Four Reviews

Slowly working my way through the stack. And when have we heard that before? Last week! Anyway, I dropped All-Star Batman and Robin from my pull list. All-Star Superman is fun and worth waiting for, but not All-Star Batman & Robin. It was okay, but there was an underlying ugliness that, now that so much time has passed and I've forgotten the actual storyline, has lingered in memory. If only the story was as memorable.

52 43
There's an old novelty-type song called "The Snake." An old lady takes in a half-frozen poisonous snake, nurses it back to health, and it bites her. Before she dies, she asks it why? And it says,

"You knew darn well I was a snake before you took me in."

That's Sobek. The ending surprised me, but as soon as it happened, that look on Sobek's face when Osiris renounced his powers, was pure hunger. It was an inevitable outcome. And the death serves a purpose. I believe this will greatly affect Black Adam and sets up a chain of events that will reverberate through the rest of 52 and probably more comics in the DCU to come. Meanwhile, we got to see the Marvel family, and Animal Man is in fine shape. Yup, the end of 52 promises to be a blast, a wonderful way to bring this roller coaster ride to a close.

Green Lantern 17
Nice bits in this, including Bats being rejected for the Sinestro Corps and a nice turn by John Stewart. Amon Sur has real father issues that could never be resolved and I felt sorry for him despite his being unhinged. Nice cameo by the JLA and I liked how Cowgirl was bright enough to figure out Hal is GL and that she flat out told him she knew. And next time, we get an alien parasite with no fashion sense try to be Star Sapphire. This is a good comic. It shouldn't be tainted by one of the worst costume choices for a female-appearing character in many a year.

Blue Beetle 12
If that's really Ted Kord in Manhunter, what does that mean for Jaime? At any rate, this book continues to be fun with an appealing cast of characters and the mystery behind the scarab.

Hawkgirl 61
Nice art. But after all the OMAC goings on in Infinite Crisis, having yet another character, in this case Kendra, being taken over by an alien tech is just so "been there, done that" feeling. The whole Apokolips/New Gods part of the DCU leaves me cold most of the time, though I'm enjoying Big Barda over in Birds of Prey, so I'm less than enthralled so far with this storyline.