My guess is The Mad Hatter is picked last. Even after Mr. Combustible with the light bulb head.
Deadshot. He's good at killing and, aside from a minor death wish, not insane.
Poison Ivy. With her on the team, you'd have control of every battlefield. Also less insane than the others.
Ferdie. I think even insane people are unmanned by a ventriloquist's puppet running around drilling out people's eyes. I'd only pick Shauna the Ventriloquist as well if I had to pick them together. She's fucking nuts!
Scarecrow. He's going to cause fear and chaos no matter what, so I might as well pretend that he's working toward my ends. I'd have Deadshot ready to pull the trigger on him at the first sign of him turning on his own.
The Prankster. It's modern warfare! You definitely need a techie on your team.
Man-bat. Even though I can't stand him, I'll need an air force. I'd only take the more psychotic Woman-bat to maintain air superiority.
The White Rabbit. If I need anything scouted that can't be seen by air, she'd be the best of this bunch. Not a whole lot of real super powers in this bunch, so I think she'd be uncatchable. Although she'd probably turn on me.
Killer Croc. I'd need some muscle to go against Bane's venom crazed Blackgate crew. Croc is more reliable than what we've seen lately from Clayface.
Mr. Freeze. Simply for his technology. His brand of insanity probably wouldn't really hamper the war effort either.
Talon. I suppose having an undying death dealer would be good to have. Although I might need The Court of Owls to keep him under control. And who wants them in the war room? They won't try to win the war. They'll drive it toward a stalemate! Jerks.
I think everyone else is too crazy or useless for my tastes. Who needs The Riddler leaving clues to each of your offensives? The Penguin and Emperor Blackgate are going to be more concerned with wresting control from me. The Joker's Daughter is written by Nocenti so I'm not going to want to hear her awkward, stilted dialogue. Two-Face won't take orders from anybody but his coin. The Mad Hatter has a bit of a low self-esteem problem and I think he'd resent being an underling. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are idiotic characters. Having a serial killer amongst the troops is sure to bring down morale, so Zsasz is out. Dollmaker is out for pretty much the same reason. The others I either don't recognize or I just don't know enough about, like Black Mask or Professor Pyg or The Reaper.
I'm almost certain my entire army would be wiped out almost immediately by Bane's thousands of venomized prisoners out of Blackgate along with The White Rabbit already working for him and telling Bane all of my movements. Why did I pick her?!
Anyway, Bane wants Gotham. Gotham has currently been parceled out amongst the nutcases of Arkham by The Penguin. That means Turf War! Let's go!
Bane's first stop was Blackgate to pick up more soldiers. Gee, I hope Warden Agatha is okay!
You know things are bad when the title of the comic is a pun on a horrible moment in history! Why not name this "The Hollow Cost" or "The Trail of Fears"? Maybe those will be the titles of future issues!
Another ancestral fear: small people that all look the same. Although if they dance and sing morality tales, it mostly mitigates the fear. It's still creepy though.
Seems okay! I don't think he'll be very good at violin anymore. But I do sense a huge soccer contract coming his way!
Pyg's hospital looks like any Grand Theft Auto game ten minutes into playing.
Ha! Speaking of Wonderland. But then, Gotham has always been fixated on the works of Carroll.
Meanwhile in Blackgate Prison, Bane has killed or recruited all of the inmates. Now it's time for him to fall in love with Agatha!
I sense some John McClane Die Hard shit about to go down in this prison!
Meanwhile the Scarecrow holds a meeting with the new Mayor Cobblepot about the impending threat looming on their Neighborhood Collective. Oswald tells Jonathan to buck the fuck up and fight for what's his. I also notice that, not having a hair cut in about nine months, I've got The Penguin's hair and hairline. Maybe if I gained forty pounds, lost about ten inches of height, and shaved off the sideburns, I could go as The Penguin for Halloween! Gaining the weight would be nice because I could blame it on the costume! But I'm not sure how to lose the height. Jump off the roof a few times?
The Penguin's plan to help the city is to destroy the bridges so that the Arkham Residential Leaders can't flee and must fight to protect their new real estate. Bane's plan to help the city is to maim Professor Pyg and the rest of the loonies. For some reason, he just has to have Gotham. I suppose that's motive enough for his attack on the city. But what's the underlying reason for the conquest? Why does he need to be the sole authority? Why Gotham? What happens once he takes control? Does he just kill, maim, and burn through all the resources until he's the sole authority of a burning pile of rubble and corpses? I don't believe he actually knows what he's going to do. This is just a super powered tantrum. His sole motive is to win or knock the playing board and pieces from the table so that nobody else can.
Arkham War #1 Rating: Villains Month may have delivered quite a few misses but I'm enjoying Forever Evil and I'm enjoying this more! I don't need super dark comics with lots of angst-ridden fisticuffs. Dark humor with the Arkham Asylum inmates though? Oh yes. Definitely yes. Peter Tomasi really knows how to write to the characters instead of just sticking cyphers in costumes and forcing them into exciting plots. The Scarecrow makes sense. Bane makes sense. The Penguin makes fucking sense! At times I feel like I can't entirely explain why a certain comic book series isn't working for me. Sure, I can attack the writer's mother's womb for the horrible disaster it brought forth into the world but sometimes I just can't place my finger on why the writer is such a disaster. Seeing how well Tomasi sculpts a script and story to the characters, now I can see precisely why Ann Nocenti is so horrible with Catwoman. It's because she doesn't know the character and, judging by interviews I've read from her about Green Arrow and Catwoman, she doesn't seem to care that she doesn't know the character! She thinks boiling historical characters down to a couple of bullet points means understanding the character. And she claims to over-research her subjects. Well, that I believe by all the bullshit lingo she adds to any story, half of which she uses incorrectly. But I don't believe she over-researches the characters she writes. But I kind of get that, as well. She wants to bring her own unique spin to the character and not be influenced by past writers. I get it. But I don't agree with it. Not in the comic book format where the characters aren't their costumes! They are an amalgamation of all that written history. You can't just fucking ignore that and then get excited when you decide to give Catwoman a cat. As if she's never had a cat before!
No comments:
Post a Comment