Green Lantern: New Guardians #1

As I mentioned, the Green Lantern books have been mostly spared from the reboots and re-imaginings that the rest of the DC lineup got. Hell, most of the Lanterns didn't even get the eye-cancer-inducing new outfits that every other superhero got. So this book, featuring Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, picks up in the middle of everything that was going on last month. Which is good news if you like having 6 other types of Lantern Corps, each with their own color and emotion. But it's bad news if you don't like ideas that Geoff Johns came up with after losing a bet or after he realized he needed royalties from more GL-related books to pay off his coke dealer or whatever the situation may be.

The GL books, when done right, should be a good blend of sci-fi, superheroes, and police procedural. Writer Tony Bedard has a couple of really great science fiction comics, some of them even at DC, using superheroes, so he really has no excuse for not writing a great comic. What we got instead was an okay comic with some real structural flaws. Simple stuff like, indicating that a flashback is indeed a flashback, doesn't get done. There's a retard-tacular scene where our hero explains to a little kid that he's not the Hal Jordan Green Lantern. A) Why would this kid care B) Why would Kyle bother explaining anything? C) Why even make the comparison between the two GLs? Let each GL shine in their own book.

Tyler Kirkham's pencils are pretty good. The color work, which is pretty important in any book called GREEN Lantern, is mostly solid. It is weird that he colors Kyle's hair, which should be black, as gray. Is Kyle now a silver fox, in the grand tradition of George Clooney and Anderson Cooper? Here's hoping.

Voodoo #1

I'm gonna put this out there right at the start: If you want to see an alien/monster/demon stripper murder an FBI agent in the middle of a lap dance, you'll be pleased with Voodoo #1. If that's not your particular fetish, better luck next time.

This part would usually have a summary, but that first sentence really covers everything.

So, jumping ahead. Writer Ron Marz has, up to this point, made somewhat of a career making scantily-clad-female-lead cheesecake comics into stories that actually have some content in them. He's written dozens and dozens of issues of Witchblade over at Top Cow. This be Witchblade:

So, as you can see, alien stripper monster should be totally in his wheelhouse. And to Marz's credit, he tries to elevate the material. He tries to give the characters some depth, and does attempt to justify Voodoo (that'd be the demon dancer) a reason for working at a gentlemen's club. But it doesn't work. The art is good, as Sam Basri's previous assignment was Power Girl, so it's safe to assume he can draw some boobies. His art's wasted on a pointless comic, but it is pretty.

Buy again: Nah

New reader friendly: Friendly enough, Marz gets how to craft an intact comic, but there's just no real quality material to be found

Flash #1

So say you're Dan Didio.

Okay, cool, that's you.

You run DC Comics, you have a fun goatee and graphic violence fills you with a perverse glee. You know you want to reboot your entire line in an attempt to boost sales and streamline continuity. This is your chance to just present individual stories for what they are, and not as pieces of a delicious continuity-pie. But how best to do that? GOT IT. Bring back Barry Allen, the 2nd Flash, who is pretty unanimously agreed to be boring as hell. The guy whose teen sidekick successfully replaced him in the hearts of the most fickle fans on the planet. So step 1 was completed a couple years back, when creators Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver brought Barry back. But how can this lead to a whole new world of storytelling possibilities? Don't worry, the DC brain trust has this one covered. Have Barry Allen do such a shitty job time traveling that he fucks the whole universe up. Superman loses his wife, Flash is similarly suddenly single, and everyone has a shitty new costume. Thanks a lot, Barry.

So, now that I've vented my rage against a fictional character, how's Flash #1? Not terrible. The writing is basic, but that's to be expected from artist-turned-writer Francis Manapul and colorist-turned-writer Brian Buccellato (who must've have had at least one guest appearance on the Sopranos). Barry fights some clone terrorists or something. There's the mandatory juggling of romantic interests, and an old friend with a dangerous secret. It's paint-by-numbers writing.

What does work is the art. Manapul just does everything right. Some artists can only do action, or only do facial expressions, or only do dynamic page layouts. Manapul has the full set and the comic is beautiful.

Buy again: No, the writing just wasn't there and Barry Allen is just the worst.

New reader friendly: Friendly enough. Like a toll booth worker that smiles at you, but you know they want to get the fuck outta there.

Nightwing #1

Like the rest of the Batbooks, Nightwing picks up with the status quo that existed last month. So while Superman lost his wife, Wonder Woman lost her pants, and Wally West lost his ENTIRE EXISTENCE, Dick Grayson's more or less intact. So, it's extremely difficult to judge this as just a single issue. You see, last month Dick Grayson was Batman, part of Grant Morrison's overarching Batman storyline, wearing the cape and cowl and protecting Gotham City. So to have Dick Grayson back in the Nightwing suit does seem like a major demotion, which does impede this series.

So Grayson's been demoted, but perhaps there's still a chance for him to star in a good comic. What writer Kyle Higgins does with Grayson's character is solid. He quickly establishes his confidence, his abilities, his attitude towards being a superhero, and his taste in cereal. It's extremely solid character-building work. Where Higgins fails is the plotting. The villains he confronts are uninteresting, Dick Grayson returning to the circus he performed in as a kid is boring, and we do see Nightwing get his ass handed to him at the end, which is sort of lame way to show off your lead hero in his first issue.

The biggest problem with this issue is really the sheer gore. Graysno gets attacked by an assassin. He ducks away for a moment to throw on his costume, and in those few seconds, his attacker slashes the throats of two police officers. And by throats, I mean from sternum to mouth. Seriously, the blood sprays across the bottom of the page. It's fucking disgusting. I've seen less disgusting donkey shows.

Buy the next issue: No, as much as I want to see the further adventures of Dick Gryason, this isn't worth my time or money.

New reader friendly: Yeah it's okay for a fresh pair of eyes, assuming those eyes don't mind being spattered with copious amounts of blood.

Birds of Prey #1

There's a recurring problem that a lot of the contestants on competition show "Top Chef" run into. They make a perfectly suitable dish but present it to the judges using a name of a specific dish. Inevitably, the judges find fault in the dish, because, while it's good, it's not exactly what the chef called it. In other words, don't take a random cut of steak and call it a t-bone. That's the problem that writer Duane Swiercyznski runs into in this first issue of Birds of Prey.

Birds of Prey is a concept that predates the reboot. Writers Chuck Dixon, Devin Grayson, and Gail Simone did great work in establishing Black Canary, Oracle, and Huntress into both a team and a family. And that's where this series fails. Black Canary's there, but Oracle only cameos and Huntress is nowhere to be seen. In their place we have a couple of new characters, specifically Starling, a completely new hero, and Katana and Poison Ivy (though they are only on the cover, not in the actual first issue). Birds of Prey doesn't just mean "super-heroes capable of menstruating", you can't just throw any female characters into the book and call it BOP.

Jesus Saiz (not Jesus Christ, that's a different guy), does an okay job on the art. He's one of the few comic artists out there who excels at drawing humans and fails at drawing the more exciting stuff in comics. Everyone looks realistic, but the action just isn't compelling. And it should go without saying that Black Canary's new suit looks like total ass.

Buy again: No

New reader friendly: I could see new readers being confused by only having half of the characters on the cover show up in the actual comic.

Blue Beetle #1

So part of the impetus behind this whole reboot was to de-clutter the complicated histories that many DC characters have. Superman's been around since 1938, Batman's only a year younger, and the DC Universe has only grown more complex in the decades since. However, there are plenty of characters who've only been around a few years and are in no need of rebooting. But that didn't stop Didio and company from working their magic (SARCASM DETECTED) on a relatively fresh character by the name of Blue Beetle.

Jamie Reyes, the third hero to call himself Blue Beetle, first appeared in a 2005 DC crossover by the name of Infinite Crisis, but don't hold that against him. This crossover wasn't the usual abortion that Marvel and DC tend to put out. In a pretty well done sequence, Jamie becomes Blue Beetle, gets introduced to Batman, recruited for a mission in space to shut down an evil sentient satellite (sometimes I really love comics) and helps the world's greatest heroes save the day. He segued into his own ongoing series, which lasted only a few years, but was generally beloved by its readers. It was credited with being clever, light-hearted, and presented a young Latino character in a very positive light. This is rare in any sort of media, much less the comic industry, where the vast majority of creators and a sizable percentage of the readers are a bunch of old white dudes.

But alas, DC decided to mess with a good thing, and here we are at Blue Beetle #1. It's a ground-zero approach, so NONE of Jamie's six years of stories are relevant. In their place, we have a Hispanic family speaking a laughably bad combination of English and Spanish, despite being Americans who live in Texas and give off no indications of being recent immigrants. "No way I'm letting you to la casa de amparo cardenas!" exclaims Jamie's mother. "Pero mami, porque? Did Brenda's tia do something to you?" Jesus. I've read more realistic portrayals of Hispanic people in Stormfront newsletters. But it gets mas malo, amigos. Jamie's best friend is Paco, a dropout gang member who wears a half-buttoned shirt and drives a car with lifts. Fucking hell, Tony Bedard. You're a better writer than this. You wrote REBELS like, two minutes ago, and that was one of the best sci-fi comics ever. Do you owe a favor to a racist GOP senator or something?

Buy again: No, but I wish I could, in good conscience.

New reader friendly: Assuming you're looking for readers that dress up as pointy ghosts, sure.

Batman #1

Despite an uninspired opening (Batman fights a bunch of his enemies as they try to bust out of Arkham Asylum, never seen that before, right?), this comic is the tits. Scott Snyder, the writer of this issue, just gets how to write Batman. Let me count the ways.

1) Batman is a stoic, serious, focused hero, but he can still hold a conversation with friends (Jim Gordon, Harvey Bullock), family (the various Robins, Alfred), and civilians he interacts with as Bruce Wayne. There's a lot of writers who seem convinced that Batman's at his best when he's an unshaven, nigh-psychopathic, and only cares about crime fighting. Snyder presents a more balanced Batman.

2) Batman shows off his detective skills. For everything the Nolan films get right, the one thing they fall down on is showing Batman's keen mind. We see Bats show up at a crime scene that's already been processed by the Gotham City PD, and catch things that they missed.

3) Not only is Batman a detective, the story itself asks us as readers to try to figure out what's coming next, via a pretty decent cliffhanger.

4) He's working with artist Greg Capullo. Capullo's spent years drawing Spawn (God knows why, he must've lost a bet, or maybe Todd McFarlane has pictures of Capullo murdering Girl Scouts or something. It's impossible that he actually LIKED drawing Spawn.) and it shows, in his command of shadow, knowledge of how to draw an urban setting, and how big capes can look cool as hell.

Buy again: Aye, m'lord.

New reader friendly: Very, though there's nothing here that couldn't have been done pre-reboot or "preboot", as the kids say.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1

There must be some sort of random comic title generator over at the DC Comics headquarters. It's sorta like the Fanfic Generator, in that it's complete fan-fiction, except the writer gets paid. Red Hood and the Outlaws (starring ex-Robin Jason Todd, suerpowered alien princess Starfire, and recovering junkie archer Arsenal) was the result. It could've been a worse idea, I suppose. We could've gotten a team-up book with Bouncing Boy, the Red Bee, and Hawkman (Hawkman is the worst, everyone hates Hawkman).

Anyways, out of this random combo of characters, we have a random something resembling a comic. There's some decent action to kick off the series, with Red Hood and Starfire busting Arsenal out of a Middle Eastern prison. That goes smoothly, no issues there. To relax after their little adventure, the trio relax on the beach. Starfire mugs a bit for the camera, but that's okay, right? Then we have this exchange:

Now, I have no problem with Starfire being down with random hook-ups. What I do have a problem with is Arsenal referring to her as "Jason's girl", which is pretty paternalistic. But it gets worse from there. We find out that Starfire's species "have a terribly short attention span about all things Earth." Translation: Starfire has sex with guys and then forgets about it. That's basically the equivalent of having sex with a human who gets blackout drunk. Which is rape. So now that we've established that writer Scott Lobdell views Starfire as a RealDoll (REALLLLLLLY don't click that at work), we can jump back into the rest of the issue. But there's not much that can top that. Jason runs afoul of some warrior monks or something.

Writer Scott Lobdell, except for his bizarre fucking choice to make Starfire into an amnesic fuck machine, turns in an unremarkable but occasionally fun script. Artist Kenneth Rocafort, on the other hand, does some great work. The art is vibrant, detailed, and pleasing to the eye.

Buy again: I'd like to give it another try, especially cause of the art, but the comic just didn't grab me.

New reader friendly: Not really. Starfire, Red Hood and Arsenal are all supporting characters at heart, and without their connections to Batman, Nightwing, and Green Arrow made clear, they are pretty confusing leads.

Supergirl #1

Don't expect this review to be very long. There's so little content in Supergirl #1, I'm sort of having trouble trying to review it. Writers Michael Green and Mike Johnson wrote 20 pages of Supergirl punching giant robots in the snow. I looked these guys up because I had no idea who the hell they were. Turns out they wrote Smallville and the Green Lantern movie. So really, the based on their track record, 20 pages of Supergirl punching robots is among their best ideas. And yes, it took two of them to accomplish this feat. You think they each took 10 pages? Or do you think Queen was like "Supergirl fights robots" and Johnson's like "YES, BUT IN THE SNOW!" and then they high-fived? Either way, this comic sucks, but not because it was horrendously bad, just because nothing happened.

The art's okay, if a little scratchy for a Supergirl comic. Supergirl continues her tradition of having awful costumes. There's nothing compelling about the plot or likable about the characters. I just don't understand how a comic like this gets made. Supergirl is a character that rightfully deserves a place in the DC canon, but for the past 20 years, no writer but Peter David has been able to do anything worthwhile with her. DC needs a plan for her.

Buy again: Nope.

New reader friendly: I guess, though new readers might confused why Supergir fights robots in the snow before she even meets her more-famous cousin.

Catwoman #1

Judd Winick has done a lot of his best work on the Batbooks. As I mentioned in the Batwing review, he's done a lot of "topical" comics, but for some reason, his Batman (and family) work tends to be a little more straightforward action/adventure and is generally pretty successful. So it's not super-shocking that he got handed the Catwoman solo series. Winick turns in a decent issue, but he and artist Gulliem March fail to give a thesis statement for the series, a reason for a Batman supporting character/occasional supervillain to get her own series.

Winick's issue starts with the title character having to flee her home, as it's been blown up some thugs she pissed off via her thievery. In need of her next score, she gets a gig bartending at a bar populated by the Russian mob, so she can listen up for quality stuff to steal. Winick skillfully illustrates the difference between Catwoman and a proper superhero, when she sees a Russian pimp who wronged her in the past. Rather than keeping her cover, she follows him into the bathroom and beats the shit out of him. Seriously, there was enough blood to make even Dan Didio happy. She flees the nightclub and heads to a penthouse she's "borrowing" only to get an unexpected Bat-booty-call. In a moderately graphic scene, Catwoman gives him the Batsignal to go for it, and Batman ends up driving his fleshy Batmobile into her womanly Batcave. I'd post it here but it's vaguely NSFW. But if watching latex'd up vigilantes is your thing, click here.

A lot of people had giant problems with the sex scene. I have midget problems with the sex scene. I got no problem with Batman and Catwoman hooking up, I don't think it does anything detrimental to their characters. I do have a problem with spending four pages (out of a 20 page comic) on it, it's not like they actually get naked, so it can't really serve to titillate anyone, so why not just use a panel or two to hint at what's going on and then use those other pages for story? And while I'm not one of those "think about the children!" types, I do question if a four page sex scene belongs in a publication that DC seems pretty desperate to get into the hands of new readers, presumably some of which are children.

The actual big issue with the comic is that we have no sense of where this comic is going. Selina has no mission, one supporting character, and no real purpose as a protagonist. Why not just let her pop up in a Batbook as either an ally or antagonist until a writer has a strong enough story to merit a Catwoman solo series?

Buy again: Nah.

New reader friendly: Assuming you aren't an impressionable youth, yes.

Green Lantern Corps #1

This was a tough comic to review. Positives: good character work, solid art, an attempt at social relevance, and a clever way to get new readers up to speed. Writer Pete Tomasi and artist Fernando Pasarin should be proud of all that. I don't want to minimize that. These guys crafted a good comic that they should be pretty proud of. But...

The title of this story is "Triumph of the Will", for those of you who don't know (and that includes whatever ignorant turds were in charge of editing this comic), the name comes from a documentary. Said documentary was a piece of the Nazi propaganda effort back in 1930s Germany. It stars Hitler and his right-hand man, Heinrich Himmler. I'm gonna assume you know about Hitler, but his buddy Himmler was the man most directly involved in the mechanics of the Holocaust. This guy drove around to concentration camps and made sure they were running as smoothly as possible. And when I say smoothly, I mean, this guy was pleased when Jews/gays/Gypsies/Eastern Europeans/the mentally retarded/etc. were BURNED OR GASSED TO DEATH. To think that making use of the title of a film glorifying sick pieces of shit like Hitler and Himmler is okay is just mind boggling. I'm honestly a little surprised this didn't become a one-day story on some in at least one major news outlet.

But hey, what's a little Nazi-glorification among friends, right? Everything else is smooth sailing? Not so much. The first four pages of this comic feature three violent deaths. We see an evil alien get bisected, a heroic Green Lantern get decapitated and then another bisection, this time a different GL. By the end of the comic, we have two more dead GLs, this time left to rot on pikes, and the genocide of a whole planet. And we see the corpses left over from said genocide being picked at by alien vultures. I've seen less pointless violence at WWE cage matches. I've been to orgies at Dan Didio's house that featured less gore to feed his murder boner. This is really over the top savagery that doesn't enhance the storytelling in the slightest.

Tomasi did himself no favors, because the gore distracts from a good story. He's a writer with a good command of how to use character to jump start a story. Lanterns Guy Gardner and John Stewart return to Earth to try and reconnect with normal life, only to realize that duty calls and you can't always go home again. The art really works, especially the coloring. Even the cover, which wasn't drawn by the guy that did the interiors, really looks great.

Buy again: Despite some reservations with the blood/guts/idiocy, yes.

New reader friendly: Yeah, a scene where Guy Gardner is mobbed by groupies and has to explain what the rings can and can't do, how many GLs there are, etc., was a clever-as-fuck way to bring new readers up to speed.

Grifter #1

If you've ever wanted to read a comic where a military man in full regalia has a soul patch, this is the comic for you. If that isn't your particular fetish, this comic may not have much to offer you.

So Grifter (we don't find out that the main character's goddamn name is Grifter until 9 pages in) is a con man or something, except we never see him get paid, nor do we see him pull any cons. This is kind of like reading a Superman movie where Superman never punches anyone and acts like a mopey wanker instead of an adult. Man, hope they never make a movie like that.

Anyways, Grifter gets kidnapped by a weird jellyfish thing in a tank. The jellyfish seems to have restrained Grifter, but Grifter just gets up. That's why I never hire jellyfish to help me in any of my kidnapping schemes. Grifter flees and ends up on an airplane, but the jellyfish starts talking to him telepathically or through the humans the jellyfish mentally controls or maybe this comic makes no sense. Grifter jumps out of the airplane after murdering a couple people (hey kids, comics!) and hides in a graveyard and puts on a homemade mask. As I mentioned, the jellyfish thing can talk to him telepathically, what the fuck use is wearing a mask gonna serve? "Oh hey, jellyfish creature, I know you're talking to me inside my goddamn head, but you've got the wrong guy, I swear, the guy you want doesn't have a cool mask."

So the writing (courtesy of a guy named Nathan Edmondson, who I've never heard of) on this comic sucks. The plot is hopelessly lost in a sea of crap, the dialogue is generic and there are no characters to speak of. The art's not bad, but nothing of note. If you want to read an actual good (well, actually GREAT) comic with Grifter in it, do check out the Wildcats 3.0 series from a few years back.

Buy again? Nay, frost giant.

New reader friendly: Nah, I hear new readers like stories that make sense.

Demon Knights #1

I feel like Paul Cornell really got the point of the reboot here. Use existing characters (Etrigan, Vandal Savage, Shining Knight, etc.) with simplified histories to tell fun stories (dragon attacks! psychic exploding babies! ladies making out with demons!) in a new setting (the DCU during the Middle Ages). The writing's tight, the art is GREAT (artist Diognes Neves has been floating around DC's books for a while now and his stuff has never looked this good before), and it's like nothing else DC is publishing at the moment. Keep up the good work, gents.

Buy again? Does the internet like cats?

New reader friendly: Do cats like the internet?

Legion Lost #1

In case you're totally new to comics, here's what you need to know about the Legion:

1) it's a team of teenage super-heroes from the 31st century

2) each of its two dozen (or so) members is from a different alien world

3) unlike say, X-Men or Harry Potter, where there's one unifying weird thing that gives everyone their superpowers (the mutant gene or magic, for example), some members of the Legion are superpowered because they're aliens (like Superman), some of them are superpowered because of an accident (like the Fantastic Four) and some of them aren't superpowered but are such badasses they get to hang out with superheroes anyways (like Batman)

4) The Legion is probably in possession of the most die-hard fanbase in all of comics

5) DC Comics may, as we speak in Sept. 2011, have just rebooted their whole fictional universe, but the Legion has had three distinct continuities and god knows how many issue #1s in their history

Got all that? Still feel like reading this comic? Did you just have an embolism?

Aight, so a few Legion members take a Time Bubble (no, you didn't hallucinate that) back to our time in pursuit of a future criminal by the name of Alastor. They arrive too late (yes, even with their own Time Bubble) and find that Alastor has already released a plague. If you're a DC devotee you may remember a high-profile comic from 2007 by the name of "Countdown to Final Crisis" (and you'd have to be a devotee, because that comic was so bad, it gave me Autism), wherein the Legion tries to stop a future virus from being released in the 21st century. If you're even more devoted, you may remember a year-long story arc from the mid 90s where a chunk of the Legion team got stuck in the 20th century. Ah, DC Comics, you're a veritable idea factory, assuming idea factories are places where ideas lose fingers in industrial accidents.

But let's try to put aside the lack of original plot points and just judge this comic on how well it executes its pilfered ideas. Writer Fabian Nicieza is a veteran of 90s X-Men comics, so he should be well-prepared to write a team with a billion members that is mired in decades of incestuous continuity. Unfortunately, this is not his finest moment. This is a book that could've benefited greatly from one of those nifty summary pages that Marvel puts in front of all of its comics, giving you a quick, concise summary of the setting/plot/characters. Artist Pete Woods turns in fun but messy art. Woods is capable of better.

The biggest failure of this comic is really the sheer joylessness of it. The Legion's future is a bright one, where planets have banded together, teenage superheroes have over-the-top adventures, and society is honestly better. Here, the comic is ravaged by disease, blown up hospitals, murdered cops, and exploding Time Bubbles (yeah, spoiler alert, the Bubble gets blown up, killing two members of the team). It's not to say that you can't do dark Legion stories. Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Levitz, and Keith Giffen are proof that you can. But you do have to do them well.

Buy it again: Can't do it.

New reader friendly: No, an accessible Legion story is a rare creature, like the Lighting Beast of Korbal that gave Legion members Live Wire and Spark their superpowers. And no, I didn't smoke PCP before writing that.

Mister Terrific #1

A hallmark (you'd think that a 2 week old initiative wouldn't have enough material for anything to be considered a hallmark, but hey, that's what happens when you flood the mar

ket) of this whole reboot has been some of the bizarre choices for ongoing series. Hawk and Dove? OMAC? and now, in that not-so-grand tradition, Mister Terrific.

Like a lot of the second week wave of books, there's nothing hilariously bad about this comic. Wait, I take it back, forgot about the horrible interior art from someone named Gianluca Gugliotta. Apparently DC Editorial managed to find the only crappy Italian art

ist out there. Marvel has about 19 new Italian artists working on their books, and they are all fantastic. Since their art is beautiful, and Gugliotta's is uglier than than the chanc

es of America ever getting national healthcare, I'm gonna post some of their art.

Okay, so, that was art from Sara Pichelli, Andrea Divito, and Emanuela Luppachio, respectively. If you like good art, go buy their comics. If you hate good art, stick around and keep reading Mister Terrific. If you like foreheads that seem to pulsate, keep reading Mister Terrific. If you think EVERYTHING should be wrinkled, not just clothing and old-people skin, keep reading Mister Terrific.

Once you get past the art (logic trap: you can't get past the art, it's too crappy), the comic is just bland. We're told repeatedly that our lead character is a genius and possibly the third smartest person in the world, but that's really nothing special in the world of comics. Dr. Doom invented a time machine to steal pirate gold back in the 1960s, if you want to impress a comic fan with super intelligence, you're gonna need some real feats, none of which you get here. Which is a shame, because in prior appearances (which may or may not have happened, thanks nebulous DC reboot), Terrific's been a pretty interesting supporting character who actually has pulled off some cool intellectual feats.

Buy it again: No, I really wanted to like this comic, but there's nothing here that drew me in.

New reader friendly: Yeah, Mr. T's origin is presented and there's nothing too crazy for a new reader to handle.

Green Lantern #1

Finally, Geoff Johns gets it. The long-time Green Lantern writer finally figured out that Hal Jordan is the least interesting GL out there. Finally, he's seen the (emerald) light. His bosses on the planet Oa stripped him of his ring and banished him back to Earth. In his place, we have Guy Gardner. Wait, nope, not him. John Stewart, must be John Stewart. Whoops, wrong. Kyle Rayner? Not him either. Alan Scott? Abin Sur? G'nort? Hell, at this point, I'd even take Ch'p, the sentient squirrel Green Lantern. But it's not him. Surely there's no crazier choice than a frigging rodent with a power ring. So who'd they go with?

YUP. Sinestro. The rogue ex-Green Lantern. The guy who was kicked out for being a space fascist. Who created an army of evil ring wielders to depose the Guardians and kill Green Lanterns. Yep, he's a GL again.

Admittedly, Johns tries his best to write-around how sillybones this idea is. He has some fanfiction-y sounding explanation, but it doesn't stand up to any actual thought.

But hey, if you can get past that, the comic is fun. It's Sinestro being a badass, Hal Jordan being a dumbass, and amazing art from artist Doug Mahnke.

Buying the next issue: It may cost me a couple IQ points, but yes. I'm a genius (I assume), I can spare them.

New reader friendly: Yes, casting Sinestro in the lead puts the reader in his shoes, as he starts up as a GL again.

Static Shock #1

Hold on, let me check my calendar. Ah, excellent, it's 2004. A whale just exploded in Taiwan, water has been confirmed to once have existed on Mars and the Static Shock cartoon series has just wrapped up its four year run on the "Kids! WB" network (yes, they had an exclamation point in the middle of their name). Now is the perfect time for DC Comics to capitalize on Static's national publicity and give him his own comic book.

But wait, it's not 2004, it's 2011. So, seven years after the cartoon wrapped, DC finally decided the iron was hot enough to strike. Problem is, the iron is so cold it's frozen, striking it results in it shattering into a million pieces of useless crap. Pick up one of those frozen shards. Look it over. Congratulations, you've now read Static Shock #1.

Scott McDaniel and John Rozum "wrote" this comic, and McDaniel, not content with the crime he'd committed against storytelling on the verbal end, decided to compound his sins by drawing it as well. McDaniel, along with "Green Arrow" artists George Perez and Dan Jurgens, as well as "Detective Comics" creator Tony Daniel, are part of a growing trend at DC Comics. They're all artists turned writers, and in the weeks to come, the DC Reboot will have even more of them. They mostly suck at writing, and some of them even suck at drawing (that'd be our boy McDaniel). The proliferation of these guys is mystifying, especially given how crappy this particular comic is.

From start to finish, this comic makes me wish that old adage about masturbation making you go blind was true. If it were, I'd buy a gallon of CVS-brand lotion and never have to see another comic this crappy again. From the crap art (does McDaniel know that people are supposed to by symmetrical?) to horrendous dialogue ("Okay buddy, you asked for it, time to take the kid gloves off and put on the plasma gloves!") there's nothing good about this comic.

It's not just the execution though. Conceptual stuff, like Static having a holographic adviser named Hardware (a preexisting character from the DCU who gets no introduction/explanation) to Static having to pretend to be a juvenile delinquent to get an internship (taking one of the few minority characters in comics that hasn't been in prison/grown up in the hood/etc and making supporting characters assume he's a criminal), this comic failed before McDaniel and Rozum even started writing their script.

Buy again: What part of "I'd rather jerk myself into blindness" didn't you understand?

New readers: Nope, and it's a shame, because if this comic had been done seven years ago and with some actual care, you might've actually been able to get some cross-media-pollination going on.

Stormwatch #1

One of the more confusing thing that DC loves to do is buy other characters from other comic companies. They did it, pretty notably, with Shazam/Captain Marvel back in the day, they did it in the 80s with The Question/Captain Atom/Blue Beetle, they did it in 2008 with the Red Circle line of characters (FREE FINANCIAL PLANNING ADVICE: if ARCHIE COMICS tries to sell you their superhero line, always say yes, it's a great investment). They've had varied levels of success each time, sometimes publishing the characters in their own stand-alone stories, but often seeking to integrate them into the shared DC Universe, so that Shazam can meet Superman, Blue Beetle can join the Justice League, etc.

Way back in 1999, DC Comics, as part of their habitual "buy other characters rather than just make our own" initiative, bought out Wildstorm Productions. Not only did they pick up a ton of talented staffers (including current Co-Publisher and Justice League artist Jim Lee), but they got the rights to Wildstorm's entire cabal of characters. And for the last decade or so, they've published (or at least tried to), those stories, keeping them in their own little publishing kingdom, away from DC's other characters. Well, no more. As part of the reboot, those characters now have a shared history and setting with Superman, Green Lantern and the rest. The first title to reflect that is Stormwatch #1, by Paul Cornell and Miguel Sepulveda.

The result is a comic that raise a couple of questions about the wisdom of a shared universe, but also manages to entertain in the process. We're introduced (or re-introduced, I guess) to Stormwatch, a group of superhumans who look at the big threats facing the planet (an angry, sentient moon, in this case). Not every character resonates as being important or interesting, but Cornell manages to give a sense of the history of Stormwatch and the scale of the threats they face. Fingers are crossed that next issue, Cornell will be able to delve a bit more into character work. Additionally, while it doesn't have to be addressed JUST yet, I am eager to see how the more morally-minded Justice Leaguers feel about sharing a universe with the pragmatic Stormwatchers.

Artist Miguel Sepulveda turns in good work, in the vein of his recent space-stories over at Marvel. Weird satellites, crazy monsters, the aforementioned sentient moon, they're all great looking. He could use a bit of work in human faces, as everyone looks a bit pinched and squeezed into shape, but otherwise, quality work. This is also one of the few reboot books where the colors really looked great. Colorist Allen Passalaqua's super satured hues really made the book look great.

Buying again: Yep

New reader friendly: Fo' sho'.

Batgirl #1

Batgirl #1 is an extremely difficult comic to review in the abstract. In the abstract, it's an okay comic with some troublesome storytelling devices (narration boxes and flashbacks) used to tell a opening chapter. But as a comic addict, I don't have the luxury of coming in clean, and that makes this issue problematic.

Writer Gail Simone may've just authored her first issue of Batgirl here, but she wrote the lead character, Barbara Gordon, for over five years over in the series "Birds of Prey". And those were some good stories, where Gordon shined as Oracle, a paralyzed information broker who doled out secrets to the good guys and stole them from the bad guys. She was competent beyond belief and the comic often had conflicts that extending beyond people getting punched in the face.

That's what makes this comic seem so weak in comparison. We have Barbara here, walking again (though without explanation), ready to literally kick ass. Simone's formerly deft storytelling descends into standard fare. Barbara finds a wacky counter-culture roommate, uses her father's connections as Gotham City Police Commissioner to track down criminals, and then confronts said criminals by beating them up. It just feels pointless, it's stuff that Barbara did throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. It'd be like a 61 year old man going to a high school and making out with some of the students (and now you know why I don't like my dad).

Adrian Syaf, the book's artist, has a lot of work to do if this book is gonna start to look respectable. Batgirl's costume really needs to be tweaked. It's done in the style of the recent Batman films, with all sorts of striping, scalloping, and detailing. There's no way that drawing something this convoluted doesn't make Syaf consider sticking his number 2 pencils in his eyes. The amount of work that must go in to just keeping the suit on-model is insane, it must not leave time for him to do much else. The art is lifeless and perfunctory all the way through.

Buy again? No, sorry Gail, you're better than this.

New reader friendly: No, it attempted to return Batgirl to her decades-lost status quo, but ended up being confusing.

Animal Man #1

Opening your first issue with a solid page of text is a risky move, as a lot of readers are gonna get real bored, real fast. If we comic readers were a literate bunch, we'd read the books WITHOUT pictures. But writer Jeff Lemire presents a fictitious interview with the title character, and, in the span of ONE PAGE, tells us everything we need to know about Buddy Baker, AKA Animal Man. Good stuff.

This is a refreshing comic in a lot of ways. Buddy's a pretty normal guy, except for the ability to channel the abilities of the entire animal kingdom. He's got a wife, two kids, a normal house, a job ( a stuntman, giving him a chance to use his powers for stuff besides punching bank robbers in the face), the whole deal. It may sound mundane, but I assure you, in the realm of superheroes, this is pretty unique and also helps ground the story in some semblance of reality.

What is less unique is Lemire's use of a dream sequence to hint at the threats to come. It's a tired tool. It's almost as played out in fantasy/sci-fi as prophecies are. I'd rather come in 1st Place in a penis-kissing contest than see another story with a prophecy in it.

The art in Animal Man is problematic, but that can't all be attributed to artist Travel Foreman. The colors are flat and washed out, like it was colored with Microsoft Paint or something. Foreman does have to take the blame for the occasional panel where otherwise healthy people look like they've suddenly become burn victims.

Will I buy it again: Probably not, but not every good comic is for every good/hairy comic reader.

New reader friendly: Quite.