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

I haven't read Flash either. I need to read the Millar and Johns runs.

How can one tell what input an editor has?

I re-read that issue. They don't state Starman's age but Courtney says "you look like you're thirty".

 

Tomasi has been doing awesome work lately on "Batman and Robin" despite starting off slowly on the book out of the shoot. I've come to respect him greatly over the past year or so.

 

Sometimes with interviews, but usually if you have behind the scenes dramas like writers being replaced several times on the same title or inexperienced artists (such as Liefeld or Daniel or Finch) being given a writing job then it's all signs of trouble . Also if you find the same editors on a list of consistently bad titles, it's usually the editor's fault in someways which is where comicvine comes in handy since you can look up the credits and see what else that person has edited.

In the instance of JSA, the editor that replaced Johns with Willingham then followed with Guggenheim also iirc got called out by Mark Waid in his interview on AICN (where he also slammed Dan Didio) for not following up on any of the promises they made to him when he returned to the Flash book after they killed off Bart. On the other end you have people like Tomasi where creators (including guys like Ennis) say how much he influenced the product or gave someone this title or how he persuaded so and so to do this book, etc.

 

The Millar (and Morrison) run happened towards the end of Waid's run. Waid (and Augustyn) took off a year and those two filled in.

 

Does anyone know in what issues the Guardians of the Universe were resurrected? I know it was done by Kyle prior to "Green Lantern Rebirth" but I can't find when/where.

 

It was in Green Lantern #150, the wrap up of Kyle as Ion (the first time). He divests the energy and it turns into tot-like Guardians, who Ganthet is all too happy to take care of.

It followed Green Lantern: The Last Will & Testament of Hal Jordan, in which Kilowog and Oa are both restored.

 

I enjoyed him up until the past year or so when it seems like he's relying on way too many action sequences.

 

Which I find he does pretty well compared to other writers. I agree that he's had a lot of big action pieces, but then that's been the nature of the search for Damian. I suspect he'll switch back to character writing and balance the two given Damian's new status.

 

I finally read 1999's Day of Judgement which turned Hal Jordan from Parralax into the Spectre. Also by Geoff Johns! It was pretty good. Good art. I was shocked to see how this story was almost identical to the Day of Vengeance part of Infinite Crisis. Not only were they both about the Spectre being manipulated by a bad guy, going nuts, and unleashing random hell on earth, it ALSO involved most of the characters that became the Shadowpact! Ragman, Enchantress, Blue Devil, Phantom Stranger... So it came off very repetitive to me, but of course that is the fault of DOV.

 

I finished JSA last night and you guys were right, it definitely climaxed with "Black Reign". Everything was kind of building to that storyline and it pretty much meandered along after that. Soon I'll start reading the post-Infinite Crisis series.

It's too bad Johns didn't make the JSA more central to the Infinite Crisis story. It only tangenitally worked into it; they should have been more involved with the Spectre story than they were. It's surprising because Johns wrote IC and JSA and I know he always had a special place in his heart for JSA.

 

Classic Beetle and Booster from the 80s woke up in the 31st century 3 months ago.

Not bad.

Now I just need Sue to come back as well.

 

^ What comic was that in? I'm guessing the two future weeklies since I don't read those...

I started the 2007 JSA series and whuff. It is not as good. The cast was bloated as it was and they added like five new made-up characters in the first couple of issues. Characters I don't care about. It's just too much.

 

the monthly JL 3000

 

yeah, the book was just too crowded. thankfully they started JSA All Stars and several characters left for that book.

 

They're using Beetle and Booster to tease the events of the upcoming Convergence.

 

I finally finished Geoff Johns' run on JSA tonight.

first arc of JSA 2007: uninteresting and way too many characters
Kingdom Come arc: really interesting and big. really built up to something promising...
then had a hugely rushed and disappointing climax. I was really expecting something more. Gog was about the march on Kandaq... and Black Adam had just been reintroduced into the book... so naturally he never gets to Kandaq and Black Adam never becomes involved in the story

Is the post-Johns JSA book any good?

 

It varies. Bill Willingham's run is...passable. After that, it goes down hill fast. There is a alternate future story that is just horrible, and the book's last arc is just lame. I wouldn't recommend it. The JSA All Stars book that spins off of Willingham's run is ok, but nothing mind blowing. It also features Magog heavily early on, and I always found him to be a huge A-Hole.

I actually really liked Johns run. It wasn't quite as good as JSA, but I still really enjoyed it. But, yeah, as much as I enjoy it, it doesn't go well after him. I was a huge fan of the Justice Society, so I don't regret reading Willingham's short run, but I wouldn't recommend it past that to even the most hardcore JSA fan.

 

Was the Kingdom Come story aborted prematurely or something? Cause it just stopped so abruptly. After so much time building up Gog, and even doing three tie-in books a few months earlier... it all just gets resolved in a single issue. Like I said before, they were setting up a big confrontation in Kandaq with Black Adam and it just didn't happen at all. And then Johns left the title a few issues later. Did his other obligations force him out sooner than he had planned?

 

^ I think so.

JSA kind of petered out after Infinite Crisis and 52. Storylines were brought up, but they lacked vision going forward.

The "Thy Kingdom Come" storyline.

The resurrection of Isis, depowering of Billy and Mary and the wizard Shazam saying he will "deal with" Freddy Freeman (who was Capt Marvel at the time) for some reason that was never explained.

I think JSA just got lost in the events of the time.


Grant Morrison's New Batman and Robin series after Final Crisis.

Geoff Johns' New Krypton Arc on the Superman books. Which he left half way through in order to focus on Green Lantern's Blackest Night and Brightest Day story lines. New Krypton arc was aborted before it crossed the finish line due to declining book sales. So they reset the status quo hard in War of the Supermen.

Johns was also helming Flash and Booster Gold at the time I believe.

James Robinson's Justice League was terribad.

The Teen Titans took a dive after Infinite Crisis too.

Wonder Woman was going through yet another revamp.


So yeah, DC had a tough couple of years on several titles. I think that's why they decided to reset their whole universe with New 52 in 2011, after Brightest Day ended. And why DC is going back to the Post-Crisis Universe with their convergence series. Since Brightest Day and Flashpoint were the last stories that involved the whole DCU (minus LOSH) before the reboot.