Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Vigilante #5


This is a book by some old favorites of mine. Marv Wolfman did some good Titans work back in the day, but here he's dealing with a dysfunctional Titans line-up and an uninteresting lead. I only read the first issue or two of this book because I couldn't make myself care about Vigilante (cool costume aside). That doesn't change here. Vigilante tries to take out Jericho, who he believes is hiding in Cyborg's body. He does this non-lethally, and repeatedly announces he's not trying to hurt Cyborg. The Titans were trying to draw in the Vigilante using Cyborg as bait, yet when Vig shows up, Beast Boy is enraged at him for the rest of the issue. The plan worked, Beast Boy! Why are you mad? The Titans head into the city to stop a bank robbery and Vigilante escapes and follows. The Titans are pretty easily led by the nose throughout, first in dealing with Vigilante after he surrenders and later by Jericho. Jericho is trying to set them up to be attacked by the Teen Titans, I think, but I never really understood his plan. There is a neat sequence with Jericho controlling crowds of people to attack Vigilante, but I thought he jumped into one body at a time? Weird. I loved the setup for the next part of the story, with Jericho hacking into and controlling the Teen Titans jet by making a phone call. Not sure how that works. There is some internal dialogue with Vigilante talking about mistakes and how he's spent the last few years, but since I don't know who he is, it was all kind of over my head. This crossover didn't get me invested in the character.

Tom Lyle used to have a clean style back in the 90s and I believe he worked with inker Scott Hanna then too. The style in this is a lot blockier and sketchier, which I actually liked. I wonder if Lyle can get more work using this style?

Average

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