Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Mirka Andolfo
Colors: J. Nanjan
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Trapped in the labyrinth with Talia al Ghul…as something approaches.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Bombshells: United delights me once again this week for the simple fact that I get more Mirka Andolfo artwork. While we get things slimmed down in a number of areas for backgrounds with simple walls and the like we also get some better time spent on backgrounds with new areas revealed and flashbacks to the past. I’m a bit of wary of Marguerite Bennett doing too many looks backward since it ends up making things feel even more complicated and convoluted but it can also slow down the pacing with exposition in this form. Particularly if you’re wary as to whether it’ll be worth the investment in time to really add it to the narrative as a whole. It does bring in some important parts to the history of the world in the area and how things swept across the stage of time but I’m still just a bit wary of it.
A decent part of this installment focuses on the fight and flight against the creature that Renee and Kate have come across and it’s done a bit lighthearted with Kate coming up with all sorts of anime quips that are basically dad jokes. It gets a little silly and chaotic but largely works until we get some funky moments with a little additional help from a mystery woman. She reveals herself to be Talia al Ghul and helps to secure them passage to another area/level where things they’re safe from the creature. The visual presentation of Talia is something that I’m sure is well researched and put together but it just comes across a little odd in a way I can’t quite pin down. It’s working along the lines of what’s accurate for the background for it and I’m definitely curious to see how her role evolves.
What we get is a history of where she comes from with the caliphate that existed over five hundred years ago and spanned a great deal of territory before falling into ruin. This explores some of what became called the Lazarus Pits and how it all came together there but it’s very lightly done, mostly used to show that this is an older order that exists and that the big beast they’ve been facing is one of the first put through it and twisted all that time ago. What we do get is a little bit of the rules as to how the Lazarus Pits work, three times and it’s spoiled, and we get the last page discovery of who the second one to use this one was which isn’t exactly a shock but kind of left me underwhelmed in a way. I’m enjoying this arc for what Kate brings to it, and Renee, but I’m still waiting to figure out the significance of it in the larger scheme of things.
In Summary:
Bringing Talia into the world is something I’m definitely curious to see how it’ll play out and this is a decent start to it. The book kind of runs with a couple of different focuses and throws a lot at the reader so it doesn’t have quite the weight that it feels like it should. I like the fun of the start of it with the quips and action but felt the flashback/exposition side of it was just a bit less compelling, a little too soon to be happening from someone they just met. I would have rather had more time seeing Kate and Renee connecting with Talia than getting the whole history in a kind of cartoon info dump. The book is fun overall and I definitely liked what Mirka Andolfo brought to the page with the action and Kate’s expressions so there’s plenty to like here.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: December 8th, 2017
MSRP: $0.99
