Doomsday Clock, Heroes in Crisis, Clue

New comics!

Clue: Candlestick 1

I bought this based off a positive review I read somewhere and the fun graphic designs of writer/artist Dash Shaw.  Like many, I grew up playing Clue, and seeing the classic characters on the page brings back fond memories. The murder mystery nature of the game makes it a natural fit for comic book adaptation, and Shaw creates a decent enough story that I’m up for more.  His art style, with the deadpan faces, reminds me of Mike Allred or Melinda Gebbie.

Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls

Mike Allred.  Same bug eyes and expressionless faces.

Heroes in Crisis 9

What a clusterfuck.  So many things wrong with this issue:

There’s a huge leap of logic here that makes no sense:

(I cut out the irrelevant scenes in between.)  So...how did Blue Beetle’s intervention magically convince future Flash to go from willing homicide victim to extremely effective trauma counselor?  (That’s what I think’s going on, but I honestly don’t care if I’m wrong. This story isn’t worth my brain power.)

Poison Ivy talking like Swamp Thing annoys the heck out of me.  But I still thought Harley’s reunion with her was super cute.

Though what was the point of Harley in all of this besides murder frame victim?  And what did Batgirl accomplish besides look cool?

Booster Gold still sucks ass and I hate that he’s somehow the guy who figures it all out.  Not that it makes any sense. And seriously, “Bros before heroes”? Lame and stupid.

I would say that all of this pisses me off, but that would require me to care about anything that’s been going on in the DC Universe as a whole.  It’s kind of like the DC movies. I’ll chalk it up as another flagrant misfire, ignore what Tom King did to Wally like the fourth Indiana Jones movie, and move on with my life.  I will say that I expected so much more from King. How does he get from Vision and Mister Miracle to this?

Good things:

Clay Mann finishes up his string of amazing title splash pages.:

All of King’s talking head pages are little thumbnails into how he views these characters.  And some of them are hilarious.

This has to be a Vision nod :)

I’m definitely keeping this, despite my displeasure.  The art is way too good. I’ll just ignore the words that make me sad.  

Doomsday Clock 10

Geoff Johns is so adept at aping vintage Alan Moore’s voice in this series, I barely care about the quality of the story itself.  Half of this issue is spent on the life and death of Carver Colman, the actor in the film noir movies that have been playing in the background of previous issues.  Colman’s annual meetings with Dr Manhattan at the diner remind me greatly of Hob Gadling’s rendezvous with Morpheus every century in Sandman.

One of my favorite issues.

Johns finally gets to the point of this series - Superman is the focal point of the Multiverse, in a special world called the Metaverse.  Here, every one of the multiple Superman origin stories that I’ve been reading has happened, each one creating ripples in the multiverse.  I don’t know if it really makes any sense, but I like what Johns is trying here. It’s a bold, crazy idea, and the execution is nifty. No idea if it’s going to hold up in the last two issues, but it’s a far better effort at an event than Tom King’s failure.

It's the Dr Manhattan narration that makes this so effective.