miércoles, 28 de noviembre de 2018

Some thoughts about DC's Nuclear Winter Special #1

What is the future of the world?

The whole planet has gone through an apocalypse and now Rip Hunter has no choice but tell stories to save his life.

Another Holiday special is here and unlike previous years, this one proves to be more interesting because it's centered around a post-apocaliptic future.

Mark Russell brings a story about Rip Hunter who is narrating stories to a cannibalistic gang to distract them. The segment serves as a connection to all the other stories and it works charmingly enough as most of Russell's works. Mike Norton's artwork is really solid in terms of expressions.

Then both Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing arrive with a story suited in the Batman 666 future where Damian has another confrontation with Ra's Al Ghul. This works in several levels because of the writers understanding of how Damian works, even in this darker continuity while respecting everything that happened during Grant Morrison's run and they even humanize the villain. Giuseppe Camuncoli's artwork gets the job done from a storytelling perspective.

Steve Orlando delivers a tale about Superman One Million which is fitting considering Orlando's affection to Morrison's ideas which also involves Martian Manhunter which is also logical considering Orlando's upcoming work on the character, all of this proves to be effective. Brad Walker's artwork is expressive as always.

The Flash receives a segment by Jeff Loveness which tries to emulate a similar feeling as Barry's role in Crisis on Infinite Earths but is not nearly as memorable and has a few writing ticks I'm not fond of. Christian Duce's artwork is also a bit out of place for a story about the speedster considering his dark style.

Mairghread Scott handles an Aquaman tale about another end of the world scenario and works fine enough while touching solid aspects of the character. Dexter Soy's pencils are on-point as expected.

Tom Taylor shows his love of Superman concepts with a segment about Supergirl which is centered around the premise of this special and features an appropriate conclusion. Yasmine Putri's art is quite good in terms of character models and style.

Firestorm and obscure characters like the Nuclear Family receive their own story by Paul Dini based on their last Christmas and becomes pretty hearwarming. Gerry Ordway's style is surprisingly polished here.

Kamandi, the last boy on Earth, appropriately gets a part here both written and drawn by Phil Hester and as expected from the creator, is solid from every angle.

Cecil Castelluci handles the tale of Catwoman and her new sidekick and is decent enough but not that impressive. Amancay Nahuelpan's artwork is probably the best part of this due that the style reminds me of Greg Capullo's.

Finally comes a Green Arrow segment written by Dave Wielgosz and it started with a rather insufferable version of Oliver who was supposedly the "conscience" of the Justice League but leave after they didn't listen to him (and yeah, Ollie could never be anyone's conscience considering his barely works) but fortunately the writer doesn't take this route seriously and actually addresses the problems with Ollie's character and how that alienates his loved ones which is as accurate as you can get. Best of all, he didn't end with Black Canary which is a welcome change. Scott Kolins' art is serviceable at least.

Overall, a pretty good special. Basically no bad story here.

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