David tagged posts

If you want a quick primer on roller derby, and a little bit of my opinion on derby in the entertainment world, go back and read my review of Slam #1-3. As an added bonus, you’ll find out my opinion on the first three issues of this title, and the plot coming into issue #4.

So it’s issue #4 of Slam, and it’s bout night as the Pushy Riots take on the Meteor Fights! Things start out with a television interview that walks the viewer through the rules and how-tos of banked track roller derby.

As the teams get ready and warm up, CanCan and Knockout lament over their flagging friendship. The issue closes when the two finally go head to head on the track and an errant hit sends CanCan crashing to the ground.

Veronica Fish’s art continues to be wonderful, and Brittany Peer’s colours are vib...

Welcome back to Dave’s continued journey down the modern DC Comics rabbit hole.  If you missed my review on issue #1 of Supersons I started with pointing out that I am not normally a DC Comics reader. While I would say my knowledge is above average, it is mostly from other forms of media and not strictly current.

The prologue for issue #2 starts similarly to issue #1, in the same fake house with the same family, but instead of insisting on group hugs, the teenage son is insisting they die. Also, there are three of him and he now calls himself Kid Amazo.

Meanwhile, our young heroes are eighty stories up the side of Lexcorp headquarters with an ‘S’ embossed caped silhouette floating behind them...

I’ve never really been a regular DC reader. I watch the various movies and animated shows but (other than some Green Lantern) I’ve never read all that much, so Super Sons was a bit of a deviation from my normal reading.

Taking it’s title from the “Saga of the Super Sons” storylines of the 1970s World’s Finest comic, Super Sons follows the adventures of 13 year old Damian Wayne (Robin) and 10 year old Jonathan Kent (Superboy). The fifth, and current, Robin has been around since 2006, but I only learned about him after watching the Son of Batman movie on Netflix. The current Superboy, who is the fourth (or so) “major” character to hold the name, only came about in 2016 so I hope I can be forgiven for not knowing he existed.

Super Sons #1 is all about setup for the rest of t...

Roller Derby can trace its roots back to the banked track roller skating marathons of the 1930s (and as far back as the 1880s), and since the early 2000s has enjoyed a resurgence that is still growing and evolving.  With both banked track and flat track versions of the game, there are hundreds of leagues and thousands of players around the world. Roller Derby in popular culture is something very interesting. If you turn on the TV and there’s roller derby involved, it almost always takes place on a traditional banked track. Just a partial list includes the short lived 70s sitcom Rollergirls, RollerGames and RollerJam in the 80s and 90s, the Rollergirls reality series in the 2000s, and (of course) on the big screen was 2009’s Whip It: all of these centred around banked track roller derby...

The story threads from past six issues (now being collected and released as Future Quest Vol. 1) really start to come together in issues #7 and #8, as the various heroes from separate stories start to interact.

Issue #7 brings us back to the remote laboratory of Dr. Kim-Conroy, her son Buzz, and the nearly complete gargantuan robot, aptly named Gargantuan. Meanwhile, the new Mightor gets some hero training from Birdman before encountering Omikron in the desert, and the kidnapped Dr. Quest talks science-shop with Dr. Zin at F.E.A.R. headquarters. Finally, The Impossibles work to clear civilians from the Hollywood Bowl as one of Omikron’s vortexes appears there, and the unconscious body of Space Ghost comes through.

Issue #8 sees Race Bannon, Agent Sumadi, and Dr...