Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LV: The World of Flashpoint featuring Wonder Woman

My three days of Doctor Who reviews comes to an end with the best Fourth Doctor Adventure so far this series, Gallery of Ghouls.

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2012 (contents: 2011)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2016

The World of Flashpoint featuring Wonder Woman

Writers: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Tony Bedard, James Robinson

Pencillers: Agustin Padilla, Scott Clark, Vicente Cifuentes, Ardian Syaf, Eddie Nunez, Gianluca Gugliotta, Christian Duce, Javi Fernandez
Inkers: Jose Aviles, Dave Beaty, Vicente Cifuentes, Diana Egea, Don Ho, Gianluca Gugliotta, Walden Wong, Javi Fernandez

Colorists: Nei Ruffino, Val Staples, Andrew Dalhouse, Kyle Ritter, The Hories
Letterers: Travis Lanham, Jared K. Fletcher, Dave Sharpe, John J. Hill

I'm not sure where I got my reading order for the Flashpoint collections from, but so far, it seems to make sense to read the Wonder Woman World of Flashpoint collection first. The first two stories in here, "Wonder Woman and the Furies" and "Emperor Aquaman," lay out the status quo of this new timeline we're suddenly in, from different perspectives. The Wonder Woman tale spans the history of the Flashpoint universe, showing us Princess Diana first encounter with Man's World, which results in an engagement to Aquaman. Reactionary elements in both the Amazon and Atlantean societies think merging the cultures is a Very Bad Idea, and manipulate events to kick off a war that wrecks much of the Earth, with Great Britain becoming an Amazon fortress and much of Europe devastated by an Atlantean geo-weapon.

That's Angela Merkel, right? It always amuses me when actual heads of state turn up in superhero comics. Though, in one of the stories in The World of Flashpoint featuring Superman, Germany is represented by an actual Nazi, so how does that track with this?
from Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman #1 (script by Tony Bedard, art by Ardian Syaf & Vicente Cifuentes)

As a story, to be honest, the Wonder Woman one doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it, from either a writing or artistic perspective; the writing moves too quickly for us to get attached to this version of Diana, and the art is weird, either plasticky under one illustrator, or kind of flat under another. But the story's real purpose seems to be exposition: read this, and you'll know the background for every subsequent World of Flashpoint tale. As a result, "Emperor Aquaman" seems to have more room to breathe, giving more personal focus to Arthur Curry in this mad world, showing his youth (he spent much less time on the surface world than his Prime equivalent, to his morality's detriment) and how the attacks detailed in the Wonder Woman tale affected him on a personal level. It's not particularly amazing, but it works.

I'm not sure what I like less, plastic-face on the left, or giant-eye on the right.
from Flashpoint: Wonder Woman and the Furies #1 (script by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, art by Scott Clark & Dave Beaty) and #2 (script by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, art by Agustin Padilla & Jose Aviles)

If there's anything to like about these tales so far, it's how they all interlock to create a larger tapestry. "Lois Lane and the Resistance" shows us the backstory of some key events of "Wonder Woman and the Furies": like, we learn how come Lois is broadcasting a distress signal to the world from Great Britain, and how Diana figures out that her aunt has set her up. Other than that and some once again goofy art (the outfits Eddie Nunez puts Lois into are ridiculous, though I thought the issue illustrated by Christian Duce showed some real design sense) and a team up between Etrigan the Demon and Grifter, there's not much going on here.

At first I was gonna scan some of the art I didn't like, but then I was like, 'c'mon, self, accentuate the positive.' Looking at it again, I think it's the inking that really makes it work: Walden Wong is pretty reliable.
from Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance #3 (script by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, art by Christian Duce & Walden Wong)

The book closes out with "The Outsider," about an asshole criminal from India. This story isn't very strongly linked to the other three and probably could have gone in a different volume. James Robinson has written some good magnificent bastards before, but the Outsider isn't one of them: there's little to care about here, and fewer familiar characters and concepts from the DC universe appear, either. I found this one sort of joyless and grim in an uninvolving way.

Next Week: Okay, but what about Superman? Time to find out what happened to the Man of Steel in The World of Flashpoint!

Faster than a DC Bullet: The End of Green Arrow, Part II: Justice League: Cry for Justice

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2006-10)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2012

Justice League: Cry for Justice

Writers: James Robinson / Sterling Gates / Len Wein / Mark Waid
Art: Mauro Cascioli / Scott Clark / Federico Dallocchio
Additional Art: Ibraim Roberson / Sergio Carrera
Additional Pencils: Mark Bagley / Don Kramer / Ardian Syaf / Scott McDaniel / Ivan Reis
Additional Inks: David Beatty / John Dell / Michael Babinski / Andy Owens / Oclair Albert / Vicente Cifuentes
Colorsts: Mauro Cascioli / Siya Oum / Giovani Kososki / Federico Dallocchio / Pete Pantazis / Alex Sinclair / Ulises Arreola
Letterers: Steve Wands / Sal Cipriano / Travis Lanham / Ken Lopez / Rob Clark Jr.

At the end of Green Arrow and Black Canary: Five Stages, Hal Jordan summons Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance up to the Justice League headquarters for an important meeting; Cry for Justice opens with that meeting. Hal's point is that too many heroes have died recently and what he needs is some JUSTICE.  JUSTICE apparently being a more proactive approach, where the League hunts down criminals before the commit crimes.  Notwithstanding that the characters in the first chapter use the word JUSTICE at an implausibly high rate, I'm not sure this premise makes sense.

(Can we talk about the hilarious panel where the Atom shouts "Yeah... JUSTICE!", which makes him sound like a member of the Tiny Titans, which I somehow doubt was Robinson's intention?)

Are you telling me that the League knows where (for example) the Toyman is, and just sits around doing nothing? Even if he's not currently up to criminal mischief, he's a wanted man, surely? To imply that superheroes just sit around waiting for crimes to happen makes them seem like incompetent chumps most of the time.  Anyway, Hal Jordan says he's gonna form his own JUSTICE League, and even though moments before they beamed up, Oliver and Dinah renewed their commitment to one another, Oliver takes no time at all to leave with Hal for completely nonsensical reasons.

So, even if the premise did make sense, it gets abandoned after about 22 pages.  Hal and Oliver go proactive in Gotham (why? isn't it kind of mean of GA to leave Speedy protecting Star City all by herself?), teaming up with the Atom, who is apparently a giant asshole, and soon discover that the villain Prometheus has a plot to destroy the world which they need to stop.  Okay, so just like every other Justice League title, then.  What was the point of this special team?

Oh, right! It's the torture. This is done in the heavy-handed way that every superhero comic handles torture, which is to say that the characters do a lot of it, then one of them shouts, "My God! We've gone too far!" for no readily apparent reason. If this comic actually examined the seductive aspects of torture, that would be one thing, but it just has a lot of it up until the point where it doesn't.

It's also the violence. This is famously the story that kills off a five-year-old girl to prove the situation is serious. Charming.  Also, Star City gets blown up. Again, for those of you who remember Winick's five-years-ago run on Green Arrow.  Oh geeze.

The worst part of this book is, of course, Prometheus. Seriously, has a worse supposedly-awesome-but-actually-lame villain ever existed? His power is that he has a power to stop any superhero's power. Does that even make sense? Some of his powers are so powerful that he should just use them all the time. He can chop off Arsenal's arms-- why doesn't he do that to everyone? Or he has bullets forged by Mercury to use on Supergirl-- surely that would kill anyone he came across? And for some reason the Justice League fights him one at a time. I am pretty sure that if anyone was jumped by Supergirl, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Stargirl, Black Canary, the Atom, Wonder Girl, Starfire, Green Lantern, Doctor Light, Starman, Plastic Man, Zatanna, and the freaking Flash all at once, there's no way he could be fast enough to win.  He was lame when he first appeared in Grant Morrison's JLA, and he's lame here.

There's also the art, which starts out nice, if stiff-- Mauro Cascioli does some good sub-Alex-Ross painted stuff. But time goes on, he gets rushed, and we get bad fill-ins and a never-ending stream of butt and boob shots.  Both at once if we're lucky!  The storytelling, too, is lacking.

Is there anything to like about this book?  Even the humor's B-grade sexist stuff. So apparently not.  Poor Green Arrow-- why'd you have to get sucked into this crap?