The Book of Hsssh

The last aftermath mini featured Tattooed Man. While not a major player in Final Crisis, he was one of the leads in Submit one-shot and definitely was more significant to the plot than Human Flame or Super Young Team. Nemesis wasn't even in it at all. So how did it turn out? Over the years there have been multiple Tattooed Men in DC comics. This one was created by Geoff Johns few years before Final Crisis in Green Lantern #9. He wasn't treated very seriously there and was more of an excuse to have Hal Jordan and Batman team-up and resolve some of their differences after Green Lantern: Rebirth. While he was killing criminals there wasn't much of an attempt to make him a good guy, so basically a cool looking villain of the week. In Final Crisis Morrison tried to make him a bit more heroic, maybe an anti-hero. How did it work? I'm not certain, I don't think that pages with him were bad, but at the same time I don't feel like anything would be really missed if he wa...

So far I was basically going in the order of Frank's publications, but here I'm making a big jump ahead since after Agent of SHADE ended Gotham City Monsters was the first series since then where Frank could be considered a lead character. And Sideways fits thematically to what I want to talk about. Midnighter was the first Orlando's work that I have read and I was very optimistic about him back then. He liked lots of things that I like and he really looked like he could become next big writer for DC. Years later? Sadly, Midnighter probably remains the best thing that he has written for DC. On surface level Gotham City Monsters, like majority of Orlando's work, looks like something I should dig. It features characters that I like, it references continuity and brings back some old things that I like as well? How could I not like it?  My main problem here really is that we never really move beyond references. Melmoth is back, but he is doing same plot he did in Seven Sold...

Super Young Team was a weird bunch of characters introduced by Morrison and I didn't have much experience with Casey work so I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. Let's find out. I'm going to start with the unfortunate - asides of rare cases I'm really not a fan of multiple artists doing one story. I was kinda okay with Escape having two artists, but this has 3 and a number of inkers, it is just too much. It doesn't help that I have read some of the recent Chriscross' work and it looks much better than here. Everyone has a bit different taste and all that, but I'd say that this one has the weakest art from the four aftermath minis. With that out of the way lets talk a bit about Super Young Team. So the idea here was to create a Fifth World version of Forever People. Morrison has been pushing this Fifth World idea for a long time so it is not surprising that such team would be introduced at some point. But here is the problem, DC is never going to f...

While I love Frankenstein I'm fully aware that he is a D-lister at best and well, characters like him usually don't have long ongoing series. With that in mind it is not surprising that Frankenstein's New 52 ongoing didn't last even two years. So, lets see how Matt Kindt wraps it up. In my earlier posts I praised that Morrison, and to lesser extent Lemire, moved Frankenstein away from the traditional interpretations. Unfortunately Kindt moves in the opposite direction and much of his run is focused on Doctor Frankenstein. We also spend some time on Frank having some visions about the previous owners of his body parts that starts and stops without much narrative purpose. Didn't like either of those two things. Kindt basically writers two one-shots and two three issues long arcs. First one-shot and three issues arc slowly sets up the return of Doctor Frankenstein, while second arc is a tie-in to Rotworld crossover. And final one-shot does its own thing. So, Doctor Fra...

Out of the four aftermath miniseries released after Final Crisis this one was the one I was the most excited about. While he didn't have a major role, Human Flame ended up being responsible for MM's death. Death that kickstarted the entire event. So what happens to this loser when the dust settles? Lets find out. I like the first two issues of this mini. Sturges establishes rather well that Human Flame is out of shape Z-lister who is way over his head. He is also a total scumbag who refuses to take any responsibility for his actions and always blames someone else for it. So you know, he totally deserves all the pain that is coming. Luther has put out a bounty for his head and John Stewart is searching for him as well. Someone will get him and he'll get what he deserves. Unfortunately following four issues are something else. Human Flame characterization is there, he still blames everyone else for everything, but he get three power-ups during the series. Three. At the start ...

I have not bothered to count it, but I feel like Jeff Lemire is most prolific Frankenstein's writer. He wrote a mini, an ongoing and later did use Frankenstein in his various other books. In this blog post I'll be covering his solo adventures, while stuff like Justice League Dark (or Futures End if we ever get to that!) might warrant a separate post entirely. Lemire started writing Frankenstein during Flashpoint event. Frank got his own mini and was paired up with other universal movies inspired monsters. This pairing makes sense and I wonder why previous versions of Creature Commandos did not include some version of Frankenstein*? Anyway, this miniseries is often praised as one of the good things that came out during Flashpoint event and... it probably says a lot about overall quality of Flashpoint event? Frankenstein's mini is not well plotted or well written, artist changes every issue so art direction is all over the place as well and it ends just as it starts going. On...

When someone talks about Final Crisis these days they usually mention failed build-up, Bruce Wayne "dying" or that it was actually good/bad. Nobody really talks about other things connected to it, like 4 Aftermath series that were released after the event ended. No surprise there really, they all sold poorly and focused on things that nobody cares about. But that makes them perfect for this blog. Escape is probably the weirdest one of the bunch. At a first glance it has nothing to do with Final Crisis. Nemesis and Chase weren't even featured in that event, Electric City wasn't mentioned either. Only thing that kinda connects it is Global Peace Agency (GPA), but even that is not a direct connection. But then you read it couple of times and it clicks, you see the bigger picture. Or you think that you see it. So the entire series is based on British The Prisoner TV show. Everyone pretends that they have seen it and totally get it so without elaborating too much: Nemesis ...