DC's New 52: Reviews and Discussion (Spoilers welcolme and likely)

Young, old, it's all smug, all bastard, all the time.

 

^ Not all the time. Damian has had some nice moments outside the Bat-Books. The crossover with Kara was awesome and implied he had a crush on her...oh wait that Kara is gone now...but yeah he's a smug and arrogant bastard 90 percent of the time. He's grown a lot from the sheer and utter prat he was when we were first introduced to him.

 

Hell, I like Damian. I meant Bruce.

 

^ Oh LOL.

 

God I haven't read comics since the early ninties. My kempo class was right next to a comic store and our sensi would give out a comic each week to the kid who had worked the hardest and I really got into them. They were all marvel comics and I read them for a while but it became way to hard to follow plus I was a kid and thus didn't have money to buy very many on my own and I didn't even bother with DC. I decided to go ahead and give DC a chance though with this new reboot and so far I'm enjoying the he'll out of it. I love the digital comics and the way it guides you panel to panel, that's pretty cool and of the ones I've read I've been pretty impressed so far and I'm looking forward to the next issues. I picked up Action, Detective, Batgirl and JL mainly because I'm familiar with the Batman and Supes methos so it isn't hard to follow. I was thinking about getting JLI but Batman is pretty much the only character I know from there so I'm still thinking it over. I know next to nothing about Green Lantern and Green Arrow but maybe I'll give them a whirl. Definitely going to pick up the rest of the Supes and Batbooks though except for the one about African Batman. All in all I think DC did a good job and I hope they keep it accessible for a little while before the crossovers and big world changing event stuff.

 

So I have the New Action Comics, Detective Comics, Justice league and Green Arrow just for the hell of it. I love DC and have since I was a little kid watching Superfriends. Superman is my favorite and I used to read comics when I was younger. I remember them bieng lika $1.50 or something. Anyway, I followed Superman for about a year after the death and rebirth, but it became increasingly harder and harder to find comics.

Over the past decade I would pick one up every so often, but the story lines became so hard to follow that I just gave up. In the past few years i've been wanting to get back into comic books, but like I said, the story arcs are just too much.

All of that bieng said, i've tried to keep up with what has been going on. I have a vague idea of the past few years. I figured with this reboot it would be a great oppreotunity for me to personally start over as well. I intend on keeping up with Superman and Batman. I may ocassionally read GL, GA, Auquaman, Flash and WW.(the core characters), but Batman and Supeerman are my main concern. I also intend to keep up with Justice Leauge. How long I will keep up is completely up in the air right now, but for now i'm on board.

I have only read JL and Action Comics #1 so far. For JL. pretty much everything has been said. I thought it was funny and suspensefull and pretty good. I loved the banter and the reveal of Supes.

Action Comics #1: So it starts with Superman bieng
on the scene for 6 months, so no origin story as far as Clark's ship landing in Smallville or anythin, but who really needs that, right? Superman is kind of a dick and arrogant, he's still got his "Boy Scout" quality, but is not so humble as i'd like him to be. He pulls a few Batman tactics in dealing with the bad guy. This is a younger version of Clark, we see his apartment and is not at the Planet yet. This gives him a Peter Parker feel to it. Luthor and General Lane are in this one and it's cool how they are working together, but you can tell that Luthor is out for blood. There is a hint of some major trouble coming from space. This could be Braniac, Zod or Darksied, I guess from the JL #1 though that it is Darksied. I'd prefer Braniac, but I guess we will have to wait.( I was hoping Braniac would be in the new movie as well) The suit, I actually like it. Obviously the suit will change, I like the new suit, but the belt needs some gold in it and the shield on the belt is not needed. Over all, I liked it and i'm looking foward to #2. A/A-

I can't say I will give a review of every issue, but I will definately try to discuss. I will come back after I read Detective Comics #1.

I also want to say that I think it's cool to be able say I own Action Comics #1, though I wish it was the 3 million dollar one.

 

This is the thing I was complaining about upthread. JL takes place "5 years ago" Action takes place 6 months after Supes appeared. BUT, that doesn't mean they are taking place at the same time. So, what is being hinted at in JL comes after the events that are unfolding in Action. Maybe months after or a year or...? It's unclear.

 

Yeah, right, I forgot about that, so it could be Braniac or really anyone.

 

I think Action takes place '6 months' before JL. I remembering reading, and I can't recall where I read it, that Action's first arc also tells the story of how Superman gets his suit. So, the thing in space has to be Kryptonian, right? I guess Supes has been in action for six years then.

ncc71877

 

I just realized there's kind of a plot hole in animal man. So, Buddy won't get his daughter Maxine a dog, right? Because he claims that being around one animal for any extended period messes him up, because he imprints on that animal power or whatever. Okay, we can leave out humans for whatever dumb reason (could Buddy manipulate the morphogenetic field to grab the "power" of a human smarter than him?).

But the plot hole is that we, and our homes, are covered in animals. Millions of them. Why don't spiders, cockroaches, flies, and dust mites mess him up?

I don't think he's lying. Maybe Lemire just didn't consider it, or considered it and decided his story was more important, as the cliffhanger relies on Buddy's refusal to get a dog... I know that sounds lame, but it's the awesomest last page out of all 14 of the books. If so, I couldn't fault him for it.

Also, I know it's never been how Animal Man's been visually depicted, but since they're rebooting it anyway it might've been nice to see him actually assume the trappings of the animals he's emulating. Like, I get that the power of an eagle lets him fly, but when an eagle does it, its wings hold it up. Buddy Baker just takes off like Superman. What's holding him? It's always been visually off-putting.

 

Yeah Action Comics takes place before Justice League does...and it's not six months that Clark has debuted but "several months" IIRC. Morrison has stated that at this point Clark hasn't uncovered his Kryptonian heritage yet so he doesn't know where his powers come from or where he is from. Martha and Jonathan are dead but we don't know for how long at this point. He also stated at SDCC that the Legion of Superheroes will be touched on in some way (he wouldn't say how) and that Jor-El and Lara would make an appearance in issue three.

I didn't think Clark was being a dick or arrogant at all. He's just very naive and idealistic as well as direct. He isn't at the point in his career where he thinks about the consequences of his actions. Morrison is very much playing on the word "Action" in this book.

 

At the end of JL they give character details to the big 5 (so far )and it reads something like," See how Superman gets his new suit in Action Comics bla, bla, bla."

 

Batgirl.

I wasn't wowed by it. For a Batgirl book, it was surprisingly grim with a high body count. (Two people get murdered, and two more people are almost murdered. In the span of twenty pages, no less.) Gail Simone's writing was merely average, and it suffered from the Eric Saward problem (in his Doctor Who scripts, he had a tendency to introduce major characters and then never ever name them -- for instance, I don't think we ever learn the name of Barbara's roomie in Batgirl #1).

In a lot of ways, I think this was the book of the New 52 that had the most to prove -- it had to follow the Bryan Q. Miller run (which I loved), and it had to justify undoing twenty-plus years of the Barbara Gordon status quo. And it doesn't do either. Miller's Batgirl was the "fun" Bat-book, and there's no fun here. (Maybe Barbara meeting her roomie, but that has the Saward problem. Also, it doesn't make much sense if Barbara had a life as Oracle; whatever happened to her base of operations?) And as for the past, it's all glossed over. (There's a one page flashback to The Killing Joke and its important detail insofar as Barbara is concerned; otherwise, it's limited to a line of dialogue that goes, basically, "And then a miracle happened.")

For a book like this, the best thing to do would be to start in the middle of the action (which it does) and establish a tone (which it also does), so in that sense Batgirl #1 works. It when you think about it in the larger context that it falls down.

Based on the first issue, I don't know what this book wants to be. If it's going to be a somewhat grim comic about a redheaded female Bat in Gotham, I don't see why this Batgirl needs to exist -- Batwoman fills the same niche and is bound to be the better written and more artistically interesting book. But I should be fair -- I didn't like Miller's Batgirl off the bat, either; it took until about issue #3 for its tone and premise to establish themselves and for me to really "get" the book.

If you have no connection to the previous Batgirls, if you've only ever known Barbara Gordon as Batgirl (thanks to Adam West reruns or the Batman animated series), this book is probably fine, if a little dark.

 

I'll probably pick up Batgirl after the pricedrop, on the strength of Simone's other work. I think you're right that Batwoman will very likely be better, but I suspect that won't be Simone's fault. |for the reasons you suggest above, Batgirl has too much working against it and no real reason to exist beyond "that's how it was in the Silver Age."

Of all the new 52, only Flash comes close to the status of pure nostalgia without anything else compelling - and even Flash has jettisoned almost eferything that made Barry Allen interesting in the Silver Age (and there was precious little of that to begin with - he had nephew with the same powers and was in a stable relationship).

 

What, they're more than that now?
That's obscene. In my day they were 25 cents.

 

12 cents, baby.

 

If you want a laugh, page through Hawk & Dove. Liefeld's work is dreadful. Worse than usual, IMO. You'd think that he would put forth his best effort on this, but wow, he really doesn't.

 

^^^
Over at the DC boards I was honestly surprised to see a handful of people say that liked the artwork.
My guess is they haven't really seen Liefeld and it's "newness" to them was more oddity than like. Their posts counts indicate they aren't comic newbies nor the way the spoke of comics.

It's the same dreadful artwork he's been doing for 20 yrs.

 

@Allyn I too was surprised at how dark Batgirl #1 is but Gail Simone this book is going to be different than any other Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. It is going to be exploring mature issues and Babs making critical mistakes. She hasn't been Batgirl in a very long time and is rusty. So we'll be seeing her make mistakes, second guess herself, and genuinely go on a journey of self rediscovery. I thought it was okay. It's not Simone's best writing but we have a long way to go yet.

Previews for "Superboy" and "Legion Lost" both books are more interesting than I originally gave them credit for, especially "Superboy".

 

I couldn't even read it the art work was so bad. And I usually like Sterling Gates work.