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quetzelish 's review for:
DC Comics: Bombshells, Vol. 2: Allies
by Marguerite Bennett
Volume 2 of Bombshells starts off really strong, taking the characters of volume one and crafting a small story with the batgirls that is the highlight of this volume. Unfortunately, that means that the rest of the volume is downhill from there. But take that with a grain of salt, as my favorite parts of this series are Batwoman and the batgirls. This plays into something I've noticed with Bennett's writing, her characters are phenomenal, different and feel real. Bringing so many varied female characters to the forefront is important to her and she does it really well but the plots she crafts around them feel lacking.
Here the story suffers from a very uneven pacing, having whole events missing for multiple issues and the plot itself not advancing in any consistent time frame. Do all of these issues take place over a few days, a few weeks or like the first volume, a few months? And the villains kind of come out of nowhere (other than the overarching villain), with their motivations mostly being really shallow or nebulous. Which is fine for a couple minor villains but every one, save the big bad, has this introduction. It just feels like the villains, heroines, and main plot are all disconnected from each other just enough for it to feel off and make the stakes have less impact than they should but not enough to ruin the story or the personalities of each character.
While the art is also really good, capturing a wide berth of colors, the constant shifting of artists and art styles is really off putting. Sometimes the action doesn't suit an artist's style and other times it just sucks you out of the story seeing the change but not having it fit the mood of the setting. But the biggest issue is the faces and some of the action scenes. They always seem to have dead eyes and 3 mouth shapes: half open slack jaw, closed mouth, and perfect O scream. Again, this only happens with some of the art but when it happens, it kills any emotions the characters are trying to express.
As far as the action is concerned, this is much less common but the one part that sticks in my mind is when Wonder woman kicks down on goon #7's face but she's not drawn in any dynamic way. The panel has a floaty feel to it, which is not what an action panel should have. The impact isn't there so it falls flat. The final gripe I have is with the way they layed out thr volume itself. I know this was first published as digital half pages but when they put it into print, they could have at least tried to help the readers figure out when a 2 page spread was being used! There were many times when the panels were layed out as if it were 2 side by side pages but until you looked at page 2, you couldn't tell that it was actually a 2 page spread and that you were missing bits of the story by skipping those top right panels. And vice versa. It bothered me a lot, but that's on the people who edited the physical volume (and only a tiny bit on the creators, as while this wasn't the original layout, they are still thinking of it as comic pages).
But, with all this griping, I still give it a 4. It's a solid universe to build upon and although the plot is a bit thin and the art jumps around a lot, the characters are wonderful and I want to keep reading about them. This is one of the most important books out now, as it's 90% female, with a wide variety of characters. Now all that's left to do is to give them stronger plots and maybe, smaller but tighter storieslines across issues.
Here the story suffers from a very uneven pacing, having whole events missing for multiple issues and the plot itself not advancing in any consistent time frame. Do all of these issues take place over a few days, a few weeks or like the first volume, a few months? And the villains kind of come out of nowhere (other than the overarching villain
Spoiler
TenebrusWhile the art is also really good, capturing a wide berth of colors, the constant shifting of artists and art styles is really off putting. Sometimes the action doesn't suit an artist's style and other times it just sucks you out of the story seeing the change but not having it fit the mood of the setting. But the biggest issue is the faces and some of the action scenes. They always seem to have dead eyes and 3 mouth shapes: half open slack jaw, closed mouth, and perfect O scream. Again, this only happens with some of the art but when it happens, it kills any emotions the characters are trying to express.
As far as the action is concerned, this is much less common but the one part that sticks in my mind is when Wonder woman kicks down on goon #7's face but she's not drawn in any dynamic way. The panel has a floaty feel to it, which is not what an action panel should have. The impact isn't there so it falls flat. The final gripe I have is with the way they layed out thr volume itself. I know this was first published as digital half pages but when they put it into print, they could have at least tried to help the readers figure out when a 2 page spread was being used! There were many times when the panels were layed out as if it were 2 side by side pages but until you looked at page 2, you couldn't tell that it was actually a 2 page spread and that you were missing bits of the story by skipping those top right panels. And vice versa. It bothered me a lot, but that's on the people who edited the physical volume (and only a tiny bit on the creators, as while this wasn't the original layout, they are still thinking of it as comic pages).
But, with all this griping, I still give it a 4. It's a solid universe to build upon and although the plot is a bit thin and the art jumps around a lot, the characters are wonderful and I want to keep reading about them. This is one of the most important books out now, as it's 90% female, with a wide variety of characters. Now all that's left to do is to give them stronger plots and maybe, smaller but tighter storieslines across issues.