TITLE: Detective Comics #1
AUTHOR/PENCILLER: Tony Daniel
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASED: September 7, 2011

There’s a two-page spread in Detective Comics #1 that features a close-up shot of Batman racing across the rooftops of Gotham City (pictured below). It’s somewhat reminiscent of a spread Jim Lee did in All Star Batman & Robin #5. When I turned to those two pages, all I could say (out loud) was: “Yes!”

Indeed, Tony Daniel continues his work in the world of Batman with this new volume of Detective Comics. We open the book with something rather unexpected: Statistics. It turns out The Joker has murdered 114 people in the past six years. Is it weird that I’ve always wondered about those kinds of figures?  We kick the issue off with some strange man in what appears to be a homemade flesh mask attacking Mr. J. Batman comes to the rescue, but when the police intervene and attempt to bring our Dark Knight to justice, things go south. We learn that Commissioner Gordon is under pressure from the mayor to bring The Joker to justice, and that the mayor’s not exactly a fan of Batman’s either. We get a confrontation between Batman and Joker, and by the end of the issue, we (sort of) meet a twisted new villain called The Dollmaker, who performs an extremely disturbing surgery on The Joker. The last page will stay with me for quite some time.

As it was with Daniel’s run on Batman, the art will be the big selling point of this book for me. He’s unquestionably one of the better Batman artists of the past decade. I’ve never had a major qualm with his writing, though this issue stands on mildly shaky ground for me. We know most of these characters, Batman, The Joker, Commissioner Gordon, they’re classics to say the least. But they’ve got an unfamiliar flare to them in this issue, because the continuity, the world they live in, has been tweaked a bit. Things like Gordon having his reddish brown hair (as seen in Batman: Year One) back, and the relationships between the characters being a bit more raw and new, threw me off balance as I’ve been an avid Batman reader for a number of years.

Still, there’s nothing here that suggests this won’t at least be a solid run. For the time being, The Dollmaker certainly has my attention. But whether it’s a good idea for any new villain to share the page with The Joker remains to be seen.

***

TITLE: Hawk & Dove #1
AUTHOR: Sterling Gates
PENCILLER: Rob Liefeld
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASED: September 7, 2011

This issue was pretty much what I thought it would be: Good writing mixed with so-so art.

The book has our heroes, Hank Hall and Dawn Granger, based in Washington D.C. The story starts with Hawk & Dove stopping a plane full of zombie-like creatures from attacking the city. We then get a bit of a history lesson as to what happened to the original Dove, Don Hall, and how Hank and Dawn haven’t exactly had perfect chemistry lately. We then see a new villain emerge. As readers may know, Hawk is the avatar of war, while Dove is the avatar of peace. But this new villain appears to be another avatar. Who he is and what he stands for remains to be seen.

Rob Liefeld’s art is the big story with this issue, in that it’s more or less the same quality it’s always been. If you’re a Liefeld fan, that’s great. If you’re like me and don’t care for it, then the issue suffers. Liefeld’s depictions of Hawk are the main offenders. Everything is just too damn huge. That’s what happens when Liefeld gets to draw huge, muscular guys (and because that’s usually what superheroes look like, it happens often).

I wish I could find page 11 of this issue online somewhere. But if you’ve got the book, it’s the page where Hawk hits the zombie with the big “KRAK” punch. Look at the panel on the lower left portion of the page. Are you SERIOUS, bro? Also, on page 16 Washi Watanabe’s thumb seems to have undergone a mysterious mangling. For the most part, the rest is just Hawk looking like a human refrigerator box, and people having Liefeld’s trademark trapezoid shaped grimaces. To an extent, I feel bad for Liefeld. Smart asses like me have trained ourselves to look for this kind of thing in his work. I will however, say that if you’re going to give Liefeld a character to blow up like an MLB home run hitter, Hawk isn’t a bad choice. He’s a big, hot-headed jock type character, and Liefeld’s angry trapezoid grimaces suit him well.

Thankfully, Sterling Gates gives us an interesting story, or at least the beginning of one. He plants seeds for some kind of revelation about a relationship between Dawn Granger and Don Hall, and the war/peace dynamic between the rage-fueled Hank and the calm Dawn will make for interesting reading. Despite the occasional figure mangling by Liefeld, I’m sticking around for this one.

***

TITLE: Justice League International #1
AUTHOR: Dan Jurgens
PENCILLER: Aaron Lopresti
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASED: September 7, 2011

Here’s one I might not be sticking around for.

Quick history lesson: In the late ’80s, many of DC’s big guns were undergoing a creative overhaul (much like now). This presented a problem when it came to introducing a new Justice League. Superman, Wonder Woman and The Flash were off limits, but DC still needed it’s big super team. Thus, creators like Keith Gidfen, J.M. DeMatties, Kevin Maguire and others created a new concept for a new era: Justice League International, a U.N. sanctioned peace-keeping force. For an extended period, the book hosted heroes like Batman, Martian Manhunter, Booster Gold, Guy Gardner, Fire & Ice, Rocket Red, among several others. The book also managed to win readers over with its use of humor and lightheartedness. Despite not having some of DC’s big stars attached to it, Justice League International was a success that is fondly remembered to this day. Many of the main characters were recently reunited in Justice League: Generation Lost.

Now, DC is looking to revive the concept, with many of the original characters returning, and the addition of some new ones. We get Vixen, Godiva, and a Chinese superhero named August General in Iron (who was introduced in 52). The U.N. assembles the team and appoints Booster Gold as its leader, under the assumption that they can control him due to his lust for attention. Together, they strike out in search for several researchers who’ve disappeared in Peru, but they get much more than they bargained for.

What I expected from this issue was more of the old Justice League International humor. We get some of that, but it’s not quite as prominent as I’d hoped it would be. I suppose that can be justified with the argument that Jurgens and Lopresti spent most of the issue assembling the team. By the end of the issue, they’re ready for action. This could be an instance where the second issue may serve as a better indicator than the first as to what the series will actually be like. I’m inclined to look once more, but I’ll be looking very critically.

Also, I’m not a big fan of how they tweaked Booster Gold’s costume. Why fix what isn’t broken?

***

TITLE: Green Arrow #1
AUTHOR: J.T. Krul
PENCILLER: Dan Jurgens. Cover by Dave Wilkins.
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASED: September 7, 2011

I gave J.T. Krul some flak for how he handled Green Arrow: Into The Woods. My argument was that he took the character too far in the Robin Hood direction from a literal standpoint. He lived in a forest, he hand a medieval knight as a sidekick, etc. It was too much in one direction for my taste. Thankfully, this book brings Oliver Queen back to civilization, and may just redeem Krul’s run on the character.

This version of Oliver Queen is a young entrepreneur. He’s something of a mix between Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Robin Hood and Iron Man. He’s the owner of Queen Industries (which is located in Seattle, as opposed to Star City), but his heart really isn’t in business. He’s more of a tech guy, and finds crime fighting allies in his associates at Q-Core, who he’s in contact with remotely during his missions. This issue sees him break up a metahuman terrorist ring. But by the end of the issue, we see that he may pay be paying for it later.

I really enjoyed this take on the character (which isn’t entirely unlike the Justin Hartley version from Smallville). The reason I threw Iron Man’s name out as a simile is because this character somewhat reminded me of Robert Downey Jr. He obviously cares about people, which gives us part of his motivation for being a hero. But he also has a certain I-don’t-give-a-crap-if-I-get-in-trouble mentality.

He’s not afraid to put the bad mouth on bad guys either. The character has a series of lines in this book that I love: “You’re not villains. You’re not even bad asses. You’re punks. And it’s about time you got put in your place. Why don’t you all just sign up for a reality show. It’d be a much easier way to get the attention you wannabes obviously crave.” Damn! That’s how you do it!

The Steve Jobs simile isn’t an accident either. This version of Queen Industries apparently has their fingerprints all over this new DCU. They make “Q-Pads,” which I’m guessing is the equivalent of the iPad. They’re apparently also leaders in “virtually every aspect of civilized life.” Are there still similarities to Bruce Wayne and Wayne Enterprises? Obviously, yes. But from a personal standpoint, Green Arrow has always been very different than Batman, and this title is no exception. I’m on board for this one.

I’ve been saying that a lot, haven’t I? I’m on board, I’m in, I’ll be coming back, etc. It would seem that so far, this DCU reboot is going rather well. But then again, that’s only a first impression…

Cover image and Hawk & Dove pages from insidepulse.com. Detective Comics pages from gothamknightsonline.com. JLI page from jmkprime.org. Green Arrow page from latimes.com.