THIS WEEK: Absolute Power Task Force VII #4 arrives! Plus, we have our usual round-up of blurbs about other DC books hitting shops!
Absolute Power Task Force VII #4
Writer: Pornsak Pichetshote
Artist: Claire Roe
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
We are about half way through DC’s summer event book Absolute Power at this point. The main series is about half done as is the companion series Absolute Power Task Force VII. It started as an event comic easy to pick up for anyone who hadn’t read any of the stories that led into it; “Failsafe”, “House of Brainiac”, and “Beast World”. That’s almost a year worth of set up there. Thankfully the Absolute Power: Ground Zero special and issue #1 made everything seem pretty clear.
Very quickly though Absolute Power became the kind of event series where you have to read EVERYTHING. Issue one ends in one place and then issue two picks up as if an entire act happened in between. God forgive you if you didn’t read the tie-in issues that explaining why Superman wears in his black costume from the Death of Superman again or how any of the characters got fancy new armor.
This makes reading a book like Absolute Power Task Force VII, advertised as a book examining the different Amazos robots under Amanda Waller’s control as they fight various factions of heroes, suddenly seem more important than it really is. Because now it seems like really important events are happening somewhere needed to understand the main series. And a series with the name Absolute Power Task Force VII seems like the ideal place to link those events. Especially since this series comes out biweekly.
Except this series is more of an anthology series following the different Amazo Robots attacking different heroic factions. Things happen but since a different creative team tackles each issue, what happens mostly pertains to a particular group of heroes that Amazo fights. What happens in this series has more impact on whatever book it ties into (see below) than the actual event taking place.
Take for example issue four of this series written by Pornsak Pichetshote, and art by Claire Roe and Lee Loughridge. Failsafe, the robot Batman without compassion, hunts down Voodoo from WildC.A.T.s in an old Court of Owls base. Nightwing and the Tim Drake Robin gathered a small group of heroes trying to evade capture. Failsafe finds them and someone gets captured in their attempt to escape.
If you’re someone who read Absolute Power #2 and wondered how Nightwing got to a maze under Gotham from the disaster at the Fortress of Solitude, you’re out of luck. If you picked this up because it follows an issue of Batman or Nightwing, you’re probably going to be really confused about the Steve Trevor subplot in this issue that runs through this series. That subplot where Trevor infiltrates the Gamorra Island prison seems totally disconnected from the actual series. Something’s happening with the villains but who knows if it will actually relate to the event meaningfully.
That said, this is actually a solid issue for a one shot inside a huge event. Pichetshote writes a compelling story about heroes trying to face inconceivable odds with limited means. The visuals by Roe and Lougridge are some of the most distinct in this limited series so far. Roe’s heavy use of shadows render gives the adventure a sense of claustrophobia and isolation. Loughridge’s limited pallet of blues and greens doesn’t overwhelm the art by Roe.
Still this is a small story that will be lost in the great event that is Absolute Power. It’s symptomatic of just how unwieldy limiting the main series to just four issues is. There’s so little breathing room that anything that ties into the series takes on a greater importance than it should. Absolute Power Task Force VII should just be a series of one shot stories showing how the heroes face this new breed of Amazo robots. Instead it’s a confusing series that ties into other tie in issues.
The Round-Up
- Green Lantern #14: Speaking of tie-ins of tie-ins, if you hadn’t read Absolute Power Task Force VII #3, you are truly going to be lost with parts of this issue. That issue, written by Jeremy Adams who also writes this issue, had the JSA and Alan Scott fight the Green Lantern looking Amazo. Scott surrender himself to that one after detecting it may have developed free will after absorbing the Starheart from him. The JSA skipped off to the Tower of Fate while Scott’s still in the Gamorra Island prison testing this new Amazo called Jadestone. Meanwhile, Hal Jordan attempts to escape. The best part of this issue is Hal using various weapons from villains to try to escape Waller’s goons and artists Fernando Pasarin and Oclair Albert have fun depicting the accessories from bad guys ranging from Condiment King to The Key. One feels bad for anyone reading this book proper though with the Durlan take over of the United Planets subplot getting shoved to a few pages and back up in this issue. Meanwhile anyone reading this book because of the Absolute Power connection will definitely be confused by that last page. Absolute Power marches on absolutely.
- Batman: Gotham By Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #3: It really is disappointing that a sequel series to Gotham by Gaslight, a comic with such a simple concept (Batman faces Jack the Ripper) feels overly complicated. Andy Diggle’s script seems to do Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but with DC superheroes. He crams in as many DC characters as he can into the Victorian setting in the least exciting way possible. A comic where Wonder Woman comes from a Themiscyra at the center of the Earth and fights a giant talking centipede should be way more engaging. It’s more fun to type Alan Scott as a conman aerialist than read about it. Diggle can’t create a world that’s truly a vibrant place on its own here. Everything seems like the gag that “if you put a gear on it, it’s steampunk” except played for straight. Even if you set something in Victorian or Edwardian England, you still have to make that a believable space no matter how beautifully Leandro Fernandez and Matt Hollingsworth render it.
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