by Yang, Tan, Bogdanovic et al.
Collects issues 7-12
This volume collects three 2-issue stories, "Training Day," "Coming to America," and "The Zero Ultimatum." Each issues packs in so many ideas and jump seamlessly from one to the other, that you'd only see they were separate stories if you looked for the titles on the credits splash pages.
"Training Day" zooms in on Chinese New Year, with Kenan (New Super-Man)'s frustration that he lost his father in the previous volume, and with Baixi (Bat-Man) visiting the Bat-academy that trained him to be Batman.
Because China has superhero schools, duh. The Joker of China makes her debut here, kind of, in the form of Bat-Man's sister, as "the Alpaca"! There's an interesting distinction here: where the Joker represents anarchy and chaos in America, the Alpaca represents a different shift from China's authoritarian government, but in a similar direction: "Don't tell me you're one of those pro-democracy WACKJOBS!" Baixi says, and his sister replies, "What-?! What's democracy got to do with anything?! I want FREEDOM!" We've been trained by comics to think of it as "good guys" and "bad guys," but here there is some moral ambiguity, which is a refreshing way to think of the Justice League (of China).
The sheer number of ideas keeps the momentum going. There's the White China Triad, a group of mercenaries hired to acquire the Door Rings of "Diyu," the hell of China, along with the Chinese legend of the White Snake . There's a certain amount of magical realism to allow for the world of superheroes that any comic book reader is familiar with, along with the fantasy world of Chinese legends. Unlike the traditional Superman's pseudo-science-fiction origin, the New Super-Man's powers come from his Qi, his life force, and he finds a tutor, the blind Master I Ching to help him understand the eight trigrams of his powers (for example, the trigram of the thigh, which grants him the power of x-ray vision). There are these moments of world-building paired with these small moments of humor, making for a reading experience unlike any other at DC.
by Jason Aaron, Yanick Paquette and
Kind of like "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest," but with God Brain Machines and Chainsaw-hands-man. Logan wakes up to find that he's in an insane asylum, the Dunwich Sanatorium, run by the enigmatic Dr. Rotwell. What follows is a horror mystery that results in yet more psychic trauma for poor man Logan.
"Insane in the Brain" takes issues 6-9, and there's a one-shot in issue 10, titled "Love and the Wolverine." There's a clever time-lapse in issue 8 (9?) between Logan in the asylum, and out of it, but it's somewhat of a letdown that the arc doesn't completely "resolve," with Dr. Rotwell living on to torture Wolverine with a secret phrase that makes him murder randomly.
I struggled with the substance of this trade. Wolvie's inner monologue about the confusion in the asylum doesn't allow for much character development, and the 10th issue about his relationship SF reporter seemed too quick. But that's the lives of superheroes I guess.
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