Review: Kill la Kill Vol. 1

The Japanese school uniform is one of the most distinct and omnipresent aspects of manga, especially among the manga that makes it into translated and re-published form here in the United States, where the uniforms are immediately noticeable for their other-ness. In the U.S., only private and parochial schools have uniforms, and these tend to simply look preppy and/or involve a lot of plaid, rather than being derived from military uniforms, as so many Japanese school uniforms are (Not to overstate things, but remember one of the first and biggest anime/manga imports from Japan was Sailor Moon, which featured a heroine whose school uniform transformed into a superhero version of itself, and whose name was partly derived from the uniforms itself).

In Kill la Kill, a popular anime series whose manga adaptation arrives in the states this month, Japanese school uniforms inform the entire premise of the series, which is, in and of itself, an interesting concept.

If, like me, you haven't seen the anime, the setting is Honnouji Academy, a prestigious school ruled by iron fist by Student COuncil President Satsuki Kiryuin. The student body is divided into a clear hierarchy, with the many students wearing special "Goku Uniforms," which give their wearers incredible strength, speed, endurance and other powers; they range from one-star goku uniforms to three-star goku uniforms.

Thematically, it's not subtle. "The uniforms that this country makes its students wear are based on military uniforms," Satsuki explains at one point, "In which case, we at Honnouji Academy wshat treat our uniforms as combat uniforms. They shall be symbols of our control over the pigs in human clothing." She and the members of her student council are in the process of conquering all of the other schools in the country. In the book's opening scene, a teacher is lecturing about the rise of Hitler when a battle between a three-star and one-star student breaks out.

It's into this environment that a ronin transfer student wanders. Her name is Ryuki Matoi, and she wields what looks like one of those ridiculously large and sometimes oddly shaped manga/anime swords, but it turns out to be something quite different and more appropriate for the story: It's one half of a pair of giant scissors. She found it sticking out of the body of her murdered father, and is now in search of whoever possesses the other half. Naturally, the giant scissors are powerful enough to cut into even a goku uniform.

It's not enough to help her win a battle against any of the Academy's fascist rulers, of course, but she gets a more powerful weapon when she stumbles upon, well, here's where it gets really weird–a sentient sailor suit uniform that both feeds off her blood and gives her the strength and fighting abilities to go toe-to-toe with anyone in a goku uniform.

Think Sailor Moon meets Venom then, and you can start to see much of why Kill la Kill is as popular as it is, even if that description doesn't really do it justice, but just touches on some surface elements. The suit, by the way, is ridiculously tiny when in battle mode, allowing Kill la Kill to have its cheesecake and eat it too, as Akizuki draws Ryuki's exposed flesh in a barely-there uniform, while every single character makes fun of how weird it is that anyone's wearing something so small.

That is, apparently, only the suit–which she calls "Senketsu" or "Fresh Blood"–while it is in battle mode. It also appears as a too-small-for-school two-piece suit that leaves at least a little to the imagination (that's it on the cover).

In addition to its exploitation and exploration of the Japanese school uniform and its mixture of over-the-top action and fan-service, Kill la Kill also literalizes the idea of social hierarchy in school, externalizing conflicts–real or imagined–between kids of different social strata into epic super-brawls. I don't know how well it works in the anime, which I've never seen, but in Akizuki's manga adaptation it works quite well indeed.

These are the posters for this years Genghis Con:

Derf

John G

Amber Esner

I will be exhibiting this year–my first show sitting behind a table!–selling these comics, if you would like to come by and criticize my poor art in person. For more information on the convention itself, you can visit its sites, like this one or this one.

A little more on the first couple of new Marvel Star Wars collections.

I reviewed the first two collections of Marvel's new ongoing Star Wars series, Star Wars and Star Wars: Darth Vader, for School Library Journal's Good Comics For Kids blog. You can read the reviews here and here, respectively.

In general, I was quite impressed with both. Dark Horse Comics had done such an incredible job with the license to the Star Wars franchise for so many years, and Marvel's licensed comics of late have been so lackluster and just kind of weird (think the Dark Tower comics, Halo, the Castle-related books, the Once Upon A Time comic, etc) that I remember actually being a little scared when it was first announced that Marvel would be reclaiming the license.

In fact, I think my first reaction was a snarky tweet along the lines of "I wonder which artist Marvel will be pairing with Brian Michael Bendis for their new STAR WARS comics." I was pleasantly surprised, then, that the comics I read–just these two, so far–were actually quite good.

While those GC4K reviews are as thorough as I'd want to get with either book, and accurate reflect my feelings about both collections, there were a few random observations I had while reading them. Which I will now share with you here. Because what am I going to do, have a thought about a comic book and not commit it to writing on the Internet...?

•I can't tell you how excited I was to to find that Jason Aaron was not starting his Star Wars ongoing with the rebels looking for a new secret base from which to hide after the Battle of Yavin IV (i.e. when they blew up The Death Star at the end of the first movie; I never understood why they don't refer to that as "The Battle of the Death Star," as everyone knows what the Death Star was, and only fans know what Yavin IV is. I imagine it's the same in the the Star Wars universe, right? Surely every sentient being would have heard of the giant, moon-sized, planet-destroying, orb-shaped laser gun, or at least be more likely to have heard of that then some random celestial body chosen by the rebels for its relative obscurity, right?).

That was at least part of the premise of the Brian Wood-written Star Wars series at Dark Horse, the one that used the same cast and time period as this book, and it feels like it was the driving plot behind the first one million issues of the original Marvel Star Wars series (I'm still on Dark Horse's Star Wars Omnibus A Long Time Ago... Vol. 4, but it seems like the original Marvel series was dedicated to the rebels trying to find a new base for a few years...right up until The Empire Strikes Back came out, and then it was all about Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewbacca trying to "find" Han, even though it always seemed pretty clear that Boba Fett was going to take him straight to Jabba The Hutt).

•Leia seemed to be the more bad-ass of the two Skywalker twins. The first issue features Han posing as an emissary for Jabba, and Luke and Leia are disguised as his bodyguards, wearing the same disguise Lando would wear in Return of The Jedi. They're attempting to infiltrate an Imperial weapons factory, and at one point they turn on the nearby Stormtroopers.

It's Leia who gets the tough-guy moment punctuating the scene, as she punches out the Imperial and says "Thanks" after he's given them the information they need. (That information was scared out of him by R2-D2, who is basically the Batman of the Star Wars gang).

•I suppose I shouldn't have been, but I was pretty surprised by the inclusion of prequel trilogy races in this series, which is set in the original trilogy. It seemed slightly wrong and off, but then, I guess I'm just not used to the later films informing the setting of the earlier films; it's basically been the reverse forever, with all the comics and books and cartoons being pumped out stuck foreshadowing the "future"e vents of the original trilogy.

There are more subtle allusions too, as when Darth Vader prepares to lop off Luke's head using two light sabers, the same way Anakin finished off Count Dooku in Revenge of The Sith, an far more obvious ones, as when Darth Vader flashes back to various scenes of his life as Anakin with Padme at the climax of Darth Vader Vol. 1, an unfortunate scene if only because it forced Salvador Larroca to try his hand at celebrity likeness.

•I really like AT-ATs/Imperial Walkers. And one figures pretty prominently in this first Star Wars collection. Han and Leia try to escape the facility in one, they try stepping on Vader with it, and Vader fights it hand-to-hand.

When I first heard they were going to do Star Wars spin-off movies featuring certain characters, my initial hope was that there would be a Star Wars: AT-AT, and it would just be 90 minutes of an AT-AT walking around and stepping on stuff.

That, or maybe The Haunted AT-AT, which sould be like DC's old The Haunted Tank concept, only with the Force ghost of a fallen Jedi general from the Clone Wars filling in for General Stuart. Or maybe The Fast and The Furious, but with AT-ATs.

AT-ATs–They're wear it's AT! (...AT!)

•I don't think there's anyway around it: Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 1–Vader is a terrible name for a trade paperback. Whenever you have a colon in the title of your comic book, you're going to get in trouble when it comes time for the collections, as if you want to include a sub-title you have to either use a double colon or a dash, as they do here; neither of which looks good. If you have a colon in your title, you're better off forgetting sub-title and just using volume numbers, as in manga collection. But If you were going to use a sub-title, why on Earth use have it be half of the same name that is your title?

Jessica Jones Vol. 1: Jones, Luke Cage Vol. 1: Cage, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen Vol. 1: Jimmy Olsen...it just doesn't work.

•I'm not a particular fan of either Cassaday or Larroca's style, although they're both good at what they do, and reading the entire run of Invincible Iron Man kind of turned me around on Larroca a bit. The latter is at his best when not drawing humans, so he's in pretty good shape here, as there are hardly any human beings at all; just a lot of droids, aliens and guys in masks that make them look like robots. Although so much of the book is devoted to not drawing humans that, when a few finally get introduced, they look super-off.

•Seeing Darth Vader on Tatooine seemed pretty wrong to me; partly because I was assured in one of the old Expanded Universe novels that Vader would never set foot there, and partly because it makes him seem a bit more like a chump that he returned to his home planet and never, like, felt Luke's or Obi-Wan's presence, never put two-and-two together at all.

•I did like his reaction to Salacious Crumb, though.

•The cover for Darth Vader #3 was pretty awful; I'm not sure why Doctor Aphra is striking a sexy, Bond girl-on-a-movie poster pose, like she's a model showing off the latest in finger-less gloves and blaster-holster belts.

It's not at all reflective of her character within the story.

•Kieron Gillen's story doesn't really deviate far at all from Dark Horse's several Darth Vader minis-series, most of which were actually pretty excellent. He's scheming against The Emperor, The Emperor is testing him and treating him like crap and the pair have two completely different agendas.

•By far the best part of Vader is the creation of two dark, evil versions of C-3PO and R2-D2. We've previously seen an astromech serving Vader in a few panels of one of the previous miniseries, and I was kind of fascinated then by the concept of an "evil" R2, who was to R2 as Vader was to Luke.

This one is BT-1, not an astromech, but a "blastomech" droid. Aphra explains that it "does enough to pass as an astro, but it's primarily a cove. It's a specialized assassin droid." He doesn't really look as cool as Vader's old black astromech, and Larroca's art and Edgar Delgado's colors make him look more gun-metal with lots of color than shiny black. The square-shaped head further distances him from R2. He certainly packs a lot of weaponry though:

I was much more impressed by 0-0-0, or Triple-0, the evil version of 3-PO. "I'm a protocol droid, specialized in etiquette, customs, translation and torture, ma'am," he says, introducing himself to Aphra.

He looks identical to 3PO, save instead of gold he's a shiny dark gray, and his eyes glow red. He walks and talks just like 3P0 too, which makes his dialogue about torture and killing seem all the funnier, as I hear it in Anthony Daniels' voice.

•As much as I liked Vader's new running crew, I didn't care for the ending of the series, and the direction it's taking. I'm not sure if I'd buy the second volume...but then, I'm not sure what's happening with future issues of Marvel's Star Wars comics anyway, as they seem set to do a crossover already, and who knows how that will end up being collected. Hopefully a lot better than Black Vortex was...

Comic Shop Comics: November 11

Airboy #4 (Image Comics) Not to pile on James Robinson, whose Airboy comics avatar is shown above discussing his regrets about his recent career with Black Angel in the fourth and final issue of Robinson and Greg Hinkle's extremely weird, extremely interesting Airboy revival, but I have actually never even heard of Comic Book Villains, nor did I know that he was involved with LXG. I might have know that at one point, but if so I forgot about it, as I've tried to forget everything about that film. I'm kind of glad to hear he still feels terrible about it! If he had anything at all to do with it, then he should! (Seriously; I hope the caterers feel bad about working on that film, and pray to God for forgiveness for even their own small part in it on their deathbeds).

So, I think it's safe to say that this comic is not what anyone would ever have expected from a James Robinson-written Airboy comic, and that is in large part one of its greatest strengths. As is the fact that it stars Robinson and Hinkle moreso than the title character, who is more of a supporting cast member anyway; maybe it's just me and where I'm at in life and comics right now, but I tend to find the lives of real comic book creators more interesting than the adventures of many fictional comic book characters.

While clearly nothing approaching a biography, it's still fun to hear Robinson wallow in the way reader perception of his work has changed over the years. It's impossible to sort out what, exactly, Robinson teh character says that is completely, honestly how he feels, and what he says because it's a joke of sorts (it's not hard to read the above page as a long wind-up for the last panel gag, for example), but, yeah, I can certainly understand how a guy who the industry used to give metaphorical ticker tape parades for over his Starman might feel like he made a wrong turn somewhere. (Personally, I think if you write more than one comic as terrible as Cry For Justice, and that's to be expected; Robinson may have gotten some terrible assignments and worked with editors that weren't on the same page with him at DC for a while there, but, at the same time, he did take all that work, you know?)

I liked the conclusion of their affairs in the world of Airboy–I just realized those remote-controlled bird planes from Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow here an homage to/lift from Airboy–it was great to see what Hinkle and Robinson might have done with a "straight" version of Airboy. That is, if they ignored all the meta-stuff and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas-inspired stuff and just did an Airboy adventure comic in which they didn't appear at all beyond the credits.

Clearly, this comic isn't for everyone, as the controversy around one of its issues proved. It is well-made, though, and it's been a fascinating read and, despite some concerns about it, I think it's by far the best thing Robinson has written in a good long time.

Also, it has a pretty inspirational message:

Yes, let's all try to be the best James Robinsons we can be. Wait, that's not right...

Batman & Robin Eternal #6 (DC Comics) I'm not precisely sure how DC plans to collect this weekly series–if they do so in bigger-than-usual chunks as they did with Batman Eternal, then the first trade paperback should include more than jus these first six issues–but this one makes a pretty good stopping point, finally bringing some of the themes to the fore in a way that makes both the history of Batman and Robin (mangled and malformed as it is in the New 52), with the specifics of the case that Batman and Dick Grayson worked on several years ago, and the one that Grayson and the rest of the Bat-Family are currently working in the present.

While the title still suffers from a lot of problems, the point of it is really starting to take shape, and it is potentially a pretty interesting one, and one that could grow and solidify the Bat-Family of characters in new and interesting ways.

The art is less of a mess this issue than last, with a single pencil artist working faster and rougher than usual, and a total of three inkers–including the pencil artist himself–helping to get the book done on what appears to have been a particularly unforgiving deadline. That single pencil artist is Tony Daniel, and, as with his previous issue in the series, the big action scene he draws doesn't really make much sense, nor does it quite match up with what the script seems to suggest.

The bulk of this issue, a full 15 pages of it, is set in the past, as Batman and Robin I continue to track down The Scarecrow and his mysterious associates. Batman actually takes over narrating duty for a while, and serving as the POV character, which I'm not sure quite works in the set-up of the comic, but whatever. At a fund-raiser he stumbles across a guy who seems to be selling him on a sort of Stepford Wife program, the buying of a "designer human" that was formed by Mother in the crucible of an origin awfully similar to Batman and Robin's own origins.

In the present, which bookends the 15-page past sequence, apparent identical twins Dick Grayson and Jason Todd investigate St. Elijah's, and Dick seems to indicate that the girl we saw in issue five was indeed Cassandra Cain...although it's still not clear if she simply hasn't aged at all between "ten, twelve years" old and 15-17 years-old that she currently is, or if the art was just so poor that no one remembered to draw a person at those very different ages any differently, as they did remember to do with Dick, who has got taller and bulkier in the five or so years since he was Robin.

The Bat-Family basically splits up, with Jason sayind he would join Red Robin Tim Drake tracking down one lead, while Dick takes two of the three girls–Harper Row and Cassandra Cain–with him to follow another lead. I'm not sure where Stephanie Brown disappeared to, but I thought it weird when Dick mentions setting up a new apartment for Harper and Cassandra to live in, since The Orphan obviously knows about Harper's old place. What about Stephanie and Harper's brother, Cullen? Surely they aren't being left alone in the old apartment, are they...?

DC Comics Bombshells #4 (DC) The fourth, three-chapter issue of Bombshells is a bit of a letdown, with Marguerite Sauvage MIA and the three artists varying rather wildly in style. I found something about the visual end of each chapter on the confusing side, most particularly in the middle, Harley Quinn-introducing section.

Here's the breakdown: Supergirl and Stargirl by Bilquis Evely, Harley Quinn by Mirka Andolfo and Wonder Woman by Laura Braga.

That first chapter features Supergirl and Stargirl as The Night Witches, wearing tiny little flesh-exposing red costumes as they lead the more traditional plane-flying Night Witches into combat. Set-up as a propaganda film, or at least jumping back and fourth between a propaganda film and what they were really doing, it's a pretty awkward juxtaposition that gets a little more labored the longer it goes on.

Their refusal to kill during the war would be admirable, and well in keeping with the characters, if these were the "real" version s of the characters, but seems out of character for soldiers on the frontlines, defending The Soviet Union from Nazi invaders (Remember, before Kara's powers and Stargirl's staff were discovered, the pair were in training to be combat pilots).

After learning that the leaders of Stalinist Russia were maybe not the most noble of people, and refuse to massacre a bunch of their fellow citizens who happen to be dissidents, they decide to quit the Red Army...likely to get new, blue costumes in future issues and join the rest of the Bombshells.

The middle story, featuring Harley Quinn, is a little weird. Andolfo's art is gorgeous, and he draws particularly cute and cartoony characters, but they don't seem to fit in the same world as those of Evely and Braga, and there' sjust enough fantasy in the story that it can be a little unclear just what exactly is going on.

While Harley is a "lady doctor" (meaning a doctor who is also a lady, and not a gynecologist) helping wounded soldiers in London, she still works at (an) Arkham (here London's "Arkham Ward, Sanitarium for the Criminally Insane), she still has made gymnastic skills and apersonality that is a mixture of crazy, mean-spirited and sexy, and has a thing for face-paint and a mysterious crazy man in her past (The scene where she puts on her make-up is pretty hard to read...I don't know if she puts it on, or takes off her flesh-colored make-up to reveal a real fact that has clown makeup on it permanent-like, or what.

After she transforms from Dr. Harleen Quinzel to Harley Quinn, she puts on her Bombshells statue outfit, albeit the Christmas variant statue version of it, rather than the one seen on this particular cover.

I was pretty damn surprised to see Bennett taking Dr. Shondra Kinsolving and Benedict Asp out of mothballs for usage here–those are two fairly minor characters, that belong in a portion of 1990s Batman continuity that's been rebooted away and was mostly ignored for a long time anyway.

Any weaknesses about this portion are forgiven by the fact that Bennett and Andolfo use it to introduce us to a pilot named Hal. Hal then gets hit in the head, and knocked unconscious.

"You should feel lucy, Dearie!" Harley calls to him "Most girls never concuss on the first date."

I guess even in this alternate reality, the argument can be made that Hal Jordan suffers from brain damage due to repeated blows to the head.

The final, strongest section is the Braga-drawn Wonder Woman section, wherein she shows off her new Bombshells costume, "in the fashion of the goddesses of your people."

Neat. I really am enjoying the Wonder Woman story thread; so far, Bombshells has proven to be the best long-form (i.e., not just a 10- or 20-page story in Sensation) Wonder Woman this year. She and Steve continue to talk about his PTSD, unknown and undiagnosed in 1940, and then things here get a little weird. The soldiers' uniforms all look...wrong for the time period, and, when Wonder Woman refuses to allow the American soldiers to kill German soldiers who have already surrendered and art at their mercy, General Lane says that the price a soldier must pay for "insurrection and desertion of duty in the field" is "execution," but given what they just saw her do in previous issues, I don't understand why Lane would order his men to circle and march on her, or what Bennett presents this as cliffhanger, since we all already know she pick up the nearest tank and swing at them like a several-ton blackjack.

SpongeBob Comics #50 (United Plankton Pictures) Hey, 50 is a lot of issues. I wonder how many comics series I've actually read for 50 straight issues without interruption? Ultimate Spider-Man, JLA, JSA, Birds of Prey, Green Lantern...not very many, I'll tell you that.

In this issue, with its highly disturbing character mash-up cover, the lead story is by the book's most-faithful-to-the-cartoon's-design team of Derek Drymon and Gregg Schiegiel, who present a 10-page tale of the horrifying power of extreme best friendship and too-hard hugs. I would say it was a SpongeBob riff on body horror but, well, this being a comic book featuring cartoon characters, that term doesn't work quite the same way it does when discussing live-action film, you know? (I did find myself wondering what the composite characters sounded like, though; this was maybe the first time in 50 issues of the book where I would have almost preferred to see in animated form.

Sam Henderson, Michael Gilbert, Bob Flynn and James Kochalka round out the contributing creators, and there's a a five-page pin-up gallery, as befits the 50th issue of an ongoing series (a greater rarity today than it used to be, given not only the harshness of the modern comics market, but the fact that publishers rarely allow book to ship 50 issues without relaunching it with a new #1). I really like Jacob Chabot's, in which we see Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy re-enacting many famous comic book covers...as well as other, odder iconic images, like a Norman Rockwell painting or that Cheryl Tiegs poster from the 1970s.

David Petersen's pin-up, showing highly realistic-ish versions of the characters, is pretty damn horrifying, maybe even in the same class as Kelley Jone's terrifying Halloween cover was. Jim Woodring's pin-up is kind of on the scary side too, come to think of it...

Review: Justice League #44 ("The Darkseid War" Pt. 4)

Note the people being cut in half, which is usually a pretty  good clue as to who wrote this particular DC superhero comic book.

Previously, in "The Darkseid War"...

•Justice League #41 ("The Darkseid War" Pt.1)

•Justice League #42 ("The Darkseid War" Pt. 2)

•Justice League #43 ("The Darkseid War" Pt. 3)

THE COVER

Bad news? This is by far Fabok's worst cover for the story arc to date. Good news? This is also his last issue as cover artist and interior artist...at least for the solicitable future. A crowded image dedicated to showing Darkseid and The Anti-Monitor–the two sides of the titular war–in combat and squeezing in (almost) every other player, it doesn't have the same sense of design as the previous issue's cover.

So, what do we have? Well, Darkseid slugging it out with The Anti-Monitor just in front of the book's logo, while an explosion of lifhgt and clouds of dust and a busted-up, off-scale tank help hid their feet. In the next tier, we see the bust of Kanto, a full-body shot of Grail, and the bust of Myrina Black in profile. She's facing the giant head of Wonder Woman, which looks off into the distance.

Along the bottom, we have Superman–sporting a new, photo negative-inspired look after having re-charged his cells with the solar energy of Apokolips' fire pits–punching Lex Luthor, New 52 Mister Miracle on his flying discs and, behind his cape, Cyborg, Captain Marvel Shazam and The Flash, standing there looking tough.

PAGE 1

The beginning of this issue is in very sharp contrast to the previous ones in this story arc, which all featured a stack of "widescreen" horizontal panels gradually zooming in on something. Here, we have a nine-panel grid, the imagery showing a weird, somewhat arty parallel between The Joker, of all characters, and Batman, while Wonder Woman, the arc's on-again, off-again narrator, talks about Gelos, the Greek god of laughter.

The first panel begins with a picture of an angrily smiling Joker, and the "camera" gradually zooms in on his green eye, and then the black of its pupil. THen we get a close up of Batman's now glowing white eye, and slowly zoom out of that to reveal the grim, unshaven Batman, in his current, New New God look.

Wonder Woman's narration talks about the fact that Gelos was the god her mother hated "above all others," not because she hated laughter, but because he would follow her "like a shadow across teh battlefields...laughing at those in pain."

The parallel couldn't be more obvious, of course, although it's a little odd that The Joker is given such a prime place in this particular story arc, as he has had little to nothing to do with the Justice League or in Justice League so far (although he did co-opt them as part of his ultimate attack against Batman and Gotham City in "Endgame," which takes place after the events of "Darkseid War.")

You'll recall that the second question Batman asked the Mobius chair upon gaining access to it and all of the information it stored was the true identity of The Joker. Seeing him reappear at this point, and being equated with an evil god just as Batman has ascended to a form of limited godhood himself suggests that Geoff Johns does indeed intend to follow up on that tidbit from earlier in the arc.

PAGES 2-3

Batman and Green Lantern Hal Jordan begin their investigation into The Anti-Monitor's past, with Batman's new chair Boom Tube-ing them first to "The Crime Syndicate's Earth." That would be Earth-3, which we learned during the course of Justice League writer Geoff Johns' Forever Evil was pretty thoroughly destroyed by The Anti-Monitor.

When Hal wonders aloud if they should really be spending their timelooking for clues to the Anti-Monitor's origins instead of fighting him with the others, Batman tells him off, saying that he and Metron's Mobius chair both know that "You're not the hero, Jordan. The ring is the hero."

Hal is uncharacteristically mature in the face of the insult, not even attempting to slug Batmetron.

PAGES 4-5

A double-page splash, as Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor both punch eachother simultaneously, like this was a Dragonball Z fight. The force of their punches send their Shadow Demons and Parademons falling out of the sky, while Steve Trevor, Mister Miracle and the various Justice Leaguers all reel backwards. Only Diana seems more-or-less unaffected, as she narrates about the nature of war, and being a warrior for peace.

"My name is Diana," she reminds us. "Daughter of the Amazons. And I will die before I let them"–meaning Darkseid and The Anti-Monitor–"destroy our world."

PAGES 6-7

In the first panel, Cyborg tells Wonder Woman that the two titans either didn't even notice the Justice League was there, or didn't even care. What's the plan? It was unclear what Diana was hoping to do here last issue, as she lead the League in a vague charge in the direction of the two bad guys. She narrated about Odysseus having to choose between Scylla and Charybdis and how, ultimately, it didn't matter which he chose, as people would die either way.

Grail and Kalibak know what side they're each on. Grail somehow chops a couple of Parademons in half with her tiny, weird shaped axe and jumps at the much larger Kalibak. He catches her, throws her down, and talks trash.

She shoots eye-beams that apparently blind him, and his "AARGHHHHH!!! causes Darkseid to look away from The Anti-Monitor, who then sucker-blasts him.

Diana is the first Leaguer to enter the fray. She chooses as her opponent...Grail...?

Wonder Woman's plan to stop The Anti-Monitor and Darkseid from destroying the Earth by fighting on it is to break up the fight between their two top lieutenants.

Huh.

Man, the League needs Batman back, pronto!

PAGES 8-9

On Apokolips, the newly transformed Superman destroys the flock of Parademons that was pursuing he and Luthor, and demonstrates that he's got a new personality to go along with his new look and new dialogue balloon design. He's kind of an a-hole.

PAGES 10-11

Back on Earth: Fighting! Wonder Woman fights Grail! Mister Miracle fights Steppenwolf! And, when the guy with the wisdom of Solomon asks Steve Trevor (the least wise character in the DC Universe) what they should do and Trevor responds "Try to push them apart?" (Batman! Hurry back!)

Shazam, who, in addition to that wisdom of Solomon also possesses the strength of Hercules, the power of Zeus and the stamina of Atlas responds, "Who's going to volunteer to get between them?"

I always thought that the courage of Achilles was supposed to be a good thing? Was Achilles a coward or something?

Anyway, the League's most powerful member doesn't want to get between the bad guys, and their second most powerful member on the scene is busy fighting a mini-boss, so Power Ring volunteers.

Power Ring is, of course, the Earth-0 legacy version of the Earth-3 villain of the same name; she inherited his ring after the events of Forever Evil, and has been working with the League since. She basically has all of Green Lantern's powers, only her ring is an evil asshole that's always giving her shit.

She pushes it to the limit, and out shoots a big, scary ring construct, a knot of thorns, tentacles and dragon-heads, which pushes The Anti-Monitor and Darkseid apart.

The big D has had enough of this comic book, and wants to bring the conflict to the end. So he says "ENOUGH" and gives a black power salute.

Myrina and Grail both smile. "Yes, my old lover," the former says, "call him."

"Darkseid is summoning him," the latter says.

Who are they talking about?

Why, it's...

PAGES 12

The Black Racer!

That is The Black Racer, right? I mean, it says his name in a big black box right next to him.

Well, he looks...different. In fact, while all of Jack Kirby's designs for the New Gods characters have been rather radically screwed around with in the course of this story, The Black Racer may be the most radical redesign.

You may recall the original:

Death, in the world of Kirby's New Gods, was a black guy on a pair of flying skies and a suit of primary colored armor. The design has been tinkered with over the years, depending on the artist, of course, but rather than just making The Black Racer wear, say, black, now he looks like a weird droid version of Kirby's Destoryer design from Thor, with scythes instead of ski poles.

He/It proceeds to horribly wound The Anti-Monitor, slicing open his side and spilling his...pink...energy...stuff...?

PAGES 13-15

The narrative is now speeding up, and jumping back and forth between Qward, where Green Lantern and Batmetron are tracing The Anti-Monitor's origin, and the battle between The Anti-Monitor, the Apokolpytians and the Justice Leaguers.

Batmetron and his chair realize that The Anti-Monitor was once known as Mobius, and it was he that built the chair, and it was here on Qward in search of something forbidden, which cursed him.

On Earth, Darkseid has The Anti-Monitor/Mobius on the ropes. He rips off The Anti-Monitor's mask, Omega Beams him in the chest and then directs The Black Racer at him for the coup de grace.

On Qward, Batmetron is foreshadowing the hell out of what was at the center of the creation of the anti-matter universe, the opposite of free will, which was at the center of the creation of the, um, regular (?) universe.

The Anti-Monitor puts a whammy on The Flash, merging him with Death in order that he may bend it to his will.

And thus:

PAGE 16

Oh snap, The Flash is now The Black Racer!

He doesn't get skis or ski poles, but he does get a big, red scythe with a lightning bolt-shaped blade.

I think this would have been an infinitely more awesome moment if we hadn't already been introduced to a grim reaper version of The Flash back during Grant Morrison and Mark Millar's 1997-1998 run on The Flash, a character that Johns himself used during his 2009 The Flash: Rebirth miniseries.

This Black Racer/Flash mash-up bears more than a passing resemblance to The Black Flash, particularly in his color scheme.

PAGE 17

Five more panels of foreshadowing what happened to turn Mobius into The Anti-Monitor when he was in the anti-matter universe.

PAGES 18-19

Did you guess what it is yet? The two panels that fill these two pages, an awkward horizontal, splash-ish lay-out, will spoil it for you.

"THE ANTI-LIFE EQUATION IS IN MY VEINS!" The Anti-Monitor screams, while he blasts The Black Racer, Darkseid's greatest weapon, at and through the god of evil.

The Anti-Life Equation is, of course, the thing that Darkseid traditionally quested after. His interest in Earth was originally because he believed The Anti-Life Equation, which would give him complete control over sentient minds, could be found on Earth, locked away within the human subconscious.

Grant Morrison has had Darkseid find it repeatedly, in both his JLA arc "Rock of Ages," where in a far-flung future Darkseid has found it and used it to just about conquer everything, and in Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle and, most recently, in Final Crisis where Darkseid has conquered and enslaved Earth via the equation.

Morrison even once did the math. In Mister Miracle, the exact Equation was said to be this:

loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding × guilt × shame × failure × judgment n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self=dark side

Evan Dorkin, in his World's Funnest, offered his own solution to what the Anti-Life Equation might be, during a scene in which the warring imps destroy The Fourth World:

Well, the math in that version at least looks a lot easier.

Here, Johns suggests that it is the source of the creation of the Anti-Matter Universe, the opposite of the free will that was the source of the creation of the DC Universe, the "white light from where everything came...splintered into existence...gods and men."

The Equation, Johns has Batmetron explain, was discovered and unleashed by Mobius, transforming him into The Anti-Monitor promise. As to his precise beef with Darkseid, I suppose they'll get to that eventually, but he rants a bit about how Darkseid must be destroyed before Mobius can be renewed.

Is throwing The Flash-fused-with the personification of death through Darkseid enough to do the job?

Looks like.

PAGES 20-21

Another horizontal lay-out stretching across the two pages. There are nine slim, vertical panels, each stretching from the top of the page to the bottom: Darkseid screaming and venting pink energy and Kirby dots, Shazam screaming and venting lightning, Shazam saying "I can hear them fighting. They all want out...", Superman punching a prone Luthor in the jaw, Darkseid exploding in a flash of bright white light, Myrina Black saying something isnt' right, Kalibak shouting, WOnder WOman waxing poetic while shielding herself from the explosion and, finally, Wonder Woman looking shocked.

PAGE 22

Huh.

Well, he looks pretty dead to me. The title of the story appears on this last page, as it must, or else it would have spoiled the big event of the issue: "The Death of Darkseid."

So what, exactly, happens when Darkseid dies? Well, for starters, Justice League will get a new and better artist, and the various Leaguers will get a bunch of character-specific one-shots, as others join Batman and Superman in New New Godhood.

Comic Shop Comics: November 4

Batman & Robin Eternal #5 (DC Comics) The credits on the above page of this issue of DC's weekly series should give you a pretty good indication of how bad the artwork is in this particular issue. That is a lot of cooks in one particular 20-page kitchen. I've been reading Steve Pugh-drawn comics since at least the late 1990s, and I didn't recognize a single panel of this book as his work. In fact, even going by the page numbers in the credits and checking the pages against the artist's credits, I question if they're accurate; the most Pugh-like lines I see, a nose here or there, occur on pages credited to someone else. The pages that are credited to him are good ones–Tim Drake looks like an actual teenager instead of a 45-year-old man, for example–but still don't look particularly Pugh-like.

Does it matter?

I think so, yes. I always say, here and when talking to people in person, that I'm a lot more forgiving of poor art when it's produced on a punishing, weekly schedule (although, given the fact that this is like, DC's tenth weekly comic this decade, you would think they would have gotten to the point where they work far enough ahead that they can use fewer artists, maybe even–gasp!–a single one). But as this particular storyline is occurring at two different points in time, and a significant portion of their cast are nearly identical characters, yeah, art is important. Especially when it comes to the more mysterious aspects that writers James Tynion, Scott Snyder, Steve Orlando and others are teasing out.

Here's a good example. This issue opens during the "Several Years Ago" timeline, when twentysomething Dick Grayson was still Robin (despite wearing a costume that looks to be part Robin III and part Robin IV...what's up with the weird treading around his armpits?). He and Batmnan encounter a girl that is dressed exactly like Cassandra Cain is during the "present" setting of the book. Given that she's always drawn by different artists, it's impossible to say if she looks exactly like her or not, but she has the same short black haircut, at least.

Is that the same Cassandra? If so, why hasn't she aged, like Dick has? Is it because she doesn't age–a character tells her that she's not even a real person at one point in the conversation, for example–because of some element of her mysterious origins and/or the mystery of the "designer people" the series' plot is concerned with? Is that not Cassandra, but someone who dresses and looks a lot like her?

The fact that the art is so wildly inconsistent from page to page and panel to panel makes it impossible to sift out what is a visual storytelling cue (which is kind of integral in the medium of comics) from poor art.

So yeah, it's a problem. If DC and these writers want to tell a more sophisticated story, they might want to make sure the artwork is of at least base level sophistication, or stick to more straightforward "Character A Punches Character B" plotting.

In this issue, we get another scene from Batman and Robin's investigation of a "Several Years Ago" Scarecrow, a case growing to include The Orphan, "Mother" and Cassandra-or-whoever-is-dressed-like-Cassandra. In the present, Dick Grayson goes to visit Tim's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Drake, who in the New 52 are both apparently still alive. And pretending that Tim is dead...? And living in a super-house, all high-tech booby traps, that Tim apparently built for them, because he's a millionaire super-engineer...?

I have no idea if this is all new information thrown at readers in this issue, or if this is all part of Tim's heavily re-written origin that accompanied the 2011 New 52 reboot. If it is information that readers have had access to before, I guess it would have occurred in the unreadable* Teen Titans, as that has been where Tim has most often appeared since the reboot (I've only read a few pages worth of his origin story in...dammit, I don't even remember where, now. One of the #0 issues of one of the Batman comics, I think).

Meanwhile, Cassandra Cain walks around, with Bluebird following her. They find a secret passage, and fight The Orphan again.

Batman & Robin Eternal #5: A bunch or poorly-drawn plot that is either nonsensical revisions of stuff you thought you knew, or nonsense from other, worse comics you may or may not have read.

Neon Joe: Werewolf Hunter #1 (DC) "What's this?" I asked, flipping through the top copy of a little stack of comics set aside in a special place right next to the cash register. The art looked familiar. "Is this by Ostrander–Wait, not Ostrander, what's-his-name..."

"Too late! It's in your hand! You have to take it now!" he said, in a We've-got-a-bunch-of-these-things-to-get-rid-of tone of voice (The same one he used when forcing a copy of DC's special Batman Day giveaway comic upon me a few weeks ago, even though I already had one (Their shop's shipment apparently unfortunate arrived after Batman Day).

As the comic, which is apparently a tie-in to a Cartoon Network shoe, is drawn by Ohio-born, husband-and-wife team of Tom Mandrake (who has often worked with John Ostrander, which is why I thought "Ostrander" upon seeing his art) and Jan Duursema, I decided to take it home with me, rather than throwing it down and running out of the shop.

I like Mandrake and Duursema's work a lot, the latter's more than the former's, although the former has drawn a few of my favorite DC Comics over the years, like The Spectre and Martian Manhunter (the good volume of that series). Additionally, I have a lot of affection for the pair, as they drew Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Mandrake drew a pair of fill-in issues for Duursema, the title's regular artist), one of my first comics.

This...isn't really the best use of either artist's time or talents. Page one of the Jon Glaser-written issue has a character at a police station taking a hair from a plastic bag marked "Werewolf Pubes" and putting it under a microscope, where we see the hair itself has a heavily-fanged mouth.

I actually can't tell who did what in the 16-page comic. If you told me it was all Mandrake, I'd believe you, probably because he finished all of the art, which has his much more distinctive, blacks and cross-hatching. A lot of the characters look a lot like Duursema's though, too, particularly in their eyes and their posing. I don't know. Maybe Duursema did the pencils, or rough pencils, and Mandrake the inks or finishes and inks. Maybe they sat around the drawing board together, each simultaneously working on different parts of the same page. Whatever; it still came out better than the first five issues of Batman & Robin Eternal.

This is the story of who Neon Joe: Werewolf Hunter is, and how he came to be. I read it very, very late Wednesday night, and forgot everything I had read. I just now re-read it, between paragraphs (it's a short read). Neon Joe is apparently a white trash steroetype (I'm a caucasian who makes less than $30,000 a year; can I use that term "white trash," or is still offensive...?). He had a number of ridiculously dumb tattoos, talks in a dumb voice, which Glaser writes phonetically/Claremont-ically ("Oh, I'm gonna git dat wolf") and says "He-Yump" a lot. I think that's supposed to be his catchprahse. He says it in a dialogue balloon with a neon green circle around it during the book's one splash page, in which he poses with his bayonet-bearing handguns.

Neon Joe was raised by werewolves, but his father ran off with the nanny, and his mother killed herself. So then he was raised by actual wolves, "although, truth be told, they was a little slow...so it was more like me taking care of them."

And when he grew up, he wore neon–the opposite of camouflage, so they could see him coming–and dedicated his life to werewolf hunting, "in the hopes that one of these times, it would be my daddy, so I could avenge my momma."

And that's that. It's well worth what I paid for, I guess, although, truth be told, I had more fun studying the line-work and trying to figure out which line was drawn by which artist than I did in reading the book.

The show will apparently look more like this than what's on the cover:

That doesn't look much like a cartoon to me, but I don't know, I stopped watching Cartoon Network some time ago. Maybe they've moved pretty far away from t heir name, like The Learning Channel, American Movie Classics and Animal Planet have...

Paper Girls #2 (Image Comics) With it's second issue, Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's Paper Girls has added a few new elements to get to the point of "Actually, I have no idea what's really going on just yet." While the first issue ended with a climactic reveal of an artifact from the future (well, the protagonists' future, as the book is set in a fictional Cleveland suburb circa 1988), plenty of weird stuff happens in this issue, as well, including weird atmospheric phenomenon, the disappearance of many people and the appearance of a flock of some of my favorite prehistoric creatures in a fantastic two-page splash that reveals the time anomalies go both ways (as well as revealing how splash images are supposed to work, rather than just filling-space the way they usually do.

One of the girls also uses the word "Shillelagh," so this would have been my favorite comic book of the week. Had Sholly Fisch and Dario Brizuela not killed it on Scooby-Doo Team-Up.

Scooby-Doo Team-Up #13 (DC) So if you're doing a comic book called Scooby-Doo Team-Up for DC Comics, the entire premise of which is to team Scooby-Doo and the gang up with various characters, than teaming the ghost-breaking heroes with a trio of DC's greatest ghost heroes–The Spectre, Deadman and The Phantom Stranger, all pictured on the cover–sounds like a pretty great idea.

The Stranger and Deadman come to visit Scooby and the gang at their (?) house on Halloween night (Yeah, this shipped a week late, I guess), asking for their help in rescuing The Spectre and several other good ghosts from a mysterious perpetrator who has captured and imprisoned them.

At this point, you may be thinking, what could be better than that team-up? Having Scooby become the new host of The Spectre Force...?

Yeah, that would be pretty cool.

But even better? How about involving, oh, I don't know, every single DC ghost hero and villain that Sholly Fisch and Dario Brizuela could think of and/or get away with?

Because they did that too.

"What about the Haunted Tank?" you ask? Don't worry. While I would prefer an entire issue devoted to a Haunted Tank/Scooby-Doo team-up, reast assured that the ghost of General J.E.B. Stuart is indeed in here.

So yeah, this is pretty much the best comic ever, complete with the villain muttering "And I would've gotten away with it, if not for that meddling Kid Eternity!"

Of note is the fact that Gardner Fox and Howard Purcell's 1942 creation The Gay Ghost appears, although bearing the new name "The Grim Ghost," which appropriates the name of another comic book ghost-themed hero, this one from the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard line. As far as I can tell through entire minutes of exhaustive online research, the name change did not occur here, but in 1985's Who's Who #9, which changed The Gay Ghost's name to The Grim Ghost. This issue is, as far as I can tell, the first instance of The Gay Ghost being referred to as The Grim Ghost in a comics story.

I pondered the name change for a while. The connotation, and more popular definition of the word "Gay" has certainly changed quite a deal since 1942, to the extent that when people first hear it now, they think "homosexual" rather than "happy." Is that a reason to change the character's name, though? Maybe. I kind of like the idea of a straight ghost–as much as I like typing that phrase–who is constantly being thought of as being sexually attracted to other male ghosts and, being a product of his own, long ago time, constantly being afraid of the label and arguing against it. (Grant Morrison alluded to that during his Animal Man run, when The Gay Ghost elected to stay in Limbo, due in part to the changing meaning of his name).

I was kind of uncomfortable for it being changed specifically for a kids comic, as whether a character is gay or straight, or whether the word "gay" gets used or not shouldn't be a more sensitive topic for readers of Scooby-Doo comics than of other comics, so I was kind of relieved to learn that it wasn't a creative choice made specifically for this comic (The fact that the ghost-formerly-known-as-The-Gay-Ghost happily declares "They brought ladies" upon seeing Daphne and Velma seems a bit like over correction, though).

I don't know; gay-ness and Scooby-Doo are a weird topic to get too deep into though, I imagine. Certainly Velma was one of the first characters I encountered in my own consumption of pop culture that was defied pop-culture definitions of what it meant to be a boy and what it meant to be a girl, and, when I eventually learned what a lesbian was in grade-school, she was among my first suspects of a cartoon character who might be one (followed closely by Peppermint Patty and Marcie, although the former is really more of a tomboy). In recent years, Warner Brothers has apparently quite consciously made Velma a more traditionally "sexy" character, her figure and mode of dress gravitating closer to that of Daphne, as well as making her a character with a more noticeable sexual attraction to boys. Whether that came about because of the decision to cast Linda Cardellini as Velma in the first two live-action iterations of Scooby-Doo**, or because of some agenda, conscious or unconscious, to make her more of a sex object akin to Daphne and more of a definitely-not-gay character, I couldn't imagine. The evolution of Velma over the past decade or so has been interesting to watch, though.

Speaking of the cartoons, this if the final ad in this issue:

There's a new Scooby-Doo series?! I guess that means the excellent Mystery Inc series has ended, huh? I was trying to watch it on DVD for a while, but got a little lost (they released it weirdly), but really enjoyed what I had seen of it. That was probably the all-around best Scooby-Doo series ever, so hopefully the new one will at least be in the same ballpark.

The style certainly looks...different.

Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #16 (DC) This issue's cover by Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy seems to come from the very same battle that the heavily-criticized one that Ivan Reis drew for issue #3 came from, huh? There's Wonder Woman, splattered with the black blood of her foes, holding her bloody sword and shield (no sign of that magic lasso of hers, one of the most famous–but apparently not deadly or cool enough to use–weapons in comics) while she poses among a bunch of random orc characters in a generic Ancient Greek ruin backdrop.

It, naturally, has nothing to do with either story inside, both of which are, in costume and back-story, definitely pre-New 52 stories.

The first and longer, 20-page story is written by Caitlin Kittredge and drawn by Scogtt Hampton, whose style is a little...weird. Most recently seen drawing the canceled-upon-conception G.I. Zombie series, Hampton's artwork is an uncomfortable mash-up of appropriated photo-reference (i.e. all of the backgrounds and props) with traditional drawing...or not so traditional, as it looks more air-brushed or painted than drawn with pen-and-ink.

It's okay artwork, sure, and it tells the story just fine, but it's not, stylistically, my own personal cup of tea.

Entitled "Echidna" and set in Gotham City, the guest-star filled story finds Princess Diana helping the mythological title character trying to track down a trio of her children, who are here just strange-looking but otherwise innocent, non-monstrous kids. She puts on one of her post-Crisis, pre-New 52 costumes (John Byrne design, I think) and starts kicking down doors to find the missing kids.

Along the way, she encounters a Batgirl–

–who dresses more-or-less like the original, although her hair is hidden. Actually, the costume most resembles one very breifly worn by Batgirl III Stephanie Brown, before she adopted her final, purple-themed one. Maybe it is Stephanie? There are no dialogue clues that I can find to say who it is (although she bears the air of authority that Barbara, rather than Stephanie, might adopt when talking to Wonder Woman), but the presence of the other characters makes a stronger argument for Stephanie than Barbara (the blue eyes rule out Cassandra). Of course, these stories tend to be continuity-lite, rather than tied to a particular era, so it ultimatley doesn't matter).

Also appearing are Professor Pyg, Harley Quinn and, briefly, Batman, who shows up on the last page to ask Diana if she wants to have an off-panel team-up taking down The Scarecrow with him.

The second story is a ten-pager by Jason Badower, and features Wonder Woman teaming up with the other half of the World's Finest, this time on-panel. A great, evergreen, day-in-the-life type story, it features Wonder Woman and Superman wrapping up a Justice League adventure–Batman and Aquaman get name-dropped, while the latter appears in the foreground of one panel–and then hanging out together, as Superman follows her around on various adventures, from being a particularly hands-on United Nations Executive Ambassador–in this case, she stops and army by pretty much just standing there and soaking up all their ammunition–to officiating a gay wedding.

This bit is pretty awesome.

Also, there's a nice bit where she defines her relationship with Superman (This being a non-New 52 story, it's their traditional relationship, as best friends)...

...and a nice bit where she tells him how Clark Kent can always help her.

Badower has a really great handle on the character, and what makes her so special...as well as what simply differentiates her from other characters, like the one she spends the whole story with. His art style isn't one I particularly love, but he's really good at it, and this story is better-illustrated than many I read this week, including the one that fills the first two-thirds of this issue.

We Stand On Guard #5 (Image Comics) The second Brian K. Vaughan-written Image Comics title I bought this week! I could have sworn this was a five-issue limited series, for reasons that I now can't remember, but the letters page seems to indicate this is not, in fact, the last issue. That's good. The ending of this particular issue would still have worked, in a shockingly unexpected way, as an ending for the whole series, but at least one more issue would allow BKV to stick the landing better. However many issues are left, be it one more or 10 more, I'll be sorry when it's over. This has been a pretty great series. As much as I love BKV and Fiona Staples' Saga, it's been a blast these past few months seeing what they can do with other partners in other places.



*Seriously. I've tried reading various issues of the book by various creative teams, and I simply cannot get through a whole issue of it. The only one I did make it all the way through was the first issue of the title's relaunch. It was terrible, but dammit, I read every single panel of it, which is more than I had managed with any issue before or since.

**According to Scooby-Doo director Raja Gosnell, there was a scene filmed in which Velma was singing a love song, and it was unclear if she was singing it to Fred or Daphne, as the pair were standing next to one an other. That didn't make it into the final print, but the sexually ambiguous nature of Velma was one of the several adult reading s of the original cartoon that the live-action film flirted with riffing on. See also Scooby and Shaggy's perceived rug usage. What a weird film that was.

I wrote about two Peanuts books that you might want to check out.

I wrote a bit about Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron, Fantagraphics' collection of Schulz's strips on that particular subject, for School Library Journal's Good Comics For Kids blog.

I wrote about Peanuts: A Tribute to Charles M. Schulz, Boom Studios' big hardcover collection of 40+ artists paying tribute to one of history's greatest cartoonists, for Comics Alliance.

Review: Justice League #43 ("The Darkseid War" Pt. 3)

B-O-O-M...yeah, it's spelled right, but it still looks wrong to me.

Previously, in "The Darkseid War"...

•Justice League #41 ("The Darkseid War" Pt.1)

•Justice League #42 ("The Darkseid War" Pt. 2)

THE COVER

Artist Jason Fabok does for something a little more symbolic and more carefully designed this time around, limiting the characters to just three and using a literal triangle for outline the trio of figures. In the center, and at the point of the triangle, we see Batman, in his new role as The Know-It-All Jerk Who Sits Atop The Mobius Chair. This was the role previously filled by Metron, the New Gods' god of knowledge and laziness, but Batman stole Metron's seat last issue, in an attempt to keep the chair, and all of its knowledge, in the League's possession.

This, apparently, makes Batman the first New New God. Note that the chair seems to be changing Batman, giving him a goofy glowing Tron version of his costume, more than Batman is affecting the chair; why, he hasn't even been able to add bat-wings to it yet!

Batman's also shooting eyebeams, which he doesn't do inside the comic, but this may be symbolic of his newfound ability to see all. It also helps bisect the image (as does the vague column of light behind the chair), dividing the busts of archenemies (but current Justice League teammates) Superman and Lex Luthor.

You will note that Superman looks like a black-and-white photo negative of himself, and appears to be steaming. What's up with that? We will have to read on, to find out!

PAGES 1-3

Another "cinematic" opening, as the first page has a half-dozen, thin and horizontal panels stacked neatly, Fabok's art–colored by Brad Anderson–suggestive of a camera slowly zooming in. We see what appears to be an eye-less pit-bull chailed to the floor in a room full of humanoid bones. Someone clubs it to death with a pair of silent blows, then lifts a phallic lip to his pierced nose, and licks it.

The splash page that follows reveals this to be Kalibak, here drawn monstrous in size (as will become clear when Steppenwolf approaches him), rendered by Fabok in much greater detail and more realistic proportions than the character's creator Jack Kirby originally imbued him with.

The result? He looks more like someone you might run into on the street, and less weird, monstrous and scary.

BEFORE

AFTER

Does he still have those weird, two-toed feet...? It's difficult to tell from this comic book, as Fabok manages to avoid drawing the character's feet in all but one panel, and that one is an extremely long shot (page three, panel three). He appears to have the normal amount of toes, though, or at least the boots he's wearing covers up his feet so that they appear to be the normal shape of your average humanoid foot.

"Leave," Kalibak tells Steppenwolf in a bigger, bold font than most characters get to talk in. "I'm busy."

He's busy beating to death chained monster dogs and then eating them, maybe...?

The two evil gods banter a bit, with Steppenwolf telling Kalibak they are headed to Earth to fight. Kalibak makes it clear he fights not for Darkseid, but for Kalibak.

See?

PAGES 4-5

Steve Trevor and the Justice League try to convince Batman to get off the Mobius Chair, but he's not budging. He insists they need the information it contains, and that he can handle it, but he's already glowing funny and talking in a new font.

PAGES 6-9

Meanwhile, Superman and Lex Luthor find themselves on Apokolips, where Lex's sister sent them after repeatedly shooting Lex. While the frenimes (or are they more enefriends...?) wander about an Apokoliptian slave camp, it becomes clear that Superman is weakening: His hearing is less sharp than Luthor's, his X-Ray vision is on the fritz and, when they are attacked by a horde of extras from Mad Max: Fury Road, Luthor notices that Superman is bleeding.

This has nothing to do with his de-powering in Superman, Action Comics and the rest of the DCU line; "Darkseid War" is apparently set before the events of Convergence. No, Superman is losing his powers because, as Lex says, "There's no sunlight."

I don't want to second-guess Luthor, one of the smartest men on the planet, nor Geoff Johns, the guy writing this story, but I would think it would take quite a while for Superman to lose enough of the solar energy stored in his Kryptonian cells to de-power him so drastically...especially if he's not expending a ton of energy (Johns might have wanted to rearrange events so that Superman was forced to use a "solar flare" attack either just before or just after being transported to Apokalips; that would have been a more logical way to believably de-power him almost immediately).

PAGE 10

Kanto and Lashina arrive in the Myrina Black Cave, looking for Myrina Black and Mister Miracle. They're not there.

PAGE 11

Grail, Darkseid's Daughter, uses her own Mother Box (in the shape of a weird axe), to draw a summoning circle with which to call for Darkseid. Her ally The Anti-Monitor chills in the background, while Shadow Demons circle him in the air, and others kneel before him, bowing reverently like they're in some sort of old movie, playing natives worshipping an idol.

Hey, did you know Grail wears high heels...?

Because she does. I just noticed that.

PAGES 12-15

The League are still talking when Mister Miracle Boom Tubes onto the scene, and Batman and his chair starts exposition-ing. In the space of a few pages, plans are formed.

Miracle will lead Wonder Woman and most of the League to face The Anti-Monitor, in an attempt to get him to leave Earth before Darkseid arrives to fight him.

Batman, his chair and Green Lantern Hal Jordan are going to head to "the depths of The Multiverse" (Hooray! No one ever gets sick of DC screwing around with their ever-changing Multiverse!) to seek answers about The Anti-Monitor, in case they need to force him to leave Earth.

And Metron will stay there, at the Rock of Eternity, chained to a column. He seems happy about it though. Could he be up to something? I think he may be up to something.

PAGE 16

Lex Luthor and Superman hold hands.

PAGE 17

Wonder Woman and her fellow Leaguers Boom Tube to where Grail, The Anti-Monitor and the Shadow Demons are waiting.

PAGES 18-19

The lay-out on these two pages is a little crazy, as Darkseid, Kalibak, Steppenwolf and a bunch of Parademons arrive via Boom Tube (see the image at the top of the post). Four elongated letters–B-O-O-M–for "panels" that are actually just one big splash panel, reaching over one page and crowding into the next page. Darkseid's feet are rooted in the bottom of the four panels, the misshapen M panel, but the rest of him stands outside the panels containing the forces behind him.

Filling most of the rest of page 19 are a stack of five panels. The Anti-Monitor and Darkseid stare each other down, while Power Ring asks Wonder Woman who they should fight. Wonder Woman thinks about Scylla and Charybdis.

Those are the sea monsters of Greek myth she's thinking of, by the way, not the terrorist super-villains who stole Aquaman's powers and had his hand chewed off by piranha in the early '90s.

PAGES 20-21

A double-page splash, featuring the titanic Anti-Monitor and Darkseid striding towards one another, while their armies run and fly at one another. Framing the image in the foreground are the hands and hips of Wonder Woman, on the left, and Mister Miracle, on the right.

PAGE 22-23

The action jumps back and forth from Apokolips to Earth, almost panel-by-panel now.

On Apokolips, Luthor flies the weakened Superman up into the sky using his suit's rocket boots, while Parademons pursue them.

On Earth, Wonder Woman leads the Justice League in a charge, although it's not clear which side they're taking, if any.

Back on Apokolips, Luthor explains he's going to drops Superman into a fire pit, as Superman's cells need reacharged by solar energy, "and these fire pits on Apokolips are that." Is that true? I didn't know that was true. I'm not sure how they would or could be solar energy either, since they are coming from a planet rather than a star, but again, I'm just going to take Lex Luthor's and Geoff Johns' word on this, since the former is super-smart and the latter is the writer.

As Superman falls and disappears, the two evil cosmic entities on Earth reach one another and throw punches. Before we can see if they connect or not, there's an explosion in a fire pit, and a tail-less baloon says the name "Luthor" in normal font.

And then...

PAGE 24

A climactic splash page, showing a transformed Superman flying out of the pit. He looks like a photographic negative, as the cover of this issue already spoiled.

"I should've killed you a long time ago," he says in the white font on a black, red-rimmed dialogue bubble, of the same sort Batman and Grail are talking in. That must be the official dialogue style of the New New Gods.

Is that the best term for them? What about All-New Gods? All-New, All-Different Gods? The New-er Gods? The New 52 Gods...?

I don't know. I guess we can think on it until "The Darkseid War" Pt. 4, next issue!