Comics Recap 10/13

Good thing there were a couple of sales in September so I'd have some comics to read and recap, not that anyone really gives a crap.  Anyway, here we go:

Justice by Jim Krueger and Alex Ross:  I bought this for the sole reason that my idea for the third Girl Power story is along similar lines.  Many of the world's villains band together and seem to be working for the good of society while the JLA has seemingly disappeared.  It might be a little too long and I'm sure some people's favorite villains (the Joker for instance) don't do a whole lot, which is what happens when you get these sprawling event series.  The real star for me like the earlier Kingdom Come is Alex Ross's artwork, which are really more paintings than drawings.  If ever there were comic book art suitable for framing this would be it.  If you don't feel like reading comics, watch the DC movie Doom which features largely the same plot.  It was on Netflix; I'm not sure if it still is. (4/5)

Lex Luthor:  Man of Steel:  by Brian Azzarello:  Since they want to work Lex Luthor and Batman into the next Superman movie, this would be a way to go since obviously Luthor is involved and Batman is also slightly involved.  The reason this could never become a movie though is there aren't enough big action set-pieces.  It's more of an intricate chess match as Luthor maneuvers Superman into a no-win scenario involving a new "hero" and the Toyman.  Luthor gives Batman a chunk of kryptonite presumably to drive a rift between him and Superman.  For his part Superman has like one line in the whole 5-part series.  Anyway, if you're more about story than slugfests this is a good series. (5/5)

Batman:  Hush:  by Jeph Loeb:  This is one of those Batman series I'd heard about but never got around to reading until it was finally put on sale.  The 12-issue series like Justice has villains working in coordination, only it obviously just focuses on Batman's world, though Superman makes an appearance.  There seems to be a massive conspiracy at work that Batman slowly uncovers by moving from one villain to the next.  Who is largely behind it is pretty obvious from the second issue of the series but I did not pick out who was at the head of the conspiracy until the end.  I guess I get half credit.  Anyway, some of the same elements go into the later Grant Morrison storyline Batman: RIP but this is a lot less trippy and better reading for people outside of Tony Laplume.  (4/5)

Civil War by Mark Millar :  Yep, I got a Marvel one in here too.  I was somewhat familiar with this story from playing the underwhelming Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 video game.  The gist is that when the government decides all superheroes must register their secret identities, Captain America leads a group of heroes opposed to the act while Iron Man leads a group supporting the government.  There was actually more plot and fewer slugfests than I'd expected.  The sad irony is what gets all this started is that a bunch of children are blown up by a supervillain in Connecticut.  Since this is a comic book universe Congress actually gets together to pass a law.  I guess Captain America just needed to hire the NRA's lobbyists. (5/5)