In SHERMAN: The Promise New York by Stephen Desberg and Grifo, the eponymous tycoon witnesses his son, a presidential candidate, gunned down in front of him, which soon proves the first move in a campaign of revenge for one of the many dirty deeds in Sherman’s climb from tenement to penthouse. A good start to a multi-volume series.
BATMAN VS BIGBY: Big Wolf in Gotham by Bill Willingham and Brian Level has Batman and Robin investigating a series of monstrous murders where the victims were ripped apart. When they encounter Bigby Wolf from Willingham’s Fables series (which wrapped disappointingly several years back, but has recently started up again) it’s obvious he’s the monster, right? Only what is Bats’ old foe Bookworm doing in the middle of all this? Enjoyable, but it could have been better.
VORACIOUS: Feeding Time and Appetite For Destruction by Markisan Naso and Jason Murh wrap up the series launched with Feeding Time. Time-traveling Nate has had a lot of success feeding dinosaur meet to his diner customers, but he doesn’t realize the dinos come from the past of a parallel world where in the present the descendants of the saurians he’s killed are disappearing from existence. One cop struggling to hold onto the memories of his vanished wife sets out to find the psycho responsible—meanwhile Nate has some surprises to deal with in both his personal and his cooking lives.
The twist was great and V2 is excellent; V3 has some great bits such as Nate’s bestie Starlee calling him out but it needed a couple more issues to wrap things up smoothly (the bits I missed were Nate’s ex Jenna not even getting a goodbye scene and a too-quick resolution to another plotline). But I figure as they did a Kickstarter for Appetite for Destruction they probably couldn’t afford more — and overall, it sticks the landing.
TEEN TITANS: Full Throttle by Adam Glass and Bernard Chang is built around the edgy concept that superheroes need to take their gloves off and play hardball to protect people — oh, wait, sorry, that was novel and sort of edgy in the 1990s, now it’s a cliche. Nor is the cast any better, with Roundhouse (a knockoff of New Warriors‘ speedball) and Djinn (a tormented Raven-esque supernatural) among the uninteresting new members.
SUPERMAN, SON OF KAL-EL: The Truth by Tom Taylor and John Timms has Jon Kent stepping into his father’s shoes as Superman after his father goes off on a mission he’ll never return home from (if you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you). Jon’s struggle to live up to Dad’s legacy are good — who wouldn’t be intimidated at stepping into those shoes? — but otherwise this is dull. The villain, Bendix, is impressively bland, Jon’s relationship with his new boyfriend (this Superman is bi) lacks spark and the Truth website the boyfriend works for doesn’t impress me — it’s supposed to be a scrappy underground paper printing the truth the mainstream media ignore but that description makes me think more of right-wing propaganda networks like OAN.
#SFWApro. Cover by Level, all rights to image remain with current holder.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 