To the moon and back!
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Bruno Redondo, Juan Albarran
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
The battle against Amazo continues, but a surprising player gets ready to join the fray. Meanwhile, the rebellion among Ra’s allies continues.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The battle in New Delhi has presented a good bit of power with what Amazo can do and the inability of the heroes to do anything, but it’s been weak on showing the carnage. Which I get as this is hewing an awkward line of adapting into a popular if violent video game but being a more colorful traditional book in some ways. I do wish that Tom Taylor had made clear more of the carnage in regards to the population, at least beyond the numbers and a nod in this installment towards kids trying to flee, but the intent is to showcase the action more than anything else. And Bruno Redondo and Juan Albarran deliver that look beautifully with some great scenes and a really great range of characters to work with.
The main thrust in New Delhi is that things are definitely bad now that Batman is down and out, barely breathing, and getting ready to be evacuated from the field. That has a number of the heroes staying to fight as you’d expect but I like the focus with Harley on rescuing the kids and Diana just doing her best against Amazo. We do get a potentially great moment with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold showing up to give Jaimie his chance at redemption after past events and he’s really ready to go all in, though I adored the way most everyone else was ready to roll their eyes at him. There’s plenty of reason for that so it works well and I’m so hopeful to see Blue Beetle get better established within this continuity. Of course, there’s a hitch…
Events back at Gorilla City have taken a curious turn now that Jason has revealed himself and is working with the others as they realize things have gone further than they thought or realized, so they’re looking to try and end the carnage. That has a creative approach as they go to deal with Ivo to try and turn him but his reveals of why he’s doing what he did makes it clear just how he was blackmailed. And while I don’t exactly trust Jason with what he reveals about it, it’s definitely a dark moment within the series. But it’s also that moment that finally helps in putting Kara into play – much to the delight of some of the Amazons she’s friends with – and throwing her into the mix takes the whole fight to another level here. It’s great to see her confident and going all out even briefly, hopefully giving us a solid installment of just furious energy next time.
In Summary:
This installment has a lot of different things going on so that it doesn’t fall quite into the usual two-track approach but it does a lot of very fun things. Kara’s role is probably my favorite but I also really dug what Harley’s up to and the intensity that Jason brings to the page in trying to stop things. And a near-chance for Blue Beetle to shine once again left me hopeful but not surprised with how it went down. The action is definitely the driving force here and having Redondo deliver such great pages with layouts and character impact gives it exactly what it needs. It’s a solid installment that I once again feel would read even better in full at some point in an omnibus but also works really well in these weekly installments.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 27th,, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
