- The Brave and the Bold #22, by David Hine, Doug Braithwaite & Bill Reinhold (DC)
- Tangent: Superman’s Reign #12 of 12, by Dan Jurgens, Carlos Magno & Julio Ferreira (DC)
- Guardians of the Galaxy #10, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Brad Walker, Victor Olazaba & Livesay (Marvel)
- Invincible #59, by Robert Kirkman & Ryan Ottley (Image)
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Tangent: Superman’s Reign had a promising start: The DC Universe heroes meeting their counterparts from “Earth Tangent”, and catching up with the main characters from that world was fun, since it’s spent the last few years under the supposedly-benevolent rule of their Superman, a powerful telepath and telekinetic.
Unfortunately the series ended up being a mess, padded by at least four issues. It didn’t help that each issue (save the last) featured a back-up story taking up a quarter of the pages, but doing nothing more than recounting the backstory of the Tangent characters (and ultimately going nowhere). There were too many characters so no one stood out as the protagonist, everyone got lost in the shuffle. Plus the game of musical artists started mid-way through, none of them quite working out as well as the original artist, Matthew Clark, did. I think the series would have been better served by getting rid of the backup story and cutting it back to 6 issues or so. But ultimately I think the series just didn’t have a reason for being other than throwing the DC and Tangent heroes together, and frankly that just wasn’t enough to carry it. |
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On the other hand, the underrated series The Brave and the Bold wraps up its latest story arc and it turned out to be a perfectly enjoyable retro-style team-up of Green Lantern and the Phantom Stranger (with a side of Green Arrow) facing down a powerful creature trying to end all life in the universe. It includes a visit to a fairly alien world (by comic book standards) and themes of the value of life even in trying circumstances. I’ve never read anything by David Hine before, but this is a pretty good indication that I should check out his other work, if I come across any. Doug Braithwaite is a pretty good artist with a bit of Mike Grell and Norm Breyfogle in his style, and his work looks better here than it did in Alex Ross’ series Justice.
After this series of fill-in issues, I guess J. Michael Straczynski is taking over the series with the next issue. Although it sounds like it’s already running late, and as you saw in my review of Thor last week his previous comics work hasn’t thrilled me (although The Twelve has been quite good, though it’s running late, too). Anyway, we can cross that bridge when we come to it. If we come to it. |