Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Impulse #29 (Sept. 1997)

As promised, tonight brings us another round of Retro-Reviews, this time from DC. The theme tonight? How's about the original Young Justice? Yep, tonight I'll review an Impulse, a Robin and a Superboy comic back from the 90's. How awesome is that?! Hopefully I'll wind up with three great reads, but as always with the Retro-Reviews, I draw these comics at random, so who knows what we'll end up with here... As I did with the last round of Retro-Reviews, I'm going to post the reviews in alphabetical order, meaning we start off with...

Impulse #29:

What Happened: Bart Allen(Impulse!) winds up getting in trouble at school for not paying attention during class. That coupled with an argument he had with Max Mercury earlier in the day has Bart not all that fond of returning home to another Max lecture. The school day ends and while walking home from school with his two friends, Bart witnesses a truck about to crash. With his friends distracted, Bart changes to Impulse and stops the truck, but is surprised when a bunch of armed goons exit the trucks and start shooting at him. Bart manages to deflect the bullets into the ground but loses his footing in the process. One of Bart's friends yells at the gunmen to distract them from shooting Bart, so the goons instead turn their guns on the kids, grazing one in the arm with a bullet. That pisses Bart off and having recovered, he makes quick work of the gunmen. With that, Bart changes clothes and rejoins his friends and after talking to the cops, Bart heads home, feeling guilty that his friend was “shot”, even though his friend thought it was uber-cool. Upon getting home, Bart wishes that Max was gone forever since he knew Max would be angry with the way Bart handled the gunmen, and Bart learns from Max's daughter that Max had vanished without a trace.

The Good: The good?! It was Impulse!! There's your good right there! This issue made me remember just how much I loved this character and this series. The way Bart handled the bullets flying at him was REALLY well done as it showed off his speed wonderfully. He stood there pondering about 5 different ways to get rid of the bullets before deciding that sending them into the ground was the way to go. Bart's relationship with Max was great(as it always was). The ending was a nice little touch with Bart wishing that Max was gone and then Max suddenly vanishing without a trace(he actually was responding to a mystery letter he received). The story was a good, fast, fun read.

The Bad: The armed gunmen suddenly shooting at some kids was a bit overboard... They went from smuggling toxic waste to trying to murder children?! Bart's friend only getting a grazing gunshot wound from a bunch of armed goons with automatic weapons was a bit too lucky for me.

The Verdict: I really enjoyed reading this issue! I mean REALLY enjoyed it! I enjoyed it so much it made me want to pull out the entire Impulse series to remind myself how awesome DC was once... As opposed to what it has become... *sigh* This was a really good taste of what this comic was all about actually. It was just good fun. And you know what? There's a HUGE gap in the market right now for this type of comic book. I don't know that either of the Big Two are putting out a series that's just plain fun, like this series was... Thanks for getting rid of Impulse, Geoff Johns...

Score: 9 out of 10.Impulse rules. Period, end of discussion, case closed, 'nuff said.

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