CRIME SYNDICATE #3 DC COMICS
Not even a guest appearence of Doctor Chaos (the Reverse Dr. Fate) on the cover could help me with this one. After a really good couple of issues, this almost turns into a regular Justice League story with even Lex Luthor joining up for a while. None of the main characters have alot to do here. No one really shines here and the insanity that previous storylines have focused on in present. And by giving us a glimpse of even more super people, it lessens the threat of the Syndicate. While some Easter Eggs are dropped throughout the story, this one sort of petered out on me. Owlman’s plan against Starro is not all that brilliant, Ultraman is more of an bully version of Superman, and Green Lantern is still just John Steward version from the JLU cartoon. For anyone not overly familiar with these characters, this is an entertaining book. For those of us who have witnessed the version of Power Ring that was slowly going insane from radiation poisoning from his leaky power battery or seen the version of Owlman that realised that due to parallel universes, he could never die, these guys are tame. I give this one a 6 out of 10 Grahams. (Seriously, I’m the only one who remembers Dr. Chaos? Superboy Volume 2 #25? The Earth 1 version of Dr. Fate? Blue helmet? Nothing? Sigh!)
MARJORIE FINNEGAN TEMPORAL CRIMINAL #1 AWA STUDIOS
This is a wonderful bit of fun in the vein of Xtraterrestrial Time Travelling Thieves and the movie Time Bandits. Garth Ennis’s story immediately throws us bollocks deep into it and only gets weirder when the action stops. Marjorie is a wonderful character and the secondary characters have real potential. And some of Marjorie’s reactions and dialog had me laughing out loud! While the language here is definately mature, it is very current and does feel appropriate to the situations. Goran Sudzuka’s art is absolutely perfect for this book. Sexy and realistic while having a certain cartoony quality to it. Miroslav Mrva’s color pallet just leap from the page. And with a all star cast of variant cover artists such as Mike Deodato Jr. and Frank Cho, you just can’t go wrong! This one definately gets a 10 out of 10 Grahams.
