^Do the circles mean anything? Like, is Hal Jordan worth more points than John Stewart? Because, frankly, that's a little racist.
I do like the John Constantine, though. It gets to the core of the character: a blonde guy with no orifice but his cigarette hole.
Personally, I loved the 90's DC; it felt like the characters were growing and moving forward. Kyle Rayner; Wally West; Connor Hawke; Jack Knight; legacies were being passed on and allowed to grow in different ways. DC felt like a real world, and I believe the stories were better for it.
Then Geoff Johns came on the scene. Don't get me wrong; I like the stories Johns has given us; but it does seem like his mission is to regress the DC Universe. Despite working on a few legacies in JSA, Johns doesn't really seem to want the stories to grow or move forward; Johns just wants to put DC back in the box he knew when he was a kid. Hal Jordan was the star; Barry Allen was the star; Superman was defined by Richard Donner.
Which approach is better? I guess we'll see as time goes. So far, I think the execution has been "regress first and story later" (where in some cases there is a story - Hal - and in some cases actually not a story - Barry). I just believe that change for the sake of change usually doesn't work. With Flash, this is really what I feel has happened; Wally took a back seat because Johns wanted Barry back - there's no other story there.
With the exception of Hal Jordan, whom Johns clearly wants to marry, I'm not entirely certain that Johns isn't just Didio's hatchetman in some regards (irrespective of his talent).
I don't think he cares about Barry Allen--I've been told that
Flash v.4 doesn't have much indication of anyone caring about the words that were written in it. It certainly appeared, back in the old days before he became Creative Emperor, that he had a fondness for Wally West.
But Didio cares about Barry Allen. God knows why.
As for
Superman: Secret Origin, I can't say for certain whether that came from above or from from Johns' own impulse. I have nothing specifically against it, except the human masks Gary Frank makes all his characters wear. But it is interesting to think about the idea of Superboy going to the future to hang out with the Legion. Like, on one hand, it really has the potential to mess up Superman's origin. On the other hand, Superboy is a great lens through which to view all the weird shit of the 31st century. I've been watching the LSH animated series lately and it really benefits from Superman. However no one has mentioned yet the obvious fact that even if they can take him right back to the moment he left, he'll have aged several years and probably won't be able to function at all in present-day society. Of course, it is a children's show.
Anyway, back to the Crisis on Infinite Barrys, I wanted to point something tremendously great that was just pointed out to me, that almost makes me want to pick up
Red Hood and the David Allen Coes.
Specifically, Roy Harper's otherwise dumb baseball hat is purified and made perfect by its incorporation of his new superhero symbol. That symbol? A dead cat.