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Loki: Agent of Asgard #2 – Review

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Al Ewing (story), Lee Garbett (art), Nolan Woodward (colors)

The Story: Loki was born for the modern dating scene.

The Review: I’ve heard people elsewhere criticize this series as an attempt to drive Loki towards his on-screen portrayal, and I wonder at that.  Certainly there’s a rakish, snarky element to him now that’s reminiscent to his appearances from The Avengers onward, although Elwing is really just following Kieron Gillen’s lead there.  Anyways, this is ostensibly a new Loki for a new age of Marvel comics—for Marvel NOW, so to speak—so why not rejigger him in the process?

What I personally find suspect is this issue’s focus on Lorelei in the very same week she made a guest appearance in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Now, this may just be fortuitous coincidence, but I tend to think otherwise.  What are the chances that a high-profile comic book and TV show would simultaneously feature a minor Asgardian character who is really the poor man’s Amora?  Sounds a lot like business synergy to me, rather than original thinking.
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Forever Evil #6 – Review

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Geoff Johns (story), David Finch (pencils), Richard Friend (inks), Sonia Oback (colors)

The Story: Not only is morality topsy-turvy on Earth-3, the spelling is off, too!

The Review: After I reviewed the first issue of Forever Evil, commenter Invasionforce and I had a slight disagreement about its merits.  Invasionforce was of the mind that the storyline served as a kind of political allegory, with “evil” as a stand-in for social Darwinism, where one’s fitness for survival need not include scruples or any humanist sentiment whatsoever.  I was of the mind that Forever Evil was just another splashy event drenched in mindless superpowered battles.

No offense to Invasionforce, but at this point, I’m convinced that history will validate my perspective on things.  It’s been many months since we’ve seen the Ultraman, Luthor, or anyone else espouse their views on anything; they’ve been too busy fulfilling their intended roles in this melodrama, either killing or getting killed as most befits their stature.  And that’d be hunky-dory with me if only the plotting and character work had a little more going for it.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E14 – Review

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Jeffrey Bell (story)

The Story: Unsurprisingly, S.H.I.E.L.D. makes it even harder to get your medical history.

The Review: I’ve always had serious questions about this show’s attempts to wring a sense of closeness out of the cast before they’ve fully earned it, ever since the second episode, when they set all friction aside to watch the sunset together.  Things have improved since then, with the last episode in particular displaying how good a chemistry the team can have when allowed to bounce off each other, instead of delivering one-liners in between exposition.

The thing is there’s still a gap between the unity the show thinks they have and what actually comes across on screen.  Early in the first act of this episode, after S.H.I.E.L.D. medics strive and fail to repair Skye’s mortal wounds, a doctor tells Coulson and Co. to contact Skye’s family.  Coulson takes a beat and declares, “We’re her family.”  Allow me a dubious “Hm…” as I discuss the presumptuousness of that line.
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Arrow S02E15 – Review

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Jake Coburn & Ben Sokolowski (story)

The Story: One should think twice before inviting a man with an eye-patch into one’s home.

The Review: I didn’t mention the cliffhanger appearance of Slade in the Queen family home last week because there really wasn’t much to talk about besides its dramatic power.  Now that we’re actually dealing with the fallout from his revealing himself to Ollie, we ought to talk about Arrow’s portrayal of Slade Wilson, who in many respects cuts a more impressive yet sympathetic figure on TV than he does in comics.

Compared to the amoral mercenary we almost always see (check out his guest part in Forever Evil for a typical example), television’s Slade has an emotional component driving his ruthless behavior, one that makes him difficult to hate even when he’s planning to destroy Ollie and everyone he loves.  A large part of this comes from the passion Manu Bennett brings to the role, selling Slade’s rage and despair with equal finesse, making you believe that there’s a core of pain in his deadened heart.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #31 – Review

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz (story), Ross Campbell (art), Ronda Pattison (colors)

The Story: How much tai chi does it take to soothe betrayal?

The Review: While I’ve often admired this series for its willingness to provide a more mature read than what would normally be expected from the TMNT, there’s no avoiding the fact that the Turtles are aimed toward a younger crowd of readers.  Specifically, the straightforward plots and conflicts, as well as the willingness to engage in a slightly higher level of violence, seems tailor-made for the adolescent demographic.

Frankly, I think even adolescents won’t have a hard time catching on to TMNT’s more obvious plotlines.  Case in point: the Foot Clan falcon tailing after Apolex (and, consequently, the Turtles).  I’m quite sure almost anyone could have foreseen the tentative trust between Apolex and the Turtles being shattered once the Foot revealed themselves.  That’s exactly how this issue plays out, hitting every predictable beat like clockwork, from Raphael’s outrage to Apolex’s protests of innocence.
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Dead Boy Detectives #3 – Review

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Toby Litt (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Gary Eskine (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: The dead boys are about to become even deader.

The Review: You’d think that once a person dies, one of the great fears of life has been extinguished (and fulfilled), but if this series is trying to get anything across, it’s that with the existence of an afterlife, your fear can go on long after death.  That lends some danger in a story where the main characters can’t technically die anymore.  Actually, it soon becomes clear that Charles and Edwin have nearly as much to be afraid of as any of the living.

Our detectives, true to their ghostly nature, are caught in a kind of stasis, fearful of moving on completely, but terrified of spending eternity in a place like Hell.  Edwin, who once experienced that chilling prospect, describes it thus: “the years of loneliness and the years of despair.  The decades of terror…  I crave non-existence—eternal absence.”  That is the peril and horror of Saint Hilarion’s: not just that it can kill you, but that it can torment you for ages afterward.
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100 Bullets: Brother Lono #8 – Review

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Eduardo Risso (art)

The Story: The better question is who doesn’t die at the end of the issue?

The Review: I’ve come to expect the unexpected when it comes to Azzarello’s comics, but one thing I never expect from him is a happy ending.  Not that he’s incapable of delivering one—Wonder Woman #18 ended on a hopeful note, at least—but it just doesn’t seem to be part of his makeup.  Even if it was, it certainly wouldn’t seem to fit into the pervasive grimness of Brother Lono.  This series has been a lot of things, but sentimental is not one of them.

This final issue is still bleak, though, even for Lono.  I’m not just talking about the gruesome outbreak of violence, which is only to be expected once our protagonist decided that the gloves should come off.  Spoiler alert—while the orphanage is ultimately saved, the price paid by all the major characters makes the victory feel a bit hollow.  Cesar and Paulo are dead, Manny is blinded, June (a.k.a. agent Linda May) gravely wounded, and Lono is back on the hell train.
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Filed under: DC Comics, Reviews, Vertigo | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

The Wake #6 – Review

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Scott Snyder (story), Sean Murphy (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: As it turns out, both the global warming deniers and paranoids were wrong.

The Review: So here we are, a long four months after the last issue of The Wake.  If it makes you feel any better, time has been even less kind to the title itself, as a whopping two hundred years have passed since we saw Lee Archer and her doomed crew sinking to the bottom of the sea while tidal Armageddon was happening overhead.  Needless to say, things look pretty grim for humanity at present, though the existence of Leeward shows that not all is lost.

While the world hasn’t completely gone under, it has definitely shrunken, and grows smaller all the time at a rate of about five or ten miles a year.  Though the U.S., at least, manages to keep its head above water, it’s had to make serious social and political adjustments.  The fifty states are no more (indeed, some coastal states have vanished altogether), replaced by thirteen territories, a conceptual blend of America’s original thirteen colonies and its unsettled, territorial days.  Though some semblance of governance exists, it’s much like the walls and reefs along the new coastline: a ruthless but fragile barrier against the despair about to overwhelm the country.
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Filed under: DC Comics, Reviews, Vertigo | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Hawkeye #15 – Review

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Matt Fraction (story), David Aja (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: Get morning coffee.  Check.  Do crossword.  Check.  Defeat hitman…?

The Review: Much as I’ve enjoyed this series, I’ve always felt one of its biggest failings was the lack of an overarching plot.  Fraction definitely seems like he knows where he’s going, but his narrative has been distractible and meandering, making sudden jumps in time and perspective, giving you information in such a fractured way that it took months for us to learn what would ordinarily take a few issues.

And for what?  Mostly for Fraction to experiment with his storytelling and kill time with witty, random asides.  Indeed, the Kate-centric issues have been about almost nothing else.  Fruitful and entertaining as many of these experiments and asides have been, you would have preferred a speedier resolution to this whole deal with the Bro Gang, or Tracksuits, or Titushki, or whatever they actually call themselves.
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Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Aquaman #28 – Review

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Jeff Parker (story), Paul Pelletier (pencils), Sean Parsons & Andrew Hennessy (inks), Jeromy Cox (colors)

The Story: With any luck, Arthur can avoid getting Carrie-d at this high school function.

The Review: Geoff Johns did a lot of great things for this series, but one of the best things he did was firmly establish Arthur’s life in Amnesty Bay: holing up in his dad’s old lighthouse, getting fish and chips at the local diner, adopting a dog.  It was too easy to laugh at Aquaman when he was the undersea foreigner who visited the surface on occasion; you’re less comfortable poking fun at someone who genuinely wants to fit in.

As a big fan of a superhero’s out-of-costume moments, I’ve loved each development to Amnesty Bay as much as I’ve loved the purely Aquaman bits, like the Others or Atlantis’ troubled royal heritage.  You can thus imagine how much I’ve looked forward to Arthur’s high school reunion, which on paper is just a great idea.  School reunions are just so rife with dramatic possibilities; even for us regular folks, there’s a lot of baggage that comes from confronting that particular part of your past.  Imagine adding the weight of a secret origin on top of that.
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Batman/Superman #8 – Review

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Greg Pak (story), Jae Lee (art), June Chung (colors)

The Story: Which World’s Finest is the finest?

The Review: The Earth-2 arc that led off this series was a strong storyline whose promise was nearly ruined by the following arc that turned Batman and Superman into living avatars controlled by the collective nerd-rage of a host of gamers.  Returning to Earth-2 is thus a wise decision on Pak’s part.  It reminds discouraged fans of what made this title initially attractive, and it pairs this World’s Finest with that of another world, making for a mighty fine foursome.

I don’t know how Paul Levitz will handle the Batman, Superman, Power Girl, Huntress dynamic in coming chapters of this storyline,* but Pak gives them an endearing chemistry, surprisingly devoid of the misunderstandings that plague encounters between people of different worlds.  Even Batman discovers, to his slight horror, “In my heart, I believe every word [Huntress] says[.]”  This immediate trust lets Pak bypass obligatory conflicts to focus on the story at hand.
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Arrow S02E14 – Review

Posted on March 2, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Wendy Mericle & Beth Schwartz (story)

The Story: Nothing like a tirade against your long-lost sister to ruin a family dinner.

The Review: Apologies for the lateness, but midterm duties called and I had to answer.  You know how it is.  But let’s not waste any more time than we have already.  This week’s episode finally puts a pin in the most troubled part of the show this season: Dinah, burgeoning alcoholic, pill-popper, drama queen, and all-around mess.  It’s not hard to see her trajectory towards rock bottom, but the ETA has been repeatedly delayed by new personal crises.

But then, Arrow has always struggled to find a place for Dinah, established early on as one of its major figures, but quickly overshadowed by the rest of the cast, even, lately, Roy.  At this point, Dinah is in a very risky position for a character in a fictional series: she doesn’t have a clear or secure position in relation to Ollie except as a romantic interest, nor does she have a purpose of her own to pursue.  The closest she came to either of these things was her untimely investigation into Sebastian Blood, which only led her further along her downward spiral.  Frankly, this was all starting to seem dangerously Mandy-esque.*
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Seekers of the Weird #2 – Review

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Brandon Seifert (story), Karl Moline (pencils), Rick Magyar (inks), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colors)

The Story: Never mix reading with lacrosse.

The Review: As you could probably tell, I wasn’t all that impressed with the first issue of this series.  This isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker; plenty of stories need an issue or two—or more—before they get their sea legs.  You don’t always have to take a running leap from the very beginning, so long as you can prove that the premise or the characters are interesting enough to see how they come along.  Seekers of the Weird didn’t quite manage that.

Even more troubling, the second issue isn’t much of an improvement, either.  From the character side of things, Melody, Maxwell, and Roland haven’t gotten any more personable, remaining as flat as they were initially rendered.  Maybe this is the “All Ages” curse rearing its head, but Melody and Maxwell seem particularly generic as tomboy and bookworm.  When Roland explains their mission going forward, Maxwell remarks nervously, “This sounds like a lot of…exercise.”

“And homework,” adds a petulant Melody. (Later, in the Museum’s library, she stares in dismay at all the books around her and cries, “You did mean homework.  Boo!”)
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Batman ’66 #8 – Review

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Jeff Parker (story), Rubèn Procopio (art), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: King Tut—how’d you get so funky?  Funky Tut—did you do the monkey?

The Review: I can’t say that I exactly had high expectations for this series—no matter what, it’s still an adaptation of a TV show that was campy even back in the sixties—but the first issue was such an outstanding blend of winking comedy, credibility, and homage that it perhaps set the bar too high for the rest of the series.  Quite honestly, Batman ’66 has been running on the ever diminishing momentum of that strong start, and now it’s almost completely petered out.

I’ve implied this from the beginning, but this title didn’t have a prayer of long-term success if Parker simply kept it a straight transfer of what we saw on TV to the page.  We’re all friends here, so let’s be honest: Batman was not that great a show.  It’s important today as a record of sixties pop culture, like Laugh-In, but unlike Laugh-In, it never claimed nor even pretended to have any real substance.  That’s just not going to cut it anymore, not with the literate, snarky audience that makes up comic book readers today.
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Fables #138 – Review

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Bill Willingham (story), Russ Braun (art), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: Geppetto proves that being a tree-hugger isn’t necessarily a good thing.

The Review: The superhero genre has plenty of belief-stretching conventions, but one worth discussing for the purposes of this issue is the constant cycle of defeat and revenge where villains are concerned.  I always find it incredible that the likes of the Joker, or Count Vertigo, or any number of evil nemeses, would be allowed to return time and time again to plague heroes and innocents alike.  It just seems logistically irreconcilable and fictionally futile.

No wonder that in most other genres, a villain that goes down more often than not stays down.  Once their big play is undone, everything else that comes after seems mostly like anticlimax.  This is why allowing Geppetto to live was a noble move on Flycatcher’s part, but one that could only lead to two predictable courses.  Either Geppetto makes a genuine effort to reform or he goes back to his evil ways, striking again when the other Fables are occupied with other matters.  The first option would be ideal, from a humanist perspective, but almost certainly cheesy and sentimental, defanging a powerful antagonist.
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Daredevil #36 – Review

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Mark Waid (story), Chris Samnee (art), Javier Rodriguez (colors)

The Story: Matt brings disorder to the court.

The Review: One of the quirks of mainstream superhero comics is that major changes in the status quo can just as likely be the products of editorial strategy as creative ingenuity.  Let’s take Daredevil’s impending move to San Francisco as an example.  It’s hard not to see this and immediately flashback to the X-Men’s inexplicable relocation to the same city just a few years earlier, which was clearly little more than a stunt designed, apparently, to appeal to hipsters.

This feels different, though.  For one thing, Matt has a prior history in California, or so he claims, and for another, moving out of New York became a necessity practically from the moment the words, “My name is Daredevil,” left his mouth last issue.  Even if—spoiler alert—he and Foggy weren’t disbarred as a result, it’s hard to imagine he and his loved ones would survive the public scrutiny and rogue attacks that were sure to come.
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Harley Quinn #3 – Review

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Chad Hardin (art), Alex Sinclair (colors)

The Story: It’s a bad day when a long-haired dwarf turns down a date with you.

The Review: I tried watching Dexter some years ago, back when it was new and getting wildly popular, despite all the controversy it generated.  I was enthralled by the first few episodes as much as anyone else, but at some point, I suddenly felt like I could no longer stomach the idea of getting entertainment out of murder.  It was less a moral reaction than a biological one; every time Dexter took out one of those microscope slides, I started getting slightly queasy.

There’s something like that going on here with Harley Quinn.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m getting less and less mileage out of the macabre humor of this title with every passing month.  Again, it’s not so much the immorality of Harley’s kills that disturbs me, although that does play a part.  I’m fine with her bumping off anyone who goes after her first, but brutally slaying anyone, even prison inmates, for actions they can’t help is a lot less justifiable.
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Batman and Robin #28 – Review

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Peter J. Tomasi (story), Patrick Gleason (pencils), Mick Gray (inks), John Kalisz (colors)

The Story: Two-Face discovers, to his horror, that a coin has more than two sides.

The Review: In the spirit of the recent Olympics, I’ll describe Tomasi’s biggest obstacle to comic book greatness as a frequent failure to stick the landing.  A character-focused writer at heart, Tomasi can usually manage to start somewhere interesting and deliver a tight, even gripping narrative along the way.  But once you reach the conclusion, you sense he might have gotten caught up in the storytelling without thinking of what he wanted to get out of it.

In that regard, this arc is a typical sample of the Tomasi problem.  While the creation of Erin and her history with Bruce and Harvey has deepened the Batman and Two-Face mythos, it doesn’t appear she has any other use than that.  Her importance is thus primarily rooted in the past.  In the present, she served her purpose by drawing Harvey out, but with that done, Tomasi’s at a loss of what to do with her.  Nothing reveals that more than when he has Batman literally eject Erin from the story within the issue’s first few pages.  Despite her defiant commitment to villainy later on, it’s quite apparent that her future use will be limited.
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Wonder Woman #28 – Review

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Brian Azzarello (story), Cliff Chiang (art), Goran Sudzuka (layouts), Matthew Wilson (colors)

The Story: Diana versus the Minotaur—round two.

The Review: Much as it pains me to admit it, this series has definitely suffered some ongoing problems as of late, namely its ungodly slowness and a strange reluctance to let its star shine.  In spite of this, I remain steadfast to Wonder Woman in a way that I would with only a handful of titles.  I’m not enjoying each issue as much I’d like, but I still look forward to the next one every month because I know I’ll be getting a different reading experience from your typical superhero.

In a way, the series’ lack of focus on Diana is simultaneously one of its biggest weaknesses as well as one of its greatest strengths.  With Diana reduced to a tertiary figure, Azzarello is free to juggle multiple storylines featuring different members of the supporting cast: Apollo and the First Born’s struggle for power, Zola going solo with Zeke, Hera’s mortal self-discovery,  Cassandra’s quest for Olympus.  If you think about it, this isn’t so different from what Brian K. Vaughan is doing over on Saga, only Vaughan has a much, much tighter focus.
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Justice League #28 – Review

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Geoff Johns (story), Ivan Reis (layouts), Joe Prado & Scott Hanna (finishes), Rod Reis (colors)

The Story: These robots have awakened with a singular purpose: watching wrestling on TV.

The Review: Much as I love old-timey, slightly odd comic book characters, I sometimes think the Metal Men are a concept that, like the Doom Patrol, Sea Devils, or Challengers of the Unknown, seem like they’re best left in the Silver Age.  These concepts almost pull the complete hat trick for failure, in some respects too simplistic and silly for the sophisticates, in others too weird and niche for a popular audience.

In these cases, the only writer I trust to revive these characters and preserve their appeal for another generation is Johns.  Whatever critiques I have of his particular writing style, there is no one who has a better success rate at updating properties long thought obsolete.  So it goes with the Metal Men.  Johns tackles them with such genuine enthusiasm and heart that they feel fresh and enticing again, without compromising what made them popular in the first place.
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Coffin Hill #5 – Review

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Caitlin Kittredge (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eve de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: The wicked witch strikes against the wicked stepfather.

The Review: I started reading Hinterkind and Coffin Hill at around the same time, and it’s been interesting seeing them develop on parallel lines.  With Hinterkind having recently landed on my Drop List, the big question was whether Coffin Hill would suffer the same fate.  Both share the same defect of being too comfortable in their genre conventions and both have problems settling on a consistent tone.  Given these similarities, Coffin Hill should also be Dropped.

Yet somehow, I still feel Coffin Hill deserves a little more leeway than Hinterkind did.  Kittredge definitely made things easier on herself by limiting the size of her cast and further focusing on a select few.  Even if you don’t end up liking Eve, Nate, or Mel very much, at least you have a strong sense of who they are, where they’re coming from, and what their relationships to each other are.  They’re interesting in ways that the characters of Hinterkind only aspire to be.
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Letter 44 #4 – Review

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Charles Soule (story), Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque (art), Dan Jackson (colors)

The Story: Stephen makes the worst hiring decision of his presidency.

The Review: It must take a certain kind of genius to write a mystery.  After all, you’ve got to be smarter than your audience if you want to keep them baffled as to where the story is going.  This is a tall order, no doubt, perhaps too tall for a writer who is simultaneously trying to grasp the intricacies of political intrigue and sci-fi phenomena.  As intelligent and ambitious as Soule is, I’m not sure he can really deliver a conspiracy of this level—at least, not in a comic.

Comics tend to move fast, especially in monthly issues.  You’re talking about twenty to thirty pages, which in prose might offer a lot of substantial development, but which is all too easily devoured as a series of static visuals.  But few readers, or writers, for that matter, are willing to endure several months of issues just to get through the beginning of a storyline.  This might explain why, four issues in, we already have the first assassination of the Blades administration.
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Astro City #9 – Review

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Kurt Busiek (story), Brent Eric Anderson (art), Alex Sinclair (colors)

The Story: Winged Victory learns what the wise already know—a good tea solves everything.

The Review: The flipside of trying to support the historically disadvantaged is that you might end up showing your own gentler brand of racism or sexism.  I think we can all agree there’s a fine line between providing opportunities to the disadvantaged and patronizing them.  This kind of dilemma is what I like to call liberal anxiety-plus.  Not only are you self-conscious about coming across as prejudiced, you’re self-conscious about your self-consciousness.

Speaking as a member of a minority group, I don’t experience this extreme level of political correctness that often, but I can recognize it, and I definitely see it in Samaritan’s uncertainty after he flies in to give her a last-minute assist in fighting off the Iron Legion.  “Should I have held back?” he asks.  “Let you handle them?”  But even the very question has a vaguely paternalistic air, as if he’s the one in control and he need only “[l]et” Victory “handle” things.
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Fatale #20 – Review

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Ed Brubaker (story), Sean Phillips (art), Elizabeth Breitweiser (colors)

The Story: Jo demonstrates her own brand of vigilante justice by kissing a serial murderer.

The Review: Coming on this title as late as I did, I never got much of a chance to see Jo as she presently stands, which is to say, at her most competent.  Not that being vulnerable has made her any less dangerous; if the fates of Amsterdam are anything to go by, Jo can definitely bring the “fatal” in “fatale.”  But that’s only made me even more interested in seeing how Jo handles herself when she has all her physical and mental faculties in order.

Unsurprisingly, she’s much more calculating.  From the outset, Brubaker reveals that Jo would have been fine with Nick languishing in jail until she was ready to use him: “She wasn’t supposed to be out here yet at all.  But when she heard about Nicholas Lash’s escape from custody, her carefully laid plans went right out the window.”  She rescues Nick not really out of true affection, but simply because she needs him for some other purpose.
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Justice League 3000 #3 – Review

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Minhquan Nguyen

By: Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis (story), Howard Porter (art), Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: Earth has finally become the disgusting cesspool we all thought it would.

The Review: After reading this issue, I’ve cobbled up a theory about how Giffen-DeMatteis are handling this series.  I don’t think they care much for the idea of a cloned Justice League in the 31st Century and either they’re putting in a minimum of effort into the story or they’re deliberately trying to sabotage it.  Otherwise, I can’t explain why Giffen-DeMatteis would seemingly go out of their way to make everything in this series as unpleasant as possible.

Out of respect for Giffen-DeMatteis’ chosen premise, I could stand a thoroughly unlikable League for a short while, so long as there was a payoff at the end of it, or if Giffen-DeMatteis would reveal some redeeming qualities to our supposed heroes.  Instead, the more time we spend with the League, the less appealing they become.  In that sense, it was a mistake to have an issue focused on the Trinity, who have been the most problematic members of the cast thus far.  Trapping them together without the buffers of Hal or Barry could only expose more of their worst personality traits.
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