I'd heard pretty good things about Fables: Legends in Exile and thought I'd give 'em a chance. It's an interesting first volume in an on-going series. Sets things up pretty easily (the characters all come from fables and fairy tales but are now exiled to NYC) without dropping all the info at the get go. There's a decent enough storyline (mayor's sis has disappeared, maybe killed) that gets a good wrap-up in the end (a fine parlor scene for the detective). I thought it was okay but nothing spectacular. I've heard that the series might be the best currently being run in comics, so I'm guessing that things get better from here. This volume doesn't seem to live up to that sort of a reputation.
Wow, very dark collection of the last of Green Arrow before the DC One-Year Later jump. In this one, Dr. Light has returned and seems to be focusing the majority of his anger and vengance for Identity Crisis on Green Arrow - in spite of the fact that Ollie seems to have voted against mindwiping Light. The main plotline of this volume involves Light and a few other villians running GA through a series of distractions while Light takes his revenge on Ollie's "family".By the end of the volume, we see GA stabbed and dying as Light burns down much of Star City around the battle. It's a rough storyline and one that continues the reprecussions (sp, sorry) of Infinite Crisis, an event horrific enough that it should be felt for a while.
The Green Arrow series has been consistently well-written since its relaunch a few years ago, and this is a fitting mini-culmination to some of its lead-up events. GA has a strong family tie to the people he works with, and in this volume he finds out how dangerous it can be. Well done, folks...
Here are a couple of reviews of the individual issues collected here.
Man, Alex Ross's Justice must be an absolute bear to produce. It's nothing but painted pages from Ross himself, and his stuff isn't exactly filled with throw-aways.The story's a lot of fun, however, and has a strong feeling similar to some of the old Super Friends episodes - but done with a whole lot more intelligence this time around. We get the un-named Legion of Doom throwing down with the Justice Leaguers who are pretty much all useless and nearly wiped out by the end of this first collected volume. The rest of the story should be a blast if Ross's two-part interview about the series is any indication (part 1 & part 2).
I dug Marvel Zombies. It was a whole lot of fun and nothing nearly weighty enough to cause me to think in the least. Good times.The artwork's sick and dark - which totally fits the tone. The homages to prior Marvel history are a load of fun, and the dealings with Galactus are nicely done.
All in all, an hilarious and grim lark.
The first of the post-One-Year-Later trades are being released, and I took a few moments to read through Batman: Face the Face a decent but far from original little run from the new Batman creative team. The storyline's pretty standard - Batman's been away, somebody took his place but is reluctant to give it up, Harvey Dent is reformed (maybe), Jim Gordon's police commissioner, and Batman's remembering that he needs to deal with people instead of forcing them all away.The story and trade work well enough, but it feels like this is ground that has been mined nearly to death before. It's a trade worth flipping through but not for buying.
The fourth volume of Ex Machina: March to War continues the very interesting turn of events in which the main character - New York's first superhero mayor - continues to walk an interesting path through politics, being neither left or right whole-salely. (sp?) The series continues to be excellent, deserving of the praise heaped upon it regularly. The majority of this story sees Mitchell Hundred dealing with a terrorist attack on a peace march in his city, a march that saw one of his trusted aides put into a coma. The storyline - Hundred exploring how to walk the line between civil liberties and governmental need, freedom and security. At times the whole thing can get a little preachy as the author takes time to explore the position verbally, but all in all, it's an excellent story arc.
The second arc is less satisfying as a frameing device (radio interview) is used to have Hundred explore his first arch-enemy who has powers oddly similar to Hundred, himself. It's not a bad arc, but it pales in comparison with the afore mentioned first arc.
I dig Marvel's Ultimate universe. I think I might have mentioned that at some point in the past, eh?Here we've got the next collected volume of the Ultimate X-Men: Phoenix. It's a thread that's been bouncing around teasingly here and there in the first few years of the Ultimate X-Men storylines, and here it comes to the fore as a new organization (some sort of Shi-Ar churh) wants to fund the X-Men if they can just be allowed to examine Jean Grey - who might contain their god, the phoenix force. The minor drama - teasingly unfinished as we see at the end of the book - is played out against a backdrop of increasingly passionate and involved teammates (Grey and Cyclops, Rogue and Iceman, Collosus and ??, Kitty and Spidey) as the book continues to be aimed at a teenage audience - which did have a couple of notes that I wondered if they were a little on the adult side of that audience, but nothing horrible.
This volume isn't a key, a can't live without it volume, but it's a good quality middle run in the continuing series.
The recreation of the Green Lantern Corp has been an interesting little development of late in the DC Universe. Heck, even the undeath of Hal Jordan has been moderately interesting - mostly because the other characters have all been forced to yell and admit how they all feel about him.In this volume: Revenge of the Green Lanterns Hal heads off into the forbidden sector - (cue forboding music) - where he finds a bunch of GL's trapped by the newly recreated (by the weird Cyborg) bunch of Manhunters.
Jordan, of course, saves the day by his strength of will but finds himself still in the doghouse with the Guardians. I guess it was something about him pretty much destroying all the universe and everything.
Sorry, tangent...
So, the storyline's passable...the artwork's decent...it's not bad...
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