Month: January 2022

100 Issues Ago September 2013

Teased for months with the Trinity War crossover in the JUSTICE LEAGUE titles, the first big, line-wide crossover event since the launch of the New 52 landed – FOREVER EVIL, where the bad guys would win and take out the League, leaving the handful of apparently honourable bad guys (principally the Flash’s Rogues) to strike back and take over.

Of course, that’s all months down the line – this issue is simply the aftermath of the arrival of Earth-Three’s Crime Syndicate where they take out the world’s communications grid, and assemble Earth’s villains as their Secret Society, their army to take over the world. Oh, and they unmask Nightwing on live TV for . . . reasons, I guess. Maybe showing they can find anyone and everyone connected to the heroes, so telling them not to bother to retaliate.

It’s grim, and dark, and not much fun at all.

Elsewhere, the rest of my DC titles were all about showcasing the villains – each series had issues of x.1 or x.2 this month where the heroes were side-lined and their bad guys got the spotlight because of FOREVER EVIL.

Outside of DC it was still FATALE from Image and THE STAR WARS from Dark Horse, the adaptation of George Lucas’ original rough draft.

Untold Tales #490 Batwoman vs Harbinger

It’s a special Crisis crossover as Harbinger comes to recruit the Golden Age Batwoman to aid in the fight against the Anti-Monitor!

Ah, if only, eh?

Random Retrospective #1 – Reborn #4

Totally ripping off the idea from regular commenter Calvin Pitt over at Reporting on Marvels and Legends, I aim to have a weekly look back at a randomly selected issue/trade/whatever in my collection and REBORN #4 kicks things off.

I’ve never been a massive fan of Mark Millar but think I saw a preview for this series in, appropriately enough, PREVIEWS and the premise (everyone who dies goes to a magical/pseudo fantasy world where many of the people have powers) plus the art by Greg Capullo enticed me.

By issue 4 of the 6 issue mini-series, Bonnie is on a quest to find her husband and she and her father have been captured by Il Mago, a lieutenant of the series’ big bad guy, Golgotha. Despite the sword and sorcery overtones, there are still guns and, this being Millar, her escape attempt is full of bullets and blood:

The attempt doesn’t work and Bonnie and her father end up waiting to be sacrificed on Black Wish Mountain where a human sacrifice grants a wish, the only condition being that you can only wish for something bad.

Before Il Mago and his troops kill both Bonnie and her father, he and all his troops are turned to ice by the newly arrived General Frosty who isn’t rescuing Bonnie, but rather wants to kill her himself because of what she had done to him in the real world:

If this version of an afterlife is real, I’m screwed as I’ve had all my cats neutered.

Before he can kill her, Bonnie turns the tables and makes a bad wish, wishing that Frosty and his troops were all dead. I can only hope that Bonnie made some sort of sacrifice in a previous issue because otherwise Millar is bending his own rules here as without that sacrifice, Bonnie’s wish shouldn’t have worked.

With Frost and his troops dead, she and her father continue on their quest to find her husband and overthrow Golgotha at the same time.

My memories of REBORN are mostly positive and I’m sure there was talk of a sequel series but, as far as I know, nothing ever came of that. It was collected, and if you find yourself with some spare cash, you could do worse than picking this up.

Untold Tales #489 Dejah Thoris and Black Widow

Stuck on Mars, Black Widow looks to have made the right ally. Pity the Green Martians.