Saturday, December 29, 2012

Comics this week

Justice League #15- Since the New 52 came into being, crossovers in DC had focus mainly within the same family of titles. The Batman titles had their crossover, Justice League Dark and I, Vampire had theirs but there hadn't been one across the titles. As the flagship title of the New 52, I guess it make sense that Justice League #15 kick off the first big cross-title in the New 52. The Throne of Atlantis crossover kicks off when a "mistake" from the American Navy caused several torpedos to lauch and explode near Atlantis. Assuming that this was an attack from the surface, Ocean Master launch a counter-attack on America and the Justice League and Aquamans are caught in the conflict. First off, #15 is the debut issue of  new regular artist Ivan Reis and after his stellar work on Green Lantern, this is a change I welcomed. Jim Lee may be great for work on epic and vast action scenes but I feel Reis is the more well-round artist with excellent work even on smaller moments like the dinner date scene between Superman and Wonder Woman in this issue. Writer Geoff Johns' script hint that the conflict is not that simple but it's too early too early to tell how everything will play out. Good issue for a start, let's see where we go from here.

Aquaman #15- Picking up right after the opening chapter in Justice League #15, this issue shows the counter-attack from Ocean Master on America. Tidal waves hit several cities in America and countless people had died in the aftermath. Now I haven't been following Aquaman but I like this new version of Ocean Master. Geoff Johns's take on the villain as a leader of a nation involved in a military conflict was refreshingly but what I really liked was how fish-out-water the League members were. In a battle where there's no real outright villain, the reaction of the members were telling. Some like Aquaman (who was king once) tries to find a way to cool down the conflict while other like Batman just ignore the bigger picture and treat the battle like a normal hero/villain fight. A significant battle with consequences for both the world and the League's relationship to each other. An excellent issue that hint that the Throne of Atlantis may be as good as advertised.

Justice League #15- After last issue, Tim Hunter and Zatanna have been teleported to another dimension and the rest of the team are trying to find a way to get them back. Forst off I must say the coming and going of various members is getting a little confusing. I mean what happened to Princess Amaya? The confusion is not helped by the slight confusing script which tried to be too mysterious for its own good. If not for artist Mikel Janin's good panel work, this one could have been really bad.

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