DC's NEW 52-the final five

Okay, so here is the last last five of the first issues for DC's NEW 52 books. It's a mixed back of titles and a mixed bag of reviews.

Created by Jim Lee, STORMWATCH first appeared in 1993 and through it's many incarnations, has been a cornerstone of what once was the Wildstorm Universe. The were run by the United nations and were overseen by The Weatherman. Over the years, the series was written by such notables as Ron Marz, James Robinson and a notable run by Warren Ellis.

Issue #1 begins in Hyperspace where a horn is noted. yeah...the same one from SUPERMAN #1. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Jack Hawksmoor former member of The Authority and currently the leader of Stormwatch and his team(Projectionist-a new character, and the Martian Manhunter) are trying to convince Apollo to join up. Apparently Apollo is an Internet sensation as he has become famous due to a video of him killing a child molester. Well, Apollo splits leaving the team's mission as a failure.

Back in space, one of the team gets attacked by the moon and is dragged below the surface where he comes face to face, so to speak with a huge eyeball that proceeds to  ear-probe our hapless team member. We see visions of the Demon Knights, an early "Stormwatch" team and a "Shadow Cabinet"(a nod of sorts to the old Milestone book perhaps?). Consequently, the poor guy is now taken over by...the beast.

Meanwhile, off in the Himalayas, Jenny Quantum tests her powers on The Horn which she attempts to teleport to the deck of the headquarters. And the hunt goes on for Apollo, complete with Martian Manhunter transforming into some kind of hideous monster.Apollo is told he could be the most powerful man on the planet and soon after, the team is taken out in very short order by Midnighter. At last: lovers reunited.

Okay, I am a huge fan of the original book, especially after Warren Ellis got his hooks in it. And I have high hopes for this book, but it's just not where I want it to be yet. I understand it's the first issue and since about six people actually read the previous version of the title, you have to set it up for the newcomers. I'm cool with that, but let's not spend the first six issues setting things up.

Let's get to the good stuff! Paul Cornell has great experience, being responsible for some DOCTOR WHO material, YOUNG AVENGERS, "War of the Supermen" and is currently doing DEMON KNIGHTS. It's a well paced tale and drops enough bits to keep me interested. And Miguel Sepulveda's art is nice and reminds me of the art when Doug Manhke was doing the book.

I still have high hopes for the book and will hang with it for awhile. Hey: maybe we can even find a way to bring back Rose Tattoo...hint, hint, hint.

BTW: the mysterious hooded woman is in the first panel of page 13, right before Apollo meets the Stormwatch team for the second time.

Priscilla Kitaen is VOODOO, or at least she was when introduced in WILDC.A.T.S. #1 back in 1992. True to form, she is an exotic dancer, just as she was in the original series. And she's being checked out by this guy and a girl who we assume work for the government or some other shady organization. The guy gets a private lap dance and threatens to have her cut up like something from Area 51. Voodoo turns into her true form and shreds him, then becomes him and goes off to meet his partner. In between, the female partner kicks some thugs asses and we get some interesting chatter between the exotic dancers.

Yawn...never thought a book about an alien stripper could be so lame. Shame on you Ron Marz for turning in this truly awful book.But Sami Basri's art is awesome...sure knows how to draw exotic dancers! How much does this book stink? Well, DC has announced that they want a "change of direction" of the book and, starting with issue #5, Josh Williamson will take over as the writer and there will be a crossover with STORMWATCH and GRIFTER. And the book's editor, Rex Ogle, is leaving DC Comics altogether. Gee...if I was DC, I'd make the book a four issue mini-series and cut it off at the pass. This book is so bad, I didn't even waste time to do a cover scan for this review.

BTW: the mysterious hooded woman is in the next to last panel of page 8, right after the thugs get beat.

The TEEN TITANS have a long and storied career. From the earliest days, through the George Perez/Marv Wolfman era that became the NEW TEEN TITANS, through the most recent incarnation, which had two teams. Now we revisit the past and present the future.

Metahuman teenagers are popping up all over and the newest one, Kid Flash, tries his hardest to help a situation but manages to totally screw it up in the process. gee-the media is treating these guys like their mutants or something. Tim Drake, the former Robin, is monitoring this when some bad guys come in-bad guys who have been capturing metahuman teens. So what does the ever resourceful Red Robin do? He blows up the joint! Really? Not something he learned from Batman. At least not the Batman we know.

Cassie Sandmark, once known as (and don't ever call me) Wonder Girl, gets stopped driving a little fast by an alleged police officer. Actually, he seems to be connected to N.O.W.H.E.R.E., which seems to be one of the major bad guys in this new DC Universe. Red Robin comes to the rescue and forces her to show her hand and display the powers she claims she didn't have.

Back somewhere else, a certain redhead and her boss are in discussion regarding releasing...Superboy.

This is different. I mean, it doesn't come at you full on. It kind of creeps up on you. We don't get a lot of characters here, with only appearances by Red Robin, Kid Flash and(don't call me) Wonder Girl. Oh...and Superboy at the very end. So we don't have a full team yet. In fact, we don't even have an offer to MAKE a team. But I can assume that the various heroes pictured on the cover will band together and form that team.

Good job from Scott Lobdell, as usual(although one of his other books was a clunker in my opinion). Brett Booth rocks. I love his work, going back to his co-creating BACKLASH. His style is clean and his facial expressions are great. Keep this book on schedule and keep Booth on it!

Since this book is just starting to put pieces of the puzzle on the table, I'll give it a few issues. For now, let's just say that it doesn't suck.

BTW: the mysterious hooded woman is in the first panel of page 12, just over the police officer's left shoulder.

The last two books are new DC titles, but not bearing the NEW 52 logo, so it's uncertain if you consider them NEW 52 titles. If so, then that makes 54. Either way, here's a couple of quick ones on THE HUNTRESS and MY GREATEST ADVENTURE.

In a nutshell, The Huntress breaks up a shipment of girls who are being put on the White Slavery market and heads to Naples for further investigation. Again she foils one of the bad guys and, just like the messenger after the first bust up, this guy pays for his failure with a bullet to the head. Boom...roll credits.

Paul Levitz redeems himself on this book with a nice tight, action filled story. A little background is offered, like she has connections at The Daily Planet and some references to Batman. But the fact that she is referenced as "the suit" leads me to believe that this is at the early days of her career and we can wash away the whole Earth 2 connection and the Birds of Prey. Or can we? Could this be the first appearance of Earth 2? Anyway, Levitz' story rocks and the icing on this cake is Marcus To's art. His pencils are clean, inks by John Dell enhancing and then Andrew Dalhouse adds the colors and the whole book just explodes off the page. It looks as great as it reads.

This is a mini-series and it's a winner. Thanks to my friend Jeff T. for recommending it. We don't always agree on titles, but he hit this one on the head!

MY GREATEST ADVENTURE is a six issue, three story anthology.

The first tale features an old favorite of mine, Robotman. Robotman got his start in the original MY GREATEST ADVENTURE series as part of the now legendary Doom Patrol. It seems his story continues from his most recent story in DOOM PATROL. He works at a detective agency, he's a robot with Cliff Steele's brain inserted and he fights bad guys. Well, better than the storyline where he was dating a bisexual, post op transsexual, I guess.

The second story, Garbage Man, picks up from where his tale left off in WEIRD WORLDS, which ended with issue #6. The back story, for those unfamiliar, has Attorney Richard Morse experimented on by folks connected to Titan Account. Thinking their experiment a failure, Morse gets dumped in a swamp and, much like Swamp Thing before him(in fact creator Aaron Lopresti has claimed the character was created to fill the void left by Swamp Thing), the chemicals in him react with the swamp and turns him into Garbage Man. Anyway, the short tale here has his somewhat girlfriend pining for him and our hero turning up in good old Gotham City to begin his work anew.

The third tale, Tanga, also hails from WEIRD WORLDS which kind of makes sense as Tanga was designed to be a 12 issue storyline in a book that only ran 6 issues. To describe Tanga is to use creator Kevin MacGuire's own description: she is a purple space girl with great cosmic powers, trying to connect with folks and usually stuff goes wrong. That's true here too, as she meets with a space alien and, before the tale's end, stuff hits the fan.

I really haven't fathomed a full opinion on this title yet. I love the Robotman character, but he seems under utilized here. Garbage Man is Swamp Thing redux and Tanga? Star Sapphire with issues? Great creators working hard on their creations. I'll give it a couple and see where it goes. maybe if I had READ WEIRD WORLDS, I might have more of a connection with Garbage Man and Tanga but unfortunately I don't. May be time to hit the back issue bins, huh?

So thus ends the NEW 52 reviews. Next time, I'll give you a taste of how issues 2 and beyond on the series I'm sticking with are. Will I continue past #2 on these titles? Tune in and see!