TOM KING WEEK: STRANGE ADVENTURES #10

 Published on May 26th, 2021

    Adam Strange was introduced in 1958, though I never heard of him until this series. His character is pretty much a ripoff of Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter, the American transported to Mars to fight aliens and fall in love with an alien woman. Burrough's also wrote Tarzan, so he definitely was pretty creative. I'm not sure "creative" is the word I would use to describe Tom King. This book is similar to his Rorschach book in that they're both unfolding mysteries that take a really long time to unfold. We're at #10 of #12 and we've finally solved the mystery of this book. The basic premise is that Adam Strange turned into a sadistic murderer to defeat the alien race, the Pykkts. This has seemingly got him into trouble with the Justice League and a superhero called Mr. Terrific because of the killing of innocents and what-not. In this issue, Mr. Terrific tells Adam's wife, Alanna, that Adam's true, secret plan was to make a deal with the Pykkts. He would be able to win the war on Raan, the alien planet, if he would give them Earth. Also, Adam Strange faked his daughter's death and the Pykkts have her as collateral in case the deal falls apart. And that's the whole book. I guess Adam Strange is officially a villain now? Either way, he's another Tom King character that's flawed and has "problems." If it wasn't for the spectacular art by Mitch Gerads and Ethan Shaner (my pick for Best Art of 2020 was this book...it started way back in March 2020), I'm not sure I would care about this book or even continue reading it. Every issue is split between the current time on Earth and the past time during the war on Raan between Adam and the Pykkts. Even with two stories going on, most of the issues in this series feel like filler. Like every Tom King book, it seems like he could do a 12 issue mini-series in half the issues and you wouldn't lose anything. The book is also a little bit too depressing, dark, and ugly for my taste. I've never read an Adam Strange book before, but I kind of think back in '58 he was probably a happy-go-lucky superhero doing fun superhero things. And now he's evil, broken, misguided, a shell of a man. I'm not sure what the point of this book is, and that's kind of a deathblow for me. *1/2

TOM KING WEEK: RORSCHACH #9

 

Published on June 9th, 2021

    I always feel a little uneasy when a something new in the Watchmen universe comes out. The reason is that the writer of Watchmen, Alan Moore, famously was told by DC that he'd get the rights to it back when it wasn't in print anymore. DC then sneakily never let it go out of print so they'd never lose the rights to it. There actually hasn't been much of anything done with Watchmen until ten years ago or so when DC published the Before Watchmen event with multiple books and the Watchmen movie came out. Then there was the great HBO TV show and the Doomsday Clock comic book and now Tom King's Rorschach 12 issue mini-series. The only thing worthwhile in any of that was J.J. Abrahm's HBO show. The comic book sequels/prequels have all been pretty forgettable. Rorschach seems to be the ultimate in pointlessness. After 9 issues, I'm still baffled as to why this exists. The book is a why-dunnit. It starts with a guy dressed up in a Rorschach mask and a girl dressed up like a cowboy being killed while trying to assassinate a politician running for president. The rest of the story follows a detective trying to figure out who those two assassins were and why they attempted it. So far the answers are pretty dull. The guy dressed up like Rorschach was a retired comic book artist. The Kid, a girl in a cowboy outfit, is still a bit of a mystery, though she believes that giant squids are telepathically controlling the world or something stupid. I guess this squid conspiracy has to do with the Trump Qanon conspiracy stuff and how people lose their minds over that sort of thing. In this issue, we learn that a political worker was killed at Rorschach and The Kid's house in the desert. And that's about it. A slow burn is putting it mildly. This book literally could have been wrapped up in one issue. Jorge Fornes does the art, and it definitely fits the 70's political/conspiracy vibe. His stuff reminds me of Outcast's Paul Azaceta a bit. I think the huge problem in this book is that in every issue you're waiting for some huge bombshell to show up and make the book interesting. Otherwise, it feels like it's going nowhere slowly. *1/2

TOM KING WEEK: BATMAN/CATWOMAN #5

 Published on June 2nd, 2020

    I mentioned yesterday that Tom King was fired from Batman. This was a huge story even though he wasn't fired from DC or anything tragic. One of the DC higher ups wanted him off the book. This happened right after King's weird, dream storyline that was terrible. The book was a good seller, so that wasn't the reason he was fired. Just some executive didn't like what he was doing on their big book. It was kind of weird that he was fired considering his run was almost over, anyway. The book was bi-monthly when he was writing it and he left at #85 and was supposed to carry on until around #120. He got to finish his run anyway because it just turned into this 12 issue mini-series, Batman/Catwoman. I read all 85 issues of his run and when it came out it was usually the first book I read that week, so it's not like I loathed it or anything. His run was hit-or-miss, though not particularly memorable. Making Bane the central villain probably didn't help. But his successor, James Tynion IV, hasn't really done anything better. Tynion's run is just boring. 

    Batman/Catwoman is a bit different because it takes place in the future & in the past. Selina Kyle kills The Joker in the future (The Joker is a retired, old dude in Florida). In this issue, Harley Quinn shows up to kill Selina in the future and they have a fight. Meanwhile, in the past, Catwoman meets up with Phantasm, a pseudo-villain. And we get more of Tom King's classic "broken" hero here, as Catwoman spends the present section drunk and reckless. Some things never change.

    The first four issues of this book were released monthly starting in December, but this book was delayed for two months for unknown reasons. Clay Man, the artist, has done phenomenal work on the previous four issues but this issue doesn't look as crisp. That means I'm assuming the delay was his fault for whatever reason.

    Like his 85 issue Batman run, this book feels like it's treading water. The pace is so molasses slow, and there's not a lot of meat to it. Batman does show up in the book but I don't think he even says a word. That Harley Quinn as a senior citizen is still dressing up in costume and acting the part is kind of an odd choice. One of the big surprises in this book, besides The Joker being murdered, is that Catwoman has a daughter, presumably one she had with Bruce Wayne. Will any of this future stuff even be remembered or be considered part of the official DC cannon? 

    This book is strange though it is engrossing. I'm guessing that the DC executive that fired him would read this and feel justified. But sometimes different is good, and I think this mini-series is unique enough to be worth reading.  **1/2

TOM KING WEEK: SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW #1

Published on June 15th, 2020

   

    This week brings the first issue of writer Tom King's Supergirl 8 issue mini-series. Tom King was famously fired from writing Batman awhile back, so it's kind of amusing to see that he's currently writing 4 books at DC, one of them a Batman book. I guess he wasn't good enough to write the flagship title but he's still good enough to stay at the company? He is one of the more "famous" comic book writers these days. Most of this is due to his Vision mini-series at Marvel, which everyone loved. Now he's kind of a love him or hate him writer, and the ones that hate him love to proclaim their hatred in every corner of the internet. Why he's writing a new Supergirl title and why it even exists is kind of beyond me. Is there a Supergirl movie coming out soon? There was a Supergirl TV show on the CW. It was so popular I'm not entirely even sure if it's still on. And while I have read a lot of Superman comic books over the years, I can't remember ever reading a Supergirl comic or even seeing her in a comic. Who is she? I thought Krypton blew up, everyone died. Why do comic book writers always have people from the Krypton days popping up all of a sudden (Bendis did this with his first big villain of his forgettable run)? I looked up Supergirl on Wikipedia and learned that she was introduced in 1959. She was killed off in 1985 in the Crisis on Infinite Earths event, which I never read. Shocking, really, that she was killed off 35 years ago but is somehow in a new comic book. 

    Tom King's idea for this book, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, is a strange one. It's basically what if Supergirl took a time machine to Conan times. A young peasant girl in a Medieval type world sees her father killed by a brute and she seeks vengeance. Eventually she comes across Supergirl celebrating her 21st birthday in a tavern and tries to get Supergirl to help her kill Krem, the villanious brute that killed her father. By the end of this issue, Krem has stolen Supergirl's ship and taken off to who knows where. So this book is completely separate, at least so far, from the current DC world. I'm kind of wondering why Tom King didn't just want to write a current, typical, Supergirl in Metropolis fighting a villain type of a story. Why do a weird, Medieval set thing? And why have the main character be a peasant girl and not even Supergirl? Another aspect that is a little bit disappointing is that King has made Supergirl a hero with "problems." King loves this trope for some reason; the troubled hero. Supergirl gets introduced by being drunk and then hungover and puking into a bucket. Nice. And she says "fuck" a lot even if they can't print it. While this book at least held by interest, and the art by Bilquis Evely is nice, I think I'd have rather seen King try to write a straightforward, classic, hero vs. villain story in a metropolis in modern times. Supergirl isn't that famous...so why put her in strange, unfamiliar waters out of the gate? **1/2