TOP TEN COMICS OF ALL TIME

1 - Animal Man

• Written by Grant Morrison
• Art by Chaz Truog et al.

2 - Watchmen

• Written by Alan Moore
• Art by Dave Gibbons

3 - New Gods

• By Jack Kirby

4 - DC: The New Frontier

• By Darwyn Cooke

5 - The Dark Knight Returns

• By Frank Miller (& Klaus Janson)

6 - Justice League of America

• Written by Gardner Fox
• Art by Mike Sekowsky

7 - Identity Crisis

• Written by Brad Meltzer
• Art by Rags Morales

8 - Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics

• By Tom Scioli

9 - Green Lantern: Rebirth

• Written by Geoff Johns
• Art by Ethan Van Sciver

10 - Superman & Batman: World's Funnest

• Written by Evan Dorkin
• Art by Dave Gibbons et al.

NOTE: I limited my selections to one per writer, or else the entire list would be Grant Morrison and Alan Moore comics.

 

52 #40-52 Annotations

[VOL IV - Spring]

52 #40 - "Man Ain't Nothing But A Man"

• Everyman finale!
• Steel, Offspring, Beast Boy, Raven, and Aquagirl invade the Lexcorp building, fighting Infinity Inc.
• John Henry takes on Super-Lex; he gets waxed but frees Natasha with his hammer.
• Nat reveals that Luthor's off-switch on New Years was a electrical pulse that disorganized the metagene, using Steel's atomic hammer to nullify Luthor's powers.
• John Henry explains that the everyman metagene is toxic and would have killed Luthor in six months.
• The day is saved!
• In Kahndaq, the plagues have destabilized the country.
• Osiris believes he himself is the cause: his killing of Persuader during #34 has cursed him and the country.
• He and Sobek embark on a quest to find the Rock of Eternity so he can find a new family and new powers to set everything right.

52 #41 - "Miracles & Wonders"

• Adam Strange and Starfire's Warbird is attacked by a bounty hunter named Molek. They take him down, but not before he trashes the Warbird and injures Starfire.
• Molek claims Lady Styx might not be as dead as we think...
• Renee has been in Nanda Parbat getting over the death of Charlie. Tot and Richard try to help her shed the grief and look inwards for revelation, but she refuses.
• Ralph goes to Haven and meets with Prof Milo, a golden age Batman villain who is now wheelchair bound.
• Ralph removes the wheel from his handicap, revealing that he faked a disability so he could sneak in an artifact, the silver wheel of nyorlath...
• But milo is actually disabled!
• As the haven security is about to apprehend Ralph, Fate zaps him away. All these artifacts he's been gathering, the time for the ritual has come...
• Back in Nanda Parbat, Renee converses with a lone black haired woman... it's Diana!?!?!
• Diana claims that she is waiting for a friend who will give her a new life.
• Diana tells Renee to once more stop fearing her inner demons, and instead embrace the mystery unfolding.
• As Adam Strange and Starfire tumble towards a red sun, Adam explains that his constant need to overachieve stems from his insecurity: on Rann he's won the love of Alanna by being a hero and super-man compared to the rest of the infertile Rannian men, but on Earth he's just a regular guy.
• Starfire tells him to get over himself, and he gains a second wind to repair the ship.
• However, the ship crashes into a sudden celestial object...
• It's green lantern mogo! and Opto309V!

52 #42 - "Trigger Effect"

• Opener: Renee sees her reflection in the cave... but it's her with no face, as the Question!
• BRILLIANT!
• The Death of Ralph Dibny!
• We've been duped... but Ralph hasn't!
• The ritual is set within the Tower of Fate...
• Ralph aims the gun, the same gun he had in #1, the same gun he stole from the Flash museum in #33, and shoots the helm off his head!
• The helm is Felix Faust?!? He had taken the ring from the fire! He had animated the hay mannequin! He crafted a fake helm of fate for a body out of the gold of the ring! He killed Tim Trench!
• Ralph found out because everything that had been happening had gone according to his wish back in #1, the wish for him to be with Sue!
• Felix Faust planned to trade Ralph's soul at his breaking point to free himself from a debt to Neron.
• Neron arrives, but Ralph refuses to let him take Faust's soul.
• Neron kills Ralph by shooting his wedding ring through his chest, but not before he and Faust discover the wish Ralph made on the wishing gun was to bind Faust and Neron to the tower of fate.
• Ralph dies, and his wedding ring is returned to Sue's gravestone, where Fire finds it.

52 #43 - "Family Matters"

• Osiris and Sobek descend into the Rock of Eternity, meeting with the Shazamily!
• Mary vouches for him, but Freddy explains that Osiris' murder of Persuader has caused the DMA to investigate the Titans.
• Osiris wants Captain Marvel to remove his powers, but Black Adam and Isis confront Osiris.
• Classic Geoff Johns irrational squabbling occurs, but everybody calms down as Isis convinces Osiris to return with them.
• Buddy is resurrected by the Yellow Aliens and returned to the continuum. Just before he's killed by the vacuum of space, Buddy reaches out and grabs the powers of the Sun-Eater herd!
• The pregnant chick Lady Styx nabbed back in #31 gives birth to a new Lady Styx!
• Osiris tells Sobek that he's leaving, but Sobek tells him he can be freed of the curse by transforming back to Amon.
• He does, but then...
• SOBEK EATS AMON! HE'S THE HORSEMAN OF FAMINE!

52 #44 - "Deaths in the Family"*

• Well God damn...
• The end of the black marvel family.
• Isis and Adam find the corpse of Osiris as they are confronted by Yurrd, horseman of famine, and his brothers.
• Huge brawl ensues. Adam kills Sobek/Famine. Isis is poisoned by pestilence.
• Black Adam kills War and Pestilence. Just before Death kills him, Isis blasts Death away from Kahndaq with lava.
• Isis succumbs to the plague as she tells Adam that he was right from the beginning with his Freedom of Power treaty and the war against the evils of man. She tells him to avenge her and Osiris.
• The flower Isis gave to Renee back in #26 disintegrates. She knows Isis is gone.
• Tot and Richard present Renee with equipment to begin her new journey.
• She embarks to Kahndaq to discover what happened.

52 #45 - "Every Hour Wounds, The Last Kills"

• The funeral of Isis occurs in Kahndaq. It hasn't stopped raining since she passed.
• Black Adam meets with Renee Montoya, she tries to offer some sympathy, but Adam is having none of it. He tells her she should return to Gotham, as Intergang begins to expand it's agenda.
• Azraeuz is given santcuary by Bialya, a country embracing Intergang's new world order of crime. When the president contacts Manheim for help, he pretty much ignores them.
• Apparently Oolong Island and Chang Tzu have seceded from Intergang by barring communications, but Manheim claims he has a mole on the inside of the Science Squad...
• Adam attacks Bialya and kills every man, woman, and child. He fights with Azraeuz, and tortures him for information and motives.
• The world begins mounting a response, as Checkmate starts putting together a plan, made up of Mister Terrific and Alan Scott and Sasha Bordeaux.
• Amanda Waller wants to make a Suicide Army of 100+ criminals, but Atom-Smasher refuses the call and threatens to expose her if she tries to stop him.
• In China, the Great Ten convene, but Thundermind doubts the agenda of the NCP and Chinese gov, which makes August General in Iron + Socialist Red Guardsman irritated. Could the Great Ten have some connection to Intergang or the Four Horsemen...
• Black Adam heads towards Oolong Island after discovering the origin of the Four Horsemen, and Sivana is ecstatic to go toe to toe with his rival!

52 #46 - "Mad Science"

• THE BEST ISSUE OF THE WHOLE SERIES!
• Black Adam vs the Science Squad! An assault on Oolong Island!
• Cale is the mole for Manheim? She unlocks the blast doors.
• Whatever's happening is much bigger than crime... apostles of anti-life, servants of death and despair...
• and a FINAL CRISIS NAME DROP!
• Morrow is in a bidding war for the scrap remains of Red Tornado!
• IQ rallies the scientists, and they defeat Black Adam!
• Luthor almost escapes his arraignment if not for Clark Kent and Steel!
• The JSA surveys the scorched earth of Bialya. No survivors are found.
• Atom-Smasher returns and joins them. He wants to bring in Black Adam.

52 #47 - "Revelations"

• In Nanda Parbat, Bruce has entered the Thogal ritual for 7 days in darkness. A ritual of spiritual purification. The Ten Eyed Tribe have cut his demons out, demons that provided some comfort and protection. Bruce & Tim climbed the 9999 steps of Nanda Parbat. Will Bruce survive?
• Tim waits outside the cave, and the monk tells him a riddle: there is a goose in a bottle, how will you get him out without killing the goose or breaking the bottle?
• Manheim and Whisper find out that Batwoman is Kate Kane.
• Will Magnus completes the Plutonium Man, a dark mirror of everything the Metal Men are.
• Animal Man gets sun-eater powers and can travel through Space B: a higher dimension of sorts that Sun-Eater shoals use to migrate. He can use it to instantaneously get back to Earth. He witnesses a moment one month ahead of now (4 weeks), characterized as a spherical entity which is super dope. The moment depicts Ellen and a male acquaintance returning from a date. Buddy gets sucked in and returns to the story.
• Natasha declines an invitation from Beast Boy to join the Titans, instead becoming a part of John Henry's team, Steelworks! John Henry gets a kiss from Dr Avasti!
• Renee looks for Kate at her apartment, only to find it trashed. She's been taken by Intergang! Nightwing arrives at the same time, and they team up to save her.
• Diana meets with Rama Kushna and gains wisdom, knowledge of the pain and lack of perfection in mortality, enhancing her perspective to rebuild her mission.
• Tim answers the monk's riddle: the goose is only in the bottle because he said so; the goose and bottle are mere words, now the goose is free...
• Bruce emerges from the cave with a smile on his face.
• Batman has been put in a box by his creators since the 1940s. Grant Morrison is saying that box does not exist, freeing him to evolve as we segway into the greatest run on the character.

52 #48 - "Asked & Answered"

• The Question reborn!
• Dick and Montoya team up to stop Manheim from killing Kate and turning Gotham into an Apokoliptan Fire-Pit.
• Abbott goes turncoat on Intergang and helps Nightwing disables the devices across the city.
• Renee puts the pseudoderm mask on, becoming the newest Question!
• Does the man dream of the butterfly, or is it the butterfly that dreams it's a man?
• She arives just in time to see Kate get stabbed in the heart, but she survives and throws the knife into Bruno's back.
• Back at Oolong island, Chang Tzu announces to the world his capture of Black Adam; opening up him for sale to the highest bidder!

52 #49 - "Eve of Destruction"

• The JSA and Great Ten come to a standoff on the beaches of Oolong Island.
• Oolong Island is revealed as property of the Chinese government, and everything unravels:
• Chang Tzu is a reserve member of the Great Ten! After Black Adam departed the Freedom of Power treaty, he angered powerful people as mentioned way back in #24, and those powerful people were the Chinese government. Using intergang money, Chang Tzu and the science squad built weapons to destroy the Black Marvel family, the weapons being hosts to powerful apokoliptan old gods in the form of the Four Horsemen.
• The reason the Great Ten are here is because Chang Tzu has betrayed them, and if any of this info gets out, they are screwed.
• But how did Alan Scott know this? Well it was Thundermind who beamed the expo into his mind!
• Magnus reveals to Chang Tzu that the Plutonium Man was a farce, he rebuilt the metal men in miniature form!
• Magnus lets Morrow escape via teleportation to Sivana's Omnibot above the Earth's orbit.
• Chang Tzu gets turned into Egg Fu by Metal Men and Magnus' bi-polar trigger-finger!
• Atom-Smasher frees Black Adam, and he escapes to wage war on those who took is family from him.
• Infinity Inc chumps still want to prove themselves and claim they'll step up when it really matters...

52 #50 - "World War III"

• The title says it all!
• Black Adam ravages the world.
• He busts up China, totaling the great ten as he kills the seven deadly brothers, yeti, shaolin robot, and he might have taken out the Immortal-Man-In-darkness as well.
• Nuklon and the Infinity Inc scrubs pussy out at the last second.
• Just as Nat and JH are about to launch a nanite missile, Booster warps in and yoinks it...
• Billy and the magic gang zap Adam with a controlled javelin of the living lightning that transforms him back to Teth-Adam. However, Billy also changes the name of power that activates Black Adam to something he claims Adam will never guess.

52 #51 - "Homecoming"

• Buddy makes it back home!
• Big super-hero funeral/gathering.
• Bruce and Clark meet up. Diana has a new identity as Agent Prince. I guess she works for the DMA with Sarge Steel?
• Donna was the Wonder Woman we saw in #50!
• Tim Drake new costume, dropping the green and yellow for just red and black to honor Superboy. Talks with Ravager about her dad.
• Red Devil! He was in the Teen Titans audition issue #32 with a crappy costume but now has powers? Must look into the post IC issues for his origin.
• Adam Strange gets his eyes back! And he's back on Rann with John Stewart, Opto309V and Sardath.
• Emerald Eye of Ekron is a prototype will-powered weapon, and Ekron was an ancient primordial green lantern before they came up with the rings.
• Lobo takes the emerald eye to the triple headed fish god, who wanted it since he's prophesied to be killed by that very weapon. Lobo fulfills the prophecy!
• Alien bounty hunters show up to the Baker house but Starfire disintegrates them before collapsing.
• Morrow lures Skeets to his bunker in the Rocky Mountains. Skeets reveals that Red Tornado caught a glimpse of the garden, and made a map...
• Rip and Booster show up, but not before Skeets reveals his true form:
• He's not skeets, but in fact Mister Mind! After being bombarded by suspendium thanks to Sivana, Mind has metamorphized into the hyperfly!
• The gang hops into Rip's new timesphere. We have to go back to where it all started! We have to go back! 

52 #52 - "A Year In The Life"

• The revelation is upon us!
• 52! When Superboy destroyed alex luthor's machine, the thousand earths collapsed back into one, and then unfolded into 52 identical universes to keep from imploding.
• Mister Mind in his Hyperfly form is on the chase. With every flap of his wings, with every bite he takes out of history, the timelines of this newfound multiverse are shifted.
• Mind throws up the phantom zone to trap the time-sphere, but Supernova emerges to blow the blast with his projector tech suit. Who's under the mask? None other than Daniel Carter!
• Daniel was trapped in a 52 second time loop by Skeets back in #19, the same 52 seconds that Doctor Tyme was looking for in #39.
• Rip freed him and put Daniel at this moment, because he used Morrow's tech that allowed him to see glimpses of the future.
• If they don't stop mister mind, his larvae will drain the multiverse, leaving a husk of worlds to die in darkness!
• Rip goes time diving and nabs the suspendium, aka Sivana's artificial time, from the bald bastard's lab while leaving him with one less kneecap!
• Booster goes back and meets Ted Kord one day after the original COIE, getting him to repair Skeets and give him a power source.
• They build a flytrap out of skeet's body, combining the suspendium to keep Hyperfly sated while they prep the final play: Booster throws a flytrap hail mary backwards in time to build up chronal energy, turning the flytrap into a time bomb that will seal the rift in time mister mind has created. Daniel catches it right at week 1/day 1 and spikes it to revert mister mind back to his worm-form.
• Sivana finds him in the crater, and ensures the time loop!
• So mind had crawled into skeets when magnus was repairing him; but we saw mind cocooning in sivanas lab back in #3... continuity discrepancies but whatever, it's still good!
• Per Morrison:  I can confirm that the 'cocoon' spun by Mister Mind doubled as a matter transporter, which allowed him to beam himself inside Skeets after seeing him on TV.
• They can rebuild skeets, his consciousness is preserved!
• The world is still looking for black Adam. Alan Scott and Mister Terrific plan to join Checkmate to hunt him down. Black Adam has made two crocodile-skin boots out of Sobek?
• Fire-pit in a school, creepy drawings made by children, it's up to Ralph and Sue Dibny: Ghost Detectives!
• Magnus rebuilds skeets, but his memory is a backup from week 2! Booster will fill him in!
• Renee recreates the panel sequence that Vic did back in #1, and shines the bat signal on Kate Kane's apartment.
• Are you ready?

52 #27-39 Annotations

[VOL III - Winter]

52 #27 - "The Past Best Hope"

• So this is something I had to stop reading and look up on the wiki: Crispus Allen becomes the new host in Infinite Crisis, but apparently refuses the offer. Spectre gives him a year to think on it, hence the hostless version we see here.
• Spectre will resurrect Sue only if Ralph can punish Jean Loring Eclipso accordingly. They travel back to the night Sue was murdered (fixing the mysterious sound plot-hole) and Ralph restores Jean's sanity so she can suffer in a time loop watching her past self murder his wife. However, Ralph can't do it, and he pulls them both back to the present. Failing to hold up his end of the bargain, Ralph and the Helm choose to go to Nanda Parbat (to meet with Deadman or Rama Kushna?)
• Waverider hides in a clock shop, witnessing Time Commander die in front of him. Apparently he recruited the Time Stealers to fight against whatever mysterious threat is influencing the time stream (Skeets?)
• Fun reference to HG Wells.
• So Alex Luthor caused the refactoring of history, but the new earth and this missing year after the crisis is described as wet cement and honey by Skeets.
• Rip Hunter's true name and details of birth are secret...
• Skeets is made of dead waverider's skin!!!
• Renee has been trained by Richard Dragon, while Tot learns about the religion of crime via stolen crime bible.
• Vic has lung cancer!
• So the prophecy is that Manheim will kill Kate Kane! Twice-named...

52 #28 - "Beyond the Black Stump"

• Vic and Renee travel to Gotham and meet with Kate Kane/Batwoman, telling her that in three days the prophecy of her dying is to occur.
• Ridge-Ferrick arrives in aussie-land. Why is intergang down under? Uranium Mining Development...
• Johnny Warrawa was white the last time we saw him but is back to being aboriginal?
• Where are the scraps of red tornado going?
• Lobo and the space gang are hunted by the emerald head of ekron!
• The prophecy doesn't come true, but Manheim hints that Renee and Vic are part of it too, referring to them as "The Questions"...
• The Emerald Head of Ekron is revealed as a Green Lantern! The eye is part of his arsenal, and when Lobo stole it (because Ekron apparently offended the Triple Fish God), Ekron was defenseless as sector 3500 was destroyed by the stygian passover.
• Ekron teams up with the gang as they head towards this cosmic tyrant!

52 #29 - "Name Calling"

• Jeez they are doing a great job of making you hate these infinity inc everyman stooges.
• Obsidian drops in to start some trouble but alan pulls him out.
• New hero Jade joins infinity inc. Disrespectful af.
• Harder and harder to see any redemption for Natasha at this point.
• Komrade Krabb
• Science Squad thanksgiving! Fucking hilarious.
• Veronica Cale femme fatale evil genius, she's working on the secret weapons of Project X, definitely related to the fourth world tech Intergang has acquired.
• She snitches on Magnus, and Chang Tzu takes his meds away.
• Ferry gets a race switch... the errors due to the weekly schedule are becoming more apparent the more I read...
• John Henry peels off the steel skin! There's an expiration date on the everyman powers!

52 #30 - "Dark Knight Down"

• So Bruce, Dick, and Tim have been traveling the world to recreate the journey that built the batman, and they believe it's happening because he wants them both to become the new batman and robin.
• Charlie is admitted to hospice care within Kate Kane's apartment she lets them use.
• Dick and Tim intercept an intergang weapons shipment in north africa.
• Bruce has dipped out on Dick and Tim towards the desert, the empty quarter, to have the ten eyed tribe cut out his demons accumulated through the grim-dark age since the death of jason todd.
• Dick returns to gotham and Tim finds bruce in the desert, who claims that Batman is gone.
• Dick meets Kate/Batwoman in gotham as they take out the intergang monster men.

52 #31 - "Human Resources"

• Captain Comet faces the Stygian Passover!
• Lanterns Thormon Tox and Xax are looking for Lantern Ekron. The Guardians fear the Stygian Passover and recall all lanterns.
• Lady Styx is our villain! She comes from the forever pit outside of the multiverse?
• "Believe in Her"
• Believer Cubes, Glorifiers = undead zombie soldiers.
• Ewww. Everyman Hannibal Bates needs to digest matter to takes its form. He pretends to be Natasha's boyfriend. Nasty mf.
• Ralph meets with Cassie, and she reveals that she found out Devem was a scam. She still believes that Conner was resurrected in the form of Supernova. Ralph lies to her about where he went, telling her Marseilles after reading it off the dossier given to Cassie.
• Ralph knows who Supernova is.
• Captain Comet is crucified at the head of Lady Styx's warship as she kills the GL's and eats one of their power rings like popcorn.
• Lobo, Ekron, and the space gang witness everything.

52 #32 - "Seven Days in Nanda Parbat"

• Ralph and the helm venture to Nanda Parbat. He helps the Accomplished Perfect Physician subdue the Yeti with an amulet that contains his rage.
• Ralph communes with Rama Kushna who tells him how he can be with her again.
• Ralph claims that he wrote his own end back in the ambassador hotel, be careful what you wish for...
• Osiris and Sobek want to join the Teen Titans, but Freddy Freeman is skeptical. He tells Osiris to convince the world that he is not a murderer like Black Adam, and he will help him join.

52 #33 - "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year"

• Christmas in the DCU!
• Ralph takes the gun we saw in #1 from the flash museum...
• Dick gives Batwoman a real batarang
• Luthor continues to fail to qualify for the metagene everyman procedure, so he tells his scientists to harvest the genetics of a test subject who initially resisted the metagene but then accepted in hopes he can overcome his own immunity.
• Charlie succumbs to delirium due to the chemotherapy and remembers people from his past. Renee spends time with Kate.
• The space squad arrives in Vega.
• Black Adam and the fam work to clear up their public image by depowering before the world.
• Amanda Waller gathers her ad-hoc suicide squad led by Atom-Smasher featuring Owen Mercer, Plastique, Electrocutioner, Count Vertigo, and some kind of version of the Persuader.

52 #34 - "Suicidal Tendencies"

• New years eve!
• Osiris and Sobek join the Teen Titans.
• The Black Marvels convene just to be attacked by Atom-Smasher's Suicide Squad.
• Persuader is about to kill Isis when he's torn in half by Osiris flying right through him.
• It was Waller's plan the whole time and she gets video recording.
• John Henry teams up with the Birds of Prey to meet with Natasha in secret, revealing to her that he's lost his steel skin and his suspicions of Trajectory dying at the hands of Blockbuster as one of Luthor's designs.
• Luthor kidnaps Clark Kent, injects him with truth serum, and questions him on Supernova's secret identity. Clark tells him Supernova is not Superman.
• Charlie is put in the hospital and Renee stays at his bedside.
• Luthor once again fails to qualify for the metagene, and activates some kind of remote to create a crisis that Supernova will fail to stop.

52 #35 - "Rain of the Supermen"

• Luthor turns off everyone with the everyman metagene except for Infinity Inc
• Supernova and the reg supes do damage control
• John Henry assembles the Titans
• Natasha suspects Luthor of foul play and confides in Skyman...
• The space squad arrives in the remains of the planet Vartu from #31
• Adam Strange plans for Lobo to give the three up to Lady Styx as a trojan horse so they can destroy her war machine from the inside.

52 #36 - "How To Win A War In Space"

• Animal Man and Starfire are brought inside Lady Styx's chambers by Lobo and Fishy.
• There's no bounty and Styx plans on eating the heroes and removing the intel from their brain stems.
• She insults the shit out of the Triple Fish God, causing Lobo to forsake his vows and revert to good ol fashion Main Man Ultraviolence!
• Adam Strange blows a hole in the hull as Ekron rams Lady Styx into a group of migrating Sun-Eaters. They are both devoured.
• Animal Man ends up getting shot by necro-toxin and succumbs to the poison. His wife and kids somehow feel his passing.
• Charlie continues to get worse, so Renee says screw it and decides to take him back to Nanda Parbat, leaving Kate to deal with Intergang in Gotham.
• Osiris gets booted from the Titans, but Sobek comforts him.
• Supernova is revealed to be working with Rip Hunter, who is suffering from some kind of temporal-linguistic-dissonance. He's building a device out of stolen weaponry from across the DCU that Supernova has been collecting.
• They are hiding from Skeets inside the Bottle City of Kandor!
• But Skeets is here anyway!

52 #37 - "Secret Identities"

• Skeets tries to destroy Kandor, but Supernova sheds his costume to reveal himself as...
• BOOSTER FREAKING GOLD!
• When booster and skeets went into Rip's bunker back in #6, Rip met with him and revealed the truth behind Skeets and they made a plan to stop him...
• Booster faked his death by switching places with his future corpse, going back in time to before Supernova appeared to show up as him alongside his past self. He and Rip operated out of the leveled Fortress of Solitude using kryptonian tech to make the Supernova costume out of the Phantom Zone projector!
• Rip rebuilds the projector out of the torn suit and tries to suck skeets in, but Skeets devours the entire Phantom Zone!
• Rip and Booster warp away, but Skeets follows...
• Hal helps Ollie rebuild Star City, while Ollie and Dinah chat about Ralph.
• Buddy is laid to rest in an impromptu funeral as Lobo and the gang prepare to go their separate ways.
• Adam Strange doesn't remember what they saw beyond, what Lady Styx wanted to kill them for.
• Buddy is resurrected by the Yellow Aliens!

52 #38 - "Breathless"

• Renee and Charlie venture through the snowy steps of the Himalayas towards the hidden city of Nanda Parbat.
• Magnus is off his meds and hyper as hell, rebuilding the Plutonium Man.
• We see the unveiling of the four horsemen: Yurrd the unknown (famine), Roggra (war), Zorrm (pestilence), and Azraeuz (war). These were four old Apokoliptan gods at the dawn of the fourth world given form by these physical bodies (final crisis hinting).
• We see only three of them, as the horseman of famine Yurrd rode out before his brothers. Apparently their mission is to remove the threat of Black Adam, since he's been destabilizing their efforts in Kahndaq.
• Cale expresses some regret over her contributions to Project X.
• John Henry and Beast Boy plan how they will deal with Luthor, but worry that his end goal might be to remove the powers of regular heroes.
• Natasha makes contact with them and reveals that Luthor is hiding something in a secret room. She apologizes for everything she's done, and prepares to venture alone.
• Renee and Charlie climb through snowstorms, but Charlie gains a final moment of lucidity before the gates of Nanda Parbat are revealed to them... as he passes away...
• Who is Renee Montoya, what will she become...

52 #39 - "Powers & Abilities"

• Dennis blows up his lab to cover something up, but Natasha and Jake witness him doing it.
• Mercy discovers what he was hiding...
• Ralph and the Helm venture to destroyed Atlantis to get one of the shackles of Arion. They meet with what appears to be a memory-donked Arthur who tells the that getting a shackle means freeing the monster it imprisons. Ralph replaces the shackle with his makeshift straw wedding ring.
• The four horsemen are sent on their way through a boom tube.
• Morrow suspects Magnus is gathering various metals to rebuild the metal men, but he distracts his mentor with the revelation that Red Tornado is in scraps in Australia!
• But we see that Magnus has been rebuilding the Metal Men, and Mercury hides in tiny form!
• Doctor Tyme asks Sivana about his missing 52 seconds, but Sivana shows him Suspendium, artificial time he created.
• Sivana reveals that before he was captured, he had been zapping the worm Mister Mind with Suspendium to possibly unleash his full potential. Since then, Suspendium has been acting strange...
• Sobek tells Adam and Isis that Osiris believes himself to be cursed by his powers.
• The skies over Kahndaq turn black as Isis' garden dies.
• Luthor and the everyman scientists prepare a subject for metagene procedure while Natasha watches with her bug drone.
• Jake reveals to her that he's not Jake, he's Hannibal, and he's been eating jake!
• Natasha zaps him, but it's blocked by Luthor who has Superman level powers! Dennis had been lying about Luthor's incompatibility with the metagene procedure!

52 #14-26 Annotations

[VOL II - Fall]

52 #14 - "Sand & Rust"

• Vic and Renee arrive in Kahndaq.
• John has built a new suit for Nat, though she is part of Lex's new everyman squad.
• What appears to be the US gov wants Will's metal men as new age smart weapons.
• Haven has some crazy security systems: dogs and birds and chicks with Uzis riding bikes in ice cream cars.
• Morrow vanishes from his cell, leaving a letter to Will behind, a note written in machine code
• I love the question wordplay!
• "I swear before this is over I'm gonna hold his dead body in my hands."
• What's the deal with the rat poison?
• Mercury is back! Did Will use the machine code provided by Morrow?

52 #15 - "Outshined"

• THE DEATH OF BOOSTER GOLD!
• Everything is going downhill for him as he leaps into his last hurrah to gain some favor.
• Supernova has more of a personality in this, but we still don't know who he is.
• Sea monster hijacks nuclear sub into metropolis.
• Supernova zaps the monster away, but Booster tries to absorb the radiation into his forcefield and ends up getting skeletized!
• Renee and Vic escape from Kahndaqi prison.

52 #16 - "Uhebbuki"

• Black Adam proposes to Isis.
• Renee and Vic have been hiding out in the shipping container Tot Rodor sent them. She gets the kirby-tech gun!
• An answer to the rat poison! = an anti-coagulant to coat the shrapnel, maximum damage!
• The whole marvel family is here! Tawky Tawny, Mary, Freddy, and even Uncle Dudley!
• They are married, as the suicide bomber is killed by Renee.
• The bomber said an interesting prayer, mentioning Cain killing Abel. What secret lies in this new revamped Intergang?
• Uhebukki is I love you in Arabic.
• Adam Strange, Buddy Baker, and Kori finally leave the prison planet!

52 #17 - "Last of the Czarnians"

• Erik Storn = claws
• Eliza Harmon = speed
• Hannibal bates = shapeshifting
• Gerome McKenna = strength
• Jacob Colby = flight?
• Trouble in paradise for the Everymen, as the fast one Eliza claims she can't slow down after Luthor gave her powers. She uses a device/drug called sharp for relief.
• The space gang is caught in an asteroid field
• Buddy mentions the events of the 80's Animal Man series written by Grant, and he tries to rationalize the experience of meeting the writer.
• Adam Strange talking about how he gets zeta beamed away from Alanna before they start bickering as well as the fact that he likes being a loner is hilarious.
• Devilance tracks the ship down is about to strike until he is killed by Lobo!
• Was the asteroid field as trap for Lobo?
• Lobo has found religion?
• How does Lobo need these heroes' help?
• The remains of Red tornado are found by aboriginals in Australia! And all he says is 52...

52 #18 - "Dismantled"

• House of Mystery! Cain!
• Croatoan Society? Ralph, Detective Chimp, Terri Thirteen (could this just be Traci?), Tim Trench and Edogawa Sangaku
• Tim Trench was wearing the helm of fate, Terri touches him, and he becomes a puddle of water?
• So we're calling the shape-shifting intergang goons the "monster men"? Love it!
• Booster gold funeral = we get an appearance of Mind-grabber man from SS
• Skeets finds what appears to be an ancestor of Booster = Daniel Carter
• Ralph joins Shadowpact in Egypt to activate the Helm
• The helm reveals some secrets about the 10th age of magic, and how Tim trench tried to use the power of fate without any of the training, so he got liquified
• The helm wants Ralph to be the new bearer, and promises him powers (to possibly bring back Sue?)
• But the Shadowpact says Ralph is imagining the Helm talking to him...

52 #19 - "History Repeats"

• Skeets reveals that he had to watch the atomic lock while Booster entered the vault of rip hunter, so will we ever find out about the chalkboard + "all his fault stuff?"
• A big dump of reveals regarding whats going on with the space stuff...
• Lobo had an epiphany and turned into a priest of the triple fish god, with a talking dolphin as his servant
• The planetary debris they arrive on seems to be a refugee camp, refugees from an annihilated sector 3500 destroyed in something called the Stygian Passover.
• what was a new god doing on the fringes of space...
• lobo and fishy are going into sector 3500 on a pilgrimage to the three golden planets
• the person who put a price on our trio's heads is the same who destroyed sector 3500
• the emerald eye of ekron! used by emerald empress in the legion of superheroes future!
• Wonder girl, still crazy, thinks that Supernova is Conner...
• SKEETS IS EVIL!
• What secret did Hunter find out about Skeets?
• Daniel gets caught in a time loop vortex!

52 #20 - "God is Fragged"

• What does Supernova want with Batman's kryptonite gauntlet
• The Batman style crime busts are definitely Batwoman
• Luthor has a everyman power kill-switch!
• interstellar carrion that feeds on dying planets! Did someone send them?
• buddy gets space-fauna powers!
• lobo gets shredded
• Starfire can survive the power of the emerald eye
• the emerald head of ekron???
• was is lobo who ripped it out of Ekron's head, or did he acquire it from someone else?
• Is Ekron in league with the mystery villain and the stygian passover?

52 #21 - "Teambuilding Exercises"

• Trajectory is let back on the everyman team, which is now referred to as "Infinity Inc."
• Skyman, Nuklon, Starlight, Fury, Everyman, and Trajectory
• New version of Blockbuster
• Ralph and the Helm of Fate enter the Aztec Underworld...
• Ad-Hoc Titans group: Beast Boy, Raven, Hot Spot, Power Boy and Little Barda, Zachary Zatara
• So Luthor turns up Blockbuster (most likely controlling him the whole time) and turns off Trajectory leading to her demise.
• Titans lose a couple of members, but Gar pledges to help John Henry with his suspicions about the Everyman project and luthor.
• In Australia, a mechanic puts red tornado back together into a scrap body
• Is Johnny Warrawa the aboriginal guy we met back in #17, and Mungo is this white guy, or are there three people? Not sure why the art is confusing me. Or Johnny is this white guy who's in the shop and mungo is the one outside with the beer?

52 #22 - "Burial Ground"

• Luthor thinks Supernova is Superman, we obviously know it's not since Clark and him have interacted.
• Luthor is incompatible with the metagene therapy...
• Jon Standing Bear and this ginger chick who wants to join the Everyman program
• He's a descendent of Super-Chief! The Iroquois hero!
• Jesus christ, he kills his gramps and takes the sky stone.
• John Henry recruits a man named Ferry who claims that Luthor gave him powers and then took them away.
• Magnus calls his brother David who mentions the Moz-OC organization known as SHADE
• Some interesting retcons: all of the wild revamps of the metal men have been now labeled as a fever dream psychosis from Magnus' mental breakdown after the plutonium man went rogue.
• The US military besieges Magnus' home and send their soulless versions of the metal men to capture him. He and mercury fend them off, but something else attempts to intercept Magnus, taking out the military goons.
• It looks like a giant sentinel from marvel, but it blows up the house. 

52 #23 - "The Island of Professor Morrow"

• The monster men! So intergang is the one kidnapping mad scientists?
• Oolong island!
• Omni-Bot
• Baron Bug, Rigoro Mortis, IQ
• Book of Crime, religion of crime
• Amon Tomaz, Isis brother, gets handicapped by the monster men and whisper a'daire!
• Question grabs the crime bible
• Black Adam adds Amon to the family, he gets shazam powers. Takes the name, Osiris!
• What will the black adam family do in China?

52 #24 - "Just Imagine"

• Jason Rusch has put together an ad-hoc JLA, consisting of himself, Firehawk, Super-Chief, Bulleteer, and Ambush Bug.
• Ollie is running for mayor, and immediately declines the call to join the JLA.
• For the past six months, J'onn has infiltrated the US government in order to shut down Checkmate for good to avenge Ted Kord and the others who died at the hands of Max Lord at the Omac Project. He succeeds, but for how long...
• Love the memorial in Mount Justice.
• Black Adam has turned a new leaf! He's slowly removing the aggressive policies of the Freedom of Power, but the Chinese Great Ten feel that he's going soft, claiming that his actions will anger a number of powerful individuals.
• Ambush Bug has some fun meta lines in this.
• Time vortex unleashes temporal anachronisms onto the streets of metropolis. The source... Skeets!
• Who is Skeets attempting to draw out with this?
• Firestorm gets zapped, while Super-Chief is sent to the spirit realm. His ancestor, Flying Stag, reclaims the manitou stone and gives it to Ralph Dibny.
• The massacre in metropolis does wonders to Firehawk's political campaign, but we're okay with it given her doucheyness.
• Checkmate is granted authorization by the UN, all of J'onn's work has been undone!
• Amanda Waller doesn't buy Black Adam's change of heart, and she recruits Atom-Smasher to put together a new Suicide Squad to deal with him.

52 #25 - "Liminal Times"

• Bruno Manheim, leader of intergang, apostle of the religion of crime, and cannibal! We get a great description on how Darkseid communed with him, and we can assume that he's part of this whole religion being the god of evil and all that.
• Only other dead dude besides mirage I recognized was Kite man.
• Black Marvel family KO Sabbac, king of devils. Neron name-drops as well...
• Happy halloween judeo-christians!
• Ralph and the Helm of Fate have been loose in the magic underworlds for a while now, and we see the soul of Felix Faust, permanently imprisoned in Hell after a deal with Neron gone wrong.
• They turn around and leave, but we see the soul of Faust disintegrate...
• Who will Ralph bargain with for the resurrection of his wife?
• The ginger from #22 returns as Matrix!
• Alan Scott meets with Michael Holt. He reveals that he's been selected as the new White King of Checkmate, and will join if Michael becomes his Bishop. He wants to keep the organization in check and monitor Luthor's agenda.
• Courtney is in private school!
• So intergang wants Magnus to build a new Plutonium Man and Morrow finds out about the medication stifling Will's creativity.
• Manheim meets with the man behind the oolong island, Chang Tzu, a revamp of the Kanigher creation Egg Fu!
• Mentions of the Four Horsemen and Intergang mobilizing...

52 #26 - "Halfway House"

• The Black Marvels take Renee and Charlie to the Himalayas, where they rendezvous with Tot and freaking Richard Dragon!
• Isis gives Renee a rose...
• YOU ARE WRONG! with Jack Ryder AKA the Creeper!
• I guess Natasha's attitude is partly justified since it's all about teen rebellion and angst, and maybe she believes the Luthor doppelganger scapegoat he gave to the public...
• Sivana Family! I love it!
• Suspendium... We see Waverider! "I Know Why"... Could that be a future scene...
• Veronica Cale arrives on Oolong island!
• More Fawcett stuff! Crocodile men!
• Amon befriends him. He claims to be an experiment of Sivana, a mutated crocodile pulled straight out of the Nile six months ago...

52 #1-13 Annotations

 

[VOL I - Summer]

52 #1 - "Golden Lads & Lasses Must..."

• Why is Ralph trying to off himself?
• What message was inscribed on Sue's tombstone? = #2
• Why does Vic Sage want to seek out Renee Montoya?
• Who kidnapped Sivana and why?
• Why is Skeets malfunctioning? Why did he get the events wrong? = could it be because of the new earth's new continuity?
• Where are the space heroes? = #5
• The Themyscira House becomes the Kahndaqi Embassy
• POV INTRO: Renee Montoya, Booster Gold, John Henry Irons, Black Adam, Ralph Dibny

52 #2 - "Looking Back At Tomorrow"

• Why are mad scientists being kidnapped?
• IQ, Doctor Death, Doctor Tyme, Doctor Cyclops, Mad Doctor, Sivana
• Why is the kryptonian symbol for resurrection on the tomb of Sue Dibny? = #4
• What is the secret within the building on Kane street? = #4
• POV INTRO: William Magnus

52 #3 - "New World Order"

• Is the corpse the GCPD and Maggie Sawyer find the body of Alex Luthor from E3, repurposed as Luthor's scapegoat?
• Intergang takes advantage of the fallout from the Crisis to make a move.
• Booster goes to locate Rip Hunter to fix Skeets.
• Mister Mind has cocooned...
• Black Adam makes a statement that he will not tolerate murderers and supervillainy, by ripping terra-man in half

52 #4 - "Dances With Monsters"

• Surveillance team on a satellite orbiting Earth searching for signals regarding the space team that went missing Halo, of the Outsiders, is on this team.
• What is happening to John Henry Irons? Why is he feeling sick? Who poisoned him? He appears to be literally becoming a man of steel, and having a Bulleteer-esque transformation like we saw in Seven Soldiers. = #8
• Why did Cassie and this weird Kryptonian cult trick ralph and steal his wedding ring?
• Who is this monster man that Vic and Renee fight?
• What were the weapons he was trafficking?
• The zeta beam brings back the missing heroes: Alan Scott is bleeding from his eye, Kendra is huge, Mal Duncan Herald has shrapnel coming out of his chest, bumblebee is unconscious and bleeding, and two unidentified individuals are fused together.
• What happened? = #5

52 #5 - "Stars In Their Courses"

• What chaos will unfold from Luthor's announcement of the synthesized metagene, where everybody can be a hero?
• So is John Henry not suffering from the ailment he had last issue? We see half his face covered in steel at the end of his sequence in #4, and when he puts on his mask we see the non steel side...
• Ali-Ka-Zoom! Is he sitting with Zee or Ystina?
• So everybody got messed up when the Zeta Beam caught Adam along with the whole super-space-squad, and this all happened at the same time that Alex Luthor's tower gets destroyed and destabilized the petri-dish at the center of the universe. Mal had opened up a portal to attract the stray beam, but like a prism of light it refracted and warped all of the heroes.
• Supergirl is still AWOL = apparently she gets teleported to the 31st Century and is hanging with the Legion.
• Steel got his hand bit off by the General during the JLA arc WWIII IIRC.
• Steel has talked to Pieter about his condition.
• What is the mystery behind Red Tornado's last words: It's coming... 52... 52...
• What did Red Tornado see?
• What planet are they on?
• Where did they get the ship?
• So Adam is missing two eyes, Alan is also missing two eyes, but he has an unknown eye.
• Who is on the planet with Buddy Kori and Adam?

52 #6 - "China Syndrome"

• Great Ten: August General In Iron, Immortal Man in Darkness, Socialist Red Guardsman, Thundermind, Ghost Fox Killer, Celestial Archer, Shaolin Robot, Mother of Champions, Accomplished Perfect Physician, Seven Deadly Brothers
• Super-Young Team of Japan!
• So this Coalition/Freedom of Power Treaty was formed by Black Adam as a way for countries to maintain their own borders and prevent American metas from interfering within their territories.
• So Lex is giving powers out to anybody?
• Who is watching T.O. Morrow? Are they the same people who kidnapped the scientists?
• HERE COMES THE CHALK BOARD!
• World War 3? *
• Dead by Lead?
• Further Time is different?
• The four horsemen will end her rain?
• He won't smell it?
• Find the last El?
• Time Masters -> Time servants?
• The Reach?
• The Tornado is in Pieces?
• The Scarab is Eternal?
• It hurts to breathe?
• Who is Super-Nova?
  
• Where is the Curry heir?
• I'm not kryptonite?
• 2000 years from now?
• What happened to the son of superman?
• Who is diana prince?
• Don't ask the Question, it lies?
• Immortal Savage?
• Khimaera lives again?
• The old gods are dead, the new gods want what's left?
• I'm supposed to be dead?
• Someone is monitoring us. They see us, they see me?
• Te vs (Au + Pb)?
• Secret Five?
• Where is the batman, who is the batwoman?
• The lazarus pit rises?
• Why is it all booster's fault? or is it skeets...

52 #7 - "Going Down"

• What is this fruit Kori and Buddy have been eating? I'm getting serious Island of the Lotus Eaters vibes... = #9
• Kate Kane, Kane Family: Renee and Kate secret romantic history...
• Cult of Conner...
• Booster exposed!
• Starfire discovers a giant spear, the spear of Devilance the Pursuer!
• Some have suggested that this planet-Eden is Adon from the Kirby Forever People mini series.

52 #8 - "Thief"

• Ralph meets with Ollie in Star City to crackdown on a Cult of Conner sect, only to find it abandoned. The cult is obsessed with the idea of resurrection.
• John Henry still dealing with the metagene everyman Luthor stuff. Realizes that he was probably infected by Luthor at the morgue.
• How did the samples at dr. Avasti's lab blow up?
• Natasha is recruited by Luthor and has a huge falling out with John.
• Buddy and Adam find Star, but are kidnapped by Devilance.
• New hero pops up in metropolis and is stealing Booster's thunder.
• Clark vows to find out who it is.

52 #9 - "Dream of America"

• John gets his ass handed to him on a platter by Natasha, now with superpowers.
• So Luthor has put together a new super-team. One of them is named Herakles.
• Buddy, Adam, and Star escape from Devilance.
• Devilance was hired to hunt them down because of what they saw when Alex Luthor's petri dish went boom. He says they saw beyond the veil and the walls of heaven, and only gods can have that knowledge. But who hired Devilance?
• The whole planet was a trap for the heroes!
• Question meets with Renee and tells her that the monster guy and the guns, its all a part of Intergang's invasion of Gotham City.
• Batwoman first appearance!

52 #10 - "Stop The Press"

• Why doesn't the living lightning come down when Black Adam says Shazam?
• Last we heard, Billy was the new Wizard.
• Freedom of Power treaty has expanded, Russia, China... I even see Sonar and Copperhead and what appears to be a new Ibis the Invincible.
• Adrianna Tomaz, the Egyptian girl who Intergang brought to Adam. Her family was slaughtered and her brother sold into slavery.
• The freedom of power treaty gives authorization for lethal action against meta-villains, and also seems to be a way to combat the massive amount of American metas.
• Loved the Clark Supernova sequence with Perry.
• So Clark has his powers gone for the time being.
• I enjoyed the Lois 'Post-Crisis-Trauma' stuff.
• Dick, Bruce, and Tim are still traveling the world.
• Booster is going broke as Skeets does not have a hold on accurate info on the 21st century.
• Addressing again that something is causing 21st century history to diverge from the 25th century records.
• Magnus meets with Morrow about the remains of Sivana's lab, and how he found a cocoon of mister mind. But how long ago did he escape? We saw his cocoon in #3...

52 #11 - "Batwoman Begins!"

• Great issue!
• Burglary at Ralphs storage unit. They steal Sue's clothes and dress them up on a straw mannequin along with the wedding ring they took from Ralph. Horrifying
• Renee and Vic meet with Kate who tells them who rented out the property on 520 Kane St.
• They are able to trace it back to a banking firm that is the spearhead of Intergang.
• Two members: Whisper A'Daire and Kyle Abbot.
• These intergang members can shapeshift into animalistic creatures. Whisper has low level psychic mind control.
• Mentions of Kahndaq, possible human trafficking.
• Batwoman! 

52 #12 - "Mighty"

• Renee meets with Maggie, who claims that she and Vic's incident last issue with Ferrick-Ridge has set the MCPD back.
• Renee and Vic resolve to follow their only lead, they are going to Kahndaq!
• Teth-Adam offers to give Adrianna powers of the Marvel Family, the powers of the ancient hero Isis!
• Billy is the new Wizard, but he's had some difficulties adjusting, hence the scene where Teth couldn't call down the lightning.
• Adrianna becomes Isis, but tells Adam that they must find her brother.
• Ralph tracks down Cassie, who reveals that she and the Cult are planning on a test-resurrection on Sue before they try to bring back Conner. Ralph agrees!

52 #13 - "Haystack"

• Jesus Christ! The horror!
• The ritual had to be fake... right?
• Was it Sue's soul that possessed the hay mannequin, or something else...
• Who was watching Ralph in that last page?
• Wholesome intermezzo with Black Adam and Isis searching for her brother, and a mention of Black Reign.

INFINITE CRISIS #5-7 + TIE-INS REVIEW!

 

• Infinite Crisis #5 - "Faith" = A perfect Earth doesn't need a Superman! Freaking brilliant! That whole E2 sequence was great, but I am confused as to how the logistics of Alex Luthor's multiverse spawning works. If the new Earths are manifesting in the same space as New Earth, then what is the point of the rift at the center of the universe with the hands? Booster and Jaime arrive in the Bat-Cave to both join and form the squadron to take down Brother Eye. Booster claims that the future records informed him of the members but claim that Bats would never have found the satellite without the help of Jaime. Could he be lying? Most likely. Although I believe that the Wonder Woman tie-ins rehab'd Diana extremely well, the sequence with the E2 Wonder Woman was pretty cool. Rucka's prose was much better than Johns' one page stitch-up conclusion to put Diana on a brave new path going forward, but it was nice I guess. I've mentioned the Firestorm stuff since it keeps popping up, but I have no desire to read those tie-ins and seeing Martin Stein back as the co-pilot is good enough for me. Three great scenes finish this issue, with Dick and Conner teaming up for an assault on the tower, Alex Luthor dropping a banger line before unleashing a thousand parallel earths, and the return of both the Flash and Superman-Prime with the Anti-Monitor-esque armor!
• Superman #226 - This Is Your Life, Part I : "My Heart" = One of the most fascinating kinds of tie-ins; a three issue mini-arc-interlude that takes place between the pages of the main title's fifth issue (specifically between page 17 and 20). And it's written by Joe Kelly alongside an A-Tier artist-mix? Count me in! Loved the scrap book and the idea that the brawl between two Supermen is in itself breaking continuity and connecting them on another dimensional plane to where they will experience each other's origins. I genuinely believed this was just a recounting of the E2 Superman's origin until we got to the Renato Guedes drawn sequence where it hits you that NE Supes is going to play by his own rules.
• Action Comics #836 - This Is Your Life, Part II : "My Soul" = Well gah damn! The road to hell is paved with good intentions! Fascinating way to characterize E2 Supes, a man stuck in the Manichean mindset, two sides, two colors, one solution! The redux of the Post-Crisis Superman history was pretty hilarious and kind of terrifying towards the end; two men of steel embarking on twin crusades to fix their opposite's worlds, all to save the life of one woman, their soul be damned!
• Adventures of Superman #649 - This Is Your Life, Part III : "My Folly" = And just like that, a brilliant arc culminates in an even more brilliant segway into the line that made #5: "A perfect world doesn't need a Superman." Joe Kelly gives us doomsday in two dimensions as both Supermen are faced with impossible enemies shattering their impossible dreams. On one hand we have a modern age Superman coming to the realization that the Golden Age could never last forever. On the other we descend into absolute chaos as a Golden Age Superman enacts his own authority upon a reactive reality. Obviously the E2 Supes-led Authority is so much fun to watch delve into an even crazier crisis than what is occurring in the actual Infinite Crisis, but the fall of E2 at the hands of the Anti-Monitor as Superman reflects on Bruce's words from the first issue is extremely powerful and poignant.
• Teen Titans #33 - "The Brave & The Bold" = Fantastic! Wolfman and Johns, both Crisis writers, both Titans writers, unite their respective darling boys for a quiet moment among the chaos! Very powerful writing for both protagonists, and so immensely human interactions from the first sons of the world's finest. Cassie also gets a spotlight in this where we get an escape route to prevent her from losing her powers. Her arc finally comes full circle from the beginning of Teen Titans to the Land of the Dead arc in WW to now: Ares and Cassie are to be tethered via blood relation so he can exist in this reality as the rest of the Olympian Pantheon departs. Very cool.
• Infinite Crisis Secret Files - "Heaven" = Some very intriguing character development for The Survivors very late in the game, but Wolfman presents it in such a believable way that it ends up working pretty well. E2 Superman is so blinded by his love for Lois that it clouds his judgement and feeds the negative aspects of his outdated moral compass. Superboy-Prime is psychologically manipulated by Alex Luthor via the crystal looking glass walls of the Heaven dimension. Super-powered teen-angst paired with the destruction of your entire world is already a cross to bear, but stuck in a timeless prison as you are tormented by past trauma is beyond worse. Alex Luthor might have it the worst of all: grown to a man in less than a tenth of that time, he is at war with himself. He has no past, a survivor of a dead universe only to be raised between moments by a primordial celestial watcher. He has no future, trapped within a paradise purgatory of his own making. Even worse, he is a Luthor of Earth-3, an anomaly of virtue in a world of vice: but just like the New Earth Luthor occasionally phases between good and evil, this Luthor begins to tread the line as well. There are a couple of continuity mess ups that bugged me: one in particular was Superboy viewing the death of Max Lord even though that didn't happen until after he and Alex started their machinations. We also learn that Alex was the one who zapped the files from Brother Eye in the Countdown special, though if he gave the satellite sentience and pushed it to fall into the hands of Lord from the get-go, then why would he have to delete them? Could he not access them? Or did he not give control of the satellite and Lord just stole it from Bruce on his own? One of the few mysteries in Infinite Crisis that remains unclear.
• Batman Annual #25 - "Daedalus & Icarus: The Return Of Jason Todd" = A fun epilogue, but Winick goes a little overboard with the justifications and the intrigue regarding his paradigm shift, and jeez that moment in Hush with the Clayface switcharoo. Was it editorial, or did everyone unanimously agree to have their cake and eat it too? We'll never know. The Ra's and Talia stuff was interesting, but the Lazarus factor might have cluttered it too much. Yes, I love the movie adaptation where it's the only reason for his resurrection, but when you start the issue with Superboy-Prime's cosmic reality-altering punches, I'm already inclined to accept that without the need for the intertwining with Ra's soul energy or whatever.

• Infinite Crisis #6 - "Touchdown" = Full circle dammit! RIP Conner Kent, you went out like Superman, putting the lives of the universe above your own. There's a lot to love in this chapter, the split narrative as Batman leads his squadron against the eye in the sky while the children of the trinity assault Alex Luthor's tower. I'm laughing pretty hard at the fact that I've mentioned the irrelevance of Firestorm's presence throughout this event only for him to save both Supermen and Wonder Woman from Alex by blowing his freaking finger off. The feedback from division of the Earths appears to consume a large portion of the space league, threads left to be picked up by 52. Spectre returns to kill off Star Sapphire (setting up plot points for Carol in the GL title?). The nuTrinity frees the prisoners from the tower allowing us to get an awesome moment where Black Adam kills Psycho Pirate. Loved seeing Alex Luthor reach out to the reader to access Earth-Prime, and the splash seeing various alter-earths in Perez glory was great. The fact that it's a new Blue Beetle that brings about the fall of OMAC and the legacy of Max Lord is so earned, and I just can't help but recall that moment in the Countdown special where Ted says: "I am the second man to call himself the Blue Beetle. I tell myself there will be a third. And I hope whoever he or she may be, they do it better than I have." FULL CIRCLE, DAMMIT! IT'S OVERTIME!
• OMAC Project Special  - "The Lazarus Protocol" = What a great reveal! The person who imbued Sasha with the anti-OMAC power was Brother Eye himself! In the Countdown mini the characters had postulated that it was Max who did it as a failsafe against Brother eye going rogue, but that didn't explain why she could resist his powers back in #3. Now we have a final answer: Eye had planned to use Sasha as his own failsafe if system failure was imminent. Really enjoyed the espionage vibe we get in this, something that I wholeheartedly hope is continued in Rucka's Checkmate series. Waller being promoted to Black King is very interesting, and having Fire, Jessica Midnight, and possibly Mister Bones of the DEO as the supporting cast has me hooked! Sasha's freedom in that last page makes me so happy; she is one of the best things to have come out of this era of DC.
• Villains United Special - "A Hero Dies But Once" = War drums beat as an army of evil-doers assemble, aiming annihilation at the city of tomorrow! Gail Simone's sharp prose and Dale Eaglesham's stunning art give us cracked mirror POV's: Oracle on one side coordinating damage control as heroes are scattered to contain the various breakouts, while on the other side the Society puts the finishing touches on their grand design. J'onn gets a great moment and splash page, while the Secret Six themselves are reduced to an ancillary role, providing Green Arrow with a head start before the final act. As battle lines are drawn, a black sun rises to unveil only Doomsday for the heroes!
• Infinite Crisis #7 - "For Tomorrow" = An epic for the ages! We are officially done with "Post-Crisis" DC, now we enter the event era of the Hypercrisis! We get some really great moments in this issue: Bart is revealed as the Flash that emerged at the end of #5, J'onn's line of "Take to the skies", the Thin Green Line, and the battle upon Mogo were all so much fun. My favorite however was Batman's dance on the brink of the abyss, the staring contest with oblivion as he wields the weapon that killed his parents to enact final vengeance over justice. He hasn't really had his therapy session like Supes or Wondy yet so it's all up for grabs: will the Bat finally break? But like the first truth of Batman (something Morrison eventually touches upon in Return of Bruce Wayne), he was never alone. The bell is rung, and Diana comes to pull him back from the forever pit. Brilliant. Very sad to see E2 Supes go, but the Survivors (besides Prime) were never really meant to survive past this event. Prime himself, as Alex stated last issue, has been changed by the New Earth, he's become a part of its narrative. I loved the extra lines they added in the trade collection during E2 Supes last moments, and that depiction of him and Lois embedded in the stars is beautiful. As for the status quo cleanup: space gang is still missing, Crispus is our new Spectre, some kid finds the Tangent universe GL staff washed up on shore, the Speed Force is gone along with Wally and his family, while the Trinity depart to find themselves on their own spiritual and introspective journeys. I'm assuming Diana's Invisible Jet is from the E2 WW which is great, and a depowered Clark sets us up for Busiek and Johns Up, Up, & Away! Our overarching villains get what they deserve in the end; Prime is locked up on Oa, while Alex fails to predict a wild card as his doppelganger gets the last laugh.

And that's a wrap for Infinite Crisis and Countdown everybody! This was a huge journey that took more than a year to complete (including planning and research for the optimized reading order), but I'm so happy to have made it in one piece! I can't say I'm sad it's over since there is so much good material to read following it, but to catch up on the highlights of 2000's era DC was way too much fun. To read over a dozen series intertwined to recreate a sense of suspense and excitement within a design built by the architects at that time is something I recommend to any comics fan. This truly reminded me of when I first got into comics during the Rebirth era, and every title I picked up felt like it mattered in some way and was contributing towards the grand narrative. Although Rebirth didn't turn out the way it was supposed to, the building blocks behind Infinite Crisis and Countdown sure did, and I'm so glad I was able to do this! I'd like to thank the DC Wiki and Half-Price Books for enabling me to find literally every single tie-in I needed, and some great trades they put out alongside the main one. Finally, thank you to Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Judd Winick, and every single artist and writer who worked to create this wonderful event!

INFINITE CRISIS #2-4 + TIE-INS REVIEW!

[#2]

• Infinite Crisis #2 - "The Survivors" = Spotlight: Power Girl! We've been brewing on this Power Girl origin madness for so freaking long that I can't help but be satisfied at her getting the revelations she deserves. The History of the DCU segment by Ordway and Perez was wonderful, a much-needed streamline of Crisis continuity through the eyes of the Survivors! Buddy Baker joins the Space-League (after his power begin to go wack due to Spectre's war on magic I assume?). Superman decides to stop moping around and take action following the Ruin two-parter from Rucka's AoS. What does fake-Luthor want with the Marvels, and now Black Adam? Why is real-Luthor still having headaches? Did the New Earth cause the decay of Alex Luthor's Paradise Dimension and the decline of E2 Lois' health? Love that we get Donner crystal Kryptonian tech in the new Fort Superman. Booster returns from the future with a new and rebuilt Skeets after departing in tOP #6; why does he need Blue Beetle's scarab? Brother Eye gives us some huge confirmation and expo on how he came to be: Bruce created him after realizing he got mind-wiped, but once Max Lord took control, he implemented the OMAC project via 1.3 million sleeper agents. But what caused Batman to lose control over the satellite? Finally, the survivors reveal their plan to PG: to bring back Earth-2 in place of the current New Earth.
• JSA #81 - "My Heroes" = And Stargirl to bookend the JSA run! What a journey it has been, and only natural to end it all with a piece on the stars and stripes! Even though not much happens, we get sort of a conclusion to Courtney's daddy-issues arc that ties up her dynamic with Pat pretty full circle. A bit of expo and dev on Liberty Belle and Jesse with a cameo by Shade to top it off, presented beautifully by Dale Eaglesham's brilliant pencils.
• Wonder Woman #224 - "Marathon, Part II : "War In Paradise!" = Nothing comes without cost! The cunning of Brother Eye has secured one more victory against the heroes of Earth! Io's endeavor is revealed, her work has turned the purple ray of life into a violet beam of death. The mission is over. What will Brother Eye's final attack be? Are the Amazons & Paradise Island gone forever?

[#3]

• Infinite Crisis #3 - "Divine Intervention" = The gods have their own laws! Atlantis is decimated by the Spectre, as Athena and her pantheon of Goddesses remove Paradise Island from the Earth. Although I enjoyed Rucka's depiction of this sequence in WW #224, I appreciate that Johns thought this was important enough to be in the main title (and seeing it drawn by Jimenez was dope too). Is Aquaman killed in the destruction of Atlantis? Rehab'd Superman returns as Jaime finds the scarab, while we get one page referencing the space stuff to remind us of the "few seconds" foreshadowing. Sidestepping the Firestorm tie-ins was a good idea IMO and I hope we get the answers to the mystery of this elemental Firestorm in the coming issues or the RTW special. Wally check in is much needed (we've barely seen him since Rogue War). The E2 Supes and Batman sequences were great and I love the use of Dick as Bruce's north star to guide him back to sanity, an idea that is integral to Batman's rehabilitation in the midst of this OMAC and Red Hood stuff. The Luthor mystery is revealed; fake-Lex is E3 Alex Luthor who's theta brainwaves have been mucking up real-Lex's head. Though the power armor gets smashed, he escapes with a shard of the paradise dimension via neck shrapnel! Final dual revelation segments were wonderful, as we learn it was Superboy-Prime who destroyed the Watchtower and abducted J'onn to use in a cosmic tuning fork tower built from the corpse of the Anti-Monitor alongside other captured individuals such as Lady Quark, the Ray, and the freshly betrayed Black Adam.  But what is the purpose of this tower? IIRC the Monitor used these in the OG Crisis to merge the remaining Earths back into one; could Alex and Superboy be trying to do the opposite to restore E2?
• Day of Vengeance Special - "The Ninth Age Of Magic" = A sufficient wrap up to the Day of Vengeance death of magic plot line. Shadow-Pact and the magical heroes of the DCU hunt down seven deadly sins in Gotham City, Zatanna reconstructs the Rock of Eternity, and Nabu and Spectre have a final showdown. By killing Fate, Spectre ends the Ninth Age of Magic and begins the Tenth, alerting the Presence to his campaign and relocating himself to a new host. Nightshade gets nabbed by Felix Faust, presumably for the cosmic tuning fork we saw at the end of IC #3. Aquaman is confirmed to be alive (as I pondered in last issue's reflection), and Captain Marvel becomes the new "Wizard" within the Rock. As they send the helm of fate into space to find a new host, a bittersweet victory is all that remains for our heroes. Did they really win after all?
• Batman #648 - All They Do is Watch Us Kill, Part I : "Late Arrivals" = This isn't the end! It's a trick! Black Mask is so stupid for offing his lieutenants that it's kind of funny. At least we get a fantastic brawl illustrated by the brilliant Doug Mahnke. Seeing Sionis in combat was really cool since most stories don't tend to have the mob bosses get their own hands dirty. Choreography and use of set-pieces like Winick and Mahnke do is so great; I especially love it when Mask just breaks a chair over his head after Hood trolled him into cleaning house. Alfred's anecdotes continue to be fun additions, and I enjoyed how we get a frame of Batman over a deactivated OMAC. It really cements this story as a focal point of Infinite Crisis.
• Batman #649 - All They Do is Watch Us Kill, Part II : "Lazarus & Pagliacci" = The cover says Mahnke but it has pencils by Eric Battle! Art is obviously not as good, but Winick's story has such momentum that a switch like this is not going to slow it down. Jason and Joker's back and forth steals the issue and Winick does a phenomenal job of capturing the prime essence of each of them. Very cool and heartbreaking to have Batman witness the destruction of Bludhaven right as he's about to face off against Jason; really puts the emphasis on Infinite Crisis being an outright attack on the Trinity, actively pushing these characters to their breaking points. The trauma here segways nicely into the reborn-prime-ultimate Bat-Bruce that emerges in 52 and Morrison's run.
• Batman #650 - All They Do is Watch Us Kill, Part III : "It Only Hurts When I Laugh" = It ends just like it started: with a bomb, a bat, a clown, and a fallen son. The speeches by Bruce and Jason are more than enough to cement this issue in my top 5 Batman stories ever, though I do wish I lived in that alternate universe where it was illustrated by Mahnke. As for that last page with the multiversal Batmen, I'm sure that's a reflection of the fallout of Alex Luthor's machinations.

• Infinite Crisis #4 - "Homecoming" = Dump dump dump! Bludhaven gets blown up while the Titans get torn apart. Some continuity troubles with Batman finding Dick and claiming he was in New York when it happened even though he was in Gotham fighting the Red Hood when he saw Chemo's point of impact. The iconic fight between Prime and Conner and the Titans/Doom Patrol/JSA is great and made ever better by the Flashes intervening. I'm assuming Bart and the speedsters took Prime into the Speed Force, but Wally and Linda have departed for dimensions unknown. What does Jay mean when he says, "the Speed Force is gone?" Still don't care for the Firestorm stuff in space, but Jason has lost his co-pilot and might merge with this elemental? Also Air-Wave gets offed in one panel and Crispus Allen becomes our new Spectre! Now let's get into the reveals: Alex Luthor explains that he and Superboy-Prime escaped from the Paradise/Heaven Dimension while E2 Superman is distracted by Lois' failing health. They are the impetus behind all four of the Countdown minis: 
• Alex poses as the fake-lex, creating the Secret Society based on vengeance against the super-hero mind-wipes. They collect certain individuals to build a machine, a machine they believe will mind-wipe the entire super-hero community. Only Psycho-Pirate is in on the plan since he remembers the Crisis and the previous multiverse.
• Superboy-Prime finds the Heart of Darkness and Psycho-Pirate gives it to a mentally insane Jean Loring, who ends up convincing the host-less Spectre to wage war on magic.
• Alex wrests control of Brother Eye from Batman, giving it sentience as it falls into the hands of Max Lord, preying on the designs of the OMAC project.
• Superboy-Prime moves planets around space to shift the center of the universe away from Oa to where it was in the E2 universe. This creates the battleground for the Rann-Thanagar War.
• All of these endeavors worked in tandem to build Luthor's machine: a tower based on the Monitor's design of the cosmic tuning fork, but this time built from the remains of the Anti-Monitor's corpse. Using super-powered individuals who hailed from different universes before the crisis, this tower will do the opposite of its function during Crisis; it will divide the New Earth into a Multiverse so Alex Luthor can find the so called "Perfect Earth". The destruction of magic into its raw form will be the fuel, Brother Eye will be the programming, and the new center of the universe will be the playground for Alex to build the new Multiverse.
• Using the tower, Alex Luthor succeeds in bringing back Earth-2 as all the denizens of the former reality are returned.
• Teen Titans #32 - "Doom's Day" = Some nice extended sequences for the brawl against Prime from IC #4 along with an extra side-plot about Gar and the Doom Patrol. The John Byrne DP reboot seems to be undone in favor of embracing the OG Drake/Kupperberg/Morrison/Pollack runs which is an obvious plus. We get hinting in regards to Prime's place in altering continuity via his reality punches which will be explored soon.
• Wonder Woman #225 - "Nothing Finished, Only Abandoned" = THE MISSION NEVER ENDS! Gah damn Rucka is a freaking good writer. If I had to recommend one WW comic to anyone it would be this one. Athena's monologue was as brilliant as you can get with thesis/essay comics on certain characters. Interesting foreshadowing regarding the end of the Old Gods and the coming of the New Gods, I definitely did not expect any kind of hinting towards Final Crisis this early. I love how each of the Trinity has had their rehab issue so far: Diana in this, Superman in #647, and Batman being the last in his partial therapy sessions of #650 and IC #3. One more issue left to go in Rucka's run and I couldn't be more devastated!
• Rann/Thanagar War Special - "Hands of Fate" = And now Jenny! Why do we have to lose darling characters in mid books?! Giving it the benefit of the doubt since I enjoyed the framing around Alex Luthor's hands causing absolute chaos paired with the reveal that Superboy-Prime was actually the one who destabilized Thanagar's orbit back during the Adam Strange: Planet Heist series. The Kyle/Ion stuff is interesting, and it forced me to do a bit of research regarding pre-Johns GL stuff. From what I understand: Kyle became Ion a while ago from taking all the power of GLC, but then gave it up to restore the Guardians of the Universe. Before giving it up however, Kyle used some of the Ion power to restore Jade's star-heart ability, which is why when she is offed in this, he ends up reassuming that personality. Least favorite parts of this were witnessing Jade's corpse get disintegrated by Luthor's cosmic storm, and any panel with Blackfire in it was repulsive to the highest degree.
• Wonder Woman #226 - "Cover Date" = Loved it! If #225 was the finale, then this is the epilogue, a walk through the history of Diana and Clark up to this moment. The only gripe I have is the fact that the Challenge of Artemis storyline happens before Diana's death and return from Underworld Unleashed, whereas this issue has it backwards. I'm a huge continuity freak so what can I say. Really going to miss Rucka on this title, he's truly one of the few who understands Diana fundamentally to her core, and when I say few, I mean very very few. Thanking my past self for picking this and AoS as Countdown and Infinite Crisis adjacent pre-reading because it was so worth it. At the end of the day, I'm not sad because it's ending, I'm happy because it happened.
• Adventures of Superman #648 - "Look... Up In The Sky!" = I mentioned in my last review of A/S #647 that I could tell the difference between Rucka's prose and the fill-in couple's prose, but after this issue I'm pretty torn. This was a really well put together issue and a much-needed breather segment within the constant chaos of Infinite Crisis. I loved using an article by Lois as the framing device, as well as the mentions of the other heroes. I think that these kinds of issues can feel preachy sometimes, but all in all this was really honest in my opinion, and a wonderful way to cap off Rucka's run on Adventures of Superman.
• Teen Titans Annual #1 - "Love & War" = Last Night on Earth! Loved having Superboy focus in this, and the relationship stuff with Cassie is much needed after the events of the Insiders crossover. Lex in his Super Friends garb just reminds me of his appearances in the RCDC specials, but I'm excited to see more of him in this event and what Connor ends up doing with the shard. Very interesting to see the fallout of DOV affecting Raven's abilities and the fact that the Amazons + Greek Pantheon leaving is having similar effects on Wonder Girl as well. The Raven sequence of her empath power picking up residual feelings brings some good foreshadowing for #5, but I'm reading this before since it works better as buildup for #5 than reading after.

INFINITE CRISIS #1 + TIE-INS REVIEW!

 

• Infinite Crisis #1 - "A Trinity Torn Apart" = One of the best openers to any event I've ever read. The crux behind this event (and everything that's been brewing since Donna Troy's death back in early 2003) can be summarized in a quote from an interview with Greg Rucka: "The thesis basically is when those three [the Trinity] are not in synch, when they're not in harmony - and that doesn't mean they always love each other, that doesn't mean they always agree - but it means if they're not working together, VERY BAD THINGS happen." The death of the Freedom Fighters was pretty horrific, but in a Crisis you can't help but use characters as cannon-fodder for symbolism! We get a great homage to Moore's FTMWHE, check-ins with each plotline, and a revelation setting up the orchestrators behind the entire event. The Survivors return to save New Earth from the abyss! Who do the Survivors need to save by returning? Why is Psycho Pirate taking The Ray? Why is Luthor in Alaska? Who blew up the Watchtower, and where is J'onn? What is the OMAC protocol 'Truth & Justice'? What is and what caused the rift in the Polaris system? How will the 'few seconds' Donna mentions save reality?
• Gotham Central #37 - "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" = In the midst of annihilation for the DCU, Rucka gives us a beautiful character piece on Crispus Allen. This is how tie-ins are supposed to be written, it's all about those quiet moments building off of a sequence in the main title. Steve Lieber had some great art as well, and I'm eager to go back and check out the first 36 issues of Gotham Central.
• Teen Titans #29 - "Life & Death" = Tim vs Todd, battle of the Robins! As Donna Troy returns to recruit fellow Titans for the war in space, Jason continues his psychological war on the bat-family, choosing his newfound younger brother as the next target. This definitely went off the rails the minute Jason ripped off his Red Hood outfit to reveal the classic short-shorts and elf boots Robin costume, but I guess it fits his MO of mental attrition. Glad we check in with Conner, but that last segment with Raven and Beast Boy was near incomprehensible due to Daniel's art/panel economy. I have no idea what happened, but I assume Raven's vision of the Spectre caused her to get zapped away and replaced by an undead Lilith, who is now referred to as Brother Blood's mother? Hopefully these questions will be answered.
• Wonder Woman #222 - "Blood Debt" = Curse of the Cheetah! Bound by blood to a God-groom with no mercy! This was really good, and I'm glad we get to see more of Rucka's take on Cheetah since the Flash crossover we had a while back. Loved the origin recap and the framing of her stalking Diana in the Hague. Fascinating that Diana pleads no guilty; I'm very interested to see how she and Garibaldi play this affirmative defense out. It's very much a darkest hour scenario for Wondy, having to stand alone and reject Donna and Kara's invitation to escape while her island home is besieged by the US military, and now about to be invaded by the remaining OMAC centurions. Is that what protocol 'Truth & Justice' was? An attack on Paradise Island?
• Teen Titans #30 - Lost & Found, Part I : "The Doorway" = Interesting format Johns is playing around with by splicing the Titans narrative with the Watchmen-esque Zoo Crew comic book. I'm assuming the kid in the opener will be the Kid Devil we'll be introduced to after Infinite Crisis, but will he get his powers from this demonic invasion? The commentary & themes Johns tackles with this arc are pretty interesting given that he himself is a proponent of the resurrection/revamp trope (Hal Jordan, Carter Hall, and Barry Allen in a couple of years...). Love bringing back Mia Dearden, and I'm intrigued by the mystery of the blue arrow. I don't really care about Brother Blood and his group of undead Titans, but I can only hope it ties more into the overall Crisis plot.
• Teen Titans #31 - Lost & Found, Part II : "Eternity" = Slam the door! Johns brings back the first character he killed all the way in JSA #1 for a revamp! Deus Ex Eternity cleans up the demonic infestation and we end up exchanging one edge lord for another! While KE held open the door for Blood, it wasn't him who allowed recent resurrections to come to pass. Beginning with the Death of Supes back in the 90's, something has been pounding at the walls of reality, causing tremors in the afterlife. Could it be Superboy-Prime himself? Unfortunate that the Zoo Crew stuff amounted to nothing, but still fun!
• Green Lantern #7 - A Perfect Life, Part I : "Mercy" = All I could think of while I read this was how much I miss Carlos Pacheco. Rest in peace Carlos, you channeled Neal Adams like no other! Fun follow-up to Mongul's appearance in IC #1, and we find out that the item he nabbed from the Watchtower's wreckage was none other than the Black Mercy! He's used it to infest farmland in Ohio on his endeavor to continue his father's quest to conquer Earth. Loved that little bait & switch at the end; what paradise-prison does the black mercy have in store for these hard traveling heroes?
• Green Lantern #8 - A Perfect Life, Part II : "Family Ties" = Meeting with the Monguls! Crazy inversions on the themes of family; the black mercy filling the void with false realizations, a facade born from a lineage of amber oppressors, warped by their twisted perception of bloodlines. Among Monguls, there can only be one. On Earth however, heroes must step away from the crusade to treat their own households, a lesson we can all take to heart. Better not to live in the land of ifs and whens, but instead seek the now with those you love the most.
• Adventures of Superman #646 - Rack & Ruin, Part I : "Take Me Home" = You can clearly see the difference between when Rucka writes the script vs when he hands the plot to DeFilippis and Weir. The pacing was wonderful, and Kerschl's art has grown on me since he joined this series. We get some resolutions and convergence of a number of plots while Mxy acts as our narrative reference point. Lupe and Lana are played by Ruin like a fiddle while Supes and Mxy are drawn in all according to the maestro's design. Putting the tension and suspense of these plots aside, the sequences with Lois dealing with Checkmate and finding out that the shooter was none other than the beloved Sasha Bordeaux is freaking crazy, and a brilliant arrow to the heart. Keep doing what you are doing, Rucka!
• Adventures of Superman #647 - Rack & Ruin Part II : "Speeding Bullets" = Fun enough! Though it's pretty much void of Rucka's narrative complexity and much more of a classic smash-em-up cape serial, it was still good. The stakes, seemingly unending in their escalation, had sufficient resolutions born of Superman's unfaltering determination to succeed. I like to think that the conclusion for this story arc is truly what exorcises Clark's demons from Sacrifice and allows him to become the inspirational hero he needs to be.
• Gotham Central #38 - Corrigan II, Part I : "Right Here" = God damn. As someone who hasn't read the complete build-up to this moment, I must give props to Rucka for presenting me just the right amount of context to still have this hit hard. This pulled no punches, and the framing allowed for narrative gravity even if we knew it was going south for Crispus. That's effective storytelling, when you can show the audience the guillotine coming down and keep them hoping for a saving grace until the last second.
• Gotham Central #39 - Corrigan II, Part II : "I Can't Feel Anything" = After that last page, I can definitely feel that something is off. The discovery of the gun, the alibis and interrogations; it seems too easy. What does Corrigan have up his sleeve? What gambit does he have planned to evade justice once more? Renee's grief is only matched by her anger... will she screw up the entire investigation in pursuit of vengeance?
• Gotham Central #40 - Corrigan II, Part III : "Nothing Left" = Wow. What a gut punch. I really did expect Montoya to kill Corrigan, and there's a part of me that wanted it too. The interrogation sequences were masterful; just enough hope fed with the tease of the alibis not corroborating, but then destroyed by the rug swept from underneath by the weapon switch. The proof was there but it just wasn't enough. Justice failed, Corrigan walks... and so does Montoya.
• Wonder Woman #223 - Marathon, Part I : "Amazons Attacked!" = As much as this is a Wonder Woman book, Artemis completely stole this one. Through her eyes we witness the end of the Amazons, under attack from enemies both faceless, soulless, and unending. Diana departs from the Hague to save her sisters; the mission is over, Themyscira is all she has left. What device has Io constructed, and how will it spell the doom of both the Amazons and their aggressors?
• JSAC #4 - Power Trip, Part IV : "Parallel Life" = The final verdict! The veil is lifted as we bear witness to the truth we all knew was coming; Power Girl is Kara from Earth-2! The various false memories we've seen throughout this arc were apparently a self-defense mechanism created by her altered brain to prevent her from going crazy if she found out she was from a universe that never existed. Nice little Psycho Pirate origin on the side with some cameos from hallucination Robin and Huntress as well. The epilogues were way too crammed to segway into IC's second issue, but it works nonetheless!