Wednesday rolls around again, and despite the weather being fairly crummy, I have a mission! Why? because it’s new comics Wednesday!
This week I am heading over to good old Midtown Comics to pick up this weeks pull list, as well as last weeks. I couldn’t be more excited to finally get my grubby mitts on Blackest Night number 7! And speaking of the number seven, this week’s picks also features another “7th” issue; Justice League – Cry for Justice #7.
Cry for Justice (CfJ) has been an interesting series from the start. I picked up the first one because my man, Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, was leading the charge. CfJ explores several heroes coming together and demanding justice. The idea is that most heroes sit around and wait for something bad to happen, then proceed to stop the bad guys. However, a few select heroes are tired of this approach to fighting crime, and want to take the war to their enemy’s front doors instead.
Thus begins a series of parallel story arcs that slowly have intertwined back into one over the series run. Number 7 is the final issue and promises to change the lives of some of our heroes and the DC Universe forever. I know, how often do we hear that? But the way this has been leading up so far, I can actually believe it.
While not seemingly as important as the events of Blackest Night and slow to start, CfJ has overall been a great series, especially for the interesting and very different art style. The first issues spent most of their time introducing the cast of characters for this romp, setting up exactly why they are in need of justice and drawing lines in the sand between themselves and their comrades. This last point is important. The title suggests that the Justice League is on board, while in fact practically everyone disagrees with GL. He recruits Green Arrow and a few others to his cause, but Superman, Wonder Woman and other mainliners are mostly M.I.A. in this plan for justice. Instead the cast is filled out with select individuals who in their own time have had success in individual runs or team series but tend to be more or less “B” characters these days.
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The villain of the series, Prometheus is amongst the most serious bad guys I’ve read in comics. The writers chose to retcon his character for CfJ. Apparently when Prometheus first appeared several years back, he was pretty bad, but then sort of turned into a joke. Now they make it out that the *real* Prometheus simply went away for a while and some moron impostor took up his name and garb. Well, this guy is no poser as he kills the Tasmanian Devil and turns him into a rug in his lair as just one example. He is utterly ruthless and incredibly intelligent. He is likened to being Batman’s equivalent in mental prowess, strategy and ability, except purely evil.
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As I mentioned briefly before, one of the main things I’ve liked about this series is the extremely out of the norm art style. Most series and artists stick to the sort of normal standard look. These characters and scenes all look like they were painted, similar to Alex Ross’s style seen in so many covers. At the same time its not nearly as photo-realistic as Ross’s work either showing almost a “scratchy” crosshatched look similar to what you’d get from colored pencils. So it’s an interesting and fun blend of two distinct styles which I’ve really found to be quite enjoyable. However, I’m glad its limited to this series’ run because while very good looking, I don’t think it meshes with what I and a lot of other comic fans are used to or comfortable with for longer series runs. You can see what I mean in the examples above and below, you can click each for a larger view.
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Anyway, I cannot wait to see what the end of this series brings. Supposedly its going to spark some kind of new series or change in existing ones. Should be interesting to see what comes next.
One other note before I drop my pull list for the week. You’ll notice the list includes Mass Effect: Redemption #2. While I listed this a while back, I missed getting it in the store and it actually sold out! So I am grabbing this re-print this time around. Here’s hoping Midtown got it.
Here’s this week’s picks, happy reading!
Tags: Comics, DC, Green Lantern, Wednesday Comics Picks
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