Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1 — Writer: Sterling Gates; Art: Federico Dallocchio
Green Arrow and Black Canary #16 — Writer: Andrew Kreisberg; Penciller: Mike Norton; Inker: Josef Rubinstein
Action Comics #873 — Writer: Geoff Johns; Artists: Pete Woods, Renato Guedes and Wilson Magalhaes
All of these titles are part of DC’s “Faces of Evil” month, which means the cover features the villain of the book, with his/her name scrawled over the regular logo, against a jet-black background. Kind of cool in theory — and the whole series would look impressive all mounted on a wall — but in execution it’s… well, not a disaster, but not very smart, either; it fails to take into account that most comic stores, like AABC, display the books in racks that show only the top 1/3 of the comic. That means the logo is everything — and, if you obscure it, say, by writing “Merlyn” over “Green Arrow and Black Canary,” that makes it hard for fans of the title (both of them, ba-dump) to recognize and buy it: not exactly the intended result.
As for the books themselves, the Prometheus one-shot is the best; like last week’s Solomon Grundy, it attempts to rehabilitate a villain who’s become increasingly lame, by taking him back to his badder-ass roots. It’s a good attempt, and worth a look, although the “make the protagonist look formidable by having him knock off a D-list hero or two in a particularly sadistic way” bit is something of a cliche by now, and won’t endear this title to those having the current ‘Net discussion about “superhero decadence”; chopping a heroine in half, and lovingly detailing her dead body floating in space, will do that to you.
The other two books both illustrate the problems inherent in a company-wide project like this: For GA/BC, the dilemma is that Merlyn is a lame bad guy, someone you’ve barely heard of (Green Arrow having a particularly poor rogue’s gallery anyway) who shoots arrows, but not as well as, you know, the main character of the book. So, who cares about him? Not me. For Action, the problem is that Lex Luthor is cover-featured, but has little to do with the main story in the book (which wraps up, for now, the “New Krypton” storyline; I’d say in a particularly disappointing way (*cough* Counter-Earth *cough*), but then I never held out much hope for it anyway). Why’s he on the cover? Because they had to stick a bad guy on there, of course, whether it actually connected to the story or not; that’s what happens when you try to shoehorn all your titles into the same cover format without thinking it through.
Gen 13 #26 — Writer: Scott Beatty; Artist: Dan Hipp
Worth mentioning here because it has surpassingly hideous art; the first-page splash has a character who’s so bug-eyed (they take up, like 1/3 the space of her entire head) that I thought it was some kind of mutation — but, no: all the characters are drawn like that. This might have worked as some kind of weird personal style thing, if the rest of the art had been OK, but no such luck: anatomy, perspective and staging are all bad, too. Making all the characters in the book as ugly as possible is not a particularly productive marketing technique, guys.
Resistance #1 — Writer: Mike Costa; Artist: Ramon Perez
Aliens taking over a US military base? A small commando force trying to take it back? Yes, kids, it’s another comic book adaptation of a video game — because, instead of playing the thing, interacting with it and influencing the outcome yourselves, you want to read about it in a static, cliched comic instead. Here’s a tip: take the $4 you save by not buying this thing, and go get a used paperback of Starship Troopers instead; all these military-vs.-alien stories rip off Heinlein anyway, so you might as well go back to primary sources and read the master of the genre.
Manhunter #38 — Writer: Marc Andreyko; Artists: Michael Gaydos, Dennis Calero and Fernando Blanco
Final issue (again), and while I’m glad they gave the creative team enough time to end it properly (with a “here’s how everyone would have looked 15 years later” story), I just never could muster much caring about any of these characters — and, of course, judging by sales I wasn’t the only one.
Phil Mateer
