Superman: What Price Tomorrow?, George Pérez, Jesus Merino, Nicola Scott

This wasn’t as bad as I expected from the general trend of reviews on Goodreads. I don’t think I’m really a fan of DC’s stuff in general, though. I mean, I remember Superman in bright colours, as wholesome as Marvel’s Captain America, but here it’s all dark and broody. Maybe part of the problem is that I never read the comics before, but was a devotee of the tv series. No, not Smallville — Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman!

Anyway, this was… okay. I liked the redesign of Superman’s costume which keeps the important aspects of his iconic image and tweaks things we could do without (the underwear on the outside of his costume thing). I didn’t feel strongly about the art either way, though I did feel that the criticisms of the number of panels and cluttered pages are pretty valid.

The story is okay, but like I said, there’s a lot of dark and broody here, which I thought was more Batman’s line. There’s some stuff intended to make it relevant and modern, like the Daily Planet’s way of dealing with the move to digital media, but all in all, I don’t know how that works. In my head, the Daily Planet smells of paper and ink, and Metropolis never really joins the digital age.

So the only New 52 titles I’ve really been interested in following are Batgirl and Batwoman. Hmm.

Wonder Woman: Guts, Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang, Tony Akins

I’m not really a fan of Wonder Woman, I think, at least not in this incarnation. I’m not fond of the character designs, except maybe for Strife (but she reminded me of someone else; maybe a Neil Gaiman character?) and Wonder Woman herself, and the plot just… Nah.

I can take some tweaks to my mythology (hello Thor), but this was strangely closer to the actual mythology and further from the spirit of the mythology. Or something. The bickering among the gods, Hera’s jealousy, etc — it all makes sense within Greek myth, but they seemed cardboard cutouty, which Thor and Loki do not.

Wonder Woman: Blood, Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang, Tony Akins

This was one of the first DC books I picked up, I think, but I didn’t get round to it till now. I have to say I’m more fond of Batgirl — I’m not sure this was a very good introduction to Wonder Woman. I mean, there’s very little by way of explanation of her motivations going on. She just kills some stuff dead and finds out some secrets about her past.

It’s fun enough, and the art is good, and the mythology goes pretty well with actual Greek mythology (unlike, say, Marvel’s Thor). I think the review/s that mention it being a bit like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman have got something there, too.

In any case, I have the second volume already, so we’ll see how that goes. But I may not be buying any more Wonder Woman after that.

Batwoman vol. 1: Hydrology, J.H Williams III, W. Haden Blackman

So here I am, jumping into another New 52 title. I was mostly interested in Batwoman/Kate Kane because I know she’s a lesbian, but I knew very little else about her, so it was a bit tough to just jump right in here, even though the New 52 is supposed to be a reboot.

I enjoyed it, though; I like that in contrast to what I normally think of when I think of the Batfamily, without supernatural elements, here we’ve got Kate Kane basically going through an episode of Supernatural. It’s interesting reading that at the same time as I’m getting into Batgirl — and I like that there’s plenty of stuff around in Kate’s normal life, too. More than Batgirl’s, maybe; I got more of a sense of the wider world surrounding Kate, anyway.

The art looks really cool; I love the red/black look Kate’s got going on.