Ultimately, Black Lightning #3 is an intricately and powerfully constructed depiction of a kind of routine racialized violence that we need to dedicate ourselves to minimizing and eventually eradicating both in real life and in fiction to make way for the full and unapologetic flowering of Black America.

Assassinistas isn't a swirl, a mash up, or a novelty. Its a complex engine of performance parts that took careful consideration and a fearless attitude to assemble.

Theres still ground to make up, particularly in that Ottla has yet to emerge as much more than a kind of manic pixie dream girl for Kid. Milligan assures us she has depths yet to be discovered, and this issue in particular suggests theres reason to believe, but the proof as ever is in the pudding. Ultimately, Kid Lobotomy doesnt need to be anything more than a vehicle for Fowler to demand its purchase, but theres clearly potential and ambition for much more.

Fowlers embrace of the concept and the palpable energy she puts on the page, backed by the most conventionally leaning coloring in Lee Loughridges recent work eschewing the minimalist palettes he opened his work on Catwoman, Black Canary, and Wolf with a softer contrast more reminiscent of Fowlers frequent collaborator Tamra Bonvillain is more than enough to justify an initial investment in Kid Lobotomy, but Milligan will ultimately have to tug a lot harder at the threads he introduces here to draw out the considerable potential of their collaboration.

Whats absolutely clear about Fontanas debut is that despite the clunkiness of some of its moving pieces, theres a thriving and artfully conveyed emotional undercurrent that speaks volumes to the queer and female readership of the title. Which should always be the first priority of a Wonder Woman story.

Calexit is the new face of resistance in comics, elbowing past incumbents and upstarts alike by prioritizing precision, clarity, and empathy over sound and fury.

As with most stories like these, its all a contrivance for Seeley to tell us who he thinks Steve Trevor is, and in the final analysis, its that Trevor is a man whos been made irreversibly aware of the impact that his gender has on the world around him and as a result has to re-evaluate the parts of him hes encouraged the most to disregard. The Steve Trevor we meet in this comic isnt woke, hes learning a new sense of awareness, and if there were ever a reason to read a comic about Steve Trevor, appreciating the nuances of a portrayal like that is about as good of one you could ask for.

As this issue continues to prove, All Star Batman is a precision instrument and the crown jewel of DC's current output.

The meaning prised out of this particular issue will be highly individual and subjective, but the arresting imagery of Batman with a shredded American flag draped over his shoulder paired with the setting of the nations capital narrow the likely range of reasonable conclusions just enough to ensure that theyre explicitly political in nature. But just like Bruces rogues who litter their puzzles with clues because they want Bruce to solve them, Snyder and Jock leave this issue for us to piece together, confident in our ability as readers to draw the intended conclusions.

Where The Magdalena intends to go from here is anyones guess, but it already has the most important piece of the puzzle in place: heroines that reflect the world we live in and the women who read comics.

The creators' work here appears deeply out of its depth on the topics and themes they try to present, which is difficult to muster up any sympathy for in an era where the frontiers of eroticism in mainstream comics are being reconfigured in real time by the likes of Clean Room, Sex Criminals, Sunstone, Multiple Warheads, and Harley Quinn.