Here we are, another week, another batch of comics. And they’re mostly good! There’s no point in even hiding the fact that we get the second Batman/Deadpool crossover this week!

Comic Book of the Week goes to Batman/Deadpool #1 because it more than lives up to the excitement.

Meanwhile, I beat both Ghost of Yotei and Dispatch, both of which were super fun games. Glad to have played them both. Now I’m looking for something new to play and that will last me until next November. I’ve been binging through all five seasons of You’re the Worst for the past week. Great show. And I’m considering when to go see the second Wicked movie…

Double meanwhile, the campaign is still ongoing for LobStar, the new comic made by my buddies at Very Big Comics. They’ve hit their goal, so if you jump on now, you’re guaranteed to get a comic! They’re raising bonus money now to try to fund some additional chapters of the story to go out to everybody. Check out their Kickstarter!

Comic Reviews: Batman/Deadpool #1, Captain America #5, Power Rangers Prime #12 and Wonder Woman #27.

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Batman/Deadpool #1
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Dan Mora
Colorist: Alejandro Sanchez
Letterer: Todd Klein
Also featuring: James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson and Scott Snyder & Hayden Sherman; Tom Taylor & Bruno Redondo; Mariko Tamaki & Amanda Conner; and G. Willow Wilson and Denys Cowan, among others.

I am all in favor of as many Marvel/DC crossovers as they want to make! I’m also still salty I missed out on that Amalgam omnibus from last year.

Batman is searching for a mythical device that can reshape reality, and he runs into Deadpool, who is also (I think) searching for it. The two travel together through a bunch of weird rooms/portals/altered worlds before Batman realizes that they’re actually inside their minds: Cassandra Nova wants the device and is messing with their heads! Through some cameos from Robin and Dark Claw, the two heroes escape her clutches and find the device: The Cosmic Keyboard, controlled by Grant Morrison himself!

Shenanigans ensue and our heroes win the day and go their separate ways, with Batman asking for Morrison for a happy ending favor that I won’t spoil.

We also get crossovers with John Constantine and Doctor Strange, Nightwing and X-23, Harley Quinn and the Hulk and then Static and Ms. Marvel. The best one is Nightwing and Wolverine.

Comic Rating: 10/10 – Fantastic.

Look, this comic was getting a perfect score from the Dark Claw cameo alone. The main story drops so many Amalgam Easter Eggs and cameos that I’m going to convince myself that all these crossovers are going to lead to some kind of Amalgam revival in a year or two, which would make me the happiest comic book geek in the world! But beyond that, it’s just a great story! Morrison packs the story chockful of character, adventure, action and intrigue, nailing both characters quite easily. I think I read somewhere that he did all his Deadpool research off the movies, and he nails the character in one go! Deadpool is very funny and very on brand. And Batman is very stoic and very on brand. And then Morrison gets to use two characters he created: Damian and Cassandra Nova, which I thought was neat!

Mora does fantastic work on the artwork, which is filled to the brim and cameos and references and whatnot. So I loved that! Seriously, a Morrison/Mora Dark Claw comic would be beyond dreams come true! And now only is every page filled with Easter Eggs, but the backgrounds are also filled with clues to the actual mystery at the heart of the story. That was neat!

Also, as an example of how deep this story goes, Morrison builds the story around a character from the 1980s Suicide Squad called ‘The Writer,’ and his Cosmic Keyboard. The Writer was Suicide Squad writer John Ostrander taking the piss by creating/including a DC Comics character based on (or intended to be) the Grant Morrison self-insert from the end of his Animal Man run. And now here’s Morrison, some 30-40 years later, writing his own story about The Writer. It’s glorious madness!

The rest of the stories were solid. The Hulk/Harley one was not much at all; the Strange/Constantine one had some legs, and then the Nightwing/Wolverine story was the bee’s knees! I very much enjoyed Tom Taylor’s Wolverine comic, and I very much enjoyed his Nightwing comic, so this was a giant no-brainer.

So all in all, this was a wonderful crossover, slightly better than the first one. I can’t wait to see more! And I’m going to be holding my breath for that Amalgam reboot! I mean, c’mon! All of today’s main writers were young fans in the 90s when Amalgam happened; surely they’re jonesing for the chance to write new Amalgam comics!

TL;DR: Morrison and Mora do not disappoint with a truly outstanding and entertaining crossover story, backed up by a whole bunch of fun bonus tales.

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Captain America #5
Writer: Chip Zdarsky
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Colorist: Frank Martin
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna

I’m a bit sad to say that the introduction of Post-9/11 Captain America did not live up to the hype I gave him in my head.

In the last issue, Captain David Colton found out that America helped Doom overthrow the Latverian government and take power, and that his squadmates had secret orders to kill the hostages they were there to rescue, in order to cover it up. Colton goes to kill Doom’s soldiers and Captain America rushes to stop him. Colton is pretty broken, believing he has to kill everyone it takes to make everything he’s been through worth it. They fight, Colton saves Cap from the surviving squadmate and then his heart gives out, because his Super Soldier Serum wasn’t exact after all.

But Colton survives, in part thanks to Tony Stark’s heart-saving equipment. And Steve Rogers quits the military in favor of the Avengers.

Comic Rating: 6/10 – Pretty Good.

In brutal honesty, this whole story just kind of fell apart for me by this end. David Colton remains a fascinating character, and I hope he becomes an ongoing part of Zdarsky’s Captain America comic, but the story and the characterizations of everybody just sort of petered out for me in terms of strength and excitement. Colton’s character arc felt a little trite, in that serving in Iraq and Afghanistan messed him up and now he resorts to murdering Latverian soldiers. Whereas Captain America’s storyline also felt trite, in that he just kind of barrels through the story and every confrontation and speech with his usual unassailable righteousness. I guess I was hoping for more nuance and character development for everyone involved. I’m also very glad that Colton didn’t die in the end, which would have felt like too simple an option for this retcon of a character (I retcon I very much love, by the way).

Doctor Doom also felt a little tacked on. Like, Cap gets to heroically defeat Doom, and then just kind of joins up with the Colton storyline already in progress and gets to heroically defeat him and the evil squadmates too. But the fault probably lies with me, and I expected or anticipated too much from Colton. If I lower my expectations, then I think it’s probably a better story than I’m making it out to be, a story about Colton being warped by the War on Terror vs. Steve being emboldened by his belief in America. I guess I would have just liked something bolder for this bold new character.

The flashback nature of the story was both good and bad. It’s bad because no real major character development could happen, but I enjoyed seeing the story of how Steve goes from serving the military to joining the Avengers. That was fun.

And what isn’t unassailable is Schiti’s artwork, which is always incredible.

TL;DR: Despite the great artwork and the fascinating new character, I felt this story came to a whimper of an end and didn’t live up to the promise of its premise.

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Power Rangers Prime #12
Writer: Melissa Flores
Artist: Michael Yg
Colorist: Joana Lafuente
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire

Now that digital issues are being released again, I’m back on board for Power Rangers Prime full speed ahead!

The Rangers are no match for Jun’s dad, until Lauren shows up and evens the odds. They defeat the dad, even when he grows big and puts on armor. When the dust settles, deals are made. Jun promises to give up being a Ranger and serve Eltar. The other Rangers are, likewise, forbidden from using their powers. So Rita has them all become model citizens, doing what they can as civilians.

Comic Rating: 6/10 – Pretty Good.

The fight in this issue feels weak, even though I’d say it has been successfully set up. It’s the choreography and the background artwork that really let it down. The story, overall, remains good, I think. The characters are strong, their Ranger designs are awesome; but I’ve got plenty of little nitpicks, which I raised in my last review. But a big fight against Jun’s dad has been solidly set up, so I’ve got no problem there. It’s everything around the fight I didn’t care for. First off, Jun’s dad defeats the four Rangers right off the bad with no real fight. Then the Red Ranger shows up, and suddenly they can defeat Jun’s dad without any real fight.

Not every artist can do fight scenes like Daniel Warren Johnson, but I would expect more in a high profile Power Rangers comic. And I know they’re fighting in a stone quarry (classic DBZ!), but the backgrounds are very, very lacking.

Thankfully, everything after the fight sets up the rest of the series nicely, for the most part. One of my nitpicks is that we don’t really have a strong status quo, even 12 issues deep, and we still don’t after this issue. The Black Ranger is gone, even if he’s on an interesting personal journey. And I love the idea of Rita having the team be model citizens while they’re forced to conceal their Ranger abilities. That should be fun! And I enjoy good relationship drama as much as the next person, and this series has plenty of that. So I’m not about to abandon this series anytime soon, but I’m hoping to see it coalesce into something stronger.

TL;DR: Weak art and bad fight choreography hamper this climactic issue.

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Wonder Woman #27
Writer: Tom King
Artist: Daniel Sampere
Colorist: Tomeu Morey
Letterer: Clayton Cowles

I skipped the last issue because it was a busy work, but we’re back on board now!

Using his mice as spies, Mouse Man kidnaps Etta Candy, the Mouse Girl and the two babies, with the Amazon, Emelie, is shot and killed. After telling Wonder Woman all of this and expecting her to kneel before him, Wonder Woman instead starts beating the every-loving crap out of Mouse Man even more! She starts smashing him through brick walls in his own fortress, until they’re outside and she gives him a gun to make him choose what happens next. He tries to shoot her, and she deflects the bullet back into him.

For this is her wrath, and she has been changed.

Comic Rating: 9/10 – Great.

Dramatic and exciting stuff happens in this Wonder Woman comic. It’s all thematically relevant to the ongoing story, with fun callbacks and character development. Wonder Woman snaps in this issue, but it’s not entirely revealed until the very end, which I loved. On the one hand, it just looks like Wonder Woman is beating up Mouse Man the way she would any bad guy. Then she deflects a bullet into his gut, and reveals to the Mouse Girl that she has changed. And then you look back over the issue, and you see the look on her face, and you realizes that, yeah, Wonder Woman got pushed too far in this issue.

And it’s all because she brought her baby to this island of misfit fascists!

I still don’t remember if we ever got a reason why Wonder Woman brought her baby. In the issue before she went to the island, she was on the Watchtower…there was nobody who could watch her baby? She had a little scene with Spoiler! Wouldn’t Spoiler happily babysit? Anyway, whatever, the baby and her friends are threatened and Wonder Woman snaps and really takes it to Mouse Man in a very satisfying way. And then Emelie is shot and killed, which is a pretty shocking development. And the whole thing is rather exciting to read. Then by the end, you know in your heart that something has changed. It’s very serious and cool.

TL;DR: The new issue ratchets everything up to another level of tension and energy and fear of what’s going to happen next, and I really dig it (pun intended).

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The comics I review in my Hench-Sized reviews are just the usual comics I grab from Comixology any given week, along with a few impulse buys I might try on a whim. So if there are any comics or series you’d like me to review each week, let me know in the comments.

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