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

[Icemizer]

^Interesting stuff as I too have wondered how Savage Hawkman has survived this long.
Flash has been completely mishandled so far so that drop off does not surprise me and the Wally West fans left in droves which did not help either.
Batwoman is a great book but the art is not something the casual fan would probably appreciate as it makes the book a very hard read.
LSH just needs to go away for an extended time, perhaps half a decade to let the palate get cleaned off. Way to many reboots over the last twenty years to make this book interesting.
Green Lantern titles oversaturated the market and people just got tired of following all the books to get the story so I would blame those numbers on event fatigue.
Justice League Dark might get a pass with the rumors of a film in the future and I enjoy the book although its definitely not for everyones taste.

 

[Captain Craig]

This is absolutely fascinating for those who have been interested or tracking the sales aspect of the New 52 since the relaunch.

http://flashbackuniverse.blogspot.ca/2013/03/graphing-out-dc-52-18-months-later.html

Thanks for that link Admiral Young, very informative.
It also confirms what we all essentially felt, that readership levels would get back to pre-Nu52 levels soon.
I bet they could've done this chart after the #0 issue event and there would only be marginal change. These "big" events are just short term PR boosts and money grabs by the segment of comicdom that still jumps on anything with a #1 slapped onto it since so many of the core characters weren't actual reboots/new beginnings. They just carried over right from Brightest Day and Batman just kept going on "as is".

Like Icemizer and the article, how is Hawkman around when they cancel Frankenstein?
Glad to see Aquaman is still doing well but it looks like if they do cancel some 6-10 books I may lose Justice League Dark and Swamp Thing. I didn't see Animal Man on the bullseye chart nor Firestorm(maybe cause it's cancellation has been announced?).

Be interesting to see if the same data is done for Marvel Now a year from now.

 

[Saga]

i would hate to see Justice League Dark and Swamp Thing get cancelled. maybe since Guillermo Del Toro is interested in doing a JLD book they can keep it alive or relaunch it at some point. and i've baffled how such a great book like Swamp Thing sells so poorly.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Legion of Superheroes needs Paul Levitz to go...and a marquee writer with an actual vision for the characters to write it. I was a big fan of the book pre-New 52 and was actually reading it when Levitz took over from Johns, but he is just too erratic with his plots. I don't know if he has improved on the book since I dropped it but he really irritated me. The book needs direction, and it doesn't seem to have any.

 

[Silvercrest]

I think it's more likely that John Blake is going to be revealed as Tim Drake's real name.

This is what I've been thinking since we learned that "Tim Drake" isn't even his real name any more.

Wait, what? What the hell is this?

I think it was in Teen Titans #0. We got the "New 52" origin of Tim Drake. Basically, his parents are in the witness protection program and he's living under an assumed identity.

So... Blake is a fake Drake?

 

[Admiral_Young]

We don't know that yet. That was some early speculation, but they've done nothing about who Tim really is since the zero issue.

 

[Saga]

Legion of Superheroes needs Paul Levitz to go...and a marquee writer with an actual vision for the characters to write it. I was a big fan of the book pre-New 52 and was actually reading it when Levitz took over from Johns, but he is just too erratic with his plots. I don't know if he has improved on the book since I dropped it but he really irritated me. The book needs direction, and it doesn't seem to have any.

agreed. thought i would hate yet another Legion reboot something needs to be done.

 

[Turtletrekker]

This is absolutely fascinating for those who have been interested or tracking the sales aspect of the New 52 since the relaunch.

http://flashbackuniverse.blogspot.ca/2013/03/graphing-out-dc-52-18-months-later.html

Wow. Just amazing how they had all of this momentum and just ran it into a brick wall.

 

[Mike Farley]

I kinda get the feeling that Legion is Paul Levitz's retirement. It will continue, as is, unless it's sales slip to the point where it costs DC money to publish.

That's why it didn't reboot (except in a cosmetic sense) despite the fact that unlike Green Lantern or Batman, it certainly wasn't "too popular to touch."

 

[Turtletrekker]

Well, who can know how many times the DC universe will have been re-booted by the 30th century?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Actually? By the 30th century is the Legion of Superheroes going to be from the 40th century?

 

[kirk55555]

Legion of Superheroes needs Paul Levitz to go...and a marquee writer with an actual vision for the characters to write it. I was a big fan of the book pre-New 52 and was actually reading it when Levitz took over from Johns, but he is just too erratic with his plots. I don't know if he has improved on the book since I dropped it but he really irritated me. The book needs direction, and it doesn't seem to have any.

agreed. thought i would hate yet another Legion reboot something needs to be done.

I'm actually loving Legion of Superheroes. I've always had an interest in the team, but it was the Final Crisis return of what was essentially the original team before all the reboots that hooked me. I liked that the characters weren't teens trying to get the respect of the adults (like the ok but not great version right before them had as part of their thing, I think the Legion is better when the adult/teen conflict isn't involved) and the older characters were just better in general then the rebooted stuff I've read. Currently its one of the few good New 52 books, but I think they need to stop focusing on the new guys so much. I like the newer recruits, but since Legion Lost is finally dying, I say bring Dawnstar and wildfire back and use the big guns of the Legion more in the book. Maybe have Lightning Lad and saturn Girl appear more. But, thats more about what I'd like to see as a fan. At this point, if they rebooted it I'd probably just not read it. I hope it stays around.

 

[Trekker4747]

Action
Detective
Dial H
Worlds' Finest
Smallville

 

[Hound of UIster]

I kinda get the feeling that Legion is Paul Levitz's retirement. It will continue, as is, unless it's sales slip to the point where it costs DC money to publish.

They kicked Geoff Johns off the Legion for Levitz. DC must love committing financial suicide.

 

[Mike Farley]

I would have loved to have seen a Johns LSH, but to be honest those 10 page back-ups in Adventure weren't very good. Certainly not as good as the pre-nu52 Levitz return.

 

[Admiral_Young]

"Superman and the Legion of Superheroes" from Johns Action Comics run along with the Final Crisis tie-ins were the best stories Johns did. Levitz "best" work during his run over the last two years is probably the "Legion of Superheroes: Secret Origin" along with "Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes: The Early Years" opening arc from his pre-New 52 run (the only trade I own of his run) (even though I think there were still a couple of plot points he introduced that were never touched on again).


So I just read the preview for Action Comics #19 and noticed something that I didn't know before...this is still taking place in the past? Jon Carroll is introduced and Clark is still working for the Daily Planet. For some reason I just assumed that Diggle/Daniel would have taken their arc to the present. The artwork is gorgeous.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I was trapped in town a few weeks ago, I had 5 hours to kill, so a trundled into the public library and devoured 5 or 6 trade paperbacks, a lot of which were legion related stuff where I was comparing the Johns stuff to the Levitz, but here's the cool thing...

The night before I had read the (first)Crisis Cosmic Boy crossover by Levitz from 1986 where Cosmic boy is trapped in the present as everything is switching form silver age to postcrisis... It was weird seeing how Levitz had changed or stayed the same, but what was really weird was how quickly they managed to include the Challenger Accident into the story to as the pinacle landmark to tell cosmic boy that he was in an alternate timeline, spookily easily the 911 of the 20th century.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Zee's new costume...still no top hat though.

http://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads//2013/04/zatanna-new-look-600x984.jpg?802b89

 

[Guy Gardener]

I like it.

It's a nice mix of the 80s Superhero costume and what we have come to expect over the last couple years.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I like it as well...along with the cape.

I flipped through Detective Comics #19...and thought it wasn't bad at all. It's much better than what Daniel's was doing before Layman. Not sure if I will be checking this out or not, but I did enjoy this issue with the Langstrom's and their New 52 origin I'm assuming. The stuff with Bane was interesting in one of the back up stories.