2017

Writer: Robert Venditti / Artists: Ethan Van Sciver, Liam Sharp / DC Comics

It was inevitable that Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps would have to take its turn to be tied into DC enormous Batman event, Metal. So far, the tie-ins have been pretty entertaining looks at these twisted Dark Multiverse versions of Batman. There’s usually not much taking place that we think is going to have a lasting effect once Metal is over, but sometimes a fun read is its own reward. Combine that prospect with the great job Venditti is doing on this book and the results definitely deserve to be recognized.

This issue is basically Hal throwing down against the Dawnbreaker which is, in my opinion, DC’s ultimate nightmare scenario: Bruce Wayne with a Green Lantern ring. We get a pretty inspiring flashback of Coast City (the unluckiest city in geekdom next to Ba Sing Se) and then the rest of the issue is Hal and the Dawnbreaker beating the white privilege out of each other. Venditti’s script handles the fight pretty well considering that he has the two most willful characters in DC Comics to work with. Hal actually put up more of a fight than the rest of the Justice League seems to have. My only real problem is that even though (given the status quo of the main Metal title) we can pretty much guess how things are going to end, the end comes so suddenly, I started to think there were pages stuck together.

Ethan Van Sciver teams up with Liam Sharp to deliver artwork that is actually pretty damn good looking considering what we’ve come to expect from Van Sciver on his own. This dynamic duo ends up giving Venditti’s script a LOT more scale than I think was intended considering the ending.

Bottom Line: It’s not a book that will “change Green Lantern as we know him forever” but as far as event tie-in slugfests go, it could definitely be considered a LOT better than it has any right to be. Very entertaining read.

8 Oh My Gawds (as in Oh My Gawd Who Would Give Bruce Wayne A Green Lantern Ring?) out of 10

Reading Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps? Find BNP’s other reviews of the series here.

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After the amazing, critically-acclaimed success of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it was no surprise that more of Atwood’s works would be getting the streaming service treatment. Netflix decided to get their piece of the Atwood pie by adapting to screen another one of her works, Alias Grace, a historical fiction novel based on true events about one of Canada’s most infamous alleged murderers, Grace Marks.

[Minor Spoilers Ahead]

The biggest thing about the Grace Marks story is that the abuse and torment of women within the series, while fictionalized, is based on the actual things women would face.

The historical facts as we know it, via the internet, are that Grace Marks (played by Sarah Gadon) was a poor domestic servant who had immigrated to Canada from Ireland with her family. Along with another Irish man, James McDermott (played by Kerr Logan), she was convicted of murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery (played by Anna Paquin). Marks was eventually set free after 30 years of imprisonment and vanished from the historical record. Everything in between…a mystery.

In the show, Grace enters the series already imprisoned for murder with her alleged accomplice already having been executed. People in high places have been working to having her pardoned, believing that she has suffered enough and the evidence against her is inconclusive. Dr. Jordan (Edward Holcrof) has been hired to do an examination of Grace’s memories to see if her alleged amnesia of the murder holds true and if he can unlock her secrets.

The narrative switches between Grace telling her backstory to the good doctor having some shady inner-monologues about what he has the right to know. We see Grace as the eldest of several children forced out of her home by her father (who has sexual desires towards his daughter) to make a living and living with the cold reality that as a woman she is expendable to the world around her. If The Handmaid’s Tale is a look forward to a potential future, Alias Grace is a reminder of where we have come from.

The world of Alias Grace is one where women have no access to safe abortions or birth control and are susceptible to the whims of men’s desires, their only choices either to give into it and accept some temporary privileges along with social disgrace, hoping no baby comes from it, or risk being raped by a man who has the law and society on his side.

Gadon plays the different parts of Grace very well, from the young wide-eyed ingenue of 12 to the hard woman who has spent 15 years of her life imprisoned and at the whims of gross guards and doctors at mental wards who treat her like nothing more than a piece of meat.

While not all the men in the story are bad, they all suffer from some privilege or internalized misogyny that makes them treat Grace more like a thing than a person, and the other women are not free of that either. Anna Paquin’s Nancy is very temperamental and uses her class privileges as a “lady of the house” to inflict some pain on the lower-class workers, while at the same time facing town scorn for being unmarried. She fears to lose her position of favor to Grace because that is the only thing that gives her power, therefore the only other woman in her life must become her enemy.

It is a beautifully shot and well-written story that does amazing work with few sets, makes the most of its talented cast, and has no filler or dragging. Also, you can use all of those Mindhunter skills you gained to figure out decide if you think Grace is a victim or a villain.

Alias Grace is a mystery wrapped in a strong tale of immigrants, women, and a reminder of a past we do not want to go back to. The series is now streaming on Netflix and is only 6 episodes so get to binging! Also, true crime fans, were you as shocked as I was that My Favorite Murder hadn’t covered this yet?

(image: Netflix, Edited by author)

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Archie’s quest to take on Riverdale’s own Black Hood shouldn’t be as stupid as it is. The whole Teenager Taking On A Dangerous Entity is a big part of the young adult genre, huge even, but none of Riverdale’s kids are Katniss Everdeen. They are painfully average teenagers who are woefully out of their depth. [...]

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