Weekly Awards For The Comic Books From October 1, 2008

The Followers of The Revolution voted overwhelmingly for Batman #680 to win the Che for the best read of the week. It was not even remotely close as Batman #680 absolutely destroyed the competition this week. This is the most lopsided poll that I have seen for the Che. Here are the results:

Batman #680: 71% (76 votes)
Justice League of America #25: 13% (14 votes)
Nightwing #149: 10% (9 votes)
Eternals #5: 1% (2 votes)
Trinity #18: 1% (2 votes)
Terror Titans #1: 1% (2 votes)
Sub-Mariner: Depths #2: 0% (1 vote)

The Followers voted for Sub-Mariner: Depths #2 to win the Sequential Methadone Award for the worst read of the week. It was a pretty close battle just edged out Terror Titans #1 by four votes. Here are the results:

Sub-Mariner: Depths #2: 29% (19 votes)
Terror Titans #1: 23% (15 votes)
Batman #680: 16% (11 votes)
Trinity #18: 10% (7 votes)
Justice League of America #25: 9% (6 votes)
Nightwing #149: 6% (4 votes)
Eternals #5: 4% (3 votes)

All right, let’s go ahead and dish out The Revolution’s weekly awards.
The nominees for the Che for the best read of the week:

Batman #680
Nightwing #149

The Winner: Batman #680

We got a pathetically small shipment of comic books here at the Bunker last week. However, there were certainly a couple of nice gems. Nightwing #149 was an excellent read. Tomasi continues to impress me with his work on this title. Tomasi has managed to take a title that was on life support and mold it into a comic book that offers a solid and dependable read each and every month.

Nightwing #149 appealed to me because the hero lost. I am a sucker for a story where the good guy comes up short. Tomasi gave us an emotional read and the page where Carol dies was incredibly powerful. Tomas does a fine job with Two-Face’s character and sets up what should be an amazing showdown between Dick and Harvey.

Still, in the end, Batman #680 was not going to be denied the Che for the best read of the week. Morrison turned in another brilliant issue with Batman #680. To be sure, this title has been a love it or hate it story. I am obviously on the love it side.

And now the nominees for the Sequential Methadone Award for the worst read of the week:

Sub-Mariner: Depths #2
Terror Titans #1

The Winner: Terror Titans #1

Sub-Mariner: Depths #2 is a fine example of an excellent concept that has been terribly executed. The idea of fleshing our Namor’s origin in the 616 Universe is a fine one. And the idea of having Namor first being viewed as nothing more than a mythic imaginary character born from the minds of sub-mariners is also rather interesting.

Unfortunately, the story itself is dry, dull and painfully slow and repetitious. Over the course of the first two issues, Milligan has failed to progress this story at all. Issue #2 basically just re-states and recycles the same dialogue from the first issue. This story seriously needs to pick up the pacing and have the plot tightened up a lot.

However, in the end I had to break with the followers of The Revolution and award the Sequential Methadone Award for the worst read of the week to Terror Titans #1. Terror Titans #1 was simply an abysmal read. Not even my devotion to my girl, Ravager, could get me to enjoy this issue.

McKeever foists some truly cheesy and campy dialogue on the reader. There is absolutely no character work performed in this issue. All of the Terror Titans have the same generic villainous personalities. There is also a startling lack of chemistry between the various characters.

Ravager was poorly written. I love Rose and I was immensely enjoying all the incredible character work that Johns pulled off with her character. Johns managed to evolve and grow Rose’s character beyond that of a boring and lame derivative character into an intriguing character with a unique personality. It is an absolute shame to see all of Rose’s character growth from Johns being totally ignored by McKeever.

Rose’s character has completely regressed under McKeever’s direction. McKeever gives us a pathetically shallow and stereotypical take on Ravager. It is sad to see Johns’ complex version of Rose being stripped down by McKeever as he reduces Rose to a one-dimensional brawler character with a bad attitude.

McKeever also failed to get me to buy into why in the world Ravager would leave the Titans and go join up with Clock King and his Terror Titans. I mean, seriously, just because Clock King has a similar power? That is it? That is just lame.

Terror Titans #1 also is chock full of mindless violence and killing. Honestly, it seems that McKeever lacks enough writing talent to establish a character as a villain without having them slaughter a hero. Rather than perform actual hard work and craft a sinister villain through quality character work, McKeever goes the cheap route by having the Persuader butcher Molecule.

The level of violence and killing increases as McKeever has one of the Dark Side Club soldiers put a bullet in Fever’s head after Rose refuses to kill her subsequent to winning their fight in the Dark Side Club’s arena. Again, McKeever uses death as a cheap way to try and shock the reader. Hey, DC, here is a little tip for you: It does not work.

DC has given the reader so much gratuitous death and killing that it has bordered on death porn over the past couple of years. The reader is so completely desensitized to killing that deaths of characters have absolutely zero impact on the reader. How about instead of throwing killing after killing at the reader DC instead just tries to give us well plotted stories with solid dialogue and quality character work? Just an idea.

Also, killing characters that the reader has no connection to or no knowledge of robs the deaths of any impact. How about instead of using these new characters as nothing more than cannon fodder, DC goes ahead and tries to develop them and grow them into useful characters that can contribute to the tapestry of the DCU. Or at least give their deaths some meaning.

I have no idea what the point or purpose of the Terror Titans is other than to overwhelm the reader with enough mindless blood and guts scenes. I guess this is DC making an effort to show that they are more “hardcore” than Marvel is.

So congrats to Batman #680 for winning The Che Award of the week and “congrats” to Terror Titans #1 for winning the Sequential Methadone Award for the week.