“I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger!”

There is a cliché in every action movie where the hero loses his loved one(s) and goes on an angry rampage seeking vengeance until he reaches the big boss. Black Adam takes on that cliché this week as 52 reaches a dark turning point in the DC Universe.

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Or “If They’re The Suicide Squad, How Come There’s So Many Of ‘Em Left?”

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “realism” in superhero comics. Books like Ultimate Spider-Man have been able to look at characters and events in a more adult fashion, while maintaining the best of what Stan & Steve established for the character. Some books have been wildly successful with a more realistic bent (Astro City, for one), while others have actually created MORE ridiculous premises by taking “realism” to it’s extreme (Mark Millar’s brilliant “Wanted,” for example, does grim and gritty so well that it passes back around the other end of the scale to parody, though I have to believe this is intentional.) “Checkmate” mixes real-world politics and spy-game cliches with big swatches of superheroes and their various baggage. How well does it work? (more…)