I just so happened to read a pair of books about goth in the past few months, John Robb's
(Manchester University Press; 2023) and founding member of The Cure Lol Tolhurst's
(Hachette Books; 2023). Both discussed the English rock band Sisters of Mercy, who proved quite influential in the musical genre referred to as goth (although most bands labeled such don't care to be so labeled). Their debut album was 1985's
Was writer Sophie Campbell inspired by the Sisters of Mercy when choosing the sub-title for the ninth and final volume of her Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run which, it turns out, also represents the end of the 150-issue series, which lasted from 2011 to 2024? (Don't worry, they've already relaunched with a new #1, with writer Jason Aaron now at the helm.)
A bit of an odd synchronicity, that, as I would not have recognized the reference had I not noticed Robb's book one day at the library and decided to pick it up.
As I mentioned, this is the end of Campbell's five-year, 49-issue, nine-volume run on the title, collecting her final six issues. These are mostly drawn by Vincenzo Federici, with some additional art by Fero Pe, Dan Duncan and Campbell herself, returning to draw a touching, wordless four-page reunion featuring the title's core cast. (Campbell also draws the final cover herself, a great piece which really should have been the cover of this collection, and she collaborates with Kevin Eastman on variant covers for the series; as I've said before, the pair constitute what is probably the ideal TMNT art team at the moment, and IDW really should find a project worthy of the team's talents to have them provide the art for...if not both write and draw it.)
Despite lots of callbacks to previous stories (signified by asterisks and editorial boxes), including several to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Armageddon Game and its tie-ins (which I didn't read), and time travel-enabled visits to key points of IDW's TMNT history/continuity, including to the very night of the characters' origins and to the feudal Japan where their souls originally came from (before being reincarnated into their new 21st century mutant bodies), this seems like something of an odd "last" TMNT story, for either Campbell's own run or this volume of the Turtles' adventures.
Just as likely, though, it may be because this isn't so much a TMNT story as it is a Donatello story.
Sure, the other characters all appear, but they are never together until the very last pages. The present, "real" Leonardo, along with April, helps Donatello with his magic/science experiments from their farmhouse base, and thus appears throughout the book, albeit in what is very much a supporting role. And the present Michelangelo makes a brief appearance, lasting all of several pages. The present versions of Raphael and Jennika are MIA until the reunion page at the end, however. Future versions of the other four turtles all have brief appearances during Donatello's time travel journey, but the focus is undeniably on Donatello throughout.
And what is Donatello up to? Well, using a mishmash of magic and science—computers, sigils, his warp crystal pencil, a high-tech power gauntlet and the redacted notebook of his own future self—he, April and Venus are attempting to travel through time to find his future self, who he hopes can help him with the notebook, all in an effort to stop Armaggon, a sort of time-travelling giant cosmic shark entity (Which, we learn in this volume, is actually a mutated Megalodon.)
Neither target is sitting still, however. Future Donatello is on the move through time, forcing Present Donatello to chase him, while Armaggon is apparently set on devouring Donatello at some juncture, preferably in the past before he accidentally creates Armaggon, and therefore preventing the monster's own painful existence.
Complicating matters further, Armaggon has apparently recruited a future version of Bob, the mutant mandril who was training under Leonardo and ends up getting kicked into the time portal along with Donatello and Venus, to sabotage the experiment and drain characters of their QNA, which is...well, let's not get into all that here.
For what it is, it's fine, although it really feels like it could have been a Donatello miniseries rather than the conclusion of the longest running Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle title and narrative of all time (For context, the original Mirage Studios volume of TMNT only lasted 63 issues, while the Archie Comics Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures lasted 72 issues).
It of course remains disappointing that Campbell, one of modern super-comics' best artists and maybe the most gifted to ever draw Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman's creations, is relegated to writing only (as I suppose I've probably mentioned at least nine times now), rather than writing and drawing, as in the start of her run, before her appearances on art duties became more and more infrequent, and eventually trailed off altogether.
Federici is a fine artist, though, and the book looks good and reads well throughout, the only real visual hiccup coming near the end of the book, as one of the "additional art by" creators tags in to draw a scene of Donatello and Venus travelling back in time to visit the lab where the Turtles and Splinter would soon get mutated. There Donatello is drawn with big eyes, his pupils visible through his mask (Federici has drawn his eyes all-white and pupil-less whenever masked throughout the book), making him suddenly look like the original cartoon version of Donatello rather randomly.
Never do the characters feel as alive and as real as during those last four pages, however, the ones where Campbell returns to draw Donatello stepping out of a time portal at the end of his adventure and finding and embracing his family. (The aforementioned Eastman/Campbell covers sure come close, though, pairing Campbell's superior character designs and rendering with the thick, weighty, gritty inking of Eastman that defines the characters, giving them a Mirage Studios aura.)
I'm sort of bummed to see Campbell's run ending. Her TMNT was the last serially published comic book I was reading and was then the last ongoing series I was buying regularly in trade.
The immediate future of the franchise seems a bit uncertain, with bad news (unconfirmed rumors about IDW's plans regarding page rates on their licensed comics that struck many professionals as laughably low) and good news (former ComicsAlliance editor Andy Khouri being named TMNT editor...although I suppose he probably prefers being known as a former DC Comics editor at this point).
I hope, whatever happens next, we haven't seen the last of Sophie Campbell's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, seriously IDW, get Campbell and Eastman to team-up on the art for something befitting their talents and the quality of their collaboration.
Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol 4: Return to Kingdom Come (DC Comics) Even the greatest comics artists are human, and thus capable of making mistakes. Still, I was caught off guard when I hit page five of the latest collection of the Dan Mora-drawn
Batman/Superman: World's Finest—and I presume we can all agree that Mora is indeed one of the greatest comics artists, certainly within the genre of Big Two super-comics—and realized the bat-symbol on Batman's chest was...
off.
If you look closely, there are an extra pair of "points" on the bottom, which is the wrong style of bat-symbol for this iteration of the character, although it is a very familiarly wrong bat-symbol. Specifically, that's what the bat-symbol that adorned the suit worn by Michael Keaton in the original 1989 Batman film looked like (The filmmakers corrected it in time for the sequel, 1992's Batman Returns).
Now, the Batman of this title is indeed a past Batman. The specific year in which the events of World's Finest occur has been tough to pinpoint, but it's clearly sometime after Batman adopted his 1960s "New Look" (adding a yellow oval around his bat emblem) and sometime before Dick Grayson quit being Robin, wherever that is the current DC Universe timeline/canon (Which, perhaps, is something only Mark Waid knows at this point).
I at first assumed the setting of the book was the modern version of the Silver Age, but since then Firestorm has appeared on-panel, so it must be around the modern equivalent of 1978. Regardless, though, Batman didn't add any points onto the bottom of his symbol in the late 1970s or '80s; the only place that particular version of the logo has ever appeared was in the film.
Assuming this might have been a clue that the Batman of the story was meant to be an alternate universe one—the first three pages of the book show The Flash Barry Allen racing through the Speed Force, with various alternate realties, be they culled from old "Imaginary Stories" or Elseworlds projects, appearing in the background—I just rolled with it. (It's a bravura sequence, by the way, and one that allows Mora to temporarily "cover" the work of other artists who did their own variations of Batman, Superman and company in various projects over the years).
But that was not, in fact, the case. It seemed curious to me that an artist of Mora's caliber and profile would make such a mistake, but he does it every time he draws this Batman. Why would he start doing so in the fourth collection of the series, I asked myself, and then I went online to look at past covers and panels and, I saw, he didn't just start doing that; he's been drawing Batman's logo like that for the entire series now. (So the real question is, I guess, why didn't I notice it until just now?)
It's really perplexing, and the exact sort of thing that one might think a comics editor, especially in this day and age, would notice immediately and seek to correct. I don't know; perhaps a creative choice was made by Mora and/or Waid and/or DC to use this particular version of the logo to further differentiate this Batman from other iterations (Beyond his blue and gray costume and the yellow circle, I guess), but that seems fairly unlikely.
Anyway, those seven paragraphs should be more than enough for this month's bat-symbol discourse. (Now, anyone got any opinions on Absolute Batman's logo...? Kidding!)
As the sub-title indicates, this volume of Waid and Mora's team-up title finds the former returning to his own 1996 Kingdom Come, for what I believe is the first time since the underwhelming 1998 kinda sorta sequel series/event The Kingdom (which did at least yield a pretty good Plastic Man story in Waid and Frank Quitely's The Kingdom: Offspring #1).
It seems a rather odd choice for this particular title, set as it is sometime in DC's own now-murky past, given that Kingdom Come was set in millennial DC's near-future... which is, of course, even further in the future for these particular iterations of the characters.
Additionally, the world of Kingdom Come that the World's Finest here visit, long since established as Earth-22 in the current mapping of the multiverse, isn't yet the familiar world of Kingdom Come, as it seems to be years before such events as Superman's retirement or Magog's killing of The Joker. So rather than the familiar world of Kingdom Come, which is teased on the cover by the appearances of some of its iconic characters, this is a visit to that world in its own past, a world on its way to becoming that of Kingdom Come.
What does that mean, exactly?
Well, other than the restaurant chain Planet Krypton and handful of Alex Ross' old designs filling up some group shots (Judomaster, a Boba Fett-inspired Peacemaker, the yellow and red version of Captain Atom, the post-Metal Men giant Alloy, the always-intriguing-to-me Fourth World version of Batwoman), this might as well just be another random alternate Earth, given that it says relatively little about Kingdom Come. Other than, I suppose, after all is said and done, pushing the now grown-up David—last seen in the pages of World's Finest at the end of the "Strange Visitor" arc (collected in volume two) being greeted by Gog— into the direction of becoming Magog.
That Waid has to engage with Kingdome Come/Earth-22 at all then seems only to be the result of the fact that he sent the multiverse-lost David, formerly Boy Thunder, there in the pages of "Strange Visitor."
So here we have Flash Barry Allen, exploring the multiverse as is apparently an old hobby of his, and telling Superman, Batman and Robin that he has finally found their lost ally, David/Boy Thunder. Setting them up on a "modified Cosmic Treadmill", he sends Superman and Batman to the Kingdom Come-iverse, where they experience some time displacement, appearing as phantoms in the far-flung future, after the events of Kingdom Come, where they witness their own older counterparts mourning the dead in a field full of gravestones marked with the names of superheroes.
From there hey drift backwards to a time long before the events of Kingdom Come, but long after David first arrived on this world. David is now an adult hero going by the name "Thunderman," and he has replaced his cape and headgear with a jacket and domino mask.
Upon meeting Superman and Batman after so long (his time), David immediately turns on his former mentors, and this world's Superman (still wearing a shield with yellow behind the red S, despite what the covers may promise, but not yet having grown out his hair, as he would in the "past" of Kingdom Come) and this world's Batman (wearing "the experimental flight suit Lucius has been working on" because a recent Mongul attack destroyed his regular wardrobe, an attack that conveniently gets him to dress more like he did in Kingdom Come) both arrive to throwdown with their alternate-earth duplicates, never stopping for a moment to think that they might be alternate-earth duplicates (Part of Gog's long-term masterplan for this world has included his keeping secret the existence of alternate realties, apparently).
Gog's full plan is eventually revealed to our heroes. Gog, looking just as he did in the pages of the 2007 JSA arc "They Kingdome Come" and seated atop a more expansive version of Metron's flying chair (complete with what looks like the Worlogog above it), has used some form of subtle mind-control to push all of this world's heroes into obeying him, even worshipping him like a god.
David, who is transformed into Magog as part of Gog's "Asencion" plan, is to lead this army of heroes in an all-out invasion of Apokolips, a suicide mission during which Gog intends for them all to die, himself included...thus rectifying his ancient mistake of sitting out the war that killed the old gods of the Third World, allowing all but him to ascend into Valhalla. (The Old Testament! Norse mythology! Jack Kirby! There's some comic book religion for you!)
The only ones who can stop him are, of course, both worlds' World's Finest, plus their allies, who include Captain Marvel, the "Green Knight" version of Green Lantern Alan Scott, the hawk-person version of Hawkman and Wonder Woman in her Golden Eagle armor.
The stakes of the battle are super-high, Batman realizes, as Gog's mind-control may actually be the Anti-Lie Equation, so putting him in contact with Darkseid may actually doom all of reality. Of course, the heroes win, but in an unexpected way, with David, now Magog, using his powers to blow off Gog's head.
This of course leads to a stern lecture from Batman and Superman, who don't appreciate the way in which David just saved all of reality, with even Captain Marvel and Alan scolding him. David's just like, Forget it; I'll just go off and kill the Joker one day, ushering in a new age of darker heroes who appreciate the use of deadly force, eventually goading all of the world's heroes into a huge war that will kill, like, everyone...and it will be fully painted!
In an odd (but appreciated!) ending, The Spectre arrives (not wearing any underwear, like the Kingdom Come version) to give "our" Superman and Batman a brief tour of David's future and the events of Kingdom Come, allowing Superman to give the post-Kingdom Come David an inspiring pep talk that inspires him to go on to lead a whole new, post-Kingdom Come generation of heroes, most of whom looked brand-new (and Mora-designed...?) to me.
This is probably weakest arc in the series to date, lacking as it does the world-building that made Kingdom Come so fun and, by engaging only with a past version of the world from that compelling and, let's face it, seminal story, it feels somewhat half-assed.
Gog, Darkseid and the multiversal elements are all written as well as can be, but they also feel a bit generic, with nothing really new to say about any of the characters...if, indeed, anyone was clamoring for a new Gog story. Or even a revisit to Kingdom Come at all. (Although it's 30th anniversary is right around the corner!)
Of course, if this gets newer and younger readers to check out the Kingdom Come trade, then I suppose it will ultimately be worthwhile.
For my part, it was at least fun to get to see Mora's versions of a handful of Ross designs (in addition to all those panels of alternate realities he drew in the first few pages of the collection). I imagine he had fun making this book, and the many, many variant cover artists all seemed to enjoy getting to draw Kingdom Come characters, based on how many of them appear in the gallery at the back of the book...despite the fact that so many of those characters don't actually appear in that form in the comics themselves.
Personally, I think it could have used more
Cathedral.
Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville (DC) Are Fire and Ice still viable characters? Writer Joanne Starer makes a pretty convincing argument in this six-issue miniseries, although the results come with a handful of reservations, most of which could probably have been solved if the script had gone through another draft or so.
Fire debuted in a 1979 E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon issue of Super Friends as Green Fury, a name she would change to Green Flame as part of the Global Guardians before finally settling on Fire. Ice followed almost a decade later, being created Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire for their beloved Justice League International run, with the character first appearing in 1988's twelfth issue, apparently as a new version of Icemaiden (She's actually a distinct character from original Global Guardians character Icemaiden, who first appeared in Super Friends in 1977, but let's not get into their tangled history here).
The pair are best known, of course, for their role in the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League run. They weren't there in the very first issues, which featured a slightly more high-profile line-up, but once they officially joined in 1988's JLI #14, they quickly became part of the core Justice League cast, and among the League's longest-serving members, hanging on through various creative team and line-up changes that followed (Ice would be killed off in 1994 crossover "Judgement Day", whereas Fire would serve on the team through Justice League America's 1996 cancellation, which made way for Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA launch).
They've been relatively little seen since leaving the Justice League orbit, though. To my knowledge, their last major appearances were in the pages of 2010 bi-weekly maxi-series Justice League: Generation Lost by writers Judd Winick and Giffen and a variety of artists. (That is, unless you count Tom King and Greg Smallwood's 2021 Human Target maxi-series, which I don't, mostly because I didn't read it, although it being a Black Label book, I'm uncertain if it counts as canon or not.)
Unlike many of their peers, the duo never really had any notable appearances in the many cartoons, live-action television shows or feature films that have introduced so many DC comics characters to a new generation of would-be comics readers (cameos in Justice League Unlimited and, for Fire, in Batman: The Brave and The Bold, aside).
All that time out of the spotlight is part of the hook of this title, of course, a hook that is further suggested by the sub-title. They are meant to be getting a new lease on life, moving to a new town for a fresh start, a course of action strongly suggested by Superman (Fire sees it as punishment for a screw-up, but Superman himself describes it as a vacation, "A time to relax and rebuild...I believe they call it self-care?")
The only problem with this premise is, because it's been so long since we've seen the characters in the DCU (and I barely remember anything about Generation Lost at this point), readers don't really have any sense of what they're actually taking a vacation from. What is their current status quo? Where do they live? Do they live together? What do they do, exactly?
When we first meet them here, it's in a 10-page short story by Starer and her collaborator artist Natacha Bustos that was published in Power Girl Special #1 (It seems to be an odd choice to start a story, complete with its inciting incident, in an entirely different comic book; thankfully DC included it in the final trade collection).
They are going into superhero action in Baltimore, with Fire grumbling about "a team of children" sending them to confront a natural disaster, apparently the children being the Titans, who, at this point, have taken the place of the disbanded Justice League. What the natural disaster is exactly isn't entirely clear, a recurring problem with these opening pages. Bustos draws huge waves pounding the Fells Point area of the city, with the heroes pulling bystanders out the way and using their powers to either freeze or evaporate the waves.
(I should perhaps note here a peculiarity about the way Bustos, who's elegant linework and somewhat abstracted, cartoonier sense of character design is a pretty perfect fit for the general comedic tone of the book. When Fire is using her powers, she is generally drawn like a naked woman on fire, basically a color-swapped, female version of Marvel's The Human Torch. Bustos, however, always draws her clothes when she's in fire mode, complete with jacket, headband and little biker gloves.)
Into these proceedings storms Baltimore local Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Ice called him, against Fire's wishes), and he proceeds to use a giant vacuum cleaner construct on one of the waves that somehow...breaks the frozen wave that Ice had created and deluges her with water...? (It's not clear exactly what happens here, or how.)
This leads to Fire and Guy battling one another, until Superman shows up to break up the fight. It is here he suggests the leads take their vacation, offering his parents' own farmhouse in Smallville ("I know the perfect place. Quiet, cozy, full of good people and mom's apple pie...").
They of course accept...sort of. ("But if we're doing this, we're doing it my way," Fire insists.) Instead of staying at the farm, they sign a 12-month lease on a downtown salon with six rooms available above it, "the only rental available in Smallville," according to L-Ron, who comes with them. For some reason that's never made clear, they decide to re-open and run the salon, rather than just living above it. They re-hire one of its old employees, endearing new character Tamarind, to do most of the actual salon work.
While Ice takes to smalltown life, enjoying spending time with Martha Kent and her new friend Rocky Rhoades, Fire bridles at what feels like an exile and craves to re-make a name for herself. She ultimately engages in a variety of social media-driven schemes to bring supervillains to her in Smallville, ultimately gathering a bunch of them for a sort of social media reality show about rehabilitating villains by giving them work in a salon (These villains include pre-existent ones like Ambush Bug, Gentleman Ghost, Maxie Zeus and Beefeater as well as new, original ones like Smarty Pants, Lot's Wife and Gorilla Grodd's little sister Linka).
Meanwhile, Fire and Ice have their friendship—which is at least partially built on how extremely different their personalities are from one another—severely tested, and a pair of villains with links to their past make appearances. One of these is a seemingly wendigo-inspired supernatural villain from Ice's homeland that turns people into cannibals (leading to some rather intense and violent, if mostly off-panel, content that feels somewhat jarring given the otherwise light-hearted proceedings) and a villain of sorts with ties to old JLI continuity (There's an editorial box at one point reading, "See Justice League America #34! Yes, the one from 1990.")
Despite the plot's several leaps in logic big and small that I've mentioned, and maybe trying to squeeze one too many major villain into so short a story (I think they could have done without the cannibal one, for example, which would have put greater focus on the remaining villain and made for a more streamlined storyline while excising the whole people killing and eating one another thing), Starer and Bustos' comic is a fairly fun one.
It's fun and it's funny, with a majority of the jokes landing, especially those involving Tamarind's obliviousness to Fire's claims to fame, and the interpersonal conflicts still manage to feel consequential without ever getting too heavy. It's a story in which Martha Kent, Jimmy Olsen, Krypto the super-dog and Lobo can an all appear in and, more importantly, feel like they fit in.
I can't say enough good things about Bustos' cartooning, which is superior. It's almost too bad that the book boasts covers by Terry and Rachel Dodson, who were probably good "gets" for DC on this series, as their covers don't remotely suggest the style or spirit of the art within, and just how good Bustos is. (This is true of all of the many covers, of course; the one exception being the entirely appropriate, perhaps even mandatory one by Kevin Maguire, doing a Fire and Ice-only riff on his iconic—and oft-riffed upon—cover to 1987's Justice Lague #1.)
Are Fire and Ice still viable? Sure they are, particularly if they star in comics like this, which keep the semi-serious, but mostly comedic take that Giffen and DeMatteis gave them during their time in the Justice League, a take that was mostly abandoned by the other Justice League creators that followed them, even as they kept Fire and Ice (and Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and Guy Gardner) around.
Fire, a former model, could probably do with a costume redesign at this point, though. Both characters have tried out new and different costumes since their early-90's heydays, of course, but Bustos here costumes them in their original JLI/JLA looks. That's probably the right call, given that much of the audience for this book was probably drawn to it by nostalgia for those years, but Fire's costume, such as it is, looks incredibly dated.
We could argue about the mini tank top that Ice wears over her spandex, which suggests 1980s aerobic craze fashion, but in general her costume looks clean and classic, the sort of Silver Age-esque look that never seems to age or grow dated.
Fire, on the other hand, wears all-green street clothes that might have been fashionable in the late '80s, but now look...well, they look like they are from the late '80s, the head band, the gloves, the belt, the short jacket over a bustier...it all looks a little too hair metal, as does her own voluminous, '80s style hairstyle (Which becomes somewhat ironic, given that she is now living above and apparently working in a hair salon).
If the heroes are to reappear in another comic by Starer and Bustos—and I would certainly read another one—Fire could definitely use a makeover during it.
Green Arrow Vol. 2: Family First (DC) Rather unfortunately, writer Joshua Williamson's refers to the events of Tom King and company's 2018 series
Heroes in Crisis in this collection of his
Green Arrow run.
You remember
Heroes in Crisis, right? The miniseries in which a beloved hero commits a mass casualty event at Sanctuary, a secret mental health retreat staffed by robots that was set-up by Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman long ago, a place where heroes would regularly go, unmask, and spill all their secrets.
I say unfortunately because by linking back to that story in new narratives, it helps embed King's fairly bonkers story into mainline DCU continuity, and I was actually kind of hoping that everyone—
especially DC Comics writers—would just sort of forget about
Heroes in Crisis and it would therefore gradually become something of a retroactive Elseworlds or Imaginary Story. (I did not personally care for
Heroes in Crisis, obviously; it is a very bad comic, although it becomes much
less bad if one thinks of it as not meant to be in continuity.
Here was my immediate reaction to the first issue; I swear I later read the trade and I am assuming I reviewed that on EDILW too, although I can't find it now, because I am terrible at "website".)
Not that Heroes in Crisis is a big part of the second collection Williamson's Green Arrow run, of course. As the book nears its climax, GA learns that his one-time sidekick Roy Harper, who has gone missing, is in actuality currently working for Amada Waller (So he's not dead after all, as he appeared to be at the end of the first volume! Whew!). Roy was sent to retrieve a maguffin for Waller but failed in his mission; to find Roy, GA must now take up his mission and retrieve said maguffin for Waller.
That maguffin? One of those creepy expressionless gold masks the android therapists at Sanctuary wore in
Heroes in Crisis, a mask that apparently recorded and retained all the secrets it was told over the years, which is basically everything on the superhero community, from
Batman's secret identity to
Hal Jordan not knowing what "will" actually is.
Green Arrow takes the mission, deciding he will simply figure out what to do with the mask and Waller at some point in the future (Does this play out in the pages of Absolute Power...? Now that I'm a trade reader, I'm obviously behind on the current goings-on of the DCU, but I thought I heard that Ollie was working with Waller in that book.)
If the first volume of the series was about Ollie's finding his way home after the events of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, this volume is about him adjusting to the DCU proper, reacting to the current status quo (Roy MIA, the JLA disbanded), reuniting with the rest of his now very extended family of heroes (Williamson has essentially retained the supporting cast of pretty much every Green Arrow run of the last 25 years, even roping in Arrowette, who doesn't really have anything to do with Oliver Queen and company aside from the fact that she also has a bow and arrow), and settling his score with Merlyn, the main villain of the early issues of the series.
Taking both volumes together, Williamson's story is essentially one of straightening out the Green Arrow franchise for the publisher, making sure all of the related characters are properly resurrected and placed in the current status quo after years and years of other writers' stories killing them off, writing them off, rebooting them away or finding newer, narrower focuses.
So here Ollie visits various Justice Leaguers to ask them about the team disbanding, with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Hal Jordan getting full scenes, while others like Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter and Black Adam simply get one-panel cameos.
Ollie and his son Connor Hawke begin a search for the missing Roy, which involves battles with Onomatopoeia and Brick and a break-in at the now Waller-controlled Hall of Justice. They fight Roy and his team before an Arctic Justice League facility of some kind. There's a battle against hard-light holograms of the Justice League. And then there's Ollie's climactic confrontation with Merlyn, after a recounting of the two characters' history with one another.
It's a lot, and something of a greatest hits of 21st century Green Arrow comics, setting the character and cast up for future adventures under the direction of a different writer (Despite the rather definitive feeling of the last scene in this book, it looks like Williamson will be writing the next five issues as well, so that will probably mean there will be enough new comics from him for a volume three).
It's unfortunate that Williamson doesn't have a consistent partner on this book, and instead works with a hodge-podge of different artists with differing, contrasting styles that suggests the editors went with who was available, rather than who worked well together.
There are several passages drawn by Phil Hester, who, in addition to contributing art to the previous volume, was also the artist on Kevi Smith's 2001 Green Arrow run and the Brad Meltzer arc that followed it. These are, of course, great, as Hester is a great artist, a solid draftsman with a nice, simple, individual, striking style. Here he draws the chapter with Ollie and Connor taking on Onomatopoeia and Brick (the former a Hester co-creation), as well as the seven pages detailing the Ollie/Merlyn history and a short scene set during Ollie's time on the deserted island. I kinda wish they just let Hester draw the whole thing.
The top credited artist is Seann Izaakse, who I think was meant to be the main artist for Williamson's run, and who draws the issue where Ollie confronts Waller, and portions of several other issues. His style is fine, well in-keeping with the general look and tone of what one might call DC's current "house" style, although it doesn't sing for me in quite the same way Hester's does.
The main problem with his art, though, is there's not enough of it to establish a look for the book. Several other artists seem to help him finish a few issues/chapters, including poor Tom Derenick, whose art I quite enjoy, but who of late generally only seems to turn up to help other artists meet deadlines.
And then there's Carmine Di Giandomenico and Trevor Hairsine, who draw the first issue of the collection, the one in which Ollie visits the empty Hall of Justice (before Waller takes over, which occurs in another book, Titans: Beast World), and then various members of the League.
I'm just not a fan of their style. They are here colored by Romulo Fajardo Jr., and I found the work to be dark, muddled and with too many digital effects, as well as some missed opportunities to draw cool stuff, as when we see Ollie wandering League headquarters, and instead of trophies we just see generic high-tech stuff and the images of other artists' covers dropped into the background on monitors or projected holograms.
There's definitely a lot to like in this volume (and this run so far), especially if you're a fan of the characters featured, although the art style changing up every few pages or so in what is meant to be a continuing storyline is certainly an unwelcome experience.
Godzilla: War For Humanity (IDW Publishing) If Jake Smith's work on this miniseries isn't the
very best art to grace one of IDW's many, many comics featuring the King of the Monsters—and James Stokoe's work on 2012's
Godzilla: The Half-Century War and 2015's
Godzilla In Hell is hard to beat—then it at least constitutes
some of the best Godzilla art we've yet seen.
Smith's big, chunky characters and anxious, action-packed panels call to mind the work of alternative and indie comics creators more than that of the modern superhero comics artists that tends to dominate the super-comics and IP exploitation genres, and, at a glance, his cartooning seems closer to the lineage of, say, R. Crumb than that of, say, Jack Kirby. It's also full of thick, inky lines, extensive cross-hatching and even a hint of the chibi in some of the monsters' faces, giving it something of the look and feel of the comics of Godzilla's home country.
It's a refreshing change of pace and seems like an even more radical departure from the norm when compared to some of the more recent Godzilla comics for adults, from both IDW and DC Comics, the latter of which was focused on the Warner Bros/Legendary version of the characters (IDW's Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp and Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors also featured some rather distinct artwork, but that was in large part due to their more distinct audience of younger readers).
Perhaps most impressive is the way Smith renders the title character and his—well, here, its—kaiju kin. Smith's monsters look very much like giant, living, breathing monster suits, specifically those of the Showa era. It's only in the monsters' faces, their eyes and mouths, that they are drawn more lifelike and realistic than the creatures of the original cycle of the Godzilla film series; otherwise, the designs are quite faithful to the source material, to the point that they resemble the suits and marionettes come to life more than anything else.
(How faithful is Smith's design work? Well, in one panel featuring the quadrupedal Anguirus, the monster is drawn with the knees of its back legs on the ground, in the posture of a crawling baby rather than that of an actual four-legged animal; this is because, of course, that is the way that Anguirus was depicted in the films. It's not until later, when the monster curls itself up into a spiny ball to attack an opponent, that it adopts a dynamism that would have been unthinkable in one of the early films.)
The story, by writer Andrew MacLean of Head Lopper fame (who also provides rather striking variant covers for each issue), is probably best described as serviceable.
He engages with ideas of Gaian environmentalism, including speculation that humanity may be seen as a sort of fever or infection attacking the earth, and various monsters as the world's defense system against them, ideas that have occasionally surfaced in the Godzilla films over the decades. There's also a sub-plot involving an interpersonal conflict regarding the main protagonist and the idea of intergenerational trauma.
Despite these efforts though, MacLean's War For Humanity ultimately boils down to a monster comic about monsters fighting one another and, given the quality of Smith's artwork and his striking style, that's more than enough for a Godzilla miniseries-turned-graphic novel.
The aforementioned protagonist, Dr. Yuko Honda, had a childhood run-in with Hedorah, and just when it seemed all was lost, Godzilla arrived on the scene to battle the smog monster and save her. That incident would inspire her to devote her life to the field of kaiju studies, travelling the world to give lectures about how Godzilla is humanity's savior, protecting us from other, worse giant monsters.
As for those giant monsters, mankind seems to have made peace with them in the world of this particular story, with governments and militaries closely monitoring them during their regular migrations.
The arrival of a brand-new giant monster on the scene causes absolute chaos, though. This is Zoospora, a titanic monster that dwarfs all the others, an eye-less green giant with Biollante-like tentacles that seems to be made entirely out of fungus (You can see it towering over the other characters on the cover above).
The newcomer attacks existing kaiju from Toho's stable, pinning them down with its vines and then vomiting some sort of viscous black liquid into their open mouths and then leaving just as suddenly. After the attacks, the monster victims develop the swirly eyes of a hypnotized cartoon character, drool black liquid, and go on violent rampages.
Honda is recruited into an elite team to deal with the new threat, one consisting of a diverse group of Hollywood stereotypes: Annoying (but kinda hot?) billionaire tech bro, tough Michelle Rodriguez-type soldier, nervous genius, etc. Her plan is, of course, to get Godzilla to defend them from Zoospora and his growing gang of converted monsters...but Godzilla seems content to just chill on Monster Island with Minilla.
Following an unlikely lead, the team consults a bizarre green face growing out of the walls of a cave in Tibet, a creature said to be able to communicate with kaiju. It is this face that tells Honda that Godzilla is not only indifferent to humanity but actually wants Zoospora and the other monsters to wipe them all out, for the good of the earth.
Plan B? Use a M.O.G.U.E.R.A. to force Godzilla into the fight. By the climax, Godzilla and our heroes piloting the M.O.G.U.E.R.A. battle against Zoospora and possessed monsters Gorosaurus, Anguirus, Manda, Rodan and Mothra (Ebirah also makes a brief, two-page appearance, fighting Godzilla on Monster Island).
I honestly can't recommend the book highly enough to Godzilla fans...or fans of fantastic comics art in general. In fact, if you're not a Godzilla fan, this comic is strong enough that it just might convert you.
(While we're on the subject of
War For Humanity, Tegan O'Neil wrote a rather long but very good review of the series for
The Comics Journal, one that puts the Godzilla character in its proper, current pop culture context, including a look at Godzilla's prevalence in American comics at the moment. The piece also features plenty of artwork, if you want to check out Smith's versions of the Shobijin, Mothra, Ebirah and the other monsters. You can read it
here.)
Komi Can't Communicate Vol 31 (Viz Media) Manga-ka Tomohito Oda sure respects Tadano and Komi's privacy. In this volume they seem to kiss on purpose for the first time, but it's not presented all that clearly. They are drawn in an extreme longshot standing face-to-face and extremely close together, and, in the following panel, from the neck down. A few panels later, Tadano stutters, "D-Did w-we j-j-just k-k-kiss???" Komi says nothing for a few panels, then tilts her head weirdly, with a narration box telling us "Komi is confused too!!"
