DCU Comic Book Reviews

SALVATION RUN #3

All You Need Is Hate

March 2008

Written by Matthew Sturges

Pencils by Sean Chen

Inks by Walden Wong

Cover by Sean Chen

Synopsis

On the place they call “Hell Planet,” Lex Luthor attempts to lead the displaced villains in efforts to find a way off the planet and back to Earth.  The Joker, however, refuses to bow down to Luthor’s authority.  Just then, a monster pops out of the ground.  The Joker brings together a group to deal with the monster.  Later, a fight breaks out between Luthor’s people who are working and those just sitting around.  When Iron Cross grabs the Joker’s jacket, the Joker kills him.  A large-scale fight then breaks out.  Joker then convinces Gorilla Grodd to use his telepathy to stop then fight.  When everyone calms down, the Joker decides to leave, asking who is going to follow.  Afterwards, Luthor admits it was part of his plan to get rid of Joker.  Meanwhile, “Blockbuster” walks away, turning back into the Martian Manhunter to make a status report:  the situation is out of control.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I don’t know.  It seems like a great premise and I love the way Luthor and the Joker are handled in this issue, but I am not enjoying this mini-series all that much.  I think the problem is that the cast of characters is too big and the size of the mini-series (in terms of being able to tell a story) is just too small.  There are a number of characters, a lot of them big-name characters, who are shuffled off to the narrative side because there isn’t enough room to include them in the main story.  Hell, you could create an entire mini-series featuring just the Flash rogues or even Batman’s enemies.  Hell, there is also the story of the old Suicide Squad members on the same planet with those villains they caught.  And what about Catwoman?  Finally, even though all of these characters are villains, some are more evil than others.  I would love to see what happens when evil meets even-more-evil.  Essentially, I guess what I am saying, is that the concept is great, but this mini-series just can’t do enough to completely tell all of the possible stories than could be told.  And for that reason, it just feels incomplete, more of an editorial exercise to get to Final Crisis rather than a device to tell stories. 

What happened to Bill Willingham?  He wrote the first two issues and then is gone from the series, or is he going to return to finish this thing off? I am not really sure it makes that much of a difference.  Sturges has worked with Willingham before on the Fables and Jack Of Fables books.  Plus, Sturges took over for Willingham on Shadowpact.  So, I guess there won’t be much difference and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone read this book and didn’t realize there was a change in writers. 

 

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