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Mild Mannered Reviews - JLA Comics

JLA: Scary Monsters #3

JLA: Scary Monsters #3 [of 6]

Scheduled to arrive in stores: May 21, 2003

Cover date: July 2003

Writter: Chris Claremont
Penciller: Josh Hood
Inker: Sean Parsons

"Bloody Bones"

Neal Bailey Reviewed by: Neal Bailey (baileyn@attbi.com)



Green Lantern, though injured, uses all of his energy to free Wonder Woman from the block of ice that has covered the lake. See last issue for an explanation.

They pull Diana out, but the ice keeps returning. Flash can't vibrate her free. Manhunter and Superman can't burn her free. Superman uses his microscopic vision to see that the cold is far below absolute zero, impossibly.

Plastic Man has an idea.

Since the ice is not directly on Wonder Woman's skin, he slides into the small hole, coating Wonder Woman like a second skin. He then vibrates, creating a hairline fracture which the JLA exploit at Batman's command.

Wonder Woman is freed. She clutches a rifle desperately.

Conditions seem the same as they were just before the creatures attacked Superman, so Superman tells them to withdraw and leave him to fight. They start to object, but he tells them that he knows what he is doing.

Superman fights the beasts with heat vision, the only known weakness, and they splatter him with an anesthetic acid. As he's about to pass out, Jade and Lantern pull him in with improvised fishing poles.

Inside the hotel, the JLA barricade themselves, and realize, to their horror, that Wonder Woman is being taken over by the monsters. He arm, her eyes, her hair are perverted to evil.

Batman has Lantern and Jade set up security, and he sends Flash with a data recorder to take schematics of the castle. He tells Ms. Park, Flash's significant other, to keep the people calm. She tells him she's pleased with his faith in her.

Batman says, "I have no faith, Ms. Park. I know people."

Batman has J'onn go to speak with Kishana Lewis. He tells Plastic Man to go to the infirmary...Plastic Man is actually wounded from the battle, something that seems impossible even to him.

The director asks Batman to evacuate, but Batman thinks it will be too great a danger.

Superman calls it the Alamo, and Batman tells him he needs treatment. Superman tells Batman that he will be fine, just come get him in the Library when he is needed.

Superman explores Carmody's Folly, and the structures of the castle, as well as his large collection of Indian artifacts. Lois calls, and tells him that she loves him. He thanks her.

Batman and Flash find that the castle is stocked heavily with supplies and fire implements.

The league starts to move into the basement. The doctors are given guns, and they tell Flash that Diana's condition is worsening.

J'onn visits Kishana in the infirmary, and asks to again enter her mind. She agrees, and they are transported to the past, to Carmody. She sees the lake, evaporated by fire.

They see Wonder Woman, having taken the princess' weapon, frozen.

The wall in the real world explodes with monster, and Manhunter does his best to stave it off.

Kishana uses a gun to blow the beast apart in many places, but Manhunter is slashed brutally across the face.

Wonder Woman arrives just in time to save them, as does Superman. Green Lantern is on scene as well.

They flame the beasts, and they retract.

Wonder Woman tells them that Carmody's essense is in Kishana, and they want her dead.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that the director of the hotel is working with the creatures.

Kishana agrees to give whatever she needs to, and J'onn warns her she may have to.

5Story - 5: This is a great story, so far. I thought the enemy would be standard, and the threat silly as the issues go on, but they took down Superman! They ripped J'onn's face off! They cut Plasty! This is some good stuff.

More important, as implausible as comics can be, there is actual coherence to the plot here, continuity. This is the problem with a lot of specials...no continuity, no coherence, just stuff that sounds cool. It is obvious that Claremont has a good eye for detail. The only flaws I found were the fact that the end seemed a bit rushed (space I'd imagine, but things are taken care of in due course. It's not so bad).

5Art - 5: Hood continues to surprise me. There is a lot of stuff being asked by the writer here, and I can tell, just from personal experience, that the art is going the distance. Meaning, I've been toying around with writing a comic with an artist lately, to much success, but one of the hard thing is saying that I need eighteen things in a page, and only being able to physically fit 12. If you look at where Lantern appears in pseudo hologram, things are packed in there. Really packed in there. If the artist hadn't successfully accommodated the information, even the story of this comic, which I like, would have truly suffered.

And when the information level is small, meaning, full on shots, we have something so dramatic and detailed that it's hard to pull away from. Like the Diana shot with Plasty. Like Superman in the winds of the monsters.

My only problem is the slight errors in the coloration, or what seemed to be. There were two glaring color errors. First, Superman's heat vision on 8, or what seemed to be heat vision, had green coloring. This could just be my interpretation of the art, but then again, it is strange. Still, it could have been the acid. On page 14, Jimmy Olsen appears to have blue hair. Strange...or is it Jimmy. Either way, I just noticed those things.

Good work.

4Cover Art - 4: Gotta knock one for depicting something that didn't explicitly happen in the issue (her hand was toast by then, and the JLA found her encased in ice), but otherwise, the cover is well drawn, hello, good cleavage, dynamic, in that it is a perspective we're not used to, and succinct. The dead are hard to see at first, and the expression is one of real panic. This is one of the better covers I've seen lately, when covers lack background, detail, or significance in favor of the modern art. Which I respect, but I like detail. This is chock full.


Mild Mannered Reviews

2003

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

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