*SPOILER AHEAD* Alex Ross Justice #2!

[Great Rao]

I hope they don't get gratutiously graphic with this though.

"get" gratuitously graphic?  Seems to me that they already have!

[Kuuga]

I hope they don't get gratutiously graphic with this though.

"get" gratuitously graphic?  Seems to me that they already have!

I haven't seen the rest of the issue yet I'm just going by the one image there.

[Great Rao]

So was I.

[Super Monkey]

Poor Aquaman...

[Brainiac44]

Like a fish out of his waters...

[lonewolf23k]

It's intresting, though I dig the chrome skelton look myself.

I hope they don't get gratutiously graphic with this though.

The closest they get to graphic violence are dark (and I mean non-bright) images of ape bodies on surgery tables and a monkey with an open skull, all so dark as to show very few details.

All in all, not overwhelmingly tasteless.  

The Backstory that Alex Ross used for Brainiac is also pure Pre-Crisis Golden Age stuff, only updated: a single "Skynet" style Artificial Intelligence instead of a group of Computer Tyrants.

[nightwing]

Didn't Ross already do the green-skinned Brainiac as the villain in the Superman/Batman comic in the back of his "Mythology" book?

He looked about the same there, I thought?

[Brainiac44]

I'd have to check, I have that book.  

Back to the image though - it's more suggestive than anything else.  You must remember that back in the 50s they had worse images - ON THE COVERS not on DC but from other comics.  Brainiac is holding a bloody knife and he leaves us with the idea that he's going to open up Aquaman like a coconut but I bet money against cookies that it won't happen.  Can you imagine the scene that we would see?  Brainiac cutting open Aqua's head with no anesthetic?  I don't think DC would go for that.  Then there's also the fact that if it happened, it would mean that Aquaman dies or at least changes form - now that Brainiac has cities in bottles he wants to have brains in bottles?  Hey - that's copyright infringement of Futurama...  

Me.