Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Predator or Prey?


BATMAN INCORPORATED #1 (DC)
Grant Morrison’s vision of the Dark Knight finally returns.  For those unfamiliar with this saga, it began in 2006, with BATMAN #655, when Damian was first introduced into the mythos (having been conceived in SON OF THE BAT), adding a ripple of complication into Bruce Wayne’s life.  Damian is his child with Talia Head, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul.  Morrison previously put Batman through the ringer in “R.I.P.,” FINAL CRISIS, and THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE, though he developed the budding Damian in BATMAN AND ROBIN, and brought Bruce back up to speed the original volume of BATMAN INC.  The culmination of Morrison’s run has concerned the emerging threat of Leviathan, who has necessitated the building of an alliance around the world of Batmen (including Batwing, who stars in his own New 52 series).  This issue is the beginning of the end, and reveals the identity of Leviathan, but doesn’t miss an opportunity for another rollicking (as has been the pattern for every issue of BATMAN, INC.) adventure, this time centering around a would-be assassin obsessed over his own son, even as he puts Robin in the crosshairs.  There’s a thousand things that would help you better understand exactly what’s going on, but Morrison helpfully frames most of it in pithy moments that ground the action, and leaves you begging for more.  Well, hopefully at least eleven more issues.

COBRA #13 (IDW)
Mike Costa and Antonio Fuso have been doing some of the best comics around for a few years now, and now they’ve folded both the villains and the heroes under their auspices.  I haven’t been able to read COBRA regularly for some time now, but clearly they haven’t missed a beat.  Ever since Cobra Civil War began (which, by the way, was an event initiated by these guys), the series has been able to dive still deeper in the rich psychology available with existing characters these stories have mastered.  The best example from this issue involves the confrontations Chameleon (who used to work for Cobra) has with defector (by matter of elimination in choices) Tomax Paoli (yes, the surviving brother of the two Cobras who seemed to exist to have silly names in some previous life) and other Joes who try and walk her through this process.  She has a violent reaction, but the situation plays out beautifully, as does ever other moment in the issue, and the series, in its several incarnations at this point.  If you’ve never read any of it, you owe it to yourself to correct this omission.  This is one of the best comics being published today, and that has been true for years now.

RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #9 (DC)
This is the first issue where Jason Todd might once again be considered the villain he was when he first returned as the Red Hood, back from the dead and menacing Batman.  There’s good reason for that, because he’s back in Gotham for “Night of the Owls” in a story that seems like Scott Lobdell was both rushed into this moment and therefore wasn’t entirely prepared for it, and what he embraces it like he has the whole challenge of this series.  None of this should have worked.  After “Under the Hood,” no one really seemed to know what to do with Jason (COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS seemed like just another in the series of missteps, including an awkward stint in NIGHTWING), but suddenly the New 52 fresh start seemed like an excellent way to start over.  This is a series about a team that’s not really a team, just three characters running around together, and Jason happens to be at the center, and it’s Lobdell’s narrations for him that really makes everything work so well, what keeps me coming back.  Although it seems like barely the surface of the book’s potential has been scratched so far, it’s one of the best books to come out of the reboot.  I’m hoping Lobdell and Kenneth Rocafort stick together for a long time.  Then they can get around to telling that story where Jason gets to confront these Batman family chuckleheads on his own terms.  Except this time he’ll really get to make his point.

THE WALKING DEAD #97 (Image)
I’ve been meaning to read another issue of this one ever since discovering what a wonderful series the TV show has become.  I read a handful of issues fairly regularly a few years ago, but have never become a devotee.  It just never caught my imagination as something that needed to be read regularly to have processed and understood as a worthy enterprise.  Basically, it’s the same thing every issue, these survivors struggling to survive, without a lot of progress being made one way or the other.  This issue, it seems they’re finally at the point where they must decide whether they’re the predator or the prey.  Maybe that’s what Robert Kirkman has been driving toward.  You’d think after a hundred issues he’d have gotten around to something else, too, but maybe that’s what he really wants his fans to think about, the act of survival, how it changes you.  Maybe the title of this thing is more ironic than you’d think.

1 comment:

  1. The Walking Dead seems like it would get pretty repetitive after a while Really every zombie thing seems the same to me, demonstrating that the humans still alive are usually more dangerous to each other than the zombies.

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