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

Oh my!

 

There's nothing about this I don't like, so far. I like the art. I like the first person narration. I like the fact that it's a reboot.

I'm surprised that I'm looking forward to Supergirl #1, because Supergirl's not a character I've ever paid a whole lot of attention to. She is one of the first comic book characters I remember reading about, though, along with Superman (of course) and Batman. She's been through so many versions, and so many of them confused and annoying (IMAO and to the admittedly vague extent that I noticed them) since COIE that if any DC character is more likely to be improved by and less likely to be damaged by rebooting one more time it's probably her.

Oh, and I like the costume.

 

Are there any changes in writers? Looks like pretty much shifting artists in and out, and adding back-up features.

 

Keith Giffen as the new writer for GA.

Rozum off of Static Shock.

 

I like the cape a lot, and everything above the wasteline is fine. The chastity belt/diaper/thing is sort of goofy. Not a fan of the bare legs or kneeless boots, because they don't jibe with my preconceptions, but they don't look bad.

The makeup is unnecessary and raises questions, but comic book women secrete that from glands in their face; it's probably just something no one even remotely bothered to think about, which if I'm being realistic I can't be disappointed in.

I was right about how sparse the pages are. Four pages, and an average of 2.25 panels per page? Jeez. In fairness, I know what the next page looks like from a preview of Asrar's pencils, which raises it to a whopping 2.4. I'll even be extra fair, like appellate court judge fair, and take out the splash; and it's still only 2.75. I dunno, maybe the rest of the book is written like Berlin, but I doubt it.

Say...

(And a man who knows how to rock a nine-panel grid.)

 

That new Supergirl costume is AWFUL! There was nothing wrong with the old one.

 

I like the hippy/panty part of the costume.

 

Now, this is cool. Green Arrow really needs to be grittier and gruffer than he has been portrayed. I would really like him to be more of an outsider in this reboot.

After reading the article, it seems as if there will be a lot of guest artists sitting in every few issues in various comics. This reminds me of the good old days before everything was written for the trades.

 

Nah, there was. A lot.

Of course, the question is actually which old one, but I guess you mean the Michael Turner/Ian Churchill bare-midriff, ultra-miniskirt thing? That was pretty lousy. The Al Plastino original isn't terribly great, either, but it's better. And then there are the ones which incorporate headbands.

I do like the one which has the cape flowing from the S, or, rather, I like that aspect of that costume (I think it was also combined with a headband, because in the 2980s, headbands were the shit). I still like this cape better, but that was pretty cool.

Really? It's less of a costumer's nightmare than Mr. Miracle's mouth, I guess. Maybe Kryptonian super-clothing technology explains how all that stuff works, because I'm not entirely convinced tension does. Could be wrong on that, though.

 

Which old one? There've been like twenty since the 1950s.

The more I think about it, the more story sense there is in making clean reboots of both Supergirl and Superboy. Byrne annihilated everything from Krypton except for Kal-El back in 1986 (yeah, I know that Supergirl was given a death scene in COIE prior to the Byrne reboot proper), and a number of different writers really stretched in different directions to create analogues of both characters post-Crisis - for reasons of keeping the trademarks active as much as anything else, I guess. So while pre-Crisis there was a kind of organic storytelling connection between Superman, Superboy and Supergirl the resurrected versions were basically fabricated and retooled repeatedly with various degrees of clumsiness to justify their existence and connections to Supes himself. Their back-stories are needlessly complicated to the point that whatever drama there might be to the telling is fairly attenuated.

Of course, there's always one other consideration - it's entirely possible that many of these reintroduced new52 characters will, over time, change their costumes more than once.

 

Maybe for the time period. Argo was blown into space (just like Pompeii, of course), and Zor-El's science protected it? And then eventually it became radioactive, so Zor-El put down lead floorboards, but one day the floorboards broke, and they never made any plans for a large-scale evacuation of Kryptonite City, so only Supergirl survived because Zor-El and Alura had a rocket they kept all to themselves (and Zor-El and Alura still made it out via the Phantom/"Survival" Zone)? Sure, why not. Totally organic.

Matrix made sense: a shapeshifting blob thing that thought she was Lana Lang, created by an alternate-dimensional Lex Luthor, who was inspired by the idea of a Superboy he could have sex with. Easy.

Ok, you might have a point. I still liked Matrix though.

 

I didn't say it was practical just that I liked it. It's a bit... "attractive"... or something.

 

Did you ever wonder if Byrne originally had something more sinister in mind, to be eventually revealed, about the Luthor of that pocket universe? There were a couple of dangling threads in his story...

 

Does DC have some kind of Law of the Conservation of Red Underpants in its official policies?

 

Giffen is mostly bwahah comedy or grand concepts. His recent attempts at serious storytelling such as Reign in Hell and Magog have all been spectacular in their failures.

 

Well, there's the big plot hole, if that's what you mean. Maybe that was intentional?

You know the one I mean, right? Where Luthor had access to gold kryptonite the entire time?

You could make a case for him using the Kryptonian criminals were his method of ensuring massive human dieback and his leadership of the survivors.

But I think it's just a bad turn. There's a lot in that story doesn't make a lot of sense to me, not just Alt-Luthor. Like, I don't understand what Zod, Zaora, and Quex-Ul's ultimate goal was. Maybe the Phantom Zone imprisonment deranged them, because they seemed to be totally at ease with the prospect of an absolutely ruined planet with no one to rule. Which begs the question "why bother conquering it in the first place"? Was their raison d'etre merely to kill all humans?

But regardless, I'm looking at now, and it is so beautiful. I'm especially impressed by the use of the whole spread, both pages, for large and inventive layouts, twenty years before J.H. Williams made it cool again. It's obviously a bit more restrained than Williams; Byrne used it less for symbolic purposes, and arguably makes more storytelling use of the enhanced scope. (Then you read Promethea and you've gotta say "Nope." But it's still really excellent.)

ETA: oh, and a note on violence in superhero comics. Have they really gotten that much worse? There's a part where Zaora makes Hal Jordan's head burst like an overripe pomegranate. It's not as pornographically rendered as your average Green Lantern book, but it's still a big red arterial spout coming out of Jordan's neck.

 

There's the fact that the only account of how poor naive Luthor "accidentally" freed the Zone criminals is his own.

Also, that other counterparts to known characters who appeared in the pocket universe were similar in character to those that the Byrne Superman knew from his own Earth - he's even made to comment upon the fact that Hal Jordan, Bruce Wayne et al were heroes by nature in the pocket universe just as in his own. And of course, the flip side of that would be Lex Luthor is...what, a good guy?

My guess is that Luthor thought he could control the Zone baddies somehow (like, say, with the threat of gold Kryptonite) and freed them to use them in taking over the planet. His little plan went south and he concocted a cover story to save his ass with the other human beings that he'd recruit to try to survive and prevail against the Zoners.

 

Actually, from what we saw in some of the prerelase stuff, which was brighter, she's waring white skin tight pants. I think they just look flesh toned there because they were making things look darker.

 

Lex Luthor is a good guy. He just wants to defend Earth. He says so all the time. Are you calling Lex Luthor are a liar?

I dunno, I think it's less an ambiguity than Byrne simply kinda messed up the plotting. There's errors in Superman #22 besides the major motivation gap in the Phantom Zone prisoners' behavior, Superman can't count ("five people left alive," when there are actually at least nine). And I don't think anyone would ever believe the story that Luthor gives on his deathbed ("call it ego!... I wanted to kill them by my own hand"... whaaat?), but Superman seems to buy it; my take on that is Byrne realized it was an unbelievable reveal, so tried to paper over it, but it didn't work. Finally, the Kryptonian super-criminals didn't check Superboy's lab? Ever? Really?

Oh, and this isn't a criticism, but it's kind of weird that Superman kills them with green kryptonite, which is apparently rather slow and a bit agonizing. It's "cleaner" than snapping necks, I guess, but it sure doesn't look friendlier. Then again maybe Superman wanted them to suffer a little.

(But seriously, I wish more people drew Superman, or anything, like John Byrne drew Superman.)

The color values are all wrong for those to be white pants.

 

I'm guessing Mr. Light is referring to the Michael Turner Kara costume.