World Famous Comics: The Brave and the Bold Vol. 1: Lords of Luck
The Brave and the Bold Vol. 1: Lords of Luck
By: Mark Waid Publisher: DC Comics Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: DC Comics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 160 Publication Date: December 05, 2007 Release Date: December 05, 2007
One of the Best Straight up Superhero romps! Wow! DC really kicked of the "Brave and the Bold" Relaunch with a Bang. Mark Waid's energetic script coupled with George Perez's elegant artwork is a great combination and these two have created the comic book equvelent of a summer movie, but with smarts and an interesting story.
In a shocking turn of events, DC features the Dark Knight in a story drawn by an A-List artist. Why George Perez has yet to draw one of the Batman books is a mystery to me, since he draws a very good Dark Knight; straight forward and elegant, rather than the scratchy rubbish we see much of the time in lieu of clean, good artwork on that character.
While the old Brave and the Bold featured Batman teaming up with another character from the DC universe, this new incarnation begins with a Batman/Green Lantern team up, but subsiquent chapters move the action off planet with Green Lantern/Supergirl, Supergirl/Lobo, then Batman? Blue Beetle and so on; so there is something for everyone.
The hardcover is also quite a handsome edition. Some DC hardcovers are rather unattractive, with the ugly blue DC logo cropping up at the bottom of the spine on some book, which does not look good and usually does not fit with the rest of the book's design, thankfully this did not appear on this book, so it will look slick on your shelf. Keep it up DC, and I'll keep reading.
Everything a Super-Hero Book Should Be Mark Waid, one of comics' best and most unsung writers, brings back the classic "Brave and the Bold" team-up book with "Crisis" artist George Perez. The art is fantastically detailed and the story is well-paced across the six issues collected in "Lords of Luck".
Unlike some other DC titles, each character here is defined by his or her actions and words. Waid's characterization is brilliant, especially when Supergirl teams up with Green Lantern and Lobo on separate occasions. (If the regular "Supergirl" and "Blue Beetle" comic books were this good, I would be reading them every month!) If you're not reading "The Brave and the Bold", you must be living under a rock on Oa.
Pretty to look at but another silver age retread Waid and Perez are both comic book masters with a string of hits to their names.
But this book is simply not them at their best. It seems like a winning match, two huge fans of DC's universe playing with whatever characters catch their eye, all the while telling a bigger story.
But the book suffers from Waid having far too much love for the mediocre ideas of the silver age. The book reads too much like fan-fic, lots of Easter eggs but no real meaning. Waid's own notes talk about how he worked to reference old Adam Strange and Challengers of the Unknown stories. This is nice but it ends up intrusive, the storyline does nothing really new and the fact that the final deus ex machina is based on 50 year old comic books does not make it any more fulfilling.
That being said, some of the character moments are good, the Supergirl/Lobo team up is a lot of fun. Batman and Blue Beetle are another good pair.
Perez's art is as pretty as ever but I wish it had served a more ambicious book than Waid's exercise in nostalgia.
Very good The first collected volume of DC's relaunched The Brave and the Bold finds Batman teaming up with Green Lantern Hal Jordan as they take on The Lords of Luck, and try to stop their diabolical plans that involve the Book of Destiny. Later on, Bats and GL ally themselves with Supergirl, Adam Strange, the new Blue Beetle, and even the Legion of Superheroes as writer Mark Waid's (Kingdom Come, Flash) story features enough great action and slight twists to make any longtime DC reader happy. What makes The Lords of Luck even better is the artwork by none other than the legendary George Perez, who seems to only get better with age. As a previous reviewer already pointed out, Hal's thoughts towards Supergirl being "only 17" are hilarious, and as a whole, The Brave and the Bold is one of the better new titles to come out of DC since the events of Infinte Crisis. The only downside here is that the book is too short, and before you know it, it's over and done with. That aside, this first collection of The Brave and the Bold is worth picking up for DC readers new and old, and is plenty enjoyable to boot.
An excellent romp through the DC universe The new Brave and Bold book (of which this is volume 1) is a great idea (teaming up two different heroes in every chapter) and very well executed by Mark Waid and George Perez. The personalities are all 'on character' and the art is excellent. Mixing up some of DC's old mainstays (Batman, Green Lantern) with the newer generation (Blue Beetle) and new versions of old characters (Supergirl, the Legion), the story takes you all over the DCU and will excite both old fans like me, who will wax nostalgically about stories like this from their childhoods, and new fans who will be introduced to just how big and how much fun the DC Universe can be.
Worth mentioning are the 5-6 pages of annotations by writer Mark Waid at the end of the book, which highlight all the little in-jokes, homages, and historical references of the story. This makes shelling out for the hardcover more than worth it and really was the icing on the cake for me.
Anything Goes Trivia
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