Pete Woods

With Archie and Veronica reunited, things should be smooth sailing in Riverdale ... except that Reggie goads Archie into a drag race with unthinkable consequences.

This book got more serious and consequential than the previous volumes, although it still managed to find some humorous moments. Those combined with the action make it another fast read in this escapist series.

Throughout this series, there have been a number of artists involved for the illustrations but they managed to more or less show more keep a consistent look. This volume, however, had radically different and in my opinion, significantly worse illustrations. I would have rated this book a little higher if the accompanying illustrations hadn't been so terribly done. I was glad to see that this artist doesn't continue on in the next volume.

This volume also ends with a sneak peek at The Archies, which seems fitting as the readership could be similar. show less

I liked how this links up a couple different titles, Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes, Superboy, and Ravagers, but it looks like 16 issues is all they got. Now I'm wondering what's going to happen with Harvest and his "diabolical" plans. Hopefully it's wrapped up on Ravagers because I'm not reading Superboy or Legion of Superheroes.

This got a little convoluted in the end with the time travel stuff, but overall it was a cool arc with some decent characters.

While I've liked a lot of Paul Cornell's work, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this story.

What diminished my enjoyment was the annoyance on how much this all relies on retconned metafictional buildups. While it's a good Lex Luthor story all in all, it actually mutes its own effectiveness by showing how much the "self-made billionaire" seems tied to the other big movers and shakers among the DC universe's rogues' gallery.

Yes, it's interesting to see ties with R'as al Ghul, Vandal show more Savage, Darkseid (the weakest part of the story and a rather off characterization, IMO), et al, but it's all a bit too pat and undermines Lex's own character in comparison. show less

The biggest flaw of this graphic novel collection is that it becomes very apparent that you are missing part of the story by not reading whatever tie-ins DC made along with this event. It appears many of these could have occurred within certain titles published at the time (i.e. teen titans, wonder woman, and supergirl seem like the obvious choices based on content). This lack of a full story makes for uneven reading and takes away some of the overall enjoyment of reading a Wonder Woman show more event. There have been few events centered around this particular character and her world, so it is sad that this was one of them. It also sucked that one of the characters we should have seen, Donna Troy, is swept off and we are not told what we should read to understand what was going on with her story. She just seems to disappear. It was overall a frustrating read, but rooted in what could have been an amazing storyline. It just is very poorly executed. show less