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

I can't figure out how Marvel prices their books.

Avengers The Children's Crusade #7 was $4 for 22 pages of story.
Captain America #3 was $4 for 20 pages of story.
Heroes For Hire #12 was $3 for 20 pages of story.

 

Flash #1 was awesome! Then again, maybe I am just a little too much in love with Francis Manapul's art. By chance, I was able to get the variant cover (and the price wasn't jacked up at all!). That was kinda cool.

Superman #1 was a nice one-in-done story. Lots of panels per page, so that should make some people happy. The over-exposition wasn't nearly as bad as the preview made it seem in my opinion. I also think they tried a little too hard to make everything seem all hip and updated. Though the new direction is interesting, I felt it was presented in a "in your face/shove it down your throat" manner instead of having it roll-out in more of a smooth manner. Also, Morgan Edge is now black. Countdown to the internet exploding in rage in 3...2...1...

 

Re: Morgan Edge
Maybe Kirby fans would care. He's a lesser known Kirby creation.
If anything, if I were black I might roll my eyes. Make the black man the bad guy.

Morgan Edge is no Perry White


Been too busy at work to go at lunch and get the books I want.
Anyone read:
Aquaman, Justice League Dark or I, Vampire yet??

 

That's good to hear.

Sounds like a lot of set-up.

Nothing I've heard about the new status quo and other revisions to this title bothers me a bit, though the presentation might.

Meanwhile, over in New Guardians #1 I hear that they've retconned Kyle Rayner's origin to the point that he was probably never the last and only GL at all. Works for me, but talk about teh Intarnets exploding!

I hadn't planned on picking up NG at all, but now maybe I'll have to check it out.

 

By some amazing miracle (that is, I didn't blindly buy crap for the hell of it), I only managed to buy good books this week!

Aquaman. The Trench things are really cool-looking, and kinda scary; I question, given how much the scene where they eat people echoes Jaws, the decision to just show them in good lighting and out of the water so soon, but it's Geoff Johns. No subtly expected.

I found the attempts to make Aquaman cool to be little more entertaining than a forum post defending Aquaman with a bullet point list. I already know that Aquaman's cool, Geoffrey. Relax. Take it down a notch already. It's also very hard to believe that Aquaman would be an in-universe joke. Yes, he's no Superman. But by that same token, he could break your face. No skinny nerd's gonna give him shit like that right in front of him.

C+. I'd give it a B- if I could, but that's just not how my grading scale works and structure is important.

Firestorm. Really kind of great right up until the last few pages, which culminate in a cliffhanger without much inherent interest and feels like sub-Green Lanterny crap. It's like Gail Simone wrote the first 17 pages of script and then Ethan van Sciver wrote the last three, possibly because Simone was sick or something. Somehow this justifies his name on the cover. But it's not bad in a ruiny way, just a sort of "WTF? this might suck" way. Anyway, was Jason Rusch always kind of an asshole? He flat calls Ronnie Raymond a racist for pretty much no reason. I still like him though.

And some overlooked gems from previous weeks:

B+.

Demon Knights. Is fun! Buy it while it's still at full price so as to fill the coffers of Paul Cornell and the excellent artist whose name escapes me. Madame Xanadu is neat. This also reminds me I forgot to buy JL Dark, but you know what? Fuck it.

B+. It'd get an A, but fantasy sucks.

DC Presents Deadman. Yeah, this was totally off my radar till someone said it was depressing and I was like, "All right!" It is indeed depressing. Good book. Remember when Paul Jenkins wrote good, interesting comics, like The Inhumans and (the first several issues of) The Sentry? It's like that. Bernard Chang's a good artist, too, although maybe not the best fit for this story? Nah. My only real complaint is that the colorist seems to think this is the Flash. Ironically, I think the Flash' colorist seems to think his book is Deadman. Wake up!

A.

Back to this week:

I almost bought I, Vampire because the art is very, very inky in that way that I like--someone cloned Jae Lee--but I remembered I hated vampires, and of course the cover is hilariously goofy, but I'm not sure it's self-aware about it. I'm still really tempted and maybe I'll get it when it's cheaper.

NR.

Flash. Barry is still kinda dull but less dull than usual and while the mystery/weirdness Manapul and the guy who checks his spelling is setting up doesn't feel like a "#1" type of story, it's nevertheless pretty great. The art is gorgeous.

A, but it's four credit hours, and is therefore: BEST OF THE WEEK.

It's pretty gosh darned awesome, yeah.

 

Here's all the Purple Lady appearances from this week's wave of books.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/09...nces-of-the-strange-woman-of-the-dc-universe/

@Captain Craig I don't know how much you know about Morgan Edge but he's always been a bad guy. He's the secret leader of Intergang...

 

I'm really wanting to check some of more of these out, but I'm trying to keep myself under $25.
Here's the once I'm trying to decide between:
Batman, Detective Comics, or B&R
Batgirl or Batwoman
Action Comics, Superman, or Superboy
Suicide Squad or JLDark
The Flash or Green Arrow
Green Lantern, New Guardians, or Red Lanterns
Wonder Woman or Aquaman
I'm still torn on Catwoman. I really want to check it out, but all of the stuff people have been saying about it have made me question if it's the kind of book I really want to support.

 

Naw - it hasn't changed.

As for Superman, I thought it was sorta of boring - yes some of the status quo stuff has changed but there isn't anything here that is desperately interesting.

Hickman's Ultimates was interesting but that is a different thread entirely....

The thing that made me laugh was Dark Knight, when

Spoiler: dark knight spoilers

Two-face said "I am one-face", Batman should have said "isn't that just face"?

 

DC is hiring Nielsen to survey their customer base.

These people are serious.

 

Helpfully, I have made your decisions for you.

Treating each line as its own question, the ones that are bolded are the ones you should buy; the ones that are underlined are the books I have actually read. This of course means that I have recommended books which I have not read over other books which I have not read.

But there's no way I'd let something as petty as ignorance stop me from telling other people what to do.

 

Those were actually the ones I was leaning most heavily towards, but I'll probably wait for a few more responses before I make my final decision.

 

In all seriousness, you'd be missing out not to pick up Batwoman and The Flash, which are just beautiful, beautiful pieces of comic art; and I suspect you'd really be missing out, given the alternatives. I haven't read them, but reading about them, Batgirl's supposed to be kind of a mess and Green Arrow's supposed to be just blaaargh.

But, I know; I'm saying that there's a really good comic book about Barry Allen. It's weird, right?

 

I just read Justice League Dark and really enjoyed it. It packs a lot of plotlines that are obviously set to converge at a later time, and at some points the dialogue feels a little forced (the scenes involving the regular Justice League in particular - one gets the impression Milligan wants these guys out of the way so we can focus on the new team) but overall it was fun and pretty crazy. The issue was reminiscint of some of the early Morrison Doom Patrol stories, with bizarre, supernatural events coming out of nowhere and causing chaos everywhere.

Milligan is one of my favourite writers, but is also extremely hit-or-miss (in fact, one comic blogger recently tried to make the case that he's the SINGLE most inconsistant writer in all of comics) but his two reboot titles have started off well and I'm gonna stick with 'em.

Also read Snyder's Batman and was really impressed. I like how he writes Batman - the grim, one-note iteration is thankfully absent. I'm looking forward to seeing where this plot goes.

 

I have been rather surprised by the reaction to Batgirl to be honest (the actual comic's contents, not the whole no more wheelchair thing). Granted I haven't read any of her stuff yet, but I was under the impression that everyone loved Gail Simone's BoP run, and that one of the highlights of that was her take on Babs.

 

Get GLC instead.

 

Gail Simone is the writer to write this Batgirl...it's just going to take people time to adjust to the book and probably not the way people anticipating seeing Babs back in costume. I wouldn't neglect "Batman" either it was arguably the best of the three main Batbooks.

 

Oh.... that was supposed to be GLC. Nothing I've heard about GL really interests me that much.

 

Here's an annoying thing that happened to me. I went to the store today early to pick up a copy of Superman #1 and waited in my car until the store opened at 11. The minute it opened I went inside only to find out there were NO copies of that comic book! That was a big WTF moment for me, which is why I'm just going to buy the download later.

 

I liked what I heard about Bruce in Batman + Robin, deciding to stop crying about his dead parents and try to not be such a shitty father himself.

Notttt quite enough to buy it, though. Sorry, Bat-family = poison.

...Batwoman doesn't count!

Yeah, one of the reasons I've switched to digital is that I had zero desire to try to negotiate a pull list. It's too much like a contract. Actually, it probably technically is a contract.

The only thing I'm sure I'm missing out on is Daredevil. You know what'd have been really weird and excellent? If the DC Reboot came from higher than it actually did, and the Gang of Four got kicked to the curb (or in Johns and Morrison's case, downstairs). I know whom I'd make my creative emperor.

 

I know he's always been a bad guy. He's a 3rd tier baddie I know little about but that I did know. It's just another change for sake of change, not that it was needed. They seem to be doing that in some areas.
Oversexed Starfire
Skinny Amanda Waller


The comic shop 15min from work is sold out of Aquaman and Justice League Dark. Called the one near my house and they still have both so hopefully when 7pm CST gets here I'll still be able to get mine.