Review: Mister Miracle by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, et al.

Comic trade paperback, 300 pages
Published 2019 (contents: 2017-19)
Acquired February 2019
Read March 2019

Mister Miracle

Writer: Tom King
Artist: Mitch Gerads with Mike Norton
Colorist: Mitch Gerads with Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Clayton Cowles

This feels to me like it finishes a thematic trilogy Tom King began in The Omega Men: The End Is Here and The Vision. Like those stories, it's about reconciling superpowered violence with living an everyday life. DC has often struggled to use the Fourth World in compelling ways post-Kirby, but King does great by them through doing something very un-Kirby. They're mythic gods on another plane, beings of immense power, but they're also kind of human; who else would write a scene where Mister Miracle and Kanto piss into a bottomless pit on Apokolips during a break in peace negotiations?

On another page, the panels actually follow the descent of a piss droplet into the pit as they talk.
from Mister Miracle vol. 4 #9 (art by Mitch Gerads)

King delves into some aspects of the Fourth World mythos that I feel like many have ignored. What was it like for Scott and Orion to both be sons of Highfather, in different ways that left them both feeling out of place? (Orion was adopted, and Scott given up to Darkseid.) What were the scars but also weird pleasures of being raised on Apokolips for Scott and Big Barda? If both Highfather and Orion were out of commission, wouldn't Scott become the new ruler of New Genesis?

Maybe this was my bias as a new father, but I loved all the parenting stuff in this series. Even this.
from Mister Miracle vol. 4 #2 (art by Mitch Gerads)

This is a story about war, about family, about escape. It's disturbing and hilarious in equal measure. Escape is the new component added here; I think both Omega Men and Vision suggested there was no such thing, but Mister Miracle always escapes. But what is escape when real life is the trap? At some point I need to go back and read all three comics straight through; I suspect it will be very rewarding.

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part XIV: The All New Atom: The Hunt For Ray Palmer!

Comic trade paperback, 126 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2007)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2017

The All New Atom: The Hunt For Ray Palmer!

Writer: Gail Simone

Penciller: Mike Norton
Inkers: Dan Green, Trevor Scott
Letterers: Pat Brosseau, Travis Lanham, John J. Hill
Colorist: Alex Bleyaert
Bonus story writer: Roger Stern

This volume isn't great, but it's finally beginning to feel like Gail Simone and her artistic collaborators are getting a hold on the premise and character of The All New Atom. In this volume, Ryan Choi is recruited to find his predecessor, first by one of Ray Palmer's enemies, and then by the Challengers from Beyond from Countdown to Final Crisis. The inventive, fanciful ideas are in full force, as Ryan encounters a race of tiny aliens, half of whom consider the Atom a god and half a demon, then travels into a simulation of the afterlife where he meets the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, then helps prevent a giant monster attack on Ivy Town, then stops an evil alien using 1960s music to control the town.

But I can't help feeling that though this book has good jokes (the Ray Palmer impersonator in the tiny village is great), it's completely unfocused and not in a good way. Like, the whole fake afterlife thing is largely tossed off and irrelevant, even if it does give us Ryan kicking a jetpack-wearing Hitler in the face:

Related to this: Ryan declares that reality itself has jumped the shark.
from The All New Atom #14 (script by Gail Simone, art by Mike Norton & Trevor Scott)

I mean, one issue ends with the Challengers finding a message written in blood from Ray Palmer:

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part X: The All New Atom: Future/Past

Comic trade paperback, 127 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2007)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2017

The All New Atom: Future/Past

Writer: Gail Simone

Pencils: Mike Norton, Eddy Barrows
Inks: Andy Owens, Trevor Scott
Letters: Pat Brosseau, Travis Lanham
Colors: Alex Bleyaert

Like the previous volume, Future/Past doesn't deliver on the potential that I see in the "all new" Atom, Ryan Choi. What makes him interesting is his academic background (okay, maybe as a college instructor I'm a little biased there) and the setting of Ivy Town, a place where so much mad science has been practiced that "normal" is a meaningless term. And I liked the cast of characters Gail Simone and John Byrne set up in volume one, Ryan's eccentric fellow professors who all play poker together.

This guy's research credentials had better be amazing, given how awful a teacher he is. Here I am slaving away in adjunct-land, and this awful guy has a tenure-track position at an Ivy!
from The All New Atom #7 (art by Mike Norton & Andy Owens)

The first story collected here, "The Man Who Swallowed Eternity," promises time-travel shenanigans, but is really depressingly straightforward. Ryan is told by a Linear Man* to turn in a guy if he asks Ryan for help, the guy appears and Ryan doesn't turn him in, the Linear Man comes back and Ryan persuades him to not kill the guy anyway. That's it, but somehow it takes two issues to play out. The fact that the Linear Man sends cowboys after Ryan, or that Ryan and the fugitive end up in a dystopian future Ivy Town, are just irrelevant side-shows. Neat ideas in this story, but nothing neat is done with them.

That said, Mike Norton does good, slick, action-filled artwork. Wish he was the primary artist for the series...
from The All New Atom #7 (art by Mike Norton & Andy Owens)

The second story, "Jia," feels like a misstep for the book at this stage: a girl Ryan loved from afar asks him to come back to Hong Kong to help deal with an abusive husband, who used to bully Ryan... only she neglected to mention that the husband is already dead but still angry! Ryan's bullied-nerd background is dull and stereotypical, and Jia's portrayal as a woman being fought over by two men is pretty surprising coming from the writer who coined the term "Women in Refrigerators," especially given the last twist in the story. The three-issue detour back to Hong Kong is mistimed for a book that's barely done much with its actual setting thus far. Let's see more of Ivy Town! Most of the book's recurring cast doesn't even appear in this volume, unfortunately. Establish your world, then take a break from it.

...as opposed to Eddy Barrows, who is terrible at drawing Asian faces. (Or maybe just faces.)
from The All New Atom #10 (art by Eddy Barrows & Trevor Scott)

So far The All New Atom isn't really delivering on its potential. Hopefully this happens in the third volume... because we're running out of volumes, as it only lasted four!

Next Week: Blue Beetle has to Reach for the Stars!

* Since when are the Linear Men murderous jerks, anyway?

Faster than a DC Bullet: The End of Green Arrow, Part I: Green Arrow and Black Canary: Five Stages

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2010)
Borrowed from the library
Read May 2012

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Five Stages

Writers: Andrew Kreisberg / J. T. Krul

Pencillers: Mike Norton / Renato Guedes / Diogenes Neves

Inkers: Bill Sienkiewicz / José Wilson Magalhães / Ruy José / Vicente Cifuentes
Colorists: David Baron / David Curiel / Chuck Pires
Letterer: Sal Cipriano

From May 2009 to April 2010, I worked my way through every Green Arrow trade paperback and collection ever published, the first time I had ever done so with a comic book character, but something I would go on to do with Gotham Central, Y: The Last Man, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, and Jessica Jones, and am still doing with the Sandman. In August 2010, I popped back in for another Green Arrow story that had been published since that April, but since then five more have been published, and not only that, but those five represent the last gasp of the character as I know him, as he was completely rebooted by DC last year. So here it comes: The End of Green Arrow...

I never warmed to Andrew Kreisberg's Green Arrow and Black Canary-- he penned two previous volumes, Enemies List and Big Game. Part of what alienated me was that he sidelined Black Canary in what was theoretically 50% her own title; part was that his new villain Cupid was just pathetic. So I went into Five Stages expecting to be disappointed, and to my surprise, found that Kreisberg's last volume is his best. Not that that takes much. Cupid gets a backstory, and we find out that she's not a random housewife with a Green Arrow fixation, but a trained military operative who snapped on a mission. Though dressing men up as Green Arrow and raping them is still perhaps more than I want to read about, this went a long way to making her work more for me. Especially nice was a set of flashback stories about Cupid's days with COBALT, drawn by Renato Guedes, who has a nice clean style-- I liked it a lot more than Mike Norton's scratchy work on the main title.

It's also nice to see Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Mia working together as a proper team, though this must be the third time in the course of this series that Green Arrow and Black Canary have renewed their commitment to one another despite Ollie's dickishness. (They seem to do it once per writer.) There's some pleasing banter (I like it when Green Arrow put on his "Robin Hood" cap), and they seem to actually all like another. Still no Connor Hawke, though.

It's not all good. There's a lot of generic superhero quipping, which gets on my nerves. "I hope you fellas don't think me unpatriotic," says Black Canary as she kicks some COBALT goons, "but for all I know... you're not my army." Um, what? Who says that?

The worst part of this book is when Lieutenant Hilton, the Star City Police Department cop who has liased with Green Arrow throughout this storyline, gets a knife in the back of his head. At first I was bummed, because he was a likable character, and Green Arrow and Black Canary could really use a recurring cast. But he's not dead! Somehow he's still alive... but if the knife's taken out, he'll die?

what is this i don't even

But it gets worse from there-- the doctors send Hilton home from the hospital with the entire knife still in his head, not even cutting off the hilt and putting a bandage over the whole thing. Then he kills his family and some cops and renames himself... The Hilt. Ugh, really? Who does that? Why do something so implausibly stupid to a decent character? Especially since this was Kreisberg's last issue on the title-- unsurprisingly, the Hilt never made another appearance. Thank God.

I can't in good conscience recommend that someone read any of Kreisberg's run on Green Arrow and Black Canary, but if you read the first two, at least continue on to this last volume, since it's the least bad one.

The proper story of Five Stages ends with Hal Jordan summoning Ollie and Dinah up to the Justice League headquarters to lead into the events of Cry for Justice, but there's one last chapter, which actually takes place after (most of) Cry for Justice, during Blackest Night. Written by J. T. Krul, it sees Oliver as a Black Lantern. Maybe all this would be interesting if I'd read Blackest Night, but I haven't. At least Connor is in it.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part XXIV: Green Arrow and Black Canary: Big Game

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2009-10)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2010

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Big Game

Writer: Andrew Kreisberg
Pencillers: Mike Norton, Renato Guedes
Inkers: Joe Rubinstein, Bill Sienkiewicz, José Wilson Magalhães
Colorists: David Baron, David Curiel, Allen Passalaqua
Letterers: Sal Cipriano, Pat Brosseau

Enumerating everything that is wrong with Green Arrow and Black Canary at this point would take more time than I want to put into it. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than Judd Winick's run on the title.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part XVI: Green Arrow and Black Canary: Enemies List

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2009 (contents: 2009)
Borrowed from the library
Read February 2010

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Enemies List

Writer: Andrew Kreisberg
Penciller: Mike Norton
Inker: Josef Rubinstein
Colorist: David Baron
Letterers: Steve Wands, Sal Cipriano, Pat Brosseau

I was looking forward to the replacement of Judd Winick on Green Arrow and Black Canary. Unfortunately, this is like the switch between Bill Mantlo and James Hudnall on Alpha Flight: it's still bad, it's just bad differently. There's a few big problems with the book. The first is Green Arrow's absolute obsession with bringing in Merlyn in this issue: why now? Why does this crime cause him to cross "the line"? He wasn't tempted to with Connor in the last storyline, he wasn't even tempted to when Merlyn blew up half of Star City. Merlyn taking out three technogeeks is what it takes to get him riled up? Really? The other, and much bigger, is Cupid: a woman with no training who is suddenly capable of taking out big-name villains with ease. Now, I think Merlyn and Brick are both completely lame villains... but I also know that this lone woman could not just waltz in and take them out when Green Arrow has spent years trying without success. This could be forgiven if Cupid was at all a good villain, but Kreisberg has just replaced Winick's lame antagonists with his own. Finally, there's Black Canary, who continues to be sidelined in (supposedly) her own title, needing Ollie to rescue her from a stupid thug in the very first issue here, and then accidentally deafening a man in contrived circumstances.

Add to this a perfunctory write-out of Connor and Mia (Winick was always good for giving Mia things to do) and Mike Norton's art embracing a "grittier" style that is more his own (apparently) but also more generic, and you have the third disappointing volume of this series in a row.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part XV: Green Arrow and Black Canary: A League of Their Own / The Parting Shot

Comic trade paperback, 126 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2002-09)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2010

Green Arrow and Black Canary: A League of Their Own / The Parting Shot

Writer: Judd Winick
Pencillers: Mike Norton, Diego Barreto
Inkers: Wayne Faucher, Robin Riggs
Colorists: David Baron, Tom McCraw
Letterers: Steve Wands, Sal Cipriano, John Costanza

Like many of Judd Winick's Green Arrow plotlines, this long (extremely long) one ends with someone else solving the problem, namely Batman. But at least we finally rescue Connor. Except: Connor has amnesia, has lost his archery skills (but none of his other fighting skills), has a Wolverine-like healing factor, and is extremely violent. Okay, so maybe Connor wasn't working out as a second Green Arrow to Oliver's primary (though I remain unconvinced). But is the solution to reinvigorating a character really removing every single thing that makes this character interesting and appealing? Thank God that Judd Winick will never get anywhere near Connor (or any other Team Arrow one) ever again, as this is his last entry in the series. (Also not enjoyable reading in this volume: Mia's romance with the English guy whose name I forget. Can an ex-prostitute really not tell when a man is interested in her?) This volume also contains a "bonus" story of dubious extra value.

You might notice that I haven't talked about Dinah in these reviews; that's because despite the series title, it's pretty much The Green Arrow Show. Oliver and Dinah might as well not be married for all it has to do with anything.

At least Mike Norton's art is still nice, though it's a little less Chiang-esque here than in the previous volume.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part XIV: Green Arrow and Black Canary: Family Business

Comic trade paperback, 128 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2010

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Family Business

Writer: Judd Winick
Artists: Cliff Chiang, Mike Norton, Wayne Faucher, Rodney Ramos, André Coelho
Colorist: David Baron
Letterers: Travis Lanham, Jared K. Fletcher, Steve Wands, Sal Cipriano, Pat Brosseau

After the strong The Wedding Album, Judd Winick returns to form: to add insult to injury, at the beginning of this book, the comatose and brain-dead Connor Hawke is kidnapped. Oliver, Dinah, and Mia spend the book hunting for him, aided by some British "bloke" and various other faces from around the DC universe. By the end of the book... they've actually pretty much accomplished nothing, because it's taken them five issues to find out who didn't do it. I could forgive this if other interesting things were going on, but they're not; mostly, Oliver is just snarling a lot. I did like the fakeout with the aliens, though.

The saving grace of this book is the artwork: Cliff Chiang is the best and most interesting artist this title has had since Phil Hester and Ande Parks left. Mike Norton takes over halfway through the book, but does such a good job that you'd barely know.