DCU Comic Book Reviews

CHECKMATE #11

Corvalho, Part One

April 2007

Written by Greg Rucka, Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir

Pencils by Steve Scott

Inks by Nathan Massengill

Cover by

Synopsis

In Rio de Janeiro, Beatriz DaCosta (aka Fire) visit with her father is interrupted by a call from Checkmate.  At the castle, Michael Holt (aka Mr. Terrific) informs everyone that news has spread that the elections in Santa Prisca have been rigged.  Colonel Computron contacts Checkmate and informs them he has proof who was behind it all, but he needs someone to get him out of Santa Prisca.  It seems Amanda Waller was behind the rigged elections to make sure a friendly face to the United States becomes President of the United States.  Now, she needs to get rid of Colonel Computron or all evidence will point back to her.  Meanwhile, Mr. Terrific and Sasha Bourdeaux have a feeling that Amanda Waller may be behind the rigged elections. Taleb Beni Khalid has a hunch and decides to investigate.  Later, Fire and Tommy Jagger are sent to Santa Prisca, where they find Colonel Computron just as Taleb finds a connection between Fire and Amanda Waller.  Unfortunately, Fire is the one to get o him, where she then burns him. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I really liked this one.  The politics of the elections in Santa Prisca were important to the plot, but did not overwhelm the story.  At the heart of the story are the characters, their motivations and the air actions, whether they are overt (like Waller) or still unknown to use (like Fire).  Taleb’s motivations for his query into Corvalho (something he overheard Waller telling Fire in a previous issue) makes perfect sense given Terrific and Sasha’s hunches.  Jagger’s willingness to head in Santa Prisca for revenge also works well, especially as a set-up to the second part of the story when they finally catch-up to Bane.  The cliffhanger is a killer (literally) and I am eager to see how everything shakes out in the rest of the story. 

This has got to be one of the best Checkmate issues to date, although admittedly the series is not even a year old.  This might have to do with the fact that several of the plot points for this story have built on previous stories, not only in the pages of this book (rogue squad) but also in the Infinite Crisis books and even a small bit in the JSA Classified book (which hinted strongly at some of the things that Mr. Terrific talks about it on the page 10.  The organization of Checkmate is supposed to be a global force and seeing how well Rucka assimilates the stories into the DC Universe

My first reaction when I saw the last page is that Fire’s actions are some sort of subterfuge and that she really did not kill Computron.  A lot of that, of course, stems from the fact that Fire is susppsoed to be a hero (enforced by the mention of the Justice League) so I am not inclined to believe she would murder someone that way.  But I would like to think that Rucka and co-writers would not take the easy way out and instead have Fire kill Computron and then deal with the fallout. 

A search of Corvalho, without the word Checkmate in the findings, reveals nothing more than either people spelling Carvalho name incorrectly or spelling correctly.  Like the Thinker’s results, there is a Claire Corvalho who was a writer (only two movies!) in the 30s.  There is also a street name in Portugal.  Obviously, the writers have done a little research of their own.

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