The Flash: Season Zero #9 - A Review

Felicity Smoak finds herself distracted at work, as Barry Allen's televised battle with a water-manipulating metahuman causes her to miss an important meeting. That turns out to be the least of Felicity's problems this morning. Because there's a group of terrorists out to turn everyone's favorite White Hat Hacker into street pizza and only The Fastest Man Alive can save her!


This issue of The Flash: Season Zero is somewhat perplexing.  The script by Andrew Kreisberg (based on a story by Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim) is well-written and quite funny, with a fair bit of quirky banter between Felicity and Ray Palmer and many accidental double entendres. Typical fare for an episode of Arrow or The Flash, in other words.

The problem is that it is unclear just when the events of this story take place relative to events in the show. As of the halfway point of the first season of The Flash, the existence of metahumans is still a closely guarded secret - at least so far as the team at STAR Labs and Joe West are concerned.   Explain then how it is possible for The Flash to be fighting a super-villain on a live television broadcast, with the reporter watching the fight acting like such fights are commonplace?

I'll admit this is a minor nitpick but it is an important point given the continuity of the TV series.  That said, the action of the story is well paced and it wouldn't feel out of place in a classic Flash comic.  The only real problem with this story is how it fails to fit into the reality of the show, unless it is set at some point in the not too distant future where The Flash is operating more openly.


The artwork by Marcus To is a definite improvement on the previous creative team.  There is a sense of motion to To's style that meshes well with the general aesthetic of The Flash.  To also does a good job caricaturing the series's cast and in blocking out the action of the story.

Earth 2 #27 - A Review

Set sometime after the start of Earth 2: World's End, Earth 2 #27 is nominally about our heroes trying to rescue a group of trapped scientists.  What the comic is really about, however, is relationships.  Specifically, the relationship between the new Superman and Power Girl and the relationship between the new Batman and Huntress. The former group are childhood friends who seem to be transforming into something more.  The later are estranged family and Huntress prefers to keep it that way, despite Batman's efforts to reach out to her.


This sort of thing is the bread and butter of writer Tom Taylor, who once again partners up with Marguerite Bennett for this issue.  Bennett's something of an unknown quantity here, but her previous work on Batgirl and Batman has proven her to be a writer of no mean skill.  It's unclear just how the writing duties were split between them but the fact that one fails to detect any difference in the writing styles between scenes proves that the two writers play well together and that we all benefit from the partnership.


The same can be said of the artwork, which is handled by two separate teams of artists.  One group handles the pages involving flashbacks to Huntress and Power Girl's pasts.  The other handles the main action of the issue.  Both teams do a fine job depicting the action and there's no glaring difference in the styles that might wreck a reader's focus.

Huntress #1 - A Review

One of the characters I missed most in all of the New 52 titles was The Huntress. A long-time member of The Birds of Prey, conspicuous in her absence from that title as well as all of the other Batman titles, I was relieved to hear that she was getting a solo mini-series following the first month of the DC Revamp. And more, that mini-series would eventually lead to her joining the new Birds of Prey. And perhaps most heartening of all was the revelation that she would be returning to her old Kevlar catsuit costume rather than the belly-bearing outfit that Jim Lee had designed for her several years ago.



The issue opens with our heroine arriving in Italy. Her quarry? A packing container bound for Gotham, filled to the brim with illegal weapons and - to The Huntress' surprise - a number of captive women, apparently sold into prostitution. After seeing to the safety of the women and making contact with a local reporter, Huntress sets about tracking down the local gun-runners as they too begin to hunt the vigilante interfering in their business.

Paul Levitz's script suffers some of the same flaws as his Legion of Superheroes title. The action sequences are top-notch and The Huntress is presented as a strong, capable heroine but we learn nothing about her outside of her life as a crime-fighter. The script reveals no information regarding her background or her motivations for being a superhero. Indeed, the only hint we have at her full name comes from a shot of her passport and her only connection to the DC Universe at large is an internal reference to Batman and a cue in the dialogue that Helena has connections with someone at The Daily Planet.

The artwork by Marcus To and John Dell is top-notch. Dell avoids the heavy inks that seem to dominate so many street-level hero books, allowing To's detailed pencils to show even in the scenes set in the dead of night. To is a wonderful visual storyteller, whose fight-sequences flow well. To also avoids the rampant cheesecake that seems to follow Huntress from title to title. Her modesty is preserved, even in a scene in which she subdues a Mafia informant in her nightgown.

All in all, this is a solid first issue with good artwork and a great set-up. The only worrying point is that very little is done to develop our heroine outside of her role as a hero. And yet, even this is not so worrying provided one has read the last page. It is here that an editor's note discusses the upcoming JSA title and goes on to say that JSA fans would be advised to keep an eye on The Huntress as well as Mister Terrific, which they mention features Karen Starr a.k.a. Power Girl. Could a restoration of the classic Huntress/Power Girl team-ups of the late Bronze Age be in the works? I hope so, because that's a hell of a tease otherwise.

Regardless, this book is a wonderful action book with a great heroine. Highly recommended.