Review_FICTION
public service announcement. Londoner
Cath is in a strained long-distance relation-
ship with her organic-obsessed girlfriend
Mitch, an organizer of a grassroots cam-
paign to protect local marshy bog-land in
Yorkshire. The link between the health of
the land and the health of its people is
direct, as a tree-planting friend of Mitch’s
tells Cath: “Saving the planet? I prefer to
think of it as saving grandchildren.” Cath
and Mitch bicker over eco-friendliness
issues, with Cath suggesting her girlfriend
simply move out of a flood-hazard zone.
“What, move to the top of a hill and buy a
boat?” Mitch retorts. “It’s not just one
place, it’s global. And it’s about to get a
lot worse.” Bryan Talbot’s detailed portraits
of Yorkshire’s people and wind-hewn
landscape paint a lovely, empathetic picture
of a place in danger of destruction.
Unfortunately, the story itself is a slog
and delves with more emotional intensity
into the impacts of pesticides on soil
health than into the inner lives of the
characters. (Oct.)lines. But King’s writing is incisive and
witty, paired with energetic artwork by
Mann, who excels with acrobatic fight
scenes, such as a page of the Flash zipping
about at super-speed and battling Booster
Gold. It’s left as an open question whether
the “counseling machine” approach at
Sanctuary was effective, having removed
the human element in a (failed) effort at
secrecy. King has a military background,
and beneath the dramatic superhero
character play is a heartfelt message that
even the most stoic heroes deserve help
processing their trauma. (Oct.)Rain
Mary M. and Bryan Talbot. Dark Horse,
$24.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-5067-1520-9
The Talbots (The Red Virgin and the Vison
of Utopia) set a didactic fictional romance
amid the real-life floods that devastated
the United Kingdom in 2015. While the
scholarly, eco-friendly heart of their effort
is in the right place, what’s meant to be an
ecological thriller crams in so much data
and fact-filled dialogue that it reads like asiders the psy-
chological toll
of being a hero
in this unusual
and provocative
narrative set in
the DC Comics
universe.
There’s been a
mass murder at
Sanctuary, a
psychiatric
facility where superheroes (and some of
their adversaries) immerse themselves in
holographic therapy, replaying stuck points
in their past. Batman, Superman, and
Wonder Woman join up to solve the case,
while Batman antagonist Harley Quinn
and hero Booster Gold attempt to resolve
it in parallel, mutually suspicious of each
other. Interspersed are alternately amusing
and affecting confessionals from heroes
and villains who reveal their anxieties
while in treatment at Sanctuary. Typical of
the genre, the dénouement requires famil-
iarity with an array of other DC storyPUBLISHING
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