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

So, apparently Kid Flash raided Robin's closet for a new costume.

I think it was mentioned that the Purple Lady was going to be dealt with in Justice League. But, who knows?

I largely agree. That's why I liked Flashpoint as it was completely self-contained and only had tie-ins that didn't break into the weeklies and were not needed to be read to following the main event. Blackest Night was sinful in that manner!

 

Not just the costume (and yes, it is Tim's pre-Red Robin costume). Kid Flash borrows... erm... steals a bunch of Tim's clothes in issue #4.

 

I haven't been following Teen Titans at all, but is that meant to be Bart's permanent new costume? Or just a temporary one as a gag?

 

Knowing Bart's characterization probably just a temporary one as a gag.

 

My pulls today:

Superman
The Dark Knight
Aquaman
The Flash

NON DC:
Ghostbusters
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
TMNT: Michelangelo one-shot.

I've not read any of them yet and will probably get to them later this evening.

 

Aquaman#4: You can tell when Geoff Johns is interested and enjoying writing characters. I honestly haven't enjoyed Arthur this much since Peter David's run and Grant Morrison's Justice League version. This Aquaman is clearly a much younger and less hardened character. He is still hard but not as cold maybe is the right term I'm looking for. Johns has done his best to depict why Arthur is an awesome and under appreciated character. The art is stunning. Ivan Reis is perfect for this book. Mera though is the real star...Johns affection for the character just shines. We also get little snippets of the differences between Arthur and Mera. I've been pleasantly surprised so far with the quality of this book. Compared to what Johns has been doing in Justice League and Green Lantern, this in my opinion is his best work right now. We also get a one page splash at the end of the book teasing the major story line next year...Who Sunk Atlantis?

Superman# 4: I've been patient with this book. I have really wanted to like it. I just can't stand the slow plotting and Perez's bad dialogue. If the intention to be a homage to the 80's Superman comics then I think it's succeeded. It feels like I'm reading one of those retro DC books that came out just prior to the relaunch. There are "new" elements in this book I guess but nah I would have honestly preferred another JMS/Chris Roberson arc in favour of this drivel.I can't believe DC editorial signed off on this book or couldn't assign this to a better writer. I have all the respect in the world for Perez and his art work...but really can't stand his writing. I've stuck with this book but I'm dropping it now. Will pick it up again maybe with Jurgens and Griffin take over. One thing that was amusing was that the Commissioner of the Metropolis Police Department seems to be named after Grant Morrison...and another character seems to derive his name after the word corruption lol.

 

The issue makes it pretty clear that it's a gag. Bart's costume is torn to hell when he shows up at the Titan's door, so he has to borrow (steal) Tim's clothes. Tim is not happy about this, and makes it known.

 

Last nights DC read:
I, Vampire #4

I feel I got cheated. Issue 3 clearly ends with the Bat symbol in blood on the brick wall indicating that's where we are going. Issue 4's title was "In Between Days", that was my first clue something was amiss. This issue is about the journey to Gotham, boooooo. John Constantine shows up and while it's not a bad issue it is clearly a filler issue that is stretching out the arc just, imo, to have another crossover character appear.

 

This week's pulls, in order from best to worst:

Aquaman: Very good book and conclusion to the first arc of this new take on Aquaman. The arc's villains are dealt with fairly tamely but this opening arc seemed to be more about Aquaman, and the readers, seeming has a real hero. The book ends on a touching note with a child whose parent(s) were saved declaring Aquaman to be his favorite hero. Good book, and the artwork in this one is fantastic.

Superman: Mostly okay. The book mostly deals with the after effects of the previous issue and Superman finally confronting the villain who has been tossing these baddies at him for the last few issues. The book has an odd style change in Superman's inner monologue changing from "thought boxes" to thought bubbles/balloons. The art overall is okay, but there's one or two places where Superman's physical appearance looks a bit different than it has in the previous issues, the Clark persona also looks a bit different. It's not drastic and may be due to just a fuzzy memory. I still think the art is decent but the dialogue of this book is getting a little exposition and recap heavy for my tastes.

Flash: Still a good book but I'm starting to think they're making Flash over-powered. This book suggests The Flash can make movements and decisions in femtoseconds. A measure of time that is so fast that it compares to one-second as one-second does to 32 million years. According to Wikipedia a single femtosecond is faster than pretty much every single action in the entire universe. The Flash thoughts that he can react to an action the very instant it touches him. So he survives last month's gun-shot to the head by simply moving out of the way inside of the femtosecond the bullet hits him. The blood we saw was simply from the graze of the bullet across his skull.

We're four issues into this series and it seems The Flash is way over-powered. And people want to complain about Superman being overpowered? Anyway, the book is good even though the bulk of it centers around a secondary character.

The Dark Knight: Ugh. Why I am still picking this thing up is beyond my understanding. Again it's just an ugly, ugly, looking book as far as art goes. Now, the art is good but it's just not attractive. This book also brings up stories from Wonder Woman and Flash (not from their individual books but maybe from the JLA books, or maybe they're doing completely different things here.) The book also, improbably, has Batman survive a 5,000-foot fall. (Yes, Batman fires his grappling gun at the last moment, saving him, but he'd be moving so fast the sudden stop from the grapple would rip his arm right off of him.) The only thing "good" about this book is, perhaps, the ending that teases us on who the next baddie is going to be. I'm going to see where that leads but more than likely this is a book I will drop.

 

Johns take on Aquaman isn't really "new". Like with most of Johns work recently it's harking back to the Silver Age version of the character. Most of the characters/books Johns has worked on have all had inklings of their Silver Age versions because this period is Geoff Johns favourite as a kid growing up. This is his and Dan DiDio's most idealistic vision of the DCU only the New 52 'Verse seems to have "gritted it up".

 

True. Nevertheless, this take on Aquaman I'm really liking. It's pretty much the most interesting I have ever found him.

 

I agree as I said in my review I love what Johns is doing with Arthur and Mera right now. I can't wait for the next arc and the Who Sunk Atlantis tease is interesting.

 

Yeah. This "The Trench" arc seemed to mostly be about re-establishing Aquaman as a viable superhero and to display his (and Mera's) powerset. I hope the next arc will have more teeth to it and be more interesting. (The Trench arc seemed to close up and end rather too neatly and cleanly.)

 

Agreed again. I didn't really like the obvious oh Aquaman is cool jabs that Johns did in the arc. I think I touched on this earlier in the thread. Aquaman fans already know he is an awesome character...and yeah I know that was done for the benefit of new readers or those who didn't really think much of Arthur before...but I kind of think it was unnecessary.

 

I, sort-of, agree. I think his powers could've been shown off without the references. But, at the same time, I also liked the references to AC being seen as a "lame" super-hero while also establishing his powers. (He does eat seafood, doesn't have to constantly be wet, can't directly talk to sea-life, etc.)

I suspect that's all in the "past" now and we'll move on to really seeing AC as being a viable super-hero.

 

I didn't care much for the first four issues of Aquaman, they felt so full of filler and unnecessary splash pages. It should have basically been like 2-3 issues, not 4. And the villains were just mindless monsters, not terribly interesting. I like the pairing of Aquaman and Mera, and the art was good, but the story was very, very thin.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed the Aquaman series leading up to Infinite Crisis, where he had to deal with Sub Diego and it had the absolutely gorgeous Patrick Gleason art.

 

Yeah the arc it's self wasn't very strong but then that wasn't really the point I believe. I look at the arc as a character study of both Arthur and Mera. Especially Arthur. Remember this is supposed to be designed for "new" readers and "new" fans. I think that the opening arc did it's job personally and serves as a prelude to the greater story ahead. I hated the Sub Diego arc.

 

Yeah, it was certainly an arc to re-introduce people to Aquaman.

 

Flash has always been kinda overpowered, since the Speed Force days. I mean, it's a guy who has access to basically unlimited energy, and gets all of the perks of relativistic travel and none of the downsides. Superman's just really strong and really fast, but he has vague limits. The Flash can hit you as arbitrarily hard as he wants to.

"Femtoseconds" are kinda pushing it, though. I think a lot of writers don't actually look up the words they're using sometimes. At least they didn't say "Planck time."

 

Well, they really should. When you use a word like "femtoseconds" you put a real-world number to something and that real world number can be analyzed to put holes into your story. As I said above, if The Flash can move in femtoseconds he's pretty much unstopable. Hell, he can move 200 times faster than it takes your the chemicals in your eye to react to light! Think of the implications that could have on things! If they're going to use a real number they should at least make sure that it makes sense.

It's one of the reasons why Star Trek when talking about computer technology used made up terms like "kiloquads" which while can probably be decoded to mean something to us in "reality" means nothing. It tells us nothing about the space in the Enterprise computer because the writers pretty much realized any number they used likely would sooner or later be out-matched by real-world technology well before the 24th century.

The only slip in this comes when data says he has a storage capacity of "800-quadrillion bits" which parses down to 90,000 terrabytes. Considering 2 TB hard-drives and more are around now, we'll certainly surpass 90,000 TB between now and the 24th c. So a slip in the writting pretty much renders Data's Brain capacity smaller than the entire storage capacity of all the computers presently on Earth.

So saying The Flash can react in femtoseconds makes him absurdly over-powered.