dc comics – Page 15 – PopCult Reviews

Superhero Spotlight – Plastic Man

Plastic Man has been a character with extreme popularity in the mainstream culture at points but has an extraordinarily muddled and irregular comic book presence. He started as the creation of another company before being bought by DC Comics. In the 1990s, he experienced a spike in appearances in the DC Universe only to disappear when the New 52 reboot happened. He finally returned but only as part of a pastiche of Marvel’s Fantastic Four in a comic that just recently got canceled.

Comic Book Review – Wonder Woman by Mike Deodato

Wonder Woman by Mike Deodato (2016)
Reprints Wonder Woman #85, 90-100, 0
Written by William Messner-Loebs
Art by Mike Deodato

Not many collections I’ve reviewed spotlight the artist, but in my journey through Wonder Woman’s post-Crisis career, we have reached the era where things get weird. These comics were published in the mid-1990s when Image Comics had a profound effect on the industry. Image was founded by a collective of artists who left the big two companies and created imprints under this single umbrella. They were people like Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, and Rob Liefeld, who had very distinct and oft-criticized art styles. Deodato is very much a student of these artists, and it shows in his work, which we will get into later.

Comic Book Review – Booster Gold: The Big Fall

Booster Gold: The Big Fall (2019)
Reprints Booster Gold V1 #1-12
Written by Dan Jurgens
Art by Dan Jurgens & Mike DeCarlo

The 1980s are remembered as a decade of gross corporate excess in the United States. Ronald Reagan became president and opened the doors to deregulating the financial sector. American Psycho is a great satirical take on the results of letting Wall Street run wild on American wealth. In DC Comics, they indulged in the excess with the most massive comic book crossover to date, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This featured heroes from across the multiverse in a battle beyond time and space. The result was a condensed timeline where they managed (or in some cases failed to accomplish) populating the single remaining Earth with legions of heroes. The character considered to be the first post-Crisis one is Booster Gold, a mystery man who encompasses all the corporate greed.

Comic Book Review – Young Justice Book Three

Young Justice Book Three (2018)
Reprints Young Justice #18-19, Young Justice: Sins of Youth #1-2, Young Justice: Sins of Youth Secret Files and Origins #1, Superboy #74, Sins of Youth: JLA Jr. #1, Sins of Youth: Aquababy/Lagoon Man #1, Sins of Youth: Batboy and Robin #1, Sins of Youth: Kid Flash/Impulse #1, Sins of Youth: Starwoman and the JSA Jr. #1, Sins of Youth: Superman Jr/Superboy Sr #1, Sins of Youth: Wonder Girls #1, and Sins of Youth: The Secret/Deadboy #1
Written by Peter David, Todd Dezago, Chuck Dixon, Geoff Johns, D. Curtis Johnson, Karl Kesel, Dwayne McDuffie, Ben Raab, Brian K. Vaughn, Jay Faerber, Lary Stucker, Scotty Beatty, and Jim Alexander
Art by Todd Nauck, Carlo Barberi, Sunny Lee, Tom Grummett, Rob Haynes, Drew Johnson, Scott Kolins, Cary Nord, Michael Avon Oeming, Angel Unzueta, Mike S. Miller, Norm Breyfogle, Pasqual Ferry, and Cully Hamner

It all started with making Superman a weekly character. In the 1990s, the Man of Steel had four monthly series making it so that you could pick up the next chapter in the Superman saga every week of the month. This led to DC Comics shaping their publishing schedule around this four-week model. However, this ran into a problem when you had a month with a fifth Wednesday (traditionally New Comic Book Day). In 1997, DC introduced fifth-week events, a filler week where a collection of themed one-shots would be published. That grew into a space to have a mini-event, nothing world-shattering but a longer story, the type you might typically have seen in the summer annuals. This is how we got Sins of Youth.

Comic Book Review – Wonder Woman: The Last True Hero Book One

Wonder Woman: The Last True Hero Book One (2020)
Reprints Wonder Woman Special #1, Wonder Woman #63, 64, 66-75, and Wonder Woman Annual #3
Written by William Messner-Loebs
Art by Jill Thompson, Paris Cullens, Lee Moder, and Brian Bolland

In the wake of War of the Gods and the conclusion of George Perez’s Wonder Woman run, DC had a fresh start. Around the same time, Giffen & DeMatteis were wrapping up their tenure on Justice League, so several books were getting a fresh coat of paint. William Messner-Loebs was brought on to write the Amazon. His most prominent work to this point had been a lukewarmly received run on The Flash, where he emphasized the working class elements of the speedster. He brought this same element to Wonder Woman while still trying to bring in fantastic details.

Supervillain Spotlight – The Cheetah

Earlier, I looked at Max Lord, one of the villains in the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984. Today, I’ll breakdown the second villain, The Cheetah. Unlike Lord, The Cheetah has always exclusively been a Wonder Woman enemy, but there have been multiple people that worked under that name. In 1985, DC Comics launched Crisis on Infinite Earths, a company-wide event that rebooted the entire timeline and compressed many parallel Earths into one. Before this, there had been two Cheetahs, neither of whom had superpowers and were mainly knock-offs of Batman’s villain Catwoman. With Crisis, these versions were erased to make way for writer-artist George Perez’s overhaul of Wonder Woman and her continuity. This led to a new Cheetah, one who derived her powers from dark mythic gods.

Supervillain Spotlight – Maxwell Lord

The upcoming Wonder Woman 1984 is set to feature two villains, and I am writing up a spotlight on each. First up is a character who has been both a hero and a villain, and it wasn’t until 2006 that they were even associated with Wonder Woman so directly.

Comic Book Review – Young Justice Book Two

Young Justice Book Two (2018)
Reprints Young Justice #8-17, Young Justice 80-Page Giant #1, Young Justice in No Man’s Land #1, Supergirl #36-37, and Young Justice Secret Files #1
Written by Peter David, Chuck Dixon, Scott Beatty, Beau Smith, Jay Faerber, Lary Stucker, and Peter J. Tomasi
Art by Todd Nauck, Leonard Kirk, Angel Unzueta, Coy Turnbull, Andy Kuhn, Justiniano, Sergio Cariello, Tommy Lee Edwards, Ryan Sook, Keron Grant, and Dietrich Smith

Woo boy! Young Justice has not turned out to be what I expected it would be. And this is not a good thing. I have always bristled at most superhero books with comedy, save the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League run. It takes a deft touch to balance humor and superheroics so that the stakes of the conflict don’t devolve into silliness. This is why Deadpool and Harley Quinn have just never appealed to me despite multiple attempts to read runs by different creative teams. Peter David chose to lean into the humor of a teen superhero book for better or worse.

Comic Book Review – The Flash by Geoff Johns Omnibus Volume 1

The Flash by Geoff Johns Omnibus Volume 1 (2019)
Reprints The Flash #164-191, The Flash: Our Worlds at War, The Flash: Iron Heights, The Flash Secret Files & Origins #3, DC First: Flash and Superman
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Angel Unzueta, Scott Kolins, and Ethan van Sciver

Sometimes you need to be reminded of how damn good an old album, film, or comic book is by returning to them for a re-read. That’s how I felt cracking open this massive tome, taking me back to my college days and reading these issues in fragments thanks to my roommate Keith who was always filling the room with fantastic comics of the day. Where Mark Waid established Wally West as a unique, fully fleshed-out character, Geoff Johns builds the world out around Wally to make a place that feels alive.

Comic Book Review – Young Justice Book One

Young Justice Book One (2017)
Reprints Young Justice: The Secret, JLA: A World Without Grown-Ups #1-2, Young Justice #1-7, Young Justice Secret Files and Origins #1
Written by Todd Dezago, Peter David, and D. Curtis Johnson
Art by Todd Nauck, Mike McKone, Humberto Ramos, and Ale Garza

You are likely familiar with Young Justice as the animated series, which aired on Cartoon Network from 2010-2012 and then revived on the DC Universe platform in 2019. That title and most of its characters had their start in this comic book series from the late-1990s. Young Justice in response to the Teen Titans being aged into early adulthood and thus leaving a vacuum for a youth-oriented super-team. A new name was chosen based on the popularity of Grant Morrison’s JLA run, and so we had Young Justice starting as a trio of characters and growing its roster from there.