2022 Comic Reading Challenge

[TheRealDetectiveChimp]

DC: The New Frontier 1-6

My second favorite DC Comic! Last night I made a Chimpview on it.
DC: The New Frontier Chimpview

10/10

Teen Titans GO! (2003-) 1-55

I’m on a quest to read every single tie-in comic to a DC cartoon so I can rank them all, because the world needs to know.

I didn’t like this at first, but out of nowhere the series became pretty good around issue 23. I like the action, they all are like posable action figures with ten times the dynamicness of any human being.

The absolute best thing in this comic though, was the Kwiz Kid. The Kwiz Kid is the greatest original character created by the show or the comic. This comic would be a 5/10, but this one off character is good enough to where I bump it up by half a point.

5.5/10

241 comics read so far

[scoop001]

This week I read 102 comics. Year to date is now 1372.

[BatJamags]

JSA Classified: 13 issues from 2007
Well, this title certainly exists.

• Skin Trade, by Scott Beatty: … No, hang on, I need a separate dropdown for this train wreck.

Rant

My impression of Beatty to this point had been that he wasn’t great but he was okay, and… the premise of Doctor Mid-Nite investigating a black market for metahuman organ theft run by the actress whose body the Ultra-Humanite stole? That deserves to be cool.

So why is the execution so ■■■■■■■ awful?!

So, first of all, there’s the mass mutilation of a large group of B-list heroes, because, y’know, Infinite Crisis wasn’t enough. I get that nobody was really using, say, Argus, but what’s the point here?

And, I guess proving that face removal isn’t limited to Batbooks, poor Sigrid Nansen got skinned. We, charmingly, get to see some of the operation. This, by the way, is two years before Tasmanian Devil got turned into a rug by Prometheus. I bring this up because in addition to DC apparently having something against the Global Guardians, Icemaiden and Tasmanian Devil are also, unless I’m missing something, the first bisexual and gay DC heroes, respectively. Isn’t that charming?

Pieter also summarizes the Ultra-Humanite transferring his brain into Delores Winters’ body with a quip along the lines of “I guess he wanted to feel pretty.” You know, because this wasn’t awful enough yet, I guess.

Oh, and then this happens:

That’s right, apparently they harvested the Phantom Lady’s boobs. (Dee Tyler, I’d guess, since Sandy and Stormy Knight were both shown to be in one piece roughly concurrent to this. And here I thought her death was already uncomfortably sexualized, but I guess if you scrape the bottom barrel enough, you’ll find it’s stacked on top of another entire barrel.) Ignoring, for the moment, how disgusting that is, what possible reason would they have for this when normal plastic surgery exists?

But also, that’s disgusting.

(That’s our villain, “Endless Winter,” walking by in Sigrid’s skin in the background, by the way. A lot of wordcount is spent belaboring how hot she is, as she wears someone else’s surgically removed skin.)

• Best Served Cold, by Walter Simonson: Gah, Blackfire is still such a wasted character.

• Nightfall, by J.T. Krul: This wasn’t awful, just kinda there. Pieter’s kinda arbitrarily skeptical about the idea of a vampire for a guy on a team with three immortals, a psychic who gets prophetic dreams, and a time traveler.

• Johnny Mimic, by Tony Bedard: yeah i still don’t care about s.h.a.d.e. or father time

• Fight Game, by Frank Tieri: Pretty good. Victor Gover’s looking awfully pale, though. I almost wonder if they changed their minds about which Sportsmaster they were using at the last minute, since Wildcat seems to know him, references his being “old” (Gover hadn’t been used since Ostrander’s Suicide Squad, but with comic book time, he’d probably still be in his prime), he’s drawn like Crusher Crock, and he’s only named in a couple places, and there just as “Vic.”

• Problem Solved, by Fabian Nicieza: okay this is mostly good, but don’t announce that something can’t be done because a rule of magic nobody’s ever mentioned before says so and then tell me that’s not a cop out

• Mister Horrific, by Arvid Nelson: Oh, goody, more villains who got rejected from Captain America for being too anachronistic. I wrote that after I read the first issue, and at that point in time I was being hyperbolic. How naïve I was. Also, didn’t anybody notice a space station on the moon for sixty years? Not even the neighbors over in the JLA Watchtower?

Green Lantern: 8 issues from 1967
Writers: John Broome (5 issues, 3 half-issue stories), Gardner Fox (1 issue, 1 half-issue story)
So, this is the “Hal packs up and leaves his supporting cast to go on a road trip and become an insurance adjuster in Washington state” era. Like, that’s not a joke. It sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. That happens.

That honestly tops anything else I can relay here.

More seriously, in some ways, there are suddenly subplots and climactic arcs and cliffhangers and a lot of other storytelling devices that didn’t seem to be on the table at all in the strictly-formula stories from a year or two previously. But in other ways, none of it is all that good.

There’s the, um, interesting idea to have a major two-part story about an army of dangerous interstellar criminals who kill an unspecified but large number of Green Lanterns (in the first time this title has actually referenced any sort of intentional killing being successfully committed, unless I’m forgetting something minor) have as its big bad… a time-traveling Al Capone pastiche who’s drawn to look like Edward G. Robinson???

This being roughly the same time as Alfred “dying” and returning as “the Outsider,” I’m beginning to discover that the late '60s were this bizarre period that was somehow both the Silver and Bronze Ages in some kind of quantum superposition. Like, the weird Silver Age tropes haven’t really stopped or especially declined in prominence, even as they’re suddenly sharing space with a different kind of storytelling. The two ages are like Earth-One and Earth-Two, vibrating at different frequencies in the same physical space.
309.

[boodikhan]

Its the Rise of the Haney era, man. Some truly madcap, yet deadly serious stuff all around.

[TornadoSoup]

@PatJamags

Skin Trade

Okay, so, um… what the ■■■■?

[BatJamags]

i know, right

[boodikhan]

[BatJamags]

Blue Beetle: 12 issues from 2007
Writers: John Rogers (8 issues, co-writer on 3 issues), Keith Giffen (co-writer on 3 issues), J. Torres (1 issue)
The entire cast of this book is still ludicrously committed to withholding plot-critical information from each other, only occasionally for any discernable reason.

Hm…

… All right, book, you got on my good side, but I’m watching you.

Seriously, though, I recall not being sold on this book when I read the ’06 issues, but I feel like it’s getting steadily better as it goes on. It had me laughing out loud in a few places.
321.

Green Lantern: 8 issues from 1968
Writers: Gardner Fox (4 issues), John Broome (1 issue), Mike Friedrich (1 issue), Denny O’Neil (2 issues)
Guy’s introduction is so random. Like, they make this whole production of establishing there’s this, well, other guy, but don’t, like, do anything with him. It’s all “Hypothetically, someone else could have been Green Lantern, but it wouldn’t have mattered even if it did happen, which it didn’t.”

Broome was so active in the previous year and seemed to be building up to some kind of long-term arc, and then is suddenly mostly gone again in favor of Fox and, suddenly, a few other writers. Weird.

Nothing special happens in these two early guest issues from O’Neil (I’m not up to the Green Lantern/Green Arrow stuff, these are just episodic stories that are as normal as anything that happens in the Evergreen City era), but they’re—unsurprisingly—a welcome improvement in basic panel-to-panel writing quality.
329.

[boodikhan]

I’ve got trades #2-8 sittin on the shelf(not sure what happened to #1), so I’m going for a DMZ read-thru. The show, I’ll give it a shot, but goin by the trailer looks pretty removed in all but concept from the comic.

[BatJamags]

Checkmate: 12 issues from 2007
Writers: Greg Rucka (6 issues, co-writer on 6 issues), Nunzio Defilippis (co-writer on 2 issues), Christina Weir (co-writer on 2 issues), Judd Winick (co-writer on 3 issues), Eric S. Trautmann (co-writer on 1 issue)
I literally don’t care what happens. The protagonists are horrible people who deserve to lose. Like, moreso than usual for a Rucka book, which is saying something. Sometimes it tries to fake you out by making you think they’re going to do something evil and then having them not, and it technically works because I cannot tell what the difference is supposed to be between those times and the times when they’re genuinely conducting mass summary executions or whatever.

How does this “conscription” thing work, though? Like, everyone treats it as a given that Checkmate can apparently just arbitrarily compel anyone to work for them, with no clear explanation of what power they have to enforce these conscriptions.

Oh, man. I am dying at one thing, though. The book logo exists in-universe. They use it in their PowerPoints. Incredible.

(Not an intentional joke, mind you. Rucka would have to have a sense of humor first.)

I am additionally sick to death of Bane breaking people’s backs. No, seriously. There is so much more you can do with this character, and every writer is just like “Bane, Bane… I need a Bane plot… Well, he broke somebody’s back one time, so… what if he breaks someone’s back again? I’m a genius.”

And don’t get me started on the utterly inexplicable timeline tangle of the Judomaster legacy. It’s insane. So, here’s the thing: the original Judomaster, real name (I am not making this up) Rip Jagger, was created in 1965… as a period piece taking place during World War II. If any character at all should be backdated to then, it’s him. And yet, in Infinite Crisis’s infinite thirst for C-list blood, he turns up not only still alive but still in his prime to get killed by Bane. This is a dude whose superpower is being good at judo. Not only is that guy active in the present, he apparently also has a twenty-something, ostensibly non-immortal son. Who is also not the next Judomaster, which, fair enough, but first, what happened to the second Judomaster (who was a minor character and never even named, but you could at least kill him off-panel or something), and second, what the hell is Sonia Sato’s connection to literally any of these people? It’s nuts.

And, like, aside from being a Perfectly Generic Object, Tommy is harmless here and Rucka didn’t initiate most of these plot points. But why would you willingly inflict this continuity train wreck on yourself?

And the team of Rucka and Winick on this boring Outsiders crossover I’m not reading the other half of? I’m not sure the world’s ready for this level of one-handed writing.

At least the most obnoxious character got maimed, so some good came out of it.

So, basically, it’s turning into the other monarchs versus Waller. And given that Waller hasn’t authorized any massacres recently (No, I do not intend to let that go), I’m having trouble registering her as the bad guy here.
341.

Green Lantern: 8 issues from 1969
*Writers: John Broome (3 issues, 2 half-issue stories), Gardner Fox (2 half-issue stories), Denny O’Neil (2 issues), Mike Friedrich (1 issue)
OK, this makes ten years of this book. And it’s kinda lapsing back into having no idea what it’s trying to do again? Hal’s suddenly a toy salesman now.

also in issue #70, green lantern kills a space monster by feeding it its own poop

just thought that bears pointing out
349.

[BatJamags]

Shadowpact: 10 issues from 2007
Writer: Bill Willingham
They apparently stopped digitizing this title like halfway through it, so I guess that’s it for this?

And it was… actually kinda getting good, too? It’s still sometimes kind of first-drafty in terms of dialogue and pacing, but I don’t think there’s anything drastically wrong with any of it. I was even a little disappointed to hit the last of the digitized issues.
359.

Green Lantern: 8 issues from 1970
Writers: Mike Friedrich (1 issue), John Broome (1 issue), Denny O’Neil (6 issues)
The original stretch of this book ends on a bit of a sputter. At least there’s a decent Sinestro fight in Friedrich’s two-parter.

Moving along to the Hard-Travelin’ Heroes, gotta check in with one thing. Guardian count update: There are twelve of ‘em now.

Anyway, this is, like, legitimately really bad. Like, I get that it was doing stuff nobody’d really seen before, and I’m used to O’Neil being a little preachy sometimes, but I’m also used to him, uh, making sense? Having characters with consistent motivations? Showing a bit of nuance? Having a point?

This does at least deliver some further developments in the emergence of rudimentary character arc-like constructs, I guess. Mainly of the “exaggerated flaw spontaneously manifests and is addressed within an issue or two” species (e.g. the first couple issues establish that Green Lantern is mindlessly obedient to literally anyone who seems to have any kind of authority (provoking numerous hyperbolic Nazi comparisons from Green Arrow, class act that he is), but then he changes his mind just as quickly and doesn’t do more than vaguely reference it as a past problem in subsequent issues), but arcs they technically are nonetheless.

So… yeah. Honestly can’t believe this is coming from the same guy at the same time as O’Neil’s Batman stuff.
367.

[Lois_Sane]

@BunnyJamags

They apparently stopped digitizing this title like halfway through it, so I guess that’s it for this?

And it was… actually kinda getting good, too? It’s still sometimes kind of first-drafty in terms of dialogue and pacing, but I don’t think there’s anything drastically wrong with any of it. I was even a little disappointed to hit the last of the digitized issues.

Oh, man, yeah… I was not a huge fan of this book at all.
Felt like it took the stuff from Day of Vengeance, oversimplfied everything, created a mustache-twirly ultra-villain (named Dr. Gotham, but he’s in Chicago), and basically turned this interesting concept of teaming-up of mystical b- and c-listers into a weird cartoon with terrible dialogue.

[BatJamags]

The villains did seem pretty weak. Doctor Gotham didn’t really have much going for him other than “powerful” and “confusingly named.” I wanted to like the sort of evil counterparts to Shadowpact from the earliest arcs, but most of them just kind of vanish out of the plot and the one who doesn’t is just this Gotham guy’s sidekick.

I did still enjoy some of the protagonists’ dynamics, and Blue Devil’s subplot in particular seemed interesting. And there were some moments like when it looks like Nightmaster is dying or trying to stop the volcano that had some good tension.

I guess part of what made Day of Vengeance work was the sense of stakes and fighting a losing battle, and this title only recaptured that intermittently.

[BatJamags]

You know, especially with Nightshade and Enchantress, this team is kinda magic Suicide Squad. Only, Day of Vengeance is Ostrander/Yale Suicide Squad and the Shadowpact title is modern Suicide Squad.

[Lois_Sane]

Yeah, Danny did have a decent subplot.

And this is one of those I-know-now things, but the confluence of Nightmasters realm and the Land of Nightshades should’ve been a lot more interesting. But that may have been due to my overall ignorance of the source material at the time.

I’m with you, though. I liked the way Shadowpact gelled initially, and then the ongoing made them a little… goofy, I thought.

I will say, again knowing what I know now, it’s… really odd that Nightshade teamed up with Enchantress, and that Enchantress was presented more on a range of mischievious witch to a Xanadu-like mage and team mom.

[BatJamags]

@Lois1

I will say, again knowing what I know now, it’s… really odd that Nightshade teamed up with Enchantress, and that Enchantress was presented more on a range of mischievious witch to a Xanadu-like mage and team mom.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure if I was, like, missing intervening appearances that might explain this? But she’s definitely not really in line with earlier material and there’s oddly little reference to her history with Eve. I guess the idea is that it’s June’s personality driving even as she uses Enchantress’s powers?

[Lois_Sane]

Yeah, I’m not sure what June’s trajectory was after Suicide Squad.

I do know, after reading it just recently, Jared Stevens casually expelled the Succubus from Eve in the first issue of L.A.W., and the act was supposedly supposed to unlock more of Eve’s powers but leave her emotionless. she also has an “Uncle Yves.”

So, maybe, I dunno… Maybe the Succubus found her way back to June after that?

[TornadoSoup]

@Lois1

Jared Stevens casually expelled the Succubus from Eve in the first issue of L.A.W.

This is one of the most “DC in the late 1990s” sentences possible.

[BatJamags]

The All-New Atom: 12 issues from 2007
Writers: Gail Simone (11 issues), Roger Stern (1 issue)
The first arc was a bit of a mess in terms of doing that thing some books do where it’s trying too hard to not make sense? But overall, this is a good book. I’m liking it more as it goes along.

… Wait a second. The premise here is that Ray Palmer is mysteriously missing and a new guy takes the Atom name in his place. There are various questions about whether Ray may in fact have returned in disguise.

It’s not exactly Adam Cray, but it supports my thesis that Gail Simone is better the more ideas she’s pulling from Ostrander/Yale-era Suicide Squad.
379.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow: 5 issues from 1971
Writer: Denny O’Neil
So… let’s recap this first issue. Sinestro has a sister, who is a witch, who is in contact with another realm consisting of female mythological figures, particularly Medusa ruling over the harpies and… the Amazons???

And at the end, Green Arrow says he thinks the whole thing was an illusion, announcing that “I don’t believe in . . . Amazons, for Pete’s sake!”

Um, guys?

I know Wonder Woman was in her mod period (thanks for that one too, O’Neil), but really? I would have expected the general status and disposition of the DC universe’s Amazons to be common knowledge for writers and JLA members alike. Especially writers who, again, had written the Wonder Woman title.

Green Arrow seems to get into fights with birds a lot in this title. Normal ones, mythological ones, snow ones, arguably pretty ones if you count roasting him for being dumb. Maybe that’s why CW-Arrow has such a bizarre grudge against anything Birds of Prey-related.

The subsequent issues do show some actual improvement here, though. The plots feel a bit less wooden, and it’s good to see Carol being relevant-ish again and Hal finally revealing his identity to her. Though she is kind of… passive, even compared to her Silver Age characterization. There, she was largely only relevant re: relationship drama, but at least tended to make her own decisions for her own reasons within that context and was otherwise treated as a respected authority figure. Here she’s just kind of floating around doing damsel stuff.

Oh, huh, the elephant in the room? Right, the drug issues. Well, it’s a ‘70s anti-drug PSA and it reads like one. On the positive side, I admire the balls of using a pre-existing character to humanize it, and the wordless sequence with Roy and Dinah as he’s trying to go cold turkey is fantastic. On the negative side, Ollie comes off like even more of a royal prick than usual. I think it’s meant as a way of balancing some of the earlier stuff where Hal’s the naïve tool of authority and Ollie has to show him the error of his ways by having Ollie’s more judgmental or crusading habits go too far here. But the issue doesn’t seem entirely cognizant of just how bad Ollie looks here. He neglects his son (basically), and then hits him and throws him out over a drug problem that the narrative takes pains to indicate is a direct result of that neglect. Roy chews him out, but the narration seems to treat this as some kind of proud-parent win for Ollie that Roy went clean.

(Also, Dinah is the real MVP, but that’s nothing unusual.)

(Also also, Hal is technically in this story, but he mostly just sort of stands around occasionally acting surprised by things. His interaction with Roy is basically “We’ll get you some help, buddy! Dinah, please help him,” which is somewhat better than Ollie but not terribly productive.)
384.

[BatJamags]

Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters (2006 volume): 4 issues from 2007
Writers: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti
Oh my god shut up

That will be all.

… You know, usually I do find more to say when I make that joke, but I’ve actually got nothin’ this time.
388.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow: 2 issues from 1972
Writers: Denny O’Neil, Elliot Maggin (backup in 1 issue)
Only two issues because this title got… kinda canceled-ish? At least, the characters got relegated to a backup in The Flash (none of the relevant stretch is digitized, so I couldn’t read it if I wanted to) and the next issue of this title wasn’t published until ’76. We’ll be skipping through the ‘70s pretty fast here between that and the fact that like nothing is digitized from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Actually, now that I poke around at it, if you count the Flash-backup era as part of it, O’Neil does seem to have had an unbroken ten-year run on this book. Weird that people only ever talk about the first couple years of it.

Uh, anyway. The actual issues. John Stewart’s introduction is a bit hamfisted but solid in concept. The last issue is kind of a mess, more in line with those over-the-top first couple issues where nobody makes any sense.
390.