dc comics – Page 14 – PopCult Reviews

Comic Book Review – JSA by Geoff Johns Book Four

JSA by Geoff Johns Book Four (2020)
Reprints JSA #32-45
Written by Geoff Johns & David Goyer
Art by Peter Snejbjerg, Leonard Kirk, Keith Champagne, Steve Sadowski, and Patrick Gleason

There is something deeply satisfying about reading Geoff Johns’s JSA run. When I was a kid with a limited amount of money to spend while perusing the comic rack on the wall at Kroger, I always leaned towards the team books because it was more economical in my line of thinking. I wanted to expand my knowledge of obscure characters, and team books always gave you the most characters for your buck. So, as an adult, when I stumbled across this run by Johns, it was like my childhood dream come true. He always found creative ways to weave together disparate strands of the DC Universe by using those commonalities.

Comic Book Review – Booster Gold: Future Lost

Booster Gold: Future Lost (2020)
Reprints Booster Gold #13-25, Action Comics #594, Secret Origins #35, Millennium #3,4,6,7
Written by Dan Jurgens & Steve Englehart
Art by Dan Jurgens, Ty Templeton, John Byrne, and Joe Staton

Booster Gold had evolved since his first appearance by the time Dan Jurgens was kicking off the second year of the title. Gold was an intriguing gimmick, a personification of 1980s corporate greed as presented in a superhero, but as his origins were fleshed out and his life complicated, the man from the 25th century fell from grace and had to rebuild. Jurgens didn’t really know what quite to do with Booster Gold beyond the idea, and the stories suffer for this reason. His villains are entirely forgettable, and the supporting cast feels dull. D.C. saw some potential in Booster, though, and in these issues, he’s recruited by Maxwell Lord for the newly formed Justice League International.

Comic Book Review – The Dollhouse Family

The Dollhouse Family (2020)
Written by M.R. Carey
Art by Peter Gross & Vince Locke

Hill House Comics hasn’t really lived up to the hype. Other than The Low Low Woods, I haven’t found any of them very enjoyable or all that horrific, really. The Dollhouse Family is one of the most frustrating entries into the DC imprint because it has so many seeds of potential greatness but then gets lost in the plot and ends with a horrible whimper. I would say The Dollhouse Family is the least satisfying Hill House Comics read for me so far, made even more irritating by the fact that it has that previously mentioned potential.

Comic Book Review – Wonder Woman by John Byrne Volume 1

Wonder Woman by John Byrne Volume 1 (2017)
Reprints Wonder Woman v2 #101 – 114
Written by John Byrne
Art by John Byrne

I first became aware of John Byrne when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I remember being at K-Mart (I think) and picking up one of those 3 for a dollar polybagged comic book grab bags. Inside, I had two issues of the Superman reboot helmed by John Byrne (issues 2 & 3) to be specific. I remember I really liked the art, especially Byrne’s take on Jack Kirby’s New Gods characters. I’d been aware of who Darkseid was from watching Challenge of the Superfriends, but this was my first introduction to the larger pantheon of characters in that niche of the DC Universe. Being a child at the time, I wasn’t quite aware of John Byrne’s love affair with the work of Jack Kirby, but fast forward to the mid-1990s, and the writer-artist was folding in those elements to his run on Wonder Woman.

Comic Book Review – The Low Low Woods

The Low Low Woods (2020)
Written by Carmen Maria Machado
Art by Dani

I became familiar with author Carmen Maria Machado from her short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. It’s a wonderful book of stories that are horror but also a commentary on being a woman. There’s some inventive work going on here, including a mind-blowing story presented as episode recaps of Law & Order: SVU episodes that become a sinister, disturbing & reality-bending tale. When I saw her name attached to a Hill House Comic title, I got pretty excited to see what she had to offer.

Comic Book Review – Legion of Super-Heroes: Five Years Later Omnibus Volume 1

Legion of Super-Heroes: Five Years Later Omnibus Volume 1 (2020)
Reprints Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #1-39, Annual #1-4, Timber Wolf #1-5, Adventures of Superman #478, and Who’s Who #1-11, 13, 14, 16
Written by Keith Giffen, Tom & Mary Bierbaum, Dan Jurgens, and Al Gordon
Art by Keith Giffen, Doug Braithwaite, Dusty Abell, Brandon Peterson, Jason Pearson, Rob Haynes, Ian Montgomery, Joe Phillips, Stuart Immonen, Colleen Doran, Curt Swan, June Brigman, David A. Williams, Chris Sprouse

I have not read many omnibus collections though there is a larger type of trade paperback collection that gets pretty close. It used to be when comics got bound together for a reprint, you got about 6-8 issues a book. Now we are seeing year-long arcs being collected and, in the case of omnibuses, entire creator-focused runs. Everything about Legion of Super-Heroes: Five Years Later feels epic in scale. The cast is beyond sprawling, and the story arcs touch on brand-new elements and established bits of Legionnaires lore going back decades. These issues were originally published in 1989, and the influence of Watchmen and that British new wave of storytelling is also present throughout.

Comic Book Review – Young Justice Book Four

Young Justice Book Four (2019)
Reprints Young Justice #20 – 32
Written by Peter David, Jay Faerber, Chuck Dixon, Brian K. Vaughn, and Todd Dezago
Art by Todd Nauck, Sunny Lee, Coy Turnbull, Eric Battle, Patrick Zircher, and Scott Kolins

One of the problems I think Peter David encountered as the writer of Young Justice was his inability to develop or change his flagship characters because he was borrowing them from other titles. Superboy has his own ongoing series, which wouldn’t end until 2002. Robin had a very popular ongoing written by Chuck Dixon that ran from 1996 to 2009. Impulse was under the umbrella of Mark Waid’s Flash family with a solo book. Wonder Girl was a recurring cast member in the Wonder Woman title. That left Waid with characters like The Secret, Empress, and Arrowette to have the freedom to develop. However, the book wasn’t going to sell if those were the people on the covers. Yet, by continuing to spotlight characters outside of David’s control, the book never really felt like it went anywhere.

Comic Book Review – Basketful of Heads

Basketful of Heads (2020)
Written by Joe Hill
Art by Leomacs

It helps to have a famous dad, I suppose. In 2019, DC Comics announced a horror comics imprint, Hill Comics, that would be overseen by horror novelist Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. I have never read any of Hill’s prose, but I did read his previous comics series, Locke & Key, which is quite a fun & disturbing horror mystery with all sorts of twists and turns along the way. Hill Comics’s opening salvo would include Hill’s own Basketful of Heads, The Dollhouse Family by Peter Carey, The Low Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado, and more. I plan to read through these as the trades are released, and we have some great horror comics that bridge the gap between the pulpy comic anthologies of old and more modern horror sensibilities.

Superhero Spotlight – Black Canary

Black Canary is the name used by two different women in the DC Universe, a mother & daughter, the partial inspiration for the Silk Spectre in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. She was one of DC Comics’ earliest super-heroines introduced post-World War II. In the New 52 reboot, elements of both mother & daughter were combined into a single version. Black Canary has been part of the Golden Age Justice Society, the Justice League, partnered with Green Arrow and been part of the all-female Birds of Prey. Four different actresses have portrayed her in film & television thus far with some markedly different interpretations. Let’s learn more about Black Canary.

Comic Book Review – The Power of Shazam! Book 1: In the Beginning…

The Power of Shazam! Book 1: In the Beginning… (2020)
Reprints The Power of Shazam! graphic novel, The Power of Shazam! #1-12, a story from Superman/Batman Magazine #4
Written by Jerry Ordway
Art by Jerry Ordway, Peter Krause, and Mike Parobeck

Of the collections I’ve read and reviewed on this site, I believe this is the first where I bought each individual issue as it was published. I cannot explain what drew me to the Captain Marvel character since I was a kid, but I just was. The first thing to get out of the way, yes, this character was called Captain Marvel, he was the original created in 1939 at Fawcett Comics. Fawcett went out of business, DC bought Captain Marvel, but by the time they wanted to use him in the 1960s, Marvel Comics was around with their own Captain Marvel. DC’s version legally could not use his name in the title of books, so Shazam became the commonly used moniker. By the 2000s, DC was tired of the name confusion, so with the New 52 reboot, he was renamed Shazam.