Harley Quinn | The Institute of Idle Time

29
Blue Beetle

Keith Giffen & Scott Kolins
Blue Beetle makes me forget that Keith Giffen knows how to write comic books. It also makes me better appreciate the way a Peter David or Brian Bendis can weave episodes of natural-sounding dialogue into a superheroic fantasy. Part of the blame falls on Scott Kolins, of course. The dude seems to enjoy drawing the Beetle costume, but he really phoned it in when it came to everything else, including the layouts. Word balloons are dropped haphazardly and absolutely no thought is given to effective storytelling. Also embarrassed by the half-assed attempt at adding diversity to DC’s superhero stable. – MMDG

“Two chorizos” is not a thing, and this book shouldn’t be either. I liked the smiling ninja men, that’s it. – IP

First collection: Blue Beetle, Vol. 1: The More Things Change (April)

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28
Suicide Squad

Rob Williams, Jim Lee, & Philip Tan
Why does Katana keep showing up for no reason? I don’t know enough about DC to appreciate the pairing of Flag and Katana, but the fact that she just shows up as his second-in-command without an explanation is frustrating. I don’t like when writers reduce a character to funny accents and catchphrases, but that’s all they seem to do with Harley and Boomerang. Am I supposed to think it’s funny that Croc vomits? I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of nuance, but here I am bitching about it. Man, I miss King Shark. And Deadshot looks dumb. If the goal is to send villains on heroic suicide missions because no one will care if they die, then mission accomplished: I don’t care. – tyrannoflores

First collection: Suicide Squad Volume 1: The Black Vault Part One (March)

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Continue reading Ranking DC’s Rebirth: 29 – 26 →

It’s Week 11 of DC: Rebirth and, in a clearly coordinated effort with this weekend’s release of the Suicide Squad movie, we get both the “zero-issue” one-shot Suicide Squad: Rebirth, as well as the debut issue of a Squad member’s solo book, Harley Quinn #1. While fans of the comic book characters have taken exception to the film’s critical response as compiled on Rotten Tomatoes, they can rest easy knowing that the new comics have a much more narrow audience. Adam Graham of The Detroit News probably hasn’t ever been in a comic shop. Russell Baillie lives in New Zealand. What could he possibly know about genre flicks? The vast majority of comic readers are already familiar with, if not fans of, Suicide Squad, and Harley in particular. They’ll appreciate these books. Besides, there isn’t a Rotten Tomatoes for comics.

But maybe there should be…

Typically we’d wait until all of the rebirthed titles have been released to tabulate and publish our rankings, as we did with Marvel’s All New All Different initiative. But in honor of this weekend’s fan revolt against the aggregated Rotten Tomatoes percentages, we’re revealing our scores for these two comics right now.