The best thing about this comic is the cover by artist Amanda Conner. It’s all downhill from there. I picked up Phantom Lady and Doll Man #1 on a whim, because none of my usual review titles came out this week, and I also bought and reviewed the first issue of  Justin Gray and Jimmy  Palmiotti’s The Ray comic back in the Winter. I thought The Ray was generic and simple, though not without some heart and warmth. So I thought I’d give Phantom Lady a shot to see what these two guys could do with a relatively blank slate character, reinventing her and her partner for the New 52. I especially liked her new costume.

PH & DM #1

Boy was this a mistake. Phantom Lady and Doll Man #1 is a dull comic featuring lazy storytelling, idiotic and uninteresting heroes and villains and a moment so sexist that I can’t quite be sure if I’m overreacting or underreacting to it.

Comic rating: 2/5: Bad!

With something as big and grand as DC’s New 52 reboot, why would anybody write something so mediocre? I know Gray and Palmiotti are capable of good comics, but this isn’t one of them. There is nothing remarkable or interesting about this comic, no hook to get us excited. It’s a by-the-numbers superhero story, but stars two bone-headed, paper thin lead characters and a villain who is so over-the-top evil as to be more ridiculous than menacing. Not to mention a poor use of superheroics, a few silly stretches of credibility and art that is serviceable at best. Amanda Conner was only tapped to draw the cover, the rest of the comic is left up to Cat Staggs. And while the art is OK, it doesn’t have nearly the character or charisma of Conner’s pencils. The greatness of that cover compared to what follows is like a cruel bait-and-switch.

Phantom Lady and Doll Man is a 4-part series designed to bring these two old-timey characters into the new, modern world of the New 52. If the rest of this series is anything like this first issue, DC has completely wasted any potential that could have been had. If you like your superheroes to be boring, lifeless and generic, then this is the book for you.

Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and a bit more explanation on why I thought this issue was so bad.

We open with a young couple being tied up and burned alive by a villainous sort of criminal. He is Robert Bender, and tells the couple that they should have minded their own business, and then goes ahead and kills them in a most brutal fashion. Their young daughter witnessed the killing from a hiding place, and she flees the residence in tears. That would be a young Jennifer, the future Phantom Lady.

As far as grim superhero origins go, that one is…pretty damn grim. But orphaning a child is a DC classic, so it works well enough. Tragedy usually breeds good superheroes.

We then immediately cut to a scene many years later, where Phantom Lady is hiding in the shadows, confronting a group of armed thugs. We don’t see the heroine yet, but she’s providing the narration as she takes down the thugs. She takes this time to explain her ‘powers’, which are technology based. She has some gloves and goggles that allow her to create shadows and black light that she can manipulate into weapons. While reading this scene, I was struck by just how plain and straight forward it is. Phantom Lady simply explains her shadow powers without any charm or anything more than an almost clinical exposition dump, while the images show off the thugs being pulled into the shadows. This was weird to me because her powers are pretty extreme. Somehow she got ahold of technology that can do these amazing shadow-manipulating things, and she treats it like no big deal.

Why couldn’t Amanda Conner draw the whole thing?

Where did this technology come from? How does it even exist, let alone in glove form? How did she get it? This stuff seems pretty freaking powerful, why is she using it as a vigilante?

Most of these questions go unanswered, since this is the only glimpse we get of Phantom Lady the superhero in the entire comic. So while it could be seen as a tease for what’s to come in later issues, I felt this scene was really out of place. It has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the comic, and basically just serves to say “this is Phantom Lady and these are her super-powers” in the most straight-forward, info-dump way possible. Considering the fact that this mini-series is only 4 issues, and the slow burn that Gray and Palmiotti are going for with the origins, I would have preferred to learn all of this stuff alongside the character herself rather than just be told everything up front and then flash back 6 months to the actual start of the story.

Speaking of which, we flash back 6 months to the actual start of the story.

In yet more info dumping, we’re told that main character Jennifer has become an Internet journalist, following in her late father’s footsteps. The man who was burned alive at the start of the comic was Harry, crime reporter for The Daily Planet. During his tenure with the paper, Harry did everything in his power to bring down the notorious Bender family, often called the “First Family of Crime” in Metropolis – a nickname that the comic tells us twice over the course of a few pages.

Let’s stop right here a moment so that I can point out what I mean by ‘lazy writing’.

First off, we’re told that the Benders hail from an old family of serial killers whose descendants eventually fled the homestead. We’re told that some of this family “changed their names and moved here” to Metropolis. So if they changed their names…why are they still called the Bender family? Did they only change their first names?

Second, not only does the book repeatedly tell us that the Benders are the “First Family of Crime” in Metropolis, but we’re also told that they have connections all the way up to the mayor’s office and the district attorney. In fact, it sounds like the only one even trying to hold the Benders accountable for their crimes was that one crusading reporter, and that got him killed. My problem is that this is Metropolis we’re talking about, the home of Superman. This isn’t Gotham City, with its overwhelming organized crime. You’re telling me that Superman, who is also a crusading reporter for the Daily Planet, has just been ignoring the Benders all this time? Superman would let something called the “First Family of Crime” continue to operate in his city for so long?

Rather than being creative with the villains, Gray and Palmiotti wrote the most basic ‘organized crime family’ description possible and ignored everything else around it.

So hey, let’s meet the Benders!

Not that you can tell any of them apart

The Benders are at a club, and lead Bender, Cyrus, is scoping out his girlfriend at the bar. He walks over to meet her, and we discover that Cyrus’ girlfriend is Jennifer, the soon-to-be Phantom Lady! I’m pretty sure we don’t yet know her last name. Next is that incredibly sexist moment I was talking about earlier. I don’t know whether to be disgusted or just blow it off as no big deal. But considering how DC has been facing complaints of sexism since the New 52 started, I can’t believe they wrote this.

Jennifer tells the reader via narration that she is sleeping with Cyrus in order to get close enough to him to bring down the whole family.

So our hero, a female superhero with her own series, gets the job done by throwing her body at it. She doesn’t pose as a hot, single girl to get Cyrus’ interest. She doesn’t come up with some other undercover identity. She goes straight to fucking him. The son of the man who burned her parents alive, who seems to be just as big of an evil douchebag as his father, and she gladly and willingly spreads her legs as her first line of attack. She even sounds proud of it, that she’s so hardcore that she’ll even use sex if it gets her what she wants.

Let me clarify a few things here. I’m not opposed to using sex as a narrative device. Being hardcore and ruthless enough to sleep with the enemy to get what you want is a dramatic character trait. And maybe if Gray and Palmiotti had shown us the build up to that moment, let us see what was going through Jennifer’s head that led her to this decision, and then shocked us with her actually going through with it, that might have made for an OK story. Instead, they just straight up tell us that she’s sleeping with him. No drama, no shock, no story or narrative; she’s just letting this evil monster sleep with her because she thinks it will help her cause.

And what makes this even worse is that she’s absolutely wrong.

Within two pages, we’re told that Cyrus knows exactly who she is and knows that she’s only pretending to be his girlfriend so that she can bring down his family. All the subterfuge or sneakiness that might have come from sleeping with the enemy is immediately thrown out the window because it didn’t work. Cyrus’ goons then also attack Jennifer’s friend as added insurance that Jennifer be a good girl. Oh, and even though he reveals that he knows the truth, Cyrus expects Jennifer to keep sleeping with him.

Hooray, our hero is being sexually manipulated!

I don’t know if I’m blowing this out of proportion or what, but this was just sickening.

To rub salt into the wound, we’re also told off-handedly that Robert Bender, the man who actually burned her parents alive, is already dead. He died some time ago, so the actual target of her revenge is gone. Now Jennifer is just going after the entire Bender family in her desperate quest for revenge – though she does mention that Cyrus is believed to have killed his dad. But who really cares whether Cyrus or Robert is the big bad? They’re the same generic villain character.

This is our heroine, ladies and gentlemen. In her quest for revenge against the man who killed her parents, she immediately starts sleeping with that man’s jackass son. Whatever minor information she gets, she posts it on the Internet, which she thinks will accomplish something. But her ingenious plan is crap, because the son has already seen through it, and is just sleeping with her to mock her now, because he’s an asshole.

So she completely sacrificed her dignity and her body, and in return she got her friend assaulted and is no closer to avenging her parents.

But Phantom Lady is just one half of our heroic team. Let’s go check in on Doll Man, the random super genius who clings to Jennifer like a lovestruck freshman. And yes, she’s also sleeping with him.

And she holds it over his head like a guillotine

Dysfunctional doesn’t even begin to describe this friendship. Dane Maxwell literally comes out and says that he is helping Jennifer because he’s been in love with her since the third grade. And she is clearly taking advantage of that. She gets him to help her by dropping the “you don’t love me” line almost immediately. You can practically see the desperation wafting off of Dane. He’s been Friendzoned his entire life by this hot girl, and then when they grew up and the chance was there to move on and make something with his life, she slept with him to keep him around. Jennifer’s answer to everything is to sleep with it.

Maxwell is some kind of super genius hacker living in a junkyard who is smart enough to invent some kind of shrinking device, which we’ll see soon. Jennifer doesn’t seem to have any other friends, at least none who would support her insane bid for revenge. But Dane is so smitten, so in love with her, that he’s willing to do whatever she wants of him. He apologizes to her for getting mad at her. He seems more than willing to help her on this insane quest to bring down the Benders.

Until he does something incredibly stupid.

Jennifer stole Cyrus’ phone so that they could hack into it and get some dirt. While she was resting, Dane called Cyrus and told him that they had the phone.

She’s probably not going to sleep with him again

What a moron! Are you serious? Who does that? Who makes that kind of misstep? Perhaps a character acting like an idiot in order to move the plot along.

Sure enough, Cyrus shows up looking for all the incriminating files, having traced the phone call. He shoots Jennifer in the leg and his goons drag her off. Dane hides into a small experimental cell he’s made, the glass apparently bullet-proof. The goons turn on the machine, thinking it’s a giant microwave. Sure enough, there’s a flash of light and Dane disappears. Meanwhile, Cyrus and his buddies drag off the wounded and crying Jennifer.

But wait, Dane isn’t dead!

He’s just shrunk. Because he has invented a shrinking machine, and the goons figured out how to use it just by flicking random buttons. Even though he also mentioned earlier that it wasn’t finished. But it worked perfectly! Now Dane is the size of a doll!

And even he names himself after dolls

What a terrible comic. What extremely unlikable heroes.

Maybe I’d be a little less critical if I thought all of this stuff was intentionally bad. But it comes off as straight as possible, as if we’re supposed to like and support these characters. This isn’t one of those comics were the stars are intentionally horrendous. As far as I can tell, we’re supposed to be cool with everything that happens in this issue. But I’m not, I’m really not. I mean jeez. The main character, Jennifer, is using sex to hang on to her only friend. She has zero interest in Dane as a boyfriend, but she knows that she can use her body and her affections to get him to do whatever she wants, including supporting her ridiculous quest for revenge.

And how does she pursue that revenge? By having sex with the guy she wants to take down. Way to stick it to the Benders, Jennifer. You’re really showing him. Oh wait, he knows all about your stupid website and he doesn’t care. He’s just going to keep sleeping with you because why the hell not? You’re an idiot and he likes sex.

Speaking of Cyrus, could he be any more generically evil? He’s a bad guy for bad guy’s sake, riding the ‘evil crime family’ angle as hard as possible. He’s also a white guy with dark hair who dresses in suits. There’s nothing original or interesting about him. And there’s absolutely no depth. He’s just an evil jackass who loves to have sex with chicks who throw themselves at him.

Phantom Lady and Doll Man are not Wonder Woman and Superman. They do not have millions of fans and a fairly rigid origin/status quo. Gray and Palmiotti had complete blank slates to work with here, they could have done anything. These two characters could have been whatever they wanted, the entire Freedom Fighters team they appear to be building could be anything.

Instead they chose the most basic, boring origins imaginable for everybody. They said in early interviews that they wanted to go ‘pulp’ with these two characters. They did not succeed. Instead they went ‘pathetic’.