Author: Gary

Sunday Reviews

HAWKMAN #11

London, and the rest of the world, is in danger from the return of the Deathbringers and even an army made up of Hawkman and all his previous incarnations from across time and space may not be enough to stop them.

This issue is basically a big fight scene as Hawkman and his former lieutenant Idamm go against each other while the other Hawkmen fight the Deathbringers, and finishes with a cliffhanger as London is about to fall. Its not bad – it looks good, as you’d expect with Bryan Hitch, but I’m left thinking this could have been condensed rather than dragged out.

JUSTICE LEAGUE ODYSSEY #8

Darkseid finally spills the beans about the real reason the League are here: he knew the Source Wall would be destroyed and that the Multiverse would fall and has spent millennia preparing for the event. He needs the League to recover a handful of relics so he can build Sepulkore, an ark to hold life and protect it from the end of the Multiverse. Before the League decide whether to work with him, Blackfire attacks, forcing Darkseid to send Cyborg off to find the first relic, while Azrael reveals a previously unknown power.

As I said for the previous issue, the unsteady start to this series seems to have smoothed out as Dan Abnett takes over and brings a less frenetic pace to the book while tying in, at least tangentially, with the main JUSTICE LEAGUE book and it’s big-scale story. Oh, and it looks great, too.

100 Issues Ago December 2010

I came across this “100 Issues Ago” panel in an old JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and thought I’d tidy it up and re-purpose it. If one month = one issue, what was I reading 100 Issues Ago?

This, my friends, is the power of free samples in action.

I think I saw a three or four page taster of this issue either in the back of another comic, or perhaps in Previews, but either way I was sold. I know nothing by Paul Cornell at the time and only had a vague idea of who Knight and Squire were thanks to some appearances in JLA by Grant Morrison, but the humorous tone – and decidedly British humour as well – displayed in the sample worked a treat for me so I picked this up.

I believe it’s been collected and if you haven’t read it but like your superheroes occasionally funny, then go for it.

Mash-Up #69

Three times a week I randomly generate two dates, hunt down covers from those dates and then mash them together and force the results on you lovely people, while giving a hat-tip to the wonderful Super-Team Family blog which has been doing this for years (and a lot better) on an almost daily basis.

This won’t be the first time Dr Strange tries to cure the Joker . . .

And hey, new number and date format as well!

Shazam! Review

A spoiler free review here for you, folks, so fear not.

Young Billy Batson is an orphan with a persistent habit of running away from foster homes before he ends up in his last chance home with loving and understanding foster parents and five other foster kids. Chief among them is Freddy, a wise-cracking, self-professed superhero expert and, while Billy tries not to get attached, he can’t help himself defending Freddy when the local bullies torment him. Billy runs and ends up being transported to the Rock of Eternity where the wizard Shazam grants him his powers to save the world from the Seven Deadly Sins that have been released by Dr Sivana.

Billy gets back to the real world and confides in Freddy that he has powers; Freddy’s response is to film Shazam testing those powers, uploading the clips to the net and basking in the views. Eventually, though, Sivana comes calling, wanting Shazam’s powers for himself. Cue various fights before the big finale where Shazam gets some help from some others and – no real surprise – defeats the bad guy.

Story-wise it’s not a great deal more than that, but that’s not saying it’s bad by any means. Most of the main characters have enough screen time; Rosa and Victor (the foster parents) seem to genuinely like their rag-tag family of kids; and the leads of Billy, Freddy and the adult Shazam are clearly having a blast – the last two particularly.

And it’s funny, too – not belly achingly hilarious, but enough to make me smile and chuckle plenty of times throughout; the big villain speech scene towards the end was great, for example. It’s clear that with this, Zack Snyder’s grimdark version of the DCU has finally been laid to rest, and not a moment too soon.

A little slow in some places, and a little too long in others, it’s still a fun film so gets three lightning bolts out of five.