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

The editor, Matt Idelson is probably to blame. The guy has gone through thirteen writers from the start of New Krypton to the current reboot!

 

I would have liked to have seen Geoff Johns finish his Superman story, I always thought that maybe there were changes to the New Krypton arc after he left to focus on Blackest Night.

I guess maybe I'm wrong about "Supergirl" and it's fans. A part of me misses DCU Kara so I'm a little biased against New 52 Kara. I don't dislike all of what they were doing, I like the character a bit and the art work...I just got bored with the story. Same with "Superboy". Like I said before...maybe the Zero Issues will change my mind.

Also DC is planning on releasing a Zero Month Omnibus. I'll post the link in a bit. It was reported on their blog I believe.

 

NK seems to have been a Busiek-Johns collaboration.

 

The New Krypton Epic definitely did get disjointed and less interesting when Johns left, and the climax was extremely rushed and disappointing.

 

I read Resurrection Man #10, Frank:AOS #10 and Demon Knights #10 this morning and enjoyed all 3!! RM especially was bittersweet knowing the end is nigh. The story there is kicking up for Mitch's soul and the power it holds, Suriel the Angel has shown back up for it.

 

I skipped on Resurrection Man due to the cancellation, even though I've bought the previous 9 issues. I've liked it, but haven't loved it, so I figured it was time to bail.

I thought the end of this issue would have been talked about more. I guess Blackest Night and the multiple corps really ran people off of the book. Anyway, Blackest Night began when Black Hand died and the black ring found him. Of course, that was because of Scar, who was able to generate black rings. I figure Nekron is unable to be totally destroyed. Death still exists, so some aspect of Death does as well, and Paul Cornell's run on Action Comics showed up that Death of the Endless was not involved. I wonder if Nekron is back or if there is a new avatar of Death.

I've stuck with Green Lantern all along, and think that the New-52 issues have shown a vast improvement over the post-Blackest Night issues, which were okay (I'm currently re-reading them, and they're not bad, but they are just lacking). This arc, and especially this issue is the best issue of Green Lantern in a long time, in my opinion.

 

Agreed. Right now, Green Lantern is the best it's been since Blackest Night. I was really unsure about Sinestro being a Green Lantern again, but man is it working. He and Hal actually have a really good dynamic going. Despite him being Hal's archenemy, these two actually work pretty well together. I find myself hoping that this lasts a good long time. I have no illusions, of course. Eventually he's going to be putting that yellow ring back on. I'm enjoying this while it lasts, though.

 

Hal and Sinestro working together are awesome. I'm still wondering though what the whole "Third Army" arc will bring. It's kind of hard to have a story that's setting up the Guardians as the bad guys, tying Abin Sur into it. I'm not sure where Johns is going with this, but I get the feeling that it's got to be big and something that drastically changes the status-quo.

One of my gripes after Blackest Night was that the Guardians were left untouched. I felt the same way, though slightly less so after "The Sinestro Corps War," but then they really only screwed up by thinking that Sinestro would attack Oa, and then we found out that Sinestro manipulated them into the laws about killing their enemies, were introduced to the Alpha Lanterns (which uses Manhunter technology). Then they outlawed relationships within the Corps and finally, they were set-up by Scar. "The New Guardian" really made me think that Hal was going to find a way to replace the Guardians with the leaders of the other corps, but that never happened either.

 

Yeah, the Guardians have been bothering me for a long time, too. A reckoning has to be coming for them. They perform one downright evil act after another. Them lobotomizing Ganthet was just the last fucking straw for me. This Third Army story that they're building to makes me think (hope) that this may finally be the end for them (and a long time coming it is.)

Another little thing that has been bugging me: Why have the Guardians let Kyle keep his ring? He's pretty officially no longer a member of the Corps and is actively working with people that Guardians consider enemies. It seems to me they would have deactivated his ring pretty much immediately.

 

In Blackest Night I thought Scar killed off the Guardians or something, so I surprised to see them alive and well afterwards. I agree they're just villainous at this point, and I look forward to them finally being overthrown.

 

No, Scar just covered them in some kind of black goo. They were rescued when the Rainbow Corps took on Nekron.

I haven't been reading Green Lantern: New Guardians, but in the "New Guardians" arc post-Blackest Night Hal pretty much did the same thing. Salaak brought it to their attention and the Guardians deferred to the Justice League to aid them. Hal never lost his ring for that.

 

^This is a little different though. Kyle actually put on a ring from each corps, attacked the Guardians and then fled. He's no longer a Green Lantern, but still has his ring.

 

Only a few of them died. A few more died in BD.

It's essentially weaning their numbers down.

 

Oh, well, then, yeah, I wonder how he's still a GL, too!

 

I loved Action 10: while it's not my favorite nu52 series (still Demon Knights), Action might be the best series they're doing right now. I like that we still seem to be about four years or so in the past, maybe? Clark's not quite at the Planet yet. The scene with the Justice League looked pretty "early" too (and was more efficient story-telling than the first six issues of the League's own title). We seem to be developing three different sides to Superman's personality: nebbish Clark, international Kal-el, and scary-ass local Superman.

 

I think of the three, "scary-ass local" Superman is my favorite.

8 years ago, the events of Superman #200 resulted in Kal-El disappearing as Metropolis was facing a time-storm. Out of the storm came Wildstorm's Mr. Majestic and for 3 issues (well, he was barely in the 1st of the three), I was introduced to a polite, straightforward, super-intelligent Superman-esque character and fell in love. I bought the 4-issue follow up mini-series, as well as the Wildstorm series that followed when Majestic went back home.

Like the Superman we've seen in Action these past 10 months, Majestic saw a problem and fixed it. Period. No wavering, no self-doubt, no angst. The stuff that plagued the 90's/early 2000's Superman. That's not to say that he was only written like that, but at its worst point, Superman considered action rather than took it. I have no problem with a thoughtful hero, mind you, but Superman became too much about thinking it through and too little about seeing a problem and solving it in an ingenious way.

Even worse is that authors suddenly caught on to this and tried to address it, such as when Greg Ruck ended an otherwise spectacular run on Adventures of Superman with an Infinite Crisis tie in where he tried to focus on how wishy-washy Superman had become, making him even more ineffectual.

I've waited these past 10 months to see if DC would re-introduce Mr. Majestic. The consensus I've seen has been that if DC continues with this version of Superman, at least the one in Action Comics, because I haven't been reading Superman, there really isn't a need for a Mr. Majestic, unless you wanted to set him up as a rival, which he shouldn't be. The aforementioned mini-series Majestic focused on that briefly, as the opening scene is Majestic in a diner and Superman going in to talk to him. Majestic explains his actions as doing what is necessary and Superman counters with his whole, "Super-heroes are there to inspire, not do the work of humans." It really showed how these two could not exist in the same universe for long without butting heads. And, as much as a supporter I am of Superman, I think that's a fight he would lose.


On another note, I am really loving the back-ups in Action Comics. Sholly Fisch seems to be a talent DC is working hard to hide. I know he wrote (is writing?) the Batman the Brave and the Bold tie-in comic, but other than that, he doesn't seem to be doing much for DC. Each of the back-ups has been really well-written, to the point where they've been as entertaining, or in some cases, moreso than the main feature. This issue's focus on how much Clark meant to the supporting cast was excellent.

However, I do wonder how we go from the Clark Kent of this issue to the Clark Kent in the infamous "intruding on Lois' love life" scene from Superman #1 (or really, how we go from this issue's Lois to that issue's Lois). As I've said, I haven't read Superman, so maybe I'm missing context, but we go from early 20's crusader for Truth, Justice, and the American Way/kind hearted Clark Kent, to the sad-sack Clark we seen in that scene. Hopefully I'm missing something here, but otherwise, the 5 years in between Action and Superman really resulted in a drastic change for the worse for Clark. I wonder if this issue is the catalyst for that change.

 

Scott Snyder talks about Batman #0 and his next story arc...which sounds like the "game changer" that Bleeding Cool has been teasing for the last couple of months. They have speculated that it has to do with yet another tweak of Bruce's origin. From the sound of Snyder's interview...this might be true. I've thought that a Talon might be involved in the death of Bruce's parents myself but it appears that Joe Chill is still going to be left intact.

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/scott-snyder-batman-next-major-storyline.html

 

Joe Chill was a Talon!

 

I've never care for Chill being anything more than a stickup man.

 

So they really made him a hired hand for the Court? *facepalm*