The Brave And The Cold
Welcome to December, the beginning of winter and for those who have seasonal depression, it might just feel like an Endless Winter, that our heroes will be facing off against in this mini-event. Going into this series you don't really need to know anything special if you've been reading DC Comics lately because beyond some wacky continuity, the biggest thing that seems to be featured here is the Bendis era change of Superman moving his Fortress of Solitude from the Arctic Circle to the Bermuda Triangle. With that, Winter is here, and let's find out what all the hubbub is about.
It's the setup for our December event and in this issue, we discover that Superman is somehow dumb as hell and never picked up after himself after Rogol Zaar destroyed his Fortress of Solitude. That's right, Supes packed up a few things, moved to the Bermuda Triangle, and never looked back at all the Kryptonian crystals and things that he left behind. Now, normally this may only cause a problem because of people like Sebastian Stagg trying to salvage all that he can from the home away from home of Superman but on top of the Man of Steel leaving all his garbage behind, apparently, he originally set up shop on top of the resting place of an ancient Frost King.
So like a classic horror movie, where the mummy's tomb is disturbed, the monster of this book arises from his slumber and begins to destroy everyone and everything in his path... which is ultimately just making things cold after making our Justice League look like a bunch of chumps. Yeah, it looks like our heroes may not be the thing that is going to save the day in this event, and in order to survive, we may have to look to the past at heroes who once came together to put the Frost King on ice.
All in all, Howard Porter's art is decent in this issue and I dig some of the characterizations of our heroes but there's a lot of wonky continuity in this opening issue like Catman being a villain in his original costume again, Wonder Woman talking about when she was the God of War, which should have only been a lie to her and Black Lighting having his daughters again...... de-aged, but having them nonetheless. If the continuity wasn't so weird, the idea of Barry asking how to balance work and homelife throughout, while never going home felt weird as hell and the event hinging itself on the idea that Superman is a careless dummy makes this first issue to this mini-event come off really odd. That being said, the concept for the cliffhanger flashback has me intrigued and I hope we see more of our heroes from yester-yesteryear.
Bits and Pieces:
It's weird because of the way this mini-event feels, it kind of feels like the way the Justice League series came off before it caught up to Death Metal, where it was simply a fill-in and something to tide us over, but didn't really matter overall. There's some wonky continuity in this and some strange decisions on how and why this story begins in the first place but hopefully, things pick up from here on out because the background and original defeat of the Frost King is something I'm really interested in.
So does this take place before or after Death Metal? 🤔 And was/is Black Lightning's daughter Thunder and an Outsider in current continuity or not?
ReplyDeleteThis event to me feels like it takes place during Ditti's Justice League run, pre Death Metal and as far as Black Lightning, I haven't seen anything referencing him having a family since the beginning of the New 52 up until now.
DeleteHis daughters look the same age they did in Tony Isabella's Cold dead hands miniseries during Rebirth but in that they were his cousins not his daughters.
ReplyDeleteI really like the way, how they depict the characters and how they interact. This is, what I've been missing on the normal justice League run
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