Sunday, January 19, 2020

Sunday Splash Page #97

"No, Quack is a Fowl Noise," in Brave and the Bold (vol. 3) #7, by Mark Waid and George Perez (storytellers), Bob Wiacek (inker), Tom Smith (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer)

The third volume of Brave and the Bold started up some point after 52 wrapped, with Waid and Perez as the creative team. The first year of the book had an overarching story, something about someone named Megistus who was after some MacGuffin or another. Sometimes the stories were set up so that one of the heroes from one issue carried over into the next. Like when Batman teamed up with the Blue Beetle, then was in the future with the Legion of Super-Heroes the next month.

Waid knows how to play characters off each other (although he writes Power Girl as hyper-aggressive in this issue, even by her standards), and works some humor in some issues. Bruce Wayne being stunned at Hal Jordan's success gambling. Brainiac being kind of pissed when Batman uses an ordinary old smoke bomb against them, and it works. Perez' style would be considered more old-school even by 2007, I assume, but it works for me, and I think it fits the tone of the book, which is a very old-school team-up book.

Perez left after issue 10, with Jerry Ordway taking over the art chores for three issues. Waid left after issue 16, and the book rotated through a series of creative teams, each doing a story or two, until it landed in the hands of J. Michael Straczynski and Jesus Saiz for the last 9 issues. The only other issue I own besides this one is the very last issue, a Legion of Substitute Heroes/Inferior Five team-up, which occurs in and around the Legion of Super-Heroes/Doom Patrol team-up the month before. 

It's actually not bad, works as a funny issue, which makes it the high point of JMS' run on the book. Low praise, considering this was when he wrote that story where Zatanna has a premonition of Barbara Gordon's fate in The Killing Joke, and when she confides in Wonder Woman, they. . . take Barbara out for a fun night on the town rather than, you know, do anything to stop it. I guess because Wonder Woman figures it's fate, and you can't interefere. Then why did Zatanna have the fucking premonition then?

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