TITLE:

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

This book represents the start of a lot of new things. It’s the start of a new chapter in the Batman ongoing series, it’s the start of Scott Snyder’s run with Bruce Wayne, as opposed to Dick Grayson, who he worked with in books like The Black Mirror. It’s the start of Batman’s battle with the elusive Court of Owls. These are all good things. But as good as they are, and as much acclaim as Snyder and Capullo’s run has gotten from fans, it’s not spotless as far as I’m concerned. There are a few little things that put a bit of a damper on this story for me. Yes, I’m going to be that annoying, nitpicky fan here. But I nitpick because I love these characters and this world. That’s my excuse.

In one of our first outings with Batman and company in the “New 52″ universe, Bruce Wayne is looking to breathe some new life into some of Gotham’s more troubled territories with an aggressive  rebuilding initiative. This attracts the attention of not only mayoral candidate Lincoln March, but the Court of Owls. Thought to be merely the stuff of Gotham City folklore, the centuries-old Court makes their presence known with a grisly murder. To make matters much, MUCH worse, the DNA of none other than Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Nightwing, is found at the crime scene. Now Batman must unravel the mystery of the Court of Owls. Little does he know how unprepared he is for this challenge, how the Court will push him to both his physical and psychological limits.

One of the things that really impressed me about this book was the way Snyder and Capullo sold the Court of Owls to us by having them put Batman through the ringer. For most of the second half of this book, Batman is trapped in a big maze the Court has set up. He desperately fights to stay in the shadows, as much of the maze is coated in white light. He’s been drugged, so he keeps hallucinating that he’s transforming into an owl, among other mental atrocities. They also have one of his “lenses,” i.e. the little white slits that always make up his eyes, knocked out. So he’s got one slit, and one eye that’s really wide and bloodshot. That’s a great little touch. And of course, they beat the heck out of him. But it’s tough to remember a time when Batman was pushed to the brink on every level like that. The only other instance that immediately comes to mind is the Knightfall storyline during the early ’90s.

The Court of Owls are a nice addition to Batman’s iconic gallery of foes. The Talons, assassins that work for the Court, are designed quite nicely and prove to be tough opponents for even Batman to match up with. The fact that owls have that predatory connection to bats is also a very nice touch.

Alright, let’s get picky. I would argue that Capullo’s Dick Grayson looks much too young. Take a look at how he looks in the image to the left, and then check out how Eddy Barrows is drawing him in the monthly Nightwing series right now. Under Barrows, Dick looks like he’s in his early to mid twenties. Under Capullo, he could still be in his late teens. I’m not sure how old the New 52 Nightwing is supposed to be, but I’m leaning toward Barrows’ side on this one. Nightwing has always been portrayed as the Robin who matured and grew into his own. I’m not sure Capullo captured that here, and he may have realized that as the issues progressed. Nightwing looks a tad older during the tail end of the book, and in recent issues of Batman.

I also mentioned this in my “First Impression” of Batman #1, but I think the computerized contact lenses we see Bruce use in this book are corny. I understand Batman’s got more than his fair share of gadgets. But c’mon, really? He even uses them to read lips during the first issue. Because he’s smart enough to invent friggin’ computer contact lenses, but reading lips is just too far outside the realm of possibility.

This is a really minute detail in the grand scheme of things, but when we open the book we see Batman facing off against the inmates of Arkham Asylum as they have him cornered. It’s a wonderful way to kick off this new chapter of Batman, but his renderings of the Joker, Two-Face, and particularly the Riddler rubbed me the wrong way. Mr. J. looks a bit too scraggly and smeary for my taste, a bit too much like the Batman: Knight of Vengeance version of the character. Two-Face has a similar issue. In the very beginning of this book, there’s a two-page splash shot of Batman’s enemies staring him down (shown left). At in the front we see Two-Face, and the deformed skin on his right side literally appears to be falling off his head. I’ve never seen Two-Face look so…flappy. But poor Riddler got the worst of it. That’s him on the far right side of the image. Not only does he have little question marks either shaved or tattooed into his head, but Capullo felt the need to give him a green mohawk shaped like a question mark (which you can clearly see on the cover). Hey Greg, here’s a riddle for ya: Why????

Relentless nitpicking aside, The Court of Owls is actually my favorite Batman story Scott Snyder has done so far. It introduces a cool new group of villains, and gives his a compelling glimpse into the mind of Bruce Wayne. I’m hopeful Snyder and Capullo can do better, but this is a fine start.

RATING: 7.5/10

Front page image from comicartcommunity.com. Image 1 from ifanboy.com. Image 2 from acomicbookblog.com. Image 3 from arkhamcity.co.uk. 

TITLE

By Seth Miller
Staff Writer, Part-Time Ninja

I don’t know if there will ever be an apocalypse in my lifetime; but while others have seen signs in the news or their daily life, I have seen a couple of things at the theater that have at least made me consider the possibility of an imminent end of the world scenario. The first is the success of The Avengers because its great reception exposed Joss Whedon to even larger audiences, but since Firefly was cancelled I have always held the belief that the universe will not let him have too much success. The only way to stop him now is to end the world.

The second is the fact that we have finally reached critical mass when it comes to films with Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. Not to say there haven’t been good if not great movies from their collaboration, but after Dark Shadows we have reached an inverse proportion between the number of films and their quality.

In the 1700s, Barnabas Collins (Depp) is on top of the world with a booming family fishing business and a woman he loves. Unfortunately, he spurns the affections of one of his servants who is also a witch (Green) and is cursed to be a vampire for the rest of his life. He wakes up in 1972 after being buried alive for 200 years and finds his family and business are falling apart. He resolves to restore his family to their former glory and defeat the witch who has harassed his family for over 200 years.

The only thing this film has going for it is Depp. As a man trapped in an unfamiliar world and living with a curse he hates, Depp brings humor and enough heart to elevate the film for a few moments. Green has fun with her role as the scorned witch and brings a delightfully evil energy to the role while also being somewhat sympathetic.

The thing thats holds this film back are very fundamental. Depp and Green have roles that have more to them then descriptions that can be summed up in one sentence, but the same can’t be said for the rest of the characters. For a film whose overriding message is that family is the most important thing in life, the family has nothing to really distinguish them except some broad characterization and a supernatural element that, in the case of one character, feels shoehorned at the end just to make them weirder in the hope it would make them interesting.

The biggest problem for this film is the fact that it is remake of a TV soap opera and there are a lot of clichés from those types of shows. Love triangles, out of left field plot developments, and just the general tone of the film feels like a gothic soap opera that may work on TV but doesn’t translate to film. If you are a fan of films by Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp, then don’t see this movie. You will be even more disappointed than I was.

RATING: 3/10

Front page image and interior stills from collider.com.

TITLE:

By Justin Polak
Co-founder, Ambassador to the Mushroom Kingdom

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is my favorite MGS game to date. The setting, characters, music and many other aspects captured my imagination back in 2004. The Subsistence version, released two years later, fixed minor problems like camera control and had loads of goodies. Last year, that same version was included in the HD collection for the PlayStation 3. One might be asking themselves if a 3DS port is necessary at this point, even from someone like me. Well, let’s find out!

As far as the controls go, MGS3D gave me my first experience with the Circle Pad Pro attachment. It felt kind of funky at first, but I got used to it as the game progressed. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot better than using the 3DS by itself. However, neither control scheme lets you automatically center the camera, something this game, especially on a handheld, desperately needed.

One of the more innovative elements about MGS3 was the backpack inventory system. Through a series of menus, Snake can select camouflage, eat food to maintain stamina, heal severe injuries, select weapons and perform other various tasks. While the focus on more survival `based stealth was fun, I never liked how you had to pause the action to do just about anything. It was annoying to change into better camo because you moved a few feet or stop to remove a gunshot wound in the middle of a heated boss battle.

The touchscreen now handles those functions, and while you don’t have to spend as much time clicking through menus thanks to shortcuts, the action still stops whenever you need to manage anything out of your backpack. It does succeed in making the effort less clunky, but the constant pausing still throws the pacing off.

What I did l enjoy was the inclusion of MGS4-like controls. It’s a lot easier to run and gun, for example. You can also move around in first person mode and even prop the camera behind the shoulder. Kojima Productions also included the red or blue damage indicators from Peace Walker which helps make life easier on the smaller screen. I have to admit that I wish the console versions included these features.

As far as the 3D itself goes, the effect works adequately for MGS3D.  They put effort into making the cinematic scenes more dramatic but not annoyingly so, where everything is popping out at you.  The 3D doesn’t really add that much to the overall experience, but I would by lying if I said it wasn’t a nice touch.

MGS3 veterans will notice right off the bat that some sacrifices were made to fit this game on the tiny 3DS cart. There is a lower frame rate, but it wasn’t as choppy as I thought as it was going to be before I first played it. The only real frame rate issues happen during some cut scenes, and even then it’s not that much worse than how it was on the PS2.

However, it is obvious where they made sacrifices. Aside from a few textures being a little more on the blurry side, there is obvious texture pop-in. It’s mainly shows as the vegetation around snake suddenly grows just a few feet ahead of him. The way it looked at times actually reminded me of how the Forest Spirit in the anime movie Princess Mononoke had plants grow wherever it stepped! That effect didn’t ruin anything for me, but still, more picky people out there might want to take a look at videos online before making a purchase.

A small, but fun addition is the ability to make camo by using the 3DS camera. You don’t even have to quit the game to either take a photo you already have and convert it, or even take a pic while you are in the middle of a session! It’s tough to actually photograph something that will work well with Snake, but it certainly is possible. My cat’s fur pattern was the best camo in the game at a couple of points!

At the end of the day, while I like the ability to play MGS3 wherever I go, I already had three copies of this game to begin with. This version sports the smoothest battle/stealth controls (with the Circle Pad Pro), but I still prefer the console versions, especially the HD version on the PS3. As a handheld game it works surprisingly well, long cutscenes and all. They even considered battery life by making the alert/evasion/caution phases a lot shorter, but actually having guards hunt for you for a long period of time is an aspect that I loved in the original version.

I would say that it is really up to personal tastes if you should own MSG3D. I’m a big enough fan to enjoy it on the go, despite my console HD preference. A person who had never played the game before might enjoy it, but I don’t think there are that many people who are into the MGS series that haven’t already trekked through this gem. The port was a fantastic effort by Kojima  Productions, but I don’t think it was entirely necessary to port MGS3 to a handheld.

RATING: 7/10

Front page image and screenshots courtesy of Konami.

TITLE:

By Levi Sweeney
Contributor, Grand X

Some comics are very good. More comics are simply good. A lot of comics are mediocre. And, yes, a sizable amount of comics are just awful.

Gates of Gotham lands roughly in the territory between “good” and “mediocre” known as “okay, I guess.” But it’s within walking distance of “good” area. This trade is one that had a lot of good about it, while at the same time not living up to its full potential. I think that this is because the last few issues were rushed to make way for the almighty New 52, resulting in a rather compressed conclusion.

The story starts with Batman (Dick Grayson) and others from the Bat-family trying to track down a load of Semtex, when three bridges suddenly get blown up with those explosives, killing dozens of people. It appears that someone is bent on destroying certain architectural landmarks around Gotham City, landmarks having to do with the city’s founding families: the Cobblepots, the Elliots, and the Waynes. As a sinister note sent to the newspapers reads, “The families will fall by the gates of Gotham.”

Now, it’s up to Batman, Robin, Red Robin, and Black Bat, a.k.a. Cassandra Cain, to find out who this guy is and why he’s doing this dastardly deed. Meanwhile, this story in the present is paralleled by a story from Gotham City’s past, where the rise and fall of Nicholas Gates — the architect who built several of Gotham’s major buildings, including the bridges — and his connection to the city’s founding families, is detailed.

There’s also this little story at the end, written by the same creative team as the rest of the book, about the origin of Nightrunner, the Batman of Paris. It fits nicely into the Batman Inc. vibe that’s going on here, but more on that later.

Let’s start with the good. Firstly, I’ll have you know that Cassandra Cain’s presence alone is a good thing all by itself, because this is her most recent appearance to date, since she’s still MIA in the New 52. DC simply does not understand that happy fans = money, and bringing back Cass and Steph in some capacity would get them a lot of happy fans.

But to get past the knee-jerk fanboy reaction, the characterization and group dynamic that we see in this trade is perfect. I always loved the idea of the Bat-family as, well, you know, a family, or at least a team, and that’s what we see here. I don’t know how much credit he deserves, what with Kyle Higgins being in there, but Scott Snyder has shown an aptitude in the past for balancing multiple characters, and that is what we see here. Despite the crowded cast, every character has something to offer, and not one seems useless or unneeded.

I love the character interactions; those are the real gems of it. It’s like I said, this is a family of Batman sidekicks, working together on a single mission. Particularly impressive is the dynamic between Damian (Robin) and Cass. Damian finally gets some face time with Cass, as foreshadowed back in Batgirl #5, and he doesn’t exactly think her “wonderful” in this instance. But Cass just no-sells him, and it is great. Likewise, every character here is actually in character, so it’s all good. Another thing I thought about while reading this was why Batwoman didn’t show up, being part of the Kane family and all. But then, I realized that it was because she was busy with all the Batman Inc. stuff, like Bruce was. Tight plotting.

Buuuttt that’s about where it ends. The story’s pacing started out strong, but it was a bit feeble and, like I said, rushed, towards the end. Don’t get me wrong, the first few issues did a great job of building the suspense of the bombs going off, and racing against the clock, things like that, but then it just stops happening after issue three. Or was it two? The only other good things are the Penguin and Hush, who, while not the villains of this story per se, are still excellently used and portrayed. Hush in particular is great in his role as the defeated mastermind turned unwilling accomplice to the main villain.

Speaking of the villain, let’s get on to the bad. My two big problems with this book are the villain and the art. The villain is some guy in a diving suit called the Architect, whose reasons for blowing stuff up aren’t gone into with very much detail. This is mostly because most of the time that would normally be assigned to the villain is spent in the past with Nicholas Gates in the 1800’s. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with those sequences, and how they connect to the Architect’s motivation, but I just don’t buy it. Bruce Willis once said that a story is only as smart as its villain, and unfortunately, this villain is not all that cleverly conceived. Also, it’s not really explained exactly how the Architect turned a 100+ year old diving suit into working battle armor which gave him enhanced strength and speed. Or how the guy who designed it (it’s part of the story) knew how to make it in the first place.

The art isn’t exactly bad so much as it doesn’t really fit with the story. It’s not imposing or dramatic like it should have been, and I just can’t get myself to really like this McCarthy guy’s style. There’s just too much pencil, with too many lines, and everyone looks like wax sculptures. I mean, seriously, the faces are just bleah, though I’ll give the guy points for making them distinguishable from each other. But still, just look at Penguin. Dustin Nguyen and another artist named Derec Donovan guest-draw in one of the issues. I’ve always been iffy on Nguyen’s art, but his Donovan’s is plainly poor. Specifically, his rendition of Cassandra Cain looked like an Asian Barbara Gordon with a dye job. For what it’s worth though, I’d much rather have Nguyen drawing the series, and he drew all of the alternate covers, which look pretty swell.

The Nightrunner story was okay, but it’s kind of hard to read it without the apparently epic off screen escapade that got Nightrunner to join up with Batman. That adventure was recorded in the rest of the Batman and Detective Comics Annuals, which were not included here. But anyway, I’m still puzzled that Nightrunner gets his philosophy from some kind of pop star’s music lyrics. And it’s totally taken seriously. I honestly like Nightrunner as a character and see his potential, but this story could have been better, though I guess it was fine enough overall. The art is the same as the 1800’s sequences in Gates, but it works better here because the tone of the tale is different.

In sum, this trade is not nearly as good as it should be. If the art was better and more time had been spent on the “villain” of the story, then it might have scored significantly higher. Also worthy of praise are the historical interludes. If you’re a Cassandra Cain fan, or even just a general Bat-kids fan, it’s worth your fifteen bucks. But otherwise, I’d shuffle it down to the bottom of my shopping list if I were you.

RATING: 6.5/10

Front page image from dcentertainment.com. Gates of Gotham #2 page from fictionnerdnews.blogspot.com. Batman Annual #28 panel from comicvine.com.

TITLE:

By Stephen McCarthy
Staff Writer, Evil Genius

Xenoblade Chronicles has finally been released, after a tremulous journey from Japan to our store shelves here in the states. After Europe got the game well before us and campaigns to get Nintendo of America to do the laziest thing possible and give us what the UK received, Nintendo caved and did exactly that. After all of this, was it worth all of the hype and praise that has been handed too it? Was it worth mounting a campaign to beg Nintendo to bring this stateside? I think it was worthwhile but I don’t think it is deserving of all the praise.

For quite a while the JRPG has been having some issues. It was the place to go for a good story and creative expansive worlds back in the late ’90s, but with games and technology catching up in terms of storytelling and world building, it seems to have had some trouble keeping up. The story is still more or less there, but the gameplay is old, stale and menu driven, and in the past years some games have been trying to find a way to make it more interactive and draw elements from other RPGs, from Fallout to Diablo to standard MMOs. These have all been somewhat hit and miss, and I think this game succeeds in a more traditional sense while falling all over itself when it comes to its more western-inspired elements.

While it is fairly fun, I think the game is held back by what I feel are design flaws. The menus, item management, sidequests and whatnot are all implemented in a way that I think seems like an afterthought. Quests are mainly fetch-based; a person asks for x number of items or x number of monsters to be killed, and so on and so forth. Rarely is it that you get something remotely interesting, like going down into a cave to search for an item that can mean everything to the village. Half the time the quest giver doesn’t even have a name. When I first enter a new area, I just simply talk to everyone to get all of the quests. If I manage to complete them before I move on then awesome; if not, oh well. I am not going to grind against enemies until I get lucky enough to get whatever items whoever is looking for.

That isn’t to say that all quests are completely boring and fetchy, but when it feels like 80% of them are this way then I stop caring to even read what people are saying. I can’t be bothered to figure out which quests are worth it. The worst part is that it feels like busy work and it is all so unrelatable that I just can’t get into it. It would be like in Fallout if some random person you talked to needed 5 raider helms to fix their roof. It doesn’t even make sense and just screams busywork.

Before we get into the thick of things, I have one thing to say: the item menus can all just go to hell. After 30 hours, I hate it probably more than anything else in the game. It’s quite obvious that the design of everything was created to facilitate use of the Wiimote. This game has the menus and leveling system of an old school RPG, but the menus lag behind. Instead of lists with names that you can blaze through, you have squares with pictures on them. You can’t easily scroll through and equip everyone quickly due to a lack of dual L&R buttons, which wouldn’t be so bad with an auto equip feature, but that is missing. I could rant on this for quite a while but it really isn’t a dealbreaker. You will either get used to it and accept it or begrudgingly try to avoid the menus as much as possible. After 30 hours I squarely fall into the latter category and I accept my fate at the hands of Nintendo’s terrible controller. However, I ended up using the Classic Controller Pro and it helped a lot.

Enough of this annoying but ultimately forgivable problems, the core gameplay is always where it is at and for an RPG where you will spend upwards of 30-50 hours using the system, it is even more important. There is plenty to do and plenty to explore but ultimately I think it falls short.

The classic three party system is used for battles but I never once had to change out my standard party once I got it assembled. About five hours in I had the characters I am still using, two attackers and one healer. There are other characters that use magic but there is no situation that I can’t smash my way through, which is a bit of a shame. While I am not one to always take the easy way out, I did find most of the battles to be fairly challenging in a new area until I leveled up. The bosses provided a decent challenge as well, but I was doing next to no sidequests and simply battling my way to a higher level which eventually stunts the growth potential.  Experience given is relative to the enemy level compared to yours so it makes it difficult and very grinding to over level.

While this is all well and good, by never switching characters I stunted other areas of growth. In Xenoblade Chronicles, characters have an affinity for each other that is gained through battle and quests…but mainly battle. The higher their affinity for each other, the better they work in battle together when it comes to combos and helping each other out. There is also the added bonus of learning more about the characters in scenes that can be activated around the maps in the game…if their affinity is high enough.  Needless to say this did not happen for me as everyone outside my three were pretty much iffy friends that had a common goal.

While some might say it is my fault for not changing things up, why should I? The game never challenged me to switch things up…ever. I use the exact same attacks and strategy in every battle and it has yet to fail me. This might eventually come to bite me in the ass but the characters still level up and gain skills at the same rate as if they were not in battle, so no foul there. The battle system is quite simple with characters auto attacking in battle with a set of skills to use on the bottom of the screen. Throwing in enemies and boss battles that challenge typical conventions would have been a welcome surprise and challenge, but it just isn’t there yet and after 30 hours, I don’t suspect it will outside of maybe a special hidden boss.

Seeing as how this game plays like an MMO with a lot of quests, it is nice to know that the maps are huge and expansive. Time changes, different weather, and different creatures in each area help to fill the world with an insatiable urge to explore. But once again, this is hindered. There is no loot to be found anywhere. There are items scattered about everywhere in the form of glowing blue orbs but those are random items and are never equipment. While I love to explore, and did, it all started to wear on me after a while. The atmosphere of each area is unique and exploring them is fun but at this point the story is in the driver seat.

A lot can be forgiven if the narrative is compelling and interesting, and Tetsuya Takahashi has succeeded for me in the past and he is doing it again. I am a fan of Xenogears and the Xenosaga franchise for which he was the lead scenario writer. All of these games have pacing issues, such as the too long cut scenes in Xenosaga Episode I, but the story was always compelling and full of great characters. I think the world and story of Xenoblade is a bit too slow to really get going, but now it is in top gear and I seem to be racing towards the finish. Outside of the slow start, this seems to be his most well-paced game.

In terms of concept, this time he has built an interesting world where two gods battled eons ago and injured one another to the point of slumber.  In the centuries following, life has sprung up all over the place on these two titans.  The lore of long ago and the secrets to be unveiled are satisfying and always seem natural. I never call out the story (sometimes the characters) for making no sense or pulling a cop out and given his past work, I have no reason to think that will be the case here either.

There is a reason this game is getting a lot of praise and the story is one of them, and it is the one area I don’t think will fall short but even if it does I don’t think it changes much.  Sometimes that is a personal feeling and I happen to like stories he weaves, but this time I don’t think it’s enough to make up for a lot of the shortcomings in other areas.  Xenoblade Chronicles is still fun and intriguing but I think its problems hold the game back from being something truly special and memorable.

RATING: 7/10

Front page image from nintendoartwork.com, screenshots from nintendoeverything.com.

TITLE:

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

That’s right folks! After almost three decades of dormancy, Earth 2 is back…sort of.

Quick history lesson: During the Silver Age of comics, 1961 specifically, DC Comics created an alternate universe which they called “Earth-Two.” Earth-Two was a parallel universe which DC used to not only revive many of the Golden Age heroes unseen since the comic book industry came under attack during the mid-1950s. Jay Garrick (The Flash), Alan Scott (Green Lantern), Sandman and Wildcat were all part of this alternate world, in addition to different versions of Superman, Wonder Woman, Robin, etc. The Justice League of “Earth-One”  would often team with the Justice Society of America on Earth-Two to face threats of epic proportions. The Earth-Two continuity was part of DC’s regular line of books until 1985, though some of the ideas and concepts introduced there were later incorporated back into the regular continuity. This title represents DC’s first attempt since then to bring it back full time, albeit with a modern day twist.

This issue opens five years in the past. We see Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all die in battle against Steppenwolf and an army of parademons from Apokolips. Shortly thereafter, Supergirl and Robin are both transported to the main DC Universe. Though the battle is won, this Earth has now been left without its heroes. But during the tail end of the issue we meet Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, who whether they know it or not, are about to fill that void.

In recent years, Alan Scott and Jay Garrick have been portrayed as older characters who were active during World War II, but are still alive due to anti-aging measures. It’s very surreal to see them as young men in the modern world. Scott is a wealthy businessman, and Garrick is directionless kid straight out of college whose girlfriend has just dumped him (and quite cruelly, I might add). I’m very interested to see how these new incarnations develop.

When I saw James Robinson’s name attached to this title, I groaned. He penned the astonishingly bad Justice League: Cry For Justice, and had a pretty mediocre run on Justice League proper. Thankfully, all is well here. Robinson has the awkward task of killing off Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in the span of about 16 pages. But he does a nice job of giving them all their little moments while instilling this battle with the sense of gravity it deserves. That being said, Superman goes out like a chump.

Nikola Scott’s art is simply gorgeous. It’s dynamic, it conveys emotion wonderfully, and Alex Sinclair’s colors are gorgeous as always. I don’t think they could have picked a better artistic team to work on a book as important as this.

One of my big complaints about Marvel and the old DC line is that there are/were too many teams. At one point, the old DCU had the Justice League, the Justice Society, the Teen Titans, the Titans, and the Outsiders all active in the same universe. And how many teams of Avengers do we have now? The Avengers, the Secret Avengers, the New Avengers, Avengers Academy… Exactly how much damn danger is the world in??? My hope is that having this new Justice Society (that is what’s coming, here) exist in an alternate universe will cut out some of the redundancy and simplify the monotony that can sometimes exist with all these heroes and teams.

All in all, I’m pleased with how Earth 2 has been set up thus far. I’m interested to see what happens with Alan and Jay, and the various other heroes they’re bound to run into along the way. With any luck, James Robinson is on the road to redemption with this series.

***

TITLE: Worlds’ Finest #1
AUTHOR: Paul Levitz
PENCILLER: George Perez, Kevin Maguire
PUBLISHER: DC Comics
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASED: May 2, 2012

This issue felt like Gail Simone wrote it, and I mean that in a good way.

The debut issue of Worlds’ Finest follows Supergirl (Kara Zor El, presumably) and Huntress (Helena Wayne, daughter of Bruce and Catwoman) as they’re transported to the main DCU from Earth 2. Wracked with grief over the loss of their loved ones, they must now adapt to this new world. Kara adopts the civilian identity of wealthy industrialist Karen Starr, as well as the heroic Power Girl. Helena takes on numerous civilian identities and patrols the night as Huntress.

DC has tried to put Power Girl and Huntress together before, as both characters were created for Earth-Two. This scenario feels much more natural than what I’ve seen in the past. The “lost in the multiverse” angle works well, despite the characters’ very different modus operandi. They have a sisterly chemistry that feels very real. I found it very similar to what Gail Simone did in Birds of Prey (which ironically featured Huntress). If this title is going to be successful, that element needs to be maintained and cared for. Kudos to Paul Levitz for creating it so early in the game.

George Perez plays a vital role in that chemistry by wonderfully creating a sense of warmth and playfulness between our girls. Kevin Maguire also pops in for the flashback scenes. I’m always happy to see his work. He does the most genuine, diverse, life-like faces I’ve ever seen.

Power Girl  has a new costume for this series. It looks pretty good, but here’s hoping slutty cosplayers will keep the old one alive at conventions. But even without it, Levitz and Perez manage to give Karen a sexy moment in this issue. Somehow she’s still the hottest chick in comics.

I was actually more impressed with this issue than I was with Earth 2, as we got to know the characters much more. Granted, Robinson had to set up all the exposition in his story, and a good portion of that was already taken care of for World’s Finest. But Levitz, Perez and Maguire were able to give Power Girl and Huntress a chemistry that could make this book a lot of fun.

Front page image from dccomics.com. Image 1 from comicbookmovie.com. Image 2 from insidepulse.com. Image 3 from bleedingcool.com.