By: Tony Bedard (writer), Andres Guinaldo (pencils), Lorenzo Ruggiero (inks), JD Smith & Tomeu Morey (colors) & Steve Wands (letters)
The Story: Poison Ivy’s new job has some nasty surprises that they didn’t fully explain during the interview process.
What’s Good: This is exactly the type of story that I want from Gotham City Sirens. There’s no nonsense about how Catwoman may or may not be possessed by a cat demon (I loathe these human embodiment of animal themes). What we get is a straight up story of sinister doings at Star Labs where Ivy has recently taken a job (a few issues back). It turns out that she took the job to check out this “Super Miracle Grow” that Star was developing. Unfortunately, the special sauce that Star Labs was using was most definitely NOT good, old-fashioned compost, it was an extract from an alien plant-man whose spaceship crashed to Earth. So, what we’ve got is basically “The Thing from Another World” going down in Gotham.
What makes this story fun is that it involves all three of our pseudo-heroines. They all get their little moments to shine in this story. It also has a fun bad guy that appeals to my sci-fi loving sensibilities and leaves us with a good comic book cliffhanger. Nicely done!
The art is overall a positive. Guinaldo understands that all those tassels on a costume are there to give the impression of movement. Seems like a simple thing, but there are a lot of artists who screw it up and just make the tassels look like the character is standing outside in a strong wind. Here he has a couple of panels of Harley where you really get the sense that she is a moving, dynamic character.
What’s Not So Good: You do have to suspend disbelief a BIT to think that all of this could go down without Batman being all over it. Batman is always played up as knowing EVERYTHING that happens in Gotham, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense that there would be an alien surprise in Star Labs. I’m okay with suspending disbelief, but some folks are going to be annoyed by this even if it does mean that the Sirens can’t combat anything larger than a cockroach infestation without Batman somehow being in on it.
Conclusion: Best issue of Gotham City Sirens in a few months.
Grade: B-
- Dean Stell
Filed under: DC Comics Tagged: | Andres Guinaldo, Catwoman, Comic Book Reviews, DC Comics, Dean Stell, Gotham City Sirens, Gotham City Sirens #14, Gotham City Sirens #14 review, Harley Quinn, JD Smith, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Poison Ivy, review, Steve Wands, Tomeu Morey, Tony Bedard, Weekly Comic Book Review
I’ve made a conscious decision to NOT buy a book, simply because either: Batman is in it, OR, it’s set in Gotham City. There’s only so much money to go around, at these prices…. I’ll probably buy Sirens when Batman makes a significant appearance….
Hey Matches!
That’s a very good distinction between the Batmans. Dick has not been shown to be anywhere near that eye-in-the-sky that Bruce is/was and that should allow opportunities for other heroes to have fun.
Now I do have slightly more personal problems with with the stories being out of order. Mind you, this is a MINOR quibble in my mind, so I’m not foaming at the mouth mad about it or anything.
The main reason I get Sirens is because of its vague connection to whatever is going on in the Batman-stories, so I view everything through that lens and DC makes an effort to put the Sirens in Gotham. Honestly, the only way this book survives long term is through this tenuous connection to the Batman story because this book wouldn’t sell if they set things in Kansas City.
I know, I know….that’s dumb getting Sirens because its a Bat-book, but that’s me.
Ok, one, which Batman
and more importantly, B) Probably not high on his priority list at this point.
Simply because stories are told in a certain order, it is not imperative that they indeed take place in that order….
To review, Batman was/is otherwise occupied, so of course, this is going to go unchecked until someone, in this case, The Gotham City Sirens, look into it.