Action Comics #18 review

Esnetni saw taht, wehp. Oops, sorry, I’m in 5th Dimension mode, backwards speak and all that. Longtime Superman readers know that the way to banish traditional pest Mr Mxyzptlk home to the 5th Dimension is to trick him into saying his name backwards. But Mxy’s rival Vyndktvx, who’s been attacking Superman from all angles for […]

Batman Incorporated #8 review

I think I’m safe to assume anyone reading this knows what happens this issue, DC having self-spoiled to the media a couple of days back. And if you hadn’t heard, I hope Chris Burnham’s cover here – don’t look! – gets the message across in a darkly elegant manner. Damian Wayne dies, slaughtered by his […]

Action Comics #16 review

If you’ve not been reading Action Comics, any attempt at summation of this issue by me is going to fall very flat. We’re almost a year and a half into a grand, glorious storyline spanning several periods in Superman’s life, as well as the far future. Then there are the representatives from the magical Fifth […]

Action Comics #15 review

… or Mrs Nyxly Explains It All. There’s an awful lot of exposition this issue, but it’s anything but awful, as Clark Kent’s landlady, recently revealed as an emigree from the Fifth Dimension, gives him the big picture. In a truly fascinating instalment we see Superman on the roof of her building, remembering the confrontation […]

Action Comics #14 review

I’ve heard complaints that Grant Morrison isn’t imbuing Action Comics with the same sense of wonder that pervaded his All-Star Superman run. As if to answer those critics, ‘Superman’s Mission To Mars’ opens with a sequence showing just how awesome the Man of Steel is – without actually showing him. There’s real grandeur as super-hearing, […]

Action Comics #13 review

Linus was right. The Great Pumpkin does bring wonderful gifts at Hallowe’en. What else could explain the best issue of Action Comics this year showing up in October? ‘The Ghost in the Fortress of Solitude’ is presented as a fable for a dark, autumn night, with an omniscient narrator telling us what happened on October […]

Batman Incorporated #3 review

Batman revives his underworld alter ego, hustler Matches Malone, to pump Gotham lowlives for information on the Leviathan organisation that serves Talia al-Ghul. Along the way he flirts with chanteuse Lumina Lux, and her need for a knight in shining armour lands Matches in big trouble. Damian, meanwhile, kicks against Batman’s grounding of Robin by […]

Batman Incorporated #2 review

Last issue closed with Robin apparently dead at the hands of a bounty hunter. This issue, we catch up with Damian’s mother, Talia, the woman who put the price on his head, as she visits her father, Ra’s al-Ghul, master of the League of Assassins. There’s not much in the way of progression so far […]

Batman Incorporated #1 review

We begin in a graveyard, with a broken Bruce Wayne talking to Alfred by a familiar tombstone, then move back a month, as Batman and Robin chase a goat-masked thug through the rain and into an abbatoir. As butchers pull down masks to become literal citizens of Gotham – ‘the Goats’ town’ – the place […]

Action Comics #4 review

Brainiac’s invasion of Metropolis continues, with his computer virus motivating the creation of thousands of ‘Terminauts’ across the globe. But they’re not out to terminate humans, only Superman. The other part of their mission is to preserve – read, ‘steal – Mankind’s treasures. Clark Kent, visiting an industrial plant with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, […]