Post by Zoom on Jun 30, 2011 16:32:54 GMT -5
Flashpoint week 7
It looks like this signals the last of the number 1s. From here on out, we should at least know the general quality to expect on each book. This week we have four stories (in the order that I care about them): Project Superman, Green Arrow Industries, The Canterbury Cricket, and Hal Mother Fucking Jordan.
Project Superman seems interesting to me because that’s what I feel Flashpoint is missing. It isn’t missing the Flash. It’s missing Superman. It’s missing a guy who can manhandle Wonder Woman or Aquaman. It’s missing a guy who can protect the people of not only America but the entire world. Geoff Johns only knows why Captain Thunder (whose name shouldn’t have been changed since the Wizard Shazam predates the Flash) isn’t this guy. There’s this odd thing where Captain Marvel is seen as an equal to Superman AND Wonder Woman (depending on which of them is around) even though Superman is clearly more powerful than Wonder Woman. That’s a rant for another time, though.
Anyhow, I’m interested to see where the hell Superman is. The title implies he’s being kept under lock and key by Cadmus or Lexcorp or somebody or that he died and they’re going to use his DNA to make their own Superman. Either way, he won’t be the Superman we all know and love but he’ll be a powerful player in the events of the main book…hopefully.
Green Arrow Industries seems to be Green Arrow as the head of a weapons manufacturing company. That seems to totally go against everything Green Arrow is (much like most Green Arrow comics between the Brightest Day series and…oh, Meltzer’s run) but maybe they’ll come up with a unique and interesting reason for this…or at least make him funny. Maybe we’ll get to see Arsenal and Speedy, two characters I’m rather fond of.
The Canterbury Cricket I’ve never heard of. He’s either very obscure or an alternate take on a character or a totally original character (because as I’ll get to in a second, circumstances often make the hero and you can always hope for original characters in alternate universes, though you’ll rarely get any).
Then there’s Hal Jordan. Hal fucking Jordan. I hate Hal Jordan. Like I expressed in my review of Lois Lane and the Resistance (which turned out to be pretty good in spite of this), there are certain characters who are going to be important because of who they are born as (Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman) and there are certain characters that are only important because of circumstances. Hal Jordan falls squarely in that second category. As much as I’m sure the superhero community could use a personalityless jet pilot, Hal Jordan is only important if Abin Sur dies and gives him a Green Lantern power ring. In case you haven’t been paying a lot of attention, this didn’t happen in Flashpoint. I’ve been joking for months that this’ll be a story about Hal flying jet planes and how being a jet pilot makes you 300% cooler and gets you all the chicks and makes you relevant. I let out a big sigh when I saw Hal Jordan’s cover. Just look at it. I mean come on, DC. I didn’t care when Rebirth made a HUUUUUGE deal out of Hal Jordan flying jet planes. I didn’t care when his movie made a HUUUUUGE deal about Hal Jordan flying jet planes. I freaking changed the channel on the radio the first time somebody talked about a contest where you could win a chance to ride on a jet plane “just like Hal Jordan.” I don’t care that Hal Jordan flies jet planes. You know WHY I don’t care that Hal Jordan flies jet planes? HAVING A RING THAT CAN MAKE ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE IS A FUCKLOAD COOLER THAN JET PLANES! If you really like jet planes, you can use the ring to make a bazillion of them. I care about Hal Jordan and his jet plane fetish about as much as I care about if the quarter in my pocket has a P or a D printed on it. There’s only one way to make me care less about Hal Jordan and that’s taking away his ring.
I just want you guys to appreciate how much I care about you that I bothered reading this book so I can tell you EXACTLY how bad it is.
On to the reviews!
Project Superman 1
Oddly enough, Superman doesn’t appear until the last page of this book. Instead, we’re told the story of some guy named Neil Sinclair. They basically splice him with Doomsday’s DNA, allowing him to evolve past a ton of stuff. The intention is for him to essentially be the United State’s Captain Atom because I guess (judging from Booster Gold’s book) there’s no Captain Adam in Flashpoint. The whole thing feels like Irredeemable and I can’t decide if that’s a good or a bad thing. I’m also not sure if I’m supposed to like the central character or not. It isn’t ambiguous so much as…well, he’s changing and I’m not sure if he’ll end up a good guy or a bad guy by the end of this.
Anyhow, cool book. It isn’t what I expected. It’s got the potential to succeed or fail magnificently. Here’s hoping the guy turns out to be good but accidentally kills Superman before the government kills him or something else tragic but not as cliché as the government super hero going mad with power. The art’s pretty good, too, and by good I mean the writer uses it well to tell the story, which is something few writers (Marv Wolfman, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore) actually bother with.
3/5
Green Arrow Industries 1 shot
Our story is that Oliver Queen has taken the tech from supervillains (mainly the Rogues) and repurposed it for military weapon designs. When someone breaks into his labs and kills his security and a bunch of United States generals, Queen has to take his supervillain tech and hunt down the assassin.
The experience changes Queen’s life and sets him up perfectly to be a player in Flashpoint. I can only hope he actually gets to appear in it. In fact, I’d have loved to get two more issues about this character as Pichetshote actually makes Green Arrow new, different AND interesting. I loved everything about this book except killing off one of my favorite characters. Then again, it's an alternate universe story and let's be honest, Roy is better off dead than...whatever he is in normal continuity.
4/5
The Canterbury Cricket 1 shot
This story seems kinda unnecessary. It’s essentially a spin off (or rather a spin in) story of Lois Lane and the Resistance. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a bad tale. I just think Lois could have either been condensed or just had an issue added.
Etrigan shows up in this issue to help the resistance. As I stated in a previous review, Etrigan’s appearance is either something to make you smile or something to make you groan, depending on how good the writer is at rhyming. In this case, Mike Carlin is rather good at rhyming and so most of Etrigan’s dialogue is enjoyable. About three quarters of the way through the book, though, he starts to be like “screw it” and has Etrigan say things like “wanna” and “ain’t” for the sake of rhyme, which is kinda lousy but it’s still better than most Etrigan books. (I reread Preludes and Nocturnes the other day and it reminded me that even Neil Gaiman half assed his Etrigan dialogue so maybe I shouldn’t be too picky...or maybe writers that can’t rhyme and talk in old English at the same time shouldn’t write stories with the Demon in them.)
There was one page that made me go “do British people really talk like that?” and a page where the Cricket teams up with a bunch of bug characters (who wouldn’t logically team up with each other) to fight the Amazons, which seemed to be there only for the purpose of showing the reader that Firefly and Queen Bee still exist in this timeline. Other than that, this is a pretty good story and if you’re reading Lois, you might as well read this, too.
3/5
Hal Mother Fucking Jordan 1
This issue isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It’s still Hal Jordan not having a personality, throwing his daddy issues and jet plane fetish in your face, doing stupid things that piss all his friends and coworkers off and I’m still wondering why anyone thinks that Hal Jordan is interesting enough to have his own miniseries if he doesn’t have a GL ring.
Oh, and the ads in this comic (from shoes to movies to comics to the really annoying subway sandwiches ad that has more “athletes” “helping” the Justice League fight supervillains) almost all feature Hal Jordan on them. I’ve never felt like I had a character this shoved down my throat but then again, I picked up this comic so I didn’t really expect anything different.
1.5/5
Bottom Line:
If you're just into the "main" series, I doubt any of this is worth your time. However, Green Arrow is good and Cricket ties into Lois if you're into that storyline.
It looks like this signals the last of the number 1s. From here on out, we should at least know the general quality to expect on each book. This week we have four stories (in the order that I care about them): Project Superman, Green Arrow Industries, The Canterbury Cricket, and Hal Mother Fucking Jordan.
Project Superman seems interesting to me because that’s what I feel Flashpoint is missing. It isn’t missing the Flash. It’s missing Superman. It’s missing a guy who can manhandle Wonder Woman or Aquaman. It’s missing a guy who can protect the people of not only America but the entire world. Geoff Johns only knows why Captain Thunder (whose name shouldn’t have been changed since the Wizard Shazam predates the Flash) isn’t this guy. There’s this odd thing where Captain Marvel is seen as an equal to Superman AND Wonder Woman (depending on which of them is around) even though Superman is clearly more powerful than Wonder Woman. That’s a rant for another time, though.
Anyhow, I’m interested to see where the hell Superman is. The title implies he’s being kept under lock and key by Cadmus or Lexcorp or somebody or that he died and they’re going to use his DNA to make their own Superman. Either way, he won’t be the Superman we all know and love but he’ll be a powerful player in the events of the main book…hopefully.
Green Arrow Industries seems to be Green Arrow as the head of a weapons manufacturing company. That seems to totally go against everything Green Arrow is (much like most Green Arrow comics between the Brightest Day series and…oh, Meltzer’s run) but maybe they’ll come up with a unique and interesting reason for this…or at least make him funny. Maybe we’ll get to see Arsenal and Speedy, two characters I’m rather fond of.
The Canterbury Cricket I’ve never heard of. He’s either very obscure or an alternate take on a character or a totally original character (because as I’ll get to in a second, circumstances often make the hero and you can always hope for original characters in alternate universes, though you’ll rarely get any).
Then there’s Hal Jordan. Hal fucking Jordan. I hate Hal Jordan. Like I expressed in my review of Lois Lane and the Resistance (which turned out to be pretty good in spite of this), there are certain characters who are going to be important because of who they are born as (Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman) and there are certain characters that are only important because of circumstances. Hal Jordan falls squarely in that second category. As much as I’m sure the superhero community could use a personalityless jet pilot, Hal Jordan is only important if Abin Sur dies and gives him a Green Lantern power ring. In case you haven’t been paying a lot of attention, this didn’t happen in Flashpoint. I’ve been joking for months that this’ll be a story about Hal flying jet planes and how being a jet pilot makes you 300% cooler and gets you all the chicks and makes you relevant. I let out a big sigh when I saw Hal Jordan’s cover. Just look at it. I mean come on, DC. I didn’t care when Rebirth made a HUUUUUGE deal out of Hal Jordan flying jet planes. I didn’t care when his movie made a HUUUUUGE deal about Hal Jordan flying jet planes. I freaking changed the channel on the radio the first time somebody talked about a contest where you could win a chance to ride on a jet plane “just like Hal Jordan.” I don’t care that Hal Jordan flies jet planes. You know WHY I don’t care that Hal Jordan flies jet planes? HAVING A RING THAT CAN MAKE ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE IS A FUCKLOAD COOLER THAN JET PLANES! If you really like jet planes, you can use the ring to make a bazillion of them. I care about Hal Jordan and his jet plane fetish about as much as I care about if the quarter in my pocket has a P or a D printed on it. There’s only one way to make me care less about Hal Jordan and that’s taking away his ring.
I just want you guys to appreciate how much I care about you that I bothered reading this book so I can tell you EXACTLY how bad it is.
On to the reviews!
Project Superman 1
Oddly enough, Superman doesn’t appear until the last page of this book. Instead, we’re told the story of some guy named Neil Sinclair. They basically splice him with Doomsday’s DNA, allowing him to evolve past a ton of stuff. The intention is for him to essentially be the United State’s Captain Atom because I guess (judging from Booster Gold’s book) there’s no Captain Adam in Flashpoint. The whole thing feels like Irredeemable and I can’t decide if that’s a good or a bad thing. I’m also not sure if I’m supposed to like the central character or not. It isn’t ambiguous so much as…well, he’s changing and I’m not sure if he’ll end up a good guy or a bad guy by the end of this.
Anyhow, cool book. It isn’t what I expected. It’s got the potential to succeed or fail magnificently. Here’s hoping the guy turns out to be good but accidentally kills Superman before the government kills him or something else tragic but not as cliché as the government super hero going mad with power. The art’s pretty good, too, and by good I mean the writer uses it well to tell the story, which is something few writers (Marv Wolfman, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore) actually bother with.
3/5
Green Arrow Industries 1 shot
Our story is that Oliver Queen has taken the tech from supervillains (mainly the Rogues) and repurposed it for military weapon designs. When someone breaks into his labs and kills his security and a bunch of United States generals, Queen has to take his supervillain tech and hunt down the assassin.
The experience changes Queen’s life and sets him up perfectly to be a player in Flashpoint. I can only hope he actually gets to appear in it. In fact, I’d have loved to get two more issues about this character as Pichetshote actually makes Green Arrow new, different AND interesting. I loved everything about this book except killing off one of my favorite characters. Then again, it's an alternate universe story and let's be honest, Roy is better off dead than...whatever he is in normal continuity.
4/5
The Canterbury Cricket 1 shot
This story seems kinda unnecessary. It’s essentially a spin off (or rather a spin in) story of Lois Lane and the Resistance. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a bad tale. I just think Lois could have either been condensed or just had an issue added.
Etrigan shows up in this issue to help the resistance. As I stated in a previous review, Etrigan’s appearance is either something to make you smile or something to make you groan, depending on how good the writer is at rhyming. In this case, Mike Carlin is rather good at rhyming and so most of Etrigan’s dialogue is enjoyable. About three quarters of the way through the book, though, he starts to be like “screw it” and has Etrigan say things like “wanna” and “ain’t” for the sake of rhyme, which is kinda lousy but it’s still better than most Etrigan books. (I reread Preludes and Nocturnes the other day and it reminded me that even Neil Gaiman half assed his Etrigan dialogue so maybe I shouldn’t be too picky...or maybe writers that can’t rhyme and talk in old English at the same time shouldn’t write stories with the Demon in them.)
There was one page that made me go “do British people really talk like that?” and a page where the Cricket teams up with a bunch of bug characters (who wouldn’t logically team up with each other) to fight the Amazons, which seemed to be there only for the purpose of showing the reader that Firefly and Queen Bee still exist in this timeline. Other than that, this is a pretty good story and if you’re reading Lois, you might as well read this, too.
3/5
Hal Mother Fucking Jordan 1
This issue isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It’s still Hal Jordan not having a personality, throwing his daddy issues and jet plane fetish in your face, doing stupid things that piss all his friends and coworkers off and I’m still wondering why anyone thinks that Hal Jordan is interesting enough to have his own miniseries if he doesn’t have a GL ring.
Oh, and the ads in this comic (from shoes to movies to comics to the really annoying subway sandwiches ad that has more “athletes” “helping” the Justice League fight supervillains) almost all feature Hal Jordan on them. I’ve never felt like I had a character this shoved down my throat but then again, I picked up this comic so I didn’t really expect anything different.
1.5/5
Bottom Line:
If you're just into the "main" series, I doubt any of this is worth your time. However, Green Arrow is good and Cricket ties into Lois if you're into that storyline.
