DC Comics reviews 8/8/22 – DCeased War of Undead Gods #1

Naomi Season Two #6

Naomi’s second arc wraps with this installment that still manages to shed as little insight as possible.

Good stories tend to give the reader a few breadcrumbs for mysteries as an incentive to keep coming back for more parts of the puzzle coming together. The biggest issue for Naomi is writers Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker keep stringing those answers out.

Bendis keeps his disjointed dialogue where everyone sounds alike intact — a character actually says “Don’t stop! Kill her dead.” Walker’s co-created title with Chuck Brown, Bitter Root, doesn’t feature this kind of dialogue, which makes me curious how much of the script Bendis is doing. The wildest development of this issue is the reveal of a next set of powers for Naomi as she battles a group of powered individuals seeking to overrun Earth.

This is puzzling on multiple levels. Bendis and Walker haven’t adequately explained Naomi’s stock powers. She’s just been portrayed as ridiculously overpowered with little limitations. And with no weaknesses revealed, Naomi definitely doesn’t need a power boost. Not that these new powers are explained any better.

I felt bad for artist Jamal Campbell, who’s asked to explain too much of the script with his pages. There’s a stretch of pages with no dialogue and Campbell has to make sense of it. That would be tough for any artist. Campbell is game and tries to work with the clunky script, but it’s in vain. As incoherent as the script is at least the art and color choices look good.

Bendis has never been a writer who excels at action sequences, but this is the worst execution he’s done in his DC tenure. Campbell and the reader are asked to fill in gaps that wouldn’t have been necessary if Bendis and Walker provided stronger direction.

The finale sees a splash page of all of Naomi’s various teams. This doesn’t come off well. Would Superman and the Wonder Twins or Robin really arrive to Naomi’s aid at the same time?

With the TV show’s cancellation and a neatly wrapped ending, it’s possible this is the last we see of Naomi for a while. That would be unfortunate as the character has plenty of potential just waiting on the right writer to do right by her. This continues to not be the case under Bendis’ watch.

Rating: 6 out of 10