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

[Nerys Myk]

Is the 80s when they made Brainiac look like a robot? Because they turned him into one in the mid 60s - they claimed at the time that they'd known in-house that he was a machine ever since his second or third appearance.

Do I need to read the rest of Dc universe if I just want to read Ivampire.

Pretty much you need to read about fifty of the comics, yeah, if you want the vampire story continuity and mythology to make sense. I think you can skip OMAC; I'm not sure about Blackhawks.

You are an evil man.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yeah, I mean, that's par. Brainiac 5's been a bit fucked, or at least convoluted, ever since they turned Brainiac 1 into a robot back in the 80s, let alone all that post-Crisis Milton Fine/Vril Dox stuff. I think I've mentioned this before, but I thought Brainiac 5 was a robot well before I ever watched the cartoon.

As opposed to him being an android prior to that?

 

[Myasishchev]

Is the 80s when they made Brainiac look like a robot? Because they turned him into one in the mid 60s - they claimed at the time that they'd known in-house that he was a machine ever since his second or third appearance.

Well, color me corrected.

Do I need to read the rest of Dc universe if I just want to read Ivampire.

Pretty much you need to read about fifty of the comics, yeah, if you want the vampire story continuity and mythology to make sense. I think you can skip OMAC; I'm not sure about Blackhawks.

I, Vampire was pretty self-contained, I guess. But I have no idea how long it will be. I'd assume it'll maintains some semblance of autonomy; the real question is if they want to make this vampire war some big deal shit then how you'll manage to read other books without knowing what's happening in IV. Probably how they usually do everything in shared-continuity comics: an Arkham breakout? Superman, the Flash, and everyone else more useful than Batman (or, more simply, just "everyone else") were off-world/dealing with some other disaster/on their day off.

P.S.: There's an awful, too-soon joke to be made with tim's mangling of the title. Any takers?

 

[Myasishchev]

Yeah, I mean, that's par. Brainiac 5's been a bit fucked, or at least convoluted, ever since they turned Brainiac 1 into a robot back in the 80s, let alone all that post-Crisis Milton Fine/Vril Dox stuff. I think I've mentioned this before, but I thought Brainiac 5 was a robot well before I ever watched the cartoon.

As opposed to him being an android prior to that?

I SAID I WAS WRONG WHAT DO YOU WANT BLOOD?

 

[Admiral_Young]

There will be blood! Like Dennis said yes one has to read all the books to understand I, Vampire. Not only that you have to read all of the John Constaine: Hellblazer books as well.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Unless Morrison goes an entire different direction completely with Krypton and has all facets of the planet destroyed making Kara and Kal-El truly the last son of Krypton. That would be something different for once.


Johns retconned the shrinking technology for New Krypton, I think Brainiac used some kind of highly advanced Coluan nanotech to shrink the city.

It was a raygun in the story that Geoff Johns did with Gary Frank.

 

[Hound of UIster]

We do know that Morrison loves to pull from all aspects of the character's past so yeah I wouldn't be surprised if he used the Animated Brainiac...who happens to be one of my favourite incarnations of the character.

I dunno. I like Colu. My favorite Brainiac's still animated, though, but it's not really DCAU, it's its own little bubble--the LSH Brainiac. That is a perfect example of reimagination done right.

Then again, they were making him the nemesis of Brainiac 5, not Superman, so the narrative purposes differ.

Of course, if they used the DCAU Brainiac, Querl really makes even less sense than he already does. "Hi, I'm Hitler 5--no relation."

Here's a fun query: does the colloquialism "brainiac" exist in the DC Universe? Explain your answer.

Brainiac 5 isn't the problem.

There is a 1000 year gap between Legion and the present DCU.

The problem is Vril Dox, the head of LEGION who is suppose to be Brainiac's biological son!

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

There will be blood! Like Dennis said yes one has to read all the books to understand I, Vampire. Not only that you have to read all of the John Constaine: Hellblazer books as well.

Well, the thing is that the whole aversion-to-sunlight business is tied in as a kind of weird opposite expression of Superman's use of solar energy to power up - and of course the vampire bat stuff is connected with what's what's been going on beneath Gotham ever since Jonah Hex rode in. It's really pretty complicated. You might get by without understanding the allusions to Sinestro, but then there's the whole (literally) bloody build-up about the secret history of the Red Lanterns...

 

[Broccoli]

well, I paid so little attention to fucking Smallville that if you told me Zod was Clark's father in that version I'd have to believe it.

Well...in a way...

Seriously though, judging by this and other posts you've made regarding Smallville, you seem to have so much contempt for a show you never really watched. This strikes me as less Dennis and more...another poster.

 

[Myasishchev]

but then there's the whole (literally) bloody build-up about the secret history of the Red Lanterns...

Man, that crossover's gonna be awkward.

 

[Captain Craig]

Timothy...you know they are messing around right?
At most it might crossover with another book or two depending on how Mary's agenda unfolds.

I hate getting in late on Wed and having not read any books yet.
Glad to read up thread that both Swamp Thing and Animal Man were again good reads. Looking forward to Swampy especially.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Y

well, I paid so little attention to fucking Smallville that if you told me Zod was Clark's father in that version I'd have to believe it.

Well...in a way...

Seriously though, judging by this and other posts you've made regarding Smallville, you seem to have so much contempt for a show you never really watched. This strikes me as less Dennis and more...another poster.

I watched it perhaps ten times - I've broken up with people after a lot fewer dates than that, to put this crap in perspective.

 

[Derishton]

Finally read All-Star Western last night and loved it; it felt like the weightiest of the books in terms of length. I really liked I, Vampire (which even after the good reviews surprised the hell out of me).

Admiral Young, learning that Skeets is stilla round was a good reveal; but we also had in-text confirmation that the UN has never tried a JLI type team before now. I think that was only implied before. I'm still not sure I like the new JLI: Ice's dialogue in particular seems off. I could live with Ice being different; but the dialogue is just bad (she's the most glaring example, but only Booster, Guy and Godiva sound like real people who haven't learned English from a machine overnight). Vixen actually says "that's my native Africa" at one point: given the criticisms Batwing's received for "small continent" syndrome, this seems just as glaring.

 

[Myasishchev]

Maybe she just wants to do the things we never had.

 

[Trekker4747]

Seriously, how does Rob Liefeld stay employed?

 

[A beaker full of death]

Seriously, how does Rob Liefeld stay employed?

Last night I was bagging up a few hundred 30-year-old Marvel comics and I was wondering the very same thing. I don't recall ever hearing of half the artists in those comics, yet they were all competent. Liefeld couldn't have gotten arrested in that era. WTF happened?

 

[Trekker4747]

I was at the comic store and looked at the cover for "Hawk and Dove" and just groaned. The cover alone pretty much epitomized everything I've seen, and heard, about his art over the years. It's like it's still 1993 and he's doing the same style of art. Compared to the art in comics like DC, AC and pretty much all of the other titles with DC and it's all fabulous.

Then there's... Rob.

Ugh.

Then I look at his picture on his Wikipedia page and he reminds me of just a goober. You know who he reminds me of? Remember that episode of "Friends" where Monica meets up with, and dates, a guy she knew from high school but could never date him because she was fat? When she's on the date with him she discovers, while in his late-20s, he's still very much like he was in high-school. Lives with his parents, still has the same car he did then and still has the same job in a movie theater and boasts he can "get free posters for your room."

That's Rob Liefeld.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Something like this wasn't wholly unexpected for September, I suppose, and as everyone likes to point out this is a marathon rather than a sprint. Nonetheless:

The following information will be most likely released tomorrow. But Bleeding Cool has an inside track.

For September 2011, the DC Relaunch, DC Comics had a 35.74% share of dollars spent on comics and graphic novels.

And Marvel had a 35.37% share.

It’s a half point difference, but considering earlier in the year, DC were double figures points behind Marvel, it’s a remarkable shift.

But the biggest change is in the actual number of comics and graphic novels sold. In that, DC had a massive 43.04% marketshare, over five points ahead of Marvel on 37.88%.

The only time DC has been ahead of Marvel in any form for decades was last December, when the Dark Knight comic saw DC take 33.07% in product marketshare to Marvel ‘s 32.28%, but Marvel kept dominance in dollar share with 39.9% to DC’s 36.99%. And in subsequent months, DC’s sales and revenue plummeted, until the middle of this year when they slowly started to regain ground.

The dollar numbers are so close that Marvel can be expected to resurge pretty quickly - or more to the point, the nuDC tide just needs to roll out a bit for those numbers to flip. What will be more interesting is how far and how quickly the number of copies sold slide back.
Link

 

[Allyn Gibson]

The Huntress #1. I imagine this is a book that got lost in the shuffle, since it's not part 0f the "New 52." But it has a decent enough creative team (Paul Levitz, who created the original Huntress, is writing, and Marcus To of Red Robin is on art), and I've always liked the Helena Bertinelli Huntress (she has a lot of "edges"), so I gave it a shot.

The story is just kinda "there." Helena has gone to Italy to intercept a shipment of weapons being smuggled to Gotham, and then she gets drawn into hunting down a human trafficking ring. A couple of dialogue moments suggest to me that it was planned for pre-Flashpoint, and the costume she wears is the Jim Lee-designed costume but without the bare midriff (in other words, it's a variant that a number of artists have used over the past five years), but because the Bat-verse didn't reboot to the same extent, it still "fits."

Really, the reason to get this is Marcus To's artwork. He draws a seriously lovely Helena Bertinelli, in either guise.

And that's the thing. This book "feels" like Red Robin. It's a globetrotting Red Robin kind of story, with Red Robin's artist.

If you like the Bat-books and you're looking for something different than "just another adventure in Gotham," Huntress wouldn't be a bad choice.

 

[C_Miller]

Something like this wasn't wholly unexpected for September, I suppose, and as everyone likes to point out this is a marathon rather than a sprint. Nonetheless:

The following information will be most likely released tomorrow. But Bleeding Cool has an inside track.

For September 2011, the DC Relaunch, DC Comics had a 35.74% share of dollars spent on comics and graphic novels.

And Marvel had a 35.37% share.

It’s a half point difference, but considering earlier in the year, DC were double figures points behind Marvel, it’s a remarkable shift.

But the biggest change is in the actual number of comics and graphic novels sold. In that, DC had a massive 43.04% marketshare, over five points ahead of Marvel on 37.88%.

The only time DC has been ahead of Marvel in any form for decades was last December, when the Dark Knight comic saw DC take 33.07% in product marketshare to Marvel ‘s 32.28%, but Marvel kept dominance in dollar share with 39.9% to DC’s 36.99%. And in subsequent months, DC’s sales and revenue plummeted, until the middle of this year when they slowly started to regain ground.

The dollar numbers are so close that Marvel can be expected to resurge pretty quickly - or more to the point, the nuDC tide just needs to roll out a bit for those numbers to flip. What will be more interesting is how far and how quickly the number of copies sold slide back.
Link

Marvel does charge a dollar more per their books and they released I think like 88 books last month. These numbers aren't too surprising to me.