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

[Myasishchev]

I dunno. The major appeal to me of the JLI is its collection of loveable losers who still manage to do some good even though the usual story involves low stakes or spends most of its pages revolving around how they sort of can't stand each other. Ideally, the Justice League proper should be a global force anyway, obviating any need for a JLI if the book's just going to be regular old superheroics. (And Booster Gold without Blue Beetle seems kind of pointless; Giffen and de Matteis pulled it off for a little while, but the best part of the run really is when Ted's around; of course, near as I can tell, Barry Allen wiped Ted Kord out of existence; very sad. )

But hey, I didn't pick up JLI, I could be totally off-base.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm not seeing any difference between the writing on this Batgirl comic and the previous one.

Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl was fun. Stephanie Brown was snarky, and though some of her adventures were harrowing, there was an undercurrent of fun and hope.

Gail Simone's Batgirl is grim. Barbara Gordon is somewhat dour, and her adventures have been, thus far, rather dark. There's not a lot of fun.

Stephanie kissed Klarion the Witch Boy and hunted holographic Draculas with Supergirl. Barbara fights serial killers. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the two books.

I was refering to the quality of the writing. I enjoy both books and characters, even if the tone is different.

I don't even know why anyone signed off on a Hawkman book that doesn't have anything to do with the only interesting aspect of Hawkman there is. Granted, I didn't read it, but that's accurate right? No mention of reincarnation? I don't think Hawkwoman is in it. It's just this bird man who hits people with a mace. The flying, the macing? The candles on the cake. You don't make the whole cake out of candle wax.

I disagree. I think the flying and the mace is the most interesting thing about Hawkman. The reincarnation is a late retcon that I think was wholly unnecessary.

I understand why the reincarnation angle was added -- it was to make sense of the hay that DC had made of the Hawkman concept thanks to multiple reboots of the concept -- but that's not why I read a Hawkman comic. I read a Hawkman comic because I want to see a guy, dressed up like a Hawk, flying around and beating the crap out of people with a giant spiky mace.

It also helps if said Hawkman is from the planet Thanagar.

But that's not a direction DC wants to go anymore.

I think you'll find that Hawkman's first appearence in Flash Comics #1 included the reincarnation angle.

 

[Myasishchev]

Oh, yeah, I meant to mention that, but I wasn't sure. Khufu and whatever Sheira was called back in Egypt Days were there in the beginning, yeah? I thought they were archaeologists and stuff and killed Billy Batson's parents when they found the Ark of the Covenant. Maybe I'm crossing some stuff up.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Oh, yeah, I meant to mention that, but I wasn't sure. Khufu and whatever Sheira was called back in Egypt Days were there in the beginning, yeah? I thought they were archaeologists and stuff and killed Billy Batson's parents when they found the Ark of the Covenant. Maybe I'm crossing some stuff up.

Sheira's name was Laura something.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I don't see a Laura in here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkgirl

 

[Nerys Myk]

I don't see a Laura in here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkgirl

Might have been Lara, pretty sure she raided a tomb.

 

[Admiral_Young]

LOL. I actually had to go reference Wikipedia because I don't know that much about the Hawks.

 

[Myasishchev]

I don't see a Laura in here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkgirl

Might have been Lara, pretty sure she raided a tomb.

^_^

One thing I'd like to see in a Hawkperson story is the line, "Oh, no. It's you again, isn't it?"

Anyway, the main thing is, anyone writing a Hawkperson comic should have read The Years of Rice and Salt and be prepared to rip it off wholesale. That book is great, but it is deficient in two major respects: mace-related deaths, and space aliens. Nary to be found there.

And why does Carter always get to be the dude? Was this addressed in that Hawkperson book that I didn't read because I wasn't reading comics at the time? If I were Sheira, and I had to suffer through five thousand years of gender inequality, chattel status, and statistically probably a dozen or so rapes because my soul mate can't bear leave his dick behind, I would be pissed.

 

[Trekker4747]

Oh a whim, I bought the two Batwoman comics. Not impressed, I found the art in them to be horrible and the story really didn't grab me much at all.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Didn't like the art???????

 

[Admiral_Young]

Not like the art??? The art is simply magnificent...I'll agree on the story. I love the art.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, let me rephrase that. The art is good, for the most part there's some panels where it didn't impress me much but the splash pages and bigger action panels were good. I guess I more didn't like the coloring in it. Most notably the fact Batwoman looks like she got some severe albinism.

Issue 1:

The first page is beautiful well drawn and the color gives the right tone, the second two-page splash page continues the theme of the fist and still looks good. Third/Fourth page, the "splash panel" of Batwoman's entrance looks good but then the story panels underneath just lack something. Shading. Detail, I'm not sure what it is but they look less like comic panels and more like the game-loading stills from a GTA game. (Not to mention characters are talking but their mouths are closed. From there on the artwork seems to sort of goes back and forth between great and just okay. But more than anything else the coloring (especially on Batwoman) just leaves me cold.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Why would their mouths have to be open for there to be dialog? Even in the real world mouths open and close as you speak. If it helps think of the panel as a photo taken just as their mouths closed while speaking.

Williams uses a lot of different techniques in the book, thats what makes the art interesting. Yeah, Batwoman/Kate Kane are pale. Its kind of her thing.

 

[Hound of UIster]

I think she is pale because of the goth makeup she wears.

 

[Derishton]

And again, giving us a new JLI with no apparent history intact - when the entire appeal of that produce IS nostalgia ... that makes little sense at all.

This JLI isn't meant to appeal to nostalgia. It's meant to be a continuation of the group from Generation Lost like Hawkman/Firestorm/Aquaman were springboarded from Brightest Day except here both writers: Giffen and Winnick aren't on the book and they gave the book to Jurgens. A similar thing happened to Hawkman apparently.

But the group from Generation Lost is a direct continuation of the original JLI, brought together and published over a year because DC saw that there was both nostalgia for this group and fan anger over how they had "disappeared" since the end of the Jurgens run. It logically can't be a continuation of the return of a league that never existed.

 

[Hound of UIster]

If you read Generation Lost, it's less of a nostalgia group and more of an anti-Max Lord taskforce.

 

[Myasishchev]

Why would their mouths have to be open for there to be dialog? Even in the real world mouths open and close as you speak. If it helps think of the panel as a photo taken just as their mouths closed while speaking.

Williams uses a lot of different techniques in the book, thats what makes the art interesting. Yeah, Batwoman/Kate Kane are pale. Its kind of her thing.

To be fair, I think they went too far with it in the new series. Like, in Elegy, her ass is pale, but when she's in civilian mode, it's within human bounds; they only cranked it up to Crow-level chalkiness when she was Batwoman.

At least in #1, they were coloring regular Kate Kane the same as Batwoman, which I thought was a bit of a mistake.

And I don't get the mouth open/closed criticism either, but it really does bother some folks, and I can sort of see their point. Thing is, what, 95% of all panels would involve an open mouth if we decided that any dialogue = visible tongue.

But yeah, overall the man is annoyingly, unapproachably perfect. It's maddening.

 

[Derishton]

If you read Generation Lost, it's less of a nostalgia group and more of an anti-Max Lord taskforce.

I know what it is. I read it. It was a "getting the band back together" narrative, pretty explicitly. The title itself doesn't make any sense except as a riff on a lost era and lost characters.

The first two issues of the new JLI series spent at least a third of the time making teasing comments about which parts of the old continuity still "count" and in what form: Guy and Ice, the idea of a UN charter, how well Batman and Guy get along. The ending of Generation Lost - where Batman looks ready to put the JLI back together - is clearly not what's happened at the beginning of the new series.

I do hope the new series finds its groove. I wanted to like it. But it needs to go in its own direction, rather than being a warmed-over Giffen/Dematteis.

 

[Myasishchev]

I want fully reheated Giffen/deMatteis.

 

[Derishton]

I want fully reheated Giffen/deMatteis.

So do I, but once DC made the decision to go in a different direction, that direction had to be something new if it was going to work.

I'm also re-reading the Perez/Wolfman Titans series, in the new omnibus, and remembering how ground-breaking it was. I'm not sure why DC got rid of that legacy, although I imagine if you're trying to get rid of Wally West and Donna Troy, the original Titans are a continuity problem (actually, West is a problem for Justice League Europe, too - it's these pesky post-Silver Age properties which were critically and commercially successful. Didn't we realize in the 80s that Barry Allen was just the keenest?!?)