Heroes of War
I'm not completely impressed with the execution, but the overall propaganda tone of the cover is definitely on the right track. It's inspiring as we finally enter the big battle of Robinson's run.
Nicola Scott's back on art, and I had forgotten how perfect he was on this series after the Annual and last month's issue. Nicola Scott nails all the characters, the epic entrances of the major players, and the smooth and varied action of the war. Comic wars can tend to turn into a discombobulated mess without the proper artist, but Nicola Scott is the proper artist. I especially liked how you could see each move Jay made as he takes down multiple foes at super speed.
Even though this is basically the tip of the iceberg of the war, there's such a grand epic tone to everything that goes on. There's a lot of dramatic pep talks and pre war conversations, and then all hell breaks loose.
It's clear that there's still something secret going on with Sloan, I kind of feel like The Sandmen, The Atom, and Red Arrow shouldn't have a problem with The New Wonders coming in and weakening Steppenwolf's forces before they get there unless they had some shady secret mission. There's a lot of intrigue hidden in the seemingly straightforward Good vs. Evil war. We've already seen the full scope of The Atom, and the Sandman Squadron is still totally awesome, but I'm not sold on Red Arrow. It feels like because of Red Tornado's ties to the JSA, all 'Red' characters are suddenly in Earth 2, regardless of how much sense it makes. Red Arrow feels like he was thrown in here with the few who work, like Red Torpedo. His design is extremely generic, and he's got an attitude to match. He barely talks and has an itchy murder finger. Yawn. And I really doubt there's any room left to expand on him before Robinson leaves.
In Conclusion: 4/5
As epic as the buildup always is, and the hype to match; Wars are very hard to pull off properly in comics, sometimes I wonder why people always get so excited. Sure the scale is usually easy to achieve, but usually at the sacrifice of the interesting individual battles muddling down into a clusterfudge of laser beams. James Robinson and Nicola Scott DEFINITELY know how to avoid that trap, and this war is off to a great start.
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