Batman: Justice Buster Vol. 2

I won’t say Batman: Justice Buster Vol. 2 was one of my favourite recently-read comics, but it is one of the best continuations I’ve seen in a while. As previously noted, Vol. 1 just sort of pricked my interest without standing out in any particular way. But with Vol. 2 (chapters 7-13 in the original series) things really pick up.

There’s not too much I can say that won’t be either a spoiler or, more likely, incomprehensible to non-fanboys. As you’ll know by now, and as a postscript starring Bat-Mite and creators Eichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi further explains, this is an alternate-world Batman. In this world the Joker is a masked man who turns out to be Jason Todd, who is also mentoring young Dick Grayson. Batman and Superman are still locking horns every time they meet, though it isn’t all that clear why, or at least why Batman hates Superman so much. Joe Chill is both the guy who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents and the guy who killed Dick’s parents and he’s also been posing as Grayson’s Uncle Sam. And finally Batman’s crime-fighting AI, known as ROBIN, has (as I not so presciently predicted) gone rogue. Which means the mechanical monstrosity dubbed the Justice Buster is getting ready to mete out its own kind of justice, which is a sort of anti-justice, if you know what I mean. Because what would perfect justice look like anyway? As Hamlet put it, use every man after his desert, and who of us would escape whipping?

This is all very weird, and convoluted, but I really got into it. Of all the recent reimaginings of the Batman character and his mythos this is the one I’ve found most original and enjoyable. About the only thing I found to fault was one real headscratcher of a translation error. How is “Sam Reynauld in Death,” which is shown twice, an obituary notice?

So where before I felt the series was only just worth sticking with, I’m really looking forward to Volume 3.

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Marvel Zombies 2

This Marvel Zombies volume doesn’t flow directly from the first run of Marvel Zombies, but constitutes a second miniseries of five issues. Things begin with the zombies suffering the effects of withdrawal after having spent the last forty years eating their way through the whole universe. So they decide to head back to Earth because if they can find a mechanical portal to another dimension there’s a chance they can skip over to another part of the multiverse and eat that too. Which means recovering zombies like Black Panther and Wasp have to try to stop them. And it’s a race against time because the non-zombies are starting to fight among themselves while the zombies are slowly starting to get better on their own after being forced to go cold turkey.

I was disappointed in the first Marvel Zombies series and can’t say I was any more impressed with this one. Robert Kirkman just has too much going on. You’d better know your Marvel universes really well if you’re going to identify the army of different characters, some of them rather obscure, and follow them through the only-confusing-because-it’s-so-lazy plot. I mean, I didn’t recognize the Gladiator at all, or understand what was going on with T’Challa’s son, and I guess I should have. Then everything winds up with the usual conclusion in which nothing is concluded because there’s always that escape hatch to another dimension. The End? Not on your afterlife.

There are things I like about these comics. They do go in some directions I’m not expecting. And overall they hold my interest. But I also find them lacking focus and hard to follow or get involved in. I might like the series more if it took more time introducing and building up the different characters. That’s something that might make the story stronger too.

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Asterix and the Golden Sickle

Outside of the central characters and the basic formulas, I only recall bits and pieces of the Asterix comics from when I read them as a kid. But I do remember thinking that Asterix and the Golden Sickle was one of the best. It’s actually a nice little mystery story, with Asterix and Obelix traveling to Lutetia to find Metallurgix, Obelix’s cousin who is also a manufacturer of the golden sickles that druids like Panoramix need to harvest mistletoe. Unfortunately, when they get to Lutetia they find that someone has kidnapped Metallurgix as a way of cornering the market on golden sickles just before the big druid festival.

It’s eventful, fast-moving, and the plot holds interest throughout. The secondary characters are also interesting, from the little guy in the drunk tank who gets a shot of magic potion to the Roman prefect Surplus Dairyprodus, whose appearance was based on that of the actor Charles Laughton. Dairyprodus is one of the most original villains ever, taking up a life of crime and hanging out with lowlifes just because he’s bored of enjoying all the good things in life. He’s even looking forward to rowing in a galley at the end, just for a change of pace.

The only false note came by way of the new “North American” translation, which even has Obelix saying “Cool!” at one point. Not cool!

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Road of the Dead: Highway to Hell

Damn, now that’s a zombie comic cover! Nothing like an eyeball floating in the bowl of a hollowed out skull with a smoking shotgun barrel in the background. Could the comic itself live up to this?

No, it doesn’t. And in fact the cover is by Santíperez while the comic itself is illustrated by Drew Moss. So different artists. There’s a gallery of covers by Santíperez included in the bonus material here though and they all look nearly as cool.

In my review of the movie Zombieland I suggested that 2007 might be taken as the year of “peak zombie.” It just seemed like zombies were everywhere and nothing new was being done with the genre. So this comic, billed as a prequel to Road of the Dead though I’ve never heard of that book, was coming very late to the party (it was published in 2019). In particular, this really feels like a colour version of Kirkman’s The Walking Dead mixed with even older elements borrowed from the Romero films. There are highways jammed with stalled vehicles. There are warrior biker gangs. There’s a pair of pet zombies kept on chain leashes. There’s a guy with a spiked baseball bat. There’s a battle tank that turns out to be surprisingly (and unrealistically) effective in taking out zombies. There’s a story involving the attempt to transport a scientist working on a cure for the zombie virus to a safe haven in . . . you guessed it: Canada!

I don’t think there’s any way writer Jonathan Maberry wasn’t aware of all this. He even kicks things off with a billboard advertising the Monroeville Mall (setting of Romero’s 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead). But it’s hard to draw much of anything from a well that’s already been pumped dry. You can go the route of zombie parody, but even that was getting stale by this time. So there isn’t much to do here but watch the splatter. There’s a slightly more contemporary wrinkle added by the fact that the gang chasing our heroes are members of a sort of conspiracy cult, believing that a cure is being kept from them by government elites. But that’s never developed. And of course the underlying philosophy of the zombie genre is still in play: that the zombie apocalypse only reveals the state of nature as it already exists, a war of all against all with civilization a transparently thin membrane stretched over the abyss. Our lives so routine, meaningless, and devoid of human attachment we might already be dead. As the narration explains:

This is how it is now. Everywhere is a trap. Everyone is an enemy. Each of us is a traitor to the living the second we die.

Ten thousand years of human civilization. Everything we learned, everything we built, all we know about the world and the universe. And now the only thing that defines us is whether we’re predators or prey.

No dignity left. Hope and optimism are getting bitch-slapped. Compassion’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for this sort of end-of-days nihilism, but as I say it’s something that’s foundational to the zombie genre and the fact is that Road of the Dead: Highway to Hell doesn’t have a new story to package it in. It’s the sort of comic I’d usually recommend only if you’re a huge fan of zombie stuff, but actually if you’re a huge zombie fan then you might feel let down by how unoriginal it all feels, since I’m sure you’ll have seen it all before. So while it’s an OK comic, it’s kind of hard to recommend to anyone except splatter-action devotees.

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Green Lantern Corps Volume 2: Alpha War

There are actually two different storylines here. The first is the Alpha War one, which has an excessively rigorous bunch of super-Lanterns on the HQ planet of Oa tasked with policing the rest of the Corps. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians? The Alpha Lanterns, that’s who!

And who is watching over the Alphas? The bobbleheaded Guardians hanging out in their Planetary Citadel. And you wouldn’t want to trust that lot.

Anyway, one of the dark moments in the previous volume had John Stewart kill a fellow Lantern who was being tortured by the Keepers into giving up the pass code they needed to break into Oa. As things kick off here, Stewart is judged by the Alphas and sentenced to death. But then Guy Gardner and some of his buddies break John out of his prison (what they call the “sciencell”), and have a battle royale with the Alphas, who end up being defeated.

I didn’t care for any of this. I couldn’t tell any of the Alphas apart except for the centaur guy and nothing about the plot seemed right to me. To be honest, by the time they wrapped things up I was thinking of giving up on this series.

I’m glad I didn’t, because in the next story line, that only gets introduced here, we learn about some space zombies who are just floating around turning everyone, including any Lanterns who cross their path, into more zombies. These zombies form a “third army” that the Guardians seem to be behind in some way. I told you those bobbleheads can’t be trusted. They’re also up to something when they release Xar from his prison and send him out to stir things up. Meanwhile, Kilowog and Salaak are on to the Guardians but they’re a little slow in piecing things together.

Then John Stewart, who has been sent off on a wild goose chase, meets up with the busty Fatality, and Guy Gardner gets his team of Lanterns wiped out by the space zombies, which results in him getting kicked out of the Corps and sent back home to Earth without any of his Lantern powers.

I don’t know where any of this is going, but I’m interested enough in what Fatality, Xar, the Guardians, and the space zombies are all doing to keep reading for another volume. Power up!

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