Sunday Reviews

With being on holiday for a couple of weeks and having to catch up with everything, Sunday Reviews have been a bit scarce for a while. Let’s see if we can get back into it, shall we?

BABYTEETH #16

It’s five years later and we get to see just what Satan’s made of the place since he brought his demonic horde through. Sadie and her rag-tag crew – including Clark the Anti-Christ – have somehow muddled through before deciding to return to their childhood home where they meet someone we haven’t see for a while.

Nice to have this series back and being as fun and crazy as ever.

BLACK HAMMER/JUSTICE LEAGUE: HAMMER OF JUSTICE #3

The League interrogate Abraham Slam and the others, while Batman and Cyborg work at getting out of the farm. Elsewhere in the Para-Zone, Colonel Weird and John Stewart view the final fate of the Flash . . . with surprising results. And Golden Gail finds a surprising ally when she breaks out of the League’s cage.

Another fine issue of this crossover – worth it for the interrogation scenes alone.

CHASTITY #1

Chastity, fresh from hunting and killing some vampires, heads to an audition for a burlesque show where she finds a bunch of other actresses, all waiting for different auditions. Too late she realises the room’s drugged and the others fall asleep; when the bad guys arrive, they manage to overcome her as well.

I enjoyed Leah Williams’s work on BARBARELLA/DEJAH THORIS so thought I’d give this mini-series a go even though I knew next to nothing about the character of Chastity Jack. This sets things up and introduces her nice and quick, but it’s a bit lightweight. I guess we see where we go from here.

HAWKMAN #16

In order to regain their shadows, Hawkman and the Shade have journeyed to the Shadowlands to face the Shadow Thief, but the Shade recognises that something has changed within Hawkman – he’s more vicious than he’s been in a long time.

Venditti writes a good, fast paced issue with enough of a change in Hawkman to make you realise something’s off. A good issue of a solid series.

JUSTICE LEAGUE ODYSSEY #13

On an abandoned Zamaron space station, a small group try to summon the New Gods to go up against Darkseid but what they get is Blackfire and the corpse of Green Lantern Jessica Cruz, whom Darkseid killed at the end of the previous issue. She doesn’t stay dead for long, though, as Darkseid’s own Omega Force appears to have healed and empowered her which comes in handy when they’re attacked.

I’d be surprised if anyone thought Cruz would stay dead but she’s come back with an intriguing change. Interesting to see where they go from here, but hey – Red Lantern Dex-Starr’s joined the team!

100 Issues Ago May 2011

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?

I had plenty of problems with Judd Winick’s writing on both JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST and POWER GIRL that he was writing at the time of this issue, but I had to pull this one out for this episode of 100 Issues Ago mainly for the cover and Wonder Woman’s trousers – or pants as they say in America.

Jim Lee had redesigned Wonder Woman’s costume and, I think, there was some new storyline about how people either forgot who she was, or there was a different timeline or something where she hadn’t been around – this was pre-New 52 so I don’t think it hung around for long. But the thing that made the internet go crazy was the fact that he gave her long pants in the redesign.

I vaguely remembered writing about it on my old blog and so did a quick search and found I’d captured some comments from DC’s old blog The Source (no longer available) which summarised the reaction:

disconnectedsmile says on June 29th, 2010 at 6:37 pm :

she didn’t need to be redesigned for the modern era.
Wonder Woman is a global icon. you can’t change her look anymore than you can change Batman’s or Superman’s.
i don’t know who that’s supposed to be in that costume, but it sure isn’t Wonder Woman.

thebigburton says on June 29th, 2010 at 6:45 pm :

This has to be a joke. I am literally sick to my stomach right now. This is a joke. You CANNOT destroy my reason for loving comics and superheroes like this. Not even for a single issue. Please stop this NOW!

ipstenu says on June 29th, 2010 at 6:51 pm :

This had BETTER freakin’ end with Steve Trevor stepping out of the shower and it’s all a dream.
I was willing to lay the One More Day Spider-Man fiasco on Marvel, but now this?
No. I’m sorry, JMS, I love you for B5, but this is … this is horrific and wrong.
No.
Bad.
Done.

thebigburton says on June 29th, 2010 at 7:01 pm :

I actually just threw up… how dare you do this. THIS IS DISGRACEFUL. I hope you lose the rights to WW. I am now done collecting comics. GOOD JOB!

I said at the time and it still cracks me up that “thebigburton” tells us he’s feeling ill at 6:45, goes (hopefully) to the bathroom, throws up, then comes back to tell everyone at 7:01!

Ah, comic fandom . . .