The Violent and Confusing Coming of the Fifth World

     So, the big events of 2008 were Secret Invasion and Final Crisis.  But wait.  It’s 2009, and Final Crisis isn’t over.  Huh.  Seems no one drawing any of the major comic book events or top comics can keep to a schedule anymore.  Anyway, we’re almost done with the series.  Just two issues left.  So, what’s going on?  To be perfectly honest, I have NO clue.  Everything that’s going on is really awesome, but it largely has yet to tie together into a completely coherent whole.  Darkseid and the New Gods are back, in the bodies of mortals, which apparently decompose easily since they can’t hold their energy.  Check.  Nix Uotan, one of the Monitors, is in a mortal body as well and has just remembered who he is and regained his powers.  Check.  Mr. Miracle, the Super Young Team who are obviously really the Forever People, and Sunny Sumo are on a quest to save the world, which somehow relates to Metron, Anthro, and Kamandi.  Check, I guess?

     This is a series that goes all over the place.  And I do mean all over the place.  Green Lanterns and the Guardians of the Universe one second, the remnants of the Justice League, Justice Society, and Checkmate facing off impending doom another second, Dan Turpin, Darkseid, and the New Gods of Apokolips the next.  It’s all pretty crazy.  And somehow, this will end logically.  Okay…  And somehow, this relates to the multiverse in a way other than just that Darkseid is ripping apart the fabric of reality.  Okay…

     But this isn’t actually very fair.  You can sort of figure out where things are going.  And all the individual plots are actually really cool.  I like the way Grant Morrison has interpreted the Anti-Life Equation a lot.  The dialogue may be off sometimes, but the characterization for almost everyone is spot-on.  The art is gorgeous, though I do wish that J. G. Jones would have been able to do everything.  Which is not to say that Carlos Pacheco is a bad artist.  I just would like some artistic continuity.  I wish that Barry Allen wasn’t back either, but it’s been done well.  This is a series that is mostly cool but has a ton of things going against it.  So it’s a very mixed read with a somewhat positive bent.  I know, this whole review is odd.  But this story is odd.  It’s all odd for every reason.  I think everything’s going to wrap up well in the next two issues, and all this confusion will be forgotten.  I just can’t wait for that to happen.  But make no mistake.  Final Crisis is WAY better than Secret Invasion.  Better to be confusing and deep than predictable and shallow.

Plot: 9.0      Art: 8.6      Dialogue: 8.3      Overall: 8.7

Bad Guys Can Be Funny Too

     Before I started reading Secret Six, I had no emotional attachment to any of the characters whatsoever.  The only one I already knew a lot about was Bane, and I just thought of him as the crazy Hispanic druggie who broke Batman’s back.  Catman sounded cool because I love cats obsessively.  That’s pretty much it.  I didn’t even know anything about Scandal Savage or Ragdoll, and Deadshot was just the DC version of Bullseye.  But in the course of four issues, despite the fact that all the characters are villains and dangerous murders, they have charmed me.  Or rather, Gail Simone’s penchant for writing their dialogue in the most convincing way and Nicola Scott’s amazingly clean and detailed drawing charmed me.

     Basically, the Secret Six are trying to deliver a card that gives its owner one chance to get out of hell free to a mysterious benefactor.  However, they had to first get it from Tarantula, and now, the deadly new villain Junior has the entire supervillain community of the DCU after them trying to get the card so he doesn’t burn in hellfire forever for his evil deeds.  And this card alone gives multiple different opportunities to examine the characters themselves in an awesome way.  Add to that some humorous dialogue, an awesome and super-strong new character, Jeannette, and a host of excellent supervillain guest stars, and you have a superb series.  This is definitely one of the best series I’m reading right now.  Sure, it may sound like the DC version of Thunderbolts.  Mind you, Warren Ellis’ run on that was one of my personal favorites.  But it’s nothing like that at all.  These people aren’t trying to redeem themselves at all.  They’re not even keeping up the pretense of redemption.  They’re nasty, and I love it, even though I probably shouldn’t.

Plot: 9.5      Art: 9.5      Dialogue: 9.5      Overall: 9.5