This week the mighty trio reunite and are joined by Joshua Werner! Josh talks about his work, life and love for comics. He even allows Free to indulge her TMNT obsession.
On top of Josh’s appearance the team tackle the newest news, look at the sales charts and discuss their best and worst of the week.
For once, I am more than happy to let Batman take the back seat on this issue. Jason Bard is a very fun hero to spend this issue with, especially as his plan goes full throttle and he turns into the smartest guy in the room. The writing, pacing and dialogue of the thirteenth issue of Batman Eternal is terrific. I love Jason Bard as a character; he is the newcomer to the Batman franchise, but he instantly becomes a success with the reader.
It is such a joy to see this in my reading pile; it’s one of those books that makes me excited to see and is often at the top of my reading list. This installment lives up to the high benchmark the previous issues have already set. Now before I get into the meat of The Punisher I will sort of apologise if this review seems a bit samey. At the time of writing my local post man screwed me over and only brought me four comics, so I try not to go over the same book too often, but this week I have no real choice.
This is the penultimate issue of Zero Year, and I quite enjoyed this issue. There are some bits I thought were really good, some bits I wasn’t too keen on and some bits that I didn’t get at all.
One of the bits I just didn’t get was the opening page of the issue. I don’t know who the homeless person is, if he is supposed to be anybody, and it isn’t made clear what favour Batman requested of him. I don’t know if this is something that will be made clear in the final issue.
The Good Man tackles far more of the ongoing stories than any of the other issues so far. Jim Gordon makes a return after a long absence. His trial gets underway and we get a savagely delicious courtroom scene. Meanwhile, Penguin and Falcone are going to greater lengths to win the city back, the first page showing Penguin’s thugs getting mown down by armed thugs. Jason Bard, Harvey Bullock and Captain Sawyer get together and come up with a plan to end the gang war once and for all, but it requires a risky step which is revealed in the last few pages. Also, Batgirl and Red Hood’s encounter is carried on from the last issue, but without the distracting art or silly humour.
This week’s special guest is Matt Miner!
Jack and Dan welcome Free back to the show and she’s just in time to discuss this week’s best/worst comics, answer some listener questions and interview the creator of Liberator and Toe Tag Riot, Matt Miner.
Now I enjoy good bits of writing and dialogue, I find films like Clerks massively engaging because of the dialogue between characters, but in Sovereign it feels overly indulgent of itself. I understand that this is a fantasy world, and it will have more fantasy-sounding people and places, but I honestly feel completely lost reading this. I have no idea who or what places are called.
As the first storyline in Gail Simone’s Lara Croft series draws to a finale, this penultimate issue lines up all of the pieces. Matsu’s plot is fully uncovered, a new player is introduced to the story and hopefully all that is left to do is give us a pulse-pounding conclusion next time around. Sure, this issue feels like the setting up of an episode, rather than an episode by itself, but hopefully the sixth issue will make this pay off.
Following on from the bombshell that was the final page of the previous issue we see the seeds potentially being sewn here. Alana seems to be very preoccupied with work, leaving to get there before Marco is even awake. I imagine this could play in to the separation a lot, but more interestingly we see Alana start to use some drugs. Now she hints that she has done drugs in the past, but we are warned that this is stronger than what she may be used to, and I can see this really escalating into a problem for her.
By Chris Fenn This will be the first Image #1 I’ve ever reviewed. Pretty much every Image comic I own I’ve gotten because @InterComics or @intercomicspod has suggested it – Saga, East of West, Nailbiter, the list goes on – and they have all been brilliant titles. The Wicked + The Divine was suggested to me by @InterComics and I thought it sounded appealing. The concept of Gods on Earth is something that always appeals to me, and when it’s done right (Seven Soldiers of Victory: Mr Miracle or Wonder Woman) it makes for a fantastic read. The story starts with
After the plot heavy Borgman double-parter, I was expecting things to quieten right down for a while. Harley Quinn was never too big on tackling things like a narrative, so I assumed Borgman’s addition was a compulsory attempt at tackling a storyline and then this week we would get back to the episodic misadventures with Harley. Seeing as handling story only worked 50% of the time, I couldn’t say I overly minded just spending an issue with Harley chilling.
The story of Batman and Robin has come a long way since the death of Damian. We’ve encountered a lot of characters; whether they’ve been trying to stop Batman from resurrecting Damian, or helping Batman stop Ra’s al Ghul, but now the Batman comes head to head with The Demon. My admiration goes to the colorist of this issue, John Kalisz, as I was simply awestruck with how the first seven pages created such a mood and atmosphere.
The biggest shame here is that there are a lot of storylines being brought back up, which I was waiting for with anticipation. This means that the return of these characters is met with a strong feeling of disappointment. Batgirl, missing ever since Issue #4, finally tracks down her lead, a Brazilian actor who was at the subway when Jim Gordon was set up.
Tim Drake’s story has been quite fascinating and did grab my attention for some while; I want to know what happened in Paris and I want to know how Tim survived and what happened to the rest of the Titans. I understand why they would want to progress the character of Tim’s girlfriend, Madison, but having her have a breakdown and namedrop her father isn’t the way to go about it. Also I have no idea who Maxwell Payne is, and all google gave me was the Max Payne computer game series!
I love how this issue advertised the fact it was delving into Carmine Falcone’s past to explain why he does what he does and we are given a quick flashback where he is scratched. Cut back to modern day. That is not an explanation or even character development. On the Falcone side of things, we are given a neat, little twist, but it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.