Stand Up and Salute!
I feel like getting the last of my weekly reviews over and done with right now, so let’s get to it.
Justice Society of America #8
Our focus in this issue is on our purty, purty covergirl, Jesse Chambers, formerly known as Jesse Quick, currently known as the new Liberty Belle. This issue has some backstory to deal with first — the main villain in this piece is Zoom, who is the anti-Flash. He’s partially responsible for the loss of Jesse’s superspeed powers, and he’s the guy who demolished Damage’s face. The JSA is after him, but he’s hiding out in Atlanta, and due to an incident years ago where Damage accidentally blew up a chunk of that city, he’s not allowed to set foot anywhere in Georgia. But Damage wants to tear a chunk out of Zoom’s hide, so he goes in anyway. Now he’s got hold of Zoom and has built up a charge of energy that would kill thousands of people if he lets it off. Jesse volunteers to go in and talk him down.
Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s nice to see something here about Liberty Belle, who has been a complete cypher until now. That’s really the biggest irritant about this comic, though, because there are far too many characters who we’ve barely seen at all in the past eight issues. Where’s Jakeem Thunder? Is he a current member of the team? Where’s Sand? What’s up with his funky new costume and powers? Used to be, there were almost as many people in the JSA, and they were still able to keep us up-to-date with all of them — that doesn’t seem to be the case now…
She-Hulk #20
There isn’t much of a way to talk about this one, because it’s jam-packed with spoilers. Basically, Artie Zix, the guy who currently runs the law firm, reveals his secrets and gets our main characters to reveal some of theirs, wrapping up a number of old loose plot threads before the next storyarc.
Verdict: Thumbs up. Seems fine, but not particularly outstanding.
Metal Men #1
A very nice relaunch of one of DC’s most enjoyable teams. This one has lots of great stuff, from a return of some of the concepts cooked up during the JLA’s “Obsidian Age” storyline, to a giant robot made up of nanobots and evil toasters. We also see Doc Magnus before he had completely developed the Metal Men into the shapeshifting herobots we know and love, and we get to briefly meet a new Metal Man named Copper. And of course, the Metal Men end the issue completely destroyed, because that’s what the Metal Men do — they get wrecked whenever they save the day…
Verdict: Thumbs up, again. Duncan Rouleau is the writer and illustrator, and his art and storytelling completely overclock the specs on good, action-packed, charismatic fun.