Reviews

52, Vol. 2 by Drew Edward Johnson, Pat Olliffe, Eddy Barrows, Dale Eaglesham, Keith Giffen, Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, Joe Bennett, Shawn Moll, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Phil Jimenez, Chris Batista

savastano2's review

adventurous dark funny hopeful mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

kintha's review against another edition

I'm not going to give this one a star rating, as it's impossible to separate my feelings about the comic from my self-directed frustration of having accidentally returned it to the library and then having to wait a week to get it back.

tmwebb3's review against another edition

3.0

Hit and miss. Really enjoyed the creator's thoughts at the end of each issue.

karliclover's review against another edition

3.0

I think the best part was seeing Black Adam happy. I like him as a villain, but I also like him as a hero.

Booster Gold's part in this volume was nice. I wish I had read this when it was first released. Maybe then I would have freaked out like I was supposed to.

The Renee/Charlie story is solid. I think it's probably the strongest in the series.

I still think the Animal Man/Starfire/Adam Strange story is uninteresting. I was hoping that I would change my mind after reading it a second time, but it still doesn't interest me. And I still hate Lobo.

shane_tiernan's review against another edition

3.0

Half way there! The scope of this is so wide that it's kind of all over the place as each part of the storyline takes a long time to take place because they have to write about the other 4 or 5 storylines first. Every once in a while they start talking about people I have never heard of and I feel like I'm missing something, but overall it's cool and the art's great.

magnetgrrl's review against another edition

2.0

The story is breaking down even further for me in volume 2 of this series. I'm unhappy with the lack of development in the storyline with Montoya and the Question and I could really care less about what's going on with that whole implausible "two American detectives in a Middle Eastern country solving international crimes!" plot, let alone the crazy Black Adam/Isis story. I'm assuming Booster Gold's story will make more sense soon... the other stories I am less interested in on the whole, not being as familiar with the characters. The guy with the robots is kind of cool, though.

jdauer5's review against another edition

4.0

Good storytelling but the end didn't justify the length. Some stories got closure too quickly.

rebus's review

2.5

There's more anti-Islam propaganda--how are their public executions any worse than gas chambers or electric chairs that draw vast crowds?--and the tale grows rather boring and overly complicated. There's also some 90s PC ideology infecting it, saying that identity is about determinism and that no one is really crazy (I somewhat do believe the latter). There's also false info suggesting that prisons in the US are more humane than in third world countries, which is patently false. It's just a different method of evil here, one that wears people down emotionally while it sucks what little it can out of them (with occasional physical or sexual abuse a part of it).

It all rings hollow at this point, a bizarre excuse to bring characters back to life and kill off the dead weight, and Grant Morrison devolved into a pretentious hack at long last.  

crookedtreehouse's review against another edition

4.0

I continue to be surprised by how much I'm enjoying this dense, continuity-packed bit of popcorn reading from DC. I shouldn't be. [a:Geoff Johns|10305|Geoff Johns|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1403679910p2/10305.jpg], [a:Grant Morrison|12732|Grant Morrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1587378296p2/12732.jpg], [a:Greg Rucka|18327|Greg Rucka|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1192549912p2/18327.jpg], and [a:Mark Waid|5363|Mark Waid|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1281876586p2/5363.jpg] are some of the best early 21st century comic writers. But the way all these stories do or don't intersect is fascinating. There are so many ways this series should be going wrong, but according to the betweenmatter, everytime one of the writers hit a roadblock with their chunk of the story, another of the writers would give them a swerve idea that completely changed the narrative. So far, it seems to have worked for the better every time.

Personally, I'm enjoying the Booster Gold saga the most, with the Question/Montoya/Marvel Family story as a close second, and the Dibney mystery a close third. The Steel/Luthor/Inifnity Inc story should be the best, and may get there, but didn't feel as vital in this volume as it did in volume one. The Animal Man/Starfire/Adam Strange storyline wasn't my favorite to begin with and adding Pope Lobo and a space dolphin was too [b:Seaguy|158584|Seaguy|Grant Morrison|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172273383l/158584._SY75_.jpg|153060] for me, and didn't help things. Still, I'm very much onboard for the next volume.

danithezombie's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

4.5