Category New 52

Sep 24 2013

Action Comics 23.3: Lex Luthor

lex luthor 23.3Today, Shelby and guest writer Dad — er, Pete, are discussing Action Comics 23.3: Lex Luthor, originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

villain divShelby: If there’s ever been a character defined by ego, it’s Lex Luthor. He’s the classic evil genius; unimaginably intelligent and selfish to the bone. Lex Luthor’s primary concern is Lex Luthor, and there’s no moral code he won’t break to get his way. He’s the perfect nemesis for Superman because they are complete opposites. Superman uses the power he has to give, Luthor uses it to take. Writer Charles Soule, in the guise of a “day-in-the-life-of” piece gives us a glimpse of what the world would be like without a Superman to provide balance against Luthor. The results are grim and rather brilliant.

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Sep 24 2013

Detective Comics 23.3: Scarecrow

Alternating Currents: Detective Comics 23.3: Scarecrow, Drew and Greg

Today, Drew and guest writer Greg Smith are discussing Detective Comics 23.3: Scarecrow, originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

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Drew: Peter Tomasi is an ideal utility player — he’s able to synthesize and adapt the ideas other writers introduce in flagship titles into something that can stand up on its own. He regularly turns what could be an unwieldy Frankenstein monster into something beautiful, so long as he’s given the space to do so. It turns out that last caveat is rather important — without appropriate time to develop the ideas, he’s forced to strip them down to the connective tissue they are, yielding stories that feel rushed and obligatory. Unfortunately, Detective Comics 23.3: Scarecrow falls firmly into this latter category, squandering some etherial, appropriately Scarecrow-y Szymon Kudranski art on a strange housekeeping issue. Continue reading →

Sep 23 2013

Green Lantern 23.3: Black Hand

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Today, Patrick and (guest writer) Mark are discussing Green Lantern 23.3: Black Hand originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

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Patrick: Look, we all know we’ve reached a point of over-saturation when it comes to zombie stories. World War Z was the surprise anti-flop of the summer; The Last of Us taught us that video games know how to make us feel; AMC announced that we’re going to be getting a spin-off to The Walking Dead. If we look back into the recent past, the examples are basically everywhere: Dead Rising, Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, and every conceivable adaptation of The Walking Dead. Zombies have some kind of inherent draw, but, like… aren’t you kinda getting sick of them? Continue reading →

Sep 23 2013

Justice League 23.3: Dial E

Alternating Currents: Justice League 23.3: Dial E, Taylor and Drew

Today, Taylor and Drew are discussing Justice League 23.3: Dial E, originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of DC’s Villain Month. Click here for our coverage of Villain Month.

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Taylor: The encore of a show is always a little awkward. With most shows you attend nowadays an encore is almost expected. Gone are the days of the earned encore, where and artist actually had to earn the audience’s appreciation and rewarded them with a few extra bits of music.  This has been replaced with instances where artists look a trifle bored with an encore, seemingly wishing that they could just retire to their bus or greenroom. The situation has become so problematic that some artists have gone so far as to state they won’t be doing an encore no matter how much the audience claps or yells. It’s hard to determine precisely what brought us to this point, but the fact remains that the encore has become not the exception, but the expected. Given this state of affairs, I was curious to see how the issue 23.3 of the The Justice League: Dial E (part of the Villains month event) would be treated by writer China Mieville. Would this be an artist merely pandering to the crowd or an artist excited by the chance to once again share his art with his fans? Continue reading →

Sep 23 2013

Batman and Robin 23.3: Ra’s al Ghul

Alternating Currents: Batman and Robin 23.3: Ra's al Ghul, Drew and SpencerToday, Drew and Spencer are discussing Batman and Robin 23.3: Ra’s al Ghul, originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

villain divDrew: I’m not sure I’ve ever “gotten” Ra’s al Ghul. Sure, as the immortal leader of a criminal empire, he’s a great villain, but I never fully understood why he’s a Batman villain. The best Batman rogues highlight some important element of Bruce Wayne: Joker’s gleeful chaos reflects Batman’s brooding order, for example. Without a gimmicky hook, I was always left thinking that Ra’s was meant to highlight Bruce’s mortality, which is kind of a defining characteristic, but one that is brought up every time he’s put in moral peril, so not really specific to Ra’s. With Batman and Robin 23.3: Ra’s al Ghul, writer James Tynion IV finds that parallel in the way both men wield myths to make them stronger, turning in a character-defining secret origin that actually builds on the character’s history, rather than simply rehashing it. Continue reading →

Sep 19 2013

The Flash 23.3: Rogues

rogues 23.3Today, Patrick and Scott are discussing The Flash 23.3: Rogues, originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of DC’s Villain Month. Click here for our coverage of Villain Month.

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Patrick: I wouldn’t say that Captain Cold is an alcoholic, but he does drink. Occasionally, he drinks to escape, but he also drinks to celebrate. It’s a dimension of who he his, but it doesn’t define him, which is so rare in comics. If someone’s a drinker, that’s probably some horrible vice that pigeonholes them into being abusive, inattentive or otherwise absent. Hell, Taylor and I just posted a piece of Casey Jones’ alcoholic father in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles yesterday. Beer is a consistent factor in this issue, it sees Cold through despair, it helps him unwind, and it’s even a sign of hospitality. Cold’s boozing habits are nuanced and resist simple definition, just like the man himself. Continue reading →

Sep 18 2013

Action Comics 23.2: Zod

Alternating Currents: Action Comics 23.2: Zod, Drew and Jennie

Today, Drew and guest writer Jennie Seidewand are discussing Action Comics 23.2: Zod, originally released September 11th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

villain divDrew: The final shot of “Face Off,” Breaking Bad‘s season 4 finale, is absolutely devastating, revealing exactly what lengths Walt was willing to go to in order to survive. It’s a paradigm-shifting twist, one that challenges much of what we thought we knew about the character, and one that risks alienating the audience by keeping them in the dark. It’s an incredible feat that that reveal doesn’t fly Breaking Bad off of the rails — one that can largely be attributed to the fact that the series had long been about Walt’s lies and desperation, and about testing the audience’s sympathy for him. Writer Greg Pak employs a similar tactic in Action Comics 23.2: Zod, keeping the audience in the dark about Zod’s crimes until long after the fact. Unfortunately, without four seasons of incremental steps towards that crime, the reveal lacks any actual surprise. Continue reading →

Sep 18 2013

Teen Titans 23.1: Trigon

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Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Teen Titans 23.1: Trigon, originally released September 11th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

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Shelby: Demons, am I right? They are pretty much the most concentrated form of evil out there, short of Satan himself. There are a few demons floating around the DCU, so it’s no surprise one of them would get an issue this month. The only thing I knew about Trigon going into this issue was that he fathered Raven, and I was intrigued by what his origin would be. Would he be something along the Christian lines of Hell and minions of Satan, or would it be a more galactic demonic force sort of situation? Whatever it was, I knew it would be unsavory, in a dark magic sort of way, which is usually right up my alley. Unfortunately, I was not prepared for just how unsavory it would turn out to be.
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Sep 17 2013

Batman and Robin 23.2: Court of Owls

court of owls 23.2Today, Shelby and Scott are discussing Batman and Robin 23.2: Court of Owls, originally released September 11th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

villain divShelby: For being a new villain in the DC universe, the Court of Owls finds itself very firmly rooted in Gotham’s history. They’ve existed since the beginning, secretly running the city behind the scenes, shaping it into the image they want. They claim to be Owls,  but operate more like snakes: hiding and striking from the shadows, fleeing when the going gets tough. That is the lesson James Tynion is teaching us in this Villains Month issue; the Court of the Owls will always retreat to the shadows when faced with an unbeatable adversary. And those shadows go a lot deeper than you might think.

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Sep 17 2013

Superman 23.2: Brainiac

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Today, Mikyzptlk and guest writer Mogo are discussing Superman 23.2: Brainiac, originally released September 11th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

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Mikyzptlk: Hands down, the best kind of villain is a complex one. Long gone are the days when it was acceptable to portray a villain as a mustache-twirling evil-doer wanting nothing more than to do evil for the sake of evil. Today’s villains need a reason to get up in the morning and do what they do. Villain’s Month is a great opportunity to explore what those reasons are, and it has had a varying amount of success with that so far. Superman 23.2 goes to certain lengths to give Brainiac some new motivations. Unfortunately, it falls a bit short, leaving me just a tad disappointed.  Continue reading →