GlaucaWyrm

🌙 reviewed Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (Paperback, 2022, DC Comics)

Supergirl returns to DC’s comics this summer to headline her first new series in years: …

stunning in its magical girl aesthetics & fairy tale-esque storytelling

5 stars

Content warning ending

breathtaking (though dense) prose, telling of a journey in supergirl's life when she crossed paths with a vengeful alien girl, and of a supergirl somewhere between a state of hopelessness and endless optimism in her grief and perseverance. ruthye as a character is representative of supergirl's undying will to believe in hope for everyone and everything despite her past, despite all of what she witnessed during krypton's destruction as a teenager, and ruthye being the character to change her own (and supergirl's mind) about revenge and killing, after ruthye's strong determination to find some sort of revenge for her father's murder all throughout the plot, is poignant in how it represents supergirl's wavering in her beliefs and how she ultimately returns to her ideals above all else.

and despite all this, in the end, when they do silently murder krem after his hundred year imprisonment, after he's found himself to have changed in his confinement and after the three seem to have found some sort of acceptance with the matter... it also shows that justice is not something that is black and white for supergirl, despite how the story had framed it. she came to the compromise that his imprisonment can happen as well as his murder for his crimes, and so did ruthye. and the story ends there - make of that what you will, king seems to say with that final page, and as evely seems to say with the direct parallel in artwork from this final page and the first page in the initial issue.

ok that's a lot of dense analysis lol. overall: beautiful and thought provoking story, drenched in magical girl aesthetics and filled to the brim with themes typical of fairy tales side-by-side with superhero-typical themes. it's short and direct even with ruthye's dense inner monologue and reaches a conclusion that is satisfactory just as much as it is inquisitive of the book's themes.

🌙 reviewed Shadow of the Batgirl by Sarah Kuhn

Shadow of the Batgirl (Paperback, 2020, DC Comics)

Cassandra Cain, teenage assassin, isn't exactly Batgirl material...not yet, at least. But when Batgirl goes …

sweet and sincere reimagining of cassandra's story

5 stars

there's so much heart in this book it's actually difficult to convey through words lol. it's like if a typical coming of age story was combined with the craziness of parts of dc canon, even if much of dc canon doesn't appear here except for the general batgirl mythos. cassandra's difficulty with social skills and her trauma are beautifully illustrated (metaphorically and literally - the art is gorgeous here) and it was heartwarming to see her come into her own with the support of barbara and jackie

🌙 reviewed Batman & Robin: Eternal, Volume 1 by James Tynion IV

Batman & Robin: Eternal, Volume 1 (Paperback, 2016, DC Comics)

Not many years ago, Batman and Robin worked the most disturbing case of their crimefighting …

holy fucking shit

4 stars

only negative part is that it's a little haphazard but i think that's partly because i know less about new 52 crap than anything pre-flashpoint and this kind of starts with a bang and no time to get used to the status quo. otherwise, there's an insane mystery with an equally insane bat ally teamup (most of them at least. i wish steph was here more. ok that's the second negative part) and each issue after the last raises the stakes. i prefer the pre-flashpoint backstory that cass had but damn if this one isn't compelling. mother is a terrifyingly great villain. good comic so far excited to finish it in the next volume

🌙 reviewed Batman: Red Hood - The Lost Days by Judd Winick

Batman: Red Hood - The Lost Days (Paperback, 2011, DC Comics)

After his death at the hands of The Joker, Jason Todd was resurrected by Batman’s …

good start for jason's antihero turn

4 stars

some parts were baffling (like the unnecessary jason/talia sex scene, thanks dc) but all in all it's an ok miniseries about jason's return from the dead and subsequent evolution into an antihero. rest of this is copy/pasted from mastodon - i like how it sort of gets into jason's whole anti hero thing, strongly driven by "doing what bruce won't" while also driven by his own morals, both kind of frankensteined together. he thinks he's only in it for himself and justifies everything with being a part of an ultimate revenge plan against batman and the joker, but he's clearly operating by his own morals at the same time - taking out all his teachers who turn out to be traffickers or terrorists or whatever. like he rationalizes it as taking out the trash and again, doing what batman will never get close to, but it's more a self-deluded excuse …

some parts were baffling (like the unnecessary jason/talia sex scene, thanks dc) but all in all it's an ok miniseries about jason's return from the dead and subsequent evolution into an antihero. rest of this is copy/pasted from mastodon - i like how it sort of gets into jason's whole anti hero thing, strongly driven by "doing what bruce won't" while also driven by his own morals, both kind of frankensteined together. he thinks he's only in it for himself and justifies everything with being a part of an ultimate revenge plan against batman and the joker, but he's clearly operating by his own morals at the same time - taking out all his teachers who turn out to be traffickers or terrorists or whatever. like he rationalizes it as taking out the trash and again, doing what batman will never get close to, but it's more a self-deluded excuse in place of the truth, which is that he indeed cares about making the world a better place and helping people, even if part of it is driven by his personal experiences (see the part about taking his sweet time killing the joker in the name of revenge - letting him go because he lost time and didn't want to end it so fast, excusing it with "i don't actually care about the people he kills i just want revenge" but ultimately showing that he DOES care, with how he killed all of the goons under the joker at that point in time, sort of covering his tracks there. letting the joker go free for now, but making sure he can't do immediate damage afterward). certain aspects of it were a little weird and i would've liked to see more of talia's motivations here besides doing this because she loves batman, but i get that this is jason's story first and foremost (even if talia played a huge role?).

🌙 reviewed Batman & the Signal by Scott Snyder

Batman & the Signal (Paperback, 2018, DC Comics)

THE SIGNAL, Batman’s trainee and Gotham’s daytime protector, is back with his own three issue …

i love duke

4 stars

fun little origin story for duke thomas that mostly centers on his literal first day on the job. imagine having that as a first day on the job, christ lol. and he suddenly discovers random metahuman powers in the middle of it??? but anyway fun story worth the read, maybe a little dull/generic in its execution but not enough to make it a chore to read. i enjoyed it a lot anyway and duke is very engaging as a character