Free Comic book month "The new 52 preview"

So did you all have a fun Free Comic Book Day this past Saturday? I did. I got a huge stack of free comics. Some are full issues, but most of the main stream stuff is just a mini preview. But for this week’s comic, I have to look at the DC book. Why? Well because it has more information about Pandora, that’s why. So let’s take a look at DC’s “The New 52 Preview”

The cover is awesome. You have the big three in a nice group, a looming Pandora behind them; Batman is holding what looks like a golden skull and Pandora a magic gun. Plus, Pandora’s red aura is shining nicely off the heroes in the foreground.

The comic begins with the first group of self elected magic users bringing punishment to a group of three people that they deemed evil. So while these ‘evil transgressors’ cower, the shouting and frowning magical council forces their own magic on them for their punishments. First up is a man who has great greed. He is forced to live forever as a STRANGER, nothing more than a PHANTOM.

The second man to be punished seems to be the only truly evil one, as right as the council starting their punishment on him, he claimed that he will always be powerful. But the council takes his memories and his face, making him forever QUESTION everything about who he really is.

The last evil person is Pandora. But all she can do is cry for she does not know what she did wrong. Rather than just explain calmly what happened, they yell it. Pandora, as we now know, is claimed to be evil since she opened a box, which looks like a golden skull, that she found somewhere. The box had no warning or anything to tell her not to open it. Heck, on Earth, no one even knew this box existed before or after the fact. It is also a box that these magical idiots thought that hiding it on earth where any random person can open it, not keeping it with them under tight watch or heck, PUTTING A LOCK ON THE THING, was a great idea in all their shouting, angry wisdom. Why does magic screw up more stuff then it fixes?

But after many years of crying, Pandora said that she has to try and fix this mess that she made. And once again, why I like Pandora really shows. It took her a while, but she realized that she made a mistake and is now doing all she can to try and fix it.

We then cut to the Red room. This place is where Vic’s dad is currently working. It turns out that he is still a jerk to his son as he only really cares about the machine part of Cyborg. At least he cares about it more than the flesh side of Vic. After a bit of talk, they get a video feed from Earth-2 and the JSA being made. I have no idea if this will come into play later or if this was just a way to say that Earth-1 now knows about Earth-2.

The next scene is Steve Trevor and Etta Candy talking about the most resent battle the Justice League had. Not much happens here but Steve does get a copy of the Justice League book, the one that recounted their adventures and fight against Darkseid. But before anything else can happen, he gets a call that the magic room of the USA has been broken into. 

It’s Pandora of course. She came to get her box. Now while the guards have her aimed at and she does have a gun pointed at them, the first thing she does is try to talk to them. FINALLY! The box is hers, kinda, and she did at least try to tell them that and avoid a fire fight right away. Of course, when she knows that the gun battle is unavoidable, she does take the first move. But I can live with that since at least she did tell them that it was her box.

So Pandora gets her box, tells Steve that it is the cure to her curse, and Pandora magics away. This ticks Steve off and right after Pandora leaves he hears that there was an attack on the tech base from before. Steve orders lockdown on all the other bases since tech and magic were just broken into. After he orders that, he walks off to tell the Justice League about what is going on, looking rather angry. Pandora, in a dark alley way, looks at her box and says that she knows what must be done.

Cut to the near future where Batman has the box and is running away from a new Green Lantern. New Green Lantern says that this war is all the Justice Leagues fault and we get treated to this 4 page fold out spread.

Awesome, right? Let’s get a roll call going, shall we? We have Black Adam being attacked by Deadman. (Who is dead again. What happened to the white ring?) The Flash is running around and is being attacked by some kid I don’t know. Aquaman and Mera are posing for the cameras. Wonder Woman is throwing her robe around, I guess trying to tie up Aquaman. It does not look very clear to me. There is Superman attacking people with a stone column. Most surprising is Element Woman, a character who was created in the Flashpoint event, helping to hold back Cyborg who is one of the targets of the stone column. I liked her in Flashpoint but was afraid that she would die after it. Nice to see her again I must say. We have Hawkman fighting Green Arrow while The Atom is chasing after Batman to get the box I assume. And new Green Lantern is getting his butt handed to him by the column.

It is an awesome action scene that does not draw the eyes to any one event. All the attacks and characters they have going on at once works here as both a picture and as part of the story. What I mean is that with this huge cast of characters going at it right now, most of them heroes, it makes you wonder what went wrong in the world of DC.

But yes, I know, this might just turn out to be DC civil war. I hope it is not just that.

The rest of the comic is just preview pages taken right from the other books of the second wave relaunch. I already gave my feelings on those books last Wednesday.

This preview did what it was meant to do very well I felt. It is like a movie trailer as it was suppose to give you enough information to make you know more of what is going on. Plus, it gave us some more information about Pandora, the girl who changed the whole DCU almost a year ago now. But this was the only DC book to have to deal with current mainstream items, so next week I’ll give another company some of my love. Promise.

All Images (c) DC