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

Agreed. I'm a huge fan of the older retro stuff, but what comic artists are doing now is just SO much more sophisticated. The grasp of anatomy, the dynamic compositions, and just the sheer amount of detail is impressive as hell.

When you look at all that goes into any one panel nowadays, it seems kind of amazing that they get these comics out as often as they DO.

 

Love him or hate him. John Byrne turns out detailed, dynamic work with an incredible grasp of anatomy and compostion on time and can do it twice every month.

 

Looks like Perez is off Superman.

Keith Giffen to the rescue again.

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/george-perez-off-superman-110930.html

 

Usually featuring the same ending "then we hit the time-travel reset button" and some grown man kissing a young girl.

 

Awww...we have to wait until issue 8 for the new creative team?

 

Which has what to do with him being able to produce art for two monthy books?

 

Well, I guess this isn't tremendously surprising - that they might want to make changes on this title,that is.

 

Dan Jurgens back at drawing Superman? I'm down with that.

 

Yeah, I have no opinion on Giffen but Jurgens is good news.

 

Griffen is an interesting guy to be writing Superman...someone else can correct me, but I'm not sure he's had a prolonged run with the character. Dan Jurgens though returning to draw Superman sounds exciting to me. I will come back to the title for this creative team.

 

I still dream of the New 52 featuring Grant Morrison on Action Comics and Mark Waid on Superman... but that's just a dream. An extremely unlikely one at that.

Giffen, I do like. But my one worry with him writing so many titles is that the quality's going to start to go down. And frankly he's an older writer from a different time. Perez, Jurgens, Lobdell, Nicieza, Levitz, Lefield, and Giffen and many of them like Jurgens, Lobdell, Nicieza and Giffen are being treated like old work horses. I think this would be the perfect opportunity to get some new blood on Superman. And don't tell me that they need to have a more tested writer on Superman. Superman is going to sell regardless and it's not like Giffen has a name that can move books.

 

In my ideal world Paul Cornell would have been given "Superman". I'm surprised DC didn't offer him the book in the first place after his acclaimed run on Action.

 

Yeah. I could get into that one. He's still kind of fresh. My one worry is that it's going to end up like JLI, which is my worry about Green Arrow as well. I know Jurgens isn't writing either of them, but I feel like they'll both be throw backs to earlier comics and not in a good way.

 

As long as he's not writing it.

 

Welcome to Konstaninopolis. No Turk is getting in here.

I dunno. I don't. On one hand, the level of photorealistic representation is often waaaay more advanced and technically adept than Silver and Golden Age books. We can thank Neal Adams for that, for good or ill.

On the other hand, this is a stylistic choice. It's working harder, not necessarily working smarter. Ed Benes uses more graphite than Curt Swan did, I guess. But so what?

And additionally, take someone like John Cassaday, capable of amazing work but who will go off-model as fuck in the panel-to-panel, in part because of the level of detail he strives for. And 25% of Planetary probably didn't have a background. Or Jim Lee, who draws little lines all over compositions that are not particularly superior to the average Silver Age book. Does it take a lot of time to draw little lines? Eh, maybe.

One of these days, I'd like to see a mainstream book use manga principles but a Western animation aesthetic. What I mean is I'd like to see Darwyn Cooke draw more comic books, and more people draw like Darwyn Cooke. I would, but I don't, because it's harder than it looks.

LOVE.

I welcome the Giffenverse.

Although one might bear in mind the last time Keith Giffen wrote as many comics in a single continuity, it was when he was closing out Valiant.

Did a good job, tho. It was a mercy killing.

See, but one of these things is not like the other. Er, well, two, actually, but Liefeld is different in a different way.

I'd place Giffen in the pantheon of comics masters. Pretty much everything he's ever done has either succeeded or been a beautiful, ambitious failure. The rest of those guys just aren't in his league. He's an innovator, and an experimentalist, when Lobdell or Nicieza are not. Even JLI, usually considered Giffen being silly, was experimental at the time. Hell, actually being funny would probably be considered experimental now. (And the mastery of brutal tonal shifts is rivaled by none, to the extent I'm not even sure how he and deMatteis did it; Simone is probably the only latterday creator to come close.)

I'd say the only DC writer who is of the same mold as Giffen is Morrison. (And I like Morrison a bit better, but that may only because I've been alive and literate during most of Morrison's career, and Morrison's career has been better publicized and better collected, bar Zenith.)

The only downside to Giffen is that he is likelier to physically die before a newer creator would.

I'm surprised they didn't use Black Ring to end the old DC universe. Tell they totally couldn't have. It would've been great. Their greatest villain, becoming their greatest hero, and ending conflict and hatred for all time.

Also, it would've been surprising, which the actual ending to Black Ring was not. Oh, Lex Luthor hates Superman more than he loves absolute power and DC would prefer to continue making comics? Really? Holy cow, what a twist!

 

After Birthright they can just keep Waid away from Superman, thanks.

 

Oh man, I love Birthright. It's on a very short list of my favorite Superman stories ever. It could have benefited from being a little shorter, but otherwise it was fantastic.


Myasishchev, you're right. I didn't mean to make Giffen sound bad. JLI is something I read quite often just for pure enjoyment. I just think I'd rather have him stick with one title for now and let someone else write this title. I will also say that I feel like Giffen is a better innovator than a writer and it's unfortunate that he's just picking up leftovers right now. I'd be interested to see what he could do with his own #1 (Not something Co-written by Dan Didio).

But at the same time, this is making me give a serious second look to both Superman and Green Arrow, so what do I know?

 

I've never actually read Birthright but I feel safe saying it's my favorite Superman origin story because it aligns with my ideological beliefs.

And if it's of remotely the quality of his other mid-2000s retcon-heavy work, it's probably pretty great. I was thinking the other day about a DC relaunch with Mark Waid in Dan DiDio's position. It's a cool universe to pretend to live in.

No kidding. I'll know I'll be buying 'em.

I'd like to keep buying OMAC, too, although it's not made for me, but someone who enjoys Kirbesque a little bit more...

Someone said a while back that Giffen, deMatteis and Maguire were no longer interested in doing JLI.

I thought it was the best argument for chattel slavery I've ever heard.

 

I'm convinced they have morons running the Superbooks. They ended Lemire's amazing run on Superboy. Fired Spencer half-way into the first issue of Supergirl. Forced Cornell to write their dumb Doomsday story and didn't allow him to write Superman for the first nine months while intead allowed for the terrible JMS run that was aborted before it was half way finished.

For all the crap Daniel and Finch are allowed him to churn out at the Batbooks we still have two amazing books by Snyder and Tomasi not to mention Morrison's unfinished run on Batman Inc.

 

If Cornell didn't want to write the Lex Luthor story, he sure as hell fooled me.

Okay, guys, serious question time: I read on comicsalliance that John Byrne originally had the intention of making Kryptonians non-humanoid but DC didn't like the idea. This fits in very well with the birth matrix conceit--evidently it was supposed to reprogram Kal to look "normal," with normal being "midwestern American." We know the matrix concept was retained; it still has a lot of narrative function (Kryptonians don't fuck; Superman is an American citizen) but it seems like that would be the likeliest original purpose, a solution to Byrne's two-headed problem of needing Superman to still be a big white guy placed against the desire to make Kryptonians ever more science-fictional.

Now, the question--is this actually the case? I've been looking and haven't found any confirmation. I would love to see some concept art if such exists. And by love I mean I would be likely to print it out and fuck it.

Bonus round: would making Kryptonians non-humanoid, or at least differently humanoid, work? Even in the limited, Byrne-era case of Superman being the only Kryptonian, but also in the wider DCU? Kara you can probably fudge if you needed to, but what about Zod, or flashbacks to Jor-El and Lara, which even Byrne employed?

But now that you took your medicine we can have some fun.

Classy!