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

Not in the numbers needed to keep the books selling.

 

Bleeding Cool is now "reporting" (it is Rich Johnston after all) that DC has backed down in the face of fan outrage (and probably the realization that killing off their best known African American character is probably not a "win" for their claimed "diversity" push).

 

Well, Mar-Vell has never really came back. We've seen a skrull imposter, and atleast one clone, but the actual Mar-vell from the 616 universe has never returned, as far as I know (and if he did it definately wasn't for more than an issue or two, the closest I read was the kree made clone in an Avengers book a few months ago who I think had Mar-Vell's memories, but was still a clone who died quickly). So, thats one major hero who has never been brought back for any real period of time since his death in the main universe.

 

So that constant fever-dream of a run in Action is over, right? Seriously, what the fuck at all has happened in that book over the last few months?!

 

A lot of awesome stuff that no one understood? I did attempt to make sense of it with my reviews...of which I still have to go to. Action Comics goes from must read for me to now officially dropped

I did wonder yesterday if there was going to be a fan backlash after Rich reported the killing of John Stewart...and he does acknowledge other websites in helping. The same thing happened of course when DC fired Gail Simone from "Batgirl" a few months ago.

 

If Uncle Ben counts then Martha and Thomas Wayne along with Jor-El and Lara-El are still counted among the dead. Maria Castle and the kids also still dead.

I know those are all "origin specific" but since Uncle Ben is included that would count.

I think Gwen is a good example to go with when asking what character(s) is/are still dead in comics NOT tied to the need for their to be an origin story.

Ben Reilly...again after Spider Island.
Doc Ock has died....again, sort of.
Jason Macandale is still dead right? Jack O'Lantern/Hobgoblin
Ned Leeds
Karen Page(unless she's back in Waid's DD run, I don't know)
Gabriel the Airwalker(2nd Herald of Galactus)
Marlo, Rick Jones ex-wife?

 

Not to mention Peter Parker's parents are also still dead

 

Well, speaking of John Stewart, his wife Katma Tui has died and thus far stayed dead. Ralph and Sue Dibney are still dead, as is Ted Kord. Thunderbird is still dead, right? Jean Grey, too? Even if a younger version of her is running around in All New X-Men.

 

Yeah unfortunately the original Jean Grey is still dead and has remained so since Morrison killed her at the end of his New X-Men run. As much as Bendis would have us believe...having the younger original version running around in the present...doesn't count for us Jeannie fans

I suppose we could consider Ralph and Sue even erased eh, same with Ted and the rest of the gang who haven't made their New 52 debut yet? Damn Didio.

 

nah, she's still dead.

 

Considering all of the deceased characters that have been ressurected by the New 52, I'm kinda amazed that Elongated Man and Blue Beetle have not been among them.

 

Maybe we'll still see their Earth 2 versions or something like that, even though it won't be the same.


Action Comics #18: The Grand Finale of Grant Morrison's fantastical Superman opus...was just that...fantastical and grand. Now for those who are confused as to what happened in this entire run...the simplest that I can put it...is that Morrison was establishing Superman as a new American mythology, he states this on the first page of the issue. In his own unique way, Morrison is paying the ultimate homage to Superman's entire history and showing us just how incredible a character he is...and what he truly means to the world. He never gives up, he fights the never ending battle against incredible odds, and he will always win.

As to the actual plot, pretty much unfolded as I thought it would. The Legion arrives to wake up Mxy as Morrison establishes the 5th Dimension species...they're on a higher plane of existence than we lower level conscience species are. Lord V managed to somehow trap Mxy in a coma, so that he could not interfere or aide Superman at all while Lord V did his best to try and destroy Superman...by causing and manipulating various important events through Clark's life, starting right back to the start, with the destruction of Krypton and ending with "Doomsday".

Now...this is going to probably take several reads (Trekker's continued point of that shouldn't be necessary aside) I believe that this issue basically resetted everything to unfold as it should have naturally? Lord V's influence on Clark's life was halted or restored? Mxy when he passed on our plane, ascended to the 5th Dimension where he assumed his rightful place as King and was reunited with his wife? I'm also assuming that Lord V was a family member of somekind...but actually didn't understand that part.

Rags art was awesome in this issue...and the Legion back up story as short it was, almost served as a tiny epilogue for this story. Please someone get Paul Levitz off Legion of Superheroes and put Sholly Fisch or Grant Morrison on that book. The Legion deserves them. LONG LIVE THE LEGION!

 

DC is afraid of hipsters and tumblr-girls.

 

Earth 2's characters all seem to have a previous connection to the Golden Age or Silver Age Earth 2 characters, so probably not there. We'll probably see Northwind or Silver Scarab in Earth 2 before we see Ralph and Sue.

 

I dunno, I guess to each their own. I found the entire thing just confusing and nonsensical. Maybe I'll give it another read now that it's all over but it just seemed like a confusing mess of parts. I'm not sure what the threat was, what was supposed to be happening or why the ending that happened happened. (Everyone in the world said their name backwards... Huh?!?! How would one even even begin to KNOW how to say their name backwards.)

If it's supposed to be some grand, mythological type of story telling I guess that's not quite what I'm looking for and why I've mostly been enjoying "Superman" much, much more as it's been fairly straight forward. The H'El on Earth story line could be followed even though it spanned other books, I knew who the threat was, what he was planning to do, why he wanted to do it and what was being done to stop him. Superman's motivations for visiting Lex, all of that.

This last Morrison story line has just been a jumble of WTFs and it's all been contained in the same book! And again, I'm sorry, but one should not have to re-read something in order to "understand all of it." To understand it more, perhaps, to find details you missed and can now find with hindsight, sure. But in a "WTF, did I just read?! Did I miss something?" sort of way? If that needs to be done a story teller has failed somewhere.

And that's how I feel. I literally have NO idea what I just read or what happened at all since this arc began. The first 12 issues or so of Action were decent but with these last few issues I was seriously considering dropping the book because it had just gotten bizarre and over my head. I wasn't having fun reading the books, and I wasn't interested in what was happening or invested in the characters. I was lost.

Again, maybe that'll change if I re-read it.

Anyway, I fully admit to not being a fan of Morrison as he's too abstract and too out-there. He presents you with a still un-solved Rubix Cube that's as jumbled up as it possibly can get and it seems like his fans take it as the greatest thing there is with all of the meaning of each side having 9 different colors on it form the other sides. I'm sitting here scratching my head wondering where he got the other three sides from.

 

Someday it will be the middle of the night and you awake suddenly and shout "I get it!"

 

The threat was Superman's very existence and purpose. I suppose that Lord V's human name could be close to Vendetta...since he showed an image of himself to Clark that was very close to the Guy Fawkes mask and that was essentially what he was unleashing against Superman.

It's okay if you didn't like or understand what was going on Trekker...at least you gave it a shot

Also as I've mentioned before this entire thing I think was also partial set up for Multiversity later on. You didn't have to understand the references or whatever, but that's my theory since Morrison himself stated that we would see President Superman as a major character in one of the issues (I assume the story that will feature his Earth).

 

Yeah, well it looks like maybe the next creative team behind Action will be more my style but we'll see it. As I said, I've really enjoyed "Superman" during all of this time. It's more consistently made sense and stayed as much grounded in "reality" as a comic book can be.

I'll give this run of Action another read to see if it clicks but I may need to try and give myself strep in order to induce a 105-fever first.

 

Hey, I just realized something, the Morrison Action story was basically "Dogma"! The god character was trapped in a coma and they had to wake him up to stop the demonic god from getting his revenge on the lower mortals.

 

So who was playing Jay and Silent Bob?!