Hibbs rushes 1/27
/I'm drowning in work, so I'll keep this super-double short this week...
JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE #6: You know something's gone wrong with scheduling when a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ARTIST THAN SOLICITED (Scott Clark, rather than Mauro Cascioli) does the interiors. Clark's work has enough surface similarities that it isn't jarring (and, in fact, if you didn't check the credits, it is possible you didn't notice), but man that's some tacky shit.
There's not much to this issue, other than "Prometheus kicks roundly everyone's ass, except for the one guy he doesn't have a file on" (well, and a sucker punch) -- which is pretty much exactly the plot of the LAST "canon" Prometheus appearance. I don't think there's a lot that you can really DO with a "reverse Batman" like this, but at least Prommie has read his copy of WATCHMEN (Which that issue of "The Question" shows was published on Earth-DC), because he pulls an Ozymandius, and POOF! goes a fictional DC city.
I guess I just felt all the way through this "Been there, read that", and it all seems... well, I don't know if "Cynical" is too strong, but poofing away cities and mutilating heroes -- both possible because no one cares all that much about that city or character -- well, it's all so 1990s, y'know? "Maybe people will care about this character again if we put unspeakable tragedy upon them" or whatever. Feh. By which I mean: AWFUL
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #41: In a certain way, this is even worse, because it totally spoils CFJ #7, AND BLACKEST NIGHT (though, in the latter case, I don't think anyone expected the Big Guns to stay Zombies or whatever), which is such a... well, it is a Marvel-move, and we all expect much more from DC. It also shows why having Big Events with Lots of Moving Parts can be a really awful idea, since if they don't ship in the correct order everything breaks down and your Willing Suspension of Disbelief fails... and what is a superhero universe except a REALLY BIG W.S.D.?
Having said that, I enjoyed the "tone" of this issue pretty well - much like the STARMAN comic from last week, it feels like Robinson has found his sea legs again, and is getting refocused on character development, as well as crazily obscure DC minutiae (Darwin Jones, indeed!)
I'm not really all that enthused by a JL that's largely characters from TITANS "graduating", anchored by not-quite versions of the Big Three (Donna, Dick and Mon-El), but one nearly imagines that's just a stop-gap problem. I was also deeply underwhelmed by the GL/GA sequence which takes place seemingly nowhere, AND manages to totally undersell the tragedy of a major city going "poof", but there seems to be enough groundwork being laid here that, yeah, maybe this will end up being a good run, eventually.
BUt, for what is probably too many Meta reasons, I'll go with OK here.
As always, what did YOU think?
-B