REYNARD's Profile

The creative bankruptcy of modern superhero comics epitomized in just 25 pages, arbitrarily squishing together elements you remember from long ago, playing Weekend at Bernie's with the corpse of your lost childhood. No purpose to anything except to swaddle you in memories of when you used to buy comics because you loved them, desperately hoping that you'll pay to chase those fading traces the way an addict endlessly reaches for the beautiful feeling of that first high. Sometimes I worry that superhero comics are dying as their aging readership does; reading this comic makes me feel like it's time to take them out back and put them out of their misery.more

This comic epitomizes what is wrong with DC. You have two mercenaries in Snyder and Williamson leading the pack of mundane and uninspired writers. These are cannibals, picking at the feet of their betters, scraping the tombstone library of story-past for any epitaph to sustain an event or story arc or whatever you want to call the derivative droll they put out.

Long gone are the days of wonder, the imaginary beyonds of Fox and Broome and Haney and Kanigher.

Julie Schwartz would be turning in his grave. Jack Kirby too.

There is a reason for the alienation of true auteurs in this industry: Morrison, Moore, Gaiman. Because even as they try to bring comic books back to their roots of poetry and mythology, the Empty Hand manifests itself to reap. They came, they conquered, and they departed after realizing there were better things to do than play back & forth with the carrion crows who run DC.

DC has been hanging under the fangs of the Empire of Mammon since the Golden Age, when Liebowitz and Donnenfeld stripped the company from its original owner, Major Wheeler-Nicholson.

What's happening now is more insidious. An ultra-pollution of the narrative, a sacrifice submitted to strobe-torture before being disemboweled. These people are going to ruin everything just to feed their wallets.

If you don't believe me, read this book:

"WHAT IF EVERYONE JOINED THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?"

"WHAT IF DARKSEID AND THE SPECTRE MERGED?"

"WHAT IF DARKSEID FOUGHT EVERYBODY AND BEAT THEM WITH HIS LAZER BEAMS?"

"WHAT IF HE MADE A BAD UNIVERSE WHERE EVERYTHING IS BADDER AND MORE BAD?"

"wait, don't we already have Earth-3 and the Antimatter Univ-"

"WHAT IF EVERYBODY WAS A DARKSEID AND THEY HAD HIS LOGO?"

"WHAT IF EARTH ONE WORKED OUT BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN BY US AND WE MADE EVERYBODY TOTALLY EDGY AND ULTIMATE AND MARK MILLAR AND METAL AND FRANK MILLER AND BRIAN AZZARELLO AND SO COOL?"

"DO YA GET IT? 52 DAYS EARLIER? 52 DAYS LATER? REMEMBER THAT WEEKLY BOOK WRITTEN BY TALENTED WRITERS? REMEMBER THAT PUBLISHING INITIATIVE THAT FUCKED EVERYTHING UP?"

"WHAT IF DARKSEID WAS MAD ABOUT BEING DARKSEID, BUT WHAT HE REALLY WANTED WAS TO BE DARKSEID IN DARKSEID LAND, WHERE BEING DARKSEID WAS COOL?"

"WHAT IF ALL OF OUR CHARACTERS EXPLAINED EVERYTHING THAT WAS HAPPENING AND SAID EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE THINKING AND FEELING AND THEIR MOTIVATIONS WERE SIMPLE AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND? MAN, WRITING COMICS SURE IS EASY!"

"HEY, IT'S THE MIRACLE MACHINE! REMEMBER THAT? I READ A GRANT MORRISON COMIC GUYS! I LOVE LOOKING AT ALL THOSE PRETTY PICTURES IN THAT GRANT MORRISON COMIC!"

"DARKSEID DARKSEID DARKSEID OMEGA BEAMS DARKSEID APOKOLIPS I DIDN'T REALLY GET FINAL CRISIS BUT I READ THE DC WIKI PAGE DARKSEID DARKSEID DARKSEID!"

If there is one redeemable quality, it is the art. Sampere and Craig are very talented. It's a shame they have to waste their time drawing absolute nonsense. At least they get a check.more

Mark Waid has forgotten that comics should be poetry. He is now debasing his craft to write brain-dead smash-em ups that cannibalize the Silver Age in the most uninteresting ways. This is truly the darkest era in DC Comics history.

I've been gently drifting away from new superhero comics in the last year, and while competently executed, this comic's weary exhumation of the moldering corpse of Warren Ellis's early oughts peak really sums up why. I miss the days when comics were new and exciting and full of big ideas, instead of "We've grabbed a thing readers were very excited about 25 years ago and several randomly selected B at characters, ground them into a bland slurry, and poured them into a trough for our dwindling middle-aged fanbase to stick their little snouts into"more

Not big into current comics recently, but I felt I had to pick this up.

Was not disappointed whatsoever.

I pray for the day that mainstream heroes are allowed to evolve into new configurations like this, innovative status quos that stay true to the heart and history of the character.

Very hyped to see where this one goes.

Empires fall. Parliaments dissolve. Dreams crash into the harsh light of morning. Summer ends. The Quiet Council was always a tower built on sand, and Gillen & Werneck make the inevitable collapse feel like a panic attack. Every move is wrong. Every attempt to do the right thing, to fix the well-intentioned mistakes of the past only makes the doom of the dream more certain. There is no way out. It 's fall, and there's nothing you can do about it.more

Absolutely fascinating.

Even with a couple story strands left to the winds, the main pathos Black Adam has been tackling across these twelve issues is brought to an impasse: the Red Sea is pulled apart by mortality's revelation as Theo Adam embarks on a new dawn.

He is no longer a slave to a legacy of ebony lightning that has chained him to the Sinai. He's emerged from a star ing match with the abyss, scathed, and yet liberated.

Black Adam will return, but Theo Adam's long march is just beginning.more

Welcome to the Oblivion Bar where the first round is on me and the pretzels are free! Be warned: like the pickled eggs at the bar, this issue is going to get SPOILED rotten.

Trying to decipher this issue with one read is like trying to understand how Balki Bartokomous and Larry Appleton from "Perfect Strangers" were related, how it lasted for 8 seasons and (no lie) 150 episodes!!! So, I read it four times.... maybe more... and I'll try my best to tell you what I learned. Hickman went big, and epic, and he didn't disappoint.... like usual. It was deep and confusing but totally interesting and far out at the same time.

The main point behind this entire run, in my humble opinion, was not only to show how long SHIELD has been around but to also give us the battle between fate and free will. This issue's foundation was that discussion. On one side you have Sir Isaac Newton believing in fate and that he will be the one to see the end of the world as we know it. And on the other side we have Michelangelo who believes in choice and free will. Leonid becomes Judge Judy in the middle and by the end of the issue, shows them what this tilt-a-whirl of desire we call the universe is all about.

The issue opens with Leonid piloting the Human Machine... all 3 realities of him. He is able to see past, present, and future and it appears to all run through him at the same time. However, Michelangelo is no longer able to see the future and all of its possibilities like he once could. Personally, I feel it was because their was no future anymore and Leonid folded space and time on top of itself. This, the Human Machine stopped time itself and restarted it with Leonid inside it.

Leonid asks Newton if we can just talk and put his infatuation with annihilation behind him. Well, Newton freaks out and literally shoots Nostradamus' Quiet Math at Leonid trying to destroy him but he just brushes it off and demands he listen or he'll just make him. And with powers that resemble Eternity, Leonid tears Newton apart by his skin, bone, muscle, and organs. This gets Newtons attention and he decides to listen, as would anyone who tore my body apart and had it float in the air directly in from of me.

Both Michelangelo and Sir Isaac Newton wonder what the Human Machine did to Leonid and he tries to explain it in terms of evolution. The Human Machine evolves you to your full potential and again in Leonid's case, he appears to have the abilities of Eternity which is immortality, time manipulation, multiverse manipulation, unaffected by the passage of time, and can create avatars as well as body possessions to communicate with lesser beings. Basically, he can do whatever the heck he wants. And to be honest, I partially wonder if he is Eternity.

The question Leonid is discussing with two opposite sides, fate and free will, Newton and Michelangelo, is "what now?" or "what's next?". If you believe in free will, anything is possible and you can continue on with something new. If you believe in fate and you accomplish what you feel you were supposed to, then are you done? Is that it? The point Leonid is trying to make to both sides is that question of "what now" happens not just to individuals but entire species as well.

So, Leonid explains why everyone is here. Technically once Leonid stepped foot in the Human Machine, that was it. That was the end of everything, except him. With his abilities, Leonid was reborn like a universe inside an exploding star. And after his recreation, he decided to answer this question with two polar opposites of the same coin; Newton (fate) and Michelangelo (free will). And he resurrected them at their most perfect state, which was right before the end of everything.

Being ( in my opinion) Eternity, or at least representing the full potential of a human being, he feels he has a solution that will help both sides by giving them both exactly what they want. He shows both of them the universe from a God's perspective, which is time as a single moment lasting forever. Looking at it from this perspective, choice and destiny become the same thing. He explains that time is a loop but that loop can be changed. Your destiny is written and is true but it can be altered at any moment so it's not fixed due to free will and choice. Your fate and destiny is ever changing. Heck we could take the Doc Brown theory and say, "It means your future hasn't been written yet, no one's has. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one." Michelangelo excepts this idea and is this rewarded.

On the next page, we pick up right as the group left to track down Newton in issue 4 except instead of landing in three realities simultaneously, they land in the present with everything fixed and Da Vinci waiting for them. Newton was given what he wanted; a world of ash in his on reality. Alone and filled with his fate he forced on the world all along. The epilogue continues with Howard Stark leaving a message for Tony explaining to him the journeys he's been apart of, his time in SHIELD, it's purpose, it's importance, and indirectly setting up the future of SHIELD to come. And I personally hope we see this information continue on to Tony because this would be amazing to see what Tony and Reed Richards could do with this information.

This is what I think happened. The problem is we won't get a summary page as to what happened in the last issue because this was the last issue. So, did I decipher it right? Who knows! I feel like I did but you never know. I personally loved the series in general. It was confusing but I could name for you dozens of things MORE confusing like Teletubies, why the Kardashians were so dang popular, Burger King foot lettuce, and Furbies. And sometimes confusing can be good if it's done well. Hickman's intent was to ultimately use real life characters, as well as Marvel characters, to show us what this "thing" we call life is all about.

He wants us to all to live up to our full potentials and create our own destiny using the gift given to our species that know one else has; free will. I hope Hickman branches off with a new series about SHIELD. I would love to see more stories related to SHIELD throughout time as well as the direction Marvel goes currently with Da Vinci running the show, which he was in Invincible Ironman on Bendis' last issue of you didn't read that. The potential for great things involving SHIELD is currently out there now and I hope Hickman, or anyone for that matter runs with it. If you're a Hickman fan, get the issue. If you can wait, the hardcover come out next month with 6 issues in it. I totally recommend a reread of the entire thing and have no doubt this hardcover will be on my bookshelf at home.

If you like what you heard, love talking all types of comics, and are interested in joining a comic chat group, hit me up at dispatchdcu@gmail.com or @dispatchdcu on twitter. Catch you all later! Peacemore

At the end of the day, I express great pride in saying that I spent $10 on this book solely for the Grant Morrison story. And you know what, it was totally worth it.

And it said to be continued at the end! Please Moz! Multiversity Too!

Also, that Rachel Pollack tribute was beautiful. I wish DC would do that for more creators when they pass instead of just one page ad. Having writers recount stories and their own experiences with the deceased I feel allows the readership to unlock a new dimension of that writer, and truly cement them in the tapestry forever. The people who make these books are just as important as the characters that appear in them, and I would love to see more of their stories told.more

Have Black Adam and Theo split into two individuals?

So Ishtar fucks with Black Adam, causing a rift between him, Malik, and Jasmin.

Nergal manipulates the Sanheoli to send an airstrike against Black Adam. Adam battles the air-force and Nergal, who turns to dust that is inhaled by Adam, but then expelled via the Living Lightning.

In DC, Malik and Shep are attacked by Sargon, pawn of the Akkad. He tries to turn Malik into the new Sargon by putting the mask on him, but is defeated by Black Adam. Sargon the Sorceror is freed of the Akkadian Mask's thrall, and zaps Adam with a spell that turns him back to Theo while he is enveloped in a red aura. We then see that someone has put on the mask of Sargon.

In the framing sequence, we have Theo visit a catholic Priest to recount the events of the issue, but the priest mentions that while Theo is there confessing, Black Adam is simultaneously brokering for peace with the Sanheoli. Two Adams two different places.

Did Sargon's spell split Theo and Adam, and Adam is the one who put on the Mask?

If not, then who put on the mask?

Is Nergal truly defeated after his brief skirmish with Adam?

Subtitles: "Long Division" , "Severance" , "Kismet" , "Road Rage" , "The Two Adams" , "Dusted"more

-Random thought from last issue: if the circle of crows are servants of the nth world, and the nth world is Thanagar, does that mean that they are Thanagarians or evil hath-set bad guys? Could this lead to a unified Egyptian DC lore that folds in Doctor Fate/Nabu, Khufu/Hawkman, and Teth Adam!?!?

-Final confirmation? Teth-Adam created the Akkad by breathing in the space dust!

-So the mystery is revealed? Adam can access the memories of his progeny/descendants! The original Theo Adam from Pre-Flashpoint continuity was a descendant of Black Adam, and his soul was possessed once he said SHAZAM. Black Adam would eventually expel the Theo persona during Johns' JSA.

-So the nth metal signet rings and the power of Shazam are the floodgates holding back this mysterious plague that is consuming both Malik and Teth-Adam.

-The Fawcett lore! Ibac was originally a dude named Stanley Printwhistle, imbued by powers given to him by Satan himself IIRC.

-So apparently the Circle of Crows pick an orphan every generation to host Ibac, and this incarnation seems tired of the neverending cycle of revenge: he sees himself and Adam as relics that have overstayed their welcome and are just pawns of Oni Grace's machinations.

-No idea who the Sanheoli are, but why is Nergal trying to use them specifically as a tool in his agenda (that we don't know yet)?

-When he refers to the man that raised him, is he talking about his dad Anu or is he talking about Adam (since he technically created all the Akkad)?

-So Ishtar possesses Jasmin and is using her to fulfill her fantasies? Or is she trying to start a fight between him and Malik on purpose?

-Subtitles: "Love & War" , "Strike Force" , "Probable Cause" , "Unexpected" , "Stanley" , "Flattered"more

Eddy Barrows' art is top tier! And that prose page with Priest's thesis on Black Adam was PEAK.

Here are some annotations I compiled:

-We finally meet the "wife" of Shakur Nassar and get the rest of Teth-Adam's revamped backstory.

-Nassar's wife is Oni Grace, a character I'm not sure has been pre-established before this issue. She seems to be a temptress and a mani pulator with ambitions and unknown motives.

-We learn that Mighty Adam had built a secret getaway so he could retire and become mortal in his off-hours. One day he is attacked by a resurrected Ibac and his master, Mereuka, leader of the Circle of Crows (minions of the Nth World). Adam escapes, but Ibac releases Mamaragan from his slumber, resulting in Adam being banished to space.

-The getaway temple Adam had constructed ended up becoming Kahndaq.
Jasmin returns the signet/ring to Black Adam. Will combining the two rings cure Malik of the plague?

-Did Oni Grace kill Shakur?

-Is Oni Grace a version of Amazing Grace from Darkseid's Elite?

-Now we know why #5 was called 2325; because that was the year Black Adam was banished.

-It's been mentioned multiple times now the fact that Black Adam talks about these Egyptian Pharaohs even though he was banished to space long before they were born. Adam explains (in #6 IIRC) that lightspeed travel warps time, allowing him to be on Earth during times he shouldn't be.

-What is the mystery within mystery of Black Adam?

-What is Ishtar's intent with Malik?

-Subtitles: "For All & None" , "Romulans" , "The Widow" , "The Overcoat"more

The best book DC is putting out!

Memories of Mighty Adam unfold, the mystery of mystery unravels as we gain a glimpse into the hubris and hypocrisy of Mamaragan's Dark Champion!

Akkad arrives to enact their agenda! Nergal's nefarious schemes brew while he enjoys endless thin mints!

What has risen amongst the people of Kahndaq? Seeds sown bear names of their own: Re bellion! Revolution!more

"In the Absence of Adam..."

Hard to do better than the brilliance of last issue, but still fun as always! Loved Luis and Trindade as fill-ins, and this one-off with Mirror Master ended up being a whole lot of fun!