Who'd Like A Cocktail? #240

It's a fear a lot of men have, you know...

ALL STAR WESTERN #23 - Jonah Hex and Jeremiah Arkham manage to escape Gotham City and hole up with a bar maid and her room-mate. The pair help the fugitives by supplying them with a van that the police won't be looking for. When they stop at a march for a cancer benefit, however, it's interrupted by a lone gunman intent on running over and shooting as many people as possible. Hex gets hold of a gun and takes out the lunatic but it ends with him being captured by the police.

Another cracking issue as Jonah tries to make sense of the present and ends up having a (dark) knight in shining armour appear at the end to offer legal representation.

AQUAMAN #23 - Arthur and Mera escape from Xebel with the bad guys on their tail. By the time they reach Atlantis, it's under full scale attack from Scavenger and his crew and Aquaman uses his telepathy to bring the monstrous Topo to their aid. No sooner is the Scavenger defeated, however, than the Ice King and the Xebel troops appear just as Aquaman passes out. The epilogue reveals Aquaman has been unconscious for six months.

A bold end to the storyline and you have to wonder how much Arthur's going to be involved in the forthcoming Forever Evil story if he's out of action for that length of time.

GREEN TEAM #4 - Commodore tracks down and confronts Riot having learned who's behind the white mask: his father. The bad guy takes the team to his lair and explains why he's been attacking them - it all boils down to the suits Commodore and his friends are wearing but it doesn't pan out how Riot wanted and he ends up defeated.

M'eh - I'm not feeling the love, here, I have to admit and wouldn't be too disappointed if this was cancelled around issue #8.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #23 - the various Leagues meet in Greece and, one by one, each of the members fall to the corrupting influence of Pandora's Box and turn on each other. As the dust settles and the Box goes dormant, the new Atom's revealed as the traitor on the team, put there by the Outsider who steps forward to claim the Box and open the doorway between our Earth and Earth-Three, allowing the Crime Syndicate to come through and launch the Forever Evil story.

The end of Trinity War's not bad at all, mainly because (from my point of view) the Crime Syndicate, one of my favourite concepts, turns up!

LARFLEEZE #3 - the Wanderer gives Stargrave a potted history lesson of her origins and those of her brother/cousin the Laord of the Hunt. As it turns out, she actually owns Stargrave and he's happy to work for her at first until she reveals he needs to be castrated. After that, he's keen to return to Larfleeze's employ. When Larfleeze summons his Orange Lanterns, the Wanderer converts them from energy back to real, living beings and asks them to attack their former master while she escapes with Stargrave.

I was really hoping this would be a little more fun . . . it's not bad, don't get me wrong, but it feels a little forced.

TEEN TITANS #23 - working together, the Titans manage to prevent Kid Flash from being abducted by the mysterious beings from the late 30th Century before they sit down and work out the problems they've been having lately. Wonder Girl and Superboy decide to get back together as do Solstice and Kid Flash; Red Robin tries to convince Raven she's not as bad as she thinks she is; and Bunker heads off as his partner has surfaced from his coma.

Not bad story-wise although the art by Robson Rocha isn't appealing to me - I didn't like his stuff when he was on Worlds' Finest and I'm no fan here.

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And what made me smile:

Oh Jonah, you know how to treat a lady, don't you?