DCU Comic Book Reviews

The Brave And The Bold #9

Changing Times

February 2008

Written by Mark Waid

Pencils by George Pérez

Inks by Bob Wiacek and Scott Koblish

Cover by George Pérez

Synopsis

The Challengers Of The Unknown have the Book of Destiny and are finding repeated passages that refer to some villain by the name Megistus.  Heading into the room for further reading, Ace Morgan is attacked by a monster made of pages literally ripped from the book.  The pages reveal Megistus battling the Metal Men and Robby “Dial He for Hero” Reed from several years ago, The boy Commandos and Blackhawk in World War II, and Carter Hall (aka Hawkman) and Ryan Choi (aka The Atom) just recently in Ivy University.  In this final battle, the Atom uses Hawkman’s nth metal combined with the Dwarf Star to blas Megistus away, and into the book, where he then takes on a life of his own. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I have to admit that while I am amazed at the sheer audacity and brilliance of Waid and Perez to tackle three different stories featuring six different heroes in one 22-page issue, I also had a very tough time slogging through the issue. It is dense, not only in the writing where narration boxes and word balloons threaten to block out the drawings, but also the sheer number of panels Perez uses on each page.  It feels like a sensory overload and for someone who learned (so to speak) to read comic books in the modern era where every artist includes two to three single-panel splash pages, it takes a lot of getting used to such density (sorry, McFly) in a book.  But it is to the credit to Waid and Perez that the book kept my interest and I enjoyed the hell out of it.  Each of the stories featured characters from a different era of DC publishing history and Waid manages to write each story in the manner and style that befits each era (and probably explains why the final installment was my favorite and the WWII story was my least favorite). 

I am going to give Waid credit, but it may have been the editors who did it, but I loved the fact that during the Atom sequence there is a quotation (from Albert Einstein) included on the page.  It is a little idiosyncratic thing that Gail Simone has been doing since she started writing the Atom and seeing it here cements how well Waid writes not only this character but all of the different characters he handles in this book. 

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