A General Critique

Well...that was a rather odd new Comics day. No new Green Lantern books, which has me in a state of mild depression. A passel of new "Countdown" related books that were ok, the final episode to "Amazons Attack" which was a bit on the wierd side, a new Wonder Woman, which tied in with the aforesaid "Amazons Attack" book, and finally Teen Titans, which I NEVER read, and only bought because it had Blue Beetle on the cover.

Countdown was worth it however, because they had the Origin on Parallax in the back, as drawn by Ivan Reis, so I got a tiny dose of GL goodness to tide me over the hump as it were.

I was a tad on the confused side with Amazons Attack. Isn't the point of a six-part mini-series to tell a self-contained story? The end of this was yet another Cliffhanger! A doozy, I'll grant you that, and yet...what the heck? I can't help but think that much of this could have all been accomplished in only a couple of issues...this did seem to drag on and on and on. On the other hand, I am glad that they didn't end up killing Hyppolita, which would have depressed me even more.

There are spoilers here, for those of you, who have not read Amazons Attack or Wonder Woman. It turns out that the whole megilla, was a "test" created by the Goddess Athena, and the Amazons apparently flunked. So Hyppolita ends up being exiled alone, back to Themyscira, and all the rest of the Amazons get their memories erased, while Circe is shoved back into Hell.

Um...ok.

Except, that Athena isn't REALLY Athena at all...she's none other than Granny Goodness! Wha...? you may say? I wasn't aware that Granny Goodness had the power and ability to be able to imprison the actual Greco/Roman pantheon, imitate the Goddess Athena and do all of the other rather impressive things that she did. On the other hand, this was hinted at rather broadly in one of those images that were on Newsarama a while back, so I should have been less surprised than I was.

Then in Wonder Woman, Nemesis no longer remembers that Diana is actually DIANA, so the status quo has been reistablished there as well. She ends up having a fight with Everyman, who I am beginning to find both ubiquitous and annoying, and she and Nemesis do eventually find Sgt. Steel which is nice for him.

I'll tell you the one book that I was actually impressed with, and that was the Countdown Tie-In, "Five of a Kind" one with Grace and Wonder Woman. This is Batman playing his games again, and trying to find the best people to be in his newly recreated Outsiders team. Obviously Wonder Woman ISN'T going to be in it, but it still wasn't too bad. It gave Grace some nice moments, and she and Diana seemed to be bonding rather well. Apparently Grace is still part Bana, so that makes her and Diana sort of cousins. AND they save Cleveland, which is also a good thing. And Zinda has a cameo, flying them around and I LOVE Zinda.

So Batman finally gets his team together, which consists of Grace, Katanna, Metamorpho and the oddest looking Martian Manhunter that I've ever seen...just in time to have them save the day and end up being hated and feared for it. Well isn't THAT just ducky.

Batman is starting to annoy me again.