sdelmonte | This Week's Comics

Spoilers? Spoilers!

52, Week 2 - I doubt many people were clamoring for a scene featuring Dr. Will Magnus in conversation with Dr. T.O. Morrow. And yet, there it is, and it's really well written. That will be both strength and weakness of this experiment. With 52 weeks, you can send the story in any direction, use any characters you want. But how far down the DCU totem pole can you go before you have only the most obsessed fans reading? Yes, the Metal Men and Red Tornado have their fans, but do their creators?

Still, this issue - focusing also on Ralph Dibny, Renee Montoya and the Question, and Booster Gold - lets events happen a bit slower, even as the mysteries surrounding the heroes unfold. Though the last page, and the solitications for August, leave me very uneasy about what will happen to Ralph.

OH, and we get the start of the new history of the DCU, which seems to say that the multiverse is gone but not forgotten. Decent writing, great art from Dan Jurgens in this four-page segment.

Shadowpact 1 - The preview pages for this looked intriguing, even though the buzz about everything else Fables creator Bill Willingham has done in the DCU proper has been bad. So I got this on a whim. To my surprise, Willingham is the artist as well as the writer, and still a good artist at that. And to my surprise, this is a pretty good comic. I barely know who any of the Shadowpact are, but I don't feel too lost. And the plot - involving weird goings-on and supernatural villains in a small town in the Rockies - seems interesting as well. This issue ends on a flat note, but otherwise it's a better first issue than those of many of the OYL titles. Not as good as Fables, but it's clearly by the same writer and written with the same sense of humor (which is sorely needed in the DCU).