DC's New 52: Reviews and Discussion (Spoilers welcolme and likely)
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Same with Men at War, which I just finished - the characters seem surprised to see a man who can fly, but some seem less surprised than others. It's a solid read, btw. Of the three I've read (JL, JLI, and this one), it's the best of the three. The back-up story is okay.
If anyone else has read JLI, do you remember the panel where Briggs and Esposito walk out of a room past three small TVs? One is showing Wonder Woman, one the Daily Planet Building, and the last is a big yellow bat-symbol with a man speaking underneath it. I assume this refers to Wayne's announcement in Batman Inc last year? If so, it's a clear indication that JLI is in the "right now" category.
and for those keeping score at home:
If anyone else has read JLI, do you remember the panel where Briggs and Esposito walk out of a room past three small TVs? One is showing Wonder Woman, one the Daily Planet Building, and the last is a big yellow bat-symbol with a man speaking underneath it. I assume this refers to Wayne's announcement in Batman Inc last year? If so, it's a clear indication that JLI is in the "right now" category.
and for those keeping score at home:
She appears in a scene when Rock's company finds themselves on the streets of an anonymous Middle Eastern city, in the crowd
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I suppose you could argue that it doesn't matter. The crowd DC is going for are not the types to sit around and wonder what books take place when, but enjoy a good story. Unfortunately that's all going to go out the window during the first big crossover event.
Sure. You could. But then why have then told us, the internet, if it didn't matter... Because it does matter. We're seeing characters at different points. which could be interesting.
But, if I'm a new reader and I pick up Action comics, Superman, JL, and Batman... In one, Supes has been around for 6 months (in action), in the others at different periods. Supes LOOKS different, ACTS different. These are things as a teen I would notice. And if I didn't know they all took place in different time periods... it would be weird.
...which could be solved by a simple "5 years ago" mention in the setting... or something. Or in the name of the story.
The Smallville (TV series) gag at the start of Action Comics made me laugh my arse off...
Nice one, Mr. Morrison.
ETA: Finished the issue now, and that really was Grant Morrison's Smallville. I kinda like it. Superman is a bit cocky, but I'm guessing he'll grow out of that throughout the course of the series, and into the Superman we know. I like how Luthor is already on his case, too.
Interesting start. I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Somebody! Save me!
Nice one, Mr. Morrison.
ETA: Finished the issue now, and that really was Grant Morrison's Smallville. I kinda like it. Superman is a bit cocky, but I'm guessing he'll grow out of that throughout the course of the series, and into the Superman we know. I like how Luthor is already on his case, too.
Interesting start. I look forward to seeing where it goes.
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Double post.
You know its weird seeing a not white haired Commissioner Gordon in the DC present day.
Also Batman seems more of a team player in the present as well judging from JLI.
Also Batman seems more of a team player in the present as well judging from JLI.
Okay, I broke. I bought Justice League. I also bought Men of War, Action Comics, Animal Man, and Stormwatch, because I lack self-control.
Justice League #1
All of the criticisms about it are true: this book is insanely badly paced for the first foot forward of the new DCU, and, really, almost nothing happens. Indeed, this book is technically bad, make no mistake.
Do I regret my purchase? Oh, not one bit.
It makes up for all its flaws and more, by being the most hilarious comic book I've read in a good while.
Hal Jordan written as a clinically-tested, Code 317 mildly mentally retarded man is not exactly what I expected, but it's so, so perfect. He keeps talking about himself in the third person. He uses the phrase "note to self" when trying to make a point to someone else. He describes something as "combusted into fire." He lets a crazy person in a batsuit take his ring right off his hand. He gets punched in the face by Superman. Geoff Johns, you magnificent bastard. You've exhibited growth. It's like you finally, finally realized what an unintentional parody your Hal Jordan had become.
But instead of doing the obvious thing, and just fixing it, you did something subversive, you went the other way; you went intentional, full-on parody. I didn't believe you had it in you, man. And in the flagship title, of all things? You heard it here: Geoff Johns, fucking genius.
"GREEN LANTERN'S GOT THIS!"
Note une: ComiXology's comics reader isn't very good. I mean, it functions. I could use it. But it's really cumbersome. How in the world does something I pay for manage to be far, far worse--format-wise--than the .cbr software I could download for free (which I have certainly never used, of course, but have nonetheless formed a strong attachment to and opinion on)? Page up and page down for turning pages is the only use those keys have ever had, and it worked great. Left and right for going, unsurprisingly, left and right. Why mess with success, ComiXology?
Note dva: Jim Lee's art sort of sucks, and not even in his usual "I can only draw two people" way, more like he was rushed. It's no X-Men #1, anyway.
Note tres: You probably think I'm being ironic or something with the review. I'm actually not, at least not entirely. Art aside, it was a quite enjoyable comic. If Johns was really doing this on purpose, then I'm truly impressed.
Justice League #1
All of the criticisms about it are true: this book is insanely badly paced for the first foot forward of the new DCU, and, really, almost nothing happens. Indeed, this book is technically bad, make no mistake.
Do I regret my purchase? Oh, not one bit.
It makes up for all its flaws and more, by being the most hilarious comic book I've read in a good while.
Hal Jordan written as a clinically-tested, Code 317 mildly mentally retarded man is not exactly what I expected, but it's so, so perfect. He keeps talking about himself in the third person. He uses the phrase "note to self" when trying to make a point to someone else. He describes something as "combusted into fire." He lets a crazy person in a batsuit take his ring right off his hand. He gets punched in the face by Superman. Geoff Johns, you magnificent bastard. You've exhibited growth. It's like you finally, finally realized what an unintentional parody your Hal Jordan had become.
But instead of doing the obvious thing, and just fixing it, you did something subversive, you went the other way; you went intentional, full-on parody. I didn't believe you had it in you, man. And in the flagship title, of all things? You heard it here: Geoff Johns, fucking genius.
"GREEN LANTERN'S GOT THIS!"
Note une: ComiXology's comics reader isn't very good. I mean, it functions. I could use it. But it's really cumbersome. How in the world does something I pay for manage to be far, far worse--format-wise--than the .cbr software I could download for free (which I have certainly never used, of course, but have nonetheless formed a strong attachment to and opinion on)? Page up and page down for turning pages is the only use those keys have ever had, and it worked great. Left and right for going, unsurprisingly, left and right. Why mess with success, ComiXology?
Note dva: Jim Lee's art sort of sucks, and not even in his usual "I can only draw two people" way, more like he was rushed. It's no X-Men #1, anyway.
Note tres: You probably think I'm being ironic or something with the review. I'm actually not, at least not entirely. Art aside, it was a quite enjoyable comic. If Johns was really doing this on purpose, then I'm truly impressed.
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Seriously?
My thing with Jim Lee isn't that I think he's really bad, or that I think he's really gotten particularly objectively worse,* but that his style became fixed in the days of manual coloring and early computer coloring.** And his style looks kind of ass with conventional, modern-day computer coloring. (Check out the covers of those Claremont/Lee X-Men omnibi. See how much worse the new ones look, how garish and overdone the colors are, or--if you're of the mind to blame Lee for something he had no part in--overrendered the pencils are.)
But here it just seemed... blecky. The layouts, the mise-en-scene, kind of blah. I'm comparing it to his collaboration with Azzarello on Superman, that's the most recent Lee work I've got. It was pretty okay?
It shares in common with Justice League an ugly, gross, contraption-laden soldier-thing. You know, he couldn't draw that and make it look good then, either. Hm. (It's funny, because he drew Cameron Hodge pretty great.)
*Maybe a little. Not much. He hasn't been a favorite since WildC.A.T.s. Another favorite of mine at the time was Rob Liefeld, sooo...
**With that one little exception. I would pay good money to see him return to his Deathblow beyond-the-valley-of-the-Frank-Millers style, especially for a Bat-related project, though. That shit was intense. It also looked like it took forever and a day, which indeed it did.
And I finished the rest of 'em.
MEN OF WAR is... fine, I guess? The Son of Rock stuff wasn't great. The back-up story was much better than the lead, but even it was sort of generic. This is the one purchase I sort of regret, especially as it was $4. They should've kidnapped Garth Ennis and made him write it.
Rating: Mediocre.
STORMWATCH was good fun, as one might expect from Paul Cornell. I think this might be the hardest reboot of them all, which, frankly, if you were going to do "Stormwatch" (it's really the Authority, why didn't they call it the Authority? does Warren Ellis get residuals?) really had to be done. It's written in a sort of expo-speak that still manages to work. It reads a lot like a Silver Age pastiche, but not in a bad way at all.
As for the bad: Midnighter's outfit is just as atrocious as it looks on the cover, but
MEN OF WAR is... fine, I guess? The Son of Rock stuff wasn't great. The back-up story was much better than the lead, but even it was sort of generic. This is the one purchase I sort of regret, especially as it was $4. They should've kidnapped Garth Ennis and made him write it.
Rating: Mediocre.
STORMWATCH was good fun, as one might expect from Paul Cornell. I think this might be the hardest reboot of them all, which, frankly, if you were going to do "Stormwatch" (it's really the Authority, why didn't they call it the Authority? does Warren Ellis get residuals?) really had to be done. It's written in a sort of expo-speak that still manages to work. It reads a lot like a Silver Age pastiche, but not in a bad way at all.
As for the bad: Midnighter's outfit is just as atrocious as it looks on the cover, but
the cover is sort of a lie. Also, there's a reference to a Superman book that doesn't come out for three weeks. Great job on not miring the new reader in continuity, guys!
Rating: Good.
ANIMAL MAN is easily the best of the lot I bought. Travel Foreman (son of Eric?) doesn't really draw quite as well as I thought he did, but it's very solid, and very vertiginous. My favorite part is the one where Ellen Baker is supposed to be stern but looks like she's about to boil a live rabbit, or maybe her children. It has an interesting Watchmen-lite washed-up-superhero feel to it, it's creepy where it needs to be, and of all the books this is the one I most want read the next issue to find out what happens. The splash on the last page is a little confusing but also very great and scary. Well, scary in a comic book way, which means sort of middlingly off-putting. That's a compliment! Media that require active participation like comic books and book-books aren't really the go-to formats for horror, I'm sorry!
Oh, and the other best part: Cliff Baker still has horrible, horrible hair! He's still wearing the same mullet from 1988! Take a note: that's how you do continuity right.
Rating: very good.
ACTION COMICS. Yeah, it plays a lot better as a full issue, but I'm still not 100% sold on this. For example, there's a reference to Superman breaking a wife-beater's ribs and hips by throwing him out a window, e.g. very severe, long-term debilitating injuries, which is a bit of a bridge too far into vengeance, punishment-for-punishment's sake, which has never been what Superman has been about... at least, for me.
I like how Superman is actually sort of a wuss (comparatively speaking) when he's younger, and can't take Doomsday-sized punishment yet. There's a neat reference to the Legion of Super-Heroes which I thought was cute but also might not make sense, but that's fine. I'm pretty sure there's a reference to Supergirl's craft arriving (it's in the orbit of Neptune), although I think that might be bullshit, from an astronomy perspective. Grant Morrison's Lex Luthor is a pleasure, as always.
Someone else (Brian Hibbs, I think) said it's Superman for people who don't like Superman. Yeah. Converse is sort of true, too.
Anyway, Luthor kills him with a train in a (frankly) somewhat poorly framed, confusing sequence, so unfortunately the series seems to be over.
Rating: good.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in the Justice League post, the backmatter is almost wholly worthless, so fuck the $4 price tag, but one thing that wasn't entirely so was the unused design for Superman's new costume, which I actually like better.
Rating: Good.
ANIMAL MAN is easily the best of the lot I bought. Travel Foreman (son of Eric?) doesn't really draw quite as well as I thought he did, but it's very solid, and very vertiginous. My favorite part is the one where Ellen Baker is supposed to be stern but looks like she's about to boil a live rabbit, or maybe her children. It has an interesting Watchmen-lite washed-up-superhero feel to it, it's creepy where it needs to be, and of all the books this is the one I most want read the next issue to find out what happens. The splash on the last page is a little confusing but also very great and scary. Well, scary in a comic book way, which means sort of middlingly off-putting. That's a compliment! Media that require active participation like comic books and book-books aren't really the go-to formats for horror, I'm sorry!
Oh, and the other best part: Cliff Baker still has horrible, horrible hair! He's still wearing the same mullet from 1988! Take a note: that's how you do continuity right.
Rating: very good.
ACTION COMICS. Yeah, it plays a lot better as a full issue, but I'm still not 100% sold on this. For example, there's a reference to Superman breaking a wife-beater's ribs and hips by throwing him out a window, e.g. very severe, long-term debilitating injuries, which is a bit of a bridge too far into vengeance, punishment-for-punishment's sake, which has never been what Superman has been about... at least, for me.
I like how Superman is actually sort of a wuss (comparatively speaking) when he's younger, and can't take Doomsday-sized punishment yet. There's a neat reference to the Legion of Super-Heroes which I thought was cute but also might not make sense, but that's fine. I'm pretty sure there's a reference to Supergirl's craft arriving (it's in the orbit of Neptune), although I think that might be bullshit, from an astronomy perspective. Grant Morrison's Lex Luthor is a pleasure, as always.
Someone else (Brian Hibbs, I think) said it's Superman for people who don't like Superman. Yeah. Converse is sort of true, too.
Anyway, Luthor kills him with a train in a (frankly) somewhat poorly framed, confusing sequence, so unfortunately the series seems to be over.
Rating: good.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in the Justice League post, the backmatter is almost wholly worthless, so fuck the $4 price tag, but one thing that wasn't entirely so was the unused design for Superman's new costume, which I actually like better.
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One reason why I stopped reading comics long ago. The publishers stopped caring about where it all fits in (marvel is the worst)
They need to either go back to single story comics or maybe two parters and stop with the crossover arcs. The writers just are not consistant enough.
Well, I'm saying this as not a fan of Jim Lee. I just really liked the interiors of Justice League. I'm no art critic. In fact, most art not drawn by Chris Bachalo is generally pleasing to me. I generally focus more on the writing. I will say that the best art I've seen out of the relaunch so far is Yanick Paquette's on Swamp Thing. Oh my God. I want him to draw everything.
I ordered Swamp Thing, Stormfront, Action Comics, and Animal Man so I'm waiting for them to arrive. Should be here later this week. I obtained JLI, Tec and Batgirl at my LCS and I put an order on Batwing.
Batgirl: Didn't like it. This is where the reboot loses me. It tries so hard to fit in The Killing Joke, but the explanation as to how she's able to walk and her time as Oracle and all of that really falls short with me. It would be one thing if they didn't focus on it, but they did. It over complicated the issue for me.
Detective Comics: I've been reading Detective Comics for years. It's probably my longest run. I have like an almost 100 issue complete run on the title. So I couldn't "not" get it. But I wasn't overly excited about Tony Daniel and I'm still not. I did enjoy this though. It was relatively sterile and there was a bit of stuff in there that's been in a lot of the reboot where they try. Like Gordon having a Bat-Signal, but the police having a shoot to kill order when it comes to Batman. The final scene was interesting, but I'll probably just be reading spoilers for this one.
Justice League International: I actually kind of like this one. It's the comic version of a Michael Bay movie. Not a lot of substance, but I think this could be your one-stop-shop for superhero action. I probably won't be getting #2, but this is definitely on top of my list for trades right now.
I ordered Swamp Thing, Stormfront, Action Comics, and Animal Man so I'm waiting for them to arrive. Should be here later this week. I obtained JLI, Tec and Batgirl at my LCS and I put an order on Batwing.
Batgirl: Didn't like it. This is where the reboot loses me. It tries so hard to fit in The Killing Joke, but the explanation as to how she's able to walk and her time as Oracle and all of that really falls short with me. It would be one thing if they didn't focus on it, but they did. It over complicated the issue for me.
Detective Comics: I've been reading Detective Comics for years. It's probably my longest run. I have like an almost 100 issue complete run on the title. So I couldn't "not" get it. But I wasn't overly excited about Tony Daniel and I'm still not. I did enjoy this though. It was relatively sterile and there was a bit of stuff in there that's been in a lot of the reboot where they try. Like Gordon having a Bat-Signal, but the police having a shoot to kill order when it comes to Batman. The final scene was interesting, but I'll probably just be reading spoilers for this one.
Justice League International: I actually kind of like this one. It's the comic version of a Michael Bay movie. Not a lot of substance, but I think this could be your one-stop-shop for superhero action. I probably won't be getting #2, but this is definitely on top of my list for trades right now.
I'm not so sure... Wife-beaters are probably example #1 of criminals whom our justice system are not effective at handling. The women are too scared to come forward or can't be adequately protected when they do come forward. A long-term debilitating beating might actually be a good life-lesson for such sickos and actually give the battered wife a chance to restart her life elsewhere.
What I came away with from working with alleged (well, one got convicted) CDV offenders is that they're largely profoundly stupid, and their alleged victims aren't much smarter, and beating either one of them probably won't help it. 
Picked up Detective Comics and Batgirl
Detective Comics I found kinda bland and uninteresting. Nothing much of interest really happens. It's not really bad, but it just sorta elicits a big meh from me.
Batgirl on the other hand, now that was a whole lot of fun. Much ado has been made of Barbara walking and being Batgirl again, but this works for me so far. I like the little touches, like her still having the wheelchair lift in her van. The dialogue is fantastic, the art is crisp and beautiful, and may I just say that it's very refreshing to see a superheroine not drawn as a sex object. I think this is a book I'm most certainly going to keep reading.
Detective Comics I found kinda bland and uninteresting. Nothing much of interest really happens. It's not really bad, but it just sorta elicits a big meh from me.
Batgirl on the other hand, now that was a whole lot of fun. Much ado has been made of Barbara walking and being Batgirl again, but this works for me so far. I like the little touches, like her still having the wheelchair lift in her van. The dialogue is fantastic, the art is crisp and beautiful, and may I just say that it's very refreshing to see a superheroine not drawn as a sex object. I think this is a book I'm most certainly going to keep reading.
I liked Action #1 (Ha! Now I can honestly say that "I own Action Comics #1".), and am glad that they just jumped right into the story. Everyone knows Superman's origin, and although I'm sure it will be re-capped at some point, it wasn't necessary here. I will pick up the rest of the origin arc.
I thumbed through Batgirl #1 and put it back down. I would be more interested in these #1's if they did more done-in-ones as opposed to trying to make us commit to an entire arc right off the bat.
I thumbed through Batgirl #1 and put it back down. I would be more interested in these #1's if they did more done-in-ones as opposed to trying to make us commit to an entire arc right off the bat.
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Comics these days are almost entirely arcs. Self-contained stories within ongoing titles are rare. Why not show new readers exactly what they're in for?
Because that's a bad business model. I have been a major critic of DC's business model and what not for this relaunch and some of the books have proved me wrong. Some have not. In the case of Justice League and Batgirl, they just aren't substantial books. If I want to get new readers to actually keep reading, I wouldn't spend a whole issue pussy footing around the issue of Bab's legs (I have a whole other issue with hard reboot vs. soft reboot incongruency with Batgirl) nor would I do a slow build of the team in Justice League. I think we're going to see a big drop off in readership with #2, especially if these comics are the rule.
Fortunately I was fulfilled with Swamp Thing, Action Comics, JLI and even Tec (even though it's pretty average) and I think a lot of people will be too. So here's hoping they are the rule.
Fortunately I was fulfilled with Swamp Thing, Action Comics, JLI and even Tec (even though it's pretty average) and I think a lot of people will be too. So here's hoping they are the rule.
I hated that line. Thought it was the most pretentious piece of dialogue in the issue. Horrid.
Not, "I've got this" which one would say but something awfully vain as that line.
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