The flair of a trap.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Bruno Redondo & Xermanico
What They Say:
Superman demands the return of his captured allies — Flash, Cyborg, Robin, and Raven. But Constantine sets a trap, using Raven as bait.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having counted Madame Xanadu as one of my favorite characters for a long time, the previous installment worked well in what it did with her, even if it was founded in a hell of a lot of pain over the loss of Jason Blood. Constantine and Batman managed to get her on their side and that has them moving forward with more to do in order to stop Superman since the world isn’t right, living in such abject fear of one person and those that are aligned with him. As I’ve talked about before, the pairing of Batman and Constantine is definitely really fun to watch since the two are like fire and ice, so it’s no surprise to see in this installment that Constantine is working his own plan in order to do what needs doing, since as much as he’s managed to nudge Batman to doing what’s necessary, he knows he’ll go only so far.
Constantine, however, has no issue in using people to achieve his ends. With Raven as bait, we see in this installment how he uses her being bound in the circle and trapped as a way to draw down Superman so he can capture him. You have to have a pretty damn foolproof plan to capture Superman, especially with a Yellow Lantern ring on his finger, and Constantine does that in a rather showy way. With Raven able to project astrally outward, she lets Superman know where she is and he’s intent on saving her, as well as the others that have been captured by little seen so far this series. What we get is pretty solid with the way Constantine has Klarion help, knowing what kind of person he is, and executing the trap with Ragman of all people. It makes perfect sense and provides something unexpected from the lower tiers of characters to work it with. I doubt it’ll work for long, but it makes for a great moment.
We do get some time with just Superman and the Spectre though as they float above the world and look down at the order of it all. For the Spectre, it’s something that he never thought would be achieved, and has the experience to back up that belief. But now that it has, by someone like Superman of all people, his intensity in seeing it protected definitely fits with the character in general as it’s all about the stated goal. Superman and the Spectre in low orbit like that makes for a great visual and a real sense of dread as well, since it goes against the classic Superman character with what he stood for once. And also because you know that in any other story, if they had seen this on another world, he’d be the first one to burst in there and try to right that injustice.
In Summary:
The series continues to make some big pivots from issue to issue in what it wants to do, which can be jarring at times depending on what you expect to be the next step in the story. This lets your mind fill in the blanks a good bit, which works well enough for me. But there’s so much additional material they could do with this that it really feels like it needs a novelization. This installment lets Raven finally get out of her bindings, at least a little bit, and we see Constantine put his trap into motion and watching it spring into action. There’s good stuff with the characters we see here, and some charming dialogue between Constantine and Klarion, that it makes for a smooth and fun read, if still a bit light in general. Which is par for the course for this series, but it works in its favor to keep it engaging and quick moving.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: November 12th, 2014
MSRP: $0.99
