MATT LOWDER Looks At Some Current Comics

CROSS OVER #3 (Image, 2021) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

 

This is fun, brisk, and meta. Interesting angle perspectives, a great hand drawn feel, and emotive facial expressions continue to be strengths. 

It will take six issues to see where this is all going. I'd recommend it, overall. You may need to do some wiki reading for some of the comic geek references for characters that may be obscure to some. A few reveals may pack more of a punch if you're an afficianado and know comic history. The plot is really owning the gimmick and I think I've bought into it.

It's original. I think the sum of these issues will be greater than its parts (issues) taken individually. I had fun. If you read Issues # 1-3 together, it's strong.

FUTURE STATE: THE NEXT BATMAN #1 (DC, 2021) Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Let's talk good stuff first. This was a fine introduction to a world and its characters.

It's almost too dense, but pulls it off. The first 10 pages introduce 10 or so characters and a police state setting. It's a lot. Now, I didn't read Death Metal, but maybe I need to. The comic begins by telling us from those events that time and space has been shook loose, and this is a glimpse into one multiverse scenario. Take that as you will. 

Color and art are amazing, except for one or two egregious facial errors that shouldn't have gone to print that way. Mostly, this is A-list art and color I've come to expect from Image or Boom!. Neon orange, green, pink, and blue in flat, unshaded swaths. Lots of great narrative seeds planted here. I'm curious about this cast of characters. I want details.

But now here's my big complaint that knocks it down a half star. DC wants $8 for each of these four issues. That's 32 dollars, and only 20 pages of these 64 page issues is actually Batman. I didn't know this and was pretty cranky flipping to page 22 and realizing this, I'm not gonna try to lie.

I sat down expecting a nice long Batman story last night, and was flabbergasted to learn that two additional stories in here, Outsiders and Arkham Knights, were included. Call me ignorant or whatever, but I didn't know. 

Luckily, both of these stories are competent and flesh out the Magistrate and the Gotham politics very strongly. Had they been stinker side-stories, I'd have considered canceling the rest of my books in this line. I decided not to. Eight dollars for 20 pages I want and then B-fluff is.... questionable. I'd have preferred they make those stories digital exclusives or something and given me a $4.99 book.

This book is good as a whole, but is much more about the Magistrate and solidifying the setting than anything to do with Batman, who appears on only 10 of 64 pages. I was surprised. 

Despite being cranky, I enjoy the action of the Katana story, and the final story's ragtag group was most intriguing: escaped Arkham inmates have created their own Avengers squad called the Arkham Knights who are trying to take back the streets from the fascist state of mercenary paramilitary who have broken Gotham with impunity. RAD. I'm interested in Zasaz, Dent, Croc, Clay, and others taking on a righteous role. Despite my complaints, I recommend this to Gotham fans who know this world already. New readers? Nah.

THE RESISTANCE: REBORN (one-shot, AWA UPSHOT, 2021) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

A very stylized, grainy, muddy, and (dare I say) interpretational artistry leads readers through five 10-page vignettes of characters dealing with the aftermath of a pandemic that has killed millions and given a few hundred metahuman powers, good and bad.

Each of the five stories shows one characters origin like a haiku. Panels are oversized, often 2-3 panels per page at most. Bold way to do it. 

If you have not read THE RESISTANCE mini-series from 2020, I don't think this will be of interest to you unless you really appreciate character flash fiction and reading between the lines. If you've read The RESISTANCE however, this serves as a nice fatty snack, world building with characters that may show up in 2021's Volume 2 of this series coming from AWA in March/April. AWA UPSHOT is a publisher to pay attention to.