The Brave and the Bold - #4 Review

The Brave and the Bold - #4



Synopsis: Batman and Tharok have now been fused together as a half/half entity. :O

Tharok attempts to kill La Dama, but Batman stops him, however he is fighting a losing battle for control of the body. :O

Blue Beetle stops him and tries to analyze him with the Scarab but fails. :o Suddenly the Fatal Five attack but they're defeated by Validus b/c Tharok controls him and Batman was able to use that control. :O

However, Tharok is slowly but surely wresting all control away from Batman and Batman wants Beetle to leave! :O Beetle refuses and gets the Haruspex to undo what happened but the Scarab says that he can't! Batman forces Beetle to aim the device at him and it blows Batman/Tharok away (or so Beetle thinks)! Le Dama tells Beetle that he's accomplished what nobody else could do: Kill Batman. :(

Elsewhere, Supergirl and Lobo arm wrestle in a bar with ppl betting on them. :O Lobo beats her and Supergirl just wants to continue on to Rann but Lobo has other plans. o_O

Supergirl ruins Lobo's "fun" by beating up a patron that hits on her, and they leave the bar but end up in a hedgemaze! Supergirl attemps to escape but no matter which direction she flies in, she ends up back where she started. :O Lobo takes matters into his own hands and navigates the maze with Supergirl following.

They meet a weird guy in a purple robe with an hour glass. :D He explains that he's the guardian of the book of history. However, he saw 4 figures in the book that were "outside" of the book, and therefore were anomalies that the book couldn't account for. Their actions constantly changed what was in the book. :O

This scared the guardian who broke himself free of the book and attempted to give it to the 4 ppl in the book for them to fix what they've caused. :O However, he no longer remembers WHY he did that or what his plan was. :\

Once the book was free, the Lords of Luck who are alien mystics who worship chance and bend fortune, attempted to get their hands on the book hiring the ppl who Batman and Green Lantern ran into. :O

The Guardian tells Supergirl that she has to deliver the book into the hands of the four, but he doesn't remember who they are. :O However, Batman and Green Lantern will know. o_o;;

Lobo fetches his bike and after a short skirmish where Supergirl knocks him down for constantly calling her smexist names, they leave, but not before Supergirl finds out from the Guardian that if she read the book she can see all of history! :O

Lobo figures out that Supergirl wanted to read about her future. Supergirl says that she just wants to know if any other Kryptonians survived. :D Lobo also figures out that Supergirl is half hoping to be the only survivor so she can be as cool as Lobo. XD

They get to Rann, but Lobo refuses to help Supergirl and demands payment! Supergirl leaves and says that his payment is knowing that Supergirl could have beat him at arm wrestling but didn't! XD Lobo yells at her angrily that she's lying but she just flies away! :D

Supergirl gets shot while flying in Rann b/c ppl think she's a Thangarian! She uses her vision powers and sees Green Lantern fighting with Adam Strange against hawkpeople! :O

Meanwhile, Batman/Tharok wakes up in a holding cell with the other Fatal Five and suddenly the Legion of Superheroes appears! :D

Review: If Mark Waid wants to just make his own little Waidverse and ignore the rest of the DCU, I am totally okay with that! XD

I like how his Legion showed up at the end! His and Kitson's Legion, not Meltzer's crazy Legion. >.> Not the one that's suddenly showing up in Superman that looks all retro and adult and stuffs. >.>;;; HIS Legion :D

I also like how Supergirl acts like a rational person XD She's a teenager thru and thru, but she's also heroic and smart and altho tolerates Lobo, she also doesn't take crap from him! :D But not in the angsty Kelly Supergirl way, but in a way that most ppl would understand. :D

Also like the other Brave and the Bolds, the dialogue is SO GREAT :D

Lobo: Take y'r x-ray vision off my package f'r one minute and see what ya can see.

Supergirl: That was my microscopic vision.

XDDDDD

<333333333333333333

Or when Supergirl was upset that she might end up being trapped in the maze forever. :O

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! DAMN STUPID OUTER SPACE MAKES-NO-SENSE MAZE!!! I'll get to Rann when I'm EIGHTY and Green Lantern's going to be DEAD and the bad guys will win and it's ALL MY FAULT FOR TRUSTING A DRUNK!!!

:D

SEE!!

If this was Kelly's Supergirl, she'd complain that she'd be all wrinkly and old when she's 80. XD

Instead this Supergirl is upset that it'll mean the death of Green Lantern and victory for the villains, and she takes responsibilty for that! :D

Kelly will argue that a teenage girl would care more about her looks when it comes to the possibility of being trapped forever. But.. this is again, just a stereotype of a certain KIND of teenager! Also a stereotype of a certain kind of person in general!

Being a teenager may mean you're less experienced, more prone to panic and more emotional. But that doesn't mean that you're selfish or superficial!

Supergirl's reaction is PERFECT :D She's angry and she's upset and she's ranting more than a Batman or Wonder Woman would b/c they're older and experienced and they wouldn't freak out. :D

However she's freaking out for HEROIC reasons not for "OMG IMMA GET OLD AND WRINKLY"!

Also she's clearly against the way Lobo and his ilk acts, while in Kelly's version, she acts EXACTLY the same way. >:|

I also like how she hates how Lobo treats her and she fights back, but not by kicking him in the groin or tearing him apart angstily XDDD She doesn't want to HURT him, she just wants to say "hey, I am not going to take this!" :D

And another great scene was when Supergirl was talking about the future, and how she doesn't want to be alone and Lobo, in a rare moment, realizes that she also likes being a loner cuz she thinks it makes her cool and he says it doesn't. :D

And that IS something that's true. Our society glorifies pain and suffering sometimes. It's almost like if you dun have a tragic background or a broken home, or some sort of abuse in the past, it makes you less of a person. It makes you less real, or you dun have "credibility". :\ And rly, none of that makes you a good OR bad person! It doesn't make you any more cool if you grew up on the street, or had an abusive father, than if you grew up with 2 wonderful parents and went to a university on scholarship!

But our entertainment likes to glorify the "tragic pasts". :\ And coming from somebody who has a bit of one, it's not all its cracked up to be XD But that's also the problem with the heroes with "tragic" backgrounds or the rapes and abuse in the past. :\ Writers think that that makes the characters "relatable" or hip and edgy. They think it gives them sort of "credibility" and in turn it makes some ppl feel like they need to have that sort of background or feel that they had pain in their past to be worthwhile or measure up. And it's not true! :|

But it is very understandable, esp with teenagers and the pressure our media puts on them. Like with Kelly, or with some music, which basically says "you're not normal unless you have an abusive past, or self esteem problems, or are bullied and made fun of". Almost to the point that some ppl prefer to cause their own drama just to feel like "OMGIHAVEPROBLEMS". :\

And this Supergirl isn't exactly beyond that either, but at the same time she doesn't wallow in it. But she had a moment where she thought of it, esp around Lobo who, despite his flaws, is a rly cool lone wolf :D And I lurve how Lobo sees it too and tells her that it doesn't impress him that she's trying to be all "omg I'm a sole survivor". :D

It was a rly nice subtle moment :3

ALSO Supergirl never ONCE mentions that her dad sent her to Earth to kill Superman! She merely says that he sent her to Earth in suspended animation and she misses her family and is all alone! :D It looks like Waid is completely ignoring Kelly! :D Which is great! I want to live in his Waidverse :D

The Beetle part is interesting too :O I hope that we see more of Beetle tho and how he feels with the possibility that he killed Batman! :O

Maybe the 4 mysterious ppl are Batman, Beetle, Lantern and Supergirl? :O Or maybe not. It looks like from the picture that it might be the Challengers of the Unknown! :O Does nebody know their DCU history well enuf to help me figure it out from just that one panel? :D

NEWAYS, this was a great and super fun book! :D The writing was great, the dialogue was great, and the team-ups are just so fun! :3 Waid is just so good with making all the characters likeable and yet fit what their characters SHOULD be. :D He doesn't go too extreme with Kara's youth or Batman's seriousness or Lobo's crassness. :D They HAVE those traits but it is not ALL they are. :D

I think Waid should just write every book! XD Or simply start his own Waidverse! >.>

Also the art by Perez is great too, and Kara actually looks like a healthy teenager! :D

Yay! :3

Oh and I liked how Supergirl didn't win the arm wrestling with Lobo but later implied she COULD have to annoy Lobo! :D So we're left not rly sure if she said it just to annoy Lobo or if she could have! :D This is better than what Kelly would have done which is have Supergirl beat Lobo straight out, and then rip his head off and put it into the sun and then beat up all the bar ppl and smex some random alien. >.>;;

XD

Angelwings Rating: 5 out of 5 well-written Supergirls! :D
Recommendation: It's 32 pages of super-fun for only 3 dollars! :D That's 10 pages over the usual! Definitely very worth it! :D