Superest Sunday

It's the final batch of DC Comics's "New 52"! I'm sure my long-suffering readers are familiar with what I'm talking about by now, so let's see what our last thirteen all-new comics are all about. Only two of them weren't to be found in the Nottingham comic shops this week - I'll take a trip to London to see if I can pick up some others, or else just get the reprints in a couple of weeks, because sales seem to be very brisk all over.

Superman #1
George Pérez, Jesus Merino

Pérez, who was also the inker of Green Arrow back in week 1, is credited with writing and breakdowns for Superman, while Merino provides pencils and inks. Now, when most artists say 'breakdowns', they're talking about panel layouts and sketchy stick-figures, but Pérez has something of a reputation for applying the word to what anyone else would call 'impossibly detailed pencils', and this comic does look a lot like his work...

Sorry, that wasn't really the new-reader attitude I'm trying to maintain here, was it? But I'm a big fan of George Pérez of old. Anyway, we open with the Daily Planet building, with a running narration about its history and importance to the city of Metropolis and the world, before the building is demolished.

It turns out we're at the opening ceremony for the all-new, bigger and better Planet building, as financed by the slightly sinister businessman Morgan Edge. Lois Lane and Perry White are at the ceremony, suitably impressed, but Clark Kent is boycotting it.

He's out flying around the city as Superman and reminiscing about the argument with Lois - Edge's Globe imprint has in the past been a dodgy tabloid empire not at all in line with the Daily Planet's old-fashioned ethics, and although Lois insists it's changed under Edge's new management (replacing, apparently, Mr Glenmorgan from Action Comics), Clark is unconvinced. There are some nice nods to the modern age here, because as we all know, newspapers aren't the force they once were. Lois is in television now, but poor Clark is unwilling to make that move, because everyone will see him on TV, and his secret identity is still only protected by a pair of glasses.

Elsewhere, in the Himalayas, a big giant monster blows a big giant horn, and drops it in the snow, leaving it for Stormwatch to find in their #1 from three weeks ago. That's it for the giant horn in this comic - I got the impression from reading Stormwatch that it would play a significant part in Superman, but I guess I was wrong. It might be connected with the events of this issue, but they'd already started before we cut away to the horn, so it's oddly paced if there really was a connection.

At the newly-completed Metropolis Astrodome, two security guards fill us in with a bit more exposition, while investigating mysterious little fires that seem to have been appearing and disappearing around the place. And Superman has been called into action when masked bandits steal a truck full of explosive chemical waste. But then the truck is blown up by the fire coming from the Astrodome, which seems to be alive!

While the news people scramble to get good pictures and a good view, Superman fights the fire-monster, which is talking in alienese (including, Superman believes, the word "Krypton") and, rather than setting things on fire, turns them into fire. It blows up a police helicopter, and Lois incurs Morgan Edge's wrath by ordering the news chopper to get out of there. She cleverly orders Jimmy Olsen and his friend Miko to hack into security cameras to get good footage for them.

Superman is able to defeat the fire-monster by carrying it up into space, and then writes up the story as Clark Kent, claiming to have just happened to be in the neighbourhood when the whole thing started and got an exclusive interview with Superman. He then goes to apologise to Lois, only to find that she was in bed with her new boyfriend Jonathan, so poor Clark has to go away again while his super-hearing picks up her saying that she doesn't fancy him.

The verdict? Story - it introduces the characters effectively; both the old familiar ones who everyone knows and the new ones, although it does seem to forget to mention the surnames of Perry, Jimmy or Miko anywhere in the story. The action scenes are nice, but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about the idea of seeing Clark pining for Lois and them eventually getting together, yet again. Art - really gorgeous, with a great look for Superman even despite the modern hairstyle and ugly new costume, distinctive faces and a great grasp of the action scenes. All in all - although I think the story's going to tread over old and familiar ground for the hundredth time, I still want to see what happens with Superman. I'll keep reading, and I expect I'll keep enjoying it.

Batman the Dark Knight #1
David Finch, Paul Jenkins, Richard Friend

Jenkins, who wrote Deadman last week, is the writer and co-plotter of this one, while Finch is the other co-plotter and the penciller. Friend provides the inks.

Yes, Batman again. Four of the 52 are Batman comics - Detective Comics, Batman and Robin, Batman and Batman the Dark Knight. Batgirl, Batwoman, Birds of Prey, Catwoman and Nightwing are related comics set in Gotham City. Batwing, Red Hood and the Outlaws and Teen Titans are about associates of Batman in different places. He's also a central character in Justice League and Justice League International. That's more than a quarter of the New 52, making Batman officially the busiest superhero in the world. The Green Lanterns and Superman account for about the same number between them.

Batman is flying around in the Batplane, while the narrator talks about fear. He jumps out, displaying some odd bulgy muscles, and quickly changes into the much more wimpy Bruce Wayne, sliding on a zipline to a building where he gives his 'fear' speech to a crowd, announcing that he's never going to be afraid. It's not clear exactly what the context of this speech is - I assume Bruce Wayne doesn't hold press conferences for no purpose other than to say he's not scared of anything - but he then goes around shmoozing with the high and mighty, talking again about his redevelopment plans.

He's interrupted, though, by a Lieutenant Forbes, who knows Bruce Wayne is funding Batman, and wants to know who his inside man in the police is. But he's told to go away by the hostess of the evening's charity event, one Jaina Hudson. The two flirt a little, before Bruce gets bored with having to talk to other people and leaves.

Meanwhile, at Arkham Asylum, the inmates are staging a breakout. Again. Just like in last week's comic. This time, Batman arrives to help the beleagured police, and somehow divines that this is all about Two-Face (who was just a face (or two) in the crowd last week). He goes in, finds a woman in a bunny suit running around, and then encounters a huge, muscular Two-Face, announcing that "You can call me One-Face now!" (although he's still got the two-different-halves-to-the-face thing)

The verdict? Story - rather a lot of this is minimally-narrated action of Batman making his way through the asylum, and the Bruce Wayne scenes don't really show signs of developing into any kind of plot. Art - very nice, like all the Batman comics, but Bruce's face looks strikingly different from one panel to the next. All in all - nobody needs to read four monthly Batman comics, and this one just isn't as good as some of the others. I don't feel like I'm going to miss anything if I get my Batman fix from "Batman" and "Detective Comics".

Voodoo #1
Ron Marz, Sami Basri

Marz writes, Basri draws.

Voodoo is an exotic dancer at a strip club. While she displays her ample charms, a man and woman in the audience bicker about the level of interest the man is taking. Jess storms out, while Tyler questions a waitress about the mysterious Voodoo - her real name's Priscilla, and she spends a lot of time entertaining the soldiers from the nearby military base.

Meanwhile, Jess gets into a fight with a gang of youths outside the club and beats them all up with ease. Back inside, Voodoo is hanging out in the dressing room with her fellow strippers, and being a bit socially awkward. She explains that she's new around here, and working there to learn about men. Then she's called for a private dance with Tyler.

While she takes her clothes off, Tyler asks her about herself. She tells him her story, but he doesn't believe it. He happens to know that she's an alien, with shape-changing powers and mild telepathy and is almost certainly spying on Earth as a prelude to invasion. He threatens her with being cut to bits by scientists unless she turns herself in right now. She responds by turning into an ugly, toothy, green alien and killing him.

She takes his phone, shape-changes into Tyler, and goes to meet up with Jess.

The verdict? Story - There's not much story here. It could have been done in a quarter of the space, really. But what there is is an interesting setup, it's hard to see where it's going to go in future. Art - well, there's a lot of stripping (without showing anything), and if you have to devote the whole comic to drawing a woman dancing, it doesn't give much opportunity to show your full range. It does its job of making the three characters recognisable from one panel to the next, and the monster is very cool. All in all - there's just not much to this so far. I'm a little curious to see what the alien toothy monster gets up to, but I think it'll take months before anything happens. Maybe I'll get next month's before I decide to drop it.

Justice League Dark #1
Peter Milligan, Mikel Janin

Milligan, the writer of Red Lanterns, writes this one too, while Janin draws.

It's Madame Xanadu, the fortune-teller who showed up briefly at the end of Resurrection Man, and she's predicting terrible danger. It involves June Moone, a woman who's walking the streets in a bit of a daze, and briefly seeing a great big demon appearing from nowhere. On TV in a bar, she notices that a huge horde of June Moones have appeared on a motorway and been run over horribly.

Meanwhile, Shade the Changing Man is having troubles with his vest. That's vest in the American sense, and so it's not quite as silly as it sounds when he talks about his Meta-Vest with its terrible power to change reality. But it's still a bit silly, since he and his girlfriend Kathy argue about the vest quite a lot - it's crackling with electricity, which means he's being summoned. He has to leave Kathy, and since he used the vest to create her in the first place, this means she dissolves into a pool of goo. She's not happy about it.

In an abandoned wooden shack somewhere, inside an envelope, Enchantress is going mad. And since she's magic, this causes bad things to happen around her. The Justice League are called in, but Superman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg are no match for someone who can make a storm of teeth that cut them to pieces. Back at base, Batman is talking with another magician, Zatanna, who insists on being allowed to go and sort things out, even though he's not sure she's up to it.

A man called John Constantine, meanwhile, suddenly finds himself in London (next to Big Ben again - artists of America, please try to remember that there are other things in London), having just had a vision that Zatanna's in trouble. Why that would make a vortex suck him from Brighton to London, when she's in America, isn't clear, but he only gets one page to introduce himself.

June Moone, meanwhile, has found herself drawn to Dove's (of Hawk & Dove) flat, and asks for Deadman. He's there.

Shade, vest and all, has found his way to Madame Xanadu. She tells him he has to recruit people to deal with Enchantress, although she's seeing a vision of all of them lying dead, so it might be a waste of time.

The verdict? Story - there's a very limited introduction to some characters, and a feeling that we should know who these people are before reading it. The premise is set out clearly; magic and eccentric people fighting it, but it doesn't really grab me. Art - not bad, if the poses are a bit awkward, the faces are very nice. All in all - it doesn't really do anything for me, I don't much care about these characters. I think I'll pass.

I, Vampire #1
Joshua Hale Fialkov, Andrea Sorrentino

Fialkov writes and Sorrentino draws.

Boston. Two people are talking to each other in narrative captions that are supposed to indicate the different speakers by being different colours, but the way it's come out on the page, they're really, really, really similar shades of red. The only pictures we get to see on the first page are of a man's feet walking, finding somone lying down and driving a stake through their heart. "Normally I'd lock you away someone until I could find your sire," says the feeble-looking guy doing the staking, before he chops off the vampire's head with an axe, making it disappear in a shower of dust, like they do on Buffy.

"Like they do on Buffy" is a regular theme of this comic, as it transpires. Anyway, our hero is apparently Andrew, of the slightly darker red captions, and he's arguing with Mary, who thinks that they should rule the world instead of hiding away. We cut to what's probably a flashback, because it's coloured in greenish-black and white instead of the brown-and-white of the first three pages, of Andrew and Mary discussing old times like vampires do on Buffy, having a kiss then splitting up.

Back to Andrew in the brown-and-white wasteland full of corpses, and he finds a woman who's recently been turned into a vampire, allowing him to explain that these vampires just get weakened by sunlight, and can turn into dogs or big hairy monsters (which, to be fair, they don't do on Buffy) before he kills her.

We cut back and forth between the flashback and the present day - Andrew, it's clear, is a vampire with a soul, just like Angel, while Mary is really totally evil and intent on raising an army of vampires to take over the world. There's a passing grudging mention of how Superman might be a problem with this plan, but the comic clearly wants to exist in its own world where there's just vampires. Mary has now killed lots of people and turned them into vampires, and is getting on with the world takeover, and Andrew's got to stop her.

The verdict? Story - dull and derivative, it doesn't do much in this first issue beyond setting up the premise, but we can see where it's going to go from here. Art - really not very good, it tries to be cool with shading and occasional scary-faces, but it's hard to tell what's going on. All in all - not with a bargepole, I'm afraid. There are Buffy and Angel comics out there for people who want to read this kind of thing.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #1
Tony Bedard, Tyler Kirkham, Batt

Bedard, the writer of Blue Beetle last week, writes Green Lanterns this week - he obviously likes bright colours. Kirkham pencils and the enigmatic "Batt" (no other name) is the inker.

There's a big pile of dead Guardians and Green Lanterns, which Ganthet the Guardian digs himself out of, vowing that, as the last of the Guardians, he'll make sure the last power ring gets to the right person. For some refreshingly unexplored reason, he gives it to Kyle Rayner, an unemployed cartoonist in New York and welcomes him to the Green Lantern Corps.

This whole section seems to be in the past, since the next page has a caption saying "the present day", but I'm confused. Ganthet is the Guardian who the others zapped in Green Lantern #1 a couple of weeks ago for disagreeing with them, and Kyle is established as being one of the four GLs hanging around on Earth at the moment. Was the pile-of-corpses thing in the past too, and everyone except Ganthet died at one point but got better? Or is that in the present, and was Kyle's induction the only thing that happened in the past? It'd be nice if someone told us.

Anyway, in the present day, one of the Sinestro Corps (yellow lanterns) is killing an army of aliens when his ring abruptly flies away and heads for Earth, leaving him to be gruesomely killed by the ticked-off aliens. Likewise, a Red Lantern is burning a lot of aliens he characterizes as murderers, when his ring does the same, causing him to drop dead. A Star Sapphire (which turn out to be Pink Lanterns) suffers the same thing in space, causing her fellow Sapphire to vow to live up to her former name 'Fatality'.

Back on Earth, Kyle is dealing with a disaster at a construction site, when suddenly a whole flock of magic rings of all colours fly at him, announcing that he's been chosen. And if that wasn't bad enough, along come Pink, Red, Yellow and Purple lanterns (the red one is good old Bleez, from Red Lanterns) demanding their rings back!

The verdict? Story - it introduces Kyle nicely, and the Green Lantern concept for those who haven't read the various other Green Lantern comics, but the confusing opening scene should have been explained. Art - very nice. Quite beautiful, in fact, clear and detailed, I love it. All in all - well, I'll have to look at next week's to see if it explains what's going on, if nothing else. Again, this is an opening chapter rather than a complete story, so I'll see how I feel in future months. But this first issue is holding my interest so far.

The Fury of Firestorm, the Nuclear Men #1
Ethan van Sciver, Gail Simone, Yildiray Cinar

Wow, long title. "Firestorm" is the big word. Van Sciver and Simone are co-plotters, Simone (also the writer of Batgirl) writes and Cinar draws.

In Istanbul, bad guys are interrogating a young boy, looking for something. When torturing and killing his family only gets them the information that the professor's got it, they blow up the whole neighbourhood and leave.

Back in the good old USA, Ronnie Raymond is being extremely good at American football in his high school. Jason Rusch watches contemptuously, he's not fond of jocks, but he's forced to write a piece for the school newspaper about how great Ronnie is. The interview doesn't go terribly well - Jason accuses Ronnie of being racist, they really don't like each other. At dinner with their single parents that night, Ronnie is at least thinking about what Jason said, while Jason's just generally being a jerk. I think we're supposed to get the impression that there's no right or wrong here, but Jason's so completely unlikeable, it doesn't really work.

Meanwhile, at the Large Hadron Supercollider, those bad guys are interrogating Doctor Dupin for the whereabouts of his last magic bottle. Well, they try to make it sound scientific, talking about Higgs-Boson particles, but it's basically magic bottles that we're talking about here. With the power of transmutation.

Back at school the next day, Jason is at least starting to feel a little bad when his editor Tonya yells at him, but Ronnie and his sidekick Trev come in, really annoyed about the extremely insulting article they've published. But then in come those bad guys, killing the coach and sending our teenage heroes running for their lives.

Jason reveals that he's secretly a super-genius, and takes the magic bottle from his locker. He opens it with a big boom, and he and Ronnie are both transformed into Firestorms - superheroes with lots of fiery bits (actually, the word 'Firestorm' isn't used at all, but that's the name on the cover). One of the bad guys, Loren, also gets caught up in the blast, but our heroes are too busy fighting each other to pay any attention to them. Then they merge into one big giant Firestorm, who introduces himself as Fury.

The verdict? Story - nice introduction, although Jason is so very very annoying, it's hard to sympathise. Maybe he'll get a kick up the backside in future issues. And I think we're supposed to get to know the bad guys too, they do have distinct personalities, but the way it's presented, I find myself just focusing on the teenagers. Anyway, the cliffhanger's good, and it does leave me wanting to read more. Art - another good one, everyone looks distinct from each other and consistent all through the comic, and the superheroes, when they finally show up, are extremely cool. All in all - I like it enough to want to keep reading. It's a great setup for future stories.

Blackhawks #1
Mike Costa, Graham Nolan, Ken Lashley

Costa writes, Nolan is credited with 'layouts' and Lashley as 'finisher'.

The first page gives us our mission briefing and sums up the kind of thing that this comic is about. Blackhawks field operators Lady Blackhawk, The Irishman, Kunoichi and Attila, supported by Wildman, are going in to Kazakhstan, where terrorists have taken hostages at an airport for no obvious reason. The world map on the screen is fascinating, incidentally - North America is accurately shaped, but Europe is just a weird distorted blob that's not even close to what it should look like.

Anyway, Kunoichi is ignoring the 'covert' part of the instructions in order to dangle from an aeroplane and fight people. The rest of the team get on with things in the same kind of way. It's all very military and cool, culminating in Kunoichi jumping from the plane at 300kph and shooting the water before she hits it so the surface tension won't make her go splat. I'm fairly sure that wouldn't work in real life - and while you can just ignore that kind of nonsense in most superhero comics, this one is going for a realistic feel, so it's a bit harder. Anyway, Attila gets a moment in the spotlight too, as does Wildman, but the other two are just in the background.

Back at The Eyrie, their base, Delegate Schmidt of the UN is being shown around by Blackhawks member Canada (who's actually not Canadian). It turns out The Irishman is from "The Ukraine". We get a brief glimpse of the huge amount of technology the team have, and then we see Kunoichi refusing to get treatment from the doctor, and feeling unusually full of energy and superhuman strength. And also snogging Wildman inappropriately.

Meanwhile, Lincoln, the leader of the team, is talking with Schmidt about their problem - someone took a picture of the Blackhawks logo on one of their vehicles, and now they might be exposed to the public, or something. One of the captured terrorists has worse problems, though - his boss communicates with him in prison and tells him his body has been infused with 'nanocites', which she then uses to blow him up. And back at the Eyrie, poor old Kunoichi has realised that she's been infected with nanocites too!

The verdict? Story - we don't really get much sense of the personalities of the characters here, despite a lot of scenes that seem to be designed to do just that. There's nothing really wrong with the writing, but a lot of generic tough guys fighting terrorists just doesn't appeal to me. Art - pretty good, it does make everyone look distinctive, which can often be a problem with uniformed characters, and the action scenes are handled well. All in all - it doesn't really interest me, I'm afraid. It looks like it's going to steadfastly ignore the rest of the new 52, so I don't think I'll be missing anything if I skip this one.

Aquaman #1
Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Joa Prado

Johns, who writes both Justice League and Green Lantern, writes this one too. Reis pencils and Prado inks.

At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, nasty toothy things are emerging from a trench. They exchange some completely awesome dialogue: "It's true. There is an above." "Where do we go?" "Up."

Meanwhile, in Boston, masked robbers are escaping from the police in a stolen armoured van. But Aquaman shows up to thwart them, and does so without any difficulty. The police are just left to chuckle at having been helped out by Aquaman, instead of one of the cool superheroes.

Our hero goes into a seafood restaurant, still in full superhero regalia, and amazes the customers and staff. They worry he might be there to lecture them for cruelty to sea creatures, but he actually just wants a plate of fish and chips. In response to incredulous questioning from the people at nearby tables, he tetchily explains that he doesn't talk to fish, he can just make them do his bidding, and he's fine with eating them. An irritating youth interrogates him about his background, allowing him to explain that his father was human, his mother was the queen of Atlantis, and he's in charge of the place now. But when he's asked how it feels to be the superhero everyone makes jokes about, he storms out in a huff, just pausing to give the kindly waitress a couple of extremely valuable gold coins from his collection.

He goes to hang out with his Atlantean girlfriend, and tells her he's sick of not fitting in in Atlantis, king though he is. They decide they'll go off on their own and have a new life on dry land.

But on the ocean, fishermen find themselves attacked by the toothy things from down below with a talent for awesome one-liners. "There's food up here," one grins.

The verdict? Story - it's just an introduction and power-demonstration for Aquaman that barely counts as a story, but it's still very readable and fun, and the promise of toothy monsters to come is enough to keep me interested. It's true that Aquaman is the joke character of the Justice League, requiring writers to put in an underwater part of the adventure so he has something to do, and it's nice that the story acknowledges and plays on this. Art - really, really great. Aquaman looks handsome, dramatic and heroic, and the monsters are awesome. A large portion of the comic is characters standing around and talking, but I get the feeling that the action scenes to come will look good too. All in all - it's a good one, I think I'm going to enjoy reading it in future months.

All Star Western #1
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat

Palmiotti and Gray (the names are the other way round on the interior credits, just to be fair) are the writers, "Moritat" is the artist.

Gotham City yet again, but this time it's cowboy times. The 1880s, to be precise, and Gotham is a big city for the time, in the Wild West. Mysterious scar-faced gunslinger Jonah Hex is a country boy, who's come to town and explores the sordid back streets, showing off his quick draw when he's attacked by a rowdy gang.

Doctor Amadeus Arkham, meanwhile, has been called in to investigate the latest murder in a series, although police chief Cromwell dislikes his modern theories about psychiatry. Jonah Hex joins the party, and Arkham suggests the two of them should work together to catch the cowboy Jack the Ripper. Hex eventually agrees, although he's more the loner type.

They go to a saloon, where Hex sets about getting information by beating people up, while Arkham analyses his mental state. He learns that the killer has a hand like a claw and wears a ring with a skull on it. The next day, though, there's another murder, and the message "Jonah Hex, leave Gotham" written on the wall.

Later, our heroes go to a party, where they discover that a whole lot of rich and influential people wear rings with skulls on them.

The verdict? Story - it strives for a genuine 1880s tone, and doesn't quite achieve it, but the pairing of Hex and Arkham works very well; Hex is cool and Arkham's narrative about psychology is actually very well-written. Art - sepia-toned throughout, to give it the olden-days feel, which I find a bit distracting. The art style is a bit unconventional, but Jonah Hex does look extremely cool. All in all - it's readable, if unoriginal. I'm on the fence about it, but I'll probably check out the next part.

The Savage Hawkman #1
Tony S. Daniel, Philip Tan

Daniel, who wrote Detective Comics, is the writer, Tan does the art.

Upstate New York, Carter Hall is fed up of being Hawkman. He's driven out into the woods to burn his costume. Trouble is, the costume isn't just a bird-suit, it's made of "the Nth Metal", and when he sets it on fire, it attacks him.

Meanwhile, off the Bermuda Coast, a research crew have pulled up an ancient shipwreck. Alien spaceship, not sailing ship. They're impatiently wondering where Carter, the cryptologist, has got to.

He's woken up in his home, naked, with no idea how he got there. He finds that his body's healing itself rapidly from the burns and scrapes he suffered, and his colleague Terrance comes round to take him to see the wreck.

While there, he meets the boss's daughter, and is introduced to the alien mummy they found in the wreckage. But then 'the sample' (which I can't tell from the art is supposed to be the aforesaid mummy or something else) comes alive and attacks the scientists, turning one or two of them into a horrible slimy monster. Carter jumps in to help, and finds that the Nth Metal comes bubbling up from under his skin and turns him into Hawkman again.

The alien, which introduces itself as Morphicus, fights Hawkman and announces that it must have the Nth Metal. And as the episode ends, it seems to have succeeded!

The verdict? Story - falls rather awkwardly halfway between starting from scratch and continuing old Hawkman adventures, it ends up being a new beginning that still leaves me feeling I've missed something. But it does spell out who Carter is and what he does, just without giving him much of a personality. Art - a bit ugly. Everyone looks like a zombie somehow, and it's really hard to see what's going on at some points. All in all - it doesn't really interest me all that much; the central character's a bit of an enigma, and the art doesn't make it easy to follow. I don't think I'll bother with it again.

The Flash #1
Francis Manapul, Brian Buccellato

Manapul and Buccellato write it between them, with Manapul also providing the art and Buccellato doing the colouring too.

In Central City, Barry Allen is out on a date with Patty, at the technology expo. He's a bit of a nerdy type, it seems. They meet a Dr Elias and have a geeky conversation about traffic and alternate fuels, until a gang of masked, armoured men crash through the ceiling firing smoke bombs.

Barry springs into action immediately, turning into The Flash, the world's fastest man. A good old-fashioned intro blurb tells us his origin: "Struck by a bolt of lightning and doused in chemicals, Central City police scientist Barry Allen was transformed into the fastest man alive. Tapping into the energy field called the Speed Force, he applies a tenacious sense of justice to protect and serve the world as The Flash!" A lot of other comics this month could have done with one of those. But struck by lightning AND doused in chemicals? Sounds like a really bad day.

The baddies, who just address each other by number, run for it, but the Flash chases them back to their plane, leaping on board and grabbing the thing they stole from the expo, but then falling out along with one of the enemies. Pushing the baddie through a window as they fall, he vibrates at the right frequency to let himself fall through the road into the sewer. Journalist Iris West takes this opportunity to say hi.

Flash returns the portable genome recoder to Dr Elias, and then it's time for Barry and Patty to get to work as police scientists. The baddie is dead, but when he's unmasked, Barry recognises him as his childhood friend Manuel.

Iris, a very pushy kind of woman, pesters Barry to talk to her, much to his and Patty's annoyance. Back at police HQ, Director Singh and Captain Frye debate the case, and learn that Manuel died of something other than being thrown through a window. The Flash borrows the genome recorder and a sample of Manuel's DNA, and finds that it's been altered in some way. Then someone breaks into his house, and surprise surprise, it's Manuel.

Then baddies break down the door chasing him, and our heroes run away. Barry manages to get away and turn into the Flash, and when he catches up with Manuel, he finds him surrounded by... a whole lot of Manuels.

The verdict? Story - it introduces Barry and his friends, and gives the Flash an opportunity to show off his powers. His personality comes across clearly, but the story somehow isn't very enthralling. Art - there are some very cool panel layouts, which makes up for the faces not looking very distinctive or expressive. The scenes where Flash is running don't have quite the sense of motion that they should. All in all - it's a bit bland, really. There's nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't really excite me. It's worth keeping an eye on.

Teen Titans #1
Scott Lobdell, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund

Lobdell, the writer of Superboy and Red Hood and the Outlaws, adds a third to the list. Booth pencils and Rapmund inks.

I'm getting used to comics with a cover showing the team lineup that'll eventually come to exist. But this one shows seven heroes, and after reading the comic I still don't know who most of them are. And although "Batwoman" and "Batman" both referenced the Teen Titans as a going concern, this seems to be chapter one of a how-the-team-got-together story again. So I guess we're in the recent past here, although it'd be nice if they let us know how these different comics fit together...

Anyway, in Westchester County an unexceptional housefire is made much worse by a teenage hero calling himself Kid Flash, trying to help but not knowing what he's doing. Following the big bang he causes by opening all the doors, people assume he's run away again, when in fact he's lying unconscious nearby.

It makes the news in a big way, and in his penthouse, Red Robin is unimpressed with the anti-teenage-hero feeling of the general public. He's got more floating computer screens than anyone in any of these comics, so he must be cool. He sighs that Batman started something that's got out of control with the teenage crimefighter, but his musing is interrupted by a sinister bad guy, complete with two henchmen.

They have, it seems, been kidnapping or maybe just recruiting teenage heroes lately, and they want to offer him a position with their mysterious employer. Red Robin responds by jumping out of the window and blowing up the penthouse.

In California, 17-year-old Cassie is driving around in a stolen car. (How old is Tim? The art in Batman made him look only about 14, but he could be older judging by the artwork here...) She's attacked by a bad guy disguised as a cop, but Red Robin saves her, tells her that he knows she's Wonder Girl, and that N.O.W.H.E.R.E. are after them both. They're attacked by a helicopter, and she grudgingly has to use her powers to save them both.

And meanwhile, in a scene we also saw in Superboy #1, Superboy is activated.

The verdict? Story - again, part one of a long story that we know is mainly intended to get these characters together into the Teen Titans. I do prefer stories that get to the point straight away. But it introduces three characters well enough that we at least know what kind of people they are, and if there's not much story to it, at least there's a promise that some kind of plot will come along later. Art - very nice, everyone looks suitably heroic and more or less like teenagers, although Wonder Girl just has the standard 'woman face' seen in so many of these comics. The action scenes do look good. All in all - probably one to start reading once this first story is out of the way.

Hooray for summer!

Yes, it's been the right kind of weather for dressing in my summer outfit, including unflattering shorts. I haven't done that much this year. And as well as enjoying the sun, I did an hour numbers and 30-minute binary practice today - with pretty poor results, but the important part is getting in the habit of concentrating for long periods, the scores will pick up after another couple of weeks. I hope.

Jinx

I was going to call this post 'Nelson', in the cricket sense, but I thought that might confuse people like Nelson Dellis. Anyway, not once but twice in the last three days I've been practicing speed cards and stopped the clock at 22.22 seconds, and both times I thought I'd got the recall right but found that I'd swapped around the order of two images. It's a curse, I tells you. I did successfully memorise a pack in 25.00 seconds exactly tonight, which is a great time to practice getting, because you can work out how many points it scores without remembering what the formula is.

Now, let's talk about why I'm rubbish at speed cards. The ones I forget are the ones on locations five, six and seven out of nine. I'm usually okay with the first few, and then I remember the last ones, but there's often a gap in the middle. I can't break the habit of thinking about the last two locations immediately after I put the card down, then going back and making sure I remember the first ones, and by then I'm hazy on the bit in the middle. I need to practice doing things differently, but I don't want to slow down in case I can't get back up to speed again before the world championships.

It's confusing, and I'm not good at explaining it. You should probably just ignore me.

Basking

Sorry I didn't post anything last night, but it's so hot at the moment, I feel more like just sunbathing. Or moonbathing, beccause it's dark, but you know what I mean. It's been hotter and sunnier this week than it was all summer (wasn't summer rubbish this year?) and it's fantastic!

Happy birthday to Goo

It's Google's thirteenth birthday, apparently! Do you remember what the internet was like before Google? I do, and it was rubbish. But then, nobody really knew or cared about the internet back in those dark and distant days before 1998. I got my first computer in that year (I've still got it now, and it still works just fine, thanks, although it's a teensy bit too slow for everyday use) and I'd only used the internet a handful of times in the years before that - searching with limited success on things with silly names like WebCrawler and not finding anything interesting.

It alarms me that there are so many young and even not-so-young people going around these days who've never experienced life without the internet. Things were different back then. I mean, look at the World Memory Championships and the people who complain that there isn't enough about it on the web. Back when I started out, there was nothing! Maybe a write-up on Michael Tipper's personal website, or a word or two on the MSO page, but there wasn't an official website. And it didn't get covered on the BBC News website because there wasn't one. And if you wanted to go to an international memory competition around the world you had to go to a travel agent to buy your tickets, and when you got there you'd find that there wasn't a competition in whatever country you'd flown to, because the only memory competition ever, anywhere, was the world championship once a year in London.

I tell you, everything was cheaper then, too, and young people respected their elders.

Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same

Quite aside from the world memory championship news in the post below this one, I got an email today saying that the Gadget Show have decided to stop doing the competition prize dash thing, so the bit I recorded a while ago won't be on telly after all. Boo, but at least they've already paid me for doing it.

And what's more, it turns out that the lengthy blog entries I've been posting lately have stopped Blogger displaying the whole month's worth if you click on 'September' in the list to the right. So, in order that the world can continue to see whatever I was talking about in the first week of the month, you've now got 'week commencing' dates to choose from. Have fun!

And this is why you don't book your plane tickets until the last moment

World Memory Championship announcement from a peeved-sounding WMSC:

We have just been made aware by our sponsors in China that, without consultation with us, they have chosen to change the change the host city from Beijing to Guangzhou. We are also aware that they have changed other information on their Chinese language website regarding the arrangements of the competition and also the prize fund.

To make these changes nine weeks ahead of the event and without consultation, puts all of us in a very difficult position. We are acutely aware of the fact that they caused a similar upset last year when they unilaterally changed the dates of the event causing considerable inconvenience to all.

The hotel chosen by them now is HJ Grand Hotel in the Huadu District of Guangzhou which is five star. The website for the hotel is http://www.hjgrand.com/en/introduce.aspx
Mr Guo Chanwei has been appointed by New Mind as the contact point for all competitors to arrange for accommodation and all other questions! His email is gotop1 (at) 126.com

We are now seeking urgent clarification and assurances from New Mind that they are able to meet the obligations that they had previously agreed. We have many questions which require clarification, not least of which is the need for them to fund sufficient international arbiters and also that the prize fund recognises the significant achievements of our competitors.

We are currently exploring all options to ensure that this, the 20th World Memory Championships is held in a fitting way and that the interests of all competitors will be protected.
We will be making a further announcement as soon as we have more information.


Sounds like it might still end up held in London on a shoestring budget - which, actually, I'd be entirely in favour of. Although Guangzhou would be nicer than Beijing, with the lovely winter weather.

Supererer Sunday

See my posts of the last two Sundays for details of what this is all about. We're on week three of the "New 52" from DC Comics, and there's only twelve comics to talk about this week, since Justice League was brought forward and came out three weeks ago. Actually, it came out again this week too, as a reprint, so I was able to buy a real copy at last. I found a copy of the other one from last week that I was missing too, but on the down side the two shops in Nottingham were sold out of four of this week's lot. They must be popular! Luckily, there are always other ways to get your comics, so here's how I feel about these new twelve:

Batman #1
Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion

Written by Snyder, who also wrote Swamp Thing back in week 1, pencils by Capullo, inks by Glapion.

More Batman! And we're not finished with him yet, because there's another one next week, plus plenty of Batman spinoffs! Still, here we are again in Gotham City, and this one really does a good job of introducing Gotham and the people in it. There's a running theme in the narrative captions and dialogue of "Gotham is...", and Batman muses on the subject as he fights a mob of lunatic supervillains in Arkham Asylum. And a very nicely-drawn fight scene it is, too. Then, surprisingly, the Joker joins in and gives Bats a helping hand.

Discussing the situation with good old Commissioner Gordon afterwards, Batman explains that the whole Arkham thing was part of an operation to catch a corrupt guard, and then goes back to the Batcave, where the Joker shows up for a chat. After Bruce Wayne demonstrates his latest fab technology (not satisfied with floating computer screens, he's got floating computer screens linked to his contact lens), it turns out that the Joker was Dick Grayson (original Robin, now Nightwing) all along, using a clever hi-tech disguise!

Soo... this happens before Detective Comics, a couple of weeks ago? Because the people at Arkham would probably have noticed if there were suddenly two Jokers in the place. Only Detective sort of made the Joker out to be a really big deal for Batman and the police, so if they'd pulled a stunt like this beforehand... oh, never mind. Continuity between different Batman comics is enough to give anyone a headache.

Bruce and Dick go back upstairs to meet up with more Robins - current Robin Damian Wayne, who's his usual delightful self, and Tim Drake, who apparently is now Red Robin of the Teen Titans. As established in "Batman and Robin" last week, Bruce really does collect and discard young boys at an astonishing rate. Meanwhile, he demonstrates another useful gadget in his contact lens - I really prefer Batman to just be a detective in a bat suit, rather than packed with superpowers granted by ludicrous super-technology, but that's obviously not the way they're going here.

Anyway, Wayne and his wards are gathered together for a presentation, announcing that he'll be pouring his millions into redeveloping Gotham, and soliciting donations from other leading citizens. We're introduced to a mayoral candidate (and to be fair, this does tie in with Detective Comics, they mentioned in that that the mayor was busy campaigning), and then Bruce gets wind of a crime being investigated, makes his excuses and leaves.

It seems that someone has been murdered (with owl-themed knives) and left a final message that "Bruce Wayne will die tomorrow!" A bit of detective work gets a DNA sample of the possible murderer, and we're left with the disturbing result that it belongs to good old Dick Grayson...

The verdict? Story - this is a much better Batman #1 than the two we've had previously! It sets the scene, tells you everything you need to know about the character and his background and gives him an exciting adventure or two, too. This should have been in week one, really. Art - rather cool, it suits Batman perfectly, dark and gloomy while still clearly telling the story. All in all - I really wasn't expecting to like any of the many, many Batman comics among the "new 52", but I do like this one! I want to keep reading it.

Birds of Prey #1
Duane Swierczynski, Jesus Saiz

Written by Swierczynski and drawn by Saiz.

We're in Gotham City, yet again, and intrepid reporter Charlie Keen has been called to a church by his mysterious informant, on the trail of "a covert ops team run by a bunch of supercriminal hotties". It seems that the mysterious informant has a team of men in magic suits that make them transparent who are going to kill Keen, but he's saved by the arrival of the people he's been tailing, Black Canary and Starling.

Now, some might say that our heroes aren't named after the most fearsome birds of prey in the world, but never mind. They demonstrate their skills and powers in combat, and get Charlie out of there. Flashback to a couple of weeks ago, and Charlie's watching the Canary in her secret identity of Dinah Lance, trying to persuade Batgirl to join her team. Batgirl declines the offer to team up with someone who's wanted for murder ("murdering a man with a punch", apparently), but suggests a woman called Katana instead. Since Katana's already on the cover, along with a plant-themed woman who also doesn't appear in this issue, I think we can safely say she's going to join - yes, it's another comic with a cover showcasing the eventual cast of the ongoing series.

Charlie tracked Starling, too, but her spare time seems to consist entirely of drinking and partying, so he didn't get very far. But back in the church, our heroes are making their escape when Canary is bitten and then kissed by one of the baddies, who tells her that he's just killed her.

They arrange to fly Charlie out of Gotham, but then at the airport Dinah feels a strange tingling in her brain, while Charlie gets a text that appears to make him explode with a big bang!

The verdict? Story - it does a good job of introducing our two lead characters and setting out their background and current status more by hints and suggestions than concrete facts, which suits the tone of the comic. The story is interesting enough, with a nice cliffhanger. Art - pretty cool, it portrays the action sequences well, it's just let down by the usual tendency to draw all women's faces the same (although to be fair, Starling's nose tilts up a bit more than Canary's, if you look at it closely). All in all - it's readable and fun. It makes my list, somewhere in the middle.

Blue Beetle #1
Tony Bedard, Ig Guara, Ruy José

Bedard writes, Guara pencils and José inks.

Long, long ago (in what might be a galaxy far away, but is probably this galaxy) a whole lot of aliens are slaughtered by an ominous blue beetly thing. He's a former inhabitant of this planet, who's been co-opted into a scary alien group called The Reach. One of their little blue scarabs is flying through space to recruit more Blue Beetles, when it's zapped by a passing Green Lantern and crashes into an ancient Mayan temple.

Not so long ago, at El Paso High School, we're introduced to Jaime, your average teenager, and his sporty bully adversary Joey, tough dropout friend Paco and female friend Brenda. Brenda's having a party at her mysterious rich aunt's house, Jaime's parents don't want him to go for reasons they're not prepared to explain, so he sneaks out to go to the party anyway.

The aunt, meanwhile, is in fact evil, and has hired three supervillains (Brutale, Rompe-Huesos, and another one who doesn't seem to get a namecheck, unless I've missed it) to steal the blue scarab from the cooler villains Phobia, Warp and Plasmus, who have just stolen it from someone else. Big bad guy fight scene ensues, and spills out into the road, where Jaime and Paco are on their way to Brenda's party. The backpack with the scarab falls into their car (in a scene that the artist struggles to depict right, with some very strange motion lines) and Jaime, displaying impressively heroic tendencies, runs off with it so the bad guys won't hurt Paco.

The scarab ends up stuck to his back, and transforms him into... The Blue Beetle!

The verdict? Story - it's only the first part of a story that's presumably going to be about Jaime adapting to being a superhero, so it's hard to pass judgement on just this one comic. It introduces the cast adequately, but doesn't really have that tantalising quality that draws in the readers again next month. Art - particularly good in the supervillain fight scenes; the everyday-life bits somehow look less realistic, although the characters are consistent in their appearance. All in all - it's okay, but it doesn't really grab me. I don't really care about the central character yet, for some reason. Maybe it's worth another look to see how the story develops.

Captain Atom #1
J.T. Krul, Freddie Williams II

Written by Krul, who also did Green Arrow in week one, drawn by Williams II (who probably isn't the father of J.H. Williams III, but you never know).

In San Francisco, a weird rat is up to no good, while the narrator muses about what sets humans aside from the animals, and takes a rather pessimistic view of it. In Chicago, our narrator-hero is fighting a man in a giant robot-suit. Captain Atom is composed of glowing energy, he flies around, absorbs energy blasts shot at him and fires them cheerfully back. But mid-way through the fight, he discovers a new ability he hasn't noticed since 'the accident' that made him what he is - he transforms the suit of armour into dust by reconfiguring its atoms. More worryingly, this makes his hand start to disintegrate, too.

He goes back to "The Continuum", his base of operations in Kansas, flirts with a woman called Ranita and talks it through with her creepy boss, Dr Megala (inspired obviously by Stephen Hawking). Megala gives a lengthy scientific justification of how Captain Atom's powers work, more than we really need to know - the basic detail is that if he uses his powers like that, his brain might dissipate and kill him.

Then there's a call to say that there's a volcano erupting in New York, of all places, so our hero is on his way! Stopping to prevent a nuclear reactor blowing up, he hurries to Manhattan and turns the molten lava into snow. Nobody seems to really be wondering where the volcano came from, but I suppose it's a case of dealing with the immediate problems first and worrying about the details later. Meanwhile in San Francisco, that weird rat has turned into a giant monster and is threatening homeless people.

But back with Captain Atom (and the clock that's been popping up with every change of scene is wrong here - it's gone backwards three hours), he goes down into the volcano to try to fix it, but finds that his brain is starting to dissipate. Can't say he wasn't warned.

The verdict? Story - there's plenty of action and establishing of the character, his powers and his supporting cast, but the Captain himself doesn't get to show much individual personality; he's just your normal superhero without a disinctive trait or two of his own. Art - a bit on the sketchy side when it comes to normal people and action scenes, but the central character does look good, and that's a really great giant rat monster that presumably will play a bigger part in future issues. All in all - I like it, it just needs a hero I can sympathise with a bit more. I'll give it another shot next month.

Catwoman #1
Judd Winick, Guillem March

Written by Winick, the man behind Batwing as well, drawn by March.

Gotham City yet again - Seline Kyle, Catwoman is very hastily getting into her costume, cramming a very large number of cats into a small travelling case, and fleeing from her flat. Someone she figures she's stolen from in the past has tracked her down and sent heavies to get her. To her slight irritation, they blow the whole place up, although it's not like she owns anything of value anyway. Apart from some very peculiar perspective when she lands on a rooftop, the whole opening sequence is very well drawn, and effectively sets the scene for the comic.

Selina goes to see her friend Lola, looking for some kind of supervillain work and a place to live. She gets an unoccupied penthouse to squat in, and an opportunity to replace a barmaid and eavesdrop on Russian gangsters talking about good things to steal. However, it gets personal when she sees a man who was involved in a traumatic incident of her childhood. She attacks him viciously and flees back to the penthouse.

There, she and her cats are joined by Batman, come to see if she's okay. The two of them have a long-running 'thing' going (it was mentioned in passing in Detective Comics), and the two of them have it off while keeping their masks on.

The verdict? Story - very nice introduction to the character and the world she lives in. She's very likeable in her own way. Art - stylish and distinctive. Selina and Lola both have very individual faces, unlike the trend for female characters that's irked me in so many of these other comics. Her acrobatics look good, and the costumes are very well-drawn, even when they're half-off, which most artists have trouble with. All in all - yes, I like it. I seem to be adding a lot more Batman-universe comics to my list than I expected to!

DC Universe Presents Deadman #1
Paul Jenkins, Bernard Chang

All the lists of comic titles for the "new 52" call this "DC Universe Presents", but on the cover those words are in tiny little letters, and "Deadman" is the main title. There's no explanation inside as to whether it's permanently a Deadman comic, or what the plan is. It's another one with vague credits, too - "By Paul Jenkins & Bernard Chang".

Six months ago, our narrator-hero became a stunt motorbike-rider with a secret deathwish, and apparently saved his life. He explains what he's talking about - the whole narrative is directed straight at the reader, more blatantly than in most comics. He, Boston Brand, used to be a circus acrobat with a "Deadman" costume and gimmick, unpopular with his colleagues for being basically a jerk, when an assassin shot him and made him really live up to his nickname. This has all been conveyed on two pages - lots of panels, lots of captions in this one.

Deadman found himself in the afterlife, talking to the goddess Rama, who tells him he must atone for his selfishness and egotism in life by sharing the lifetimes of other people and demonstrating love and consideration. And so that's what he does now. That's as clear as the explanation gets, it really doesn't get across the point of how the whole setup works, which is a pretty major failure on the part of the writer.

But the next person he's fated to 'be' is Johnny, a crippled soldier with depression. Before "making the connection", Deadman goes to a fair (he's apparently a ghost, it seems, who can fly around where he likes and possibly people can't see him) where he temporarily posesses the bodies of lots of people in an attempt to talk to an old acquaintance of his, a psychic called Rose. He wants her to help him with something, but it's not entirely clear what. Then he goes away and reminisces briefly about twelve other people he's been (again without saying what he did when he was them) before going back and connecting with Johnny. Then, as Johnny, he puts a gun to his head and greets Rama when she shows up.

The verdict? Story - well, it doesn't exactly go to great pains to explain what's going on. Except I sort of think that it was meaning to, but just forgets to explain a few basic details. We're introduced to the character (although how his appearance in Hawk & Dove a couple of weeks ago ties in with this story, I can't imagine) and get to know him a little, but this comic has a whole lot of words, that somehow don't say very much. Art - it's another good one, not spectacular but effective in telling the story. All in all - sorry, I just don't get it. It feels like the story is missing something, and I'm not confident that it'll improve in future months. I think I'll pass.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1
Scott Lobdell, Kenneth Rocafort

Written by Lobdell, who also wrote Superboy last week, drawn by Rocafort.

We open with Roy Harper, a young man in a Middle Eastern prison after an unsuccessful attempt to solve the country's problems. The narrator is contemptuous, but he's going to rescue him anyway - disguised as a fat chaplain, he sneaks Roy's bow and arrows into the prison and reveals himself to be the Red Hood. The narration shifts to Roy, who is also not a fan of this idiot, Jason Todd, but appreciates the rescue.

The two of them make their escape and vaguely reference who they are - Jason is apparently another one of those former Robins, now not on friendly terms with Batman or Nightwing or probably the other two either. One thing this comic seems to forget to do is mention Roy's superhero name - I happen to know he's the Green Arrow's former sidekick Speedy, later known as Red Arrow, but whether that's his name in this new relaunched universe isn't explained - he's just Roy, and a former sidekick of someone.

Jason has brought help in the form of Starfire, an extremely beautiful female alien who has issues with soldiers and imprisonment generally and so was happy to bring her enormous powers to bear on Roy's situation. She deals with all the tanks and things easily, while Jason makes an incredibly dirty joke (this is a 'teen'-rated comic, which is the lowest age-rating, so it surprised me a little) and boasts about having had her.

Three weeks later, they're all sunning themselves on St Martinique. But several sinister subplots are developing - a mysterious woman called Essence, who only Jason can see, tells him that The Untitled are at work, while Starfire invites Roy to have sex with her, and a mysterious man in Chicago has discovered that Starfire is on Earth, and is pleased about it.

While Starfire and Roy are sleeping (together), Jason gets the Red Hood costume on and goes to The Well of the All-Caste, where he's sorry to see that an old woman he knew is dead, and finds himself surrounded by threatening people with swords.

The verdict? Story - well, it's certainly 'teen'. Two teenage boys find themselves hanging out with a gorgeous alien superheroine with a relaxed attitude to shagging. But they're both likeable characters, although the story doesn't go into any kind of detail about their histories; maybe it's to come in future issues, but I get the feeling that it's expecting readers to know the heroes already. Art - the central characters have distinctive looks, the art tells the story well, the action scenes are well-handled, there's really nothing to complain about, but on the other hand it's nothing special either. All in all - it's good fun, I might have to check out future issues, because if nothing else it feels like it'll always be entertaining.

Green Lantern Corps #1
Peter J. Tomasi, Fernando Pasarin, Scott Hanna

Tomasi, who wrote Batman and Robin last week, writes this one too. Pasarin is credited as 'artist', but Hanna inks (as well as his semi-credited work on Suicide Squad).

More lanterns. Out in Space Sector 3599, the two local Green Lanterns are going about their business when they're both graphically and easily killed by a mysterious enemy who talks about a 'force of will'.

Meanwhile, back in Sector 2814, Earth, Guy Gardner is having trouble getting a job. The problem is that everyone knows he's a Green Lantern, and they find it difficult to believe he'd give any other job his full attention, let alone the insurance problems of the supervillain attacks he'd inevitably attract. In the course of conversation, he fills us in on the basics of Green Lantern structure - 7200 of them, two to a sector (although our sector currently has four, if you count Hal Jordan, for some reason or other), all reporting to the Guardians who've shown up in other comics here and there.

Another of these Lanterns, John Stewart, is an architect who gets irritated with people who think the expensive safety measures he insists on aren't necessary because they're not legally required. He can't resist using his green ring to vent his frustrations.

Guy and John have a chat, hanging out in space, sitting on a satellite, and decide they need a break from Earth. Assuming that Kyle can handle anything that's happening down there, they go to Oa, the GL head office, to see what's happening. There, they learn that a planet in sector 3599 has been drained of all its water and the local Lanterns killed. They join a task force sent to investigate (five other alien Green Lanterns, who only get a namecheck and nothing else), and find that the whole planet's population has been slaughtered, and a couple of Green Lantern corpses left for the task force to find.

The verdict? Story - showcases our heroes nicely, explains a lot of GL background that really should have been included in previous Lantern comics these last couple of weeks, and sets up an epic cosmic adventure. The problem with this kind of thing is that the mysterious baddie has killed the nameless supporting characters so easily that it's going to be hard to justify him not doing the same to Guy and John, but we'll just have to see how the writer gets around that. Art - simply gorgeous. Every page is crammed with detail, it looks space-age and dramatic, and if the human faces aren't the best, the aliens all look extremely cool. All in all - I really like it, much more than the other lantern comics so far. This might have to be my full quota of magic ring adventure going forwards (although there's more to come next week, of course - Lanterns are second only to Batman-and-friends in the New 52).

Nightwing #1
Kyle Higgins, Eddy Barrows, J.P. Mayer

Writer Kyle Higgins was the man behind Deathstroke, Barrows pencils, Mayer inks.

We're back in Gotham once again, and Dick Grayson is getting dressed. He's apparently been filling in as Batman for the last year while Bruce was busy doing something else, but now he's back in his own costume, as Nightwing. He's still surrounded by bats whenever he jumps across the rooftops, though.

In the course of a dramatic fight scene with a rampaging killer on a train (which showcases some more quite brilliant artwork), Dick muses that this part of the city is getting worse, when it used to be quite nice. This is a bit strange, really - I got the impression from the other comics that Gotham is a seething cauldron of unpleasantness that Batman is gradually making nicer.

But never mind. While a mysterious stranger arrives in Gotham on the bus and beats up two prospective muggers, Dick goes back to his new flat, in a nasty part of town (not for him the stately Wayne Manor and Batcave, he likes to be in the thick of things) and then goes to check out the circus.

Because, of course, his long-ago origin story is that he was a circus trapeze artist as a young boy, along with his parents who were then murdered by a bad guy, leading to Dick being adopted by Bruce Wayne, becoming Robin and swearing to stop bad guys everywhere. He recaps this origin for the benefit of new readers (and indeed, people like me who'd almost forgotten it, since it doesn't get mentioned much), and of course in this world it wasn't all that many years ago, and his original circus is still going, and is currently visiting Gotham.

We meet the circus owner, the surly clown who feels that his costume is way too much like the Joker and he's just asking for trouble wearing it in Gotham, Dick's old acrobat friend Raya and her new acrobat friend Marc. Marc's introductory line to Dick, "Yeah, I heard about you, man. I just want to say, it really sucks what happened," really made me laugh.

Still, they invite Dick to have a go on the trapeze for old times' sake, and he does, having a lot of fun while making sure they don't see how good he really is. The narration really gets into his personality nicely, meanwhile - he's been worried about coming to the circus in Gotham, because the city's inherent nastiness might spoil his treasured childhood memories, but it seems to have worked out all right in the end.

On the way home, he's attacked by a mysterious assassin - after Dick Grayson, not Nightwing! He's able to slip away while the killer is distracted by police, change into his costume, come back and fight. He's a little distracted to find that this guy believes "Dick Grayson is the fiercest killer in all of Gotham and he doesn't even know it!", and we end with his life looking to be in danger.

The verdict? Story - I was surprised how much I liked this one. Playing on Robin's origin story from 1939 or whenever it was was a really good idea to introduce the character all over again; it works for new readers and old, and tells us everything we need to know about him. The story it sets in motion is interesting, although I wonder if it's related to what's happening in Batman; I sort of worry that it isn't, and there's two very similar plotlines with Dick Grayson going to be published simultaneously. Art - another beautiful one, with art that revels in a lot of acrobatic action scenes and unusual panel layouts to produce something much more, well, artistic, than most of these comics while still doing its job and telling the story. All in all - Yes, I like this one too. I want to keep up with what's happening to our hero, whether or not his appearances in other Batman comics are going to get confusing.

Legion of Super-Heroes #1
Paul Levitz, Francis Portela

Written by Levitz and drawn by Portela.

It's the 31st century, and five of the Legion of Super-Heroes are landing on planet Panoptes. I could tell you who they are, because everyone who appears in this comic gets a caption listing their name, home planet and superpowers, but frankly there are so many superheroes in this one that I find it impossible to remember who's who. None of them has any kind of personality, other than that Chemical Kid and Dragonwing are two new members. They're infiltrating a base that's supposed to be keeping an eye on "the Dominators" but has stopped.

On a spaceship, possibly the one that dropped the heroes off on the planet, Colossal Boy is adjusting to life in a spaceship crew instead of being a hero. He laments about "my wife and the others", and a caption tells us to check out Legion Lost for the full scoop. Well, not the full scoop. Neither of the two comics tells us which one of the Legion Lost crew, if any, was CB's wife.

Back at Legion HQ, two other Legionaires commemorate some dead members, express a wish to become the leader (in the case of the one who isn't leader already) and check in with a further thirteen (!!) members of the team who we haven't seen yet. A couple of these talk unfathomably about some previous adventures they've been involved in, and then we're back to the gang we started with. They find that the world has been sending signals to the Dominators, which is obviously a bad thing, and then a Daxamite (mentioned in passing earlier to be really powerful things) bursts in.

The verdict? Story - beyond telling us the name of most of the twenty-one (!!!) Legionaires who appear in this comic, there's no attempt to introduce the characters or settings to new readers. The story is pretty impenetrable and consists of a lot of talking and not very much happening. Art - actually, very good indeed. I get the feeling that if we didn't have quite so many characters to keep track of, we could tell them apart well enough. All in all - this isn't a #1, it's a #1526 or somewhere in that region. I don't know who any of these people are, and I'm not curious at all to find out. This one's a no.

Supergirl #1
Michael Green, Mike Johnson, Mahmud Asrar, Dan Green

Michael Green and Johnson both write, Asrar pencils and the inking is credited to "Dan Green with Asrar". Dan Green was also the inker of Animal Man, so it's a bit of a strange division of labour.

Somewhere not too far from Kansas, meteorites are crashing into Earth, just like they did when Superman came along, as the watching narrators observe. However, the big meteorite crashes right into the ground, and keeps going right through, until it pops up in Siberia.

Supergirl climbs out of it, waking up after a long sleep and wondering if she's still dreaming. She doesn't seem to be on Krypton any more, after all. And she's not cold even though it's snowing and she's wearing a miniskirt. And there's a yellow sun, and giant robots attacking her, and she's super-strong and can fire eyebeams. Yep, she figures, it must be a dream.

When her super-hearing kicks in, she picks up dialogue from all around the world, including several other ones of these comics (Birds of Prey's opening scene seems to take place simultaneously with Nightwing's final one, funnily enough, although it was raining in Gotham in the former and doesn't seem to be in the latter. Sorry, I'm being picky, and besides, there's lightning in the sky in Nightwing, it might be supposed to be raining) and is understandably overwhelmed. She breaks into one of the robots and yells at the man inside to tell her what's going on, but as she's speaking Kryptonian, he doesn't understand her.

And then Superman shows up to tell her to stop.

The verdict? Story - there's very little plot here. Kara lands on Earth, doesn't know why, finds that she's Supergirl. The fight scene takes up the whole of the comic. Art - not bad, but it's a little ugly. That there are only a few panels on each page might be a requirement of the thin story, but it highlights that there's not much detail in the characters or backgrounds. All in all - it's just too slight to maintain my interest. I'm sure there'll be more happening in future issues, but I'll stick to the ones that have given me a good story in #1.

Wonder Woman #1
Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang

Azzarello writes, Chiang draws.

In Singapore, a rich man with jet-black skin and glowing eyes and mouth is entertaining three young women, and does something strange to them.

In Virginia, a woman in a peacock cloak and apparently nothing else comes into a stable, chops a horse's head off with some kind of magic scythe, and, um, someone starts to climb out of its neck-hole? No, wait, it's probably just growing arms and a human body and turning into one of those centaurs who turn up a couple of pages later.

And in a house nearby, a blue man is trying to persuade a woman called Zola to come away with him, because assassins are after her. He's got chicken legs as well as blue skin, but Zola seems to be taking this in her stride. But then he's shot by a couple of centaurs who gallop in and try to kill her, Chicken-Legs throws her a key, she catches it, and disappears.

And appears in London (another of those houses just down the road from Big Ben), in Wonder Woman's bedroom. She gets dressed and promises to help Zola, but Zola insists on going along, clutching the key and disappearing again with the heroine.

Back in Virginia, Wonder Woman fights the centaurs while the narrative captions tell mister-black-with-glowing-eyes-from-the-first-page some cryptic prophecies about what's coming. She beats them off, and turns her attention to Chicken-Legs, who is apparently Hermes. He warns WW to run away, with Zola, and then dies with the final words that Zola is pregnant, by Zeus.

Glowing-Eyes finishes getting his prophecies from the unfortunate women, who finally burn up into skulls and bones. One of his father's children will murder another, it seems.

The verdict? Story - hmm. Greek gods, right? It's all a bit confused, and Wonder Woman doesn't really say or do much all through the comic, so we don't get much sense of who she is. The story does its best to sound portentous, but doesn't quite achieve it, and Zola, who we should be sympathising with, is a bit of an enigma. Art - it's a bit sketchy, but it does tell the story well, which is very necessary in this case, since there's not much dialogue or explanatory captions. All in all - I can live without knowing what happens next. Somehow, it's just not at all compelling, I'm afraid.

Ones and noughts

3825 in this morning's practice session! We're getting there, gradually...

I didn't do the hour cards practice in the end, though, because of general poorliness and/or laziness. Still, I'll do it tomorrow - I'll have to, because there are 36 packs of cards laid out on my desk, and I can't do anything desk-related until I've memorised them, because I'm too lazy to put them all back in their packs and take them out again later.

Also, I think I've got pneumonia or something, or at least the flu. Sympathise with me, people!

Not to

So, I decided to stay at home. I actually got up early and did an hour numbers this morning. It wasn't a very successful hour numbers, but that's what happens when you don't do it for nine months. I'll be better next time. And next time will be later this weekend - I've also got the day off work on Monday, so I can make good use of the time. Tomorrow, binary and hour cards. Maybe a bit of abstract images, too, I need to be practicing that quite regularly.

God, I'm boring. Maybe I'll go to a party instead. Is anyone having a party?

To Swe or not to Swe

It just occurred to me today that it would have been my dad's 65th birthday next Wednesday. He would have reached the statutory default retirement age two days before it's abolished!

Anyway, I'm in two minds as to whether or not to go to Sweden this weekend. I'm thinking that a national-standard memory competition over two days, plus another day either side travelling to and from, wouldn't be as much use to me, world-championship-practice-wise, as staying at home and memorising hour cards and numbers.

Although I'm not sure whether I could motivate myself to do all this hypothetical training this weekend, or whether I'd feel more like lying around feeling sorry for myself because I've got a sore throat. Did I mention that I've got a sore throat? I feel sorry for myself.

So I was thinking that if I do a 30-minute binary tomorrow morning (I'm off work) and then the Online Memory Challenge at 1:30 GMT - ooh, by the way, everybody join in the Online Memory Challenge! It'll be commentated by Mattias live in Gothenburg, and good fun will be had by all! - and still feel like I can get more good training in this weekend, I'll stay at home and do that. If I feel lazy, I'll fly to Sweden and compete in a memory championship.

That sounds backwards, but it makes sense to me.



PS I edit this a couple of hours later after realising I should have told people how one goes about joining in the Online Memory Challenge. Send an email to Simon Orton, who has a gmail account with a dot between his first and last name, and he'll set you up with your own personal account if you haven't got one already!

Curse missed opportunities

That phrase has been in my head all day. And not because of anything to do with the German Memory Championship, it's just that the person who sits next to me at work has a laptop that plays a couple of notes whenever he does anything, and they remind me of the intro to the song 'Clocks' by Coldplay.

Which is a catchy song, but I don't know most of the lyrics - it's sung in a sort of mumbling way with just occasional phrases that stick in my memory, like "curse missed opportunities" and "a tiger's waiting to be tamed" and "shoot an apple off my head" and so on. Frankly, I don't want to know what the rest of the lyrics are, because those disjointed snatches are far more cool by themselves. So if you hear me singing strange cool-sounding words and phrases punctuated by humming and dum-de-dum-de-dums, that's why.

Remembering Germany

The Experimenta (which is an extremely cool edutainmental science museum kind of place) was host to the usual huge army of Germans and one or two foreigners in the German Memory Championships - as well as fifteen adults (who included Julian Geiger, choosing to compete in the grown-ups' event instead of the juniors) in the Walter Matthau lab, there were 21 young people in the big square room called 'Kubus', also up on the fifth floor.

The adults' competition also featured the latest great graduate of the junior competitions, Christian Schäfer (who beat me last year and who I really didn't want to beat me again), old-timers like Ferdinand Krause (the only person there who'd been competing in these things longer than me - come back, Gunther, all is forgiven), hot favourites Johannes Mallow and Simon Reinhard, gigantic Fabian Saal, nearly-as-gigantic Nelson Dellis all the way from the USA, Boris Konrad who also beat me last year, and more.

Actually, I should list the 'more' too, because otherwise it sounds unfair. Annalena Fischer, Giselher Mandel, Dana Häußler, Carsten Diete, almost-newcomer Rebecca Ernst and total-newcomer Dennis Horst Proksch.

It's a long day's memorising in Germany - three half-marathons and an abstract images on the first day. We started at 8:30 with the images. I'm still in "doing a safe 300 and only making a couple of mistakes" mode, intending to expand it to attempting 375 at the world championships, but I ended up making six mistakes for a score of 264, while Hannes broke the world record with 385. This is a bit worrying. Christian came second with 291, which is a bit more worrying, and I got the bronze medal. We were awarded medals as soon as the results of each discipline were announced, which is much better than doing it in a protracted prizegiving ceremony at the end of the championship - take note, WMC organisers!

Then after that, we ploughed on with the 30-minute numbers, and I was hopeful that my new approach to it would get me a good score. I even thought that with a bit of successful guesswork, I might have only made a couple of mistakes and beaten the world record, but in fact I ended up with a score of 1124 (seven mistakes), while Hannes broke his own world record with a score of 1320, very closely followed by Christian's 1295 and Simon's 1260.

In my day, if you got a score over 1000 in 30-minute numbers it was astonishing. Now I was getting worried because I had at least three rivals who were all on top form. We had a lunch break - free lunch in the Experimenta restaurant. The funny thing about that restaurant is the security barrier. Everyone who comes to the Experimenta gets to wear a wristband with a barcode on it that lets you through the turnstile to get in. There's another turnstile to get in to the restaurant which allows anyone to go in whether they've got a wristband or not, but won't let you out again unless you scan your barcode! Okay, it's because there's an outside door into the restaurant and they don't want to let you into the rest of the Experimenta without paying, but it made me giggle to think of someone going in there, spilling tomato sauce over their wristband and being trapped in the restaurant forever.

That didn't happen to me, anyway, and we went back upstairs for binary digits. This is supposed to be my specialist subject, but somehow I just can't do it any more. Perhaps I was too worried about my rivals to concentrate properly, but I just got a rubbish score of 3115, when a good score for me used to be 1000 more than that. I still ended up in second place in the discipline, not too far behind Hannes's 3315 and ahead of Christian and Simon who each got just under 3000, but I just have to recapture my old form if I'm to have any chance of winning championships again. I've got a plan, too - I've been practicing speed binary these last couple of years, and I'm going to stop. I only ever used to practice 30-minute binary in the old days, and I think that'll help me build my scores up again.

The final event of the long day (luckily we were sustained by complimentary bottles of drink - fizzy water, of course, it being Germany, plus orange and apple juice - an apple a day to keep the Dr Gunther Karsten away, a bag of nuts and two little bags of gummi bears) was 30-minute cards, which really is my specialist subject. The room was really getting very hot and stuffy by that point - it was a lovely sunny day - but I don't really mind that, it's being cold that slows my memory down. I attempted 18 packs, knowing that I've always been successful with cards even when the other disciplines aren't working out for me. It worked again - I got sixteen packs, which wasn't so bad by my standards, and four-and-a-bit packs better than my closest rival Simon.

I'm still hugely better than anyone else at the marathon cards disciplines, and I don't entirely understand why. Perhaps I'm just naturally gifted. Or maybe I'm the only one who's really got the hang of that two-card thing I invented all those years ago. Anyway, after that, we got to go back to our hotels for a well-earned rest, while the hard-working arbiters marked our recall sheets.

Those arbiters, as always, worked very hard and did a great job. They were primarily Klaus Kolb the instigator of the whole German Memory Championship history, and Gaby Kappus the competitor-turned-excellent-organiser. There were also the usual mob of helpers who stayed in the back room marking papers and get no credit, poor things, and Michael Gloschewski the man behind www.memocamp.com, which was broadcasting the results live to the world. Memocamp also provided the results announcements - unlike the World Championship, where we get Tony Buzan reading out the top ten and creatively pronouncing foreigners' names, then a piece of paper pinned to the wall for everyone to crowd around, the German Championship does multimedia displays with a computer and projector. However, it's fair to say that it wasn't an unqualified success this year - every announcement of scores came with a lot of um-wait-a-minute changes of display options and resizing of windows that somehow never quite managed to fit everything on one screen and make it readable. But still, technology is the way of the future!

After a surprisingly good night's sleep and a really great dream about Doctor Who, it was back to the top floor for the spoken numbers. I'm not the world's best at spoke numbers in English, but in German it's even more confusing. Especially if the voice is a dull monotone that makes "null" and "neun" sound quite similar. Well, that's my excuse anyway - nobody else had much of a problem. Still, out of the three attempts, my best score was 72. Luckily, my rivals were all trying to break the world record and falling short - the top score ended up being Giselher with 140.

Onwards to historic dates, another of my specialist subjects! And another horrific failure on my part, for some reason I can't quite work out. My head must just not have been in the right place. I got 72, a long way behind Hannes, who always wins dates, and just a little bit further behind Christian, who unexpectedly won it this time. Not another German who's better than me at dates! Dates was always my thing!

By now I was well adrift of the leaders and trying to keep pace with Christian, who's nineteen years old and shouldn't be beating me at memory things. I've been doing competitions since he was eight. That's depressing. Still, the next discipline wasn't going to be the one where I caught up - good old names and faces. The less said about that the better, except that it was Simon's turn to try to catch runaway leader Hannes, winning with a new-world-record 155, way ahead of everyone else, even Boris.

Then we went on to speed numbers, and I really wasn't concentrating right by that point. My 'safe' 360 was riddled with errors and ended up scoring 253. Still, you get two attempts, and the second one was scheduled for straight after lunch.

It turned out that the arbiters were a long way behind with the junior competitions and hadn't marked our papers during lunch. Someone needs to whip them harder, or not let them eat anything themselves until everything's been checked and triple-checked. Poor arbiters, I do feel sorry for them. So we did the random words instead. I only got 170, which isn't great but could be worse. Boris, names-and-words-master, set the top score, just narrowly beating Simon into second place. Christian got a low score in this one, which gave me hopes of maybe catching up with him after all.

He did, however, end up with the top score in speed numbers, while I didn't manage to improve on my lousy score. So now we're going into the speed cards, and I'm languishing in fourth place.

As always seems to happen, I was a long way clear of fifth place (Boris), so couldn't find any justification for doing a super-safe slow time to make sure of fourth. And at about 300 points behind Christian, I still had a chance of snatching third. With a super-fast time, indeed, I had a chance of overhauling Simon, and even Hannes if he completely failed to do anything at all.

I did a more-or-less-safe 35 seconds in the first trial, and hoped my rivals would all make mistakes. They didn't - Hannes did a safe 47 seconds, Christian a safe 51 and Simon a safe 32. 32 seconds is 'safe' for him nowadays. I'm jealous.

So I was still behind Christian and needed to improve drastically while still hoping he didn't improve on his time. I decided to go all-out for a world record, but stumbled over the third card ("wait, why did I just memorise that as the ace of clubs when I know it was the ace of spades? Go back and check - yep, ace of spades. I'm an idiot. Where was I?" sped through my head in a couple of seconds, which is never a good start). After that, though, it went smoothly, and I was pleasantly surprised to still stop the clock at 23-point-something seconds. Not a world record, but it would have been a personal best. However, the recall wasn't all there, I had a big gap in the middle that I couldn't fill. So instead I went over to see what Simon had done, to find that he'd broken his own world record. 21.19 seconds!

I've beaten that in practice, but he does it so much more consistently than me. Can I ever get my favourite record back? Anyway, that was just enough to snatch first place away from Hannes. All hail (or Heil-bronn) the new German Champion! I was fourth, behind Christian. Just a hundred points behind, but still behind.

That win also nudges Simon up to second place on the world ranking list, and shunts me back down to fourth. With Christian lurking right behind me, ready to leap ahead of me at the World Championship, no doubt. I've got to improve!

Okay, practice time! I've got a new training regime planned out, and maybe I can stick to it. I just wish I could forget that I've been World Champion already. If I could only replicate the enthusiasm and desire to win that shines eerily out of the eyes of Simon, Hannes and Christian!

Here's Gaby's slideshow:

Heilbronn again!

It's a bit late to write up the whole German championship tonight, so I'll just do a little introduction, and finish it up tomorrow.

I arrived in Heilbronn quite late on Thursday night - my plane was late again. I noticed on the train that the place I was booked into requires you to check in by 8pm, and that it was already half past. So sure enough, I got to the Pension Frey and found it was all shut up for the night. Not daunted over-much by this, I went to the much nicer hotel I stayed at last year and asked if they'd got a room, only to be told that they'd already got a booking for me on the system.

Did I book a room there and forget about it, or did someone else book one for me and not tell me? Possibly it was a guardian angel of some kind. I know I would have booked a room there if Klaus hadn't told me everything was fully booked. Still, never mind, it's a great hotel - the Insel, which means Island and is in fact on a little island in the middle of the big river. It's also right next to the Experimenta, where the competition is held.

We were back in the same room as last time, the Wilhelm Maybach lab, which for some reason I always want to call the Walther Matthau lab, even though he was an American actor who as far as I know didn't have any kind of scientific leanings. Anyway, it's a very nice venue for a competition, but it got a bit hot in the lovely sunny weather of Heilbronn.

Also, having been to Heilbronn before, I now knew where the McDonald's is, and could go there for breakfast in the mornings and get the competition off to a great start!

And on the Friday night, half way through the championship, I had a really epic dream about a Doctor Who adventure starring the sixth, seventh and eighth Doctors (plus Peri and Ace), a combination so unusual that I doubt you'd find more than five or six stories like that on fanfiction.net. Heck, maybe I'll write it myself, because it really was a great dream.

I'll talk about the actual memory bit and the people there tomorrow - don't worry, I am actually quite cheerful and enthusiastic about the whole thing now.

Superer Sunday

For those who are too lazy to look at last week's blog entry on the same subject, DC Comics are "relaunching" their entire range in September. There are 52 comics with "#1" on the cover, thirteen each week, and this is week two. I'm giving them all a try, with my head firmly in "new reader" mode (I'm familiar with a lot of the characters, but haven't bought a new DC comic for a good few years) and I bought this week's batch in the ever-awesome Nostalgia & Comics shop in Birmingham, on my way to the airport on Thursday. There was only one of the thirteen they didn't have, and they also had two of the ones I couldn't find last week, so we're now down to just two out of 27 that I've read without paying for. I'm more than doing my bit to keep those writers and artists in business!

So, week two. It's normal practice to save the best for the first and last week in situations like this. Remember all those comics with beautiful, crisp, clear artwork and snappy writing last week? This week we get a more eclectic mix, with a lot of demons and dragons and general weirdness. And lanterns of all colours. I read them in reverse alphabetical order, since that was the order they ended up packed in my bag in the shop, which means we start with...

Superboy #1
Scott Lobdell, R.B. Silva, Rob Lean

Written by Lobdell, pencilled by Silva, inked by Lean.

Superboy is a clone in a tube in a lab, hairless and naked except for a pair of modesty-covering pants that the scientists have kindly provided him with. He was created three months ago, as a fusion of Kryptonian and human DNA, and he hasn't had much to do except float there and take in what the scientists are saying. It's not good news, though - they don't think he's showing any signs of life, so Dr White is going to kill him. Red-headed female Dr Cait isn't happy about this, but Dr White goes ahead, only for everyone to be killed with a big boom. His last words to Dr Cait, who's safe on the other side of a window - "I shouldn't have kept you in the dark! The human cells, they came from..." splat. Don't you hate it when you mistime your last words like that? If he'd only phrased it in a normal way, like "the human cells came from..." he might have finished his sentence!

Anyway, Superboy's alive and well and now he can communicate with Dr Cait. And a month later, he's in school in Kansas, making friends with Rose Wilson and completely ignoring a cry for help from a woman in a burning building. It turns out that this is all just a virtual reality created for him, and he's still in the lab. He knows, but the scientists don't know he knows. They're more mystified by why his subconscious mind created the small-town Kansas background (the scientists don't have the advantage of knowing Superman's origin story) and where he got his complete disregard for the sanctity of human life (that one's still a mystery).

Dr Cait has a chat with the real Rose, who's apparently there to "put down Superboy if he ever snaps again", although how she'd go about that isn't clear. A Dr Umber, meanwhile, is sneakily feeding the lab's secrets (except the existence of Superboy) to the only journalist he can trust, who happens to be good old Lois Lane. Then the big boss, "Templar", arrives, and announces that it's time to activate Superboy. There's a mission for him.

The verdict? Story - excellent. Sets up the all-new Superboy, gives him a proper introduction and background and more than enough mysteries to keep us interested. It's a prologue, but it has great promise for the future. Art - nice. Everyone seems to have boggly eyes and funny noses, but the lab scenes are very detailed, and the storytelling is clear throughout. All in all - I like it, and I want to know what's going to happen next. I think I'll be back for #2.

Suicide Squad #1
Adam Glass, Federico Dallocchio, Ransom Getty

The three above get their names on the cover, but the credits page inside attributes the writing to Glass, and then "artists: Federico Dallocchio & Ransom Getty & Scott Hanna". I suppose Hanna lent a last-minute hand with the inking, but I do wish credits would actually say who did what.

Anyway, we're in a gloomy archetypal abandoned warehouse, and Deadshot is being tortured by a man with a bag on his head. Nasty torture, too, involving rats. He's not alone, either. Bag-heads are torturing another six super-types, trying to find out who sent them. Instead of telling them, Deadshot reminiscences about how he got into this mess in the first place - he's an assassin, and a darn good one too, but he was caught by Batman while trying to kill a senator. (After "Men of War" last week, that raises the senator-count in these comics to two, and there's more to come. Maybe the full 100 will have shown up before we're finished!) But he's not telling the bag-heads anything, however much of him gets eaten by rats, because it's all part of the job.

El Diablo is in a similar situation, although he's less the cold-blooded killer and more the warrior monk type who kills people while thinking in Spanish-accented religious terms. But when he accidentally killed a bunch of women and children, he gave himself up to the police willingly. Harley Quinn, meanwhile, used to be the Joker's lover, but his arrest last week in Detective Comics drove her a little bit more loony than she already was, and she set out to kill lawyers before she was caught by the Black Canary. She actually quite enjoys being tortured, so she's not at all in the mood to snitch on her employers.

Black Spider and Voltaic don't get introductory flashbacks, just a namecheck each, and then we move on to King Shark. He's a big giant shark-man, as the name implies (although I'm not sure if he's actually king of anywhere), and he's not the talkative type at all. He plays possum, then bites off a bag-man's arm when he gets too close, exulting "Meat! Meat! Meat! Ha ha!" I like this guy.

The seventh member, Savant, eventually cracks. He explains that they're Task Force X, colloquially known as the Suicide Squad. If you're serving a life sentence, this is the only way to get out. Albeit with a bomb implanted in your neck and a lot of really sadistic training. On their first mission, to bring in a rogue agent, dead or alive (Deadshot just shoots him through the head straight away, to save time), they were caught in a booby trap, and then all the torturing started. The bag-heads thank Savant, then drag him off to do even more horrible things to him, while his six team-mates scoff contemptuously.

After one final tell-us-or-we-shoot-you session, the six are told they've passed the final test, and they're now officially in Task Force X. The sinister leader, Amanda Waller, sends them off on their first mission, which is apparently to kill six thousand people in a stadium. Wait, is this the government, or just a gang of slaughter-enthusiasts?

The verdict? Story - It takes the decision to only introduce half the characters in any kind of depth, which I think makes sense. Other team comics have rushed through everyone or else not shown most of the team at all, but I think this one gets the balance right. On the other hand, it's a rather excessively dark and nasty kind of story with just a lot of gore and rats and not a lot of plot. Art - suits the story very well, it's dark and gritty, and King Shark's happy bloodstained grin is really awesome. Some of the poses are a little strange, though. All in all - it's not my thing, really, but it does a good job as an introduction to the characters and settings, and I do find myself wanting to see where it goes. I can stomach another issue of gore, I suppose.

Resurrection Man #1
Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Fernando Dagnino

Written by Abnett and Lanning, drawn by Dagnino.

Our hero is dead. He's just been left alone after his autopsy, and he muses to himself that everything tastes of metal this time. It seems that coming back to life is nothing new to him. Once he's recovered from the unimaginable pain, he notes that this time, his "talent" seems to be an empathy with and control over metal. He steals some clothes and some money, and heads to the airport, where his latest compulsion has driven him. He vaguely wonders what his mysterious purpose is this time - he's given up wondering where he gets these "things I have to do" from.

So that's four pages and we already know everything we need to know about the character and his setting! Excellent, concise and clear writing! We're also introduced to a few of the other passengers on the plane before our hero, who calls himself Mitch, is joined by a strange woman with a red teardrop-tattoo on her face. She says that "they're closing in", and then turns into a horrific demon-thing. Mitch's soul is overdue, and she wants it. He has to launch the both of them out of the plane (closing the door and trying to save the passengers along the way) but then sees scary faces in the storm, which the demon helpfully narrates as "phantoms of the afterlife, closing in to claim the dead". Spooky.

Mitch manages to contrive a way to get the demon struck by lightning, but then his latest life comes to an end when he's sucked into the plane's engine and, well, the word "skrunntchh" sums it up. The plane crashes, everyone dies, and when Mitch comes back to life with the ability to turn into water, he's left mystified by what the heck is going on. The demon has taken a new human form and is after him, and meanwhile, two creepy young women are searching for him and having fun killing people along the way. And there's a weird fortune-teller saying something cryptic to end the comic.

The verdict? Story - introduces our hero very well, and sets up the stories to come - poor Mitch's life (or lives) will be plagued by all kinds of horrible things. You have to feel sorry for him, but you also want to see how he's going to deal with it. And what strange powers he's going to get the next time he dies. Art - a bit unclear in places, with heavy shading, but Mitch has a very distinctive and consistent face, and the action scenes are nicely done. I like it. All in all - I'm interested to see what happens next. It's not a top favourite of mine, but it's something I want to check out in the future. The central character is very sympathetic.

Red Lanterns #1
Peter Milligan, Ed Benes, Rob Hunter

Milligan writes, Benes pencils, Hunter inks.

More torture! This time, nasty blue aliens are torturing a different kind of alien on a spaceship. But they're just doing it for fun, and the leader is getting bored. But then they're boarded by a cat in a red Green Lantern costume. A whole two-page spread, just of this cat! And it's really, really well-drawn, too. It's got a constant stream of red stuff coming out of its mouth, which seems to be a common complaint among characters in this comic, but it just adds to the coolness of it. It wears a red Green Lantern ring on its tail.

The cat proves quite efficient (and brutal) at fighting the nasty aliens, but they eventually catch it. However, then the cat's owner, Atrocitus arrives, and he's really bad news! He's also a Red Lantern, he's also streaming red stuff from his mouth (is it some kind of energy? Is it helping him fight? The art is excellent, but the red stuff is a bit unclear) and he really lays into the blue aliens, while considering his life. It seems he's not as filled with rage as he used to be. His people were killed by the Guardians (the Green Lanterns' bosses) and he's been raging ever since, but it's getting a bit old.

Meanwhile, on Earth, in "Small Ockdon, United Kingdom" (which looks very American, complete with car on the right hand side of the road), an old man is mugged by a street punk. Then we're back with Atrocitus, who leaves the kitty (it's called Dex-Starr) to rest and recover, then goes to tell his Red Lanterns to stop fighting. One of them is a woman called Bleez, who's more than a little loony and doesn't do what Atrocitus says, the others just stand in the background. We don't get told who they are.

Atrocitus goes to talk to the dead body he keeps lying around the place, and helpfully recaps his origins for the benefit of the reader. Krona, a Guardian, created the Green Lantern corps by convincing the other Guardians that they should use people and not robots. He proved this by programming the robots to kill everyone on Atrocitus's world. Atrocitus has been raging ever since, especially after Krona was killed by someone else (Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who we'll be hearing more from later), leaving the big guy just to keep Krona's corpse and occasionally shout at it. Then a nearby "fever pod" explodes, covering Atrocitus in painful red stuff and re-awakening his rage.

He decides to dedicate his rage-filled life to punishing those who deserve retribution. He'll need the help of his Red Lanterns, although they currently seem to be feeling uncooperative. And maybe the story will also involve what's happening back on Earth - the old man has died, and his grandsons Ray and John (another chalk-and-cheese pairing) are bickering about it. We can only assume this will eventually have some bearing on Atrocitus and co.

The verdict? Story - fills us in on the central character, but skips over the rest of the Red Lanterns. We're not told who they are, where they came from, how the whole Red Lantern thing works, anything like that. In a comic called "Red Lanterns", that's sort of what I expect. And the flashbacks are written in a way that suggests there's more story there that's already been written, rather than this being all you need to know in #1. Art - extremely cool. The Lanterns, from what little we see of them, are a fascinating bunch, and the aliens at the start look awesome, as does the cat. It's very bold and dynamic. All in all - I feel a bit like I'm joining in mid-story, rather than at the beginning, and the sub-plot on Earth is so totally disconnected from what happens on the other pages, it's a bit disorienting. It doesn't quite grab me, somehow.

Mister Terrific #1
Eric Wallace, Gianluca Gugliotta, Wayne Faucher

Wallace writes, Gugliotta pencils, Faucher inks.

London, England! Mr Terrific is nimbly evading laser beams in that stereotypical action-hero way that always annoys me - why do they design those beams so that there's a person-sized gap in the middle of them? And ooh, the lab he's in has more of those omnipresent floaty computer screens! It's a beautifully-drawn opening scene, though - our hero is an athletic type who flies around on big floating marbles, and he's being pursued by a bad guy in a flying suit of armour. They blast through the wall and out into the streets of London (the part of London full of American-style buildings with Big Ben in the background) before Mr T cleverly turns the London Eye into a giant magnet to catch the villain. He introduces himself as the world's third-smartest man, and then reminisces about his origins for a while.

It seems he's a successful millionaire scientist, whose wife tragically died, following which he threw himself into science. When that didn't work out, he decided to kill himself, but was then visited by his time-travelling future son, who urged him not to give up, before disappearing in a scientific explosion. Science is a theme of this comic, and I worry that the writer doesn't seem to know much about science himself.

Back in the present day, our hero, real name Michael Holt, is back at home in Los Angeles, chatting with his rich and successful sort-of-girlfriend Karen. Nearby, an average working guy is suddenly zapped by some kind of intelligence-enhancing beam. It makes him be rude to a waitress, then go out and kill a beggar. Intelligence isn't good for you, it seems. Once the police pick him up, they call in Mr T and show him the strange equations he's been writing ever since they brought him in. "Some kinda science gibberish", the policeman quite accurately calls it, but Mr T says that it's highly complicated and clever differential equations. Obviously you need to be really really clever to see that it isn't just a random collection of mathematical symbols.

Terrific goes to his secret headquarters in another dimension and shows it off to the readers for three pages while pondering this latest case, then goes to his political fundraiser for a sleazy Senator he approves of because of his commitment to science. We're briefly introduced to his friend/colleague/something Aleeka and a teenager called Jamaal who seems to be part of his entourage, although we're not told why, and we get a bit of discussion about weighty race issues. This is, it's clear, a comic about a black superhero, unlike for example Static Shock, which was about a hero who's incidentally black.

But then Mister Terrific is also zapped with the intelligence-beam, and realises that the senator has to be killed. He immediately gets to work starting a big giant earthquake, and we're promised that next issue we'll meet "the villain called... Brainstorm!"

The verdict? Story - Science! And a strange underlying theme of "don't trust intelligent people". The central character is effectively introduced, and he's likeable. There is a story in there, but the science-gibberish and the black-man element sort of stop me appreciating it for the good story it probably is. Art - really good. The action scenes on the first few pages are beautiful, which makes up for the rather inconsistent drawings of faces in the non-action scenes. All in all - I'm on the fence. I'll have to see if it improves next time round.

Legion Lost #1
Fabian Nicieza, Pete Woods

It's just "by Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods", the credits don't tell us any more detail than that.

At a hospital, doctors and nurses are wrestling with a strange superhuman man talking an unidentifiable language. He yells that they all deserve to die, and then things go boom.

Somewhere else, in Minnesota, seven superheroes arrive in a malfunctioning "time bubble". One of them notes that "the Time Institute warned The Legion Of Super-Heroes not to ride the timestream." So, is that who these people are? It's a strange way to refer to yourself, but the comic is called "Legion Lost", and this is the only indication we ever get as to what this gang call themselves.

All in all, even after reading the whole comic, I'm not sure who these people are. I think they all get a namecheck at some point, but they're slipped in among a lot of dialogue. Let me try and sort it out here. The leader's called Tyroc (he has powers of 'harmonic manipulation', whatever that is. He can fly.), there's a man called Timber Wolf whose name is Brin and Londo (one must be a first name and one a surname, I suppose), a shapeshifter called Yera/Chameleon Girl, an energy-man-in-a-suit-of-armour called Wildfire (Drake), a birdy thing called Gates who can teleport, a big monster called Tellus with telekinesis, and a woman called Dawnstar who's sort of in tune with nature.

They've come from the 31st century, and they're chasing Alastor, the guy from the first page. But none of their fancy equipment is working, and several of them are feeling unwell. Nobody's sure why. But it seems that Alastor has released a pathogen into the atmosphere, which might be something to do with it. Wolf tracks Alastor down, but only after he's smashed up a town and then fainted.

They try to go back to their own time in the bubble, but something's going wrong. Alastor, after gloating about how he's doomed the entire human race (oh, Tyroc can also reduce the volume of people's voices - that's a weird kind of superpower), turns into his big-giant-monster form, and chaos breaks out in the cramped confines of the time bubble. Gates tries to teleport Alastor away, Chameleon Girl tries to restrain him, and the whole thing goes boom.

Tyroc, Dawnstar, Wolf, Tellus and Wildfire survive. Wolf and Dawnstar both have to pass on the bad news about their teammates - bits of them are falling with the rain. And Alastor's just vanished. It's too bad, I liked Gates, from what little we saw of him. So, to sum up, our heroes are trapped in the 21st century, possibly infected by something nasty, and it's raining. What are they going to do now?

The verdict? Story - This feels like Legion Lost #235. It doesn't really introduce the team so much as drop them, fully formed, into the story and expect the reader to catch up. Right at the end, we seem to settle on the status quo for the new series, but I'm not sure how many people will have stuck with it that far. Art - pretty cool. The characters look distinctive, and the various chaotic action scenes are well handled. All in all - I'm reading these comics for new beginnings, and I'm fairly sure this is a continuation of something I haven't read. We don't really get a feel for the various characters - only Wolf shows any real glimmer of individuality - and I'm not really interested in coming back to learn more.

Grifter #1
Edmonson, Cafu, Gorder

The front-cover credits don't give full names, apparently because the penciller is just called "Cafu". That doesn't explain why the cover and the interior credits spell writer Nathan Edmondson's name in two different ways, though. The inker is Jason Gorder.

We open with Bob Harras, the editor-in-chief of DC Comics, making a cameo appearance as a passenger on a plane who's annoyed when a man in a hat barges past him. The man is mumbling about voices in his head, which is never a good sign, but it seems he's justified in this case - the voice he's picking up is coming telepathically from the innocent-looking woman next to him, who's secretly not human and is planning to kill him. She decides to do it now, and lunges at our hero, but he kills her first. He forces a flight attendant to open the door, but the flight attendant is also "one of them", and they fall out together.

Flashback to how this started. Our hero, Cole, is a conman. He's just successfully swindled another con artist out of a briefcase full of money, and he's on his way to catch a plane and rendezvous with his collaborator Gretchen. But on the way to the airport, he's grabbed by a weird creature. He wakes up strapped to a table, with a horrible thing looming over him. There are voices in his head. A normal-looking man mentally calls his 'brothers' to tell them that "one has escaped the transfer" and "the host body has escaped" and so forth. In a panic, Cole kills him. He runs for it, checking his watch and finding that seventeen minutes have passed while he was unconscious. What happened in that time?

He steals a hat, apparently thinking that this will make him unrecognisable, goes to the airport, catches his plane, jumps out of it, and here we are back where we came in. He kills the latest monster in mid-air, lands in the water, swims to shore and calls Gretchen. She's not happy. He's been gone for seventeen days, not minutes. She assumes he's betrayed her, and is determined to get back at him. Elsewhere, the army have identified the 'terrorist' who killed the people on the plane, and assign his brother, Max, to track him down. Poor old Cole hides in a graveyard, voices still very much in his head and everyone against him, and puts on a mask. Come and get me. He also says to himself "I want my seventeen hours back." Hours? What, is he splitting the difference between the seventeen minutes he thinks he was out, and the seventeen days Gretchen said? Where does 'seventeen hours' come from?

The verdict? Story - it's compelling. Creepy and mysterious, although I don't know how it's going to keep carrying on indefinitely. Art - a bit inconsistent, Cole looks different from one panel to the next, although if he's going to be wearing a mask from now on, that won't be too much of a problem. All in all - I like it. I'll stick with it, just to see where it goes.

Green Lantern #1
Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy

Johns, who also wrote Justice League, writes another adventure of the Green Lantern, Mahnke pencils and Alamy inks - helped, apparently, by Tom Nguyen.

But we start with Sinestro, the big-red-headed enemy of the Green Lantern. It seems that although he betrayed the Green Lantern Corps long ago (for reasons of not liking the Guardians, he insists, and for the good of the universe rather than for reasons of being evil), a green ring has 'chosen' him again, so the Guardians make him a Green Lantern once more. The one Guardian who disapproves of this idea is killed by the others.

Back on Earth, it seems that Hal Jordan isn't a Green Lantern any more. He's somewhere in California, with a huge pile of unpaid bills, an impatient landlord and a tendency to still try to help people. He's also lost his job with the air force, and his old boss/girlfriend/apparently also former superhero is prepared to give him a job, but not as a pilot. They vaguely reference previous adventures they had in the past - she had a 'star sapphire ring', it seems, which sounds like she was a Blue Lantern.

They come in all colours of the rainbow, obviously. Back in space, Sinestro has an army of people with yellow Green Lantern rings. One of them takes exception to Sinestro wearing green, and has to be killed.

Back on Earth, Hal has a disappointing dinner-date with Carol, and comes home to find he's been evicted. And also, Sinestro is waiting for him. If you want your ring back, you'll do everything I say.

The verdict? Story - introduces our characters nicely, but it again feels like we're joining in half-way through an ongoing story. It's not a new beginning so much as a jumping-on point. But it leaves me wondering what'll happen next. Art - classic superhero stuff, very well drawn. Sinestro and Hal especially have distinctive facial expressions, and the action tells the story well. All in all - all these Lanterns are confusing me. I don't really sympathise with Hal enough to care what happens to him next, but I feel like I should give it a chance. I'll check out the next one.

Frankenstein, agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1
Jeff Lemire, Alberto Ponticelli

Lemire, who wrote Animal Man in last week's lot, writes this one too. Ponticelli draws.

No, really, Frankenstein is an agent of S.H.A.D.E. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this. It's silly. But actually, it takes a silly premise and plays it completely straight.

The town of Bone Lake, Washington, is attacked by monsters. Frankenstein (the monster, not the scientist) is called back from his holiday on the moon, and we're introduced to the new hi-tech headquarters of the Super Human Advanced Defence Executive. His father, who changes bodies every decade or so, is now a small girl, and fills Frank in on what's happened so far. Frankenstein's estranged wife was sent in to deal with it, but has disappeared. So now it's up to Frank and his new support team, the Creature Commandos, to fight the monsters.

There's a fish-woman, a werewolf, a vampire and a mummy. Like Frank, they've been created specifically to "tap into man's irrational fear of the unknown". Except the mummy, who is apparently an actual mummy. Anyway, they get to work fighting monsters and looking for surviving humans. In a somewhat anticlimactic cliffhanger, they find some.

The verdict? Story - It's daft, but it is fun, and it does have a proper story too. I rather like it. Art - I don't think it suits the story as well as it should. This calls for a more old-fashioned kind of artwork, more realistic-looking, to emphasise the weirdness of the central characters. It tells the story well enough, though it's not always easy to see what's happening. All in all - I have a weakness for silliness. Even deadly serious silliness. I'll stick with it.

Demon Knights #1
Paul Cornell, Diógenes Neves, Oclair Albert

Cornell shows his full range of writing ability by following last week's Stormwatch with something quite different. Neves pencils, Albert inks.

It's England again, but Camelot this time. There's an absolutely beautifully-drawn first page of (presumably) Sir Bedivere clutching Excalibur. He watches as Arthur is taken away in a ship by mysterious women, and then throws the sword back to the Lady of the Lake. However, one of the women, Xanadu, decides to try to change the story by diving in after it. Meanwhile, Merlin has the demon Etrigan captive, and is wondering what to do with him now Camelot's finished. He traps him within the body of a passing guy called Jason of Norwich.

Four centuries later, and Jason and Xanadu, both being immortal, have hooked up. They happen to be in a village that the Horde of the Questing Queen are heading for. In a pub, they bump into another immortal of their acquaintance, Vandal Savage, a huge, well, Vandal who's savage. Also in the pub happen to be the Shining Knight, Sir Ystin, who might actually be a woman, and another couple of unusual people called Al Jabr and Exoristos, who don't really get to do anything. There's also a mysterious figure on a horse nearby. But then the Horde break into the pub, the various magical types resist them, and the Queen decides to send in the dragons.

The verdict? Story - sword and sorcery only really works if it takes itself seriously. And this doesn't, really. It sets up the story nicely, although some characters show up so briefly that they go unnoticed. There's clearly more to come from them. Art - really quite epic in places, it's exactly right for the story. All in all - it's just not my thing. Admittedly there aren't any Dungeons and Dragons jokes in it yet, but it's the kind of comic that would have them, if you see what I mean. I'll stick to the present-day comics.

Deathstroke #1
Kyle Higgins, Joe Bennett, Art Thibert

Higgins writes, Bennett pencils, Thibert inks. The cover seems to write it as two words, Death Stroke, but inside the comic it's just the one.

Deathstroke is a tough guy. Super-powered mercenary who can do the impossible. Narrative captions tell us all this on the first page, and demonstrate it by illustrating him killing a man surrounded by armed guards in Moscow. It's very nicely drawn, but I can't help but see the scene as showing how rubbish the guards are, rather than how awesome Deathstroke is. They just stand there and don't even fire their guns!

Anyway, having established who he is, we see his boss Christoph assign him a new mission. He has to work with a group of annoying teenagers, and he's not happy about it, understandably. But the mission is to kill an arms dealer and steal his briefcase, all while he's safely aboard his private plane.

Luckily, Deathstroke is really cool, so he can jump from another plane onto the top of that one, cut his way in with a sword and confront the target. He turns out to have a plane full of monsters, but they only last one page before Deathstroke takes care of them. It turns out, though, that the target knew he was coming, and wanted him to have the briefcase. Deathstroke is surprised by the contents, which the reader doesn't get to see. Still, he goes ahead and blows up the plane, escaping dramatically with the aid of his support team.

They celebrate a job well done, but then Deathstroke kills them all. I mean, teenagers. Annoying ones, too. He has words with Christoph - he wants better work than bodyguarding and occasional assassinations, but it seems people think he's past it. Have to do something about that.

The verdict? Story - yes, he's cool. Even despite the idea that employers don't want him any more, Deathstroke is completely indestructible and infallible, which just doesn't make for a compelling story. There's really no hint as to how the series is going to develop, which at least makes me curious to see the next one, but it's not a character I can really care about. Art - good all the way through, it tells the story and depicts the violent action scenes nicely. All in all - It just spends a bit too much time telling us how cool he is. I don't really like him, I'm afraid.

Batwoman #1
J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman

Williams and Blackman write the story between them, with Williams doing the art too.

Last week we had Batgirl, but this is a very different thing. Williams's art is watercolour-like and dreamy in the flashbacks that start the story. A scary ghost woman came into a house in Gotham City and stole three children. Batwoman arrived and fought the ghost woman, but couldn't stop her getting away with the kids. Batwoman is also rather spooky, with chalk-white skin and bright red hair.

Later on, the parents explain what happened to Detective Sawyer. She makes them feel worse by telling them that twelve children have been taken so far, and that she doesn't know if they'll ever find out what happened to them. As she's showing the parents out, she sees Kate Kane in the lobby. Kate's got chalk-white skin and bright red hair. I wonder if she knows anything about Batwoman?

Kate is mooning about a picture of dead police officer Renee Montoya, who she apparently had a relationship with. But she snaps out of it and asks Sawyer out on a date instead.

Then we turn the page, and I thought at first that it was Sawyer who was with Kate at her headquarters, but it's someone with slightly different hair, who's called Bette. She seems to be Kate's cousin, although it's not made entirely clear, and the base was built by Kate's dad. Bette is apparently a superhero called Flamebird, but Batwoman has decided to demote her to wearing a drab uniform and being called Plebe. They go out for some rooftop acrobatics training.

Meanwhile, in New York, a skeleton assigns a woman called Agent Chase to go and investigate what's going on in Gotham. They've given up on unmasking Batman, but they'd like to know who Batwoman is. A Colonel Kane has classified everything, apparently. Still, it seems to me that Kate Kane stands out in a crowd somewhat, so it surprises me that she manages to keep a secret identity.

Back in Gotham, Commissioner Gordon (he's a busy man) and Detective Sawyer are looking into a case of drowning, and Kate has a confrontation with her father the colonel. It seems she had a sister who he said was dead, but then she showed up as a supervillain. Soap operas should have plots like this. And then Batman shows up to have a chat with Batwoman on the final page. Batman's a busy man, too.

The verdict? Story - dark and weird, but the subplots are a little confusing. The central character is a real enigma, there's no attempt to explain who she is or what her story is, and yet there are references to her history with people like Flamebird that seem to assume we'll understand what it's all about. Art - varies from weird to extremely weird, but it makes a change from the rest of the comics out there. Batwoman herself is really striking, in jet black, chalk white and bright red, but since Kate Kane looks like that too, it's all a bit surreal. All in all - it doesn't really grab me. I think it's another one to keep an eye on and then come back to if and when it gets through the first storyline and shows signs of telling us what it's all about.

Batman and Robin #1
Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray

Tomasi writes, Gleason pencils, Gray inks.

It's apparently Moscow, and someone is being chased by a Batman-like person, who describes himself as "an ally of the bat". However, they're both shot dead by an invisible someone or something, which describes itself as "nobody".

Meanwhile, in Gotham, Bruce Wayne promises his dead father that tonight's the night. He goes and wakes up his son, Damian. While they change into Batman and Robin, Bruce talks about his parents and Damian, an irritating child, is contemptuous of Batman's whole obsession with death. Batman takes Robin to the place where his parents were killed - it's the anniversary - and explains that he's going to stop obsessing about that, and from now on celebrate their wedding anniversary instead.

Why he needs to commemorate any anniversary of his late parents, I'm not sure, but Robin chips in with helpful comments like "Grief and remorse are a disease of the weak." He's a precocious as well as irritating ten-year-old. He also implies that his father wasn't around for most of his life, so presumably there's going to be some explanation some time as to why Batman now has a son. It doesn't come in this issue, though. Instead, they're called to a situation at Gotham University.

A gang are stealing something, but our heroes stop them, despite Robin not doing what he's told, and Batman spending more time telling him what to do than fighting. Robin chases the baddies as they escape, messes with their strange vehicle and makes them crash. Batman prevents the reactor from overloading, or something like that. Commissioner Gordon comes in to make his contractual appearance in every Batman-related comic, and Batman chides Robin for trying to kill the baddies. They seem to have escaped the crash, but Batman still isn't pleased.

Robin then makes the strange comment that "I'm not like Tim, or Jason, or even Dick. I'm light-years ahead of all the past Robins in skills and training." So let's get this straight - Batman has only been around for five or six years in this new universe of DC's, and he's already on at least his fourth Robin? What is he doing with them? And there's an epilogue with that Nobody person, resolving to visit Bruce Wayne.

The verdict? Story - Robin is so very annoying, it's hard to pick out any good points in this. It's standard Batman stuff. Art - quite cool, but Robin looks a lot more cartoony than the other characters, which gives quite a weird effect. All in all - hmm, it's one of about half a dozen Batman comics in the "new 52", and this isn't a very interesting one. I think I'll give it a miss. Until this latest Robin gets bumped off, anyway.

Well, it's better than fifth

There was a time when I was thrilled to be able to boast that I had "the fourth-best memory in the world". However, that time was the year 2003, and a lot has happened since then. Nowadays, my inexorable slide down the ranking list worries me, because I'm honestly not sure whether it's ever going to be possible for me to...

Wait, what's the root of the adjective "inexorable"? There's no such verb as "exor". Well, to heck with it, lateral thinking is what I need if I'm going to do it, so I'm inventing a word. Where was I? Ah yes...


Nowadays, my inexorable slide down the ranking list worries me, because I'm honestly not sure whether it's ever going to be possible for me to exor it. We've got the likes of Hannes and Simon representing the best of the current crop of memorisers, all excited about breaking world records and winning championships, we've got the likes of Christian representing the up-and-coming future world champions, and then there's me, representing what can only be described as the past. Is it time to give up and find something else to do with my time?




Well, no, it isn't. That was what I was thinking yesterday, and I liked the 'exor' bit so much that I wanted to blog it anyway, but I've woken up this morning feeling fired up to get back to the top. I've spent the train journey home from Birmingham dreaming up half a dozen new journeys, because my current ones are feeling a bit over-used right now, and I'm making plans for a training schedule that won't allow any time for work and/or sleep for the next week.

Anyway, I'll blog the German Championship as soon as time permits, but in the meantime I think I'm going to amuse myself by writing about comics again this afternoon. In between watching football and quite a lot of memory training.