Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers #2

Writer – Joe Casey
Artist – Nathan Fox, Michel Fiffe
Colours – Brad Simpson

The Galactic Rangers are on the hunt for Captain Victory and they will not leave a man behind.  Thus it is that Mister Mind comes up with an idea to trace the Captain no matter where he might be.  Meanwhile Victor, the young and incomplete clone is on Earth and getting acclimated to his surroundings as well as biting off more than he can chew.  On the other side of the universe, the damaged clone of the good Captain is holding his own against the planet and its peoples who only want to give him trouble where he wants none.  Hopefully the Rangers can get to him before something happens that neither they, nor the respective Victory’s, want happening.  Casey pulls another exciting issue out of the bag with this week’s Captain Victory.  The book is well paced with the Rangers on a mission against time, while on the various planets, Victor and Victory are just doing their thing, unaware of who they truly are.  The older and scarred Victory might have the better chance of being rescued as he seems to have some semblance of his former identity, though he does not speak and spends most of his time fending off attackers.  Nathan Fox and Michel Fiffe provide some amazing artwork which is a perfect match for Casey’s story of cloning gone amuck.  With the cliff-hanger the book ended on, it looks like it is going to get pretty interesting quite soon.

4 out of 5

Batman Eternal #23

Writer – Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Tim Seeley, Ray Fawkes, Kyle Higgins
Artist – Dustin Nguyen
Inker – Derek Fridolfs
Colours – John Kalisz

This week’s issue of Batman Eternal is jam-packed full of things going on, none of them good.  Catwoman has a chat with the Lion in prison where he tells her that only she can unite the various gangs of Gotham with her as the kingpin and only then will the bloodshed stop.  Batman is still facing off with the Architect when Gotham is suddenly hit with an earthquake, an aftereffect of saving the Beacon Tower.  Hush is a little peeved at the way things have gone down, but perhaps sees a bright side in all of it. And to top it all off, Commissioner Bard wants to declare martial law.  The writing team keep the momentum going from last issue’s action-packed extravaganza throwing in some Catwoman to the mix to keep it interesting.  What the Lion proposes is not out of the question and actually seems to make sense, so if Selina takes him up on the offer, it will definitely make for an interesting change in the status quo in Gotham going forward.  Though Batman might have failed to capture the Architect and though he did end up saving his tower, the fallout from the earthquake should make things quite interesting for everyone in the city.  So with another fantastic issue from DC’s current crop of weekly books, kudos go out to everyone involved for making Eternal a ‘must read’ the last couple of months.

4 out of 5