Girls With Comics

Starting today, you can now get a DCU app for your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Playstation Portable will also be able to get DCU digital. DC is one of many who are now embracing the digital age, leaving a giant question mark over good old-fashioned comic book publishing. With other media outlets such as newspapers going kaput, will hand-held comic books be a thing of the past within the next year? I always think there will be a need for comic books. I personally do not own a PSP, iPhone, iPad, nor an iPod Touch. I do however own a Blackberry, but I very highly doubt I would want to read a comic on a screen that small. That seem’s silly.

John Rood, Executive VP of DC Entertainment said, “Today’s launch provides an additional opportunity to convert new readers and recapture lapsed readers while serving existing fans,” while I understand where he is coming from with new readers, this does not serve me at all, as an existing reader. It also won’t serve my 60-year-old father, who has been reading comics his whole life.

Whatever the future may hold, I hope no comic book publisher gets rid of the old-fashioned comic book.

-Lauren

Last week at the library I picked up Batman/Superman: Finest Worlds. I began reading it as soon as I arrived home, and finished it last night. Overall it was an enjoyable book, with the main “plot” of the book revolving around Batman taking on Superman’s powers. I say “plot” because the first half of the book has little to do with Super Bat. The first chapter is about how Bruce and Clark’s fathers met before they were born. The next was about mini childlike versions of the entire JLA being thrown into the “real” world where people get hurt and die. The final chapters are about Super Bat. Each section is enjoyable in itself, but there’s no real flow between the stories, other than Superman and Batman’s relationship. It’s cheesy, to be honest, how they regard themselves as brothers.

Yet the two won’t admit their brotherly love for one another. They are too manly or too scared to admit it, which causes some decent conflict, but as always the boy scout Superman just shrugs Batman’s mood swings off as “just being himself.” Their profound understanding of each other rivals that of Kirk and Spock, yet I don’t find the friendship as endearing or even as real, or as real as two fictional characters can be. Still, it was a good read, with some fantastic art.

-Lauren

Mad Hatter is my least favorite bad guy in the Batman universe. He doesn’t strike fear in my heart, nor does he make me feel any kind of real emotion for him. However, the other two JA comics I’ve read have been good, so surely this one will be good as well! And of course, it was. The Hatter is a lonely little man obsessed with finding his Alice. He believes he found her–a clerk at a food store–but when he finds out her name is not Alice, he plots to kill her because she “lied” to him. The Hatter is an interesting character, one because I know little about him, and two the Mad Hatter in the legit Alice in Wonderland is crazy. This guy is not only crazy, but he’ll kill you too.

Overall a good comic, but I still have little to no interest in the hatter.

-Lauren

Aw Eddy! Edward Nigma gets his own one shot in this comic, with Peter Calloway as the writer and Andres Guinaldo as the artist. We are treated to a rather special story, with a side of Edward Nigma we rarely see. The side where he is in love. Nigma is first seen stealing fine art, when a young lady demands to know what he’s doing. I guess this girl hadn’t been living in Gotham or from under a rock for very long, since I would get the idea quickly if I saw The Riddler taking stuff.

So, he falls in love with her. He goes through anguish and torment as she rejects him over and over. Finally. Nigma gets what he wants, but when he finds out it is not what he thought it would be, the girl suffers as a result. The story is very easy to read, and while it is not  a great introduction to Riddler, it is still an exceptional one shot. If you’ve never read a Batman comic or only know of the Riddler from that one terrible movie with Bat Nipples, that is a-ok too. You’ll still have fun with this comic.

-Lauren