despite being cured of the plague back in Countdown to Adventure the other month. They’re refusing to listen to reason about her true motives, so Adam Strange (still sporting his classic look – a pity as I really liked the Planet Heist update) travels back to Earth to recruit Starfire and Animal Man, while trying to hire Captain Comet to broadcast their true memories of Lady Styx to the population of Rann.

Unfortunately, since his miniseries, Captain Comet has decided to play things safe. Determined not to go through dying again (in a really nice scene he tells Tyrone that de-aging 40 years and a new set of superpowers didn’t make up for the horrific experience of his death) he’s sticking to low-risk jobs. Sadly these jobs don’t pay well and his finances are dwindling, much to Tyrone’s concern.

Its a great opening issue. I wasn’t too excited about this series, and while there are minor gripes (Rann’s population worshipping Lady Styx is a fairly negative portrayal of worship – although this could be a plot point, Adam Strange not getting back his Planet Heist gear, and Captain Comet still trying to drop the “Captain” from his name – although again this could be a plot point, we learn here he’s trying to hide the fact he’s the original Captain from people) the story has grabbed me straight away. Ron Lim’s art is great as well (I’m glad I picked up his cover, I far prefer it to the Starlin one shown on the right).

Great first issue. So far it feels like the Mystery in Space magic is back.