More points to make about "the Lightning Saga", if they haven't been made yet
Published by Avi Green on Friday, August 10, 2007 at 8:30 AM.
I think I once gave this whole entry on Comics Should Be Good some mention, but only minor, so I'm going to expand upon what it discusses a bit more, since there's more that can be said about this disastrous crossover between Justice League and Society that brought back Wally West, but beyond that was extremely poor. For example:
And even if, in the parts of this crossover with Justice Society that're written by Geoff Johns, they do mention the superhero names of those in question, it'd still look pretty awkward and baffling if published in trade format. Not to mention that they could've brought Wally and Linda and kids back in a way that's not just more plausible, but also shorter, and that could've surely been told in just one single issue!
(Not that it makes Mark Waid's All-Flash special any good, but when I looked at a preview offered on Newsarama, I noticed that he was no doubt trying to simplify everything, which is a darn good idea.)
Then, just one more thing to mention for now would have to be the art by Ed Benes. It's surprising to see him drawing as though he were channeling Michael Turner. Unlike some other people, I figure it best not to make much of a fuss over Turner's drawing, even if I've seen far better than his stuff, but Benes is surprisingly mediocre here, when his artwork in Birds of Prey was much livelier. Almost everyone here looks...the same!
Then, there's the cover. Did Meltzer really ask for Power Girl's chest to be drawn smaller? Somehow, it's sounds just like a writer who doled out senseless violence in Identity Crisis to disapprove of sexiness. No wonder I'm the kind of guy who feels that violence is worse than sex in entertainment! But more importantly, any controversy that arose over that cover was probably meant to divert attention from what should've been the real problem: the crummy story. Who cares how PG is drawn, it's the horrid, anti-climactic writing that should matter here. Yet that explains why the cover was used: partly to draw in people who'd buy it for the cover alone, and surely to "compensate" for the bad story within.
Hopefully, in another decade, people will be admitting what should be obvious already: that stories like this published at the start of the 21st century were no better than any terrible storytelling that existed during the 1990s.
...Dinah, Clark, John, Bruce, Jay Garrick, Karen, Wally West, and Hal Jordan are never identified by their superhero names. Yes, I realize that we should know who they are, but why is it so important to know their real names when it’s not that important to know their superhero names?What's interesting about this refusal to feature their superhero names is that this already happened in Meltzer's other incredibly overrated "product", Identity Crisis, where almost no one's superhero names were mentioned, if at all. This struck me as a subtle form of dislike for superheroes, so I can't see why anyone would buy into the idea that Meltzer is really a comics fan. Because real fans of these kind of books wouldn't do what Mark Gruenwald tried to warn against!
And even if, in the parts of this crossover with Justice Society that're written by Geoff Johns, they do mention the superhero names of those in question, it'd still look pretty awkward and baffling if published in trade format. Not to mention that they could've brought Wally and Linda and kids back in a way that's not just more plausible, but also shorter, and that could've surely been told in just one single issue!
(Not that it makes Mark Waid's All-Flash special any good, but when I looked at a preview offered on Newsarama, I noticed that he was no doubt trying to simplify everything, which is a darn good idea.)
Then, just one more thing to mention for now would have to be the art by Ed Benes. It's surprising to see him drawing as though he were channeling Michael Turner. Unlike some other people, I figure it best not to make much of a fuss over Turner's drawing, even if I've seen far better than his stuff, but Benes is surprisingly mediocre here, when his artwork in Birds of Prey was much livelier. Almost everyone here looks...the same!
Then, there's the cover. Did Meltzer really ask for Power Girl's chest to be drawn smaller? Somehow, it's sounds just like a writer who doled out senseless violence in Identity Crisis to disapprove of sexiness. No wonder I'm the kind of guy who feels that violence is worse than sex in entertainment! But more importantly, any controversy that arose over that cover was probably meant to divert attention from what should've been the real problem: the crummy story. Who cares how PG is drawn, it's the horrid, anti-climactic writing that should matter here. Yet that explains why the cover was used: partly to draw in people who'd buy it for the cover alone, and surely to "compensate" for the bad story within.
Hopefully, in another decade, people will be admitting what should be obvious already: that stories like this published at the start of the 21st century were no better than any terrible storytelling that existed during the 1990s.
Labels: dc comics, Flash, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America
