We know that not everyone reads every comic, so I created this column to catch our readers up on some of the comics they didn’t or couldn’t read or would like to just keep up with the characters I follow. Fair warning: These are not Sparknotes! You may find my opinions on things that happened in each as well. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments; we look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Titans #30
Marooned (Part 2)
Miss Martian shows her true form in a quick battle with Beast Boy as he is raging out. She uses her psionics to subdue him and gets him calmed down and into his normal form. M’gann comes clean and tells the team that she feared showing herself to them as white Martians are normally viewed as evil. After the secret is out, Donna Troy starts acting like a leader and tells the team a secret about herself. She gives a pep talk that they are essentially strangers and that they need to stop keeping secrets and trust each other and get along to succeed. She gives orders to each member so they can survive on the planet until help arrives. Help isn’t too far off as Steel gets the Emergency beacon on the Boom Room working and Green Lantern shows up.
This is a feel-good story about how the team needs to start working together and get along to succeed. It further develops Donna Troy’s character and shows her growing into the leader role. The story felt like an old after school special with everyone getting along and coming together. What really makes it feel that way is that after all the sappy crap, Green Lantern shows up to help them thus closing the deal on a happy ending. At least the next issue we can expect them back on Earth.
Detective Comics #993
Deface The Face Finale: A Dead Man
Most of the story takes place at Two-Face/Harvey Dent’s funeral. The story flashes back to the final battle with Kobra and the events that led to Harvey becoming burnt to a crisp. After the funeral, Bruce Wayne heads to Wayne Enterprises where he converses with Alfred over the phone filling him in on how Two-Face is, in fact, still alive (like we, the reader, didn’t see that coming) and that he is [Bruce Wayne] is pondering the next steps. The issue ends with Two-Face and Batman “facing off” again and telling each other that they are glad Harvey isn’t dead.
The entire store is lackluster at best, and I am glad it’s over. Hopefully, the next story we get will be more entertaining or a better detective story at the very least. What happened to the old school Batman detective stories? There is practically no detective work anymore in these newer comics.
Batgirl #29
Art of the Crime Finale
Batgirl opens with a recap of what has happened up to the current point. She enters the museum as Barbara Gordon but quickly changes into Batgirl in the Women’s room and pulls the fire alarm to get everyone out. She then seeks out Detective Evan Douglas a.k.a the villain Grotesque and tries to plead with him to fight the “Dark Web” that is currently controlling him in order to avoid getting the museum blown up. Bat Girl does get through to him, stops the bomb, but the “Dark Web” ends up killing the Detective. After its all over, Barbara goes in for surgery to fix her back once again and Commissioner Gordon is approached by the FBI.
Batgirl has become one of my favorite comics. I look forward to these because there is more detective work going on than in the Detective Comics (as stated earlier). It also exploited Barbara’s injury, which lets the reader know that she is still human and currently fighting through the pain and limitations imposed on her. The variant cover art, by Joshua Middleton, on this issue is also done really well and probably one of my favorite covers to date.
Fantastic Four #4
Irreplaceable
After the events of fighting the Griever, Reed starts sending back all the Marvel heroes to their respected cities/homes/etc. with the Fantastic Four heading back to the Baxter Building in NY. Once back home, they learn that their “home” has been sold off and they no longer own it. They come across some fake looking Fantastic Four superhero wannabes calling themselves the Fantastix and figure out that they have hired goons and a crowd to make it look like they are real heroes stopping a real jewel heist, even though it’s all staged. The Fantastic Four foil the plans, letting the world know they are back and irreplaceable. They then head over to Ben’s place at 4 Yancy Street where they will bunk with him for the foreseeable future.
This issue was nothing more than a long goodbye between heroes. The action and actual entertaining value in this comic don’t come till closer to the end where we get to see the Fantastix and the Fantastic Four go at it. This inaugural story for the Fantastic Four pretty much seemed like Marvel just wanted to put a bunch of their heroes on the same page for a while. Maybe Marvel added Black Panther, Spider-man, Bruce Banner, etc. to try and get fans back to reading the Fantastic Four comics since they haven’t been in print for a while. Hopefully, with the 4 back in NY, we start getting some solid story arcs.
