Comic Reviews for May 16

Time for my thoughts on this week's comic pulls

Smallville Lantern #10

We return to find out from Steve Trevor that yellow power rings have invaded the Capitol building, resulting in yellow donkey and elephant constructs fighting each other.  They detect Prometheus activating another boom tube, and Zatanna makes a brief cameo to teleport Oliver into the action.  Chloe and Tess call Emil over at STAR Labs to see if he can break in on the communications frequency used by the yellow rings to possibly break Parallax's control over his new minions.  Of course, to do that, they need a yellow ring to take a closer look at.  Sounds like a job for Batman.

While Batman and Nightwing (Barbara Gordon for those just joining us) focus on that, Superman tries to reason with John Stewart and stop him from serving as the avatar of Parallax.  He seems to be getting through for a moment, but it doesn't last.  The few other remaining Green Lanterns observe from orbit and reveal that John gave them a message from Ganthet before being overwhelmed.

This was another good issue.  Not sure if I like how they handled Killowog in his one scene, but considering that last time they fought Parallax, he pretty much took out the entire Corps, it makes a certain amount of sense.  I liked the continued close relationship between Holo-Tess and Chloe.  They both know their job and have a good amount of experience acting as command and control for the front line heroes.

Injustice Year 2 #9

Now we go from Superman being a member of the Green Lantern Corps to preparing to wage war against them.  Hal Jordan is imprisoned on Oa for his role in the formation of Superman's Regime while Sinestro waits in a holding cell on the Watchtower for Superman to call on him for help against the Green Lantern attack he claims is coming.

John Stewart breaking Hal out of prison and giving him his ring back was a bit of a surprise, but I'm almost certain it's part of a plan of some sort.  And in an interesting parallel, Superman takes Billy Batson out of Algebra class, suspecting that the signals the Watchtower detected on their way to Earth are the Green Lanterns Sinestro warned him about.  As he takes Billy to where the signals will enter Earth's atmosphere, Billy asks Superman to drop him and transforms in mid-air in an awesome splash page.

After a brief discussion, with Killowog, we realize Superman intentionally waited for them above a location with no innocent bystanders, setting the stage for an orbital bombardment from the Watchtower.

Going by the above, it doesn't feel like all that much happened, but the first time I read it, it felt like more was going on.  I'm hoping the superlaser hit didn't wipe out the entire group of Lanterns, because that would be really anticlimactic after all the build up from the previous issues.

Future's End #2

Let's go back to the Future for the second issue of this weekly series.  It begins a couple days after the end of this weekly series with heroes assembling for the funeral of Green Arrow, though some seem more interested than others.  We're introduced to this time's Michael Holt (aka Mr. Terrific as he checks what's trending on Twitter as his limo approaches the location of the funeral.  He almost seems more disappointed that he isn't trending than the fact that many people aren't all that sad that Green Arrow is dead.  He makes a big scene on arrival and claims to an angry Aquaman that he acts like an arrogant celebrity to draw public heat away from the rest of the hero community.

As the funeral begins in Star City, Terry McGinnis tries to break into Terrifitec, asking the ALFRED AI to help him figure out to look for since he's a soldier, not a detective.  This one page features an Easter Egg with what looks like "Who watches the watchmen" spray painted on an alley wall.

Back to the funeral, where Animal Man gives the eulogy (in front of the Moira Queen Shelter for Homeless Youth in a nice Arrow reference), hinting at forthcoming adventures in the new Justice League United series.  He also mentions "The War", where Oliver, who had revealed his identity to the public at some point, took the lead in trying to get people to accept refugees from another Earth (most likely in relation to forthcoming events in Earth 2 and Worlds' Finest).

In another interruption of the funeral, the scene cuts to North Carolina where someone shows up to erase the records related to Grifter's murders of a family, raising more questions than answers.

The pallbearers (including a certain Mr. Diggle) carry Oliver's casket to the hearse, but it doesn't take long for tempers to flare as Arsenal confronts Firestorm about his late appearance to respond to Oliver's distress call.  Despite peacekeeping attempts from multiple heroes (and Jason trying to calm down Ronnie from within), it devolves into a brief fight, confirming the anti-hero sentiments of a mysterious man in a bar.

That evening, Lois Lane is trying to figure out how to write about the funeral when she receives a mysterious package containing several mysterious items including an arrow tip.

Still setting things up here.  I'm really not sure what to think of the Grifter story and wish more pages had been dedicated to Terry instead of that story.  The funeral was a good opportunity to set up some of the history that we haven't seen in the main continuity yet and setting up more character personalities.  Still a bit up in the air on this one, but I think I'll at least stay through Issue 5.

Worlds' Finest #23

Speaking of refugees from Earth 2, Power Girl and Huntress both seem in a hurry to get back there after the slightly disappointing "First Contact" crossover with Batman/Superman.

Karen seems to have completely given up her attempts to maintain a secret identity on this Earth, casually displaying her powers to speed up the construction of a portal to her Earth (Project Dorothy as she calls it).  The first attempt to activate the equipment doesn't exactly turn out well, knocking out the power across 3 states.  Desaad decides to take advantage of this, and he's not the only one.

Huntress was in the process of breaking into MIT to get download codes of some sort when the power went out and is on her way back out when she encounters some terrorists trying to break in to get radioactive material to build some dirty bombs.  The power outage leads to lots of silhouettes of Huntress framed in a way to remind us that she was the daughter of her Earth's Batman.  She easily disables two of the terrorists, but one gets away.

Meanwhile, Power Girl has decided to speed things along by going to the nuclear reactor that she had drawn from to help get it running again.  Unfortunately, she didn't call ahead and gets shot down by a surface to air missile.  She retaliates by crushing a tank before ignoring the gunfire of the reactor's guards and walking in.  I'm not sure why they decided to go back to her uniform getting ripped up every other issue.  I thought that was a thing of the past after she switched back to her classic outfit.

One of Starr Industries' employees is walking home when Desaad briefly appears to her, drawing her into a position where she is narrowly missed by the car containing the remaining terrorist as Huntress forces him off the road.  He improvises by taking the young woman hostage and telling Huntress to jump off the bridge.

This was a bit of a step up after the First Contact arc.  Most of the scenes were good, but nothing really clicked well enough to make it any better than that.

Finale Night

I just finished watching the season finales of Arrow and Agents of SHIELD back to back.

This episode of Arrow was the culmination of a three part season finale that I can't wait to watch back to back in the same sitting.  It started with an epic "Previously On" montage showing Oliver Queen's entire history with Slade Wilson.

The Island flashback sequences with their confrontation on the Amazo was a good parallel with the modern story arc in Starling City, especially when they flashed back and forth between the fight scenes themselves.  The end of it (and last scene of the episode) wasn't exactly what I expected, with Oliver waking up in Hong Kong under the supervision of Amanda Waller.  I figured they would do more with him and Anatoli, but they still have 3 more seasons worth of flashback material if they follow the pattern they have been.

Back in Starling City, they still managed to follow 4 different plots through most of the episode.  I knew Thea didn't kill Malcolm with her shots at the end of the last episode, but I like that they actually did have her shoot him rather than the trope of her actually shooting someone behind him.  Nice to have another scene with her and Roy, though I kind of expected her to find the mask when they were making out instead of finding something in his house.  It's clear they're planning on taking her to a dark place next season and it'll be interesting to see how that progresses (plus more John Barrowman).

The Lance side of the Starling City plot started pretty much as expected, but took a couple interesting twists toward the end.  It made sense that Sara would call in Nyssa based on what she knew was coming, though I didn't expect the cost of her help to take the form it did.  And after I heard that Sara would have to rejoin the League in exchange for their help, that added to my fear that she was going to get killed off.  Nyssa was a bad-ass, which impressed me, even though it resulted in Isabel dying in a far more anticlimactic way than I expected.  I liked Sara giving Laurel her Canary jacket, hinting at her future.  It was capped off by Quentin showing that he's at least a bit genre savvy by saying it better not give Laurel any ideas.  And then Quentin having a heart attack or something completely out of nowhere.  I hope they don't kill him off, because he has been one of my favorite characters on the show.

I loved how Lyla made her entrance, saving everyone with a rocket into the clocktower (which I hope wasn't a way for them to write off that set for next season).  She pulled Diggle off into his plot to slow Waller down enough for the rest of the team to stop Slade.  I knew Deadshot would show up, but I hoped to see other members of the Suicide Squad (and maybe another Harley Quinn tease).  There wasn't all that much to the story here except for Dig finding out he's going to be a father.  With Roy back up and active, I'm kind of hoping this will result in Dig's role in the team changing to more of an investigator as Roy starts serving as the Arrow's sidekick in the field.

Now on to Oliver's side of the story.  Most of this was his interaction with the other characters and their plots.  It made sense for him to be wary of Nyssa's help, especially since her advice ran contrary to the man he's trying to become.  And when Quentin offered the same advice and was yelling at him that he needed to save Laurel, I half expected him to lower his hood and reveal his identity to prove that it was a difficult decision for him.  I figured that his revelation of his love for Felicity was a way of luring Slade into a trap, but I had forgotten the bugs that were planted at the mansion.  I just figured it was a way for their final battle to be there to send that set out with a bang.  Felicity being the one to cure Slade was a great twist that I didn't see coming.  I'm not sure how much I like the idea of them leaving Slade in an Argus prison.  With Waller presumably still in charge of Argus, the idea of adding Deathstroke to the Suicide Squad seems to be far too tempting for her to resist.

Excellent episode with enough twists to keep me guessing.

Now on to my second finale of the night.  I was kind of worried that watching this immediately after the Arrow finale would do it a bit of a disservice, but it managed to hold its own.

Probably not going to go into as much detail on this one since the Arrow one took longer than I expected.

Fitz and Simmons didn't get as much time as I would have thought in this episode with it being the finale.  It was great that they teamed up to figure out a way to save themselves from their difficult situation (though if they had taken a little longer, they might not have had to go for a swim.  I am worried about what they're going to do with Fitz based on not seeing him at the end of the episode with Simmons and Life Model Decoy Patton Oswalt.  The rescue scene was pretty good and the scene after that with Fury telling Simmons what was going on was probably the most tender moment we've seen with Fury in the entire franchise.

The team infiltrating the Cybertek (I keep wanting to write Cyberdyne, but that's not right) worked for me.  Nice to see a couple more of Tripp's Howling Commandos gadgets.  After they got into the base, I kind of forgot that May/Skye and Coulson/Tripp were in the same place.  Skye and May seemed to get to where they needed to be a bit too easily, but I suppose that's the advantage of not going in in a big armored vehicle.  It's lucky the "incentive program" was on-site, but I suppose that was what needed to happen to move the story forward.  It was great to see May get her payback for Ward's betrayal and there were some great one-liners from May during the fight.

Coulson and Fury fighting Garrett was the true highlight of the show for me.  Great banter among all the characters ("You didn't tell me he'd gone this crazy.") and the return of the Coulson Special from the Avengers with nice callbacks.  I called Mike being the one to kill Garrett, and I was sort of right, though I cracked up at Coulson just casually disintegrating him after his supervillain speech about getting his revenge.  I really liked Bill Paxton's portrayal of crazy Garrett in this episode, and kind of hoped he would come back from time to time, but this was a fitting end.

I don't think Mike needs to atone any more for what he's done, but I like how this season was basically an origin story for Deathlok and wonder if they're going to do the same thing with doing an origin story for another lower-tier superhero over the course of next season as well.

Fury making Coulson the new director of SHIELD made a certain amount of sense to prevent them from having to rename the show, though I am concerned that it will result in them moving him to more of a General Hammond role next season, staying on the base while May takes the team out into the field.  As I mentioned above, I'm pretty sure the Koenigs are actually Life Model Decoys of some sort.  Their dialog was just too similar to be a coincidence.  I would be OK with him continuing to be at least a recurring character next season.  There wasn't as much to set up for next season as on Arrow, but there was still a bit.

Stargate Sunday: Irresponsible & Tao of Rodney

The Stargate episodes I watched this week were Irresponsible and Tao of Rodney, the 13th and 14th episodes of Stargate Atlantis season 3.

Irresponsible

The Atlantis Expedition has learned of a planet where a "great hero" has protected the citizens from threats.  Hoping to find an ally against the Wraith, Sheppard's team goes to the planet, only to find Lucius Lavin (the Harry Mudd of the Stargate franchise) is using an Ancient personal shield to make himself this hero.  The team is not impressed, even after a gang of Genii mercenaries attack the town and Lucius "saves" them.  

We find out later that Lucius hired the mercenaries to pretend to attack the town and be driven off by him.  The mercenaries were exiled survivors of Cowen's guard, and after Lucius shortchanges them on their payment for the "attack", contact Commander Kolya to let him know about Sheppard's team being on the planet.

Kolya shows up and eventually captures the entire team except for Sheppard himself.  Lucius manages to escape as well and he and Sheppard discover that the gate is guarded, preventing them from calling in reinforcements.  Sheppard hatches a plan and gets Lucius to convince the town to rise up against the Genii while he confronts Kolya.  In a scene reminiscent of a gunfight from a western, Sheppard walks into the town square to prevent Kolya from killing McKay.  The Genii soldiers shoot him, only to discover that Sheppard is wearing the personal shield.  The shield conveniently fails after they all run out of ammo, leaving Sheppard unprotected.  The villagers show up with their weapons, forcing the Genii to surrender, but Kolya goes for his gun, forcing John to kill him.

Despite the presence of Lucius, this episode wasn't as bad as I remembered.  Unlike Lucius' other appearance in Irresistible, he wasn't particularly offensive.  I still think it's a shame that Kolya wasn't more involved in the episode he was killed in, but his presence did make the episode far more interesting than it would have been with a random mercenary.

I did find it strangely fitting that the last shot we see of Lucius is a kid kicking him between his legs, expecting the shield to still protect him.

Tao Of Rodney

Rodney McKay and Radek Zelenka are leading a science team checking out a previously unexplored section of Atlantis when they discover an Ancient lab.  Rodney attempts to turn the systems off to save power when a spiral of strange energy surrounds him.  He doesn't notice any negative effects, but a short time later, starts exhibiting enhanced hearing and telekinesis.  Radek and Dr. Weir start investigating the machine further and discover that it was created to manipulate DNA to aid the process of Ascension.  

Dr. Beckett checks up on McKay to look for any negative side effects before letting him out of the infirmary, escorted by Ronon.  On his way up to the command center, Rodney discovered that he can now read minds as well.  He gets permission to use his increasing intelligence to reconfigure the city's power systems, but part way through the process is interrupted by Weir, who discovered that if he doesn't Ascend, the changes to his DNA will kill him.  This distraction results in a power surge, which critically injures Zelenka.  Rodney uses the healing powers we have seen Ancients use in the past to save Zelenka, then starts using the time he has left to do as much inventing as he can, including improvements to the shields of the Daedalus and a hyperdrive for a Puddle Jumper.  After his attempts to learn meditation in order to ascend fail, Rodney begins saying farewell to his team members, leading to touching scenes with Zelenka, Teyla, and Ronon.

As Rodney's body starts to die, he successfully meditates, getting his brain activity down to the point at which he could ascend.  He suddenly wakes back up and grabs Beckett, giving him an idea as to how to save him.  The idea works, using the machine to revert Rodney to his condition before his DNA was manipulated.

I enjoyed this episode.  McKay is my favorite character, so that's part of it, but this was a good combination of seeing McKay at his abrasive best and seeing his softer side, especially when he apologizes to Zelenka for the way he treats him and when he heals Ronon's scars.  I do wish there had been a similar "farewell" scene with Rodney and Carson, but it doesn't drag the episode down at all.

Trivia:

In a couple scenes, we see the label SGA/BLU ## on server racks in McKay's lab.  The production crew referred to the server racks as "Blinking Light Units" to reflect their role in making the background more interesting.  You can see the label in the upper-middle portion of the screenshot below.

Quotes:

"Does superego count as a power?"

"And with great potential comes great responsibility."

"If you're a highly-evolved super-genius, put up your hand."

Comic reviews for May 5-9

Here are my thoughts on the comics I bought today.  You'll notice that they're only DC at the moment.  This is because I have a Marvel Unlimited subscription that I use to read Marvel comics.

Smallville: Lantern #9

As a digital first series, the Smallville Season 11 comics have two different numbering schemes. This is digital issue #9, which will make it the last third of print issue 3 when it comes out, so it drops us right into the action with John Stewart (the Green Lantern, not the comedian) trying to hold off Parallax on his own. He manages for a while, but he is being overpowered while Superman returns to Earth to try stopping the swarm of yellow rings which turned most of the inmates at Arkham Asylum into Yellow Lanterns. Meanwhile, Green Arrow is called on to help the DEO (Department of Extranormal Operations) capture Prometheus.

I did appreciate more references to the other human Green Lanterns during the confrontation between John and Parallax. In this continuity, they are saying that when Hal Jordan was possessed by Parallax, he killed Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardner, leaving John as the only human Lantern. This leads to an interesting cliffhanger at the end of the issue that I'm not going to spoil.

I liked them bringing Prometheus in early in this arc, but with all the focus on the Lantern based storylines, I don't think they're doing enough with him. I'm hoping he evades capture and remains a threat for a while, but with both Green Arrow and Wonder Woman after him, I kind of doubt that'll happen. I'm not sold on the armor Ollie had the Watchtower's 3D printer make, but we haven't seen it in action yet.

The idea of yellow rings descending on Arkham is an interesting one since fear is a strong part of the Batman section of the DC universe. I don't get why they haven't had Scarecrow show up with a yellow ring though. Fear is far more part of his act than it is for Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, or Bane. I wish they had done more with Superman as a Green Lantern before he went back to using his Superman powers, but there are still 3 more digital issues to go in this arc, so it could happen.

There was a lot going on in this issue, to the point where by the time I was into one scene, it was already moving on to the next one. With the digital format, that tends to happen from time to time.

New 52: Future's End #1

This is the start of a new weekly series which was previewed with a #0 issue for Free Comic Book day. Terry McGinnis, the Batman from the Batman Beyond animated series was sent back in time by Bruce Wayne to stop the creation of Brother Eye, an artificial intelligence which had taken over their world (after being created by Michael Holt and Bruce Wayne himself). The time travel device wasn't configured for Terry and sent him back 7 years after he planned to arrive, making his mission even more difficult and pressing.

I am getting a kick out of the banter between the Alfred AI in the Batman suit and Terry. In the preview issue, I was afraid it would be a bit too much like Tony Stark and Jarvis in the Iron Man movies, but

I don't really know anything about any of the Stormwatch members other than Hawkman, but seeing them defeated so efficiently does set the stage for the threat of Brother Eye. The scene also made me wonder if there was some kind of extraterrestrial AI involved in making Brother Eye what it becomes.

Other than the Stormwatch scene, this issue was mostly about setting up characters for the rest of the series. I'm not all that familiar with Grifter and only know Firestorm from Justice League and Blackest Night, but it's clear they're going to be big parts of this series. They also set up that anything could happen with the death of a major character (though since this is an alternate timeline, it doesn't really have an impact on any other series.

The Batman scene was the best part of this issue, but that might be because he is the character I know best. I'm not sure if I'll stick with this series long term, but I'm willing to give it a few more issues. With the time travel aspect, I'm hoping Booster Gold shows up at some point.

Batman/Superman #10

This was a bit of a stand alone issue to allow the story to take a breath after the First Contact crossover with World's Finest. It starts with Batman in a coma and Superman finding Dr. Ray Palmer to investigate the unusual discovery he made in Batman's bloodstream. Using Palmer's miniaturization technology, they enter Batman's brain and find an alien starship that was taken over by its society's supervillains. They defeat one of the villains, but not before the other one gets expanded into the real world. Dr. Palmer manages to extract the ship, bringing Batman out of his coma to fight the escaped villain.

This was a fun issue and with an art style I like much better than most of the other issues of Batman/Superman.

Earth 2 #23

Earth 2 continues the story of an alternate world where Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman were killed defeating an alien invasion. Which made it a bit annoying when the last few issues have been focused on Batman (Thomas Wayne this time) and a brainwashed Superman who is working for Darksied. This issue shifted back a bit more toward focusing on the original stars of Earth 2, with Alan Scott returning to save Hawkgirl and the Kryptonian they found a few issues back. It also did more with the Earth 2 Red Tornado, an android with the consciousness and memories of Lois Lane.

I'm hoping they're getting close to wrapping up this invasion storyline which has been going on for what seems like forever. While I do like many of the characters, I think it's time to move on to trying to rebuild Earth. If not, it might be time for me to move on from this series for the time being.

Some ideas

I'm not sure how regularly I'm going to post here, but here are some ideas I might do

Fridays - Comic mini-reviews
Friday is the day I buy my comics for the week on Comixology.  I haven't been following comics for all that long, so I don't want to make this a comic review blog, but I might do some mini-reviews of at least some of the comics I buy each week

Weekend - Stargate
I am participating in a Stargate rewatch on the Galactic Watercooler forums.  While I watch the episodes for the week Saturday night, I probably wouldn't post my thoughts until Sunday.  We're getting close to the end of Season 10 of SG-1 and Season 3 of Atlantis.

Not really sure beyond that.

Hello

Decided to try creating a blog.  I don't really have a theme in mind for it or anything.  Just a way of getting thoughts out there that are a bit more involved than what can be done through Facebook or Twitter.

I'm interested in a lot of superhero stuff at the moment, but also some science fiction, fantasy, and other assorted geekery.

I'm a Software Engineer who lives in Orlando, FL.  Probably won't talk about work much, other than in very general terms.

Links to some of my friends:

Galactic Watercooler - The site and forum are kind of dead, but great podcasts that broadened my horizons
Gonna Geek - A newer podcast network that I follow

Sentinels of the Multiverse - Cool Superhero themed tabletop card game with a complete original universe

Paladin Tech and Game - One of my local game stores.  I run Pathfinder Society RPG scenarios here every Sunday at 1 PM.

And now to wrap things up, a couple pictures of my cats.  Don't worry, I won't make this a habit. ;)

 Rodney - Named after Rodney McKay from Stargate Atlantis

Myri - Named after Miranda Lawson from Mass Effect and Myri Antilles from Star Wars