Week In Review : Daredevil #12 + Earth 2 #1 + Teen Titans Annual #1 + World's Finest #1 + X-O Manowar #1

Welcome back for more new issues! Read the feedback from our crack staff as they review the books fresh off the racks!
Today is a bit DC-heavy, but given the huge number of titles they put out every week and a bunch of hotly anticipated new titles - so more books tomorrow, but for now, enjoy!

Daredevil #12 (Marvel)

Story : Mark Waid

Art : Chris Samnee

(Reviewed by Anupam Sarkar)

First of all, the cover is extremely awesome and sexy. Man, I just love Paolo Rivera!

The issue starts with a date between Matt Murdock and Kristen McDuffie, the Assistant DA, where she, (in a sexy pose) asks Matt to tie a scarf around her head as a blindfold. The reason for her to use a blindfold is to experience how a blind guy like Matt “enjoys” the world.

Within the issue, Matt tells Kristen about how he and Foggy became friends and also about their 'mock trial' against a professor at the university who had accused Foggy of cheating.

Mark Waid is a brilliant writer and storyteller and has brought something new with each issue. Daredevil #12 is not one of the action packed comics but more like knowing 'bout the guy behind the Daredevil Mask. In fact, there are only two glimpses of Daredevil in this issue (including a shadow).

Chris Samnee's art is pretty awesome and he provides with some jaw dropping visuals.

My advice - In case you were one of the fellows who read the really disappointing Daredevil #11, then this issue is your medicine. And also the next issue is going to be action packed !

SCORE : 9 / 10

Earth 2 #1 (DC)

Story : James Robinson

Art : Nicola Scott

(Reviewed by Anubhav DasGupta)

Earth 2, while not as thrilling as some of the other #1s out today, is an enjoyable book, considering the fact that a lot doesn’t really happen except for the flashback.

Most of Earth 2 #1 is a flashback. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman of this version of Earth are battling Darkseid’s Parademons, and it isn’t going well. And it doesn’t end well.

Flash forward a few years, and we’re introduced to Alan Scott (the first Green Lantern from good ol’ pre-52 DC) and Jay Garrick (the first Flash from good ol’ pre-52 DC). Both of them haven’t gotten their powers yet, and they are regular, non-superhuman folks. Alan Scott’s a billionaire. But he isn’t a pompous, extravagant brat like Tony Stark, and he isn’t Bruce Wayne, either. He’s actually noble, but he never comes across as pretentious, and he’s only there for a few pages, but he does make enough of an impact.

Jay Garrick’s a teenager. I’m in two minds about the character, but I’ll give it the benefit of doubt because he’s in the comic for only a few pages, and something really cool happens with him in the last page.

The art is pretty good. There are some really great frame-worthy splash pages. And Nicola Scott is very good with expressions.

The writing however… It’s not magnificent, and it isn’t bad. It’s just somewhere in the middle and it bogs down the entire comic. The story hasn’t gotten me glued yet. The characters haven’t completely gotten me glued yet. But it looked good. It looked really good, actually. Not as good as the other #1s like Dial H or World’s Finest, but pretty good. The writing just isn’t doing it for me. I think the problem is we don’t know the Earth 2 Trinity well. Their characters aren’t set up well despite being very different from their other counterparts. That’s why the first few pages, the flashback, despite looking great don’t work well. James Robinson should have given some space for the characters to breathe, but he just pushed them into the battlefield. So we’ve got a couple of characters we don’t care about, who look like characters we care about, and we don’t feel a darn when they die one by one. That’s a major miss.

Despite a lackluster first issue, I’ve got a feeling Earth 2 will get much, much better. And even if it doesn’t, I’ll be reading it for Scott’s art alone. And Atom is going to be showing up soon. Gotta love the Atom!

SCORE : 6.5 / 10

Teen Titans Annual #1 (DC)

Story : B

Art : R

(Reviewed by Anant Sagar)

So I decided to take a break from the Good, Bad and Funny format this time. I decided to just go with it. Let’s begin...

So the first thing you notice about the Teen Titans is the costumes. THEY ARE STRAIGHT OUT OF TRON. What the hell were they thinking?! Why do they do shit like this?!

Okay, so the artwork (apart from the costumes) is pretty badass! The detailing is pretty good, as one should expect with mainstream DC stuff.

The story is interesting. The Titans find themselves in a strange place and up against a new enemy called Harvest! (what a name man!!) Who basically has some grand master plan for the future! All this must start with an event called The Culling. (No relation to the sparkling vampires at all) So going by the title, this entire mini-cross-over kicks of here and covers just the Culling.

Also trapped in this place are the Lost Legion: A band of heroes from the 31st century, brought back to the present day by our bad guy. They find themselves up against the Titans. Random fight sequence and witty banter later they decide to fight together as the Culling begins.

All in all an okay read. I’m not too fond of it, even though I’m a big fan of Tim Drake!

SCORE : 5 / 10 (... and that’s without taking the TRON suits into consideration.)

World's Finest #1 (DC)

Story : Paul Levitz

Art : George Perez (pencils), Scott Koblish (inks)

(Reviewed by Akshay Dhar)

Much more clarity on the whole “how do Huntress and Power Girl fit into the New DCU, some backstory, some present day development and a wee bit of action to round it off.

This should have been a great issue, but it fell short (I'm going to wrap up the part I didn't like first so bear with me for the good stuff!) – and for that I squarely blame the art team and partly the editorial team who had final call on some things. I've always felt that Perez is good but flawed in some respects. Largely it was alright and the layouts were decent enough, but the art didn't pop for me when I was reading through and things seemed lost, like either there were too many other things on panel or some such, essentially a lack of life standing out. Granted a lot of pages had explosions and decimated laboratory surroundings, but we've all read comics that had that and more on pages and still looked brilliant! The inks and colours were decent enough, but when the base is off, the whole suffers so can't praise them overmuch at this point. I also just don't like how Perez does faces, period.

The other major annoyance? The new Power Girl costume. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those hating because it's a new look or that it doesn't showcase her... ahem... assets quite so much, it's just a really poor design – something I've had a grouse about even with Earth-2. They've taken perfectly good, recognisable looks and instead of modifying them (like with some of the other DC redesigns), they've changed the whole look and done it badly. That logo/emblem on her costume for starters makes her chest look really, really weird... Thankfully Huntress still looks like herself.

NOW THE GOOD STUFF!
This issue actually would have gotten a much higher score if the story had been given better art to go with it. Levitz nicely blends flashback with present day events and while this kind of jumping back and forth can be jarring, it read pretty well here and flowed fairly well through the issue. We follow our girls who've been seen thus far in the terrible and now (thankfully) cancelled Mr. Terrific series (Power Girl) and in the Huntress mini-series. Refugees from another Earth that had lost all its heroes and under attack from Apokolips, our two heroines were sucked into a strange Boom-tube and ended up on our Earth. After artfully “borrowing” some cash in one of the funniest theft concepts I've seen in one of these comics, they each spent several years building a life – one creating an urban legend amongst the criminal under-belly and haunting the night, the other making a splash (not in any costume) and building a cutting edge technology company and minting cash. Guess who does which. Go on.

Anyway, long story short, we get a nice lowdown on the basics, a good introduction to their character and get to see their relationship and dynamic and end the issue with a nice shiny (literally!) new bad guy for the ladies to bring down. Sadly though, that big fight and more reveals were held in check for upcoming issues.

If the story quality remains this good, I think I can expect future issues to do better – DC seriously needs to give Perez more simple comics and less detail to draw or something, because perfectly good pages felt “meh” and killed some of the vibe. AND PLEASE DC!!! Change that damn costume... seriously...

SCORE : 6.4 / 10

X-O Manowar #1 (Valiant)

Story : Robert Vendetti

Art : Cary Nord (pencils), Stefano Gaudiano (inks), Moose Baumann (colour)

(Reviewed by Akshay Dhar)

I've actually been anticipating this new series quite seriously.

For those of you that don't know, Valiant Comics was a publisher many years past who (like CrossGen) that came up and made a huge splash with their innovative characters, concepts and great story-telling and art. Their was a lot of acclaim and a lot of fan-love for these books and X-O Manowar was one of the most popular and remains a very fond memory for most of those early readers. So you can imagine my eagerness and hesitation with this relaunch – after all, can all relaunches be as awesome as the recent Image Comics ones have been? Is history not littered with terrible examples to the contrary?

Well consider me overjoyed that this continues a trend of more character and story-driven comics being launched and (hopefully) this will be appreciated as much as the relaunched Image titles have been.

The story is simple enough, yet very unique in it's own way – we start off in the ancient Roman Empire as the tribal Visigoths struggle to keep their families, lives and homes safe and try to fight back against the mighty Roman legions. They fight valiantly and with a strong but hot-headed youth, Aric, in a central role though he is not the king or official leader. One night, while investigating a report of Romans, Aric and his men meet a foe unlike any they could have anticipated and are swiftly and brutally taken down and the survivors shipped away – all while this new enemy perpetrates some pretty disgusting acts not far away. Soon they are at their new enemies' stronghold and witness some mind-boggling (for our heroes) things unlike anything they've known. Now they must try and find a way to fight for their freedom and get back home.

[NOTE: THE NEXT FEW LINES CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS]

For those of you that have read the original series or know what it was, you can read this or skip as you feel. The rest, gather round kiddies.

You see this is primarily a science fiction concept, so the 'new enemies' are actually very clearly aliens and they take our heroes with them as prisoners. The basic premise of the series is that the aliens have a somewhat sentient super-battle-suit that chooses it's own wearer and the creatures worship it, hoping it will judge one of them worthy one day. If you've been a storybook/comic/reader of tales for long enough, you can guess from the cover and what I've just told you, that a human eventually gets the suit and then all hell breaks looks.

[END SPOILERS!]

Bottom line? It is a very well-crafted and short-but-intense first issue that really draws you in nicely, Vendetti has done a great job. He has crafted a lead character that you immediately understand and set everything up very well – the real test will be his transition from what it starts as to what it eventually forms into, because what happens now will define the tone and feel of the entire series ahead. And I DEFINITELY look forward to the action to ramp up once the suit has a new wearer!

The art however, was a most pleasant surprise. The team does an exceptional job, all the way from character designs to the final pages. Excellent and consistent rendering and a style and feel that works very well with the story being told. I've not been too familiar with these guys, but definitely looking forward to more now.

If you like good, interesting, character driven sci-fi, you should really check this out!

SCORE : 8.4 / 10