Runaways Vol 2 Teenage Wasteland by various contributors

Rating: WARTY!

This was my first venture into Marvel's Runaways, a comic book series in which a band of mostly young teens, but including an 11-year-old, learns after seeing them literally sacrifice a girl, that their parents constitute an evil organization they call 'The Pride'. The series was created by Brian Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, but Joss Whedon has also had some involvement in it, leading some to wonder if this might be Marvel's next big venture - into movies or into a TV series, adding another foundation stone in their burgeoning super hero empire.

I decided that if this was indeed somewhere Marvel was going, I should try to get a leg up on the whole thing since I knew squat about these guys other than the vaguest notion of what they were about. This chance came from my beloved local library when I saw a whole bunch of these on the shelf. I had two immediate problems. One was that of what appeared to be two separate series, and not a one of them had a volume number on the cover or on the credits page, so I had no idea which one came first. I had to look it up online, only to discover my second problem, which was that volume one wasn't on the shelf! I did get vols 2 & 3 though.

Why are graphic novel creators so devoted to keeping people in the dark about where they are? This is one reason I detest series! I know these graphic novels are already aggregations of single issue comics, but could they not put something on the cover to indicate cardinality?! I had to go online to find out which ones to start with, and even then I couldn't figure out who's on first, or whether I was looking at two sets that were really separate or whether they were merely different print runs of the same stories (it turned out to be the latter). I finally picked volumes two and three of the small format paperbacks and a volume of the large format because it was written by Whedon. I have no idea what order that one was in.

That said, I blitzed the two small ones and found them to be quite entertaining despite a few issues here and there (which were no worse than any other comic book). Yes, issues in the issues! The parents of these kids were chosen by aliens to usher in the end of humanity. The reward they were promised was that six of them would live through the genocide of their fellow humans and become immortals. I'm sorry but I see no incentive there! We're supposed to believe that these evil parents were cool with the idea that they would have one child each thereby creating the six survivors? Either they're stupid or far from evil. The aliens told them that only the most devoted of their servants would be the ones who were saved, so there was no reason to believe they would accept substitutes or care about children or their servants' wishes!

Their parents are an assorted group of aliens, time-travelers, scientists, telepaths, and wizards, and what happens is that the kids, who have surprisingly been unaware of how evil their parents are, spy on them and are shocked by their behavior, so they...run away! They try adopting super hero names but it doesn't work. The youngest makes her own thrown-together costume, but none of them really are interested in the traditional super hero path, which made this very appealing to me, especially since I'm working on a super hero novel myself right now. The characters are also mostly female and of diverse ethnic backgrounds, so this is another feather in its cap as far as I'm concerned.

Talking of diversity, Karolina Dean is the alien and she knows she's literally alien. Like superman, her power comes from the sun, but unlike the foundational DC hero, her power fades at night. This was another thing I liked. I've never understood how Superman managed to be as super at night as he was during the day, but perhaps he worked like a capacitor?! Molly Hayes is the daughter of the mutant telepaths, but she's more like Superman in that she has super strength and invulnerability. Nico Minoru, like Harry Potter, is the daughter of wizardly parents and can do magic, although in the two volumes I read, she did very little of it. She's also the de facto leader if there can be said to be one.

Chase Stein is the son of the scientists and has no super power, but he did steal his dad's 'fistigons' which are gloves which seem confined to emitting fireballs and extruding metal claws rather like Wolverine. Alex Wilder is the son of gangland capos, and is described as having a precocious and forward-looking intellect, although he never came off as being particularly smart to me. Gertrude Yorkes (there's that out-of-style name again, but maybe it's because she) is the daughter of the time-travelers. She has an empathic link with a velociraptor nicknamed Old Lace. She goes therefore, by Arsenic. Once again we see the velociraptor way over-sized as it was in the Jurassic Park movies, but since this one is genetically engineered, perhaps there is a reason for that.

This series was written in the mid-'oughts, yet all of these teens seemed unusually familiar with - and addicted to - anachronisms. This brought me out of suspension of reality quite often because it didn't feel like things these teens would say or reference. I mean, how many teens, even US teens, would even know about a 1939 play adapted into a 1944 Cary Grant movie titled Arsenic and Old Lace, as opposed to how many older comic book writers?! They did explain the Beatles references by mentioning that one of the kids had an album, a present from a parent, but this doesn't explain how all the other kids would be familiar enough with them that they never questioned the references.

Those gripes aside, I did like the off-the-beaten-path route this story took, its basic premise of rebellious teens, its cast, and the overall story. This one was focused on the kids establishing themselves in a 'base of operations' and their move towards helping people in a rather forlorn, misguided, and half-hearted effort to right their parents' wrongs, but there as very little super hero activity here. it was mostly focused on the interactions between the teens, but even so, it was very readable and interesting, so I recommend it.

Runaways The Complete Collection Vol 4 by various contributors

Rating: WARTY!

I have to give this fourth volume a negative rating too, along with the third volume I also reviewed. This one I didn't even finish, ditching it about half way through. I'm done with the Runaways series now: it was tedious and repetitive and nothing new was being offered. The characters which had held so much promise when I first began reading their adventures now seem to be running out of interesting or entertaining things to do, and they had nothing new to offer me. Add that to the tedium of some of the characters behaving the same in story after story, making the same mistakes or the same bad jokes, never developing, growing, or learning, and with Molly becoming ever more nauseating it's not appealing to me any more.

I mean Molly is supposed to be thirteen, but she consistently behaves like she's six - and a boy! There's nothing wrong with girls being masculine or tomboyish, but in her case it's not a character trait, it's a consistent failing of the writers to grasp the first thing about twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls. Although they do know how many teeth a thirteen-year-old should have, which is one nice thing I can say! LOL! But Molly never has a period. She's never interested in boys or girls on an emotional level. She shows no growth whatsoever towards maturity despite approaching young adulthood - and living on the street, and fighting for her life from time to time. It's simply not credible that she is a perennial juvenile. Chase is a perennial airhead jock type, Nico is perennially running out of new spells to cast. Frankly, it's boring and unimaginative and I'm done with this series although I still have some individual reviews to post of earlier material I read which was better!

Runaways The Complete Collection Vol 3 by various contributors

Rating: WARTY!

I have to give this a negative review overall, but portions of it I shall be reviewing separately and positively. This review is for the complete volume four collection which to me was not a worthy read. The art work was bordering on Japanese style in some portions: over-sized eyes and so on, of which I am not a fan, and even when it wasn't drawn that way, it was less than thrilling. The stories in the first half of the volume were not entertaining to me. It picked up in the second half, but I'll review those separately since I read them separately prior to getting my hands on this volume.

This takes place during the time of a super hero civil war which was recently and very excellently captured in the third of the Captain America series, which this volume references several times. The main Marvel heroes don't really feature here, though, but the young Avengers, with whom I was not at all impressed, played a lead role. One problem I had with this set of stories was the Skrulls. I am not a fan of this invasion by aliens. I don't know what it is, but it fails to impress me and doesn't stir my interest. I had the same problem with the first Avengers movie - the story was great right up until the alien invasion began, then for me it fell off and was not so interesting.

So while some of the individual stories later were engrossing (once the young Avengers and the Skrulls had departed them), I was not impressed with the overall package, so I cannot recommend this.

Marvel's Captain America: Sub Rosa by David McDonald

Rating: WARTY!

I came to this novel under false pretenses. I don't know who decides how to categorize these novels when they're put up on Net Galley as advance review copies. I suspect it's the publisher, but whoever it was misrepresented this one. It was categorized under graphic novels, but it's no such thing! There are no graphics in sight - in this case not even a cover, so I was disappointed before I began this. My advice to publishers is not to put your text novels under the graphic novel header. It's misleading at best and dishonest at worst. Nevertheless I gave it the old college try, and I have to report that it was not a beautiful day in the neighborhood for Mr Rogers, aka Captain America. I really could not get into this. I made it to just beyond the half-way point, and when it didn't remotely look like it was getting any better (indeed it got worse, descending into monologues and pages of exposition), I gave up on it.

I'm not a huge comic book fan, but then this was not a comic book, as I was sorry to discover. My experience of Captain America is all from the Marvel movies which have been hitting the screens with a routine and regularity, and a runaway success that's nothing short of breathtaking, and every one of those movies has been funny, amazing, action-packed, intelligent (for Hollywood!), fast-paced, and thoroughly entertaining. This novel was none of that. Instead, it was a series of uninspired fights followed by uninspired dialog, followed by more fighting. And there was neither anything super nor heroic about it. You could have taken out the Cap, and substituted one of the GI Joes, or one of Schwarzeneggar's older characters, like the one from Commando, or tossed in a Jason Bourne or James Bond, or any such macho action dude, and it could have been exactly the same story. There was no reason for the Cap to be here.

The story began with Commander Maria Hill contacting Cap to ask him to take care of her niece, Katherine, who plays the standard maiden in distress, despite the fact that she can handle herself and gets the Cap out of more than one scrape, yet she never gets any respect. I think this story would have been a much better adventure if Commander Hill had taken charge and cap had not been involved, but it is what it never was, and that's what I have to review.

The dialog was uninspired and not amusing, except unintentionally, such as at one point when the Cap is fighting a character named Taskmaster, who has "photographic reflexes" (what's really meant is cinematographic reflexes - any move she sees he can emulate). At one point, while fighting Taskmaster and attempting a futile distraction, Cap asks, "So who's paying you, Taskmaster, and how much?" Was Cap not paying attention two minutes before when Taskmaster came flying through a window and announced, as an introduction, "...she's worth a lot to me. Two million dollars to be exact."? I guess not. His motive is to collect a bounty. he's being paid two million dollars to be exact! Cap doesn't come off as very smart in this story, which is another problem. Of course that doesn't explain who's offering the bounty, but that's not exactly what Cap asks, is it?

The writing is a bit clunky, too. Workman-like for the most part, but not inspired. At one point, in the same paragraph we got "Then it came to him...then with a jolt it came to him..." which made for jarring reading. I guess the first time it came to him it didn't jolt him enough? Or maybe he needed to drink a Jolt cola before it came to him? Character descriptions were boilerplate, along the lines of "a lion's mane of hair" and "a curved beak of a nose." Not very inspired or inspiring. It felt like the author had cut & pasted these from other tepid random novels.

It was hard to find this on Goodreads because the title there is different. In fact the title seems very fluid. It's listed as Marvel's Captain America, but the novel itself is titled Marvel Captain America Sub Rosa. That latter Latin means literally beneath the rose or by way of translation, in secret. But it can be no secret that the Cap deserved a lot better than he got here. I can't recommend this based on what I read, which was more than enough for me when there are other novels out there which are desperate to be read and enjoyed and promise to be more rewarding.

Klaw The First Cycle by Antoine Ozanam, Joël Jurion, Yoann Guillé

Rating: WARTY!

This was an odd graphic novel and while I thought it was a good idea, I had too many issues with it and gave up reading it about two thirds the way through. This is what happens when I break my vow to never read any fiction with the word 'cycle' in the title! On another note, there are multiple stories titled "Klaw", believe it or not, and this isn't connected with any of the others as far as I know, so if you're looking for this particular one, make sure you get the creator's names memorized so you get the right book!

I was grateful for the chance of an early look at an advance review copy, especially one which had so much potential and with an amazing cover image, and while I recognize it was written for a younger age group than mine, I had some real problems with it nonetheless. One problem I didn't have was the artwork: it was beautifully done. Joël Jurion's drawing was decent - nothing spectacular, but nothing off-putting either, so that was a good start, but Yoann Guillé's coloring was magical. The plotting/writing left something to be desired however and that's a problem for me.

Angel Tomassini has a chronic bullying problem, but it's fantastical to the point of being ridiculous. He's chased in full view of everyone in the school and no one - not one single person, students or staff - does a thing about it. It's hardly surprising then, given how much fantasy we're already in, that he can turn into a huge tiger. He's not only bullied by the trope bullies, he's also bullied by the boyfriend of a girl he likes - a girl he was foolish enough to text. Her boyfriend Kurt saw the text and starts bullying him in full view of everyone at the pool, including the girlfriend upon whom Angel crushes. Again, no one does a thing about it, not even to raise a voice in protest, not even the girl in question. I sincerely hoped at this point that Angel was not going to end up with this lame, selectively blind, jerk of a girl, but that hope was forlorn.

The story gets interesting when Kurt is killed - by something with claws - even though it's obvious who's done it. It gets dumb again when the cops haul Angel down to the station without benefit of counsel or even his parents. Seriously? Angel is the son of a guy who owns the biggest fish wholesale business in the country. Yep, his dad sleeps with the fishes, and he also has major league mob connections, so Angel is freed pretty quickly. This begs the question as to why he's so freely bullied by all and sundry. Either he's a kid with ties to the mob and people are therefore in some fear of messing with him, or he's viewed as a no-import little guy who everyone (including some cops) feels free to bully. It doesn't work both ways. And Angel has to be truly stupid to have never figured out that his dad is shady at best.

As if this isn't improbable enough, Lisa, the girl who Angel is crushing on, and the now ex-girlfriend of dead Kurt, calls Angel up out of the blue and invites him to attend the same dinner she had planned on going to with Kurt. Seriously? But it gets worse. The next day at school she greets him by name, hugs him and kisses him on the cheek. More seriously? But it gets worse! This girl knows he has mob connections and despises them, yet she still asks him out and then later dumps him because of his mob connections! Even more seriously?! This girl has psychological problems, and none of these characters make any sense. Not that any of this bothers shallow Angel who is about as one-dimensional as you can get and still manage to exist in three dimensions. Supposedly Lisa was threatened in order to force her to go out with Angel, but if that was the case, how come she was so enthusiastic about it? How come she doesn't feel threatened when she summarily dumps him? Again, it makes no sense.

The story became too ridiculous for me when Angel starts donning a super-hero costume to fight crime. On the one hand he supposedly loves his father, but on the other, he's committed to putting him out of business. Okay, I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, but why does he need a super hero costume? He's already disguised as a tiger! I'm sorry, but I can't go with this. I wish the creators all the best because I like to support foreign efforts. This was a lot of work, but it didn't seem to me like it was well thought-through.

Faith Vol 1 by Jody Houser, Francis Portela, Margerite Sauvage

Rating: WORTHY!

This is what happens when you put a bunch of women in charge: you get a great super hero comic! (Note that only two out of three of the above are female, lest I get any complaints!) Talking of which, my only complaint - it was too short for me! I got an advance review copy which was more like a sampler - just two episodes plus and really intriguing third episode consisting of line drawings with no coloring or speech bubbles, which was interesting to see - like looking at a skeleton before the flesh and organs are added. Very cool for anyone who's interested in how these things are put together (which I am as it happens), but I don't imagine it will appear like that in the published version, so get it from Net Galley while it's...not! I have to say that both the writing and the artwork were excellent. Nicely drawn, beautifully colored. I am really thankful I got a chance to review this.

This superhero goes by the name of Zephyr, and she borrows somewhat from Superman. In this case she's disguised with eyeglasses and a wig and looking rather frumpy. Definitely a better disguise than Clark Kent has. And she actually comes off rather better than he does base don his last movie outing as of this writing. Those of us in the know are looking forward to Wonder Woman busting loose next year. Does Zephyr work for a newspaper? Well not in this day and age! She works for some sort of a webzine, although it's a bit vague as to what, exactly they do. Nothing very exciting as judged by Summer's comments about it. She really blossoms, though, when she takes off the wig and eyeglasses and launches herself into the sky (she commutes to work from Van Nuys, which isn't so nice since her neighbors are noisy).

So what's with the 'Faith'? It's her real name: Faith Herbert. She's known as a "psiot" - someone who is psionically gifted. I have no idea what that means since it isn't really explained. I assume it means she has some sort of psychic control over her environment. Bullets don't bounce off her, but they do bounce off her psychic shield, which she can project rather like Sue Storm does, for example.

Faith/Summer was working with a team of heroes, but something happened between her and a more traditionally proportioned masculine hero to whom she was evidently about to be married. She moved away, and people who have seen her fly the skies locally are wondering what happened. I mention 'traditionally-proportioned' because Faith is not. Rather than your standard female egg-timer hourglass figure for super heroes, Faith looks more like the egg, and she's all the more charming for it. The best thing about it is that no one makes any apology for her being a big bodied woman. It's who she is and how she is and that's all there is to it. I was delighted to see this for a change, and especially in a super hero comic book.

The blurb mentioned aliens. We see little of them here. But that's not important. What is important is that there's a new and realistic hero in town and I want to read more about her! I recommend this one.

Batwoman: Vol 4 This Blood is Thick by JH Williams III, W Haden Blackman and various artists

Rating: WARTY!

I covered some general issues I had with this series in my review of volume one. I enjoyed that issue despite the problems, but this one fared far less well. The only reason I eve read it was that I had all four volumes out of the library at once. if I'd had to buy them as single issues every month at the store, I never would have finished the collection in volume two, much less read all four collections.

Volume four of this series of collections was the worst of all. I couldn't even finish it. The thing which really nauseated me was the artwork (at last!), but the intriguing thing was that this was done by a different set of artists. My problem with it was that while the quality was slightly better, the characters looked completely different from how they appeared in the first three volumes! The opening sequence of Kate and Maggie in bed together looked so alien I had no idea who these two people were! Worse than that, however was that they looked significantly younger - like they were teenage girls.

It wasn't this apparent consumption of a draft from the fountain of youth that actually turned me off however, it was the section after that where once again we have to spend time with loser dad Jacob, whom I could not stand and whose story I found consistently dull and tedious through this story arc. In this segment, he was talking to his wife, and while they both looked somewhat different from previous artwork, Jacob at least still looked his age, which was quite mature, whereas his wife looked like a child bride! I don't know if she was supposed to be his original wife in which case she was way-the-hell too young, or if he had remarried, in which case the text made no mention of it, but she looked younger than Kate Kane had in earlier volumes, and Batwoman is supposedly in her thirties. Not that an aunt can't look (or even be) younger than a niece, but it was simply wrong for these two to be talking about 'children' the way they were when the wife was drawn very nearly as a child herself!

After that, I could not take the series seriously, and I quit reading. I certainly cannot recommend any of this unless you're a real (and desperate!) die-hard fan.

Batwoman: Vol 3 World's Finest by JH Williams III, W Haden Blackman and various artists

Rating: WARTY!

I covered some general issues I had with this series in my review of volume one. I enjoyed that issue despite the problems, but this one fared far less well. The only reason I eve read it was that I had all four volumes out of the library at once. if I'd had to buy them as single issues every month at the store, I never would have finished the collection in volume two, much less read all four collections.

Well I'm sorry to have to report that for me, this series which started out so well in volume one, went quickly downhill in volume two. I thought that three might pick things up. It featured Wonder Woman. She and Batwoman had to go to the depths of the ocean to try to track down Medusa, although what Medusa had to do with ocean depths was a mystery. Supposedly that was where she was in prison, but she wasn't actually there and in the end it turned out that she was right back where they'd started: in Gotham City, which was, let's face it, pretty darned obvious when you think about it.

They had to track down Perseus to discover this fact about Medusa, although why he would know goes unexplained. The real problem with this, though, was that Perseus was a direct rip-off of the Kill Bill character Sidewinder, played by Michael Madsen, who wore a cowboy hat and lived in a trailer out in the desert middle of nowhere just like Perseus did. Sad.

Volume three, therefore, seemed to be nothing but filler and had nothing of interest to offer. The artwork continued to be wooden and uninspiring although it wasn't abysmally atrocious. In some parts, because of the choppy story-telling, it was actually hard to tell which of the "civilian" characters was which, they were drawn so much alike. The only redeeming factor was the way Batwoman approached Maggie Sawyer towards the end, kissed her full on and asked her to marry her. This was a full page spread and was beautiful. It was Batwoman coming out in a whole different way. I loved that, but it wasn't enough to rescue a novel which seemed more interested in portraying Batwoman as a smug poseur in page after page, instead of really getting down to a solid story. This may impress die-hard fans of the genre, but it takes both none of that and a lot more than that to get me into a story. I can't recommend this one.

Batwoman: Vol 2 To Drown the World by JH Williams III, W Haden Blackman and various artists

Rating: WARTY!

I covered some general issues I had with this series in my review of volume one. I enjoyed that issue despite the problems, but this one fared less well. The same wooden artwork did not impress me any more than it had in volume one, and the story was flat and uninteresting.

One of the most interesting parts of the original volume was the relationship between Batwoman (in her Kate Kane persona) and Maggie Sawyer, the police detective. Here the relationship was all but ignored. Instead, we got the relationship between Kate's uncle Jacob, and the comatose Bette Kane, who had been critically injured in the previous volume. This was tiresome to read. One of the characters I most enjoyed in the first volume was Flamebird, Bette's super persona, but that was completely absent, of course, and the endless hospital pity parties featuring Jacob Kane were no substitute by any stretch of the imagination. The recovery of Bette was trite and a joke.

I actually came to share Kate's detestation of Jacob after he said, "...since I let Kate become Batwoman" - like he owned her and it was his choice. The guy's a jerk. I'd like to see Kate kick his weasel ass. He does sit with Bette often, but he reads to her from Ian Fleming's James Bond novel You Only Live Twice. I found it hard to imagine she would enjoy that. Could he not have found out what her favorite book was, and read that to her?

I liked new character Sune, who at one point tries to make out with Batwoman, and the latter doesn't even push her away! Sorry Maggie, but your chosen partner is unfaithful to you! Sune played far too small a role. A bigger role was played by another new character who evidently had mystical powers to create, in reality, something which a population believed in, even if it was not a real thing in which they believed. In this way, he had created La Llorona by murdering Maria Salvaje's children causing her to drown herself in her misery. He was boring, but happily didn't last long.

One of the worst parts of this novel was the endless - and I do mean endless - flashbacks. I hate those, and this was nothing but a constant irritation to me. I cannot recommend this volume, but since I have all of the first four volumes from the library, I do intend to continue on and read the other two, something I would never do had I been picking these up one at a time - so maybe it will get better!

Batwoman: Vol 1 Hydrology by JH Williams III, W Haden Blackman and various artists

Rating: WORTHY!

After a few children's book reviews, it's time to move on to more adult fare - although I'm sure there are those who consider comics and graphic novels solely children's fare too! I'm not one of those people, although I do sometimes think comics have not yet fully matured, especially in the light of electronic presentation. The maturity factor is the main reason I grew interested in a four graphic novel series titled Batwoman - not 'Batgirl', but Batwoman', a title which intrigued me.

Why is it that male super heroes are called 'man' - as in Batman, Spider-Man, and so on, but female heroes are typically named 'girl'? Yes, there are women here, Wonder Woman being the most prominent, but you'll find far more female heroes with 'girl' tacked onto their title than you'll find male ones with a 'boy' suffix. Even stories like 'Superboy' are actually nothing more than retrospective looks at 'Superman'.

Someone I knew once argued that 'woman' indicates a person who has grown and settled down - perhaps into a rut - and who has, to one degree or another, accepted the status quo, with the implication being that the status quo is a rather Biblical one. On the other hand, 'girl' has not yet sold out or bought into anything. She has not subjugated herself to the 'husband and wife' pairing, which implies that 'wife' is a creature in need of husbandry; therefore 'girl' still has the potential to lead her own life, to run riot, and to change the status quo. I didn't agree with that assessment, but it may play a part in what underlies the favoring of 'girl' over 'woman' in comic book super heroes.

For me, the problem at the root of this is that we're not comparing equivalent terms here. While 'woman' equals 'man' in terms of perceived maturity, girl does not equate to boy because of traditional gender disparity. 'Girl' is viewed, if not dismissed, as merely a minor stage on the uninterrupted path to a fertile 'woman', whereas traditional gender 'norms' have placed a veritable chasm between 'boy' and 'man' which must crossed in order to gain respect. Ridiculous as it was, in the past, a boy had to make his first kill during the hunt to become a man. Now he has to develop facial hair and get laid, both of which are still ridiculous.

There are no such equivalents for women. No girl ever achieved womanhood by plucking berries for the first time on the gather! It's because of this rampant patriarchy in our past that the measure of human growth has long been not whether a person is mature, but whether they were a man. If they were not, they were really of no account (which is doubtlessly why villains are typically not named 'man' as part of their title!).

'Boy', therefore, is not equivalent to 'girl', because girl is merely a step along the path to womanhood, and while technically boy is the same place along the path to manhood, manhood has come to mean something else. It's not just a mature human male. A boy then, is someone who has quite literally not 'manned up' - who is not ready to take his 'rightful' place in society. I think this is why we see few super heroes named 'boy' and why, for example, Batman had Robin, The Boy Wonder following him like an acolyte.

No one ever talks about 'womanning up'! This is, of course because women tend not to see things in terms of a competition or a race (and wisely in my view), in the way that men all too often do. This is why women's sports and female athletes are treated like second class citizens in a male-dominated society. While women do have obvious signs of sexual maturity, in terms of secondary sexual characteristics for example, their most potent sexual characteristic, menstruation, tends to be a hidden, personal, and private thing. There's nothing obvious about it, in the way that, for example, men begin to develop facial hair. In this way it's possible for a woman to be perceived as a girl for a lot longer than a man can be viewed as a boy. Obviously, I'm not talking about actual maturity, merely physical and perceived maturity. It's wrong, and genderist, but it's the hole we've long been digging for ourselves.

I was rather sorry then, to start reading this novel and discover that despite the mature titling, the adolescent comic book ethos still prevailed, with the female characters all being highly sexualized and objectified even as Batwoman was portrayed, in her alter ego, as a sexually adventurous, unrestrained, and independent woman. So then the problem becomes: is this acceptable? And if so, how acceptable is it? Where is the line to be drawn between 'this was a great story, and so I can recommend it', and 'this was a great story, but women were repeatedly demeaned in it, and so I can't recommend it'? Do comic books get a pass on this because they have always had this view? Is this an art form as, for example, some Japanese comics have bizarrely caricatured female characters, who are adult yet are portrayed as pixie girls, with pointed chins and huge eyes? If the art is done by women (which is largely not the case in these volumes), does this make objectification okay? If the female character is portrayed as gay, heading for a gay marriage, does that ameliorate it any?

I have to add one more thing, and this actually relates to the sexual orientation of Batwoman. She's a lesbian and openly so, which I think adds to the power of this particular title - that she's 'woman' and not 'girl' meaning that this is definitely a mature part of who she is, not merely some adolescent rebellion or experimentation. There was, however, a huge controversy over this particular series because at one point in it, Kate Kane, who is Batwoman, becomes engaged to police detective Maggie Sawyer. The controversy wasn't over this, but over DC comics refusal to countenance an actual marriage between the two! DC Comics through co-publisher Dan DiDio, argued that Batwoman couldn't marry because heroes should not have happy personal lives(!), and because they're committed to the defense of people at the sacrifice of their own personal interests. So does DC also think that cops, firefighters, and soldiers shouldn't marry either?

That's a huge thicket to wade through, but because writers JH Williams III and W Haden Blackman resigned from this series over the gay marriage issue, I'm going to take the easy way out here and give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm not going to factor in any objectification in my rating, because I support the actions of the writers, so I'm going to rate these four volumes on the quality of the art rather than the design of the female characters, and merely offer this caveat, because as always, it's entirely up to the reader to decide whether they want to support his kind of art form or not.

So on to the story! This is part of the new 52 DC Comics reboot. I liked it even though it begins with a rather patriarchal Batman actually stalking Batwoman and spying on her to determine if she's worthy of admission to his crime fighting syndicate! I kid you not. He played a very minor role in this story though. The bulk of it was Batwoman, aka Kate Kane, taking a rather patriarchal attitude herself towards her cousin Bette Kane, aka Flamebird, as she trains the latter in the art of crime-fighting.

There is also the beginning of the relationship between Kate and Maggie, wherein they quickly end up in bed together. I guess comic books aren't ready to deal with STDs yet! Or super-heroes are immune to them. The villain here is Maria Salvaje aka La Llorona, a ghost who takes young children to an apparent watery grave. In addition to this, Kate is dealing with the death of her twin sister, her dad, Colonel Jacob Kane, whom she blames for that death, Cameron Chase, of Department of Extranormal Operations which is run by a skeleton with the unoriginal name of Mr Bones, and an evil organization named Medusa, which I guess is DC world's equivalent of Marvel Comics' Hydra.

If you're a regular reader of this, which I am not, I'm guessing it would be easier to get into the story than it was for me, but eventually I did, and I enjoyed it. I liked the fairly complex life which Kate led, although we saw little of it outside of her crime-fighting persona. I liked her relationship with Maggie, and the fact that on the one hand the two were becoming involved in Kate's everyday world, but were rather becoming enemies in Batwoman's world.

The artwork, however, left a lot to be desired. It wasn't atrocious, by any means, but it looked and felt very wooden to me, particularly in the action scenes, like someone was posing one of those little wooden artist's models, and copying it without adding anything, and in particular forgetting to add any real sense of movement. Overall though, this to me was a worthy start, and despite the objections I've raised, I think it was a good read and worth pursing the series.

Superkids by Anya Damirón

Rating: WORTHY!

'Superkids' as a title is way-the-heck over-used, but this is the first book with this title that I've ever read, and overall I think it's a worthy read for appropriate age children, with bright colorful illustrations by Pablo Pino.

Ivan is a regular tear-away boy who has lots of energy and is obsessed with the super heroes he sees in movies and reads of in comic books. One day his parents (who are smarter than they look!) decide to take him to meet some real super heroes - kids who have overcome various difficulties to make their life what they want it to be despite obstacles.

Ivan gets to meet a boy who can paint with his feet, a girl who reads Braille, wheelchair-unbound kids who play basketball, a girl who can use sign language, a boy who can dress himself with the only arm he has, and so on. Ivan learns a valuable lesson from this, though he can't emulate any of these people when he tries. His parents point out to him, however, that he does have one superpower which is perhaps the best of all: he can accept people for who they are, and find the best in everyone.

I'd like to see a version of this in which Ivan meets people who are different in other ways: overweight, impoverished, of different race or beliefs, and so on, but that aside, this was a great start towards encouraging children to accept people for who they are, and which teaches them to dwell upon commonalities rather than differences even as they learn to appreciate difference and variety. That said, I recommend this book. I think it's well done and full of heart.

Insufferable by Mark Waid

Rating: WORTHY!

Nicely illustrated by Peter Krause, this comic was a riot. It was like the dark side of Batman and Robin, upon whom it seems to have been modeled in some ways. The super hero, Nocturnus, has trained Galahad, his side-kick and for a long time they worked together, but then Galahad decided he could do better alone, and summarily ditched his aging mentor. It wasn't just that he went his own way, either. Galahad did not live up to his name. We first meet him hanging in the wings as Nocturnus takes on a real villain who is televising his slow burial of a little girl. It's a telethon, and if the goal of fifty million isn't met, the girl inherits the earth.

Galahad cynically waits until Nocturnus has taken-out the villain, then he rushes in and "rescues" the girl, selfishly claiming all the credit for it. Galahad is very much a media personality whereas Nocturnus, as his name implies, stays to the shadows. There is as cop ho knows the truth, but for some reason she isn't telling. The crux of the story comes when the two of them are forced to work together to defeat a new threat.

Well written, with some nice humor and good action, and even a twist or two here and there, this is an interesting and moving story, well told, and I recommend it as a worthy read.

The Mantle by Ed Brisson

Rating: WORTHY!

I really liked this story. The Mantle is a conveyance of superpowers which are visited upon seemingly random people. The downside of this is that there is a super villain, named The Plague, who immediately starts after the current bearer of the mantle, and destroys them. No one knows why, but it appears to have started thirty eight Mantle-bearers before, when one super hero defeated The Plague and despite being requested to do so by the perp himself, did not kill him. The Plague escaped his imprisonment, and has been punishing mantle-bearers, it would seem, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate him! Why? How did that one hero guy beat The Plague back then, and no one has since?

That's what this graphic novel explores, and even though in many ways this is a very simple story, it still managed to tell it well. I liked the new bearer of the mantle - a feisty young female who after almost giving up, changes her mind, decides she isn't going to run - she's going to go down fighting no matter what. Even though there are other heroes who are pledged to help, she initially finds them of little value, but then she discovers a way - a long shot, but one which might work, and we follow her into this and step by step, slowly learning the truth about what's been going on here. It's a great story, with great graphics, and was thoroughly enjoyable. I consider this a worthy read.

Sidekicked by Russell Brettholtz

Rating: WORTHY!

It's really hard these days to come up with something original in the way of graphic novels about super heroes, but I think there's still some solid gold to be mined (or even mind!) here, and this creative team proved it with a really great, original, and meaningful story. Set in contemporary Chicago, this novel is about a world of selfish super heroes - and let's face it, is there really any other kind than the self-absorbed, super-powered, suited sentry? In this case, each hero seems to come equipped with a much put-upon sidekick, and the sidekicks are treated like dirt. So they go on strike!

It's not long before the super villains, who have hitherto been getting the worst of the deal, take up the slack and start exploiting this vacuum for their own ends. Teaming up as they never have before, they start taking out the super heroes until only the sidekicks are left. That's when the sidekicks team up and start fighting back. This is also a selfish attitude, but it works for them! Their experience in supporting their heroes proves invaluable in working together - something which the egotistical super heroes were never able to master. But there's more to the story than this. Villains have sidekicks, too....

I really liked this story. Yes, the sidekick shtick has been beaten about the bush before now, but never quite in this way in my reading experience at least, and I liked the way the dynamic played out. The characters seemed realistic and were interesting, with different motivations and personalities. It was a really good, engaging story, and the artwork by Miguel Mendoça was suitably heroic. I recommend it.

Sound Bender by Lin Oliver and Theo Baker

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a middle grade novel, the start of a series which, having read this first volume, I felt would work for the intended age range, although I had a few issues with it personally. Overall though, I rate it a worthy read for the intended age group. Note that it has nothing to do with the Avatar Airbender kind of stories, and indeed, nothing to do with bending sound at all, so the title is completely off. More on this anon.

The story features Leo Lomax and his younger brother Hollis; both attend an arts and science school in New York city, but now their parents are dead - so we're led to believe. I say that not because the novel suggests otherwise, but that the circumstances of their death are by no means nailed down. The truth is they disappeared in the Arctic (or Antarctic - I forget which ), and now Leo and Hollis have to move in with their rather oddball Uncle Crane.

Crane is a very wealthy man, having made a fortune in trading priceless (evidently not quite priceless LOL!) artifacts - cultural symbols, archaeological finds, rare fossils and so on. In short, these are great source material for a series of children's adventures. Crane may even be an outright criminal, but this is never confirmed or denied. Curiously, though, he lives in a nasty run-down dockyard warehouse where he houses literally thousands, maybe even millions of dollars' worth of his stock-in-trade, evidently with minimal security. I did warn you that he was oddball!

Leo is obsessed with capturing noises and sounds on a portable recorder. He evidently does nothing with these other than capture them, and this sound-recording habit plays no part in the story, so that felt a bit weird to me. It seemed like a clunky way to depict that he had a deep interest in sound. His brother is into playing music and has organized, or is organizing, more than one band in which he plays drums.

On his thirteenth birthday - a significant age in some cultures and religions - Leo gets a letter from his dear departed dad - a guy who studied sounds in nature and made recordings as an ethnomusicologist - informing Leo that he was not born in NYC as he had been hitherto led to believe, but on an island in the pacific during a ceremony. There is an odd disk - an old style analogue home-made disk, which Leo eventually manages to play at the used record store owned by a family friend. From this point on, Leo is suddenly sensitized to objects - not all objects but certain one which 'speak' to him - and can experience at least some of their history just by touching. So yes, there is no sound-bending. There is psychometry, but "Psychometric Bender" is a lot less catchy as a novel title, isn't it?

In exploring his new-found skill with his BFF Trevor, who is conveniently an electronics wizard, Leo discovers, amongst his uncle's artifact collection, a certain crate in storage which calls out very loudly to Leo in a very sad series of impressions and images. Tracking these down to an old recording his father once made, Leo realizes that the impressions he has been getting are form dolphins which have been used in experiments, and which may be used again if he doesn't destroy the object the has found - but it belongs to his uncle and is worth a quarter million dollars. What's a thirteen year old to do?

I found it odd that at one point in the story, Leo and a purported dolphin expert are talking about leading dolphins from an island where experiments were conducted in the past, to join the dolphin sanctuary just fifty miles away - like the dolphins couldn't function without human help, and like they couldn't have found this island themselves - especially since we've already been told that dolphins are very vocal (they use dolphones, maybe? LOL!), and that sound carries a long way under water.

I found it equally improbable that once the artifact was broken, Crane wouldn't have retrieved it and sold it anyway - it could have been, if not fixed, the copied. Crane's acceptance of this loss of a quarter mill wasn't really believable - although it was ameliorated somewhat by the fact the Crane is now more interested in pursuing another artifact with which he inexplicably believes Leo can help him.

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One thing which bothered me about this novel was the total absence of females. There was one, who was commendably a doctor (non-medical), but she hardly figured in it at all. There were no girls of the same age as Leo and Hollis, which, given that there were two authors, one male, one female, was a shameful omission.

I did not like the anthropomorphization of the dolphins. It's always a huge mistake to convince yourself that that wild animals, even very intelligent ones, necessarily think and feel just like humans do, especially if they've evolved for tens of millions of years in a completely different environment from us. There's no doubt that they think and feel, but to assume they're just like us and have our values and predilections is to do them a serious disservice. That said, dolphins (rather a lot of them) have actually been used for military purposes (military porpoises, no doubt! LOL!). Exactly what they are used for remains somewhat suspect although of course the US military denies any wrong-doing. The sad fact is that animals have been used for military purposes of one kind or another ever since Genghis Khan, Hannibal, and others.

Although I don't plan on reading any more in this series, and despite a few issues from an adult perspective, this looks to me to be plenty entertaining, informative, and scientific - for the most part - for younger children and I consider it a worthy read for that intended age group.

Echo: Collider by Terry Moore

Rating: WORTHY!

This is not the last in the series, but it is the last which my local library has for loan. Now I have to dig up the last two volumes or preferably find the entire series, which I believe is available in a single volume now.

I recommend this whole series - at least this far, and I have to add that it's hard to believe it will fizzle when it's been so strong so far. We learn that Ivy has a young, sick daughter - to add to her many other facets. We also learn something of a bombshell about her - or at least we see it hinted at - at the end. We also get a new and deadly assassin hired to take out Julie, and the return of a character who "died" in an earlier issue - Hong. Somehow, he is resurrected, and turns into something out of a fifties B horror movie - The Mummy meets The Creature From the Black Lagoon, or something! We also learn what HeNRI's end game is - they don't want Julie dead so much as want her armor so they can put it into a collider and smash the substance at itself in order to create a black hole.

Terry Moore's understanding of how dangerous black holes are has a huge black hole in it. A black hole does not have infinite gravity. It has only a fixed amount which is, as with all gravity, proportional to its mass, so if you create a black hole the same mass as a tennis ball, it's going to have no more gravitational pull than does a tennis ball. In order to destroy Earth, you'd have to have a truly massive black hole which you can't generate in a particle collider because the masses of those particles are minuscule. And you can only collide particles - not alloys, so I have no idea where he got this physics from - or worse, where HeNRI got it from. The fact is that if their understanding is so disgracefully flawed, then they're no threat at all!

But I was willing to let that slide for the fun of the story and the excellent way it's told. I can see this making a fine movie, if it's handled right, and if so, I would definitely pay to see it.

Echo: Desert Run by Terry Moore

Rating: WORTHY!

Volume Three of this six part (30 issue) series was another winner for me. It opens in the crater blown into the desert highway by Julie in defense against the vagrant dude. Thinking he is dead, Julie also thinks Dillon is dead - or near to it, and she hauls him off in the truck, but unaccountably stops short of finding as hospital and hugs him, thereby healing him. This, she did not expect thinking of herself solely as a weapon. Ivy meanwhile visits Julie's home and finds a box with something intriguing inside, but we do not learn what it is.

It's in this volume that we learn that Julie's new suit isn't just the Plutonium alloy, but also contains some of Annie, Dillon's supposedly dead girlfriend. Now Julie starts feeling what Annie felt, and thinking what she thought. Is this the start of a meld, or a takeover? Julie doesn't know. Ivy, now embarking on a phase of this relationship that is less chasing down Julie and more getting to know Julie and becoming highly suspicious of the secret agency HeNRI. When Ivy learns that Julie healed Dillon, she realizes that she has an off-label use for Julie for herself.

The story continues to thrill and intrigue, art work continues to please - what's not to recommend?

Echo Atomic Dreams by Terry Moore

Rating: WORTHY!

Volume two of this six volume series starts out right where volume one left off. Dillon the ranger and Julie the super-girl are hiding out in a desert motel, ostensibly protected by some of Dan Backer's motorcycle group. Dan is ex military and is highly suspicious of what's been going on in those desert military bases. What none of them know is that the vagrant who shared Julie's plutonium rain experience is a religious nut-job who thinks poor Julie is the harlot of Babylon. The Bible has a HELL of a lot to answer for.

When Vagrant Man shows up at the motel - how he tracked her there is a mystery, but I have an idea of my own - there is a showdown that leaves sand turned to glass, and Dan's biker boys dead. Julie and Dillon are once again on the run across the desert.

Meanwhile Ivy has tracked down Julie's sister Pam, who is in a psychiatric institution, and she calls Julie and tries to talk her into surrendering to Ivy - who promises protection. Doing this will implying, intentionally or not, a threat of something happening to Julie's sister isn't the best way to engage with Julie's benevolent side, but before this can be resolved, Vagrant Man arrives, and all that's left after that encounter is a crater in the desert, which is how volume three begins.

Once again we have interesting characters who change and grow, particularly Ivy who is slowly coming to a realization that this isn't your normal person-tracking job. The art work continues to be simple but not simplistic, and it was very much appreciated; it's clean, definitive, and illustrative - everything you would want in a graphic novel. I do not require color, indeed, it can sometimes ruin a story, so this wasn't an issue for me. I recommend this volume as part of this complete series!

Echo: Moon Lake by Terry Moore

Rating: WORTHY!

I found this in the library and liked the first volume so much that I went right back and got the next three, which is all the library had. Bless that library! I was hoping that this is the whole set because this was initially issued as a relatively short run of individual (and indie published) comics, and later collected into sets, but it turns out there are six of them, each containing five of the original issues: Moon Lake, Atomic Dreams, Desert Run, Collider, Black Hole, The Last Day. How he got it to be exactly 30- issues is a bit of as poser - that's like writing a novel and deciding it's going to be exactly three hundred pages long regardless of how you tell the story and whether it naturally ends on page three hundred! However, as I write this I'm half way through and I can't fault it for being too fast or too drawn-out.

The art work is excellent, but note that it's black and white line drawings, no coloring involved. Once in a while the text is too small, which is a pet peeve of mine, but other than that, I can't fault this at all, so it all came down to the usual test, for me: whether the story was any good, of course. For me the story is the most important thing, with art being secondary, and this story did not fail me.

The main character is Julie Martin, typically curvaceous as comic book females are, but not improbably so. I liked her sister better - she was drawn more realistically and looked pretty damned good, especially since her personality was adorable. And in the end that's what overcame the skin-deep appearance of these female characters - they were realistic, all three of the main ones.

Julie is a down-and-out photographer whose husband has ditched her for reasons which were not exactly clear to me. She's not happy with this, but she's just about dealing with it, and trying to work on her photography portfolio. Evidently her starboard-folio is already completed....

This is how she happens to be in the desert in the south-west (note that North America sports many Moon Lakes!) when a new flying suit is tested - one that bonds to the skin. It's being tested by a woman Named Annie, and the air-force considers the test to be a success and orders the destruction of the suit, with Annie still in it. This causes a literal rain of particles which come down rather like hailstones, but which are soft, like they're made from modeling clay. They cover Julie and stick to her skin, and to her truck.

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She evacuates the area quickly, but soon discovers these hailstones are, in a way, alive. They begin to flatten out and stretch, and cover her skin, eventually forming a breast plate - literally. It covers her neck, upper chest, and breasts rather provocatively, like a prototype designer swimsuit top. It's not like a piece of metal armor - it's more like a thin coat of chrome. The doctor who Julie visits cannot remove it, and actually is injured by it. Julie is tossed out of the ER as a prankster.

The air force is now trying to recover all the pieces from the explosion, but can find less that 30% of them. They discover that two people were in the area - a vagrant, and Julie. They just don't know the identity of these two people two begin with. A woman with the cool name of Ivy Raven, who is an expert at tracking down people and reading crime scenes - this woman is observant and sharp - is called in to find Julie, but she isn't told the whole story.

There are several interested parties, including a park ranger named Dillon Murphy who is the boyfriend of Annie, the original test pilot. He eventually encounters Julie when the army try to arrest her, and end up all knocked out due to some explosive power of Julie's breastplate which evidently triggers when she's stressed. Now she and Dillon are on the run with Ivy in hot pursuit.

I wasn't thrilled that Julie had to end up with Ranger Rick (or Dill) - yet another woman in distress who evidently can't make it without a guy to validate her, but the characters were written realistically (they even have realistic names! LOL!), and behaved appropriately, and there was no ridiculous love at first sight, so I let that problem slide in this case. Plus, it's Julie who actually gets them out of various scrapes with her "super-power", so this balanced out. Overall, I rated this a worthy read and I was looking forward to volume two at the end of this one.

They're Not Like Us by Eric Stephenson, Simon Gane, Jordie Bellaire, Fonografiks

Rating: WORTHY!

This is volume one of a new series. "Syd" is hearing voices; she has done so for a long time, and can't stand it any more. She tries to kill herself, but she survives and is sprung from the hospital by a guy who whisks her away to a charming old house hidden behind iron railings and deep foliage, where she meets others who, like her, have some sort of telepathic ability. The house is so representative of what these people have done to themselves, it's almost like it was planned that way....

In a tableau of introduction we meet: Fagen (pyrokinetic), Wire (invulnerable), Runt (strength and agility), Blurgirl (super speed), Moon (Illusions), Misery Kid (delusions), Maisie (clairvoyant), and Gruff (telepath). The guy who rescues Syd (her super-hero name) is named The Voice. He can communicate telepathically, too. What Syd doesn't expect is the lifestyle these people lead: violence and robbery. If they see something they want, they take it and woe betide whoever gets in their way. This sanctuary is so important to them, that even parents aren't allowed to trip it up.

Starting on page forty-nine, it felt like I might be reading an excerpt from the graphic novel version of the movie Fight club which I haven't seen and have no interest in seeing. It was bloody and violent as Syd and Gruff fight each other - presumably as training. But after punching each other in the face several times they're suddenly kissing. This felt not only inappropriate, but also entirely predictable, and it marked the point where I started losing interest in this comic.

It got worse when we went through a bunch of adolescent posing, angst, and machismo, to say nothing of the soul-searching and he dramatic plans which fell through. All the tedious back stories flooding-out really brought the main story to a screeching halt. After that, it picked up again and turned out, by the end, to be a merit-worthy read. It's not often I can say that, so this makes a pleasant change.

Since this blog is about writing, here's a writing issue. On page one hundred, Maisie is talking to Syd, and she's saying that The Voice isn't perfect, and she follows it with "none of us are". Should she have said, instead, "none of us is"? It can be used either way, but the number has to agree, I think. Strictly speaking, in this case, Maisie meant that no individual is. If she had said, "This group isn't perfect, no groups are" this would have worked, but it seems to me that this isn't the case.

She's talking in the same frame as when she said "The Voice isn't perfect," so it seems to me that since she's talking about an individual, in which case, correct use should be "none of us is", as in "He isn't perfect; none of us is." However, this is not a narrative, it's a person speaking, and people in general use poor grammar, so while it might sound odd, I think it works here. But you're welcome to disagree, since I am far from a grammar expert. The important thing to keep in mind is that what works in your narration may not work for a given individual's speech, and vice-versa.

So overall, I rate this graphic novel as a worthy read, which surprised me given the way I thought it was going - downhill! It turned around and so did my opinion. I'd be interested in reading volume two, which is also a nice change from the position I've been in vis-à-vis some of the graphic novels I've reviewed recently. The dialog - apart from a sorry bit just after the middle, was good, and the art work was superb. I recommend this.