I Tell You What to Think about 2/20's Comics

The Brave and the Bold 10
Challengers of the Unknown (Is that the title of this issue? It seems to be the only thing that fits the bill.)
-- Weakest issue yet (though still very good)? Maybe. Dividing the issue into multiple team-up stories instead of mainly focusing on one was a lot of fun last issue, but I think it might have overstayed its welcome with this one. While the characterization in these shorter team-ups is strong, the action plots suffer from the limited page count, often ending up very simple affairs. They lack the creative twists and flairs of the issue-length stories.
I remember reading about how Alex Ross was disappointed when he began reading Spider-Man comics. All he knew about the character was from his Electric Company appearances, where he seemed some really cool guy, only for him to read the comic and discover that, behind the mask, he was perennial loser Peter Parker. Well, I kind of feel the same way about the Silent Knight after this comic. I didn't know Fact One about him beforehand, but he always seemed cool to me? I mean, he's a knight, and he never talks! How nifty is that? Now I find out that behind the mystique is... some stable boy with a bad haircut. Oh well.
Anyway, the Silent Knight/Superman story that makes up the first half of this issue is a lot of fun. It has a time-travelling Superman fighting an ice-breathing dragon as a favor for Merlin because he owes him one. That's the kind of story that makes the DC universe look every bit as wondrous and blessed with adventure as it actually is. It's the issue's second half, the Aquaman/Teen Titans team-up, that weakens it.
Waid and Perez seem to be going for an Aqua-world that's a world of bright-eyed, magical wonder, Atlantis à la Disney, but I don't think it quite works. It comes off mildly hokey, not awakening the inner child so much as provoking the inner too-cool-for-school teenager. Like I said earlier though, the characterization never suffers in this title, and this story was no exception.


Ex Machina 34
World's Finest
-- I was a little disappointed when I saw this issue's cover on the racks. Looking at the picture, it wasn't hard to figure out this would be another supporting character spotlight, the sort Vaughan does from time to time on this book and Y: The Last Man, and I haven't cared for those things much. To my mind, their information/page ratio is too low; the amount of further insight into the characters they're about isn't enough to warrant a full issue.
So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this issue. For whatever reason, it doesn't suffer from the same problem as the other character spotlights. Maybe that's because, this time, there's a sort of plot running through the whole sequence: the course of Commissioner Angotti's marriage.
And the last page reveal was neat. There's something to be said for that. It jars somewhat with this title's usual sensibility, but for all that it was funny and appropriate.