Personally, I dropped Batman specifically because of how bad the I Am Suicide and then I Am Bane story arcs were/are. Bane stories are kind of iffy for me now because Gail Simone's Bane has basically ruined me for other versions of the character, but even forgetting that I found the I Am Suicide arc to be barely coherent (plus that stupid Catwoman subplot ), and I officially dropped the book after trying to muddle through issue one of I Am Bane. I may have hated snyder's Batman run, but at least he was generally coherent in his writing, even if it was generally stupid. On more positive DC Comics talk, Justice League of America is looking pretty good. I've felt that the main book is kind of mediocre, but JLA so far (with its rebirth one shots) is interesting me a lot more. I even like what they've done with Killer Frost, I know its probably influenced by Snow being a good guy on Flash but its still an interesting thing they're doing.
I dropped Batman after Darkseid killed him in Final Crisis. So, he came back to life "somehow" I take it?
Haven't read the thread thoroughly, so sorry if this is annoying, but read all the Rebirth one-offs and tried Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lanterns but dropped off after a couple of issues of each. The only titles I've stuck with are Superman and Action Comics. I was mainly attracted back to DC after several decades by the Watchmen involvement. I know they're picking that back up very soon. Have there been any mentions or developments in any of the titles so far ? I'd like to pick up the 'tidbits' before the reveal next month.
Mostly scattered appearances by Oz in Superman, Action Comics (such as the end of the recent multivese arc) and the end of the first arc of Detective.
I have really cut back on my titles because of the twice monthly issues. I am really enjoying Green Lanterns, and I like the writing on JL and Titans but the pearl for me has really been the main Superman titles. I hope that this really stops all those comments about how Superman is a boring character because he's so powerful. I do wish that the new JLA had just been titled Batman and the Outsiders though and I have my fingers crossed for the return of the Legion of Super-Heroes (hopefully with the resurrection of Sun Boy).
Yeah, this is easily the best Superman run in years. Even before the reboot actually, since his "Grounded" run that JMS abandoned (like he abandoned all his mediocre DC stuff) wasn't good, and New Krypton was completely unreadable unless you went back and read all 5000 issues from the beginning. That said, I absolutely loathe the arc that just started. Its completely misusing a superman villain by making him grimdark and sinister, and doing a really stupid thing to Superman's son. Its also apparently a crossover with mutiple books, so its definitely the first huge misstep for this Superman run, but hopefully its over quickly. I'm also loving Green Lanterns (while not reading the Hal jordan book since I read two issues and couldn't stand it), and Titans is also great. On the other hand, Justice League is bad. There are times when its actually incomprehensible or disjointed, and it tends to get the characters really off at times. Its villains are terrible and generally confusing (I can't even describe what half the villains of the book were so far). Hitch is a pretty bad author. That said, I like that the book dropped that idiot "Shazam", and as a Captain Marvel fan I support never seeing "Shazam" ever again. I'll keep reading the book hoping Hitch gets kicked off and it improves, but right now its only better then Johns in that the cast acts more like friends/allies then people who hate each other. That's a big improvement, but the sometime incomprehensible nature of the actual arcs is a step back from Johns, who at least was generally coherent. Justice League of America is really good. I don't think it needed to be an Outsiders team, it wouldn't really fit that name just because its a Batman created team. Its well written, the team members are interesting, and its just an overall good book. Honestly, I'd say its the first good book with Justice League in its title since 2011. Better then Johns JL, the current JL, the short lived JLI and those terrible Jeff Lemire JL books (JL United and the first JLA, I think?).
Personally, I think it's the best Superman has been in about fifteen years. I didn't find "New Krypton" unreadable at all. It didn't always work, and the ending (War of the Supermen) was a terrible wrap-up, but I liked that they tried to do some new and interesting things with the Superman mythos. It's just four parts, two issues of Superman, two issues of Action. (I guess the issue of Superwoman out last week is tangentially related if you want to read it that way, but it's not essential as far as I can tell.) So it's halfway done. My one issue with the story is that I know that nothing lasting is going to happen to Jon, so that negates some of the impact of the threat posed by Mxy. (Mxy's turn to the malicious doesn't bother me; the back-up story in the second part explained it pretty well -- Mxy hasn't done anything to Jon, he wants attention from Superman, and he's lashing out to get that attention.) I feel like the resolution of the story will involve Mxy rewriting reality so Clark and Lois can assume lives in Metropolis much closer to the standard idea (ie., the pre-Flashpoint status quo, albeit with a ten year-old son). I'd be a little disappointed in that, as I like the bucolic Hamilton setting.
I don't read Superwoman (I loathed the first issue, and the concept was really stupid and connected to the terrible New 52 Superman), so even if I didn't hate this story arc I wouldn't read the SW issue. As for Jon, the problem isn't that I think anything will happen to him permenantly. He's pretty popular (he's co-starring in a book with Robin), and DC seems very happy with the current Superman dynamic. the problem is that Spoiler erasing Jon from Lois's memories is really stupid, irritating, and way too dark for Mxy. Its just a terrible idea, even worse then Spoiler making fake Clark into Mxy in the first place. I'm honestly just considering skipping the next three issues. I'd prefer to ignore this whole storyline and pretend it doesn't exist. That sucks, but I'm not going to read any more grimdark idiot Mxy. He's supposed to be a "fun" villain, but this feels more like a DCEU Mxy, just with less murder and more color. The first huge mistake by the Rebirth Superman books, and hopefully its just a bump in the road and not the start of the whole Superman comic devolving into trash.
He never died, he was just sent back in time inhabiting the bodies of his ancestors like some kind of Sam Beckett hooey.
Myx still is a fun character. He hasn't turned evil, he's just royally pissed. He was imprisoned by Mr. Oz and assumed Superman would come to his rescue. When that didn't happen, he escaped and messed with everyone by impersonating Clark Kent (which he's done before) and choosing Jon to be his new playmate.
What he did to Jon is pretty much more evil then anything any of Superman's villains have done to him in years (not counting the killing of the New 52 Superman, because I don't count that when talking about the normal Superman), and it just doesn't fit the character to me. He can do some weird stuff, but I don't count erasing a child like that to be Mxy's style (besides it being a crap story). I just skimmed the last Superman issue, and its ever worse. This is a New 52 Superman level of "quality" story, and I hope when it ends the Superman books won't be ruined and revert back to the New 52 style. Its also easily the worst Mxy story I've read, although its still not the worst story to use a version of the character (the Supergirl TV show wins that award). In more positive talk, justice League of America continues to be the best Justice League book published since 2011 (not that its a very high bar, but even by pre-reboot standards its pretty good). I think they chose a good roster, and the writing is solid. Lobo is also working out well, and he's a hard guy to make work on a team. The Atom is kind of bland, but he's not bad or anything. Frost is the most interesting character, I hope she doesn't revert back to being "Killer" Frost anytime soon. Hopefully if they decide they want an evil Killer Frost they'll just introduce one of the other women to use the name.
Ok--so I stopped reading comics when New 52 hit. I just didn't like the direction they went and the decisions DC made, notably about Superman. But I have started to track things again, at least on certain websites. Maybe people here can answer some questions. I know there was a major event called Convergence. I know that it was established that all realities still exist, and at the end, SPOILER... they seemed to have undone the events of Crisis. So my first question is--is that accurate? Does the original multiverse still exist? I know that they had a new multiverse, which made no sense. There was an Earth 2, which was not the original multiverse Earth 2. And if that's the case, how do you tell that Earth 2 apart from the original multiverse Earth 2? I ask that because Kal-L, the original Superman that we followed from Action #1, was the Superman of that Earth 2, and DC went to great lengths to spare his life when the original Crisis ended. And THEN, they killed him off in a horrible way in Infinite Crisis (which is a huge reason I stopped reading). Then there was this other Earth 2, from New 52, which had a different version of Kal-L, who also either died or disappeared, and that is not the same Kal-L from Action 1. We also know this because that other Earth 2 had a different Powergirl, compared to the original Powergirl from the original Earth 2. Given the events of Convergence, where I read that in the end, a few heroes went off to prevent the original COIE, is the original Earth 2 back? And by preventing the original COIE, doesn't that mean that the original Earth 2 exists and Kal-L never dies at the hands of Superboy Prime? Is there any proof of this? Next topic.... And also, would that also negate the story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? And if that is true, then wouldn't Earth 1 Superman, from the original Earth 1, still be around, as would be the original Supergirl, who never would have died? Next topic... If the original COIE is prevented, then Earth 1 wouldn't have reformed into post-Crisis Earth. That means that Post-Crisis Superman, the one that dies in 1993, shouldn't exist. But let's assume that with a little recon, that post-Crisis Earth is now separate from original Earth 1, and all those adventures and years are valid. Post-Crisis Earth and Pre Flashpoint Earth are the same Earth, right? Let's go with that. Am I right to say that Convergence shows that Post-Flashpoint Earth and Pre Flashpoint Earth are different? If they are different then how could post-Flashpoint Barry ever remember Original Wally? If they are the same, then how could pre-Flashpoint Superman and post-Flashpoint Superman exist as separate people? Next topic--- So pre-Flashpoint Superman, after Convergence, along with his Lois and son, end up on post-Flashpoint Earth. Do we know why? If he knows he's from another Earth, why didn't he try to get his family back to their proper reality? Their Earth currently does not have a Superman. If Convergence shows that all realities we know still exist, then pre-Flashpoint Earth is out there, separate from everything, and this version of Superman belongs there. I guess that's a good start.
All valid questions. Here's my take: growing evidence suggests that pre- and post-Flashpoint Earths are actually the same. Doctor Manhattan didn't create a new universe, he just rewrote the prior one. Characters are beginning to remember their former lives. As for Superman, what we're actually seeing is the return of Superman Red and Superman Blue. For reasons yet unknown, Superman was split in two. Both are validly the same being, and will soon be reunited as a metaphor to the pre- and post Flashpoint histories coming back into alignment.
Ok, so if Superman were split in two, why was his pre-Flashpoint self preserved, and why was Lois split in two as well? And what about their son? Why only one of him?
I can see some possible logic to this, and it goes back to the post-Final Night "Superman Red/Superman Blue" storyline. One problem with the original storyline is that its ending just... happened. The two Supermen apparently merged, and then the merged Electric Superman turned back into the original Superman. And there wasn't any reason for it. It just happened that way. When the New 52 Superman died, he expelled a great deal of red energy that New 52 Lois and Lana absorbed. Both became Superwoman, Lois with the traditional Superman power set, Lana with the Electric Superman power set. Meanwhile, the pre-Flashpoint Superman has a blue energy aura. What I think happened is that the two Supermen never merged back twenty years ago. Instead, someone (Dr. Manhattan?) plucked Superman Red from time and plopped him into the New 52 but with the traditional power set. (And when his powers were seriously taxed, he began to leak energy and die, hence "Final Days.") Meanwhile, Superman Blue somehow turned back into regular Superman, and he and Lois then had Jon in the Convergence universe and then escaped back into the New 52 universe (which is really the post-Crisis universe) when they thought their world had died. I'm not sure where the duplicate Lois comes from. What I think will happen is that Superman Blue will reabsorb the red energy (and the same will happen with Lois), and then their histories will merge somewhat, allowing the pre-Flashpoint Clark and Lois to assume the lives of their New 52 counterparts, perhaps de-aged slightly, and definitely with the addition of Jon.
Regarding the two Lois Lanes: Lois and Clark are essentially "mom and dad" to the DC Universe. They have been since 1938. What this story is saying metatextually is that Lois is just as important as Clark as a foundational character. That is until the New 52. This Lois, the "red" Lois, was sidelined most of the time. She was just one of Clark Kent's friends, a co-worker and nothing more. And Superman as a mythos was diminished as a result. Rebirth is fixing this by returning the original Lois Lane to her rightful place. Again, the split is metaphorical, saying the essence of the "blue" Lois never really went away and will be made whole by the union with "red" Lois.