072 Justice League Vol 2: Outbreak

Even without Bryan Hitch drawing this book, it still has this great, cinematic feel to it.  He continues to write this book like it's a big, widescreen movie.  I love the whole feel of it.  This volume, although still very cinematic, has a lot of smaller moments.

This book collects two stories, which makes me happy.  I like that we still get occasional two-part stories.  There's a two-parter and a four-parter.  Not everything needs to be six issues.  The first story focuses heavily on Jessica Cruz, Earth's newest Green Lantern.  The League battles and defeats an alien invader, or so they think.  The creature managed to infect the League with fear.  They defeat the creature, but at the end, Jessica doesn't think the League is the place for her and leaves.

The second story is kind of silly to me.  The League gets hacked.  Hardcore hacked.  By a hacker that makes Oracle look like an amateur.  I know this is just a comic book, but this story was even a little too far fetched for me when we find out who the hacker turned out to be.  Read it and tell me if you agree.

Justice League Vol 2: Outbreak

Writer: Bryan Hitch

Artist: Neil Edwards, Jesus Merino, Matthew Clark, Tom Derenick, Daniel Henriques, Andy Owens, Sean Parsons, Trevor Scott

DC Comics

047 Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Lies

Where to begin?  Wonder Woman has been fucked up for longer than I care to remember.  Gail Simone wrote a glorious run on the book a number of years ago.  It was fantastic.  And then DC decided, fuck it, let's wreck Wonder Woman.  They handed the book over to J. Michael Strczynski, who threw everything that came before away and we started with a new Wonder Woman.  His run was awful, though the thing people hated most about it was putting her in pants.  That's the one thing I liked.  But I digress.  Wonder Woman's direction after that seemed to be based on this awful misstep.  When the New 52 started, it felt like the Strczynski influence could be felt.  But this is where things get really confusing.  The main Wonder Woman title definitely through away EVERYTHING that came before it and radically revamped her origin.  And while the story itself was kind of fun to read, I wish they called it an Elseworlds or something like that, because it just wasn't Wonder Woman to me.  Nor was the other version of the character that was appearing outside the main title.  The Wonder Woman in Justice League was not the Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman.  They had different personalities, they had different back stories.  There was no consistency.   When Meredith Finch took over the book, it felt like she was given the unenviable task of taking the character from Wonder Woman and turn her into the character from the rest of the DC Universe titles.  Her run was panned, but I didn't find it as bad as the rest of fandom.

Now we come to the Rebirth Wonder Woman.  She is neither the pre-New 52 Wonder Woman, the Azzarello Wonder Woman, the Finch Wonder Woman nor the rest of the DCU Wonder Woman.  It feels like a whole different take on the character again, but it feels more honest.  And the running theme of this book is Wonder Woman's whole past has been a lie.  And she's out to find out what the truth is and what's going on.  I was a little scared when I heard Greg Rucka was going to be writing this book.  He's a great writer, but I wasn't a huge fan of his previous run on Wonder Woman.  He more than made up for it with this volume.  I couldn't put it down.  I want more.  Now.  I love where this story is going (so far) and want to see how it unfolds.  The next volume of this book will not pick up where this story left off.  It should be a flashback tale drawn by the amazing Nicola Scott.  I can't wait for that, either!

Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Lies

Writer: Greg Rucka

Artist: Liam Sharp, Matthew Clark, Sean Parsons

DC Comics