M.D. Bright (1955–2024)

Remarkably good. Reminds me of Alan Moore, but lends itself well to an ongoing episodic format.

The basic premise is "What if Superman was raised by black slaves instead of the Kents?" The result is the superhero Icon, but he doesn't become a superhero until a young woman suggests it to him. She becomes his sidekick, Rocket. The characters are interesting and different, nodding toward the Superman origin but creating their own mythos with their own themes and topics. It does a great job of show more being politically relevant without being propaganda--I don't usually like gang stories or political stories, but the characters and writing make up for it.

The art is also great. I really enjoyed the whole experience of reading this and I wish more people had heard of it. show less

Iron Man has evolved a lot over the past few years, and for the better, in my opinion. (As an interesting character, I mean - not necessarily, like, morally.) This storyline consequently comes across even more old-school than it was, although David Michelinie was yer quintessential Marvel hack. But all the stuff that makes this kind of not work - "They stole my technology? They used it for . . . . EVIL?!" - weirdly also kind of makes it work, in that you can ignore the cheesines, distill it show more down to bare facts, and add that nugget to your "Iron Man history" tumbler - although I choose to imagine it occurring a lot earlier than it did - early seventies? Iron Man's first step toward sophistication? Maybe if he hadn't been hitting the bottle so hard he would have noticed that they were stealing his tech? Works for me. So I guess now there's two registers in which to evaluate superhero comics (and, incidentally, soap operas): 1. Is this awesome? 2. Is it consequential? Does it develop the character, ir is it essentially without meaning? This book has more of 2 than 1. show less

I've never been a Hal Jordan fan ( I find his character tremendously dull) and this series hasn't convinced me otherwise. It's perfectly fine (although my copy has some bad reproduced artwork on cheap paper), but never rises above average for me.

This story line takes place at the very end of the Knightfall Batman saga, but Bruce doesn't have much to do in the story. This is all about Dick Grayson and his journey. He takes over the mantle of the Bat after Bruce takes it back from John-Paul Valley, but apparently Bruce needs more time to ponder whether he really wants to be Batman still.

So Dick and Tim (Robin) go up against bad guys like the Tallyman and Two-Face, and try to keep up with it all when Two-Face screws up the justice show more systems' computers and no one knows who's supposed to be in jail and who isn't.

And finally Dick seems to figure out how he feels about the Bat Mantle and Bruce as well. show less