Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Birds of Prey 11, Justice Society of America 52


Birds of Prey #11


Gail Simone, Pere Perez,
Nei Rufino, Carlos M. Mangual
Stanley Lau, Katie Kubert,
Janelle Asselin

        As promised, Gail Simone gives us the  Catman and Huntress date issue that we've allegedly all been waiting for. These are two "edgy" characters that Simone has championed over the years, so the pairing makes sense right? Not really, when you take into account that Huntress is supposed to be the DCU's  female version of the Punisher and Catman  is  somewhat unreformed.
        Things start out fairly routine, as Huntress searches for a  jewel heist hostage with Catman helping out because he has a big crush on her. But things get annoying when Catman delivers the jerky line
"She's (Huntress) a lady. Watch your damn mouth" and then punches a pregnant woman a few pages later. These things didn't sound like Catman's usual reparte, his soul baring confession felt bland and the surprise twist towards the end wasn't particularly satisfying.

        What WAS surprising was Catman's reasoning for his bad behavior explained in that very last page ; all of the off putting  illegal stuff and even the bad soul baring was an elaborate farce Catman designed to push Huntress away from him. Simone had played with my expectations and it lead to a potent payoff. Catman is a character who sees himself as more "evil" then he actually is, but he'll still do evil things to keep himself from hurting a person who he actually cares about.  Let's just hope this closes the book on the Huntress/Catman romance because frankly there are way cooler girls out there for Catman to date.
        As for the art, it's total  garbage that somebody peed on. The colors are garrish with too much photoshop sheen, the perspectives and proportions on Perez's pencils are sloppy and several moments feel like a pale play on Batman and Catwoman's romance in Jim Lee's Hush (which I'm not a huge fan of anyway.) The only slightly redeeming thing is Catman's  awkward duck face on the cover sort of brings out his inner Z-list fat-assness. Simone is a talented writer but she often works with some of the
worst artists.
5.8 

Justice Society of America #52
 
Marc Guggenheim,Tom Derenick, 
Rob Leigh, Mike Atiyeh,
Mario Alberti, Chris Conroy, 
Joey Cavalieri


         This book wasn't particularly incredible but it certainly wasn't
trying to be and there was a juicy moment or two in there. I kind of
liked the build up towards  all of the secret doorway stuff  but it
quickly became a total snoozer, with each new reveal probably being in the top three of what I guessed it would be- Oh it's the Challengers of the Unknown! Oh there's some technological shit in there! Oh there's some booby traps! The last reveal is probably the most standard of all of them.
        Where this comic kind of does well is during what pretty much amounts to a Mr. Terrific solo story that's peppered throughout. I don't know much about Mr. Terrific but I always liked him since he felt like Batman but less crazy. The sad premise here is that through the machinations of an  enemy Mr. Terrific has  lost his genius intellect.
        The villain had a discomforting sort of smallness which I liked and there was a  memorable moment  where a now stupified Mr. Terrific tries to learn to read by watching a children's edutainment tape. While initially funny, a few second's pause made me realize the greeks couldn't have written a moment so tragic- and if Grant Morrison had written it he might've  made it feel grander then necessary.
         At first glance I thought the interior art looked like crap from a kids' adventures comic but on a second look I realized that it was just a little less than so-so. There were some good close-ups on faces
and I like the charcoal type shading. But whenever Tom Derenick draws figures viewed from high angle POVs they start looking like compressed little dwarfs.  I gotta say though, that  cover is subtly incredible. The usually mediocre Mario Alberti comes off  as a more polished Paul Pope (not that that's a good thing.) It's  hard to keep the JSA from being goofy but they look pretty timeless on the front of this book.
6.3
-Johnnie Jungleguts

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