Comic book review: Act 1, Parts 1 & 2 of the Green Lantern ‘Godhead’ crossover arc.

Click link for preview of New Gods-Godhead #1:
http://www.comicbookresources.com:8080/?page=preview&id=23868

Click link for preview of Green Lantern #35
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=23867
















Details of writers and artist involved are included in the previews from Comic book Resources above^^


I found these two books to be a very enjoyable introduction to the new crossover arc featuring all of the characters from the Green Lantern Universe.

New Gods #1

Act 1, Part 1 (in New Gods #1) introduces some characters called the New Gods. It gives their back-story, shows us where they came from, tells us what they are all about, and more importantly, it shows us what they want in the very near future.

What they want involves the Lanterns, and in Act 1, Part 2 (in Green Lantern #35) the Green Lantern himself sees what he’s up against. Hal Jordan is his usual cocky self, and after engaging in an ill-advised battle with the New Gods (it doesn’t go too well for him) he decides that he can’t deal with this new threat without calling for some special back up. This is already intriguing because the person he has to call for help his number one Frenemy, a man that is always guaranteed to stir things up a bit.

The New Gods are far more interesting than your average cartoon evil comic-book villains because they are big picture characters, not just petty criminals with grudges or psychopathic tendencies. What they do effects the whole universe, not just a small section of it like what happens on planet Earth. They have come into conflict with the Lanterns not because they have evil intentions, but because they envision a terrible evil taking over the universe.

The Green Lantern and his Corp buddies don’t know anything about this evil, at least so far, and that’s where the story ends after Part 2. I enjoyed both books very much. I love saying that. It’s so much more fun to like than to hate. This is going to be an epic space adventure story, and I’m definitely up for that.

Green Lantern #35

It’s already very interesting, and there’s no silly mainstream comic book nonsense where they have to pretend that a 2014 America isn’t turning into a banker/corporate autocracy/fascist police surveillance state. This adventure is set in space, so they can talk about big things, big issues that matter, concerns that are seeping into the collective consciousness.

What am I talking about? Here's a quick example of the power of the sci-fi genre:

Have a look back at the ‘Star Wars: Phantom Menace’ movie. Yeah, I know it was awful, but the plot of the movie was actually exposing how political leaders manufacture false flag terrorist events to further their long-term agendas of creating a totalitarian, authoritarian Imperial Empire. How do you get unpopular legislation passed? How do you pass legislation (think NDAA) that gives you more power whilst reducing the freedom of everybody else? Simple, you arrange for something to be blown up, and the people will actually beg you to become an evil Emperor and to construct a totalitarian Police state around them. Hitler did it by arranging for the German parliament building to be blown up. He blamed it on his enemies, passed emergency legislation, and well, we all know what happened next.

That’s the good thing about sci-fi, it can say a lot about the world that we are living in, but gets away with it because it’s set in ‘space.’ This sci-fi story is off to a very good start. I hope that it manages to say a few things about these scary times in which we are living in today, but we’ll see. Jump on board nice and early, this could be a good one.

*The arc continues next week in Green Lantern Corps #35.

Click the link below for a short video on the themes of false flag terrorism in the Star wars movies:
http://vimeo.com/41963839

Rating: New Gods #1- Godhead Act 1, Part 1: 8/10

Rating: Green Lantern #35- Godhead Act 1, Part 2: 8/10

Graphic novel review: Jonathan Hickman's 'The Nightly News': No cult membership required

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Jonathan Hickman
Publisher: Image comics
Released: June 2007

You’d think that a book such as this, about media manipulation and the role of powerful corporations owning and controlling both the mainstream media and their political puppets, would be right up my alley, but I really didn’t enjoy this book much at all.

I found that it was more of a research project by writer Jonathan Hickman put into a comic book format, with some cult members as the protagonists because I guess you have to have lots of gratuitous violence to make a comic book interesting, right?

Err, I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that this comic book wasn’t very interesting or insightful to me, at all. So, what does it tell us?

Cults are bad. No shit. Mainstream media journalists are career whores. No shit. Powerful corporate elite’s own and control mainstream politicians. No shit. Vaccines are poison. No shit. There is poison in our food. No shit. The television is lying to you, programming you. Again, no bloody shit Sherlock. I already know this stuff, we all do. Just because the corporate whore mainstream media is not discussing it, that doesn’t mean we don’t already know about it, because we do.

WE KNOW.

And what’s the point in portraying those that protest against corporate/media corruption as dangerous cult members that have been brainwashed into committing violent acts in order to further the agenda of yet another corporate elite? What is that saying? That all protest is probably being controlled, and if you want to protest you’ll be joining a mind controlled cult? That’s not exactly a good message, is it? It’s saying that you might as well not bother protesting. It's saying that you might as well stay at home and read silly superhero comics instead.

This is a largely unenjoyable book. It’s a book with overly stylised and annoying page layouts and far, far, far too much textual information per page. This information is presented like it’s shocking, like it’s some sort of secret revelation, when it’s really nothing of the sort.

Anybody with any epistemological curiosity already knows far more about this stuff than is presented here. This is media manipulation for beginners. The fancy pants page layout hides what is a largely formulaic cult story book with lots of violence and swearing, Chomsky quotations, people being Darwinian and ruthless and a message that is stating the acknowledged fact that mainstream media news bastards are lying to us all.

I know this book was released in 2006/2007, but this stuff wasn’t new then, and it’s very, very dated now, especially after the recent revelations by Wikileaks, information that just confirmed what we already knew anyway. This book dresses up fact as a conspiracy, and that's just how the corporate elites like it.

The book did get one thing right though. 'Chomsky's a fucking retard.' He sure is, and that's why he is in the position that he currently fills. An ageing gatekeeper, letting you feel like you're getting close, but then slamming the door shut when you threaten to break through the corporate/banking/education matrix.

Oh dear, and what happens next for writer Jonathan Hickman? He buggers off to a huge corporation (Marvel/Disney) where he will have a very soft and easy career writing escapist books about cold war era, anachronistic superheroes. If you want to get his latest polemic, super controversial and revolutionary mind expanding stuff then pick up the latest issue of Marvel’s Avengers. <<<<HUGE SIGH>>>>Way to go mate. You did a little bit of faintly anti-authoritarian stuff, and then it’s straight to easy Suburb Street working for one of the giant evil corporations you gently criticised in this book. There’s a two-word cliché for people who do that, and it really does apply here.

SELL-OUT.

There was nothing revolutionary about this book, at all. It was a depressing book about media manipulation and how there’s nothing that you can do about it. That is a lie, a lie that promotes learnt helplessness, the feeling that there’s nothing that we can do, so why bother even trying. We need to break through this destructive feeling of learnt helplessness because there is something we can all do about it. The solution is very simple, and that solution does not involve cult membership or violence. All we have to do to break the destructive cycle of corporate/media manipulation is the following. Turn off the mainstream media. Stop voting between left arse cheek and right arse cheek, and stop reading statist comic books like the Avengers. That’s all you have to do. No cult membership required.

Rating: 5/10 (For the information that the largely sleeping comic book fanboy readers might not know about, but really bloody well should do)

Horror comic review: Grimm Tales of Terror #3: Knife wielding nut-job on campus

Writer: Meredith Finch
Artist: Milton Estevam
Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
Released: 17th September 2014


I enjoyed this book, but it would be amiss of me not to mention that it had serious structural flaws, with an ending that happened before it should have done, and some characters that weren’t properly developed or given satisfying story-line payoffs.

There was the added problem that all of the pretty girl protagonists looked very similar, apart from hair colour, and as the story was relatively short it was difficult to get a handle on who they all were as individuals. One girl was a daddy’s girl, and some of the others were worried about their grades, but that’s all there was to differentiate them. The problem was that the book was too short, and there were too many people in it. In horror one shots there isn’t enough room to properly develop numerous characters. Writer Meredith Finch tried to put a horror movie script into twenty-two pages of a comic book, and there wasn’t enough room to properly accomplish that.

One of the undeveloped characters in this book was a perverted lecturer who gave pretty college girls good grades for sexual ‘favours.’ That’s quite standard fare in stories about pretty college girls, but the book wasn’t long enough to fully develop his character and story-arc, so when he met his inevitable demise it fell flat because he wasn’t a convincing flesh and blood person. You see him briefly at the beginning, and briefly at the end. He is a teacher, and a pervert. That is all. That is not a human being. That is two-dimensional cardboard cutout.

The big moment in horror stories such as this one is the scene where the identity of the murderer is finally revealed. You expect a twist, but if it's done well it’s still a dramatic moment. You get that scene in this book, but it happens too early, leaving three unnecessary pages that were only included so that the Horror host could be fitted into the story at the end. It didn’t work.

The host should have been involved in the reveal, and she wasn’t. Her signature moment of whistling whilst the bad guys get their just deserts didn’t work out this time as she didn’t appear to care about a psychopathic knife murdering maniac at all. Instead she was more concerned with a lecherous teacher and making sure that he got what he deserved. That was a bit jarring to me. On a rising scale of moral wrongs surely hacking young girls to death with a knife ranks a few notches above being a perverted teacher? Yes, I know that being a dirty old git who exploits his pupils is pretty bloody disgusting and morally vacuous, but stabbing college girls to death with a big knife and leaving silly horror movie messages on the wall in their own blood must be a more serious crime, right?

I also had a problem with the character of the janitor in this book. Again, as you might expect, he was portrayed as a big old weird pervert, because obviously every single man that comes into contact with young females must be some perverted lech, right? Actually, come to think of it, the younger men in this book were portrayed as perverts as well, so it’s not exactly a man friendly book come to think of it. Anyway, the janitor character kept popping up, looking and acting like a big fat sweaty pervert (how was he not sacked on the first day of his job?), but we didn’t get any payoff to his story. Any half clued in reader would never take him seriously as being a real candidate for the murderer because he was too obvious, and as the book ended he was still mopping up, still looking like a pervert, and that was it. He was just there as a very obvious and very unsatisfying red herring. That’s frustrating to the reader, and I got the impression that the original script for this story had been massively edited, and because it was a one-shot story there wasn’t enough time and space in a comic book form to make it properly work.

This book was a three or four-issue script that had been crammed into a one shot comic. The panels were very large, featuring double-paged spreads of gruesome murder scenes etc, and it left them with nowhere near enough room to tell the story, as it should have been told.

The book was working against itself, but that didn’t stop it from being fun. The curvy girls were drawn very voluptuously, the pervert men were drawn very seedily and the reveal of the murderer, although a bit obvious to horror comic buffs, was a good moment anyway. It was a small surprise to me, and when it came I did smile. It came too early on in the script, but it was good.

I really appreciate Zenescope putting out these old style horror books. These are the kind of books that I grew up with, so they give me a strong sense of nostalgia that I really enjoy. It’s not just nostalgia though. I miss the old horror books. Why not bring them back? They used to be really good, and they can still be good today. Human nature does not change, and the thrill of reading a well-structured creepy, weird story with a delicious twist at the end will always be an enjoyable experience.

Plus, superheroes can get very lame, very quickly, especially when Marvel and DC are so bloody statist and corporate that all of the heroes are either government agents, stuck in dimension X or battling Nazi’s and cold war era Russians. Contemporary superhero comic books STILL cannot get to grips with a post 9/11 world and all of the NSA Police state bullshit that is turning western countries into bloody banker ran autocracies these days. Just imagine all of the great stories that a switched on horror writer could be telling today with all that has happened in the past decade. The world has become a horror story, so why not reflect that fact in the comics?

Grimm Tales of Terror #3 had structural problems, but I enjoyed it. It felt rushed and incomplete, and I would love it if they updated the genre somewhat. The events that unfold in this book have no relation to this day and age. They could have happened in 1960, 1984, 1994 or 2014. Things need to get updated. Things need to change, and that’s why I’m doing my very small bit by writing this blog. I want Zenescope to keep on putting out these horror books. I want them to get better. I want them to update the stories for a post 9/11 generation, and I want them to start connecting with the awakened, post mainstream media generation of these times. I know it’s asking a lot, too much perhaps, but it’s not going to stop me from asking. I love old style horror comics. Get the structure sorted out. Let the stories run for a few issues if you cannot tell them in one-shots, and throw in the odd reference to the surveillance state, poisons in our foods, illegal wars and corporate bankster owned political elite’s. Oh, and if you can cut out the anti man stuff, that would be nice as well, thanks.

Rating: 5.5/10

Comic book review: Sinestro- Futures End #1: A Parallax to ISIS

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Igor Lima 
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 24th September 2014


I’ve never been afraid to say controversial things. I’ve never been afraid to state the bloody obvious, even when everybody around me is doing their best to ignore it. That’s what political correctness and a life based on protecting a career does to you. It stops you from saying what you want to say. It stops you from saying what needs to be said. Well, I have no need to keep my mouth shut. If I see something that needs to be talked about, then I’m going to talk about it. I’m never going to win any popularity contests, so screw that. I’m not afraid. I’m not a coward.

So, here I go again. The character of Sinestro in ‘Sinestro- Futures End #1’ is a ruthless dictator who is keeping the most violent and destructive elements of society under control, caged where it belongs. But when you take Sinestro away, when you take the dictator away the beast is unleashed and society falls apart. The beast in this book is something called ‘Parallax.’ Sinestro controls it, stops it from destroying his home planet of New Korugar. But then a team of ‘liberators’ comes along. A team called ‘The Apex League‘ who talk ‘peace’ but end up unleashing the beast that is Parallax. That beast then acts exactly as you would expect it to act, it destroys the planet. Does that sound familiar to you? Does that sound like something that is happening NOW in the real world? I’ll spell it out.

Sinestro is Saddam Hussein. Sinestro is Colonel Gaddafi. Sinestro is President Assad. Parallax is Al Qaeda. Parallax is ISIS. The Apex League are the US and their coalition of the bribed and coerced. America has destroyed Iraq and Libya, and is currently attempting to destroy Syria. These deliberate acts of war have unleashing ISIS upon the world. The dictator Saddam Hussein ruled by fear, exactly as Sinestro ruled by fear. But now he has been removed, and Hell has been unleashed.

Why has America done this? It is not incompetence. It is deliberate. The beast is used to further the agenda of those who control the armies of ‘peace makers’ and ‘liberators.’ Who are these people? Who are the people that sent uniformed order followers to war, to unleash the beast that is now tearing the Middle East apart. Do you believe that their agenda is world peace? Do you believe that they care at all about the death, destruction and misery that they have deliberately unleashed upon the world?

Do you watch television? Do you read the newspapers? You know who these people are. They smile at you. They ask for your vote. They make you complicit in their evil. They give orders, and you obey them.

Yes, the out in front spokesmen and spokeswomen of the satanic elite’s give the orders, but they also receive them as well. Their orders come from a tiny number of 'elite' family’s hidden within the structures that they themselves have set up and funded.

THE UN, CIA, MI6, NSA, GCHQ, UNESCO, NATO, IMF, WORLD BANK, BIS, ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, RHODES TRUST, CARNEGIE FOUNDATION, TRILLATERAL COMMISSION, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, BILDERBERG GROUP. 

They scheme behind the scenes, giving orders to the bleached white teeth on your HD television screen. They create ISIS/Parallax, they unleash ISIS/Parallax, and they use ISIS/Parallax. That’s what they do. That is what they always do.

I’ll finish my review here. I’ve made my point. Think about it. There’s nothing more to say.

Rating: 9/10

Comic book review: Justice Inc #2- The Avenger is old and new, whilst Batman is just old, and old

Writer: Michael Uslan
Artist: Giovanni Timpano
Publisher: Dynamite Comics
Released: 24th September 2014


I’m reading this book for The Shadow, and if the other two characters bring anything to the table then that’s just a bonus. Issue #2 gave me some interesting insights into the character, personality and special abilities of The Shadow, so that alone is reason enough for me to both enjoy and appreciate the book.

Okay, so the art isn’t that special. There’s a lack of atmosphere in the shading, and the colouring is far too pastel and bright for my liking. But again, going back to The Shadow, he’s drawn exactly like The Shadow should be drawn, so that’s enough for me.

The story in issue #2 of Justice Inc is brief, as it should be in an issue #2. Most of the action takes place in-flight, with the character that will become ‘The Avenger’ going through his Bruce Wayne moment of horror that will come to define his subsequent crime-fighting career. The dialogue, again as it was in the first issue, is very amusing, but amusing without being silly and ridiculous as you’ll find in the dialogue of far too many mainstream comic books today. Oh, and there was a hint of a femme-fatale in this book, and I’m perfectly happy with that as every old fashioned pulp book needs a sexy bad femme-fatale to spice things up a bit.

Far too many comic books and comic book writers of today are stuck in the 1990’s, and are either unwilling or unable to negotiate the post 9/11 world that we are all living in today. Plus, the mainstream obsession with political correctness and it’s diversionary issues to do with race, gender and sexuality is depressing beyond belief, and makes most of the books put out by DC and Marvel today unreadable for any educated and awakened mind.  Justice Inc is not stuck in the 1990’s, and so far I detect no hint of Rockefeller funded liberalism in the book. Whilst Marvel stays in the 1990’s, trying to get attention by playing out tired old race and gender issues, Justice Inc is bypassing 1970’s feminism altogether by going back to the pulp days of the late 1930’s and 1940’s. It’s using the old heroes and personalities of that period, putting them all in the proverbial blender and having a good old time with the results of that delicious mix.

However, you must bear in mind that if you decide to take a chance on Justice Inc you’re going to get a story that is in no way contemporaneous with current geo-political events. This is a book set in the safe past with characters like Einstein and Howard Hughes, very well known historical figures that are uncontroversial, safe and easy to play around with in a comic book. It’s not a brave book. It’s a comic book that has taken elements of the pulp history of the comic book genre and decided to play out the old stories once again, but for a new audience. These are pulp heroes of the 1940's and that’s where their playground is, not a post 9/11 world, the world that we are all living in today.

If the majority of comic books available today were stuck in the 1940’s it would drive me absolutely nuts. I’m sure they’d be preferable to the liberal nonsense that dominates DC and Marvel today, but I’d still hate it, and every week on this blog I’d be calling them out on their inability to reflect the world of 2014. I give Dynamite comics a pass on this book for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’m a huge fan of the Shadow, and anything with The Shadow in it is fine by me. Sure I’d like him to be brought into this NSA spying/criminal banks/ puppet politician’s era, but there’s something about his character that appeals to me. It’s probably because he’s independent, morally upright and utterly ruthless with criminal lowlifes. Secondly, this delving back into the 1940’s is interesting because it’s only being done in these Shadow books. I know it’s safe and easy, but at the moment it’s a nice change from the norm, and anything that breaks from the norm at the moment has to be good.

Setting aside my Shadow fandom for a moment, Justice Inc #2 is worth investing your time and money in because you are seeing the re-birth of a super hero known as The Avenger. That’s interesting as The Avenger is a character that has not yet been done to death. He’s an old character, but somewhat of a lost one, somebody who from what I’ve researched appears to be very interesting, and I welcome his reintroduction into the comic book world of today. Contrast that to the character of Batman who gets his origin story redone every couple of years or so in DC comics. Heck, the story is even being redone on mainstream television at the moment in a show called ‘Gotham.’ The Avenger is old, but new. Batman is just old, and old. Get the book because of the re-birth of The Avenger, that alone is good enough a reason to read it, but if like myself you are a huge fan of the awesomeness that is The Shadow, you’ll want to pick this book up as well.

Rating: 7/10

Comic book review: Criminal Macabre- The Third Child #1: Not for the young and messed up

Writer: Steve Niles
Artist: Christopher Mitten
Colourist: Michelle Madsen
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 17th September 2014


The main protagonist of Criminal Macabre is a ‘Pill popping, alcoholic degenerate’ by the name of Cal McDonald. He has great hair, looks like a movie star, has a glass of whiskey in one had, a gun in the other, a cigarette perpetually dangling from his mouth and an air of super cool alienation and dissatisfaction with everything and everyone around him. In other words, he’s the kind of twit that can act as a dangerous role model for a lot of lost and lonely young men out there.

You know the kind of young man that has no direction in his life? The kind of man who cannot find his place, so he dives into books and sees a weird outsider like himself, but this outsider is cool, really cool, dark and interesting. This fictional character might be sick and alienated, just like the lost young man, but he’s really, really cool, and that’s what the young man wants to be. He wants to be cool, dark and interesting, not just messed up, lonely and bored. Looking for a role model he can identify with, he’ll find one here.

You can probably guess why I’m saying this, right?  I used to be the lost young man that I’m referring to here, and putting myself back into my old shoes of self imposed isolation and misery I can see myself getting a kick out of the character of Cal McDonald. That’s not to say that I would try to act like him, that I’d try to dress like him, try to talk like him. No, that would be too obvious. I was pretty stupid, but not that stupid. On a subconscious level I would more than likely identify with the character. See, I would say to myself. Just because you are a mess it doesn’t mean that you can’t be cool. The character is probably taking it even further than that. On one level he’s telling readers that the way to be cool and interesting is to be completely messed up. That’s bullshit. It’s a really, really terrible message to be putting out there into the world. Here’s a revelation.

THERE IS NO ‘COOL’ IN BEING A MESS.

Is the Cal McDonald character dangerous to young male readers? He kind of is you know. He doesn’t encourage you to change. He encourages you to wallow in your alienation and misery. Drink another drink, smoke another cancer stick, it’s cool you know? I’ll tell you what. I’ll let Cal McDonald explain himself in his own words:

“I’ll do what I want and when I want. Got it?”

“Why don’t you get off my back?”

“No, don’t touch me.”

"Is this an intervention?”

He sounds like a pretty messed up young man, doesn’t he? He sounds like a man with problems, with people trying to help him out, but he’s fighting against the help and fighting against his own self hate. Again, it’s very cool, very teenager, very young man, and it’s very stupid.

If you are an unhappy, messed-up, alienated young man, then don’t buy this book. You might enjoy it, but it won’t be doing you any good. You’ll probably end up identifying with the Cal character, and he’s not the kind of person that you want to be identifying with. He’ll end up giving you the deceptive belief that being messed up makes you interesting. That’s not how reality works. Being messed up does not make you interesting. It makes you sad, and pitiful and very, very lonely. And don’t kid yourself that girls have some kind of weird fetish for messed up, ‘dark’ and introspective personalities. They don’t.

Having got that monkey off my back I want to say a few nice things about the book as well, because it is not a bad book. The Cal character is funny, engaging and likeable. He’s the narrator, and when he talks it’s like he’s a best buddy talking directly to you. The book follows Cal and his buddies as they save the world from weird monsters whilst Cal looks super dashing and tormented in his long black trench-coat, with his designer stubble, spiky haircut and dangling cigarette. The story is simple, and Cal is cool. He is dangerously cool, but I’ve already discussed that.

I know I don’t always talk a lot about the art in my reviews, but that’s because I’m not an artist. I don’t want to give you a misinformed, uneducated view, so I keep it short and just tell you whether or not I liked it. What did I think about the art in this book? I liked it. The narrative is set at night and the colours along with the frenetic, almost casually unfinished style of pencilling works very well to create a super cool atmosphere perfectly in keeping with the Cal character. I enjoy art when it gets a bit rough, wild and wonky, and that style is perfect for this book.

Get this book if you want a brief splash of silly sick cool in your life, but don’t get it if you are a messed up young man. If you are, and if you are still under the misapprehension that being fucked up is going to make you appear to be cool and interesting then I wouldn’t bother with this one. Get something that celebrates health, not illness. Get something like Conan the Barbarian, a book that celebrates masculine pride and strength and getting your arse off of the couch and doing something with your life other than moping around feeling sorry for yourself.

‘Criminal Macabre: The Third Child’ is a book with a messed up protagonist that tells you that illness and disease is super cool. It’s a book that tells you that alcoholism and alienation is something to aspire to. The book is a liar. It’s not cool to be messed up, it kind of sucks, actually it sucks a lot. Look at the shaky old man who drinks by himself in the pub during the day as happy young families enjoy a lunch-break around him. That is the reality behind Cal McDonald, and it’s about as far from cool and interesting as you can possibly imagine. I did like the book though, dangerous as it is. The art is very stylish, the colouring is very nice and the dialogue is a lot of fun as well. Buy it, but only if you have successfully passed the messed up young man stage of your life.

Rating: 7/10

Comic book review: Justice League Futures End #1: Not even trying to be a good comic book

Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Jed Dougherty
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 17th September 2014


I guess that Jeff Lemire had a spare five minutes during his tea break, and as he’s wont to do these days, he’s crapped out another filler script for a mainstream comic book. I’ve read far too many blah Lemire books now. I don’t know how he’s getting away with it. Is it just a case of having a name and being able to pump out units like an assembly line loaded up with Chinese children? I think it is. He’s very quick, reliably uncontroversial, and I guess he needs the cash or something, because there’s nothing else you can say about his work here on Justice League: Future’s End #1. It was done by deadline. That’s the only praise that it deserves.

So what is it about? First off, it doesn’t have any of the top Justice League regulars in it. That means no Batman, no Superman and no Lex Luthor. Instead it features the Flash and Cyborg messing around on a Mars prison base. Yes, it’s Guantamano Bay in space. Well, without all of the torturing of inmates until they confess to being the Easter Bunny and Rumpelstiltskin of course.

Buy the book and you’ll get a one-shot story where the characters explain the plot and their motivations whilst they are fighting. This makes all of the dialogue complete ridiculous and impossible to take seriously. People don’t speak like that. Well, they do in a one-shot comic where you have no time to explain the context and character motivations.

Is this a skill? Is Lemire good at this kind of writing? If it was enjoyable, clever, emotionally engaging, socio-politically relevant, funny, sad or anything that would conjure up some kind of emotion then I would have no problem whatsoever with the laughable dialogue. The problem however is that this comic left me feeling completely indifferent. There’s nothing there, so how can I react to it? I guess I should applaud Jeff Lemire for knocking out a quick filler story. Congrats Jeff, but what about the readers?

I don’t want to be cruel about the art, as I’ve seen a lot worse. The story wasn’t at all engaging. That’s the main problem here. I felt like the art was a bit basic. It had the feel of a comic book designed for young children. The characters were cartoons. Their faces and bodies were all square jaws and muscles. I like realism in my books, and I didn’t get it here. That’s a personal thing of course. Some readers might enjoy the style, but it didn’t do anything for me. The backgrounds were lacking in detail, and the full-page panels that should have made an impact were noticeably lacking in any impact at all. There was no great creativity there, but somehow it fit with the story. A basic story had basic artwork. The feeling of a book being rushed out to hit a strict deadline was very apparent on every single page of the book.

Give Justice League a miss this month. It’s a filler book with a daft story about Captain Atom trying to break out of his Mars prison. He was very naughty, killing people to help people, a bit like our politicians really. It’s a pity we don’t have superheroes and a Mars prison base in the real world. It would have to be a big prison though, as this world is full to the brim with psychopaths in suits who are intent on killing people to save people. Wow, I just managed to say something about the book. At least it had one idea in it then. But taking it as a whole I wouldn’t bother wasting your time and money on it. It isn’t very good, and it’s not really trying to be either.

Rating: 3/10