Batman #692
Creator: Tony Daniel
Tony Daniel is no stranger to Batman. he drew two arcs of Grant Morrison’s run, including the excellent Batman RIP. He wrote and drew the recent Battle For The Cowl miniseries, which won’t win any lifetime achievement awards, but did its job well enough. Now he’s returned to the main Bat-title as both writer and artist, and kicks off his story in a flurry of slightly disjointed activity. There are some rough spots, but this issue holds up well enough to keep us reading. In the end, that’s really all a first chapter has to do.
Daniel the writer may have learned a bit from working with Morrison. The story hits the ground running, leaving us to figure out the specifics of the story. We hit several of the beats that post-Bruce Wayne Batman stories are supposed to hit: Dick Grayson is no Bruce Wayne, Catwoman doesn’t doesn’t really trust him, Black Mask is a really dangerous dude, etc. We get a couple pages each of the main players, hopping from one to the next in a herky-jerky motion. Black Mask appears, inexplicably dressed like some sort of alien wizard in purple bondage gear. He’s gathered a cadre of mad scientists, Z-list characters from bye-gone eras of bat-lore. A branch of the Falcone crime family returns, apparently not yet tired of competing with psychopaths and vigilantes for Gotham supremacy. And finally, we witness the resurrection of another fairly obscure bad guy (one created in a Nazi concentration camp. SRSLY. Why is it always Nazis? Aren’t there any bad guys from the last 60 years we can pick on?)
Daniel the artist turns in good work, without coming close to the iconic work he did on Batman RIP last year. His layouts are clear but not repetitive, showing that he knows his way around a page in order to tell a story. We get nice establishing shots, and while I could have done without the Falcone family flashbacks, they’re laid out nicely.
In all, it’s too soon to pass judgement on this story arc. There is too much setup in this first book, but there seems to be a lot to set up. If the story ends up being broad and eventful, then we’ll forgive a lot.
Grade: B
Blackest Night #4
Creators: Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis
There’s only so much gushing I can do here. Blackest Night continues to be the best read on the comics stands. The halfway point arrives and we finally meet what appears to be at the bottom of the Black Lanterns.
In the meantime, Barry Allen continues to show his revered leadership ability, Ray Palmer continues to work through his personal issues, and an ever-growing chunk of characters gets put through the emotional wringer. My biggest fear about this title early on was that we weren’t going to get any forward motion. I was afraid it would just continue to expand in scope until there was nothing left to do, inviting a stilted and cheesy ending. That doesn’t appear to be the case. The threat seems to be bottoming out, and we’re finally seeing how bad it’s going to get. And more importantly we have heroes acting like… well, heroes, a nice change from the brooding and hopelessness of some major catastrophic storylines.
Reis’s artwork gets even more spectacular. While he doesn’t get as much detail on the zombies as some of the ther BN-related artists, he does do a great job of conveying the action. This story is fairly dense, and Reis keeps it all straight for us visually so we’re not left trying to figure out what we just read.
Two slightly unfortunate things come to light here. One is that the word “corps” is both singular and plural, and it’s the sort of word you’re not used to using a lot, so a line like “they need Hal to rally together the other corps” sounds odd as you read it. The second has to do with my own personal prejudices. I throw up in my mouth a little every time the Atom rides a phone line from one place to another. Hitching rides on electrons didn’t even make sense when all phones were analog. In the digital age, it doesn’t seem like this is even worthy of three seconds of thought. Maybe Ray can read a packet header and address himself to the same place once his phone call gets to a router. That’s right. I suspend my disblief about super-powered zombies, but not about fiberoptics and VOIP. That’s my own cross to bear, though.
Grade: A
Green Lantern #47
Creators: Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke
The best of the companion books to Blackest Night continues. While the heroes on Earth fight in the main title, Hal Jordan and Sinestro struggle to form an alliance that can take down the Black Lanterns. We see a return of the Five Inversions, the demonic characters conjured by Alan Moore ages ago as a throwaway backup story that Johns used as a basis for the sci-fi epic he’s building. Abin Sur, Hal’s predecessor and Sinestro’s old friend, makes a comeback to great emotional effect. We also get a glimpse of the two color corps we haven’t focused on much lately: Saint Walker and the Blue Lanterns, and the increasingly comedic Orange Lantern, Larfleeze.
It’s hard to top Reis’s artwork in Blackest Night, but I really do think Doug Mahnke does it here. Everything is so crisp and clean, with almost no linework. The action comes through in powerful, large frames. Like the last couple issues, Green Lantern #47 is a home run.
Grade: A+
Michael is old enough to know better, but still reads comics. He writes about them to make himself feel less nerdy. 
