Sea of Change
the ONE SHOT I've been waiting for and DC delivers. The Crime Syndicate has taken over the world, every prison has been busted open from Belle Reve to Blackgate. The JL, JLA and JSA are all dead or missing and the only Heroes that can do anything about it are Villains.
Enter David Ray: AKA
Privateer
Treasure Hunter
Weapons Inventor
Pirate Assassin
come Anti Hero
(Dude don't do it. she sexy and everything but don't fall for it)
From this point the conversation is interrupted by an attack on Belle Reve.
Nothing new right? Not this time, the evil Justice League has attacked the entire earth and shit has really hit the fan. Imagine everything that could go wrong, all goes wrong at the same time. Amanda leaves to do her thing
and King Shark, well ..... does his thing and eats a couple of guards.
At this point Manta walks thru the prison chaos, gets his gear and leaves via some helicopter pilot named Brisco. For real Suicide Squaders this is a sort of easter egg and a memory of better days.
Manta goes to the big bad guy pow wow the Syndicate throws and is unimpressed. Matter of fact, he takes Aquaman's trident from some A list killers, disregards what Ultraman is saying and walks right out of the damn meeting like the G he is.
On a real note. I really like what Geoff Johns has done with this issue. He gave us another look and a deeper sense of who Black Manta is, the respect he commands from his peers and the independence of an alpha character that can hold down a solo book with no problem.
Now.... after neatly giving us a brief recap of the character without going thru a whole origin story, and tying the character directly into DC's new big event; Geoff humanizes Black Manta and shows us a man, a son lay down the pain of the loss of his father. The hate that burned hotter than Vesuvius that controlled his life is over
the hate was over. So much for that.
Let's go Killla
Nice post mate - maybe after all the Crime Syndicating is done, a revamped true anti hero Suicide Squad is on the way? I hope so.
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is, was the helicopter named Sheba? :) Excellent summary. It seems like they're handling Manta well, and I love love love that last splash of him with the red glare. I'm also happy they didn't just turn the entire book into a rage fest, because that's entirely too easy and much too one dimensional. Good job.
ReplyDeleteThanks guys,. They are handling Manta well and you know I'm pulling for an ongoing. I read some other reviews of 23.1 and all but one review really liked what Geoff and Tony Bedard did with the plot. They gave us a nice little story without a gore fest.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to flash a lot of blood. It's harder to tell a story of loss and finding your path afterwards during a war. Especially from the darker side. Make us care about a character who is, essentially, a bad guy.
DeleteI agree whole heart. And that goes for alot of movies. I need real story, the action and adventure plus the special effects only supports the narative.
DeleteWith Black Manta I think his first back story was a lazy attempt to characterize the guy. And it only got worse when writers tried to just build on top of trash.
Brandon Vietti, Greg Weisman and Geoff Johns has for the most part got the formula right. Both parties had some missteps but if you look at what they've done with the character it's nothing short of ground breaking.
The combination of the YJ version and the GJohns version would be super villain bliss.
well that actually looked pretty good i like the basic premise. nice catch on the Briscoe reference. by the way Tiger did you ever see Justice League Paradox Flash Point in full?
ReplyDelete??? did I see the entire movie? yeah. It was good. It lined up with the books alright. The animation and voice acting were solid ... bang up job.
Deletewhat's up?
sorry about the late reply. well if you remember in that alternate reality Manta kills Deathstroke so i figured that made you pretty happy also after what happened on YJ. thanks for visiting the Rom blog today brother.
DeleteYou know I'm an honorary spaceknight and yeah the Flash point fight was cool but I didn't want Slade to visit Davy Jones.
DeleteI wonder how a Black Manta, ROM team up would go?
actually i'd rather see a Black Manta Bronze Tiger kinda team up. something in which they had to be temporary allies in order to fight some kind of common threat.
DeleteBlack Manta ROM would be monumental for me. I could see the manta ship in space battling with ROM against some Dire Wraiths and Manta comes out of the deal with some spaceknight tech upgrades.
DeleteBronze Tiger, Black Manta could happen with Manta possibly becoming a member of Task Force X. Even without that happening the two could team up and become the new DC version of Professor X / Magneto.
got some cool Sabra stuff going on in today' blog posting. by the way you know how to use photoshop maybe some kind of ROM/Black Manta cross over cover would be in order sometime soon over here?
DeleteI thought about it most seriously my friend. There's just no good pictures of the Manta Ship. I put together a quick BT/Arrow post but I'm having some conversion issues.
DeleteNice post as usual Tiger. Manta's the man for sure lately, so at least Johns hasn't that up. Curious to see what happens to Manta after this, when Aquaman returns.
ReplyDeleteI hope he beat the shit out of him, come to the understanding that his Father isn't coming back and get on with finding his son and becoming the Punisher of the underground world of DC comics.
DeleteOf course he'll never like Aquaman and their rival fighting will continue. I just hope the fighting is because Manta's the menace of the mighty oceans, not just Aquaman hate.
I'm just glad the main Aqua villains still get some spotlight. I heard the Aquaman book is about to kick up a lot of new foes, which made me think where that leaves the great work done on Black Manta. Now I know you can have your cake and eat it too.
ReplyDeleteDan, I hope it's Red Velvet. Manta is primed for a break out career.
DeleteGeoff ol boy, I need ya.
You like Red Velvet cake too? Hell's yeah, my man!
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, new AQ foes huh? Interesting. I hope they succeed, 'cause DC has stumbled bi time in the past to create a decent rogues gallery for AQ in the past. As long as you get an update on Manta when he's not the main focus, yeah, go for it.