| Title | : | Midnighter, Vol. 2: Hard |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Format Type | : | Kindle , Hardcover , Paperback , Audiobook & More |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
The mastermind behind the theft of the God Garden's technology is finally unveiled...and Midnighter never could have guessed the ultimate goal of the heist! However, as he recovers from one of his most brutal battles to date, Lucas Trent finds himself back in the sights of Spyral... and the Suicide Squad!
Writer Steve Orlando and illustrator ACO continue their critically accalimed run with MIDNIGHTER VOL. 2. Collects issues #7-13.
Midnighter, Vol. 2: Hard Reviews
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Much, much better than volume 1. The story is straight forward, the Suicide Squad has stolen something from volume 1 and the Midnighter goes to get it back. The book picks up nicely once Apollo reappears. Honestly, Midnighter is just not the same without Apollo. They work so well off one another and I like seeing 2 gay men have a stable, loving relationship just like any other couple.
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[Read as single issues]
I think it's safe to say that DCYou wasn't exactly the success that DC wanted it to be. Aside from a few books, it was mostly an unremarkable mini-relaunch type thing. However, the one shining gem that came out of it was the amazing Midnighter series, whose second volume collects the remaining few issues of the series.
It's easy to say that Midnighter sells out in the second half here, since the Suicide Squad show up for the last few issues, but Midnighter flattens them in seconds (except for one of their new recruits who is both awful and awesome all at once) so it's fine. They're also not the main problem, as the evil mastermind of the series is revealed at last (and will be very familiar to Midnighter fans).
It'd also be easy to say that with only 5 issues left of the title things get rushed to a conclusion, but that's not true; there's a sense of unfinished business, but it's more like Midnighter has reached the next stage of his journey than his story ended too soon. Plus there's that new Midnighter + Apollo mini so there's that to love too.
ACO and Hugo Petrus double-team these issues but their style is almost indistinguishable; they both love the little panels-within-panels moments that emphasis Midnighter's brutality, and their panels are always highly detailed without being too cluttered. It's exactly the kind of visual Midnighter needs - his world is chaotic, but he's always in control.
Midnighter is unapologetic, and it is fabulous. Steve Orlando writes a perfect Midnighter, and this book has made me a firm follower of his - you need to check this one out. -
It seems that the fights are even more annoying this time around and they offer nothing new, so they don't improve my rating for this volume. The dialogue is as boring as ever, so no marks for that either. Some more characters are thrown in for good measure, but nothing to write home about. Ultimately this volume is completely forgettable.
It might just be the horrid artwork with way too many small panels that ruined it for me. Every action scene has a large panel in the background and several tiny panels that need a detective to figure out. I guess the series does in fact suck hard and probably should have ended after the first arc. I have rarely been more happy to see the last page of a series. At least it helped me sleep for a bit.
Dominic Mndawe has the ability to aggregate life. His story is completely skippable. The Sportsman's Ambition is an illegal hunt club that has stolen Mndawe's elixir to create monsters they then kill. Midnighter helps him and we never see him again.
Matron offers Midnighter a job in Spyral. He refuses, but works with her to retreive the stolen Perdition Pistol, one of Gardener's items.
Midnighter gets his ass handed to him by the Suicide Squad. He almost gets blown up, but calls on Apollo to rescue him. -
This second Midnighter volume from the recent DCYou experiment is just as action-packed as the first. The set-up is not quite as ingenious as in the first volume, but I loved the interplay between Midnighter and his supporting cast. The Suicide Squad shows up, and Amanda Waller is her usual bad-ass self, plus there is a reckoning between Midnighter and his ex Apollo.
This book also collects a couple stories from Midnighter's previous series. Although this series had terrible sales and was canceled, writer Steve Orlando is doing a Midnighter/Apollo mini series soon. Looking forward to it, as this was one of the best things to come out of DC in the last few years since the introduction of the New 52. Art by ACO and Hugo Petrus really plays off of each other well. Their style is similar enough that it's not jarring seeing two artists in one issue, as it seems one art team was unable to do an entire issue. Either way, the art is dynamic and definitely not part of DC's house style, thankfully.
Although there is some of Midnighter's personal life in this story, it's not as prominent as in the first volume, so hopefully the stupid reviewer who was tired of the "gay, gay, gay" will not be so hindered this time.
I get the impression Midnighter is a bottom, though. Thoughts? -
This book tried my patience. It was more of Midnighter saying the same thing to everyone he beat up/killed ("I know how to fight and I'm going to win") with added convoluted plot and cameos from some well-known members of the Suicide Squad.
The one redeeming thing was when (not a spoiler since this is in the blurb itself) Apollo returns.
TL;DR: I'd say this is kind of skippable because the ONLY thing that happens is that Midnighter and Apollo begin to patch things up. The art was all over the place and the plot was a hot mess.
I borrowed this from my local library. -
5 stars
Not bad of a comic. Midnighter seems a little too violent to me though. Liked his relationship with Apollo. Nice to see Spyral and the Suicide Squad again. Also good to see more of his history.
Can't wait to read more Midnighter comics!!!! -
rep: gay mcs
MY GAY DADS !!!!!!! -
My review of the first volume lamented the my belief that Midnighter, Apollo and the rest of Stormwatch/The Authority work better in their own universe away from the rest of the DCU.
So it's weird that the Stormwatch universe has effectively been rebooted into "The Wild Storm" by Warren Ellis and that this volume used elements of the DCU really well. I liked seeing Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad clashing with Midnighter, the more gritty bad-guys-being-controlled-by-good-guys shtick fits in with The Authority school of heroing. -
Everything that made the first volume memorable is jettisoned in this second volume, in favor of overwhelming action and crossovers. The action is over the top in its violence and its presentation, with pages featuring dozens of overlapping panels, making a visual that is hard to parse and does nothing for the clarity of the story. While Midnighter has a little bit of personality showing (mainly in terms of Apollo's reapparance), more time is spent on the villains. Suicide Squad is used as a punching bag, poorly. Waller's presence here (as well as Bertinelli's) just muddies the plot. It's all a question of which department manages to be the most corrupt, and it's not an enjoyable read. The art is good when it's leashed to the plot, but has a tendency to go overboard, to its (and the story's detriment). All told, I was not impressed with where this series went; I would have preferred more focus on story and less on punching.
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I'm not usually into super violent graphic novels, but I just really enjoy Midnighter. His "I have a super computer in my brain, and I've already fought this fight a million times" monologue before every villain gets a little old as a reader, but mostly I really like him.
I also liked the inclusion of the older Midnighter stories at the end of this volume. It was a nice way to wrap up. -
bendix is an excellent villains name
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Well, it's better on the ultraviolent basics than the first volume, and it's lovely to see Apollo again because even when they've split up, those two are very much #relationshipgoals (of course they are, it's a non-shit Batman in love with an only slightly less perfect Superman). But too much of the story features the rubbish modern Suicide Squad (skinny Waller, fussy-outfit Deadshot, weirdly unfunny Harley), and Midnighter looks a bit hipster out of costume, and it remains Not Quite Right. Which is emphasised by putting two classic issues of the Wildstorm series in the back to remind us what we could have won. Though hey, it's still ahead of the godawful chin-spike costume from the early New 52 era, which in the other 'bonus' story even Milligan and Bisley can't salvage.
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A strong second arc that has fun playing with the idea that Midnighter is only technically unstoppable. He goes up against the Suicide Squad, and getting to see the team and Waller in action against Midnighter is a lot of fun. It wraps up nicely, with Apollo coming back into the picture, and I enjoy that Steve Orlando makes it clear that Midnighter has learned how to be himself in the short time Orlando was given to pull it off.
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This book is so good. I'm so glad DC's doing a miniseries in the fall and that Rebirth didn't cause just another random cancellation.
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Amazing run; sad to see this series end!
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One trick pony , thankfully cancelled.
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Yeah... no. This half of the series was utterly disappointing. Not even the return of Apollo could save it. It's a confused mess, with the subplots varied and unnecessary. Some guy is doing a documentary on Midnighter - freaking random choice as it is - but, he constantly uses a dictaphone and not a camera. So... not a documentary then, an article. The speech bubbles and panel placement were baffling; the first half of this series had a few gaffs that confused me, but this one's just crazy.
Spyral joins the fray, as do the Suicide Squad, none of whom add to the plot that much. It could have been any ol' mysterious organisation and kill squad, as they're that incidental to the plot. And since they're syndicated characters from outside the Midnighter universe, they bring with them DC's troubling art. Harley Quinn is a real clown and I don't really know how anyone puts up with reading the comics the artists draw her in. It's an eye sore.
Spyral is a grand total of two women (or it might be three, hard to tell because they're all interchangeable), both of whom look young enough to be Midnighter's daughters. They're also super-skinny, which is outrageous given that they're supposed to be saving the world with big guns and fighting skills - they don't have any muscle to hold a gun. The ladies include Helena Bartinelli, and all of them are written as nothing more than cheerleaders. They call in Midnighter for assignments, which he botches and wreaks havoc. He then dismisses their concerns and talks down to them - occasionally mansplaining their own jobs to them. Like... why is it that a male character is seriously awesome, but the moment he's in the proximity of women, suddenly he's a jerk?
Throughout, the behaviour of the characters made you wonder what the point of Spyral was, or why these people were hired to work in it. Unbelievable.
Midnighter and all the male characters are disrespectful to Amanda Waller (head of ARGUS) as well; she is also drawn as a skinny 25-year-old. It baffles me. I get that neither Waller, not Spyral are favourites of DC heroes, but there's a difference between writing a character's dislike of something as opposed to a writer's dislike of that thing. It felt like the writers didn't like these women characters, because they're the only ones who were belittled and cut down to size constantly.
This half of the series was also overly gory - didn't need that. Midnighter doesn't need to be sadistic, he just needs to get the job done. The writers overdid it here. I don't remember him being so vicious in the other stuff I've read.
There's plenty of body horror going on, which is another thing I don't get. It's not something I choose to read, and didn't care for it turning up so many times in this half of the series.
I like Midnighter as a character, and it's evident writer Steve Orlando is fond of him as well. His
Midnighter and Apollo series was far more readable, coherent and fun. Its violence was balanced with some excellent emotional and human moments. Wherever Midnighter appears next, I hope it's as a much more respectful and respectable character - exactly as he's meant to be. -
3.5
This volume is a lot more straightforward than the first, for better or worse. That was my biggest issue with Vol. 1, and while this one is more clear and concise, it feels more “blockbuster-y”, trading in a little bit of nuance and cleverness for a bombastic WMD storyline. While I was engaged the whole time and ran through this fairly quick, there were a few too many instances of “but wait, why would they (insert plot hole/uncharacteristic behavior like or )”. This was solid, but there were a few interesting ideas that I felt like could have been executed with more finesse to really take it up a level and be something different. The art is still pretty good, a bit muddy or confusing here and there, but pretty cool. Overall, I’d recommend the series, though it didn’t turn out to be anything groundbreaking; it’s a solid action movie with some snappy writing, some zany sci-fi, and gratuitous violence. -
It confuses me a bit trying to resolve Midnighter being in the DC Universe, but this is our reality now. The first volume ended with him facing a DC villain who totally made sense as someone who could give him a run for his money. This next volume has him facing Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad, because of course things would go this way.
But the real surprise was who Waller turned out to be working with - we're talking about someone all the way to the Stormwatch days! This mash-up of antagonists also made sense and helped push things forward in their own way.
The real gem of this series was finally trying to address more of Mdinighter and Apollo's former relationship. We barely saw much of Apollo in the first volume, but he comes back into the story at precisely the right moment here and it helps things tremendously. Our little human killing machine has a few important realizations in this book - at least when he's not busy reminding everyone about the millions of ways he has imagined a battle ending. -
For Lucas Trent, AKA Midnighter, the mission never ends. His willingness to the do the dirty work tempered by his compassion for the people he protects is what makes him one of my favorite superheroes. Steve Orlando continues to do a wonderful job of illustrating the challenges of combining the ability to enact violence with the need to protect.
The Suicide Squad finds out just how difficult a fight with Midnighter can be. The dialogue between Midnighter and the Suicide Squad is a bit of fun all by itself. The artwork was lovely. I value an artist who doesn't ignore backgrounds in an epic battle. This trade paperback is worth reading twice to catch some of the gorgeous background scenes.
This volume wraps up the main story arc, but sets up a new one so I recommend hunting down the next story arc in Midnighter and Apollo. -
Ultraviolent, ultra-funny, and unapologetically gay, Orlando's Midnighter has been nothing short of awesome. The dialogue is authentic, and the style established by Aco makes Midnighter feel unlike anything else on the shelves. I'm glad to have read the whole series, even if the second volume didn't knock my socks off as hard as the first. The B'wanna Beast story was awesome for what is was (including an excellent use of The Red) and the Suicide Squad crossover was fun! It wasn't forced, and Midnighter's narrative came first, including a big step in his development in regards to Apollo. That's how it should be done.
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Midnighter: I am a superhuman vigilante with a computer in my brain and no qualms about violently killing lots of people.
Also Midnighter: I am going to avoid calling my ex until I'm trapped in a spacecraft 10 seconds away from exploding and need someone to fly me to safety.
Anyway, this was a satisfying end to the solo run and I'm glad I got a few pages of Midnighter and Apollo getting back together and beating up bad guys. Also reminded me that I should maybe track down some good Suicide Squad comics to read in order to entirely wipe the atrocious movie from my brain. -
Honestly I liked this better than the other volume.
I know that others don't like the addition of the Suicide Squad...but I did enjoy them being here and being the true bad guy.
The classic issues really threw me off due to changes in art and storyline. -
Asses were kicked. Midnighter’s included. That made it more compelling than the first volume, which featured Batman-EX destroying everyone who tried to take him on. Multiple mini-panels were confusing, but guess that’s what the supercomputer is for.
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Continued stories with the semi-hero and his interactions with some of the Suicide Squad. A little more interaction with his ex-boyfriend Apollo. Not sure I like him as a gay hero though, as he is very cocky and full of himself.
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The two older issues at the end are jarring and highlight how badly DC has handled the continuity of all the Wildstorm characters. But the main story is pretty good, and feels much more like Ellis' era of Stormwatch/Authority than anything I've read with the characters since then.
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I enjoyed the story, but I only read volume 2, so I will have to pick up volume one! I enjoyed the art style, and hope to pick up more works by this artist.
