Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: David Hahn
Colors: J. Nanjan
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Will Lex Luthor’s sister take her revenge on him? Or all of humanity?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With two more weekly digital installments left after this, we’re almost to the end of Bombshells: United and it’s showing. The previous issue felt it to a good degree as it ran through a lot of panels showing all sorts of things going on with numerous Bombshells and this issue does the same just so that we get a taste of each of them, even just briefly. Bennett’s not giving us any real story with them other than the larger backdrop of the war and it leaves me wanting to know more. On the plus side, David Hahn is definitely having fun getting to work on so many characters and they’re all looking good through his style and interpretation. But as I said, the bulk of the book are this cross section panels showing different one-off instances before it gets to a little more traditional storytelling toward the end.
All the one-off panels are fun after we get a bit with Black Canary and all the Batgirls as they fight on, though with a bit more help with the arrival of a few others. The exhaustion is setting in as a part of the endless battle, though and that takes a little inspiration and just the right kind of smile in order to get that bit of needed motivation. We do get a decent bit of time with Power Girl and Superman as they set things in motion from the Soviet Union by leaving Supergirl behind in order to go up against the ships that are in space. At first, because they do the zipping around the world thing, you wonder if they’re trying to do a Superman movie gimmick of turning back time. But it’s actually to increase their speed so they can be a pretty powerful weapon up there in space to take down the invading ships and leaving the mop-up work to those on Earth.
Lex and Lena’s argument and fight in space doesn’t quite feel earned for a whole host of reasons that we talked about before since so much of it just feels “dropped in” at this point. It is fun to watch them go back and forth and to see Lex doing the heroic thing while accepting the blame for much of it while trying to do right by his sister. The problem is that this doesn’t exactly do much for waking the King Beneath the Black for long and that in turn ends up not working out well for Joker’s Daughter just as she thinks she’s going to run roughshod over the world. It’s a kind of whiplash sequence but I’m intrigued with how it land sin Zatanna and left me wishing we had more story for her, Raven, and John as they were definitely a fun trio to watch in the previous run.
In Summary:
At this point I’m just enjoying the book because of the long established connection to the characters over the 100 issue run of the first series. Bombshells: United has not worked as well and left me feeling wary about it from the opening arc and that’s been a struggle to get past, which is frustrating as there’s so much good stuff that can be done here. This issue feels like half of it is just montage material and the rest quickly working through things so that we can get it all wrapped up as quickly as possible. That’s simply not all that engaging, even as good as it looks.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: April 27th, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
