Rock Me, Amadeus

Prince of Power #1

In the aftermath of Hercules’ death, Athena has orchestrated to put his friend Amadeus Cho, the seventh smartest person on the planet, in charge of the Olympus Group. Amadeus has accepted the position mainly because it gives him the resources to try to locate Hercules, since he’s learned that Herc isn’t in Hades, the Greek god afterlife. So while he runs around beating up supervillains like the Griffin (using Hercules’ magical Adamantine mace and an energy shield developed by Bruce Banner), he’s also got Banner spending a half-trillion dollars’ worth of the Olympus Group’s money to build a machine capable of scanning the entire multiverse for signs of Hercules. Unfortunately, the quantum observer effect means that the simple fact of making a scan of that magnitude creates even more multiverses, making the search vastly more complicated.

After that, Amadeus gets a visit from a guy named Vali Halfling, an Asgardian supervillain with a tendency to fight the Hulk. Halfling tells Amadeus that he has a plan to steal various mythological artifacts from a number of different godly pantheons to enable humans to become actual gods themselves. Amadeus gives Halfling a whuppin’, but realizes that godly omniscience would sure help speed up the quest to find Herc, so he sets off for the first item on the quest list — the Golden Apples of Asgard.

Verdict: Thumbs up. All the usual brilliant characterization, dialogue, humor, and action we’ve come to expect from Greg Pak and Fred van Lente. The battle against the Griffin is entirely excellent, but there are also some wonderful scenes that are very low-key and quiet — Amadeus’ monologue with the incarcerated and generally displeased Delphyne Gorgon, his snake-haired ex-girlfriend, is nice, and the scene with townspeople from Broxton, Oklahoma running a food drive for the recently wrecked Asgard (the entire realm had taken up residence over Oklahoma until the end of the “Siege” crossover) is both awesome and funny.

Batgirl #10

The Calculator has lost it big time. He’s keeping his son Marvin’s corpse around to talk to, and he’s planning revenge on Oracle for keeping his daughter Wendy away from him — ’cause after all, he’s so freakin’ crazy and criminal, he should have all kinds of visitation rights. Oracle suspects he’s about to pull something rotten, and so she’s unplugging all of her Internet connections — and it turns out it’s for a very good reason, ’cause Calculator manages to broadcast a nanite-technovirus over the Internet that lets him turn half the population of Gotham City into robot-zombies, all trying to track down Barbara Gordon — including the students in her classroom and her own father. And as bad as things start with thousands of Gothamites turned into Calculator-controlled drones, it gets much worse when other costumed crimefighters get added to the mix…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very nice story with a lot of claustrophobic tension. Very funny dialogue between Steph and Detective Gage. Not a lot else to say — just a really good superhero comic…

Secret Six #21

Catman is on his own, torturing and killing anyone who he thinks might have killed his son. Deadshot, Scandal Savage, Ragdoll, and Black Alice are trying to track him down, either to rescue him or to help him. Bane and Jeannette are trying to keep the Secret Six going under their own leadership by hiring a bunch of other metahuman crooks. Catman tracks his next victim down to South Africa — a big superstrong sadist called Loki. Does he have a chance against someone that powerful? And will the remainder of the team tear itself apart without him?

verdict: Another thumbs up. Loved the background material on Catman’s entirely rotten father. Lots of excellent dialogue, too, and a ton of blisteringly gruesome violence. I know there are other comics focusing on supervillains as the protagonists, but this one really is the best one out there.