One Year Of The New 52, Part 2

The quantitative stuff is easy. Crunching numbers. Quality is a little trickier. Maybe it's just me. We'll see.

Prior to the relaunch I was buying three titles from DC: Batgirl, Secret Six, Batman Beyond. We could throw REBELS in there too, since it had ended only three months earlier (making room for Flashpoint mini-series). Batgirl would be the headliner, well above the other three. Batman Beyond had solid writing undermined by weak art. When Secret Six was good, it was really good, but when it was bad, I was close to dropping it, which is pretty bad. REBELS was just consistently good. Never great, but never bad, either. I'd rank 'em:

1) Batgirl
2) REBELS
3) Batman Beyond

Secret Six would swing depending on the arc. At its best, it'd be #2. At its worst, #4.

So that's the old. What about the new? Since the relaunch, I've tried Suicide Squad, Grifter, Resurrection Man, Green Arrow, and Dial H. Batman Beyond Unlimited is more of an anthology, so I'm not sure how to consider it. Generally speaking, I'd list those:

1) Green Arrow
2) Dial H
3) Resurrection Man
4) Grifter
5) Suicide Squad

Of the various stories in Batman Beyond Unlimited, I'd rank Krul and Porter's Superman arc even with Grifter, the Nguyen and Fridolfs' Justice League would be ahead of Resurrection Man, and Beechen and Breyfogle's Batman Beyond story would be even with Green Arrow, maybe a little ahead.

Suicide Squad's tone hit me entirely wrong. Grifter had a good concept it wasted by not getting me interested in any of the characters. It's disappointing to see Resurrection Man third, but Abnett and Lanning simply fooled around to long and the momentum of the book was lost. At the end of 2011, it was the book I thought had the best chance of making up for losing Batgirl. So much for that. That's why I have Dial H ranked second. I think it can be a book like Batgirl, in the sense it'll have consistently good writing (in a very different way, Miller's was clever and funny, Mieville's is more mysterious, with a bit of insanity) paired with a good artist who makes the story come alive. But it's only been 4 issues, so I'm going for cautiously optimistic.

Which leaves the Nocenti/Tolibao team at the top. Which isn't a great, since Green Arrow is a lot like Batman Beyond. There's more going on with the writing on G.A., but the art still isn't doing the book any favors. It's basically a stronger version of either the 3rd or 4th best DC comic I was buying a year ago. I could probably slot it second behind Batgirl, but there'd be a wide margin between those two books. If Mieville and Santolouco can maintain the quality on their book for a year or so? Or DC can pair Nocenti with a stronger artist? Then there might be something.

In terms of overall quality, it probably hasn't been an upgrade. I say "probably" because one, it's still early in the game for Dial H, and two, parts of Batman Beyond Unlimited can bolster the relaunch's results. Assuming we're willing to fudge it and count that book as part of the "New 52", the addition of Norm Breyfogle was a major boost, and I've found myself more interested in the Justice League story than I expected. I knew I'd like Nguyen's art, I just didn't figure to care about the plot. Pleasant surprise. Again, that's assuming we count that book as part of the relaunch.

Actually, it kind of annoys me they couldn't simply replace Ryan Benjamin with Norm Breyfogle on the pre-relaunch title, give Nocenti the Green Arrow book they had going then (I'm sure she could do something with Ollie living as an outlaw in a forest that grew because of a magic lantern), and let me keep my other books. I know that wouldn't have been their best financial strategy (supposedly), but they have their concerns, I have mine.

For the books I tried, there are various problems. Some tried too hard to be edgy, or maybe "mature" is a better word. Books that have a good central idea to drive a story, but forget about things like character building. Or they have both those elements, but move at such a slow pace it kills the book. Or it comes down to DC not having enough good artists to go around. Or else they aren't using the ones they have properly. Those aren't issues exclusive to a relaunch, and there are plenty of titles out there I wasn't interested in that managed to avoid those problems. But from this point of view, it feeds that sense DC charged into this without a lot of advance planning. If they'd had more time, maybe suggest spending more time making the reader care about the cast, or finding an artist to mesh with the writer.

So that's me. What about you? Are you happier with the books you get from DC now than you were with the ones you had before? Is it a mixed bag, some books you want back, current ones you want to keep?