These trades aren't really worth discussing on their own merits, because frankly, they have none. I didn't expect them to. I read them to scratch a particular itch. I
came to them with "a perverse appetite for seeing lots of brand-name superhero teens in technicolor costumes get fed through a meat-grinder in as exploitative a manner as possible." The weird thing is, they're chock full of scenes like the one above, and those
itemized by J. Caleb Mozzocco in his review, and yet they somehow fail to scratch that itch. I guess that's because these scenes have no narrative weight or consequences. If the scene above of Wonder Girl getting strangled with her own lasso to the point of blood-vessels bursting in her eyes disturbs you, just turn the page and:
All better!
And I'm not exaggerating--literally a single page turn separates these two images.
This happens often enough to form enough of a pattern that all the icky, squicky, gruesome stuff starts coming off as mere theater. It's there to be seen but not felt. But if it isn't felt, what's the point of seeing it? I honestly wanted to feel a little soiled and degraded after reading these, but you just can't
wallow in something this superficial, this flattened-out. Yes, the images are gross on their own terms, but the "context" of the story always goes on to rob them of any punch or bite.
No more. I'm done with this shitty run of comics.
