Domino Killer instinct by Gail Simone, David Baldeón, Michael Shelfer, Jesus Aburton

Rating: WARTY!

Given that, apart from the writer (Simone) who apparently has little influence or simply doesn't care, this is entirely the work of evidently adolescent males (drawn by Baldeón and Shelfer, colored by Aburton), this graphic novel didn't surprise me at all to see that its rating in my new system was a very poor 22 (the lower the number the worse the comic book). What this means is that the book only made it to page 22 before it showed a female character (in this case the main one, and in her underwear) in an image with her leg legs wide open facing the viewer. It took her fewer pages than that to get her into the frilly underwear she apparently favors when working.

From now on regardless of the story, any graphic novel/comic book that gratuitously shows that kind of an image (and I can't off-hand think of an instance where it wouldn't be gratuitous), it's an immediate WARTY rating on my blog. The story wasn't that great anyway. I skimmed through it from p22 onward and it was the same kind of crap we normally get in Marvel comics - and probably in DC comics too. It's supposed to be about the main character Domino, but every step of the way, every known character in the entire Marvel universe puts in an appearance to help the poor helpless girl out, so the story really isn't about her at all when you get right down to it, it's about how many Marvel characters we can fit into her story and how helpless, disempowered, and devalued can we make her on the way through it.

I expected better from a female writer. I got exactly what I expected from a male art crew. In short, this graphic novel sucked.

Birds of Prey Vol 4 Sensei & Student by Gail Simone and various artists

Rating: WARTY!

Since 1996, DC comics has published several series in the Birds of Prey category which is why it's so hard to keep track of which was published when and in what order - a failing of which comic books seem inexplicably proud. The two I read, I came across by accident at the local library. One of them actually did the courtesy of announcing that it was volume two on the cover, but volume two of which series was left to guesswork. That it also called "The New 52" offer a clue, but not much of one. The other volume, typically for comics, offered no clues at all which series the story was in, if any.

I first came to Birds of Prey via the short-lived, and slightly limp, but nonetheless enjoyable TV series which came out in 2002, but which I didn't watch until quite recently. This is why I was interested in picking up these comic books when I saw them at the library. I was drawn to the TV series by two of the cast, Dina Meyer, who I've adored ever since I saw her in the movie Johnny Mnemonic based on a William Gibson novel, and Rachel Skarsten who, as later, as Tamsin in the TV show Lost Girl provided endless entertainment for me.

The TV show featured only Oracle, Black Canary (the two founders of Birds of Prey), along with Huntress and Harley Quinn and in main roles. Black Canary wasn't part of the inception of Birds of Prey in the TV series. She came along in the first episode after the organization was up and running, evidently founded by Oracle and Huntress and already with some back story. The graphic novels did not feature Harley Quinn in any kind of leading role, but did feature the other three in main roles, along with Lady Hawk.

The first of the two graphic novels I read featured specifically Oracle, Black Canary, Huntress, Lady Shiva Cheshire, and Savant, although Oracle was largely sidelined from being imprisoned inexplicably and to little purpose either on her part or on the part of her captors who were purportedly Homeland Security or some such government agency. Homeland security never made any sense to me because, fool that I am, I'd always thought that's what the FBI was supposed to be, but I seriously underestimated the power of a bureaucracy to proliferate and perpetuate itself.

This story, from the first Gail Simone era, was very disappointing, especially from a series with a female writer. Catwoman (or someone I assumed was Catwoman) is featured prominently in the lower right quadrant of the cover yet makes no appearance (not that I noticed) in the story. A half-dressed Batgirl also occupies a quadrant of the cover, hilariously catty-cornered to Catwoman, but her appearance is also limited and un-entertaining, like she's on a leash. Huntress disports herself at one point in fishnet hose as part of her costume. Seriously? I don't believe I've ever read a graphic novel wherein the artists have less respect for women than I saw in this one, and the art wasn't even that great to make a pretense of "justifying" it.

I got the impression that the cover illustrations were nothing more than a salacious come-on, and had nothing whatsoever to do with what happens inside, which is a very good reason not to pay any attention to the cover, not even on a graphic novel. Unfortunately, a glance through the interior had made it look like it was going to be more interesting than it turned out to be. In the end all it managed to be was an exploitative montage of "hot" female super hero body parts - an open crotch here, a pair of legs or breasts there. The art was less than satisfactory and very bland, so I guess it needed the titivation aspect in order to survive. If comics want to grow beyond the shadow of superannuated adolescence with which they're oft tarred, they need to grow beyond, way beyond, this schoolboy pointing and tittering mentality when it comes to artwork.

The main story, which is what had caught my eye, was about an uneasy alliance between Huntress, Lady Shiva, and Cheshire. This part wasn't awfully bad, but these women were far too well-behaved and polite to be the real characters they were supposed to be, and in the end, this blandness killed all joy of that part of the story for me. I don't want to read about a tame Huntress, a restrained Cheshire, and a Lady Shiva who is on her best behavior. Thus for me killed the story and I cannot recommend this one unless you like looking at highly sexualized cartoon characters who seem to have little to offer beyond unnecessarily exposed body parts.

Vampirella Feary Tales by Nancy A Collins and Gail Simone

Rating: WARTY!

Given that this was a graphic novel with standard 'okay' art work, written and illustrated by two female artists/writers, I expected better and didn't get it. It was still women as meat, romping around in their underwear with poor dialogue and unimaginative adventures. Vampirella gets dragged magically into a fairy tale book, except that these fairy tales are horrifically twisted - hence feary tales.<./p>

There are five stories in this first volume and the series runs to at least four more volumes after this, but my interest ended with this one. I can't recommend it. I know it was supposedly a celebration of forty-five years of Vampirella, but this is 2015, and we deserve a lot better than Vampirella as vapid meat. And so does she.

Batgirl Volume 4 Wanted by Gail Simone and Marguerite Bennett

Title: Batgirl Volume 4 Wanted
Author: Gail Simone and Marguerite Bennett
Publisher: Warner Bros (DC Comics)
Rating: WARTY!

Penciling: Fernando Pasarin.
Inking: Jonathan Glapion.
Coloring: Blond and Brett Smith.

This and the other graphic novel I'm reviewing today are probably the last DC comics I'll be reading and also coincidentally constitute the last of the graphics which I was denied a chance to read in advance review copy form. The publishers can deny you an early look, but they can't prevent you completely from reading and reviewing a book you've set your mind on!

This one beautifully presented and colored, in hardback with glossy pages and really great art work, but that's only a part of a graphic novel. The other part is story, and this one made little sense. Note that in saying that, I'm coming into this at volume four, having not read the previous three, but although this story proceeds out of the previous three volumes, it's not so obscure that you can't get into it and figure out what's been going on. While there are some notable exceptions, comic books after all, are not known for being deep!

Whenever you're reading a super hero story you have to let some things slide by or give up. Obviously there are no "meta-humans" in real life, and no vigilantes in the sense intended here, so you have to take that as a given going in. The problem isn't that per se, it's what's done with that premise which makes or breaks a good graphic story. It's for this reason that I've never been a fan of either Batman or Superman. I give the links in my blog because I think it's hilarious that the two characters are illustrated in wikipedia (as of this writing) in images showing almost exactly the same macho pose, but facing in opposite directions, like they're book-ends or like they're in confrontation depending on how you juxtapose them!

For me, these two characters make little sense at their very root, and while that lack of sense may have managed a passing grade in 1933 and 1939 respectively, it's not nearly adequate in 2015. I loved the Christopher Nolan movie trilogy, which rose above any routine issues I might have with the concept for Batman, but Superman has always failed with me, and comics have consistently failed to dig them out of their holes too.

Coming into this, and having enjoyed the Birds of Prey TV show, which features two of my favorite actors in lead roles, I was hoping for something good and cool - and different from the Batman world - especially given that the writers are female (which itself is something that's scarce in the comic book world). What I got was pretty much standard boilerplate comic book which any guy might have come up with. I was disappointed.

The story begins with The Ventriloquist, which was mildly amusing since I only just got through watching a Hercule Poirot TV show yesterday which featured a ventriloquist as the villain! There is no back-story (in this edition) for this character, and I'm not familiar with her, so while she was intriguing and interesting, she lacked substance, especially since she rapidly disappeared from the story never to be heard from again. Plus her weirdly morphing powers were rather weird to me.

That was like a prologue, I'm not a fan of prologues, but after this, the main body of the story took off with a vengeance, focusing on the angst Batgirl was facing after having taken action to save her mother which resulted in the death of her brother. Note that both Barbara Gordon and her brother are the children of the venerable police commissioner Gordon, but what Gordon doesn't know is that Barbara is Batgirl. She even tries to unveil herself to him, but Gordon, who wants Batgirl dead, turns his back, refusing to learn who she really is.

This is one of the things which made no absolutely no sense, but what makes less sense is that Gordon, who is obviously intimately familiar with his daughter's face, and who is very familiar with Batgirl's face having seen it numerous times, has failed to figure it out for himself. Barbara Gordon has long red hair and so does Batgirl, and her cowl fails to hide her eyes and the lower part of her face. How could he not figure it out?!

This is on par with no one grasping that Superman and Clark Kent are the same when the only "difference" between then is a pair of eyeglasses and a comma of hair. It's utterly nonsensical. But that's not as nonsensical as the flat refusal on the part of both Batman and Superman, to actually help the police. Both these guys, and particularly Batman, have access to technology and methods which could really aid police investigations and crime prevention if the so-called heroes were willing to share the technology and train the police, but neither of them ever does. instead they selfishly keep it to themselves, arrogantly assuming that they're the only ones fit to use it! This could be viewed as obstruction of justice!

Obviously other heroes do this same thing - for example, Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four comes readily to mind - and if they did this they'd be a lot less special in many regards - particularly Batman whose entire existence is predicated upon his superior training and technology, since he has no super powers. Again this is one of the things you must let slide if you want to enjoy the comic.

There were issues with this issue, such as the stereotypical hooligans in the mall who harass Barbara when she's out shopping (for shoes), because clearly all guys who wear spiked hair are closet rapists! There's a lot of gore and blood splatter. There's way too much angst, but that's stock-in-trade for comics books. In one instance this is hilarious because it looks like Barbara is crying ink - her tears are black! At first I thought this was some horrible seepage from her eyes caused by something which some super-villain had done to her, but it was just tears and artistic license.

The closing scenes when she and Daddy Gordon are running from super-villains (does Batman ever run from villains? I'm not in a position to comment, but it seemed odd), were simply not credible given what had come before. The interactions between them made both characters look like idiots and the whole failed "Hey dad, it's me, Barbara!" dénouement made Batgirl look weak, clueless and totally ineffectual. So overall, I can't recommend this. Aside from the art work, which was remarkable, there really was nothing heroic about this story. Marguerite Bennett's contribution was a really odd story at the end which had nothing to do with anything that had gone before. It wasn't entertaining to me.