Batman: The Devastator #1 - A Review

The Dark Knights continue to carve their way across Earth Zero. The Knight known as The Devastator - a Batman who turned himself into a monster born of Kryptonian science to stop the corrupted Superman of his world - is about to pay a visit to Lois Lane and make his mark on Metropolis.


If nothing else was accomplished by Batman: The Devastator #1, it gave me a new level of respect for Frank Tieri and James Tynion IV. I shan't spoil the hows or details but the flashback sequence detailing the creation of The Devastator puts a nail in the coffin of the idea that Batman would easily beat Superman in a fight given enough time and resources. Emphasis on the word "easily". The artwork by Tony Daniel and Danny Miki proves equally impressive, being vividly detailed yet smoothly presented.

The Final Analysis: 10 out of 10. A Must-Read for all fans of Superman and Batman. 

Red Sonja: The Black Tower #4 - A Review

And so it was that Red Sonja was killed by Thraxis - God of The Black Tower!  And lo were the people of Hyboria enslaved. Even the random superheroine who was there for some reason.

Okay - maybe that's just futuristic clothing that Thraxis was kind enough to give the enslaved. We're honestly not that sure about the time scale between chapters here.


But there were those who would resist inspired by the legends of Red Sonja - The Spawn of The She-Devil! But they all got killed almost instantly and inspired Thraxis to become even more cruel. So screw them. And forget we mentioned them, because they aren't at all important to this story.

What is important is that Thraxis was awesome. And he had a harem of totally hot smoking babes who would do anything to make him not kill them or send them to the mines.

Is Hyboria doomed?  How will this story end when our heroine got killed in the last chapter? Does anybody actually care at this point?


How does the story of Red Sonja: The Black Tower - a tale that has thus far involved dragon-riding, robots, lightsabers, ray guns and flying saucers -  become even more convoluted in its final chapter?

By introducing time travel.

I'm not even kidding. It turns out that the attractive couple we saw get killed WAY back in the first chapter were time-travelers.


Mom hung on just long enough to deliver her son, who was raised by the robots in the tower and he was able to use the advanced technology to watch the outside world, developed a crush on Red Sonja and then became this monstrous warlord to get revenge on the people who killed his parents.  Oh, and he killed Sonja after realizing there was no way she'd ever surrender to him.

He explains all this to an attractive redhead who wishes to serve the living god more directly. And I don't need to say anything more because you already know how this is going to end.

Just one question remains - how is this possible?


You have to love it when the writer can't be buggered to choose just which hackneyed plot twist he should use and just decides to say A Wizard Did It. The irony being that this is one of the few genres where that would be a legitimate explanation...

Is a comic truly bad if you find yourself amused by it?  I'll leave such questions to other scholars. For me, it is enough to say that Red Sonja: The Black Tower seems incredibly conflicted as to just what kind of story it is trying to tell.

The worst part is not the introduction of science-fiction elements into the Hyborian world or the vague plot. It is the fact that the base plot is virtually identical to the much reviled Avengers #200, with the only difference being that our villain beheads the woman of his dreams rather than raping her and that she (or her clone/daughter/spirit/whatever) gets revenge by going back in time to kill an innocent woman ala The Terminator.

It's a distasteful comic. And I feel sorry that the genuinely skilled Cezar Razek will have this book on his resume. Hopefully he'll be able to draw a much better Red Sonja story in the future.  Better yet, let's get Amanda Conner (who did the cover for this issue) to write and draw a Red Sonja comic!

Red Sonja: The Black Tower #3 - A Review

In my many years as a comics reader and a critic, I have read an awful lot of Red Sonja comics and a lot of awful Red Sonja comics. So when I say that Red Sonja: The Black Tower #3 is the single worst Red Sonja comic ever written, please understand that opinion does not come from hatred or ignorance. It comes from the scholarly consideration of one who is well-versed in the mythos of Hyboria, who understands just how badly this story conforms to the universe it is supposed to be set in.

When one thinks of the sword and sorcery genre, what comes to mind?  Muscular heroes in impractical armor?  Giant animals and fanged demons?  Sensuous sorceresses and decrepit wizard-priests with a glint in their mad eyes that matches the glint on their sacrificial knives?

How about flying saucers, laser swords and robots?



That is the plot of Red Sonja: The Black Tower #3 in a nutshell.  Having twice escaped the wicked town of Lur with her life, Red Sonja (now sporting an eye-patch and a skunk-stripe for no reason that is ever explained) returns leading an allied army of every damn nation in Hyboria to fight the forces of The Black Tower.  Forces, it must be noted, which have already killed every wizard, pirate band, barbarian horde and noble line that it pleased them to go after.

It's Barbarians vs. Aliens and it's every bit as stupid as the premise suggests. And yet, the biggest problem with this series is not the ludicrous concept more befitting a 1980s syndicated cartoon than the oeuvre of Robert E. Howard.  It is the fact that writer Frank Tieri has a bad habit of telling us the story instead of allowing the text and artwork to show us the story.

What is worse, Tieri throws aside whole sagas in sentences.  How Red Sonja united all of these armies under one banner - or how she tamed a giant dragon so she could ride it into battle - is not explained.  You just accept that Sonja somehow got every nation in Hyboria to work together and that she took a crash-course in dragon-riding from the Pern Correspondence School.


I'm still not sure I can fairly criticize Cezar Razek for his artwork on this series. The artwork is competently done, though it is riddled with explicit gore and gratuitous fan-service - even by the standards of sword-and-sorcery!  For instance, one wonders why Sonja has the body of a very shapely 17 year old cheerleader without any scars or signs of hard-living save for the loss of one eye AND the hair of a forty-something woman.

Red Sonja: The Black Tower #2 - A Review

In my review of the first part of Red Sonja: The Black Tower, I said that this was sword-and-sorcery of the old school - bloody and visceral with little sense of nuance.  For a moment as this second chapter opens, it looks like we might get something more.  True, we start out with lavish illustrations of men in combat and scantily-clad whores with purple prose about how the city of Lur fell into decadence and violence after the arrival of the titular tower.  Then we are given a vision of a mystic sisterhood who rise up, and use the dark magic generated by the tower to smite the wicked.


Alas, the Sisterhood of the Black Tower appear for all of one page. And with the passing of one paragraph, we learn how they were all killed and a number of warlords came and fought over the city, with the eventual winner was the same mercenary leader to whom Sonja delivered the unkindest cut of all in the previous issue.  Sonja herself does not show up until this issue is about a third of the way finished, sporting an eye-patch.  We are then told that her eye was lost in a battle off-camera.

And there are the three biggest problems with The Black Tower in a nutshell. It is a Red Sonja comic for which Red Sonja barely figures into the plot. We are told, not shown, the better portion of that story. And what few bits of the story are interesting or original are quickly discarded in favor of mindless, gory action.


In this regard, I really can't fault artist Cezar Razek too much.  Razek is good at drawing what the script requires - nearly naked women and a lot of blood and severed body parts.  I can, however, fault him for one of the most ludicrous monster-designs this side of a First Edition D&D Fiend Folio.

Red Sonja: The Dark Tower is not merely a bad Red Sonja comic. It is a bad sword-and-sorcery comic. Indeed, I would go so far as to say the issue has but two saving graces. The first is that this story can easily be dismissed as a tall tale involving Sonja - a legend with little truth. The other is that the conclusion of this issue - in which an army of robots with lightsabers show up - is so ludicrously awful that this comic promises to pass the event horizon of merely being bad and become so awful that it demands Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbet riff upon it.

Red Sonja: The Black Tower #1 - A Review

Red Sonja: The Black Tower is a sword and sorcery tale of the old-school.  By this I mean that it is heavy on action and short on plot.  There's precious little story to be found here and the action of the issue can easily be summed up in one paragraph.

Our story begins as Sonja arrives in a town where an ominous black tower appeared and inspired the townspeople to start fighting one another.  Sonja steps in when a gang of mercenaries set about trying to rape a beautiful outlander.  The leader of said mercenaries tells Sonja to back off, poking Sonja in the boob as he does so.  An orgy of violence worthy of Sam Peckinpah ensues, as Sonja kicks a lot of ass and makes her opinion on would-be rapists known quite forcibly.


The script by Frank Tieri is not deep or nuanced.  This issue is basically one extensive action scene and taken on those terms it is a damn good action scene. Yet very little is said about the titular tower and those who have come to know Red Sonja through the recent Gail Simone title may be surprised by how pointed and unsubtle this story is.


The artwork by Cezar Razik is good, if a little gory even by the standards of Red Sonja.  Never before have I seen so many severed limbs in a single comic!  That said, the action sequences are all well rendered and the action flows clearly throughout, save for one scene where it is unclear just how Sonja was able to deliver the unkindest cut of all to the mercenary leader.  Razik can also be added to that rare group of artists who can depict Sonja as a clearly dangerous warrior and yet also make her appear sexy without being exploitative.

This first chapter has my attention.  It is not like any Red Sonja story I've seen in recent memory and that alone makes the second issue worth picking up.  Hopefully we will get a little more story next time to go with the excellent action we saw here.