A fairly short entry today, hopefully with a part two tomorrow... BRIGHTEST DAY #0: In terms of Setting Up The Story, this is a decent enough follow-through on BLACKEST NIGHT -- I'm a little worried if it might be overstuffed though. There are, what, 10-12 "main characters" here to deal with, whereas "52" really only had 4-5 mains. Everyone gets checked in for 2-4 pages, and there's a number of intriguing things set up, but there's "only" 27 issues to move things along, and that's a whole lot of juggling. Some of the characters might have a larger focus outside BD, maybe -- Zoom and Boomerang in The Flash, MM and the Hawks in JLA possibly, whatever, but it's still a crazy large cast and it seems like not so much space to handle it all. I thought the first issue was a low-ish GOOD, and I'm looking forward to the ride, but I'm wondering if Geoff might not be over-extending a bit here...

THE FLASH #1: didn't do a thing for me. sorry to say. Pretty darn EH, and if it weren't for the free Flash ring with #1, I'd be pretty worried about the long-term health potential here. Nothing screams "MUST READ!" to me, which is the kiss of death for entertainment in 2010...

SIEGE: LOKI #1: just mentioning this because I rapped Gillen pretty hard on the knuckles for the Thor Siege tie-in, and I thought Loki was much more "on message" as portrayed here. I kind of liked this one a decent amount (I'll give it a GOOD), but I have to say that the "classified" original solicitations on the five one-shots here really leave me scratching my head -- there's nothing going on here that couldn't have been solicited, and the deeply cynical bit of me says that what was really going on was someone said "we need five more Siege tie-ins, so we're going to schedule them. You, editors, make the books appear from thin air!", and thus these comics were "classified" because, up until 3 months ago, MARVEL didn't know what would be in them or by who. In other words, these were manufactured items created to suck more money out of your pocket, rather than anything done for compelling creative reasons, and even if they end up being decent (like this one), that's more a happy accident than anything else. I'd be happy to be proven wrong on that, however.

STAR TREK: MCCOY #1: Or, as the cover says "Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor", which is a MUCH better title. John Byrne has been really hit or miss for me for much of the last decade, and I thought this one was a solid "hit", I'll go with a solid GOOD here, with my wanting to see more.

GREEN ARROW #32: Really? I don't want to beat up on this book too much, I really don't, but man this is a steaming pile of CRAP. There's a few conventions of comics that don't really withstand scrutiny -- like "Secret Identities", but that's because sledom do comics underline just how fucking stupid they are. But, it is double-underlined here, then highlighted with an orange highlighter pen. "Gasp, you mean Green Arrow is ex-Mayor Oliver Queen? Wha-?!?" OH, PLEASE! Trust me, if I threw on a domino mask, you'd still be able to tell it was me, and I'm neither the mayor of a city, nor a high-profile member of the JLA.

Then there is the whole trial/verdict thing which was just unbelievably bad -- "I'm tempted to overrule the jury, but, ah, what the hell, let's just banish you." How is that even remotely plausible anywhere anyhow? Stinnnnky!

"I saw part of me in Mia's eyes"? Really, through the non-eye-showing mask? Really?

Ugh, and the whole dismantling of the GA/BC marriage for just goofy mandated reasons...

And the ending with Hal standing in for the JLA and saying, in essence, "we don't care that you're a murderer, since a biased Jury let you off" *shudder*

I read a lot of bad comics, but I think I can completely say that Green Arrow #32 is the worst one I've read so far in 2010 -- it's not even crap, it's (the dreaded) ASS. Foo!

***

Like I said, hopefully more tomorrow (or maybe Friday) -- I want to talk about OTHER LIVES and MARKET DAY and a few more comics, too.

In the meantime, what did YOU think? (And are these "same day" reviews working for you? Or is it too early?)

-B