Saturday, October 08, 2011

One week later Reviews: Part 3

Okay, this is more like two weeks later now, but I didn't get around to reading half of them for a week after they came out, partly because the poor quality titles are dragging down my interest in the whole enterprise, and partly because I found some European comics I'm enjoying more.  I'll maybe come back to them in another post.

Batman: Batman for architects. Bruce Wayne is building some skyscrapers, but we'll throw in a random fight scene to remind you what comic you are reading.

Birds of Prey: Black Canary and her bird themed sidekick fight some invisible guys in a church, with a car.

Catwoman: I so wished I'd never broken my rule by reading any Winnick.  Is this fanfic? It reads like fanfic.

Green Lantern Corps: John and Guy can't get boring jobs on Earth that they don't need or have time for, and bad things are killing off lots of aliens (and Lanterns) we've never met.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Better than Legion Lost, since I did read it to the end, but I can't remember a thing about it, so not much better.

Nightwing: Nightwing, about a foot taller than seen in this week's Batman, jumps around some rooftops and.. does stuff, I guess.

Supergirl: Supergirl crashes to Earth in a meteor and fights some guys in battlesuits.  That is actually all that happens in it.  Seriously. Is this supposed to get me interested enough to read issue 2?

Wonder Woman: This is Wonder Woman done as a Vertigo title. There's lots of symbolism and references to Greek mythology and horses' heads. I don't remember it too clearly, but unlike most of this week's selection, I am interested enough by it to want to reread it.

After three weeks the plots are getting so samey.  So many of them involve some mysterious threat that is nastily killing off NPC's while our hero or heroes are off having some exposition, until they finally bump into each other on the final page.  The mysterious threats are largely interchangeable, because it's not like they'd want to give anything away in the first issue.

A couple of titles get the fight started early, a couple have fight scenes that appear unrelated to anything, included only to remind you that you're reading a superhero comic.  Some do it better than others. but none of them that I've read stray very far from the template.