Reading the New 52: Issue #1: Batwing

by Judd Winick and Ben Oliver

Cover: Guy in silver bat armour... above the pyramids? Hey!That's right, Batwing is the African branch of the Bat family. I hope this is done well.

Story: "I told Batman that a man dressed as a bat will not instill fear in the average criminal in Africa. They have seen too much." This book seems to be set in a close analogue of a real-world, war-torn part of Africa. That's got a lot of scope for stories. I'm no expert in recent African history. I am just a person who has seen the documentary War Dance a couple of times. There's a powerful and largely untapped well of material here, and if it's done right... oh, I am excited about this book! Excited and a bit apprehensive.

So, Batwing fights warlords and drug runners by night as a vigilante. By day he`s a police officer in the made-up city of Tinasha.

The art in Batwing is in a style that`s somewhere between photorealistic and watercolour. I`m not sure yet how I feel about it.

Superheroes are getting murdered in Tinasha and David Zavimbe is on the case, in both of his personas! And then... holy shit! Cliffhanger ending! I am spoiling everything (hey, this has been out for a year, the statute of limitations is surely up) so I will say that David gets stabbed through the heart on the last page. Or that's how it looks.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he makes it.

I want to know what happens next!

Drop or Keep: Keep keep keep. I hope this lives up to its potential.

Reading the New 52: Issue #1: Batgirl

by Gail Simone, Adrian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes

Cover: While Batman is of course familiar to me, I had no idea there was a whole Bat family. Bat colony. Batgirl appears to be a feisty redhead, cute but no Escher Girl. So far, so good.

Story: So Batgirl is named Barbara Gordon. She talks to herself a lot. She beats up bad guys. She was paralyzed for three years. And then... she got better?

Ouch. I guess I see why people were so incensed by this change. I don't know enough about the backstory to get into it.

There's a bad guy named The Mirror murdering people and Batgirl is going to tangle with him.

Drop or keep: Keep.

Reading the New 52: Issue #1: Animal Man

by Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman and Dan Green

Cover: I know nothing at all about Animal Man. The cover is a bit grotesque, what with all the veiny bits.

Story: Buddy Baker (really?) is a minor super hero whose wife thinks he hasn't been doing much superheroing lately. Animal Man has the power to take on the abilities of any animal. Well, that's legit weird. Do you think he ever channels the ability of the paper nautilus to detach its penis? So he can bang and make himself a sandwich at the same time. I like to think I make the world a better place by not writing fan fiction. But for those who do,  just imagine what Animal Man could get up to.

So Animal Man stops some guy from shooting up a children's hospital and then he starts to bleed out of his eyes. Then he has a super creepy dream about his daughter disemboweling his son. Then he wakes up and finds his daughter has resurrected a bunch of dead animals.

Necromancy! Excellent!

Keep or Drop: With an ending like that? Resoundingly Keep.

Reading the New 52: Issue #1: Superman Action Comics

by Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Rick Bryant

Cover: Superman in jeans, a t-shirt and a cape with bullets bouncing off him over astonished onlookers in a traffic jam. Is a cape and tee not a fashion faux pas? I actually like this cover a lot. Superman has a kind of shit eating grin on his face.

Look at that impish face.

Story: Superman is beating up on oligarchs in Metropolis. And there are cell phones. He does look pretty different as Clark Kent, all nerdy. I bet his voice is completely altered as well. That would go a ways as a disguise.

We see him take bullets that bounce off, stop a wrecking ball, leap a tall building in a single bound, stop a speeding bullet train...

Oh wow yeah.

Did I mention I'm Canadian?

Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Lex Luthor get brief look ins. I'm not that intrigued by them.

Keep or Drop: Keep, for now.

Reading the New 52: Issue #1 Justice League of America

Issue #1: Justice League of America

by Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and Scott Williams (Am I supposed to know who did what by the order in which their names appear? Writer, penciller, inker. I have a lot to learn.)

Cover art: I assume this is the team.

Story: Apparently this book is set in a time when goverments were hunting down people with super powers. That's a bit... X-men, as far as plots go, but it's not unreasonable. People with superpowers are totally a threat.

There's more than one Green Lantern? I did not know this.

So Green Lantern (or, I guess, A Green Lantern) and Batman are fighting some mystery alien. Green Lantern quizzes Batman about his powers.

Ha ha. He totally is! That is what makes Batman so cool, though. He doesn't actually have superpowers. He has wealth and gadgets and peak human conditioning and issues.

And then there's a cut to... a high school kid playing football? This is the Justice League of America. Amurrca. The team's motto is "Hustle, Hit, Never Quit." The kid's dad didn't show for the game. Nobody's dad ever does, in fiction. His dad is too busy studying superhumans. This bodes well.

Meanwhile, Green Lantern and Batman pick a fight with Superman. As one does. My favourite (so far) interpretation of Superman is Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. I had a crush on Lex Luthor as a kid.

See? John Shea as Lex Luthor. Don't tell me you wouldn't.

Anyway...that's it. The book ends with a picture of the team, which includes Aquaman and Wonder Woman, and also the kid from the football field, Vic Stone, in some kind of wild silver armor. Spoilers!

Keep or Drop: Keep.

Reading DC's New 52

I've been reading comics for a while, but I've never done more than dabble in the Big Two superhero stories. There's just so much of it, I didn't know where to start or how to find what I'd like. But thanks to the New 52 reboot by DC, suddenly there's a manageable amount of books to dive into. And I intend to try them all. And to write about it.