Villains Month has inundated us with many different profiles and whatzups for just about every bad guy DC Comics has ever invented – or at least the ones deemed cool enough to make it into the New 52 era. So we’re going to cast a wide net here and try to touch on quite a few of them for this week, to better ascertain the state of the villain.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #7.4: BLACK ADAM #1
When last we left Black Adam, he’d been turned to ashes, which were then brought to his home country of Kahndaq by Shazam, which kicked off The Trinity War. Now, Geoff Johns collaborates with Sterling Gates to bring us the next chapter – his resurrection and transformation into the defender of his nation. Despite being a nasty, murderous, power-hungry villain in previous issues, when he is brought back thanks to rituals from rebels fighting an oppressive regime, he immediately starts attacking that regime (although it helps that the first thing that happens upon his return is that one of them tries to shoot him in the head). He then goes to the jerk dictator – who conveniently named himself Ibac after the despot who originally killed Adam’s family back in Old Tymes – kills him, and declares that Kahndaq no longer has a ruler – just a protector. In that instant, the Crime Syndicate’s ‘This World Is Ours’ message comes through, and Adam’s instantly in no mood to hear THAT.
The turn feels a bit sudden and inorganic, based on the Adam we saw in the Shazam stories, but this does put him in position to be the Bad Guy Superman against the Worse Guy Ultraman, assuming the villains are going to rise up against the Crime Syndicate. It also helps him to become more interesting than he was in those issues, making him a Dr. Doom-type for the DCU once again.
JUSTICE LEAGUE #23.4: SECRET SOCIETY #1
Once again, Johns and Gates collaborate to give us some backstory on Evil Alfred and Owlman from Earth 3. Owlman is Thomas Wayne, brother of Bruce (who we saw introduced in the main world at the end of Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls story), and his sidekick is Talon, the Earth 3 Dick Grayson. Evil Alfred, aka The Outsider, is the one who killed Owlman’s parents for reasons unclear, but has formed a lifelong partnership with him to serve him in his quest to control everyone and everything. We also see the Earth 3 Joker as a fighter against Owlman’s regime, but things aren’t so cut and dried in this version of Earth 3 – it’s not a simple ‘good is evil and evil is good’ flip, because this Joker is still the kind of creep who will chop up a sidekick and gift wrap him in five separate boxes – although he does stop to quietly lament loss of life. Also, Owlman seems to actually care about his Dick like a brother, and although the details of what really happened here will not likely be revealed until the main Forever Evil story continues, it helps explain why they went after Nightwing as hard as they did.
We also see that the Joker is the one who turned Evil Alfred into Evil Joker-Looking Alfred, and Owlman’s antidote was not a complete success – he’s not trapped in a cackle loop, but Evil Alfred is still pasty-faced and occasionally blurts out a quiet “Ha.” Oddly enough, the cover sports Amazo and Copperhead, but they only appear on one page of the whole issue. Szymon Kudranski’s art is supremely dark, which certainly fits a story about an evil Batman.
BATMAN #23.4: BANE #1
Truth up front: I really miss Secret Six, which means I also miss Bane as he was in that series. The New 52 Bane has reverted back to the Venom-addled beast from Santa Prisca with a mad-on for Gotham City, and sacrificing all his character development makes him inherently less interesting. This issue, from Peter J. Tomasi and Graham Nolan, focuses entirely on Bane ruthlessly raising an army of Santa Priscan fanatics – some even dressed like Bane Henchmen, which seems like it should be an oxymoron – and setting sail for Gotham City with full intent to take it over. It’s all a set-up for the upcoming Arkham War series, and pitting all of Batman’s rogues gallery members against each other is usually a pretty fun concept. This version of Bane, though, is just a cult leader, and not a particularly charismatic one.
BATMAN/SUPERMAN #3.1: DOOMSDAY #1
Greg Pak and Brett Booth take us back to Krypton once again. Honestly, it feels as though the New 52 has given us as many stories set on Krypton as it has actual Superman adventures in the modern day. The planet might as well still be kicking.
It starts on “Remembrance Day,” and that implies that the first appearance of the monster we know as Doomsday was a catastrophic disaster, like Krypton’s 9/11. Jor-El’s wife Lara was a soldier on that day, but all her fighting was for naught until Zod showed up, sporting ancient power armor and fought off Doomsday – but in a nice dig at Man of Steel, they actually acknowledge collateral damage. “Because of him, I live, but because of him, thousands more died as the city crumbled.” We see a young Kara inquiring about what really happened that day, and her father tries to protect her innocence by spinning a folk tale about The Last Knight of the House of El, and that tale is essentially the classic “Death of Superman” storyline, interestingly enough. Once that story is over, it’s quickly revealed that Zod seems to be communicating with Kara from the Phantom Zone, threatening her and explaining that he actually loves the Doomsday monster, because the threat of it keeps his people from becoming complacent and soft. Young Kara doesn’t know what to believe, and chooses to wish it all away as a dream.
A connection between Zod and Doomsday is kind of cool, and Pak inserting a smidge of old DCU canon as a Kryptonian fairy tale in the New 52 is clever and, at the same time, a bit depressing, reminding us of what we’re missing. Still, Pak’s doing compelling work with Batman/Superman, and although this isn’t some fine-art Jae Lee masterpiece, illustrating that Doomsday is a beast who will ignore people trying to fight it in order to prey on people fleeing from it is a pretty scary notion.
ACTION COMICS #23.4: METALLO #1
In this Sholly Fisch/Steve Pugh tale, we see what’s become of John Corben. Spurned by Lois Lane and turned into a cyborg soldier by her father, General Sam Lane, it seems Corben’s a bit unhinged. Saved from a comatose state by having a kryptonite shard installed as a power component, he attempted to resume his military career, but after murdering a lot of civilians in the field of battle, he was dropped into the ocean by the general and presumed dead. However, in an impressive feat, he just walked across the bottom of the dark ocean floor for two months until he reached land again, preparing to take his revenge. However, he has to fight Metal 2.0, the next phase of Metal-Zero, and it results in an explosion that kills them both – or so we think. Instead, the Secret Society yanked him out of harm’s way and offered him membership.
The story has some darkly compelling beats – literally, with the ocean march, and figuratively, with Corben’s moral center completely non-functional. It renders him a bit one-note as a supervillain, obsessed with revenge and little else, but you tend to have those guys when you cast a wide net like Villains Month has.
SUPERMAN #23.4: PARASITE #1
Aaron Kuder handles both the script and the art, showing us Joshua Michael Allen, a bike messenger who hates his life in Metropolis, and as such, is a total dick to everybody. After running into a giant booger monster and breaking his leg, he’s called into STAR Labs to test for booger monster residue, and something goes haywire, transforming him into an ugly purple monster who has to feed on people to live. Trying to go back to his normal life resulting in him killing everyone he saw, and he was still always painfully, gnawingly hungry. So he tried to kill himself, but Superman swooped in to save him – and that proved to be providence for Josh, because sucking up Superman powr made him feel full for the first time ever – for a little while. Turns out that taste of godlike power is all he needed to keep going – and he’s going to do whatever it takes to dine on Superman again.
Kuder’s rendering of Parasite is truly gross and unsettling – an emaciated sucker-face normally, and a giant misshapen pile of gross purple scales when Suped out. He also does some interesting work by filling Josh’s world with constant insults swirling around him, radiating his hate for himself as much as his hate for Metropolis and everybody in it. It’s also kind of a neat twist that Superman being his usual hero self resulted in the kickstart and preservation of one of his most enduringly annoying enemies. It’s not a bad issue. But Parasite is really gross.
DETECTIVE COMICS #23.4: MAN-BAT #1
Frank Tieri and Scot Eaton take on Kirk Langstrom and his nutty wife Francine, who are now Man-Bat and She-Bat, respectively. She-Bat was playing Man-Bat all along, even going so far as to marry him to get what she was after in service of those wanting to steal his formula. Kirk is in control of himself – or was, until he combined his formula with Francine’s version of it in order to make him strong enough to fight her. However, the side effects are an ever-increasing hunger and a dependence on the Man-Bat formula, slowly changing him from a noble man to a savage killer monster. It’s not that complicated a story, but it is a fairly compelling look at a man succumbing to addiction and becoming what he once hated and fought against. Tieri and Eaton work well together to make the Man-Bat ferociously scary, making a villain out of someone we almost considered a hero – and who was actively trying to be a hero.
