Ratings and Rantings

Hey everyone, Captain Awesome here, that's right, Jason Todd as always, welcoming you to my Red Hood. I hope you're ready for the continuous cavalcade of Comic content comments continually creating controversy! Oh yeah, alliteration for the win! This week we've got a short edition Ratings and Rantings with only three comics but my shop's Marvel comics hasn't been delivered by the time I got there (or gotten stocked...damn my earliness!) so I just grabbed my DC comics and took off. Now that that's taken care of, let's get down to business with the last Ratings and Rantings of 2010!

Green Lantern #61

Green Lantern starts off with two people, a woman and a man that looks oddly like Sinestro (that poor ugly man) are in a car arguing, and it's apparent that the man has been beating up and verbally abusing the woman. She tells him she won't take it anymore and he pulls a gun out on her, but his car crashes into a monster, that monster being Atrocitus. This either brutally injures of kills them, and an uncaring Atrocitus uses the man's blood to find out where "The Butcher" is, the Red Lantern entity. From there we see a convicted rapist and or murderer I would assume, that is about to be executed by electric chair. The evil bastard then goads the girl's father and talks about how much his daughter "loved it." The father gets angry and says he wishes he could kill the prisoner himself, and this causes the Red Lantern entity to burst through the wall telling him he has great anger in his heart, and that he's hungry. The Raging Red Bull is soon stopped in his tracks by the attacking Spectre, who tells him Earth is his domain. He tells him to leave earth and quit searching for a host but The Butcher refuses and attacks. After a brief fight the Spectre is about to try to decapitate the Red Lantern entity but Atrocitus shows up and says the entity belongs to him. The entity then takes the body of James Kim, the angry father, and he wastes no time in dealing out punishment on the man that killed his daughter. Spectre tells Atrocitus to make the entity leave Kim's body, and tells Kim that the murderer is not his to judge. James Kim starts to fight the entity but it goads him as well by repeating the murderer's words, causing him to spaz out and attack the Spectre. The rage infused James Kim then kills his daughter's murderer, then Atrocitus tells the Butcher he belongs to him and the rest of his Rage Corps. The Butcher then tries to fuse with Atrocitus by looking at his past, but Spectre knocks it out pretty much while it's doing that. Atrocitus then contains The Butcher in his lantern and tells the Spectre he will take it back to the Red Lantern homeworld of Ysmault. The Spectre pretty much doesn't care as he's about to judge James Kim, but Atrocitus speaks up and says how the man who lost his daughter has not gained equality by killing her killer. Atrocitus pretty much understands since he also lost his daughter, and the Spectre allows James to live as the issue ends. Well that was bland, we learned some about Atrocitus and he has his entity but that's it, nothing else happened. Oh and this is the DCU synopsis "Plus, another being seeks the red entity – The Spectre! And he has no patience with his former host Hal Jordan, who happens to be in the way…" and guess what.....Green Lantern didn't appear ANYWHERE in this comic, which is his comic! This was okay but nothing amazing and nothing really happened, it was also pretty boring as Spectre isn't the most interesting character around. I'll give this a 5/10.

Atrocitus: I am Atrocitus the Red Lantern. There is nothing else you need to know.

Action Comics #896

This issue of Lex Luthor's Action Comics (Nice ring to it right?) features an appearance by the Secret Six as well as Vandal Savage. We start out with the Secret Six going to save Lex Luthor, prompting Deadshot to ask why. We see a flashback to a dinner where Lex and Ms. Vandal Savage. and how he pretty much offered Scandal something that we don't know about if she agrees to help him on the one time he calls for help from her and the Secret Six. Scandal obviously shows up but is surprised to see the person trying to attack Lex is her father, Vandal Savage. From there we see Robo-Lois and after a quick reboot to get over a virus, she starts to chat with a woman being controlled by Mr. Mind. Over the course of questioning the Robo-Lois over their previous encounter, he realizes that she's working for someone else besides Lex, which Robo-Lois neither confirms nor denies before incapacitating Mr. Mind's host body. The Secret Six finally springs into action and Lex uses the opportunity to knock the bomb detonator out of Vandal's hand, which is caught in the nick of time by Scandal. This causes a argument between the Savage's but it's interrupted when Robo-Lois and her vast array of guns joins the fight. When Robo-Lois takes out Scandal, causing her to drop and a pool of blood spreads, Vandal goes ballistic and slices Robo-Lois in half with an axe. Vandal helps Scandal up and she appears to be fine..okay then. After more fighting by the Secret Six and Vandal's henchmen, Lex tries to talk sense into Vandal and the issue ends soon after with the detonator possibly going off. This will continue in Secret Six, which I won't be reading but I'm sure Lex will live, but the next issue will feature Lex and The Joker, so I'm ALL OVER THAT! This issue was fine for what it was though, I'll give it a 6.5/10. I would have given it a seven but all that hooplah over Scandal and she's perfectly fine annoyed me.

Scandal: Luthor, I have cutlery.

Lex: Oh, please. I wouldn't let you near nice dinner things with a dozen snipers aiming at your heart. You KNOW that.

Detective Comics #872

I didn't review last months issue of Detective Comics because I read a buddy's copy but it was good enough that I picked up this issue. For those curious on last month's issue you can read a review by my good buddy X-Man75 by clicking here. The issue starts with Batman (Grayson) trying to question a man by the named William Rhodes, and while trying to avoid Batman the guy crashes and apparently dies. Smooth move, Dick. This leads to him and Oracle using the guys credit card to make him seem not dead and buying some vintage wine online. Um...okay? After some more Babs and Dick talk which was written very well, Batman takes off to search for more clues about the mysterious murders as of late. From there we see Dick find out from Tim that Lucius Fox has got a new invention for the Batman Inc. guys that allows you to sculpt light and make you look like anyone, meaning Dick can now pretend to be that Rhodes guy he inadvertently helped kill. After meeting with Harvey Bullock since Gordon was busy, Dick gets a lead from Oracle and springs into action by stealing Rhodes' face and heading to a party as him that may have the culprits that Batman is looking for. Once entering the "party", Dick is given a gas mask, and like the other people his mask is to filter out the gases that are coming into the building during the auction, I guess to keep people from removing their masks? One of the first things for auction is Joker's crowbar, that's right, the same one he pretty much beat Jason Todd to death with, and like vultures the patrons bid for the Clown Prince of Crime's murder weapon. Unluckily for Batman, the people suspect that he isn't Mr. Rhodes, so his mask hasn't been modified and he's soon rendered helpless by the chemicals. The issue ends right there, or it would before we see that after Dick left, James Gordon and his daughter Barbara met and he told her that her brother was back in town. After a talk about how her brother James is a killer, Babs leaves, and the issue ends with James Gordon Jr. sitting down across from his father, Commissioner James Gordon. This comic was kind of slow up until the end, then it really picked up. Aside from the slow parts it was pretty good, I especially liked the ending for both Batman and with the Gordon family, as well as the talking between Dick and Babs, but I didn't like how Dick pretty much helped kill that guy, even by mistake, and didn't seem to care too much. I'll give this issue a 7/10 rating and I'll be grabbing the next one to see where Scott Snyder takes the story from there.

Tim Drake: I guess that means we'll be retiring the old beard and wig trunk?

Well, surprisingly that didn't take too long. We're all done for 2010, here's hoping 2011 has more Jason Todd, more Booster Gold, more great comics and more good times and great memories. Be sure to join us in two days when I post the first ever annual Red Hood Awards, it should be lots of fun and cause a lot of debating, which I'm looking forward to. So until next time I'm your friendly neighborhood Blogger-Man, Jason Todd, signing off.