Ok, so I made some purchases last week.
Supergirl: Wings
JLA: League of One
Batman: Hong Kong
I bought the first because Peter David made her a great character. One of the most interesting in DCU's line up.
Wings wasn't a disappointment. It's an elseworld title meaning it will have nothing to do with "official" continuity and that the character might have nothing to do with the official character. The cover was really cool. They made matrix and Linda two separate characters, and gave Linda back the life she had pre-Supergirl. Then they made Matrix (Supergirl) an angel.
A literal angel. The conclusion was a little too... well... sentimental I guess. But the art was an interesting set of colors and an unusal style, and most of the writing was very interesting. It was a good buy for a 50-page, no avertisement, prestige format full color ($6). Art: interesting. Writing: Mostly good.
League of One:
I bought this one for one reason only. The cover art on the hardcover version was incredible (but I bought softcover to save $10). Wonder Woman going toe-to-toe with a dragon that took down Supes, Bats, GL, Flash, MM and Aquaman already? Sign me up.
Don't judge a book by it's cover, folks. While the internal art is still pretty much what the cover led me to expect, the JLA isn't taken out by a dragon. The writing gives you a lot of expectations. It plays heavily on truth v. lies, using WW's lariat of truth as a key turning point. There's some really cool ideas here. But they all get turned down. When you have an icon representing truth, and she tells even a little white lie and betrays her friends even with the best of motives, you've got to have some consequences for that when she faces the epitomy of falsehood and her lies are suposedly revealed -- but those lies are conveniently ignored, and well, the day is saved when wonder woman uses her superhuman strength to crush the dragon's heart. Bleh. The most consequences she faces are when Superman pouts and won't speak to her for 4 panels, then whines at her for 4 more. Talk about lame. Also there's a prophecy that whoever defeats the dragon will die. This is averted because Superman shows up in time to do... uh... CPR. Again, very lame. Now we can never, ever take a prophecy seriously in Wonder Woman, because they just don't come true. It'd be fine if the writer got out of it by Delphic vagaries, but the prophecy is pretty plain. This one also paid some gratuitous homage to Kingdom Come (all DCU graphic novels are required to do this now), but while it wasn't entirely necessarily, it wasn't bludgeoned, so it works all right. So, Art good, writing promising good, but ending up bad.
Hong Kong:
By far the best, which makes me happy because it was a) the one I paid the most for (it's in hard cover) and b) the one I had the most doubts about. The art sometimes got to me. Some panels are reminiscent of Alex Ross' work (especially on Kingdom Come) but in other panels more like Akira. Not that either was bad, but their different styles. And they don't always work together when mixed on the same page. I think it bears another read to see if there's a patter to the changing styles. The writing was nothing to rave on and on about, but with one scene's exception, it was pretty solid. Overview is that Batman is caught up in an investigation in a snuff film with clues leading to Hong Kong's triad gangs. So Bats goes to the source. There he inspires a Chinese Version of himself. This'd be great for a Jackie Chan flick, though generally it's a bit more serious than that, and of course, it almost requires the Batman character because of the themes Night Dragon embraces. It looks at both sides of the law in HK and uses some oriental outlook. I was pleased through the whole thing.