DC's VILLAINS MONTH, Week 1

ACTION COMICS #23.1 CYBORG SUPERMAN: This issue begins nine months after Krypton’s destruction on the ruined city of Argo with Brainiac tooling about. We flash back and forth throughout this issue as we see Jor-El and his brother Zor-El debate on how to save their people. Brainiac finds Zor-El and makes him into a cyborg representative for the House of El. Cyborg Superman begins touring the universe in search of specifies to bring back to Brainiac. But his tests are challenging on immoral levels, making brothers fight brothers and friends grovel to demand his favor, costing the lives of their friends.

If this was the opening salvo for VILLAINS MONTH it was a real stinker to start with. I can’t totally blame Michael Alan Nelson and Mike Hawthorne because they have to work with a character who apparently has made his presence know in SUPERGIRL, which is where everyone learned Zor-El was the Cyborg…everyone but me who doesn't read the title or any spoilers surrounding it. So, when I didn't get Henk Henshaw, I was a bit bummed. But to spoon him out to act as a black hearted version of the Silver Surfer looking for flowers for Brainiac/Galactus’ garden turned this tale into a stinky pile at best. Aaron Kuder and Daniel Brown give us a Lenticular cover that actually looks really good from arms’ length. And that seems to be the trick with these. Are they worth another dollar out of my comic budget per book? Probably not, unless it really bowls me over once first glance. My guess is that I will be opting for 2D with most of the month.

BATMAN 23:1 THE JOKER: While in the middle of a heist, The Joker recalls his young life with his abusive Aunt Eunice. Washing his skin with bleach and saying how she murdered her husband with a Colombian necktie, he was rather attached to a monkey puppet he called "Gaggy". Back in present day, the Joker and his gang are allowing a zookeeper at the Gotham City Zoo to be constricted and consumed by a boa. Then he sees a gorilla with child, gases mother gorilla and steals the baby. From here, he attempts to create a family with the monkey, who he names Jackanapes, and his sidekick Flame Dupree in a house where the rotting corpses of the owners still remain. He tried to have a father and son relationship with Jackanapes, including teaching him how to steal and build weapons. Eventually, he learned the Gotham Zoo was being closed and torn down, so they attacked a council-woman by dirigible, causing the councilwoman and her guards to mutate because of a device they had created. The victims turned on the pair, sending them out of the airship. Joker survived, but Jackanapes fell into the river and drowned. The Joker laughed, realizes he was owed money for swimming lessons that didn't work.

How can you go wrong with this one? Written by Andy Kubert and illustrated by Andy Clarke with a killer Lenticular cover by Jason Fabok, this book is the reasons The Joker needs his own series again. He‘s a crazy psychotic who sometimes has a heart of tarnished gold. All he wants to do is raise a family and unfortunately his best effort isn't enough. C‘mon-raise your hands: who cried when Jackanapes died? Sure you did. Twas Beauty killed the beats and all that! This was a winner from page one right to the very end.

BATMAN AND ROBIN #23.1 TWO-FACE: Batman is gone and Two-Face has two choices: save Gotham or make it bleed. As he flips, Scarecrow grabs it and hands him another coin: a communication devise used by the Secret Society.  The coin flips Heads meaning he becomes a public defender as he did in his past life. He starts killing off the bad guys and dragging any survivors to the courthouse. Harvey ends up on the judge's bench, flipping his coin. It’s heads for life in prison and tails for death. A gang bursts in representing the Secret Society. Since Harvey has broken his promise to the Society, the gang kills everyone in the court room. With that, he shoots the gang members dead and places the Society's coin into the mouth of the dead leader.  Harvey retrieves his own coin and again vows that heads means he saves Gotham and tails means he makes it bleed. The coin lands Tails-side up. Watch out Gotham: Two-Face is back.

Peter J. Tomasi and Guillem March turn Harvey Bullock back into a hero for the briefest of moments, doling out justice to the bad guys of Gotham. But then, it all comes back to the coin flip and the final flip causes Harvey to flip AGAIN. His was a fun story for me. Nothing groundbreaking-no origin piece like many of the other tales this week. Just a fun tale of a former crusader protecting his people again. Guillem March’ art looks awesome as always. I wish the same could be said for Chris Burnham and Nathaniel Fairbairn cover which may have looked great in 2D but certainly suffers from the crummy Lenticular process here.

BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT #23.1 THE VENTRILOQUIST: Even though the power is out all across Gotham City, it appears the old Melodian Theatre is open, offering light, shelter, and food. It’s current resident is ventriloquist Shauna and her partner the Fantastic and Frisky Ferdie. She tells of her youth, how she was born to a concert pianist and a ballerina. Bur she was also a twin. Her brother became a child star who eventually won himself a recording contract. She sabotaged the chains on a swing he was on, it snapped, and he broke his neck. This is how her doll got his name. She soon found herself being spoiled by her parents, poisoning a punch bowl and stealing Rainbow Rodney’s dummy. She was responsible for a crime wave recently, but killed the officers taking her in and now she is free. In the middle of her act with her captive audience, gangs break in and she and Ferdie appear begin killing them off. When all the killing is finished, Ferdie finds Shauna has poisoned her audience.

Maybe it’s me, but I really like the new Ventriloquist. I have trouble trying to figure who is crazier: Shauna or Ferdie. With the OLD DCU Ventriloquist, you had a mile mannered man who seemed to be haunted by the dummy. Here, we have a crazy woman who seems to be HAUNTING the dummy. No matter what, she is a certified crazy woman and will be a villain for a long time to come. Great work from Gail Simone and Derla Santacruz under a real creepy cover by Pat Gleason, Mick Gray and John Kalisz. In fact, it is one of the few Lenticular covers that really works well, especially from a distance.

DETECTIVE COMICS #23.1 POISON IVY: Gotham City is a complete mess and Batman is M.I.A. Poison Ivy decides it’s her time to take the city back to it’s roots.-literally. She causes a variety of havoc while being reminded of her time growing up. Born with a skin condition that keep her out of the sunlight, she and her mother constantly had to deal with her abusive father. He father eventually killed her mother and buried her within her flower garden. In the present, she takes revenge on arsonists destroying a beautiful garden by burying them in the garden. In college, she created designer drugs which helped get her in jail. But she had used her pheromone pills on the Dean. So, charges were dropped, and she graduated Summa Cum Laude. After college, she visited her father for the first time since the murder and kissed him on the lips with an untraceable toxin that killed him by the next morning. Soon she landed an internship ay Wayne Enterprises and helped develop pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. She arranged a meeting with Bruce Wayne and pitched a pheromone project, but he fired her on the spot. She tried to steal back her work, but got doused in her chemicals.  This made her immune to poisons and gave her a connection to The Green. Becoming an eco-terrorist, she spent some time with the Birds of Prey before she left them. Now, with batman gone, she returns to Wayne Tower and ignites a fire in the chemical lab. Soon, all of Gotham is covered in plants.

Right off the bat, this book ends up with one of the best looking of the Lenticular covers by Jason Fabok. But, when you have a busty super villain on your cover in 3D you can’t lose. So, let’s go to the inside of the book. We get some nice back story on Pamela Ivey’s early life and that does a great job of coloring a character we all thought we knew in the days of the OLD DCU. Derek Fridolfs, someone I am totally unfamiliar with, does a great job with this story, especially when it is set in this past. As it tries to mesh with the current story, it tends to fall flat. The art from Javier Pina is great. Despite all the complaints in fandom, I find this a great issue to read.

EARTH 2 #15.1 DESAAD: Five years in the past, DeSaad was ready to attack the few survivors on earth when he fell into a Boom-Tube and ended up on another Earth. He ends up off the coast of Hawaii where he immediately begins torturing people to feed upon their emotion. Four years later, he has set up a base in the Congo with the intention of building  a Boom Tube to get back home. Unfortunately someone has stolen the quantum tunneling technology from Holt Industries and Holt himself has gone missing. He eventually discovered it in the possession of Karen Starr. With the help of Hakkou, he decided to destroy it rather than have her retain it. He also gets depressed that he can’t seem to influence an artist who is more concerned with his art than anything else. Someday, Darkseid will come back to retrieve him.

Wow: what a major whiny god is DeSaad. I found this to be one of the least entertaining of the VILLAINS MONTH books thus far, be cause he is supposed to be the big bad mental torturer and all he does in complain about NOT being back hope with Darkseid. Paul Levitz: shame on you. This is awful! And it has nothing to do with your writing, but the characterization is so trying. “I’m the great and powerful DeSaad and I miss Darkseid.” To quote Megadeth:  “Nice story ... Tell it to Reader's Digest!!!” Yildiray Cinar: your artwork is cool. Nothing amazing, just cool. The cover is by legend Ken Lashley and rocks, even in the non 3D version.

THE FLASH #23.1 GRODD:  Following all that transpired during the recent Gorilla Wars in both Central and Keystone City, the apes of from Gorilla City have decided to help rebuild. During an unveiling a a Flash statue, an unscheduled eclipse occurs, interrupting Solovar’s speech. Grodd appears, destroying the statue and claims he owns the Speed Force now that The Flash is dead. Pied Piper attacks, but is swatted away. Solovar attempts to stop Grodd with psychic attacks to no avail. He rips the Flash symbol from the statue's chest and sends it through the chest of his enemy. Rather than risk the death of humans or apes, Solovar surrenders. Grodd intends to begin constructing Grodd City on the ruins of Central and Keystone Cities and, within days, humans are enslaved in camps. Grood rechristens Central City as Gorilla City. He murders Chroma as warning to other villains, and chains Solovar to the Flash statue as punishment. One of the elders begs Grodd to stop humiliating Solovar and the gorilla leader decapitates the elder, placing it on a pike alongside the heads of the mayor and Chroma. With  no challenge ahead, Grodd leaves the Gem Cities, Levin his army totally confused as what to do next.

Okay, that Grodd is a bad mother…shut your mouth…I’m just talking about Grodd! Can you dig it? Wow! This is not just some intelligent monkey anymore, is he? No, he’s a bloodthirsty, killer monkey who has been through the Speed Force. He has killed his own people, the mayor and now tortures one of the great elders of Gorilla City. What a great use of this underused character. This ape is truly mad, bad and dangerous to know! Brian Buccatello and Chris Batista give us a great non-origin story that fleshes out the beast known as Grodd. Francis Manapul brings us a great looking cover that just doesn't work in 3D. This Lenticular process is certainly hit or miss with some books looking awesome and others just looking bad. This is truly one of the bad ones!

GREEN ARROW #23.1 COUNT VERTIGO: We begin today with Count Vertigo making a visit to a dilapidated Health and Research Center. When he was a young boy, Werner Zytle and his mother escaped from the war torn country of Vlatava and head to Vancouver. His father, who was next in line to be king, was murdered by rebels and his mother blames him for them having to leave. They had lost everything and she was forced to become a prostitute, making him hide in his room while she worked. She eventually got a payment from the Crius Mental Health and Research Hospital, where they took him and experimented on him. Ten years ago, Dr. Witchell designed a new model of the vertigo devise Werner had been fitted with and praised his progress. Werner responded by deciding to leave and punish Witchell by causing his head to explode! A year later, Werner was back in Vlatava and making his way into HIS castle and calling himself Count Vertigo. Today, Vertigo is in a brothel in Calgary where he visits his sick and drug addled mother. While she is glad to see him, he tells her she is not fit to go back to the homeland and he uses his abilities to kill her. He then orders that her body needs to be burned, as well as the hospital. Now it’s time to go back to Seattle and settle the score with Green Arrow.

 

What a huge difference the team of Jeff Lemire and Andxrea Sorrentino has made on this title. Count Vertigo’s twisted and sad origin story is a modern classic. We get a displaced monarch in waiting, a prostitute mother who sells him for research who becomes a tormented child seeking revenge. Once he gets enough power, he takes his revenge on his captors and then, eventually, ends up becoming a true monarch, uses his resources to find his mother and then take revenge on her. This is some extremely heavy stuff going on here and that is why this book is fast becoming one of my favorite NEW 52 titles.

GREEN LANTERN #23.1 RELIC: The story begins in Relic’s universe, where the Lightsmith’s were using too much power. He tried to warm his people but they treated him like the people of Krypton treated Jor-El. The various lights within his universe began to burn out, eventually burning out all lights in his universe. Billions of years pass and Relic has been freed by Kyle Rayner and his Guardians. And since no one listened to him before, Relic is determined to make people listen now.

This is a fairly lightweight lead-in to the LIGHTS OUT SAGA that will cross through all of next month’s Lantern titles. Robert Vinditti does a nice job of introducing the character fully and giving us his motivation. The saving grace in this book is Rags Morales and his beautiful art. The cover gives me a headache and Green Lantern does NOT appear anywhere in this book. This is probably one of the weakest of this first week’s worth of books.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #23.1 DARKSEID: We begin long ago on a planet of “mortal mud-grubbers”. Their gods were giants that didn't care for their people and regularly trashed their homes. Uxas hated the gods while his brother-in-law Izaya and his wife Avia were devout and thought Uxas’ hate would be the death of them all. That night, he whispered lies into the gods’ ears and that led to war amongst them. One fallen god revealed to Uxas that the gods fed on faith. Uxas slew him and took his power, eventually killing all the gods and taking their power. This transformed him into Darkseid. Izaya and his wounded wife fled, but stopped at the dying body of the lord of the sky. The god died as did Avia, but he bestowed his last bit of power to Izaya as he did. Izaya faced Darkseid, claiming they were the New Gods and should use their power for good. In response, Darkseid destroyed the world and created Apokolips. Amongst the horror that was Apokolips, Kaiyo the Chaos Bringer teleported to worlds where super beings existed that rivaled his own power. He would challenge and destroy each hero and each world. One universe defeated him. But this only may him vow to kill every Superman everywhere.

WE HAVE A WINNER HERE!!! We are presented the NEW 52 origin of Darkseid and Highfather. And it is about as perfect an origin story as it could be for the ruler of Apokolips. This is one spectacular gem of a story! And it happens to be Greg Pak who brings it to us! Not NEW 52 Architect Geoff Johns…Greg Pak! The guy who did some amazing stuff with Bruce Banner’s alter ego gives us a great story that defines the legendary villain. We have Paulo Siqueira doing the art. Now, Siqueira is no Jack Kirby, but his work is okay to look at. And the cover by Ivan Reis, either in the Lenticular version or the standard 2D version is awesome. The Lenticular is truly amazing as the 3D effect works to true perfection. No squinting, no tilting it from one angle or another. Look at it dead on from arms’ length and prepare to be blown away. This is TRULY my pick of the week and has set the bar very high for the rest of VILLAINS MONTH.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #23.1: THE CREEPER: We begin back in 16th Century Japan where we meet a boy named Jakku who was possessed by a demon called The Oni that, for over two decades caused havoc. Eventually, he was taken down by a Samurai from a team known as The Outsiders and ended up becoming one of the souls within the Soultaker Sword. Eventually, the rest of the team turned on the Samurai, as it seemed his sword developed a life of its’ own, and ended up being sucked into Soultaker. Once inside, the Samurai meets everyone who ever ended up in the blade, including The Oni, now know as The Creeper, who proceeds to hang the Samurai for 100 years. Then one day, specifically KATANA #4, the Soultaker blade was broken and The Creeper and the Samurai were free in modern day San Francisco. The Creeper finds his way into the corpse of Jack Ryder, who died in THE PHANTOM STRANGER #7, and then takes over a janitor named Gallagher. Once inside the janitor, he wreaks havoc, burning a building down and forcing him to take the blame. First on the scene the next day is the late Jack Ryder. It appears that Ryder sleeps at night, freeing The Creeper who does his damage. The following night, The Creeper tears up a biker bar and causes a tornado, just as he did in olden times. The following morning, Jack Ryder finds himself the only survivor and is ready to report the news.

Let’s make the short and sweet: AWFUL. A dumb origin, a sequence the feels like it came from GHOST RIDER and cornball dialogue. Shame on Ann Nocenti and Dan Didio(well-THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!!) for delivering this upon us. Pencils by Chriscross, Fabrizio Fiorentino and Tom Derenick, along with a trio of inkers and colorists cannot save this book. Neither can a cover by super talented Mikel Janin that is a headache inducing mess. Did I already say AWFUL?

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #7.1 DEADSHOT: Young Floyd Lawton used to suffer from survivor’s guilt. When he was a child, his parents and sister Jenny were inadvertently killed when thugs in the next apartment got shot to death as part of a mob hit, leaving Floyd an orphan. He went to the apartment of the junkies, took one of their guns and learned how to shoot it. He became quite good over the years and put his talent to use, deciding early on to NEVER take an assassination job for free and never missing his target, which is how his family died. For some time, Lawton, now known as the assassin Deadshot, has been a member of Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad. But that Squad has been disbanded and he has decided to kill the man who once ran Ace Chemical. That was before he began using the company's chemicals to provide power for an armored suit he designed. Deadshot takes him out which now completes his goal of killing the man responsible for hiring the hitmen that killed his family. He also takes out the man’s son so he doesn't grow up to seek revenge on Lawton. Finishing this mission, he gets a call from Waller, telling him Belle Reve has been destroyed and she needs his help. He agrees for a price. The government wires 10 million into his account and he is ready for his next mission.

Well, this was an interesting take on the early life of Floyd Lawton and his metamorphosis into the assassin known as Deadshot. And if you can’t actually find a soul inside Floyd Lawton after the way his childhood was interrupted so violently, then you haven’t quite gotten it. I understand Deadshot’s needs now and why it’s all about being the best marksman and getting paid to do it. The old DCU Floyd Lawton had father/son issues which always made him somewhere between hardcore assassin and The Punisher. Matt Kindt knows Floyd Lawton because Matt Kindt has had his hands all over SUICIDE SQUAD. Sami Basri provides the art on the current story sequence while Carmen Carnero provides the art for the flashback part of the story. All in all, a great issue that paves the road for a possible DEADSHOT series. Not saying that’s a sure thing, but they are giving Mr. J’s #1 gal her own gig.

SUPERMAN #23.1 BIZARRO: Five years ago, at the beginning of his crime fighting career, where Superman breaks free after being held by Lex Luthor. In the process, he spills blood upon Lex’ suit, which now gave the bald genius a DNA sample and the raw material with which to create a superhero who could rival Superman. Luthor eventually selects a test subject and injects him with his drug cocktail that causes his muscles to grow and his skin to turn white. He breaks free and begins to rampage through the lab. Lex opens fire with a Kryptonite gun that has no effect on the creature. So he releases the Lexbots and the Transdimensional Quantum Tunneling Hounds. When nothing fails to stop the creature, Lex decides to abandon the experiment, pulls a switch and causes the creature to explode into chalky goo. So his next move is to clone a new hero from pure Kryptonian DNA. The finals shot we see is a test tube marked B-0. B-O=Bizarro.

I totally feel like I have been screwed! Let me firsts start with the good points. 1. Aaron Kuder’s art on the cover is nice and the Lenticular effect is prettry amazing. 2. Jeff Johnson’s artwork is really nice and his pacing is and layout is pleasing to the eye. 3. It only runs for 20 pages. Thus ends the good. The bad? EVERYTHING ELSE! Sholly Fisch, the king of ACTION COMICS back-up stories, is in charge and I now know WHY he only gets back-up stories. This is a MAJOR pile of doo-doo. First off: the dialogue is totally stale and not even bad Eighties dialogue. Second: we go through an entire issue and don’t even get the character portrayed on the cover. We get a rampaging failed experiment that eventually will LEAD to Bizarro. We have been led down the road expecting this poor test subject to become that classic “Me Bizarro” guy and instead we get someone with less dialogue than Solomon Grundy. This was a complete waste of my time and my money and if THIS had been the first NEW 52 book I was to ever read, I would NEVER pick up another DC book ever again.