Comic Pop: Nemesis TPB

So Mark Millar has apparently found his career niche: looking at some comic book trope and making a book about that.  In Kick-Ass, you get an ineffective Spiderman-like character and a way too young female assassin.  In Nemesis, we get the tale of a rich playboy who uses his toys to buy all sorts of gadgets, cars and planes, but instead of fighting crime (like so Bruce Wayne), he is targeting the world's best police officers.  That premise itself has loads of potential.

Unfortunately, that's where the creativity ends.

I'm assuming Millar saw Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.  So why he is copying that movie exactly?  A black Batmobile with a motorcycle hidden in it becomes a white sports car with a motorcycle hidden in it.  The Joker wanted to get thrown in jail so he can escape, and so does Nemesis.  At least the Joker had a reason.

Once the book telegraphs that everything Nemesis does is part of his plan, the book becomes completely uninteresting.  Everytime something happens, we know what's coming next.  Hell, Nemesis himself is constantly telling his pursuers and captors that he meant to do whatever happens.

The book both wants to be grounded in a sort of reality and then be completely ridiculous.  Nemesis at one point lands on Air Force One while it is in flight, and starts walking around.  They never explain how he stays on (magnetic boots maybe), but the absurdity of someone actually being able to move let alone avoid being crushed by the wind?  It's silly and takes you out of the book.

The only saving grace is Steve McNiven's art.  At one point, Nemesis captures the President and Millar only treats him as a pawn on the chessboard, a plot device.  A couple of McNiven panels provide that sense of what is really at stake in a way the script fails to do.

Silly, stupid and predictable, with an ending twist that seems tacked on as a "we could write another series if this does well" ending, Nemesis is best avoided by anyone who wants more from a book than blood and swearing.

* out of *****

Superman: War of the Supermen Book 3 TPB

Written by James Robinson

Really?

I have never in my life seen such a big, blinking reset button hit in a comic book.  I am struggling to think of when a comic has so transparently moved itself back to square one.

I have actually enjoyed a lot of the New Krypton tale.  For those catching up, the bottle city of Kandor from Superman's home planet became a community on Earth, complete with people with the powers of Superman.  Humans distrust the Kryptonians and after some sabotage between the two races, the Kryptonians establish a new planet that mirrors Earth's orbit.  General Sam Lane (Lois Lane's father who was thought to be dead) leads a plan that involves Braniac and Lex Luthor to destroy New Krypton.  The end of volume 2 had the Kryptonians' military leader (and Superman arch-villain) General Zod declaring war on Earth.

(SPOILERS AHEAD) I am not even going to get into the arc of this story as it is pretty slight (especially considering it is a full scale war between thousands of Superman-like beings and Earth).  To put it in some perspective, at one point Luthor launches a rocket that turns the yellow sun into a red sun, negating the Kryptonians' powers.  Within a minute, this major development is undone by someone from Superman's extended family.  Within a minute.

The ending really colors the entire run of James Robinson for me.  In the end, Mon-El, Zod, Non and Ursa are all back in the Phantom Zone.  Flamebird is dead.  Nightwing (no relation to Batman's Nightwing) is in the Phantom Zone to keep an eye on Zod.  General Lane who surprisingly was not dead at the beginning of the series, killed himself at the end.  I am hard-pressed to think of a new character who survived any of the goings on here.

The art is good.  I prefer the more human, less ridiculously muscular depictions of Superman and he is handled well in the graphic novel.  There's a lot of characters and a lot of different locations and they are all detailed and beautifully drawn.

This was a real disappointment.  A story that felt like it was building to a dramatic showdown just kind of petered out.  Superman's new status quo is the same as before the New Krypton story arc.  Meh.

** out of *****

Comic Pop: Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne

Written by Grant Morrison

Pencils by A Whole Lot of Characters 

It's been a rough year for Batman.

Between Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis, he seemed to get killed twice.  Only one time, he was (in the words of Miracle Max) only mostly dead, and the other his apparent death sent him hurtling back in time.  Bruce's prodigies set out to fill the void.  Dick Grayson (formerly Nightwing) took up the mantle of the bat and became surrogate father to Damian (the new Robin and Bruce's biological son).  Tim Drake became Red Robin and had run-ins with the League of Assassins in his efforts to prove Bruce was still alive.

All of this leads to The Return of Bruce Wayne, a six issue arc collected in a graphic novel format.

The basic story is this: Bruce was thrown back in time by Darkseid.  He starts in the caveman era living in the very caves that would become his fortress, and begins leaping forward through time.  He becomes a witchhunter, a pirate, a cowboy and a noir-like detective.  He begins with no memory, but each step in his journey gives him a little more information about who he is.

Meanwhile, the Justice League is trying to prevent Batman's return.  They have discovered that with each jump in time, Wayne builds up more omega energy and when he reaches the 21st century: boom!  Game over.

Grant Morrison is a fascinating writer and the story here is universally compelling.  The narrative is pretty loose throughout, but I think that suits the story well.  Each of the tales is recounted almost as a half-remembered dream rather than a dense story.  And that's okay, because Morrison's got bigger fish to fry.

In telling the tale, Morrison burns Batman down and reconstructs from the ashes.  We see him as primal force, vigilante and detective.  We see the echoes of enemies from the Joker to Two-Face.  Each piece provides a mirror for who Batman has been and what he has become.  In telling the tale, Morrison both reveals Batman's character and better integrates the mythos of Batman into the history of the DC Universe.

The weakest part of the tale is the framing device which should give the finale its stakes.  When you are reading a tale of Bruce Wayne jumping through time and title it "The Return of Bruce Wayne," you've already given us the end.  The story that takes place at "the vanishing point" is narratively dense to the point of becoming incomprehensible in parts.  It's never clear exactly what bad thing will happen.  Bruce himself dismisses the threat as just another monster for his friends to beat up.

The art is universally great with the exception of the western tale penciled by Georges Jeanty (who was so reliable on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer books).  The scarred half of Jonah Hex's face looks like someone just took an eraser to it.  Many of the characters are difficult to differentiate from one another, making the story really hard to follow.

On the whole, this is a great arc.  I love seeing a crazily creative Morrison set loose on such a tent pole character.

****1/2 out of *****