Comic Book Case

Black Canary #1

Black Canary has always been a character I've wanted to read but haven't have the time to pick up any of her older titles minus some Birds of Prey so I really wanted to pick this up. Black Canary picks up with her story from the new take on Batgirl which had her being in a band looking for money after Barbara accidentally set fire to her house and Canary said she was leaving Burnside because she got a contract to perform. Here we see her pretty much dealing with performing on stage when she has a tendency to fight people which while well meaning causes a lot of collateral damage. It should be noted that she isn't trying to get famous, just fulfilling her contract and getting paid so she can get her life back on track. Things get worse when three monsters attack her concert and Canary finds out the monsters are after a young girl named Ditto who can't talk but seems to have some power with sound. Canary decides to protect the girl, staying with the band, hoping it will get Ditto to open up.

Black Canary #1 is a fun enough story. I honestly did not know what to expect, especially after reading her origin in Secret Origins. When DC announced they were going to give her a kind of punk rock martial arts feel to the story I honestly didn't know what to expect and the art I feel may not be my favorite but it is interesting, I don't really like how the colors change though to suit mood. The creatures that attacked and the human form they had I felt were interesting, they looked very "establishment" and the idea of them looking like black scribbles was pretty bold. A good and interesting start.

Doctor Fate #1

Doctor Fate has only existed in Earth 2's first story in New 52 and when I was REALLY wanted a Doctor Fate story after seeing him in Earth 2. This story is actually really interesting as Khalid, a young medical student is visited by Bastet in the form of a cat trying to stop Anubis from flooding the earth to restore Maat (truth) in his own design by offering him the Helmet of Fate because he is descended from pharaohs, which isn't thrown in your face, it's just implying that Khalid's father came to the U.S. before he met his wife. At first he thinks it is a dream but when he finally gets the helmet on he can't control it, implying a presence in the helmet that it's known for.

Doctor Fate is a fun enough story. The art reminded a bit of the art from Wonder Woman's early run, not in style but in that I'm not 100% sold on it but it does grow on me. I'm not entirely familiar with the origins of Doctor Fate and he often just exists as a character in most incarnations and Nabu has never been explored in much of anything recent. It does look interesting and Khalid seems interesting but I don't see enough to really care about him. If there was one thing I really didn't like was the design of Khalid with the helmet on and still keeping the rest of his clothes, I wanted to see the whole thing but let's give it time. I'm really excited for this.

JLA #1

So I did not expect JLA to exist this way. I don't know why but I think I always figured this would be about more potential members of the League, but whatever.  JLA seems to be where we get  the full team from the first issues of Justice Leage. Clark receives a letter at the Daily Planet from the Infinity Corporation which is actually calling Superman because the Superman "S" in lead foil on the paper. A woman, named Alexis welcomes him and takes him to a man named Vincent who warns Superman that at some point he will be killed which he saw when The Stones of Forever brought him through and apparently Vincent has been trying indirectly to prevent his death and now they are telling him upfront. On a Power Plant in New Metropolis, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Wonder Woman find they have received a similar invitation that turns out to be a trap involving the monster Parasite. Aquaman, after leaving a meeting with the government has been informed that the time of the false gods (like Wonder Woman)  is over and that the TRUE GOD is coming. When Superman leaves to go help, Alexis tells Vincent that they should have told him everything but Vincent says that all of them agreed, implying that more people are involved. Batman and Cyborg are able to devise a plan to stop Parasite but Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Flash have gone missing and when Superman tells Cyborg to Boom Tube them back to Infinity Corp only to find it gone. A spaceship appears in the sky and speaks through everyone's mobile devices and Superman says that is Rao, a god from Krypton.

JLA was weird but interesting. One of my issues with Justice League is that the only thing we got from until recently was Superman and Wonder Woman are dating. JLA seems to want to tell at least some small stories involving other characters and this one focusing on Superman while we may find out about Aquaman and possible ties to Krypton. It's really ambitious with itself and the 60 pages in it. The best part for me was the battle with Parasite as we watch how Batman and Cyborg defeat him and watching how around half the league is taken out of the equation. It's doing something new that doesn't involve well known enemies where Justice League seems to focus on Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor. 

Martian Manhunter #1

J'onn J'onzz hasn't been given the best treatment in New 52 until recently and that's a bit of a shame. he had a comic that i believe cancelled, was mentioned having fought the League and was overshadowed a bit by Stargirl in Justice League of America (though he was enjoyable in that book), and while interesting in Justice League United as a whole he was overshadowed by the Legion of Superheroes so this was a book I was looking forward to. J'onn is trying to stop an airplane from crashing finds another martian possessing or imitating a person telling him that he should stop pretending to be a hero and be the weapon he was created for. meanwhile, all over the world, acts of violence are being acted out and some are by people who can't possibly do it and they turn out to be Martians (I'm thinking White Martians) and they are also having an effect on J'onn and he asks a scientist named Helen Demoff to kill him.

This story is like a lot of  #1's, more set up than anything else. The internal dialogue is where the meat of this comic is. J'onn wants to be of help to the people of Earth and everything he does really does seem to be about not being a martian physically because it can scare people despite the change making him weaker physically. The scene on the airplane is really what makes me want to buy issue 2.

hat makes me want to buy issue 2 which added with the scene with the dead mother has gotten me on board.

Sinestro #12

New Korugar is under threat of it's core exploding and Soranik wants to evacuate the Korugarians off the planet before the eventual meltdown occurs but Sinestro says that he has a plan and that he knows who is behind it. This leads to argument where Soranik believes that Sinestro cares more about his ego than the safety of the Korugarians which he denies. When Soranikl leaves he talks to Lyssa Drak about how something else is coming that will help the Sinestro Corp achieve it's goals (hinting that Lyssa has predicted the soon to be Lost Army story) and that Sinestro is keeping her close. Soranik finally decides to try to free the Korugarians but is stopped by Sinestro and the two fight which ultimately ends with him removing her green ring and placing a yellow ring on.

Ultimately this was something people had been waiting to happen. Soranik has spent a lot of time arguing with her father but we knew that at some point she would wear the yellow ring or at least hoped for it. The two of them coming to blows was nice and it is interesting to see how Sinestro handles fighting his own daughter. It's hard to really tell how he feels about her but it's safe to say that in his own way he does care about her. We still haven't seen the traitor be exposed but we did see more members of the Sinestro corp and any skills they have like the engineers.

Wonder Woman #41

Our story starts off with Diana reflecting on her life and how she's been trying to find a sense of balance as Queen of the Amazons, God of War, and a champion of justice. She goes to Olympus to check on Donna and tries to help guide her to redemption which I feel is a bit weird, not the execution but we haven't seen any of Donna Troy as a character for this to work though that may be the point.  She tells Donna about how it felt when she thought she was made of clay and said that with time she believes they can help Donna move past killing the male Amazons. Hera is more skeptical as she visits Zoala and Zeke (Zeus) and says that unlike Diana she actually is made of clay and clay will eventually break under pressure.She then goes to see Hephastus who seems justifiably angry about having to watch the Amazons who helped Donna kill the men, men whom they were going to drown when they were born had he not taken them in. Hephastus tells her that he has finished her new armor which Diana says is to symbolize the new balance in her life (more on the costume later). Diana later receives a call from Cyborg about a boy threatening to blow himself up if he doesn't meet her. It turns out to be a trap and the boy jumps off the bridge before revealing that he knows she is a God. The boy heads down to a basement and talks to a voice coming from a pool and says that Diana isn't using her full power and that she doesn't deserve them. A pegasus then flies out of the pool and the voice tells him he will need a weapon.

This seems to be a rather interesting ending to a rather flawed story. While the premise was good it felt really rushed and everything was really tied together and to her specifically. She never really has to make much a choice, she just kind of deals with everything as it happens which I think should have been the end result for her. A problem could be with Azzarello's run which was kept only within Diana's own universe, not really exploring the rest of her life. Her costume is a bit much, the shoulder pads and wrist blades especially. The costume isn't a fusion of her life, at least when I look at it and when compared to some of the other drafts I think this was the worst one. The new story coming up looks interesting and I'm hoping at some point we can see her and Steve Trevor but I think we will definitely be seeing Deathstroke, since in his story he has been hired to kill a god and is armed with a weapon that can do it.

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