Swift Planet's Profile

The first issue of Batman comes out strong with the first (and second) appearance of Joker and also the first appearance of Catwoman, which shows Batman giving her a very loose leash from the onset.

As someone who loved Tom King's run on Batman and had to be disappointed by the decision he wouldn't get to tell his full Batman story, and honestly I have been very indifferent with Tynion IV's take on him so far... I loved this. The presentation was amazing, from the way the chapters are introduced, to the great looking art and costumes. I already know a common complaint is going to be how convoluted it seems with all the plots happening at once, but it really is simple. Since it is a Christmas story, remember there is a Past, Present, and Future... kind of like A Christmas Carol. I have no idea if that was intentional.

This was almost exactly what I expected of it judging by the covers. It's got a nice horror, spooky feeling throughout... I could imagine Frankenstein taking place right off panel somewhere.

I had no idea just how accurate my last review would be.

I have never liked what DC has been doing with Wonder Woman more than recently with stuff like Dead Earth and Death Metal. This whole series was a love letter to fans of the entire DC Universe. Specific fans. The ones who actually love the entire universe. Anyone else, it may be lost on them.

This was probably the best part of the whole series for me.

I don't know much about Superman Prime. In fact I thought he was based on the original Earth-2 Superman that died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but wow this story was fantastic.

Josh has a real accomplishment here... 106 issue run in 2020, that is something to be proud of and one that has a perfect ending for what it set out to do (and for taking the blame away from Wally for HiC)

Man, this actually seems like it will be rapping up in a satisfying way. Most underrated DC title on shelves.

Love every part of it.

This was even better than the first issue.

This is seriously one of my favourite Superman stories already. Seriously, Venditti for main title.

One of my favourite DC runs as of recently.

Is it too early to say comic of the year?

Heh heh heh. Bueno!

This wrapped up very satisfyingly. I will definitely be collecting this in any collected forms that end up being released.

This is Wonder Woman's Dark Knight Returns. The art was incredible and the story made some of the best use of Wonder Woman's ideals I have ever seen.

Nice to see James Tynion IV trying something new with Batman, and making good use of any additions to the supporting cast. Robin was really a don't blink or you'll miss it story, but a nice extra.

Fantastic series. Tom Taylor once again shows his mastery of the DC Universe. The ending is somewhat underwhelming, because it isn't what you expect, but maybe he has other plans.

Turns out I like Brandon Thomas.

More of this please.

I didn't expect going in to like this series more than The Next Batman, but I did. The backups were stronger, not counting Brandon Thomas' in The Next Batman. Just overall it is a better package.

After Nightwing was consistently disappointing during the Rebirth era, this is a pleasant surprise.

Ridley's Batman? Great. Brandon Thomas' Outsiders? Fantastic. The Arkham Knight story? I could do without.

The better backups of this series are in the odd issues.

Loving this new Wonder Girl.

This is one of the best.

All of these writers did fine work. Anything Swamp Thing is a big undertaking with what it is following, but these creators all created reasonably horrific tales perfect for an anthology.

This was so good. I loved how neatly it was bookended and it keeps you flip flopping on who to side with.

It's really amazing when you think about it, that Superman's ideals have stood up for nearly a century and are still relevant.

Way too good for a series that will go overlooked.

It's great. Not perfect, but definitely on its way to be a modern day classic TMNT title.

Better than his Batman.

Kelly Sue DeConnick on Aquaman was overall pretty good. I personally don't like the idea of a vacant throne for Atlantis, but it's something new.

Well to my complete surprise I dug this arc a lot.

Man, this book still captures the best of the DC Rebirth Superman and Super Sons sense of plain fun.

This was a really fun series, more enjoyable than Adventures of the Super Sons, my only problem with it is how convoluted it kind of becomes because of the rule/non-rule(?) of the scroll.

The greatest part of this was seeing how many Lobo slang puns these writers could come up with.

This was a lot more funny than I expected going in. The Robin King story was excellent and rightfully dark, I would say it is the standout.

There really are a lot of classic relationships in the DCU and this did a good job with most. Man, the Sgt. Rock story was so good. I'd love some more Sgt. Rock in general.

Really liked Legacy(shame about the art), As Always, and my favourite was Detective #26.

This was a really good arc. Loving Tomasi on Detective, too bad this is his final issue. DC why do you hate Tomasi?

I actually liked both of these stories. Joshua Williamson did a good job working on the relationship of the new JL, and Ram V proved he can write JL Dark just fine without working off of James Tynion IV's existing outline.

It didn't blow me away quite the same as some of Geoff Johns' other work, but it was still very strong.

At this point I have just embraced the insanity that is Season Two of GL by Grant Morrison, and I enjoyed it a lot more for it.

The story was a great transition from the ending of Death Metal and Future State, but man they really needed better artists for such a book. Also the last page had me so happy in more ways than one. One because of *y'know* being how he should be, and also that JrJr is no longer working for DC... because yikes.

A pretty heartwarming one-shot. Billy should have transformed back when he said Shazam though.

Venditti for main Superman title.

Ram V has turned this into a crime epic and so far it is working.

The penguin story was very... surreal. I loved the story with John and Dark John.

What's to say really? It's the first appearance of Batman ever and right off the bat he is delivered with full confidence. Also beginning now is my murder count for Batman, because he has changed his tune about killing over the years and that part of the character was absent from his early appearances. Murder count: 1. He kills a man by punching him into a chemical vat, and no it isn't the guy who ends up being the Joker. Interesting historical point of note: Batman wears purple gloves in this issue, much like in Scott Snyder's Year Zero story. The identity of Batman is also not revealed until the last panel. Apex Chemicals. I am going through every issue of Detective and Batman, and reviewing them. Nobody cares, but if you are a nobody, feel free to follow me. Especially if you are interested in these issues with no intention of ever reading them.

This is a review of the whole arc. Tomasi is really good at writing these characters how I envision them, but the brainwashing was a very odd plot point to me.

There were two colouring mistakes, that hopefully will be fixed in the trade, other than that this arc continues strong.

Stephanie Phillips did a fine job, however the ending feels a bit weak. The art by Di Meo is both incredible, but also overly processed. If they cut back a bit on the effects, they could be a truly top tier artist.

This is a really fun story, with some pretty solid political criticisms, but at the same time I am glad this in no way canon because of Lex's character.

PKJ and Manin on Superman = 10/10 in my book. The backups bring it down though.

They had me at Dan Watters.

Ridley's Batman is still great. The backups kind of suck.

The art was incredible, and I liked that Anti-matter Hal and Sinestro are lovers.

This was all really well written, and handing it off to Ram V did not change that, however I do wish Upside Down Man was as scary as he was in the start of the run. Instead he started feeling like any other cosmic level villain.

This ended up a really satisfying series.

Daffy getting his bill blasted off (like 20 times in one issue) remains funny to this day.

I noticed in previous Priest books that he has a surprising knowledge of the military, and he flexes that here. It helped make the story feel way more realistic.

That Lobo story was a pretty good use of the character. The Mongul one is fine too, but I don't imagine it will be very memorable.

That is actually a really cool way to implement the environment into a physical and sentient looming threat, it will definitely become an even more interesting issue as time moves forward.

I'm glad Nick Spencer acknowledged that Civil War 2 did this already, because I was thinking that during the last arc. This one was pretty good after the last arc, which was pretty much one of the worst arcs of the whole run.

I loved this arc because of Damian and Elainna Grayson going back and forth.

Not sure whether I hate or love the ending, but it got me.

Damn, Tomasi. You got dark with this one. I love Robin King from his previous appearance, but this one became increasingly hard to read the longer it went on. Still good, but not a character's thoughts I would want to follow for long.

Gene Luen Yang is one of the most underrated writers of especially Superman and I look forward to his ongoing. This wasn't his best, trust me.

This was perfectly fine. Not great, not bad. I would have loved to see 90s' Guy try to fix a civilization like this.

It's okay.

The backups are pretty mediocre in these even issues.

It's got a very appealing old school feel, it even feels like a Crisis type book, but not the best one. It's fun and that's enough. Dominus is made to really good use too.

I love how everyone is talking about relying on each other and trusting one another over tech, and Batman immediately leaves off to secure Eradicator.

The part with the aspiring musician was wholesome. Lana Lang's piece was also pretty good.

This is quite dark for Spidey, but the structure of the story was a bit sloppy.

Their plan to keep Terry as Batman made absolutely no sense to me, but I do like seeing Booster Gold.

The message in this one is trying to say something great, and it sort of works, however the execution is a bit lacking to me.

Sadly, Geoffrey Thorne's story was the weakest.

I can't lie. I don't care much for the multiversal characters in Grant's run, and I feel like he is kind of squandering the potential this title had by focusing on them so much. I was also disappointed by the story here as a standalone issue. I would have given it lower even, had I no faith it will go somewhere.

This series was far from perfect, but I do not regret reading it. I was personally happy when I heard the news Dan DiDio was leaving DC. I don't have anything against Dan, but I disagreed with the way he had authority over the characters. In interviews I have always enjoyed hearing from him, he seems likable that way. Anyway, it is very clear Dan DiDio loves the Metal Men. Like *really* loves the Metal Men. He makes some deep cuts and ties this well into main DC continuity, with the inclusion of the Dark Multiverse. While reading this, it is hard not to feel his passion for writing these characters. Dan's enthusiasm for them becomes infectious. At best he has inspired me to read some old Metal Men comics, and that was really Dan DiDio's job from the start... to sell us on comics. Goodbye Dan, I will miss your personality in DC Comics at the very least. DC definitely seems more corporate since they lost that big personality, even if it will be better for the stories in the long run.

Finally a decent (but still not good) issue.

It was time for this series to end. Hopefully next round the creators have a less horrible direction for the character.

It was pretty fun. Liked seeing Shazam! interact with Gotham.

I read this because I like Si Spurrier. However it was a bit too ingrained in the saga of Krakoa for me to enjoy. I haven't been keeping up with the rest of the X-men titles, but even then I don't feel like I'm missing much context. The important part seems to be the knowledge that the mutants can be resurrected from a previous point, which I do know. The Patchwork Man is what's new to me. Anyway, I wanted to like it, but I really just didn't. I really don't like the info dump pages from the past Krakoa stories I've read and I was sad to see them still here breaking up the flow of the story. Otherwise it was fine. I do like how the mutants are so desensitized to death now.

So let's break it down: Are the characters likable? No. Is the story good? Not thus far. Is the art good? It's average. Is it really Image's Watchmen? Big no. Does it pander to general comic fans? Yes. Is it written like a Netflix pitch? Yes. Is it really closer to the comic equivalent of Ready Player One? Yes. I have liked the majority of Donny Cates' work, really only disliked Death of the Inhumans before this, but this one comes off as really amateur and something that anyone in the business could have wrote. In fact Brian K. Vaughan dies in the beginning, and this story actually reminded me of a more mainstream take on his Private Eye concept.

Jon Kent and Mister Miracle were a bit underwhelming, but I did enjoy the Guardian's story. We really don't get enough of The Guardian.

At least the ending felt like a proper end. Thankful for it to be over so someone else can write Superman.

This has to be one of the biggest disappointments to me all year. This reminds me of the 90s' Adam Strange which flips everything you knew about Rann and Sardath on it's head. This in a way retcons the original series so that the whole reason Amy ever goes to Gemworld is for corrupt reasons and it just doesn't add anything, if anything it makes it worse. I do not like Amy Reeder as a writer, idk why that should come as a surprise to me now either after reading her Moongirl.

The first story was alright, aside from some characterization inconsistencies. The second story is not believable because I don't see why the JLA would be requesting Batgirl so much. The third was just page filler.

The second issue is just as packed as the first issue, however the stories are quite a bit more forgettable. The Joker story is great as always, but the stories involving The Crime Master, Clubfoot, and a prehistoric man are easily disposable but still entertaining from a historical perspective.

I'm a pretty cynical guy, but the fact this is claiming to be hopeful when only one person survives to hold the guilt of 52 destroyed worlds... it's kind of insulting. Maybe, it isn't hopeless, but it's definitely joyless. Duke's Bat costume at the end is a very cool design though.

A teaser for what's to come? Not entirely that great a story on its own.

I'm reviewing this weeks later and it just wasn't that memorable.

Did anyone call Jim Zub? I know Tom Taylor is busy with other projects, but Zub's Suicide Squad was miles better than what's here and he made it sound like he's willing to answer.

The biggest joke in this comic starring the Joker is how he and Barbara are thought projections of Cecil. It isn't without its cool moments, but man does the dialogue stink.

I got to level with you on this one... it's bad.

An assortment of coal.

This issue kind of exists solely as an explanation to ditch the horrible Ric era, but as a story it doesn't hold up.