52 Problems, Etc. (Volume Three)

So, 52 volume three.

Week 28 has two pages of brilliance in space. One page is a splash of Lobo towing the ship containing his dolphin buddy, Animal Man, Adam Strange and Starfire. The following is six panels that barely make any sense, cutting in and out of the scene with no rhyme or reason. But, it follows along with the concept of the real time storytelling moreso than any other bit in the entire series. It's week 28, days two and four and we check in on the space story for a bit to see them fleeing a giant one-eyed green head and Animal Man ranting about how the situation sucks.

Still don't care about Montoya or the Question.

Booster Gold as Supernova doesn't make sense, mostly because it involves time travel, which while a reasonable possibility does preclude many of the so-called clues dropped. The fact that the solution is revealed along with the method of pulling it off and it doesn't cause me to go "Oh, now I see!" means it was handled poorly and is not a good mystery. Ideally, seeing how it was done should have made it all Make Sense. It didn't. And I knew already that Booster Gold was Supernova. And still didn't see anything that pointed to that.

Wow, Lady Styx sure was a giant threat--what with being killed quickly in week 36. Although, the Captain Comet bit was also another lovely moment.

In week 32, it seems that Ralph has decided to kill himself. In week 33, he gets a gun. He is not seen again until week 39 where he's getting something in Atlantis. Not sure how much logical sense this timeframe makes. Probably the thing that annoys me personally the most about this series. The number of stories combined with the limited amount of space makes the passage of time very problematic. Especially when you take into account how time passes in regular comics. Regular comics operate in a very compressed sort of time where numerous events take place in very short periods of time, while in this series, very little takes place over longer periods of time. Perhaps a weekly realtime book involving more than two or three plots can't work. Hell, maybe it should focus on one single plot to work properly.

The Black Adam family bores me. So utterly typical. The rise and fall. It would have been much more creative to sustain these characters and push forward.

The mad scientists bore me as well when they're not all mad and doing crazy shit. The serious elements of that plot don't work for me. The Egg-Fu stuff was fantastic, though.

Clark Kent was kidnapped and interrogated for a page? What the fuck? That was a moment where I literally said "What's going on now?" Especially because the artist had neither the skill nor the inclination to make Lex Luthor look like Lex Luthor. Instead, we're treated to generic bald guy who looks kind of Asian.

Lex Luthor is a condemnation of the general public and the fact that we continue to trust people we know for a fact to be evil, corrupt and utterly devoted to their own goals at the expense of everyone else.

That said, Luthor gaining superpowers? Lame. But, as I've often said, I prefer for him to operate on an entirely different level than that of the average supervillain. He's the guy who pushes a button and kills hundreds only to go "Oh no! Something went wrong! Why god why?" Luthor does not get his hands dirty with fisticuffs. How utterly common.

For some reason, I love any comic that has young people telling the founding members of the JSA to fuck off to the old folk's home. I just can't get behind the idea of geriatrics fighting crime. Nor am I a fan of teenagers or kids doing the same. Stories about either seems like an absurdist comedy where lurking beyond the next panel is a broken hip or some horrible mistake from a lack of experience (or memory). Oh, I'm such an ageist.

...they stole Animal Man's jacket! Fuckers.

Oh, and Batwoman is a lesbian, but Dick Grayson doesn't know that. I smell a crazy mix-up coming up!

All in all, this was a lacklustre collection of lacklustre comics with the odd shining moment. There were, like, four. Maybe five.

In November, I'll get volume four and we can see how the entire saga works as a whole.