Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Checkmate #4 Review




Check Please!


Written By: Brian Michael Bendis
Art By: Alex Maleev, Dave Stewart, Josh Reed
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 28, 2021


It's time to get back to the espionage world of Checkmate, where Leviathan is up to some dastardly stuff.... like teleporting people places back and force and standing around and talking about things but just being coy enough about their subject matter that we at home playing along still have no idea what the end goal of anything is. So yeah, we have the big bad Leviathan doing some weird stuff and we have Checkmate not sure about said weird stuff trying to take him down. Let's jump into this issue so we can see more people standing around and talking about things that never really get fully explored... Let's check it out.


Now for this issue, we continue to get what we've been getting throughout this series so far... People standing around and talking about what's going on but never really getting deep enough into the conversation to really find a means to stop what Leviathan is doing or even figuring out what it is that Leviathan is actually up to. That being said, we do have a new idea in this issue about the idea of alien brainwashing that makes people become sleeper agents or just all about Leviathan in general but beyond the idea that Checkmate thinks this is going on because it would be way scarier if that wasn't the case, we do nothing about this information except get Checkmate talking about it in their church headquarters and then also have Lois Lane and Superman talk about it in the Fortress of Solitude. 




The funny thing about this issue is that we actually discover what the Snowman's ticket is..... and because this book was so delayed and Bendis decided to use the character in other books before this came out, we find out that the Snowman's ticket is the redacted birth certificate of Leonardo Lane, the new sibling to Lois and Lucy that no one ever knew about....... but because we've already seen the character in other places...... where Lois seems to know all about him, this reveal means absolutely nothing and makes this series feel even more useless than it did previously and that's a feat I couldn't imagine was possible.




All in all, the art is something I'm still not a fan of but it does its job in showcasing characters standing around and talking but for this issue, we do get two instances of fights happening but ultimately they do nothing and aren't that exciting overall. This series just continues to be a big nothing-burger overall and I'd like to say that it was because of the initial delay but I'm sure I'd be just as angry about the Leonardo Lane reveal if this was where it appeared first as I was in the Justice League issue from a few weeks ago. Like the rest of the series, there isn't much here and because the big reveal was originally done in Justice League this issue offers up less than it usually does and I find myself just counting down the days until this mini-series is finally over and we can forget about Bendis' versions of Leviathan and Checkmate.


Bits and Pieces:


If you've been reading Checkmate this far and have been enjoying it....... Well, there's no reason to stop now because you'll be getting the exact same thing that you've been getting from the previous issues, except this time around you'll be getting the answer to the Snowman's Ticket..... it's just too bad that the reveal means nothing if you follow other books at DC Comics.


3.5/10

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