There are times when my cynicism gets the better of me. Upon hearing that the Disney Epcot ride, Journey Into Imagination, was going to be developed into a comic book, I felt confident that it could easily become one of the worst comics I would read in a long time. Keeping in mind that I haven’t been on the ride since 1985, I failed to see how any writer could make a little purple dragon of imagination into a comic book series I’d want to read. My only hope was that it would be silly enough for a gaggle of 7 to 10 year olds to enjoy. Read the full review at http://popculturenetwork.com/article.php?story=20140610212709312#.U5kXupQ7u9E

It’s not that Future State: Aquaman #1 is a bad comic book, the problem is that it doesn’t really do anything of value. For a book that gives us our first glimpses of Arthur and Mera’s child, Andrina “Andy” Curry, grown into adolescence and having her own adventures, the story does nothing to make the character interesting – or memorable – or even present for most of the story. Instead, we’re stuck with Jackson Hyde – though there’s no telling if the Infinite Frontier is allowed to bring back the version readers enjoyed from Brightest Day or if we’re still stuck with the retconned version readers rejected from DC Rebirth. In the end, it doesn’t matter since this issue doesn’t really give him much to do anyway. If a boring story were all we had, that would be fine as a mediocre entry to the Aquaman mythos, but our story takes place in the ocean… in outer space. Apparently these two stumbled upon “The Confluence,” a place where all of time and space… in the oceans… interconnect and travelers can move from one place and time to another… in the oceans… from planet to planet and era to era through a floating mass of water in space that connects them all. (The idea of a giant oceanic portal connecting all of space and time makes no sense considering that no one has found it before, and nothing has come through it before, but whatever.) The two were separated, and thinking that Aqualass had perished, Aqualad had given up when captured by some alien things (I guess because they aren’t really explained very well) at some point in the past. Aqualad is not interesting. Nothing about his character is remotely entertaining or interesting. Aqualass is not interesting. Nothing about her character us remotely entertaining or interesting. The story is given no context. We have no reason to care about these characters or their actions. The only thing I can figure is that writer Brandon Thomas literally took the idea of plucking issues from a future storyline out of sequence and dropped them into this special event, but in doing so, robbed it of all meaning and value. Aquaman is mainstay of the DC Universe but as we’ve seen with the recently finished Kelly Sue DeConnick run on the eponymous series, the wrong writer can drain all enthusiasm from a series and leave nothing left for fans to appreciate. But at least the art from Daniel Sampere and Adriano Lucas looks good. Too bad it’s just not enough to make me come back for the second issue. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

One of the many problems with Future State is the “Elseworlds” dilemma. We are given a story set in a “possible future” of the DC Universe and are asked to care about it, when we know that it will most likely be gone in 2 months and little, if anything, will ever come of it. Additionally, we get introduced to new characters and find ourselves reading about these strangers in place of the familiar characters we’d rather be reading about it. I planned to skip Future State completely, but the lack of comics on the shelf grabbing my attention forced my hand and I eventually began to try a few comics just to see if any of them weren’t so bad. Future State: The Next Batman #1 isn’t so bad. The biggest problem is the one outlined above: this is a Batman comic without Batman. There is a guy in a Batman suit, but even he questions if he is the real Batman now, which just further cements in the reader’s mind that this isn’t really Batman. When we see who he is, teased by the story to be Luke Fox the former Batwing but previously spoiled by an overzealous PR department to be Tim Fox the… other… son of Lucious Fox, I guess… it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the story. The real problem is that Tim Fox has no reason to be Batman whereas Luke spent time as a costumed crimefighter in the Bat-Family. Why did writer John Ridley go with Tim over Luke? No clues are given in this story, other than the fact Luke seems to be unreliable now, so I guess he couldn’t be the one. Real clear, isn’t it? Future State: The Next Batman #1 isn’t all bad. The story and art has plenty of throwbacks to Batman: Year One, so at least you get the feeling that unlike some other Future State books, this team is familiar with the comic books that came before. The art by Nick Derington has a somewhat simplistic feel, but it does enough to convey the dirtiness of Gotham City and the action of the fights. The colors by Tamara Bonavillain strike a good mood and a feeling of depth that the line art often lacks. The two work well together and I hope they are together on future issues, assuming that those issues also work to invoke the early years of the modern Batman mythos. Unfortunately, Future State: The Next Batman #1 is presented in DC Comics’ new expanded format, meaning it comes with two back-up stories to add to the page count and raise the cover price to $7.99. The lead Batman story is the new industry standard 22 page length, while each of the back-up stories are 20 pages in length with the only non-DC advertising being on the coverstock pages. Honestly, that’s a lot of story for $8.00, but if you only want the lead story and don’t care for the back-ups, you’ll feel hard done to shell out so much money. The first back-up story features The Outsiders (Katana, The Signal, and Black Lightning) as they attempt to rescue citizens fleeing from Gotham City and take down a former ally who is now working with The Magistrate (the overlord controlling Gotham City and outlawing all superheroes). The story from Brandon Thomas is straightforward and unremarkable, but the artwork from Sumit Kumar, Raul Fernandez, and Jordie Bellaire is fun and energetic, though it can be occasionally goofy. While it might sound like I’m knocking the story and art, I easily enjoyed this entry more than the feature and found the most joy following the action as laid out by the artists. Honestly, if this was a sampler of upcoming titles, I’d most likely buy only The Outsiders and skip the other two, but as an ongoing $8 series, it wouldn’t be enough to get me to buy this title every month. The final back-up story is about Astrid Arkham, apparently the current head of Arkham Asylum, and vigilante known as the Arkham Knight. The character has previously been established in comics as someone who has the hearts and minds of the Gotham City underworld, so she’s apparently using her talents to turn the psychologically unstable into a superhero team to fight The Magistrate. The art by Jack Herbert and Gabe Eltaeb is phenomenal and easily stands out as among the best you’ll find on comic racks today, but I just can’t find any way to connect to the story by Paul Jenkins. There’s just not enough happening here to make me care about anything going on with these characters. Additionally, all the former villains are each wearing some sort of armor that resembles that of the Knight, making characters like Humpty Dumpty (yes, a big egg-man) look absolutely ridiculous. Future State: The Next Batman #1 is not the worst comic book in the Future State line-up so far, but with only one story that actually seems to succeed with the correct mixture of writer and artists, the $7.99 price tag makes it an expensive experiment. The lack of a “real” Batman in a Batman comic book is the book’s biggest fault. With no real connection to Batman, Bruce Wayne, or the 80 year mythos readers have come to expect, I can’t say that I’ll miss this “possible future” when it goes away in the coming months. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

Unlike other Future State comics that have been set in the far future where things are radically different, Batman/Superman is set at the beginning of the massive upheaval that changes the DC Universe. On the one hand, it’s a sad moment of the last gasps of a DC Universe that doesn’t completely suck, but on the other hand, it’s great to see the real Batman and Superman working together again even if it might be for the last time. Mixing in a few beats from the Future State stories swirling around the DCU, Gene Luen Yang gives us a story of a new face-changing drug making its way to Metropolis from Gotham City. Arriving in Gotham, he finds that The Magistrate has moved in and the drones with facial recognition technology are in use, putting Batman in greater peril. Superman provides some muscle while Batman searches for information on the new drug and the two get separated, leading to the cliffhanger event which might or might not lead to Superman’s disappearance in those Future State comics. Yang isn’t one of DC Entertainment’s writers brought in to shape the future of the comic book line, he’s an actual comic book writer, and it shows with his ability to craft an honest-to-goodness comic book narrative that feels like it might as well be the current issue of the ongoing series. If this issue had arrived with my weekly pulls, I’d be a bit confused about the Magistrate stuff, but I’d otherwise be fine with the story and just assume it’s a story beat that will get explained later. Ben Oliver lends his talents to the art and Arif Prianto gives us the colors, and these two together make one of the best teams DC Comics has. Each page is dynamic, each panel looks stunning, and each character stands out as a unique individual. If these two team up again for another book and are given a decent writer and character to work with, I’ll certainly give it a try. In the midst of all the turmoil and problems at DC, it’s nice to see a gem like this slip through and make it to the stands where it can be appreciated for simply being a good super-hero comic book. There’s no agenda, no checklist, no forced groupthink… Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne get to be heroes and put their lives on the line to save others, and it’s done in a well-crafted story with good looking artwork. It doesn’t get much better than this. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

DC Comic’s new publishing initiative of adding back-up stories and raising the cover price comes to Detective Comics for the Future State debacle in the form of Future State: Dark Detective. This time, the mediocre writing talents of Mariko Tamaki get the proper Bruce Wayne/Batman story while the superior writing talents of Mathew Rosenberg get the mediocre character of Grifter to work with. Both stories run the full twenty-two pages of a modern comic book for the cover price of $5.99, but one delivers an action-packed narrative while the other drifts along, drowning in a meandering monologue. Dark Detective follows the story of Bruce Wayne after the events that led the public to believe that the Batman had been killed. Shot in a fight with The Magistrate, Batman makes his way to a back-alley doctor who stitches him up just enough to keep him from dying. Bruce emerges to find that Gotham City has now been told that the Batman died at the hands of The Magistrate and Bruce Wayne died sometime later. Of course, Bruce happens to find that crime is still a problem in Gotham, even with facial recognition drones and a militarized private police force, so he pieces together the remains of his Batsuit and what appears to be scraps of armor from The Magistrate’s Peacekeepers and sets out to retrain and retake Gotham City. At the very basic level, Tamaki gets Bruce Wayne and his commitment to Gotham City correct. Tom King never quite seemed to understand Bruce’s undying fealty to a city that openly seemed to despise him, so the writer gets points for structuring that part of the story correctly (though to be fair, that could’ve easily been the story outline given by editorial). The problem is that she borrows heavily from the Tom King book of “make the character drone on endlessly in a pointless monologue that accomplishes nothing other than to make a 50-year-old man sound like an emo-teen.” There’s a moment where Bruce is confronted by a Blade Runner inspired version of Gotham City, with its high towers covered in bright lights and holographic imagery, and he has to run away with his head hung low in a full sprint towards a dark alley to escape the noise and the lights and the commotion, as if the New York City/Chicago inspired Gotham City of old was never lit up or noisy. This scene plays out on a full splash page of art to give it some sort of falsely enhanced gravitas, but in reality, just wastes a page on what should’ve been a panel on the bottom of the preceding page, at best. The art is from Dan Mora with colors by Jordie Bellaire, and it is beautiful to look at. Mora is able to make each character stand out and provides a wide range of expressions, making the story work at times when it shouldn’t. It elevates the story beyond the script in many places, which is good because there’s not a whole lot of meat on the bones of this story. However, there are a few puzzling issues plaguing the story and I wish there was a better explanation given as to what was happening. For instance, there’s a flashback sequence of Bruce getting shot by Peacekeeper-01, the head of The Magistrate’s police force, which is what lead to the stories of his death. He’s in his Batsuit pants, t-shirt, and leather jacket. When we see the next flashback of him getting operated on, he’s in jeans with kneepads and wearing his cowl to protect his identity. Did he change clothes to get a lifesaving operation from a back-alley doctor? If so, why change out of half a Batsuit to half a Batsuit? Is this an artist error or did the script specifically call for this? Someone get Cinema Sins on the line because I need to know how many points this kind of mistake is worth. The back-up story has a completely different problem. Grifter is not a Bat-family character and has no business being in this comic (but I guess Jim Lee has a mortgage too, so we’re getting Wildstorm characters shoe-horned into the DC Universe these days). I really don’t care for Grifter – it’s not that I hate the character, but much like Marvel’s Winter Soldier, I just don’t have much of a reason to care about the guy. The only thing that makes Winter Soldier enjoyable is his buddy-cop team-ups with The Falcon, and Matthew Rosenberg must’ve been reading my diary again because this Grifter story is a buddy-cop styled team-up with (former) Batwing, Luke Fox. Grifter is in an illegal high stakes card game when approached by two plainclothes police officers who out his real identity to everyone in the underground casino when he refuses to leave to talk to them. In the ensuing battle, the fight spills onto the street where The Magistrate is waiting to arrest Cole and take him away for being a masked vigilante. This is where he meets Luke Fox who is also locked-up in the paddy-wagon, even though he hasn’t been Batwing for a long time. Luke offers Cole a lot of money to help get him out of Gotham City, and the hijinks begin. The story is just a downright fun action spectacle in the vein of an explosion laden popcorn flick. This is mini-series I’d add to my regular list of pulls at the local comic shop, even though it has Grifter in it. Carmine Di Giandomenico and Antonio Fabela provide that artwork, and it’s some of the best looking in any comic book on the shelves from any company publishing comics today. Di Giandomenico puts so much detail into every panel that you often find yourself looking at all the people and objects packed into each page. He’s an artist from the same school as Ethan Van Sciver, so every poker chip, every windowpane, and every car headlight is drawn in and detailed. Fabela not only adds the proper colors to make things pop and come alive in the action, but the texture and depth is added when it needs to be. I’ve marveled over Di Giandomenico’s work before, and this story is another great work from him. So once again, the mix of stories from DC in these expanded issues are a mixed bag of quality. The art is top notch in both stories, and I can see how many people might not care about how shallow the feature story is because the art is so good, but I just can’t let something that bad go without commenting on it because it is costing you money to read it. The $5.99 price tag is essentially getting you two comics for the price of two comics (drawing the line at $2.99), but I’d honestly rather pay the modern standard of $3.99 for the stand alone tale by Matthew Rosenberg, because he knows how to put a good story together. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

Brandon Vietti was a writer on the Young Justice cartoon and a bunch of animated movies, including DC’s own direct to video LEGO offerings, and that weird Scooby-Doo/WrestleMania you’ve probably seen in the discount bins at Dollar General. This is his first attempt at comic books and it’s not the best first impression. The biggest problem is that he’s using Wally West as the main villain of the story. Once again, Wally has been overtaken by some sort of evil entity within the speed force and he’s killing off heroes around the globe. After Tom King’s disastrous “Heroes In Crisis,” DC has tried very hard to redeem Wally West and it feels so stale to go back to that well again. Vietti also seems to over-rely on the Flash tropes. Hearing Barry say “Flash Facts,” mention his ring recorder, name-drop just about every member of his Rogue’s Gallery and their weapon, and list off all the speedsters of the DCU just felt like too much crammed into one issue. I applaud Vietti for doing his homework and taking notes, but this feels more like a student trying to hit the word count on a term paper by listing every fact and spelling out every reference to fill space. The story itself is interesting, so I’ll give him credit for that. Wally’s attacks have removed the speed force from everyone except himself, leading the world to believe that The Flash and other speed-enabled heroes have been kidnapped and locked away by the oppressive government (much like in The Next Batman, how we got here isn’t really explained) and the Flash Family have turned to collecting the weapons of the Rogues to fight on and try to help Wally. After creating a device to help them contact Wally through the speed force, they discover that an evil entity claiming to be Famine of the Apocalypse has taken control of Wally’s body and Wally’s true essence is trapped inside his mind. After losing another member of the Flash Family in the battle, Barry wonders if he can save Wally, or if he should just end him. The art by Dan Eaglesham is a little stiff and awkward at times. There are moments where I’m not sure who a character is when only their face is shown, until reading the word balloons reveals their identity. At times, the panel layouts get a little confusing and it can get tough to tell which panel comes next or in which order the narration boxes are meant to be read. The colors from Mike Atiyeh are often too concerned with highlights and ignore adding the shadows and contrasts needed to make figures and objects stand out and appear set apart. The final page, which shows Barry’s workshop full of weapons he’s confiscated and considering using against Wally, is so devoid of needed weight and shadow that the objects feel as if they were stickers peeled out of an activity book and placed on an empty table scene. I wish someone had given then book a quick glance over before sending it to print. It’s not terrible, but it could be so much better. Luckily this series isn’t bogged down by DC’s need to add any back-up stories and inflate the cover price, so you’ll just pay the standard $3.99 for this. It’s not the worst thing you’ll see in Future State, but it’s not great either. If Vietti is expected to write more comics for DC in the future, he needs someone with a little more experience standing over his shoulder to iron out the kinks. Maybe DC shouldn’t have fired all of those editors after all. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

This review covers Future State: Green Lantern #1 and #2. Green Lantern is the name of several characters in the DC Universe, but most people associate the name with Hal Jordan, the character created in the Silver Age of comics. It’s a little disappointing to see that Hal only shows up in one back-up story at the end of issue #2, and the story doesn’t do much other than set-up an appearance in the new series debuting later this year. Green Lantern series have always struggled with ways to shift focus around the Green Lantern Corps and the many characters but relegating the most well recognized version of the character to an afterthought brings down the whole experience. The main story focuses on Lantern John Stewart and his command of a group fighting against a group of Khund (think Klingon) warriors set on massacring a planet of friendly blue aliens for the “God In Red” cult that calls out for blood sacrifices. Stewart must draw upon his time as a US Marine and fight these killers while commanding his troops and saving the innocent. It’s a fine idea that works to draw upon the character history of John Stewart, but the problem is that writer Geoffrey Thorne has decided to break the Green Lantern Power Battery at some point before this story, rendering all the rings useless. He’s basically taken away the one gimmick that makes these characters unique and turned them into random space fighters. It’s a shame because the art from Tom Raney and Mike Atiyeh feels dense and gritty and serves the action well and the premise works with John Stewart’s backstory. But by the time you get to the end and the “God In Red, the story falls into a lot of rather convenient coincidences to get things wrapped up in time (and luckily the “God In Red” is someone Stewart knows and can call, apparently). There’s two-thirds of a good story here, but the last one-third just kills it for me. Each issue comes with 2 short back-up stories featuring other Green Lanterns, and depending on your level of fandom, you may or may not get your $5.99-worth out of each issue. #1 features Jessica Cruz and Guy Gardner and issue #2 features Teen Lantern and Hal Jordan. Getting these extra stories for a couple extra bucks doesn’t feel as bad as the other options DC has done with bundling and adding extra pages, but I still would prefer old school newsprint and lower price overall. The first back up features Jessica Cruz on the Green Lantern Power Battery that is now floating aimlessly in space. She’s found a way to supply just enough power to keep life support system active for herself, but now she’s attracted the attention of the Sinestro Corps and has to fend them off without her own Lantern abilities. It’s a good story overall from writer Ryan Cady and the artwork from Sami Basri and Hi-Fi provides good, clean, crisp, classic, comic book artwork. This was the best of all the stories in terms of providing a story that felt like a real Green Lantern tale. Rounding out the first issue is a Guy Gardner yarn written by Ernie Altbacker. In this one, Guy lands on a planet during a civil war when his ring gives out and the natives mistake him for a new Prophet to lead them in a new religious order. Without any other options, Guy takes on the role and works to bring peace to these people. Once he finally succeeds, another member of the DCU discovers the planet and sows discord, ending the story on a down-note. While I’m fine with a bit of a downer ending, the biggest problem is that story takes place over the span of twenty-five years, meaning that there’s apparently no place for Guy Gardner in the DC Comics Publishing Empire for the next generation. I also feel like the artwork from Clayton Henry and Marcelo Maiolo was a too cartoony for this story. While it was certainly full of expression and emotion, it felt too lighthearted for a what was ultimately a story of a lifetime of a failure and an end for Guy Gardner. The second issue also has two back-up stories, this first featuring Teen Lantern from the Brian Michael Bendis version of the Young Justice comic series written by Josie Campbell with artwork by Andie Tong and Wil Quintana. I honestly knew nothing of this character before this appearance and this appearance doesn’t inspire me to want to know more. I found this character to be annoying and the other characters in the story to come across as silly even though they really shouldn’t have. I’m guessing that this was written as if it was meant for younger readers, but it wasn’t sold to younger readers. This story was included with stories meant for regular readers, so it doesn’t fit in this issue. The final story is where we finally get our Hal Jordan story that most readers would’ve expected as the main story, especially since Hal Jordan is on the cover of this issue. Writer Robert Venditti doesn’t give us much of a story though. Hal gets on a spaceship and speeds off after a battle while monologuing about how tough the battle was and about how many have fallen, but it was necessary and how he’d do it again. Of course, we don’t really know what happened, but I’m guessing whatever it was is what caused the Power Battery to fail in the first place before all of these stories started. When his ship finally lands (or crashes), he finds himself next to Green Lantern Jo Mullein, the Lantern from the Far Sector series (how convenient). And here the story ends, promising to continue sometime later in 2021. While I liked the artwork by Dexter Soy and Alex Sinclair, the cliffhanger leading to a resolution later this year drains the story of all sense any future insight or artistic expression and instead is just an ad for the new series. I can’t help but wonder if this specific story was originally meant as a Free Comic Book Day giveaway, but repurposed thanks to AT&T’s re-tinkering of DC and the ongoing pandemic cancellation of public events. Future State has once again shown us that the future of DC Comics is not the one that readers and fans are clamoring for. Making a series that focuses more on John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan isn’t a problem in and of itself, but then removing the Lanterns from the Green Lanterns is simply a mistake. There’s nothing in this Future State that makes me want to continue on with the Green Lantern books in the Infinite Frontier of 2021. Hopefully the next Crisis event that wipes out this continuity can make these characters fun again. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

This review covers both Future State: Suicide Squad #1 and #2. I knew that Future State had to offer at least one book that was a bonafide good title worthy of your money in both story and art, from start to finish. I had hoped that I would find that praise-worthy title amongst the Superman and Batman titles that crowd the shelves. You can only imagine my surprise when I has finished the first issue of this Suicide Squad/Black Adam book and realized that I eagerly wanted to read more. Other titles in Future State had given me hope with a good back-up story after a terrible feature, but this title gave me a good feature and a good back-up, mixing good stories with good artwork, all while properly paying homage to the characters of the DCU and forging ahead with bold creative choices. The only downside to these stories is the “Elseworlds” effect – that feeling that what happens in these might not be as important they make themselves out to be, but the Black Adam back-up story actually seems to fix this issue with an ending that shows that it might be a key development in the character after all. Writer Robbie Thompson is no stranger to the world of comic books, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that this is why his story works so much better than many of the others that come from writers who have only ever worked in the worlds of television, movies, or novels. Thompson gives us a look at a world where the Suicide Squad is masquerading as the “Justice Squad” in a nod to the Dark Avengers era of the Marvel Universe. Amanda Waller has found several villains to take on the roles of the heroes we are more familiar with, though the exception being Conner Kent who is standing in as Superman. Waller has devised a plan to create a world safe from all otherworldly threats and has convinced Kent to join her. Our story opens with the team taking on Mongul, Sinestro, Cheetah, and Brainiac for a piece of tech that Waller needs for her plan, and lives are lost on both sides as the Squad eventually finds success. Of course, there’s more to Waller and her plans than meets the eye, but that’s the charm of Suicide Squad in any incarnation. This alone as a Suicide Squad story would be fine and dandy, but Thompson throws in an extra wrinkle. It seems that there’s another Squad working in secret to find Waller. This Earth is, in fact, Earth-3, home of the Crime Syndicate. The Syndicate is dead is Amanda Waller from Earth-1 has apparently escaped here because she’s found that this world is more willing to allow her to proceed with her plans. The problem is that Earth-1 is facing some dire problems and the leaders now realize that they need Amanda Waller to help keep things in check. Peacemaker has arrived with his Squad from Earth-1, but the time they spend on Earth-3 is slowly killing them, giving them a small window of opportunity to find Waller and bring her home. The artwork from Javier Fernandez and Alex Sinclair is dark and gritty when it needs to be and clean and futuristic when it’s called for, and looks great in the story. Each character from each world is recognizable when they need to be and even though the Earth-1 Squad is hidden in shadow for almost all of the first issue, they are recognizable once you know who you are looking at when you go back and revisit the story. While I’ve had my ups and downs with the Suicide Squad from incarnation to incarnation (the last series from Tom Taylor was unreadable and hopefully undone by these universe rebuilding shenanigans), this story was a massive load of fun and caused me to purchase the new series with the hope that it might be OK this time. The back-up story features a group known as the Justice Legion-A in the far future (making this story feel more like a Justice League or Legion of Super-Heroes story than a Suicide Squad tie-in) made of future version of Superman, Batman, Flash, and Wonder Woman, who exist in a universe where cities and nations now exist on individual planets while Earth sits in ruins. As a new evil known as The Unkind appears to destroy the universe with the help of the personified 7 Deadly Sins and the Lords of Chaos, worlds and heroes fall (including the original Superman who is still alive, but now living in a yellow sun and glowing like golden metal) and the fabric of reality appears to be dissolving. The future heroes of the Justice Legion-A are too inexperienced to handle this massive threat, but Wonder Woman knows of one man who might have the power to help them. Black Adam, the longtime arch-nemesis of Shazam (formerly known as Captain Marvel, but, well, you know…) has given up his former ways to be a man of peace and no longer rules his people but works as their ambassador. Apparently, he and Wonder Woman have secretly been having a relationship and Wonder Woman now finds herself pregnant, so she uses the news of Adam’s impending fatherhood to bring him out of his pacifist ways to help them in their battle with The Unkindness. As they battle and find themselves losing terribly and needing to regroup, they are met by Gold Beetle – the time traveling successor to Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, who appears in the nick of time to help them save all of reality, if she can remember how. Jeremy Adams’ story is admittingly frantic and full of references that might require the occasional comic reader to check Google from time to time, but it’s also a dream for long time comic book readers and fans of DC’s difficult continuity. Adams is mostly credited as a screenwriter who has worked on a number of properties, but among them are The Green Lantern animated series, the DC Comics Scribblenauts Unmasked video game, the Justice League Action animated series, and a bunch of the LEGO DC properties. I can’t help but get the feeling that he’s a huge DC Comics fan who happened to pursue screenwriting and now has the ability to write the comics he reads. Amazingly, this feels more like a Crisis event comic story set in the far future than a random “What If…” or “Elseworlds” story like most of the others we’ve gotten. Paired with the excellent Suicide Squad story, it makes these issues feel like a great collection of mini-series events that have nothing else to do with Future State, and that makes them even better. The artwork from Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, and Jeromy Cox is highly detailed and stylishly colorful. The influences of artists like George Perez and Jerry Ordway can’t be overstated enough, and helps to give the story that feel of a classic “big event” comic from the 80’s and 90’s. With the time travel elements and the ending that makes it feel as if it is important to the ongoing story of Black Adam (and I’ll give them credit for finding a way to make it look like this story matters to current continuity), this looks to be like one of the must read stories of the DCU. If these two comics can do so much in just 2 issues, it’s a shame that characters like Batman and Superman felt so underserved by Future State. DC’s current editorial staff are too worried about checking the right boxes for the wrong reasons that they’ve forgotten that you’re supposed to tell a good story in each issue and pair it with good art that makes people want to spend money on it. The current crop of DC Comics coming out from the AT&T conglomerate are a pale imitation of the books that came before, but luckily, comics like these still manage to slip through the cracks when no one is paying attention. I’ll bet that most people never read these issues of Future State, but I wish everybody would. If all the comics from DC were as thoughtful and creative as these, they might just inspire people to read and buy comic books again. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

This review covers Future State: Swamp Thing #1 and #2. Future State: Swamp Thing is perhaps the greatest Future State mini-series to find its way to print. Its biggest strength is its disconnect from the rest of the Future State event and the DC Universe at large. You could easily take this story and publish it as a stand-alone graphic novel, and it might become one of the best-selling Swamp Thing tales in years. In the far future, the Earth lies in ruins and only a few humans remain in isolation. Swamp Thing has been searching for this remainder of humanity but has had no success in finding any survivors. To ease his loneliness, he has created a new group of green creatures much like himself who each take a small piece of his power and exist as a new race of plant-based beings who search the ravaged wastelands of the planet for remnants of humanity. The biggest problem the green face is that humans see these green creatures as monsters and continue to set traps for them, thinking that these creatures are going to kill them. Little do they know that Swamp Thing, the supernatural creature of the Earth’s green energy who bonded with a human host, longs for humankind and misses having human interaction. When a human is finally subdued and shown that the creatures of the green are not his enemy, the human tells them that the last remaining humans have moved far north into the snow-covered lands where plants can’t grow, into a former S.T.A.R. Labs facility where the military control everything and some new kind of weapon is being developed. He begs Swamp Thing and the creatures of the green to help him free his people and save humanity. I admit that I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories and this one delivers. I was expecting some sort of climate change mumbo-jumbo or even a tale set in a not-too-distant future that simply pushed along the Justice League narrative, but this story delivered in ways that were far better than anything my lowered expectations could’ve fathomed. Future State was so uneven overall that realized no standards had been set and some writers just weren’t up to the task of creating a new status quo. Ram V, however, nailed it and crafted one of the best comic stories in years, Future State or not. The art from Mike Perkins and June Chung was a great fit for this yarn. Perkins not only had the ability to tell a great story and keep the characters independently recognizable, but he also provided some amazing “anatomy” drawings of the green creatures to sit alongside Swamp Thing’s narration of their creation that mimicked the anatomical drawings of Leonardo Di Vinci. I found myself often just staring at the linework and detail of these “fake” bodies and I think it really helped to sell the creation of these creatures. Chung’s colors are rich and moody with the ability to be dark without becoming muddled and confusing. She shows a tremendous grasp of the color spectrum by using different tints and shades of green for the creatures that help to keep them distinguishable and recognizable, even when they are grouped together. I don’t plan on reviewing any more Future State comics because I don’t expect any others I read to move me to love or hate them as much as the ones I’ve already covered. But especially after reading Swamp Thing, books like Dark Detective and Superman: Worlds of War anger me with their spectacular crapulence. It’s painfully obvious that the powers-that-be in charge of DC Comics have no idea how to pilot the ship and the “big name” writers they paid big dollars for are woefully underprepared to write the characters that they’ve been given. At least Ram V hasn’t been let go from DC Comics yet, and hopefully he’ll be moved to a book of greater prominence once the others have failed and been let go from the company. Do yourself a favor and buy these two comic books. They will make you see why the medium works. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

The mixed bag that DC’s new publishing initiative of adding two back-up stories and raising the cover price hits hard on this issue. If these back-up stories had been included in the initial issue, I would have never given the series another chance. I still feel that the “feature” story is somewhat lacking, but the back-up stories at downright terrible. $7.99 for a comic book is a tough sell for retailers in today’s market, but in no way is this issue worth it. Writer John Ridley still hasn’t given us any reason to see Tim Fox as a new Batman. Whereas Bruce Wayne dedicated his entire life to avenging the death of his parents, Tim became Batman because… his sister did drugs, or something? It’s still not entirely clear why he became Batman or even how he’s able to do the things that Bruce did without Bruce’s lifetime of training a dedication. It’s because of technology, I guess? It’s just so unsatisfying to see a fill-in character without any justification for it. The story this issue follows Tim as he investigates the murder of man found in a dark alley. His assailants kept their faces covered well enough to defeat the rampant facial recognition technology in Gotham City, and while he’s concerned with finding the murderers and their motivation, The Magistrate is hunting him down and attempting to kill him. We’re also shown a little more of Tim’s mother who is working with the mayor to fix the “kill all masked vigilantes on sight laws” because it’s unconstitutional, though she supports the idea because “…Batman… my daughter… something… something…” I can’t tell if Ridley is just putting a placeholder idea in here because he has no idea how to flesh out the story, or if he thinks it makes it feel more like a real story from another timeline by not having them rehash the details, but as a reader, I need something more to keep me invested in these characters. Art chores have changed hands, which is odd because they’ve been working on these stories for months and should’ve had plenty of time to work in advance, but we find Laura Braga, Nick Derington, and Arif Prianto taking over this issue and I feel like it’s a better overall fit than last issue. Together they bring more of a traditional superhero style that at least helps to make the story fell more that a traditional Batman comic book, even if the story still feels like it needs a little more of anything to tie it into the Batman mythos. If the issue ended here for $3.99, I’d probably still be unsatisfied, but more likely to give it a pass. However, the following two stories are downright terrible. I can’t fathom who gave these scripts and artwork a pass but considering how many people have been fired and shuffled in the editorial offices at DC Comics in the past two years, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that these made it through the process, but I certainly feel like the idea of sticking extra stories on a “headliner” title and charging extra came about because they realized what stinkers they had to deal with. The first story, simply titled “Batgirls,” finds former Batgirl Cassandra Cain being tossed into a Magistrate prison facility where both heroes and villains are interred until they can be processed for long-term holding. Her cellmate is Spoiler, former Batgirl (maybe, depending on what continuity this is) Stephanie Brown, who turned against the heroes at some point in the past. Stephanie waxes on and on about the prison: the hierarchy, the technology, the guards, the friends she’s made, the way to get ahead… and you can’t help but wonder why she’s explaining all of this. I know that complained in the Next Batman story that we weren’t getting enough details, but these details are so poorly presented within the narrative that you wonder if writer Vita Ayala even knows how to structure a basic story. Eventually Spoiler and Batgirl spar leading them to time in solitary confinement where they each come clean and reveal their secrets. Spoiler went undercover as a villain but was caught before she could make a move against the bad guys and had to maintain her cover. Batgirl has been getting secret messages from within the prison that “The Bat Lives” and has discovered a secret chamber underneath the holding cells. Batgirl believes Batman may still be alive down below and asks Spoiler to help free him. Unfortunately for us readers, Ayala gives away the fact that it’s actually Barbara Gordon (former Batgirl and daughter of Commissioner Gordon) being held below, not Bruce Wayne. I can’t fathom why this important plot point would be revealed here, again except for the ineptitude of the writer. Spoiler agrees and when released from solitary, she calls in every favor to start a prison wide riot. Despite the structural problems with this story, there are plenty of other problems with it as well. All of the heroes and villains are allowed to intermingle freely during the day like a normal prison with no signs to any steps taken to dampen super-powers or stop archenemies from confronting each other. Also, during Spoiler’s informational monologue, she discusses how the prison is wired for sound and there’s no safe space to talk freely unless you have a “nullifier” which gives you a safe radius of a yard. She says this openly without fear of being overheard, so I’m guessing she has a nullifier, but Batgirl is far enough away that anything she says would not be covered by it, so there’s a pretty big problem with the way it’s being handled here. On top of all of these story problems, the art is barely serviceable. The linework by artist Aneke is stiff and unexciting. There’s very little fluidity to the layouts and the character designs are just enough to claim their existence. I had no idea that Batgirl’s cellmate was supposed to be Spoiler until Batgirl called her by that name 11 pages into the story. I had just gone forward with the assumption that this was a new character who had risen and fallen in the future. The bland art alone wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the flat and lifeless colors by Trish Mulvihill. Almost nothing has shading or any sense of form. Spaces have no sense of depth, and even when presented with a blank background space (which is certainly more than most colorists probably would be by today’s artists) she takes no opportunity to fill in the area with texture or shading. It feels very much like she knows the basics of a computer coloring program, and nothing more. I wish this was the end of the issue, but there’s still one more story to slog through and while I will admit that I am not the target demographic for this story, it’s still being forced upon me by being included in the $7.99 cover price. This entry into the Gotham City Sirens world of stories of obviously tailored for female readers with Sex and the City references and a female android who feels betrayed when her creator gets engaged to be married. It’s certainly not as bad as the last story, but Paula Sevenbergen’s tale is still not very well structured with a by-the-numbers flashback that does little other than fill space before oddly warping back to the present with no proper transition. The artwork isn’t great, but it is certainly better in this story than in the last. It just took four people to make it happen this time with Rob Haynes providing breakdowns, Emanuela Lupacchino on pencils, Wade Von Grawbadger doing the inking, and John Kalisz as colorist. The look is lighthearted and cartoony which fits the simplistic tone of the story, but at least there’s more action when there needs to be, and the colors add to the feel of each scene instead of just filling the spaces between the lines. However, the final product is still a story that doesn’t feel like it belongs in a Batman comic book, much less a flagship title like this one. Future State: The Next Batman #2 feels like the proverbial switch after issue #1’s bait of not being so bad. In no way does this collection of stories justify the $7.99 price tag. If these back-up stories had been published in the first issue, there’s no way it would’ve returned for a second printing and I now question if I’m going to even bother buying the fourth issue in this series that continues these awful chapters. Can the main story in the third issue be good enough to bring me back for the finale? http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

Gene Luen Yang’s final chapter of this Batman and Superman team-up reads like the final chapter of Batman and Superman’s friendship, strained and exhausted, before the events that lead to Superman’s exit from Earth and Batman’s descent into the worst version of Gotham City ever imagined. It’s sad because even as the two allies see their friendship falling apart for various reasons, they still maintain a lot of mutual honor and respect for each other, though they won’t admit it. Following up on the heels of last month’s story, Superman has been captured by Professor Pyg while Batman discovers that Pyg is working for The Magistrate, though he’s pretending to be leading a resistance group against Gotham’s evil overlords. Somehow, The Magistrate has discovered a way to synthesize a form of kryptonite that allows Pyg to not only get the better of Superman but perform some experiments on him as well. Batman realizes that the experiments Pyg has been doing have allowed him to replicate certain parts of Superman’s physiology into biological weapons, making Gotham an even more dangerous place for vigilante heroes. Of course, the story wraps up with Superman and Batman removing the biological threats, destroying the lab and the research, and making sure Professor Pyg gets locked away in Blackgate prison, but the story doesn’t end there. Realizing that The Magistrate’s synthetic kryptonite is a bigger threat to Superman’s life than Clark is willing to admit, Bruce turns the table on his friend and banishes Superman from Gotham City under the pretense that the genetic modifications are too dangerous to fall into the hands of the Gotham villains. Stephen Segovia helped Ben Oliver on the linework this issue and Arif Prianto is back on the colors. The artwork is once again exceptionally stunning and among the best on the stands today. It is somewhat of a shame that these artists aren’t on a higher profile comic that will get them more exposure, but those comics are also not as good as this one, so I guess there’s always a silver-lining. Just as with issue #1, this issue is only $3.99 and features one story instead of attempting DC’s new initiative of adding extra stories and raising the cover price. Those extra stories can be a mixed blessing as some are better than the feature and are worth the bulk of the cover price while others are downright terrible and would be too expensive if given away for free. Since this story alone is worth every penny and one of the best that Future State has to offer, I’m glad it didn’t get tied down with anything else. Even if you skip most of Future State because you know better than to buy the mess that DC Comics is currently publishing, grab these two issues. You’ll be glad that you did. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

Emo teen Bruce Wayne is back and narrating this story again, showing how poorly Mariko Tamaki seems to understand the world around here. The internal dialog of Bruce is much worse in this issue than it was last time while also providing one of the biggest plot holes outside of a Looney Tunes train tunnel painted on a mountainside. Why Tamaki thinks that police detectives will mistake an old rotting corpse floating in Gotham Harbor for the supposedly freshly killed body of Bruce Wayne is beyond me, and it’s also beyond reason. This is the writer who will be taking over Detective Comics after Future State and it’s a pretty safe bet that I won’t be paying money for those issues. It’s a shame because the story makes some interesting steps forward with links back to Waynetech and the old Gotham City, but these could be more skeletons set in place by editorial which could explain why they seem satisfying while the rest of the writing is terrible. Dan Mora and Jordie Bellaire provide some more great artwork, it’s just a shame it’s attached to this book. The follow-up this issue is a Red Hood and Ravager story about former heroes who now work for The Magistrate to bring in the masked vigilantes around Gotham City. Apparently Red Hood brings them in alive while Ravager brings them in body bags, and the two have some sort of a relationship outside of the workplace. While Ravager seems to enjoy taking them down, Red Hood is apparently not 100% on the side of The Magistrate and his attempt to figure out what’s really going on with some old villain tech being used to possibly control the minds of these masked vigilantes appears to put him on The Magistrate’s hit list. This follow-up story is from Joshua Williamson who is a tried-and-true comics writer and it shows in how this story is laid out, layered, and revealed. Even if you aren’t a fan of the Red Hood, you’ll probably enjoy this story simply because it’s good. Giannis Milonogiannis provides the artwork and his unique style adds a manga-flair, though it’s kinetic feel does look a little sketchy and rough in a few spots. I like it overall, but I can see how not everyone would. Once again, the back-up story that DC added to increase the page count and raise the cover price was better and more rewarding than the feature. This seems to be the theme with their marquee titles in Future State. I don’t know if this is a bad sign for the future of DC Comics publishing in general, but the days of the 400,000 copy print runs are long dead, and no one seems to be working for their return. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

I recently joked with a friend that the classic Marvel “What If…?” stories always ended with the end of the world. While Future State: The Flash #2 doesn’t quite hit the full apocalypse, it does bring about the worst possible outcomes for the Flash family. It wasn’t the ending I expected, but I don’t really have a problem with the end of the story being a downer. My biggest gripe is that it’s apparently a lead-in or tie-in to the Teen Titans Future State books, which I really have no interest in reading. Brandon Veitti has jumped the story ahead 2 months which seems like a lot of time when Kid Flash is apparently one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse bringing about the end of the world. When a speedster can circle the globe in seconds, months seems like an exceptionally long time have someone hiding out. Veitti also tried really hard to establish in the first issue that this is a very supernatural occurrence of a dark apocalyptic character but spends this issue building Barry’s internal monologue to clarify that this clearly can’t be a supernatural creature. There’s no reasoning given for his change in attitude, and it sticks out like a sore thumb, especially when Barry is proven wrong. Brandon Peterson and Will Conrad take over the main art duties this issue with Mike Atiyeh returning on colors. The art feels a lot more fluid and energetic which is a great change from the previous issue. The colors from Atiyeh feel much more well rounded this time around. Perhaps the artists gave him more shadows and heavily weighted areas to work with, but the issue just felt like a more finely polished product than the previous effort. While I’m still happy that this issue doesn’t come packed with a back-up story and a higher cover price, I just don’t feel like this story is worth the price overall. It feels too disconnected from the story that has been running in the comic series for the past several years and the continued kicking around of Wally West is just too much. Veitti doesn’t have the voice of Barry Allen down and tying-in of this story to the Teen Titans series instead of the Justice League or keeping it as a stand-alone doesn’t feel right for this character. http://www.dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

This review covers Future State: Green Lantern #1 and #2. Green Lantern is the name of several characters in the DC Universe, but most people associate the name with Hal Jordan, the character created in the Silver Age of comics. It’s a little disappointing to see that Hal only shows up in one back-up story at the end of issue #2, and the story doesn’t do much other than set-up an appearance in the new series debuting later this year. Green Lantern series have always struggled with ways to shift focus around the Green Lantern Corps and the many characters but relegating the most well recognized version of the character to an afterthought brings down the whole experience. The main story focuses on Lantern John Stewart and his command of a group fighting against a group of Khund (think Klingon) warriors set on massacring a planet of friendly blue aliens for the “God In Red” cult that calls out for blood sacrifices. Stewart must draw upon his time as a US Marine and fight these killers while commanding his troops and saving the innocent. It’s a fine idea that works to draw upon the character history of John Stewart, but the problem is that writer Geoffrey Thorne has decided to break the Green Lantern Power Battery at some point before this story, rendering all the rings useless. He’s basically taken away the one gimmick that makes these characters unique and turned them into random space fighters. It’s a shame because the art from Tom Raney and Mike Atiyeh feels dense and gritty and serves the action well and the premise works with John Stewart’s backstory. But by the time you get to the end and the “God In Red, the story falls into a lot of rather convenient coincidences to get things wrapped up in time (and luckily the “God In Red” is someone Stewart knows and can call, apparently). There’s two-thirds of a good story here, but the last one-third just kills it for me. Each issue comes with 2 short back-up stories featuring other Green Lanterns, and depending on your level of fandom, you may or may not get your $5.99-worth out of each issue. #1 features Jessica Cruz and Guy Gardner and issue #2 features Teen Lantern and Hal Jordan. Getting these extra stories for a couple extra bucks doesn’t feel as bad as the other options DC has done with bundling and adding extra pages, but I still would prefer old school newsprint and lower price overall. The first back up features Jessica Cruz on the Green Lantern Power Battery that is now floating aimlessly in space. She’s found a way to supply just enough power to keep life support system active for herself, but now she’s attracted the attention of the Sinestro Corps and has to fend them off without her own Lantern abilities. It’s a good story overall from writer Ryan Cady and the artwork from Sami Basri and Hi-Fi provides good, clean, crisp, classic, comic book artwork. This was the best of all the stories in terms of providing a story that felt like a real Green Lantern tale. Rounding out the first issue is a Guy Gardner yarn written by Ernie Altbacker. In this one, Guy lands on a planet during a civil war when his ring gives out and the natives mistake him for a new Prophet to lead them in a new religious order. Without any other options, Guy takes on the role and works to bring peace to these people. Once he finally succeeds, another member of the DCU discovers the planet and sows discord, ending the story on a down-note. While I’m fine with a bit of a downer ending, the biggest problem is that story takes place over the span of twenty-five years, meaning that there’s apparently no place for Guy Gardner in the DC Comics Publishing Empire for the next generation. I also feel like the artwork from Clayton Henry and Marcelo Maiolo was a too cartoony for this story. While it was certainly full of expression and emotion, it felt too lighthearted for a what was ultimately a story of a lifetime of a failure and an end for Guy Gardner. The second issue also has two back-up stories, this first featuring Teen Lantern from the Brian Michael Bendis version of the Young Justice comic series written by Josie Campbell with artwork by Andie Tong and Wil Quintana. I honestly knew nothing of this character before this appearance and this appearance doesn’t inspire me to want to know more. I found this character to be annoying and the other characters in the story to come across as silly even though they really shouldn’t have. I’m guessing that this was written as if it was meant for younger readers, but it wasn’t sold to younger readers. This story was included with stories meant for regular readers, so it doesn’t fit in this issue. The final story is where we finally get our Hal Jordan story that most readers would’ve expected as the main story, especially since Hal Jordan is on the cover of this issue. Writer Robert Venditti doesn’t give us much of a story though. Hal gets on a spaceship and speeds off after a battle while monologuing about how tough the battle was and about how many have fallen, but it was necessary and how he’d do it again. Of course, we don’t really know what happened, but I’m guessing whatever it was is what caused the Power Battery to fail in the first place before all of these stories started. When his ship finally lands (or crashes), he finds himself next to Green Lantern Jo Mullein, the Lantern from the Far Sector series (how convenient). And here the story ends, promising to continue sometime later in 2021. While I liked the artwork by Dexter Soy and Alex Sinclair, the cliffhanger leading to a resolution later this year drains the story of all sense any future insight or artistic expression and instead is just an ad for the new series. I can’t help but wonder if this specific story was originally meant as a Free Comic Book Day giveaway, but repurposed thanks to AT&T’s re-tinkering of DC and the ongoing pandemic cancellation of public events. Future State has once again shown us that the future of DC Comics is not the one that readers and fans are clamoring for. Making a series that focuses more on John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan isn’t a problem in and of itself, but then removing the Lanterns from the Green Lanterns is simply a mistake. There’s nothing in this Future State that makes me want to continue on with the Green Lantern books in the Infinite Frontier of 2021. Hopefully the next Crisis event that wipes out this continuity can make these characters fun again. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

This review covers both Future State: Suicide Squad #1 and #2. I knew that Future State had to offer at least one book that was a bonafide good title worthy of your money in both story and art, from start to finish. I had hoped that I would find that praise-worthy title amongst the Superman and Batman titles that crowd the shelves. You can only imagine my surprise when I has finished the first issue of this Suicide Squad/Black Adam book and realized that I eagerly wanted to read more. Other titles in Future State had given me hope with a good back-up story after a terrible feature, but this title gave me a good feature and a good back-up, mixing good stories with good artwork, all while properly paying homage to the characters of the DCU and forging ahead with bold creative choices. The only downside to these stories is the “Elseworlds” effect – that feeling that what happens in these might not be as important they make themselves out to be, but the Black Adam back-up story actually seems to fix this issue with an ending that shows that it might be a key development in the character after all. Writer Robbie Thompson is no stranger to the world of comic books, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that this is why his story works so much better than many of the others that come from writers who have only ever worked in the worlds of television, movies, or novels. Thompson gives us a look at a world where the Suicide Squad is masquerading as the “Justice Squad” in a nod to the Dark Avengers era of the Marvel Universe. Amanda Waller has found several villains to take on the roles of the heroes we are more familiar with, though the exception being Conner Kent who is standing in as Superman. Waller has devised a plan to create a world safe from all otherworldly threats and has convinced Kent to join her. Our story opens with the team taking on Mongul, Sinestro, Cheetah, and Brainiac for a piece of tech that Waller needs for her plan, and lives are lost on both sides as the Squad eventually finds success. Of course, there’s more to Waller and her plans than meets the eye, but that’s the charm of Suicide Squad in any incarnation. This alone as a Suicide Squad story would be fine and dandy, but Thompson throws in an extra wrinkle. It seems that there’s another Squad working in secret to find Waller. This Earth is, in fact, Earth-3, home of the Crime Syndicate. The Syndicate is dead is Amanda Waller from Earth-1 has apparently escaped here because she’s found that this world is more willing to allow her to proceed with her plans. The problem is that Earth-1 is facing some dire problems and the leaders now realize that they need Amanda Waller to help keep things in check. Peacemaker has arrived with his Squad from Earth-1, but the time they spend on Earth-3 is slowly killing them, giving them a small window of opportunity to find Waller and bring her home. The artwork from Javier Fernandez and Alex Sinclair is dark and gritty when it needs to be and clean and futuristic when it’s called for, and looks great in the story. Each character from each world is recognizable when they need to be and even though the Earth-1 Squad is hidden in shadow for almost all of the first issue, they are recognizable once you know who you are looking at when you go back and revisit the story. While I’ve had my ups and downs with the Suicide Squad from incarnation to incarnation (the last series from Tom Taylor was unreadable and hopefully undone by these universe rebuilding shenanigans), this story was a massive load of fun and caused me to purchase the new series with the hope that it might be OK this time. The back-up story features a group known as the Justice Legion-A in the far future (making this story feel more like a Justice League or Legion of Super-Heroes story than a Suicide Squad tie-in) made of future version of Superman, Batman, Flash, and Wonder Woman, who exist in a universe where cities and nations now exist on individual planets while Earth sits in ruins. As a new evil known as The Unkind appears to destroy the universe with the help of the personified 7 Deadly Sins and the Lords of Chaos, worlds and heroes fall (including the original Superman who is still alive, but now living in a yellow sun and glowing like golden metal) and the fabric of reality appears to be dissolving. The future heroes of the Justice Legion-A are too inexperienced to handle this massive threat, but Wonder Woman knows of one man who might have the power to help them. Black Adam, the longtime arch-nemesis of Shazam (formerly known as Captain Marvel, but, well, you know…) has given up his former ways to be a man of peace and no longer rules his people but works as their ambassador. Apparently, he and Wonder Woman have secretly been having a relationship and Wonder Woman now finds herself pregnant, so she uses the news of Adam’s impending fatherhood to bring him out of his pacifist ways to help them in their battle with The Unkindness. As they battle and find themselves losing terribly and needing to regroup, they are met by Gold Beetle – the time traveling successor to Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, who appears in the nick of time to help them save all of reality, if she can remember how. Jeremy Adams’ story is admittingly frantic and full of references that might require the occasional comic reader to check Google from time to time, but it’s also a dream for long time comic book readers and fans of DC’s difficult continuity. Adams is mostly credited as a screenwriter who has worked on a number of properties, but among them are The Green Lantern animated series, the DC Comics Scribblenauts Unmasked video game, the Justice League Action animated series, and a bunch of the LEGO DC properties. I can’t help but get the feeling that he’s a huge DC Comics fan who happened to pursue screenwriting and now has the ability to write the comics he reads. Amazingly, this feels more like a Crisis event comic story set in the far future than a random “What If…” or “Elseworlds” story like most of the others we’ve gotten. Paired with the excellent Suicide Squad story, it makes these issues feel like a great collection of mini-series events that have nothing else to do with Future State, and that makes them even better. The artwork from Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, and Jeromy Cox is highly detailed and stylishly colorful. The influences of artists like George Perez and Jerry Ordway can’t be overstated enough, and helps to give the story that feel of a classic “big event” comic from the 80’s and 90’s. With the time travel elements and the ending that makes it feel as if it is important to the ongoing story of Black Adam (and I’ll give them credit for finding a way to make it look like this story matters to current continuity), this looks to be like one of the must read stories of the DCU. If these two comics can do so much in just 2 issues, it’s a shame that characters like Batman and Superman felt so underserved by Future State. DC’s current editorial staff are too worried about checking the right boxes for the wrong reasons that they’ve forgotten that you’re supposed to tell a good story in each issue and pair it with good art that makes people want to spend money on it. The current crop of DC Comics coming out from the AT&T conglomerate are a pale imitation of the books that came before, but luckily, comics like these still manage to slip through the cracks when no one is paying attention. I’ll bet that most people never read these issues of Future State, but I wish everybody would. If all the comics from DC were as thoughtful and creative as these, they might just inspire people to read and buy comic books again. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

This review covers Future State: Swamp Thing #1 and #2. Future State: Swamp Thing is perhaps the greatest Future State mini-series to find its way to print. Its biggest strength is its disconnect from the rest of the Future State event and the DC Universe at large. You could easily take this story and publish it as a stand-alone graphic novel, and it might become one of the best-selling Swamp Thing tales in years. In the far future, the Earth lies in ruins and only a few humans remain in isolation. Swamp Thing has been searching for this remainder of humanity but has had no success in finding any survivors. To ease his loneliness, he has created a new group of green creatures much like himself who each take a small piece of his power and exist as a new race of plant-based beings who search the ravaged wastelands of the planet for remnants of humanity. The biggest problem the green face is that humans see these green creatures as monsters and continue to set traps for them, thinking that these creatures are going to kill them. Little do they know that Swamp Thing, the supernatural creature of the Earth’s green energy who bonded with a human host, longs for humankind and misses having human interaction. When a human is finally subdued and shown that the creatures of the green are not his enemy, the human tells them that the last remaining humans have moved far north into the snow-covered lands where plants can’t grow, into a former S.T.A.R. Labs facility where the military control everything and some new kind of weapon is being developed. He begs Swamp Thing and the creatures of the green to help him free his people and save humanity. I admit that I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories and this one delivers. I was expecting some sort of climate change mumbo-jumbo or even a tale set in a not-too-distant future that simply pushed along the Justice League narrative, but this story delivered in ways that were far better than anything my lowered expectations could’ve fathomed. Future State was so uneven overall that realized no standards had been set and some writers just weren’t up to the task of creating a new status quo. Ram V, however, nailed it and crafted one of the best comic stories in years, Future State or not. The art from Mike Perkins and June Chung was a great fit for this yarn. Perkins not only had the ability to tell a great story and keep the characters independently recognizable, but he also provided some amazing “anatomy” drawings of the green creatures to sit alongside Swamp Thing’s narration of their creation that mimicked the anatomical drawings of Leonardo Di Vinci. I found myself often just staring at the linework and detail of these “fake” bodies and I think it really helped to sell the creation of these creatures. Chung’s colors are rich and moody with the ability to be dark without becoming muddled and confusing. She shows a tremendous grasp of the color spectrum by using different tints and shades of green for the creatures that help to keep them distinguishable and recognizable, even when they are grouped together. I don’t plan on reviewing any more Future State comics because I don’t expect any others I read to move me to love or hate them as much as the ones I’ve already covered. But especially after reading Swamp Thing, books like Dark Detective and Superman: Worlds of War anger me with their spectacular crapulence. It’s painfully obvious that the powers-that-be in charge of DC Comics have no idea how to pilot the ship and the “big name” writers they paid big dollars for are woefully underprepared to write the characters that they’ve been given. At least Ram V hasn’t been let go from DC Comics yet, and hopefully he’ll be moved to a book of greater prominence once the others have failed and been let go from the company. Do yourself a favor and buy these two comic books. They will make you see why the medium works. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

Issue #3 once again shows how quickly the overall quality can shift in DC’s new publishing format that combines a 22-page feature story with two 20-page back-up stories. While the feature that should be drawing me in has left me underwhelmed, again, the two back-ups have proven that there are much better stories to tell in the DC Universe, even if the execution isn’t perfect. John Ridley’s Next Batman is still not the Batman we want or need. Besides the fact that we still have nothing to connect our protagonist to the real Batman, a problem that should’ve been fixed in the very first issue, the story progresses at a snail’s pace of expanded storytelling that plagues the modern comic book industry. The entire story, which should be the reason we want to pay the majority of the $7.99 cover price, feels like it would cover about 10 minutes of a tv episode. Beyond that, the story ends with yet another cliffhanger leaving us to wonder if this new Caped Crusader will perish in his first published story arc (which obviously, he won’t, and it’s sad that this is the only kind of hook Ridley could think to use to try to draw us back for the next issue). I’m also still trying to figure out what’s going on with The Magistrate and the armored military police force patrolling Gotham City. Their job is to enforce a “kill all masks” law that is aimed at removing vigilantes who hide their identities behind masks, all while wearing body armor and masked helmets that hide their identity. So far, only one “peacekeeper” has been shown without his helmet on in public and it seems to be only so that we can pick him out of the crowd. Otherwise, we essentially have a story of guys in masks enforcing a “kill all masks” law against other guys in masks. Luckily this isn’t a film or Cinema Sins would be tallying up the points. The art team of Laura Braga, Nick Derington, and Arif Prianto have returned from last issue and I still think that they are a good fit for the story. I just wish that the story gave us more motivation for our protagonist or did a better job of explaining how he’s able to pull off the signature Batman moves that Bruce spent decades training for. I wasn’t 100% sold on this new version of Batman before this issue, and this new chapter does nothing more to change my opinion. The first back-up story returns to The Outsiders from issue #1. Knowing that Duke Thomas, aka The Signal, has a group of Gotham City refugees in hiding that has been infiltrated by a spy loyal to The Magistrate, Black Lightning once again makes contact with Katana in an attempt to warn Duke before it’s too late. Even though this story has two less pages than our feature story per issue, and two less issues to tell the story in, it does a much better job of explaining Katana, her sword and its powers, Black Lightning, his powers and how they’ve changed since we last saw him, and The Signal, his powers and his role to the people of Gotham City. I know more about these three characters by this story alone than I know about the Next Batman from the twenty-six extra pages of story afforded to that character. Sumit Kumar, Raul Fernandez, and Jordie Bellaire handle the art duties, and I still think they are my favorite team on any of the five stories contained in the Future State: The Next Batman comics. Some of the best art in any of the stories revolves around Black Lightning and his electricity effects, especially when interacting with Katana’s haunted sword. The frantic artwork, glowing energy effects, and use of shadow and light make these pages fun to look at. If this team were to spin off an Outsiders comic book in the coming months, I would definitely pick it up. Paul Jenkin’s Arkham Knights finishes out the issue, and I think this chapter was certainly stronger than the last. The basic idea of using the inmates of Arkham Asylum to form a makeshift superhero team still seems like a terrible idea, but at least the mission this time around had enough twists and turns to not only keep it interesting, but also make the outcome less obvious until the end. While I’m not sure I’d buy this as a stand-alone series, it’s still head and shoulders above either back-up story in the last issue. The artwork from Jack Herbert and Gabe Eltaeb is stunning and I think after they spent the last chapter getting used to the characters and concepts of this Future State gang, they found their rhythm in this chapter and were able to concentrate on the action. There’s a fair amount of story packed in these twenty pages and both the linework and the colors work to make it feel bold and alive. Now that the Outsiders and Arkham Knights stories have concluded, I don’t see any reason to continue the series. Yes, it’s just one more issue, but that issue costs $7.99 and will contain two back-up stories that I consider to be pure garbage. While I might look elsewhere for some spoilers just for the sake of knowing how Tim Fox’s story wraps up, I still have some issues of Future State: The Dark Detective to read, and I’m not looking forward to it. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

Well, that was... nothing. This issue of Dark Detective advertised the meeting of the original Batman and the Next Batman, and their face-to-face meeting turned out to be a whole lot of nothing much at all. In all, they stared at each other, exchanged a few words, then turned away and walked off. That was it. Mariko Tamaki should be ashamed. The terrible inner monologue Tamaki seems to think Bruce Wayne would be speaking to himself takes on a new voice this time. This issue, Bruce is no longer the moody teenager he was in previous issues, but he has somehow become the voice of the “eat the rich” proletariat who hates the rich because they do whatever they want and play by their own rules and never pay their taxes. What...?! Has Tamaki never read a Batman comic before writing this series? Has she never seen a Batman TV show or movie or cartoon? Why am I paying $5.99 for this? Assuming you can look past the problems with Tamaki’s inability to understand who Bruce Wayne is and read the story anyway, you still won’t find much here to digest. Three issues in and we still have about 10 pages of real plot surrounded by useless filler and bad dialog. Apparently, The Magistrate has invented invisible micro-drones that record everyone in Gotham City using technology taken from some of the tech companies in the city, and that’s why Bruce Wayne was originally targeted for murder – to cover up the use of WayneTech robotics. Again, the art from Dan Mora and Jordie Bellaire is a joy. If only DC could find a competent writer to handle the story, this book, wouldn’t be so bad. The back-up story from Matthew Rosenberg is the real reason to buy this issue. In fact, as much I still don’t care much for Grifter, Rosenberg’s story is so well done that I’d buy a Grifter series if he wrote it. The artwork from Carmine Di Giandomenico and Antonio Fabela is so jaw-droppingly gorgeous that I’m almost willing to pay the $5.99 cover price for just that story and I wish it wasn’t hidden behind this awful Batman story that will keep most people from ever discovering it. I don’t want to give away any part of the story in the back-up because I truly believe it’s worth reading and experiencing by every comic fan. Even if you must suffer the indignity of buying Future State: Dark Detective #1 and #3 just to get the Matthew Rosenberg back-up story, I suggest you do it. Even nothing else, you can at least in enjoy the artwork in the Batman feature. http://www.dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

This is the best the issue of Dark Detective, but that’s been a very low hurdle to clear. The strongest factor that helps this issue to soar above the others is that Mariko Tamaki doesn’t have much story to tell or inane inner monologues to annoy us with. Instead, we get final showdown between Batman and Peacekeeper-01 with a bunch of punching, kicking, and explosions. Sure, we still get a lot of dumb thought balloons like: “What I know.” “There is no end.” “Only endings.” “Clean cuts.” “Rarely.” “Mostly frayed edges.” “Collateral damage…” “The cost…” “…of my mistakes.” Blargh. At least Dan Mora and Jordie Bellaire really outdo themselves on this one. The battle scenes are beautiful, and the explosions are gorgeous. Watching this horrible version of Gotham City go up in smoke is sight to behold and every page looks fantastic. Again, I just wish these pages weren’t in a comic that was so terrible to read. The back-up story featuring Read Hood and Ravager wasn’t quite as great as I had hoped it would be, but it was still a lot of fun and certainly better than the main story again. My main problem with the story is that it didn’t actually wrap up. It ended this particular tale, but it didn’t feel like there was any closure to the saga of Red Hood and Ravager in the Future State of Gotham City. Unlike the Grifter story in the odd numbered issues, Joshua Williamson’s story seems to be the precursor to more stories set in dystopian Gotham City. I don’t want that. Giannis Milonogiannis returns for the art duties with Jordie Bellaire providing colors, and the manga influences are very strong again. Red Hood on his cycle invokes so much Akira imagery, I’m almost surprised that Ravager doesn’t call him Kaneda. Once again, many of the backgrounds look sketchy and unfinished and might not attract everyone, but they do add to the overall kinetic energy and flow of the action. Future State: Dark Detective as a series has been better than The Next Batman in the fact that the back-up stories are all good, even though the features are just as bad. Perhaps AT&T is to blame for these terrible comics. Maybe it was the move from New York City to Burbank or the pandemic and the scramble away from Diamond Comics or maybe the comic book industry as a whole is getting the same screwed over treatment that the TV and movie industry have gone through in previous years. But whatever the case may be, the days of reading good stories from front-to-back appear to be over, and no one in these corporate offices seem to care. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

Infinite Frontier is a mess. DC Comics has always used these big “Crisis-like” events to fix problems in DC continuity, bring back characters from the dead, and wipe clean the mistakes that past writers made with the DCU. Scott Snyder’s run on Batman lead to Metal which lead to his run on Justice League which lead to Death Metal which lead to Infinite Frontier which is basically leads to the universe giving a giant shrug, fixing nothing, and moving on. DC is basically saying that all the mistakes they made in the early 2000s that were wiped out by The New 52 are now part of current universe, plus all the mistakes they made in The New 52 that were wiped out by Rebirth are now part of the current universe, and all of the mistakes of Rebirth that were wiped out by Doomsday Clock are now part of the current universe. In essence, everything that made you roll your eyes, shudder, and stop buying your favorite comic book titles over the last 20 years are now part of the current DC Universe, even if they were previously undone. Oh, and DC is going to start charging a dollar more per comic in the next few months. At its heart, Infinite Frontier #0 is a sampler of what’s coming in many of the different DC Comic publications in the next few months. Framed by Wonder Woman and her contemplation of an offer from the mystical leaders of the universe known as “The Quintessence” to ascend and become one of their kind, Diana doesn’t want to leave this new universe until she knows everything is going to be fine. She was warned of a “great cost” that the universe must pay, and she can’t leave knowing that her friends and family might be in danger. The Spectre offers to lead her around the DCU to see the heroes as they are today, and here’s where the DCU Sampler begins. Was this supposed to be a Free Comic Book Day offering before the pandemic and AT&T corporate ownership screwed everything up? It certainly feels like this is the case as we jump from title to title, even looping back from Batman to something else to Detective Comics causing The Spectre to quip: “…we are being pulled backward. Perhaps there is something we missed.” Well, that’s certainly one way to try to cover it up. Eventually Diana decides that if this universe is going to survive and there’s a whole new infinite realm of possibilities, she’d hate to miss it all and turns down the offer to ascend so that she can return to Earth. (Of course, she watched as Nubia took her place since she’s been absent. If she going to return just to put Nubia back in her place? Will she find a new Amazonian named Caucasia to be the Eastern European Wonder Woman? Only time will tell.) I think one of the worst things is that most of these stories are shown with no context. If you didn’t read Young Justice, you won’t understand Green Lantern. If you didn’t read Legion of Super-Heroes, you won’t understand Superman. DC claims that they wanted to give their writers more freedom to tell they stories they wanted in large universe with a flexible continuity, but then they forced characters like Apollo and Midnighter into the Superman books where no one wants them. They’ve forced Grifter into Batman where’s he’s despised by readers, and they’ve added all the worst parts of the modern JSA continuity back into the universe, so fans of the original characters and concepts who might’ve been excited to see those real characters return, are once again left out in the cold. It’s difficult to say who to blame for all of these modern missteps. We know that AT&T wasn’t prepared for the publishing business it inherited when it bought TimeWarner, and AT&T has done just as good with DC as it has with DirecTV. But we also know that Jim Lee wasn’t prepared to make the tough decisions needed to keep DC running, and Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio didn’t do DC any long-lasting favors. If you ever needed anything to show why DC has gone from 400,000 copies of a top tier comic a month to 30,000 copies, this is your introduction. Unfortunately, it’s also the exit for many readers. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

The rebirth of the DC Universe into the New 52 has given DC Comics the opportunity to revitalize and reintroduce characters largely forgotten or ignored by modern readers. While the Forever People were part of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World in the early 1970’s, not much has been done with the characters in the decades since. Dan Didio and Keith Giffen bring this new series to life and hope that readers will give the Forever People a second chance in the New 52. Read the full review at http://popculturenetwork.com/article.php?story=20140610233635578#.U5kZMZQ7u9F

I wasn’t planning on reading Man-Bat #1, but the pairing down of the DC Comics line during Future State, and my lack of enthusiasm for Future State in general, left me with a hole where my reading pile used to sit. I decided to give it a chance even though I was unfamiliar with the creative team and I’ve never been much of a fan of Kirk Langstrom. I’m glad I gave it a chance. Man-Bat #1 give us the story of a man who desperately wants to be a hero, but instead finds himself an addict of his own ego, unable to realize that he can no longer control himself or his alter-ego during his transformations. In fact, his transformed self has taken on a distinct personality and that personality is beginning to wrest control away from the human that once dominated the body they share. To make matters worse, the constant experimentation has left Langstrom’s body in terrible shape and his life may be in danger due to cellular breakdown discovered by Batman. There’s something more tragic about Man-Bat in this series than I remember from before, and I find myself rooting for him as the underdog. There’s actually a chance in the current environment at DC Comics that the character may be killed off in this series, which puts some real stakes on the table. It’s somewhat sad the poor state of comic book publishing and the financial burdens of parent company AT&T might be giving this series more gravitas, but you can’t really complain with the results. The story is more compelling, but it’s also good enough regardless to justify coming back for a second issue. The artwork has a real Norm Breyfogle feel to it, which suits me just fine. Having found my way to comics during the Aparo/Breyfogle-Batman/Detective years, this feels right and I really enjoy how Sumit Kumar handles the action sequences, allowing the motion to move the eye through the page while NOT drawing every single individual action like many artists do these days. He’s a gifted storyteller and now that he’s caught my eye, I’ll be paying more attention for his name after this series. I’m willing to admit that the lack of “real” Batman comics these days has left a hole that Man-Bat squeezed into rather easily, and perhaps that has jaded my perspective a bit. But the structure of the story, the fantastic art style and storytelling, and the fact that this comic dares to tell a story without trying to be “topical,” “trendy,” or “timely,” makes it one of the best things I’ve read in while. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com

The advertised “Man-Bat vs Suicide Squad” showdown was not quite what I expected it to be. I expected a look at the new Suicide Squad as revealed in the new Suicide Squad #1 comic book that came out this month. Since about half the team tends to die off in the first issue of a Suicide Squad series, I thought maybe they’d show us a little more about the team members who recently left us. Instead, Dave Wielgosz gave us a look at the Suicide Squad from before Infinite Frontier, Metal, Tom Taylor’s disastrous run, and set firmly in the era when the Squad was last allowed to shine. I never thought I’d be so happy to see Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and Killer Croc again (and sure, Harley Quinn is there too if you want to go slumming), but I was literally overjoyed when I realized that this was the team I was dealing with. Kirk Langstrom is hiding out at an old family vacation home in the country where he feels he can work in private, but the Squad has been sent him to capture the Man-Bat after the destruction he caused in the last issue. We get some flashbacks of Kirk and his wife and a bit of monologuing about how he’s not going to give up on his work, but the main focus of this issue is action, with Deadshot shooting to annoy (because he’s not allowed to kill), Captain Boomerang trying to make Deadshot look bad by doing a better job with his skilled weapons, Killer Crock doing the Crock thing of smashing and bashing, and Harley… well, she’s Harley. She’s mostly useless until she can walk in towards the end and take control once everyone has flattened everyone else. I will admit that there’s not a whole lot of development to the plot in this issue, but the character beats we get are good and make sense and it’s always entertaining. The art from Sumit Kumar and Romulo Fajardo Jr. is energetic and exciting. I will admit that some scenes look a little goofy as Kumar seems to draw on a bit of stylized manga inspiration for the anatomy of large figures trading punches, but it’s still powerful and dangerous looking, and that’s really what matters. Man-Bat #2 is $3.99, and I don’t feel bad paying for it. Unlike other comics on the stands that make me question if I really am I comic book fan anymore, books like this remind me of the escapism I found so exhilarating all those years ago. The action, excitement, and all out fun that comic books used to offer is available again in series like this, and as long as it can deliver issues like this, I will continue to recommend it. http://dirtmound.com http://ThePopC.Net

When the pandemic hit last spring, I remember purchasing X-O Manowar #1 for no better reason than I was desperate for something to read while new comics were on hold. It was not the greatest book on the racks, but it wasn’t the worst either. As the virus continued to mandate shut-downs and played havoc with the comic book publishing schedule, I continued to read the series mainly because, again… it wasn’t terrible. I’ve never felt like the series was the best superhero book on the market, or even the best version of X-O Manowar to hit store shelves, but it’s entertaining enough to keep me from becoming disinterested, and that’s more than I can say about the majority of comic books being published today. One of the problems in this series is the extended cast around Aric of Dacia. Since Aric is now for some reason living in New York City, he’s making friends with street-wise kids who “talk tough” like characters in a Disney Channel Original Movie and hang out with a homeless guy who pushes a shopping cart full of garbage while talking to himself, but can also fix just about any kind of gas powered vehicle and machine. These feel like the characters found in the 1990’s explosion of superhero films and tv shows written by people who never read comic books, but think they understand them regardless. Considering that Dennis Hopeless (Spider-Woman, Cable and X-Force) is the writer behind it all, I’m somewhat shocked at how bad they are. (Although to be completely honest, I would argue that his being a part of the era of All-New X-Men is among the worst of the X-Men to ever exist, but that’s also partly to blame on Brian Michael Bendis.) At the same time, the actual story is entertaining. As Aric struggles to be a hero in a era the doesn’t appreciate a guy who can pulverize any enemy into dust without things like due process and considering collateral damage, he’s approached by a billionaire genius who not only knows how to amp up the armor with his own nanites, but can also help Aric navigate the tricky world of Public Relations. Of course Aric isn’t interested, but when his latest attempt to stop a third-world warlord from causing genocide and massive destruction still leads to massive destruction, Aric has to join with him even though little is known about this man. This new ally could lead to bigger problems down the road, but there really isn’t much of a choice for the former warrior turned general turned emperor turned superhero. The art is fine and serviceable, though I feel it gets a little too cartoony at times. In the end, it makes for a book that is… okay. It’s fine. It’s all right. It’s not terrible. It’s better than most other books on the shelves these days. http://ThePopC.Net http://dirtmound.com