175 Justice League Of America Vol 2: Curse Of The Kingbutcher

Not Steve Orlando's strongest work.

Justice League Of America Vol 2: Curse Of The Kingbutcher

Writer: Steve Orlando

Artist: Felipe Watanabe, Jamal Campbell, Andy MacDonald, Neil Edwards, Scott Hanna, Sandu Florea

DC Comics

126 Justice League Of America Vol 1: The Extremists

DC has high hopes for Steve Orlando.  They gave him two high profile books (this and Supergirl) to write with the Rebirth initiative.  So far, he's falling slightly short for me.  And I don't know why.  I love love love love love his Midnighter work.  It's been one of my favorite books from DC in a long time.  But dealing with mainstream DC stuff, it's just not clicking with me yet.

This books has two stories.  The first is the modern day reintroduction of the Extremists.  Lord Havok and his bunch.  While the story itself wasn't bad, reading it all in one fell swoop didn't do it much justice (pardon the pun).  The timeline of the entire story is unbelievable to me.  Things happened entirely too fast for them to seem (even in comic books) plausible.  

I am enjoying the interpersonal exchanges between the characters and look forward to a lot more of that going forward.  It's an interesting line up for a team and I'm anxious to see it succeed.

The second story was my least favorite of the two.  It felt like the team was dealing with a Maxie Zeus knock off.  Yawn.

Justice League Of America Vol 1: The Extremists

Writer: Steve Orlando

Artist: Ivan Reis, Felipe Watanabe, Diogenes Neves, Andy MacDonald, Joe Prado, Oclair Albert, Julio Ferreira, Scott Hanna, Ruy Jose, Marc Deering

DC Comics

017 Flash Vol 1: Lightning Strikes Twice

Confession time.  I love the Flash.  I've always loved the Flash.  Then the New 52 came along and I couldn't read the Flash anymore.  It was an awful book.  They took away the Flash and replaced him with someone I didn't recognize.  Now we're in the midst of Rebirth and I thought I'd give The Flash a look.  I was happy with what I read.  I honestly wasn't expecting to like this book.  Maybe I had the bar set low and this exceeded my expectations because of it?  I don't know.  He still isn't quite my Barry Allen, but this is the Barry Allen I could have accepted with the New 52.  He sounds like Barry.  He looks like Barry.  He acts like Barry.

I felt like this first trade was kind of mirroring or maybe aping what's going on on the Flash TV show.  That show is obsessed with speedsters.  Every season, every week it seems like all we have are speedsters.  And it gets tiring.  This trade is all about speedsters.  A new speedster villain.  A new speedster sidekick.  A whole slew of new speedsters.  Speedsters speedsters speedsters.  Sure, a lot of them end up dead, but there are still way too many speedsters in this book.  But it was a well done story, rushed (no pun intended) in some spots, but a really fun read.  The art is beautiful.  Carmine Di Giandomenico has something in his style that reminds me of Scott Kolins run on the book.  It's beautiful.  My only gripe with the art is I still hate all the lines in the costume and I really hate the constant halo of lightning surrounding the Flash.  That shit needs to go.

Based on this first volume, I plan on a return visit.

Flash Vol 1: Lightning Strikes Twice

Writer: Joshua Williamson

Artist: Carmine Di Giandomenico, Neil Googe, Felipe Watanabe, Andrew Currie, Oclair Albert

DC Comics