Sunday Splash Page #400

"Optimistically Marketed, Abruptly Canceled," in O.M.A.C. #3, by Dan Didio and Keith Giffen (storytellers), Scott Koblish (inkers), Hi-Fi (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

One of the New 52's original 52 titles (which isn't all that impressive when I put it like that), O.M.A.C. was Keith Giffen doing his best Jack Kirby cosplay, and Dan Didio, well, I'm sure Didio was responsible for something.

Rather than taking place in some far flung future, the book took place in the same time and Earth as all the other DC books. So O.M.A.C. - Kevin Kho, forcibly converted into 'the perfect blend of biology and technology' by the Brother Eye satellite - can run afoul of other DC characters. If, you know, that's a prospect you were excited about. O.M.A.C. having an inconclusive fight with Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E., or Superman being sent after him by Checkmate. Sarge Steel also works for Checkmate but he's just some generic super-soldier, though he loses a hand in his last fight with O.M.A.C.

In this continuity Checkmate oversees Cadmus, and they're responsible for creating Brother Eye, leading to conversations between Brother Eye and Max Lord, where they exchange threats and vague proclamations. Max is wearing a hazmat suit the whole time, which is disconcerting. Also, I kind of picture Max as smarmy, the sleazy, glad-handing, overconfident used car salesman, and that is not something that fits with Giffen doing his Kirby impression. He's got an imperious air, standing on raised platforms with his arms folded behind his back. Stuff better suited for Darkseid.

Kevin spends most of his time staggering around confused in the aftermath of whatever Brother Eye's put him through, so he doesn't get a lot of development beyond having some OCD which seemed to suit him well in his job, which involved filing reports on microbial cultures for the public facing half of Cadmus. It seems like Brother Eye chose him due to something related to Kevin's father, but that's not revealed. There's a girlfriend, but with Kevin spending so much time as O.M.A.C., there's no time for anything there but her wondering why he's never around. At least he comes clean about what's happening - to the extent he understands it - by the end.

The book was one of the first wave of cancelations, ending at 8 issues with Brother Eye defeated by a Checkmate weapon that magnetized Eye's outer covering so it essentially became an asteroid. As a last ditch "gift," Eye grants Kevin full control of O.M.A.C.'s power, but left him stuck in that form. What was Eye after, hooking into Cadmus' files, Checkmate's files, trying to swipe the files of a Dr. Simyan (creating animal men with names like "Command D")? No idea. At least I picked the tpb up for $5 a few years ago.

Saturday Splash Page #187

"Phrasing," in Secret Six (vol. 4) #5, by Gail Simone (writer), Dale Eaglesham and Tom Derenick (artists), Jason Wright (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

I may regret this choice in splash page when Blogger disappears this post for "inappropriate content", but it was too funny not to use. 

Three years in, DC's New 52 wasn't working for me. Everything I bought when it first started - Resurrection Man, Grifter, Suicide Squad - was either canceled or I dropped it long ago. Ditto what I bought - Green Arrow, Dial H, Batman Beyond Unlimited -  as those books phased out. In 2014, my DC purchases were basically Conner and Palmiotti's Harley Quinn, the first 3 issues of a Klarion series written by Ann Nocenti (canceled at 6 issues), and the first issue of Gail Simone's return to Secret Six.

Six people - Catman and Black Alice, a Talon from the Court of Owls named Strix, an elderly lady Ventriloquist, a thief named Porcelain, and the refugee from a '40s B-gangster flick there called Big Shot (who is actually an existing character under an assumed identity) - wake up in a metal box at the bottom of a harbor. "Mockingbird" wants to know which of them stole something, but won't specify what was stolen or when, which would seem to complicate matters needlessly. Catman already spent a year locked in a cave, though Ken Lashley (artist for the first two issues) gave the guy such a huge grin you'd figure it had to be the Joker. (It's not.)

Anyway, they escape and hide out at Big Shot's place, which is a cheerful little two-story house in suburbia. It is a stark change from the first two issues, which were very murky and dark, but there was also about a 5-month gap between issues 2 and 3, and when the third issue did show up, the Eaglesham/Derenick art team arrived. I don't know if Lashley had some health issue or something else, or if Simone changed the direction of the book to suit the new artists, but it's hard to picture what we got working with Lashley's art, which is jagged and rough.

It works for a book about 6 broken individuals, trapped and on edge and ready to shatter, but not so much for stories where Batgirl (in that "Burnside" look era) is offering Strix her bright yellow boots, or fighting Catman with a panel that takes the old cartoon "fight inside a dust cloud" approach. Eaglesham and Derenick seem comfortable distorting anatomy or faces for comedic effect.

They're also comfortable drawing Catman as apparently hot to just about everyone. Scandal Savage shows up as part of a smaller, for-hire group with Jeanette and Ragdoll. Scandal's married to both Knockout (who the Six rescued from Hell late in the previous volume) and Liana (the exotic dancer the rest of the team hired for Scandal's birthday when she was really depressed over Knockout's death at the start of the previous volume.) When the ladies decide they'd like a child - I'm not clear who's actually carrying the kid - Catman's the one Scandal calls. (Their pre-New 52 history seems gone, so this is based on their brief interactions in this series so far. But I guess if you just need a sperm donor, his genetics suggest you could do worse.)

The last 12 issues of the book are the Six forming this distaff little family in a suburbia only one of them is familiar with, and protecting it against all manners of outside threats. Black Alice is apparently draining the magic from the world with her powers, which is going to weaken barriers meant to keep out some ghastly tentacled horror from realms beyond. So a bunch of magic-users try to kill her before it's too late, and eventually even call in Superman. Except this is New52 Superman, with the high collar look, and his requests they stop fighting feel more like arrogance borne of overconfidence than a real desire to avoid fighting. Shiva shows up to recruit Strix to take her place in the League of Assassins, and the rest of them have to rally to rescue her, storming the League of Assassins' HQ (or one of them, at least.)

And, SPOILER for a 10-year old comic, they find out Mockingbird is the Riddler, and he's looking for a big diamond he was showing off at a party all of the Six were present at (for different reasons) when the diamond was stolen. A diamond he was going to use to propose to Sue Dibny, who was with Ralph (as in, they were married and he was standing right there) at the time. Oh, and Big Shot is Ralph, which is one way to use stretching powers, I guess. Honestly, Elongated Man against the Riddler in a battle of wits sounds pretty cool, but that's not what we get here. I guess because Scott Snyder tried to make Riddler a Big Boss type, it's all threats and goons and explosions. There's nothing clever about any of it.

Also, he apparently coerced Scandal's group into attacking the Six by abducting Knockout and Liana, and I'm sorry, there is no fucking way the Riddler took a Female Fury of Apokolips captive. Absolutely no way, I don't care how hard Snyder tried to set him up as a dangerous figure on par with the Joker. Who, to be clear, I would not believe could capture Knockout either. She trades punches with Barda, and is more than willing to rip either of those doofuses into pieces! Just ludicrous. 

But Elongated Man's presence in this book is weird in general, even beyond him shifting his body to look like a big, hyper-muscled goon 90% of the time. Simone writes him as being deeply in love with Sue, and protective of the others - trying to provide love and stability - but he's not trying to rein in their violent impulses. When they go to rescue Strix, Alice borrows Giganta's powers and crushes people in her hands, Catman is cutting people up (he has mechanical claw gloves, except sometimes he also seems to have actual claws?) Ralph seems, totally fine with this. I guess if he thinks of them as family, then it's a matter of what you'll do or accept for family. 

Sunday Splash Page #293

 

"Outer Demons," in Katana #3, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Cliff Richards (penciller), Rebecca Buchman, Juan Castro, Le Beau Underwood and Phyllis Novin (inkers), Pete Pantazis (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer)

I've discussed before that DC's New 52 didn't do a lot for me, China Mieville's Dial H being a notable exception (both in terms of my enjoying it, and it actually qualifying as something new.) But I was glad DC brought Ann Nocenti in to write some books. None of those runs lasted very long - the 10 issues Katana got was the most of any I read, but I don't know how long she wrote Catwoman - and none of them got much of a proper ending, but I've learned to take what I can get.

Nocenti keeps what I think was Katana's original deal, in that her sword houses her deceased husband's soul, and she's after his killers. Which she thinks is his old friend, now a big wheel in one of the criminal "Weapon" clans. Katana figures she might as well bring all the Weapons down at once, but finds that more difficult than expected.

In large part because she's not really thought much of it through. Nocenti's version of Katana is impulsive, confident bordering on arrogant, sharp-tongued and generally unwilling to concede. She gets her ass kicked more than once for pressing a fight she was better off abandoning. Even when she wins, she's often cut up or scarred, but she's determined to take vengeance, as a way of avoiding dealing with loss. She keeps pushing forward until she gets the truth, and has to decide who she's going to be.

Vengeance and grief, desire and power keep circling around. The people without power try to play by the rules of the ones with power, hoping they'll be able to live that way. Except the ones with power can change the rules whenever it suits them. Some people give in to despair, some lash out, some act to change things. It's all about how people handle it.

The book suffers from inconsistent art. Alex Sanchez is the initial artist, and ends up drawing around 6 issues' worth of the book (he and Cliff Richards share art duties on a few issues), and some of the page layout choices are just peculiar. Sanchez seems fond of a pages with a large central panel, almost a splash page, with postage stamp-sized panels scattered on top. The central panel often makes for a striking image, but most of the important action is relegated to the smaller panels, where it's difficult to parse. I don't think it's an issue of Nocenti's scripts, because the problem disappears when Richards is the artist. Richards has some interesting layouts, too, but they're usually easier to follow. Sliding diagonally across two pages as the battle goes first up, then down a tree. Things like that.

The book ends with several unresolved plot threads I'm 99.9% certain no one else ever followed up, but Nocenti at least has Katana come to a realization of what type of person she wants to be and how she wants to do things. A little closure in that regard, at least.

Sunday Splash Page #228

 

"Harley Home Makeover", in Harley Quinn (vol. 2) #4, by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Stephane Roux (artist), Paul Mounts (colorist), John J. Hill (letterer)

It took over a decade, two Crises, a Countdown and a Flashpoint leading to a New 52, but Harley got herself a second chance at an ongoing series. Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti worked as the writing team, with Chad Hardin (who I'd first encountered as an artist on some of those Bloodrayne comics I bought years earlier) initially as the primary artist, though the book had frequent other artists because DC seemed to take a page from how Marvel handled Deadpool and started shipping a crapload of Harley Quinn mini-series, one-shots, annuals and whatnot on top of this book. Sometimes Hardin would draw those instead, or this title would double-ship, so there had to be guest artists.

Through the first 2 years of the New 52, Harley had been mostly an unambiguous villain, commtiting such crimes as distributing handheld gaming systems packed with explosives through Gotham, then setting them off, killing dozens or hundreds. Conner and Palmiotti backed the hell away from all that as fast as they could, setting the character more firmly in a morally grey, anti-hero space. Harley would still commit violent acts, but typically in self-defense or against people who could be said to deserve it (if not quite to the extent she dished out.)

It also, at least for the 17 issues I bought before dropping the book, felt like Conner and Palmiotti couldn't decide what they wanted Harley to be doing, as they kept introducing new settings or jobs, then seemingly dropping them to move to the next idea almost right off. She inherits a building in Coney Island, which gives her the difficulty of being a landlord and potential plotlines involving her tenants. But they also had Harley join a roller derby team, then almost immediately abandon that in favor of a roller derby-themed underground fight club, which also sometimes working as a psychiatrist at a nursing home. By the time I dropped the book, she'd even started a gang of Harleys, for reasons that escape me.

There was strong streak of absurdist, referential humor. Harley frees a bunch of animals from a testing lab, but all their waste is stinking up the joint. So one of her tenants builds a giant catapult and the first launch hits DC's offices with dog shit. She keeps a stuffed, half-burned beaver around that she hallucinates talking to her. Harley faces a string of hitmen trying to collect a huge bounty, and finds out she put the bounty on herself in her sleep. She teams up with an old Cold War cyborg super-spy (who made it into her animated series) she met at the nursing home. 

Hardin's work was a little stiff early on, but as time went by, he loosened up his linework. With the comic (sometimes darkly comic, but still comic) tone of the book, being willing to exaggerate his art better fit the book. I didn't laugh out loud much while reading it - Conner and Palmiotti's sense of humor doesn't quite work for me somehow - but there were parts here and there that worked. Mostly, I wanted the book to just settle on a status quo and run with it for more than two issues. Pick a few supporting cast members to really focus on rather than just constantly throwing more, more, more at the wall.

Sunday Splash Page #155

 

"There's a Void Inside Me. Outside Me, Too," in Dial H #3, by China Mieville (writer), Mateus Santolouco (artist), Tanya and Richard Horie (colorists), Steve Wands (letterer)

I wouldn't describe DC's New 52 as a success. That they abandoned it at least partially by summer of 2015 with the "DC You" branding (and then entirely with "DC Rebirth" a year after that), less than four years in, would suggest they agreed.

There were a lot of factors. DC throwing out their history and legacies, but even more half-assedly than they did after Crisis on the Infinite Earths. So Batman could still have four Robins (in 5 years, apparently), but there could only be one Batgirl (Barbara, naturally). Four Earth Green Lanterns (and Geoff Johns just kept doing the same stories he already had going), but only one Flash (Barry, naturally). 

The Jim Lee redesigned costumes, were to put it politely, too busy. To put it bluntly, they sucked. The claim that things were going to be new, but the majority of the books were helmed by guys who had been writing comics for decades didn't help. I've enjoyed Tom DeFalco's work, but he's not a writer I'd turn to for something new. Then editorial kept driving creative talent off books with heavy-handed oversight. Not much point to putting George Perez on Superman, only to piss him off in less than 6 issues.

Saying all that, it did give me 16 issues of China Mieville's Dial H series, so it wasn't a complete loss. DC canceled some titles 8 months in, and Dial H was one of the replacements. It's one of the few real examples of DC trying to get outside the box, in the sense they brought in a published, award-winning novelist with, to my knowledge, no prior comic writing experience. If you're looking for something "new" and attention-getting to be done with your characters, that's a better bet than handing them to Scott Lobdell.

Mieville dives into the concept of the dials, how they were made, how they work, how they end up where they end up. Gives them an air of body and especially psychological horror. The toll it takes on the person who uses it, to have another entire personality and memory super-imposed over their own, especially one that seems so much greater than them. One of the two main characters (Nelson) struggles to keep track of who he is and what he planned to use the powers to do when he dials, while the other (Roxie) hides whatever identity she dials behind her own mask, costume, and codename, as a way to keep her mind clear.

There was also an entire issue based around the idea some of the dialed heroes are just too culturally offensive to go out as in public unless there's no other option, which was pretty hilarious, and a fair point, given comics' questionable history when it comes to depicting races, cultural trends, sexual preferences, so on.

As far as the designs for the dialed characters, I don't know where the breakdown is between Mieville and his artists (Mateus Santolouco for issues 0-5, David Lapham for issues 6 and 7, Alberto Ponticelli for 8-15), but the designs are great. From the creepy Boy Chimney, to the ridiculous Cock-a-Hoop, to the Glimpse (who is drawn so you only ever see a small bit of him in the panels). There's an essentially sentient mass of plankton that beats the crap out of a whale. Like I said, I don't know who gets credit, but all parties involved did a great job coming up with some interesting designs and powers to go with them.

Lapham's work is probably the closest to a realistic looking, and the two issues he draws involve the least action by dialed heroes, focused more on a Canadian secret agent with powers. Who is basically a guy in a suit, so it works. Santolouco's art is heavier on shadows, characters look more shell-shocked or freaked out by what's going on. By the time Ponticelli takes over as artist, most of the characters are ones used to this dial stuff, and they just looked kind of tired. His art has a grimy texture, and everybody looks older. His linework's also busier than the other two, a lot more extra shading and scratch mark lines, to the point of overdoing it at times. 

Some of that might have been deadlines, because things clearly get rushed at the end. Mieville had a big, universe-hopping arc going, with Nelson and Roxie teaming up with a crew called The Dial Bunch to chase a dangerous "Operator". Unfortunately, DC canceled the book at issue 15, and you can tell Mieville and Ponticelli were scrambling hard to cram enough in to make some sort of a coherent ending. Which they managed, at times quite well. Mieville ends up just alluding to several worlds they've visited along the way, making it seem as though they may have been at this for years. But if they had even another five issues, it could have been so much better.

There was a post-script of sorts, when DC did a "Villains Month", called Dial E (but it was an issue of Justice League, #23.3). It was one of those jam comics, where each page is by a different artist, and it's as much a mess as those usually are. But it did provide a little bit about the fate of at least a couple of the characters.

This Is Going To Get Progressively Angrier

DC and Marvel have generally lost their capacity to elicit outraged reactions from me. They go to the well so often with their hyped up, shocking twists, and change everything events that I mostly sigh or roll my eyes nowadays. Sometimes I miss how ticked off I could get at things like Civil War, but on the whole, I prefer it this way. Marvel and DC are like some bratty kid that keeps poking me or making a particular sound they can tell annoys me, because they think it's funny when it gets to me. Better to not play their game at all. It still happens, sometimes, though not to the same degree.


But I'm genuinely surprised DC did manage to piss me off with DC: Rebirth. More specifically, with the reveal that everything that's gone wrong with DC during the New 52 was the doing of Dr. Manhattan. Geoff Johns trying to metatextually blame the direction the DCU took on Watchmen, and I guess by implication, Alan Moore (and Dave Gibbons?). And I've never read Watchmen, I have no attachment to it. From I've read about it, it does not put forth a vision of superheroes I have any particular interest in reading about on a regular basis (how fortunate it was its own mini-series). I'd just as soon DC left it alone and let the rights revert back to Moore and Gibbons. That said. . .

It's ridiculous for Geoff Johns to try and pin the blame for the darkening of the DCU, or the loss of legacies, or whatever, on Watchmen. So it's that one mini-series, published 30 years ago, using its own characters (analogues to existing one, yes, but Rorschach is not the Question), in its own universe, that is to blame for Identity Crisis, Knightfall, Flashpoint, the New 52, whatever it is that was "wrong" since. Right. Yes, Watchmen had a particular style and philosophy to it, and yes, many comics published, both at DC and elsewhere, have tried to ape at least parts of it. Most of them have not been as good, owing to inferior creative talent, editorial restrictions, the difference between writing a single, self-contained mini-series versus an ongoing serial that's part of a larger fictional universe, and probably other factors as well.

But at the end of the day, Watchmen wasn't making anyone try to copy it. Alan Moore didn't stride into DC's office with a gun and demand they publish a bunch of books in a similar vein. The people working on those books made that decision. People like Geoff Johns, who is now blaming Watchmen for all those stories he wrote where Superboy-Prime ripped people's arms off, or dozens of essentially faceless characters in different colored Lantern costumes slaughtered each other in multiple unnecessary single and double page splashes. Just because Johns strip-mined basically every idea Moore tossed out in his stints writing Green Lantern comics doesn't make Moore responsible for what Johns did with those ideas. It's disingenuous at best, hypocritical nonsense at worst.

Which isn't new for Johns. The guy who insisted on bringing back Hal Jordan and Barry Allen is also the guy who made Superboy-Prime the avatar of fanboys wanting everything back how they liked it, and one of the villains of Infinite Crisis. Sure, it'd be nice if Johns recognized that flaw in himself, but I think that's giving him too much credit. He's been in a position of some power in the DC office all through the New 52, which he now claims was all wrong, but he's trying to pretend as though he had nothing to do with it. Which is the same approach my dad's dogs take when we come home and find one of the kitchen trash cans knocked over and stuff scattered all about. Except if my dad and I had been standing there watching them scatter the garbage for the last 10 years, while being unable to do anything to stop them.

I know I shouldn't be surprised at either DC or Marvel pulling this kind of stupid, petty bullshit. And maybe if it had been written by someone other than a chief architect of a lot of the same developments he's now decrying, I'd have been less bothered. Over at Wait, What?, Matt Terl mentioned he might not have minded as much if say, Jeff Parker or Margeurite Bennett had written it, and I think that might also have been true for me. But for Geoff Johns to sit there like he's Inspector Renaut, just shocked, shocked to find the DCU is full of grim violence and no legacies, and act like it's Alan Moore that's to blame, rather than Johns himself (among others), no. It's revisionist bullshit, to the extent I had to type something about it, and figured better to do it here than barge into the comments sections of other people's posts.

Sure, Let's Talk About Convergence, Why Not

I'll get to my usual solicitation/pull list here sometime, either at the end of the week if new books don't show up, or after the Year in Review stuff. Still, since DC is benching their new 52 line for two months in favor of all these Convergence mini-series, I thought we'd focus specifically on them for a minute. I'm going to list all the ones I'm considering picking up, and weigh the pros and cons. What I did when DC announced their original new 52 back in the summer of 2011, though that's hardly a strong argument in favor of my judgment. I picked Suicide Squad, Grifter, and Resurrection Man. Swing and a miss times three.

Convergence: The Question - The pro side is quality of the creative team, Rucka and Cully Hamner. Rucka clearly has a lot of fondness for Renee Montoya, and he and Hamner have worked on stories centered on her as the Question previously. The con, for me, is that I don't really have a particular fondness for Montoya or Harvey Dent. Don't dislike the characters, but they don't move the needle much. So buying this would basically be trying to convince DC to continue with their recent trend of getting talented people to work on their books, then letting those people's talents and styles show through.

Convergence: Batgirl - I'm not at all familiar with Alisa Kwitney's work, and this is going to involve the Flashpoint universe. Those are the red flags. On the other hand, I generally like Rick Leonardi's work, and this has Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain. So there's no real question. This is the one sure thing buy in here.

Convergence: Justice League International - Ron Marz and Mike Manley. I will admit I don't understand the thinking behind some of these creative teams. I'm sure in some cases there was bad blood between DC and particular creators, or exclusive contracts, or the creator in question was too busy or not interested. But Giffen and Dematteis are already working for DC, on a book where they are gradually bringing in the old JLI bunch. So why not get one of them to write this? I don't have any objection to Ron Marz specifically, and I liked Manley's art on Darkhawk eons ago, though I haven't seen anything of his in a while, it's just a bit curious. Anyway, in this case the pro is the characters, and the con is I'm not sure how well the creative team will mesh with each other and the characters. Also, what the heck is Red Tornado doing there? He's Satellite Era!

Convergence: Suicide Squad - Pro, stout, old school Amanda Waller. Con, fucking Deathstroke in the Squad, again. Getting so sick of that guy. Pro, Tom Mandrake on art. Con, not sure about Frank Tieri. I've never seen him write Amanda Waller, and she's easy to write badly. And since when are Poison Ivy, Deadshot, and Bane some of 'Metropolis' most dangerous villains'? If the cover is misleading, maybe I'll at least be spared more Deathstroke.

Convergence: Justice League of America - Pro, I'm a pretty big fan of Nicieza's work, and the Detroit League is the sort of oft-maligned group of misfits I find interesting. Con, well, Chriscross is kind of vocal about being anti-gay marriage, so I'm questioning whether I ought to support a project he's working on. I've bought stuff he drew in the past (before I knew that) during various back issue hunts (Slingers most notably). I like his work, and I'm sure he's hardly the only person working in comics with such views. Still, I feel I should draw some sort of line. I'm never sure about refusing to buy a collaborative project because of one person's views, but I can't exactly claim ignorance in this case, can I? I'm probably going to have to skip this just so I don't feel like the other comics bloggers are judging me.

Convergence: Booster Gold - I liked Booster's time-traveling adventures, though Jurgens' run on that volume didn't do much for me. But a prison break story with two Boosters sounds intriguing. Alvaro Martinez' art looks pretty solid, based on the samples of it I found from a quick online search.

So those are the ones I'm seriously considering. 6 total, one a certainty. I imagine someone who was a bigger fan of Wally West and his family than me will be excited about the Speed Force book (don't let the Brett Booth cover put you off, Tom Grummett's drawing the interiors, though again, why not put him on Superboy, which he drew for so long?) If Amanda Conner was drawing the interiors for Action Comics I'd probably go for it, but while I'm fine with Claude St-Aubin's art, it's not a selling point. Neither is Red Son Superman's inclusion. That's one of the bigger problems for me with this. They mixed in all this stuff I don't care about, with the stuff I do. I just have to hope it's more "peanut butter and chocolate", and less "horse shit and my shoes". If they'd gotten someone other than Scott Lobdell to write it, I probably would have gone for the Blue Beetle book with the Charlton heroes, but oh well.

Is it ass backwards to find it easy to not buy something because I don't like the style of the writers or artists involved, but hard not to buy something because I do like their talents, but think one of the people involved holds some lousy views?

Anyway, which books caught your eye, good or bad? Is this going to be a month for you to save some cash, or one you better start saving up for now? Like me, are you looking at this simply as a chance to see some old favorites again, to heck with the overarching story? Or are you interested in what Brainiac is up to?

Three Years of the New 52, And Marvel NOW-ER

This marks the start of the fourth year of the new 52, or else the end of the third year. Whichever you prefer. Here's a quick rundown on the raw totals of books:

The last year before the reboot: 48 books
Year 1: 36
Year 2: 35
Year 3: 15 books.

Ouch, the bottom fell out there. I can't really say what happened, other than the obvious point they didn't release anything I was terribly fired up. Everything is Bat-related, or a Lantern book, or else some weekly title, and I'm not getting into weekly books. I have really enjoyed Deadpool, and even so, it taxes my limits by shipping 3 times every 2 months. There's no way I'm up for buying 4 or 5 issues of a book each month. It's too much of a financial commitment.

At any rate, DC's looking at its worst year for me since 2007, when I bought 12 new comics from them the entire year, which was less than 8% of the total. They'll beat both those marks, but not by a whole lot. For me, DC is in this weird place where they want me to care about these characters based on a past history with them. Except DC supposedly got rid of that past history, so is it the same character? They have a Wally West now, but does he bear any resemblance to the previous Wally West, and if not, why would the fans care?

Also, I'm still leery of trusting the books to reflect the talents of the creative team after all the complaints about editorial meddling some time back. I haven't heard much about that lately, but it's hard to shake the wariness. Overall, it's just hard to be enthused about most of their line. But, adding Klarion to Harley Quinn brings me back up to 2 ongoings, so maybe it's the start of another upswing. Or maybe it'll prove to be a temporary fluke after Klarion is canceled at 8 issues. In quality terms, it's harder to say. Harley's book is OK, but nothing great  It makes me laugh sometimes, and I appreciate what Conner, Hardin, and Palmiotti are trying to do. Katana, in addition to the rushed ending, suffered from inconsistent art due to a lot of shuffling of the talent involved. Hopefully that won't be the case with Klarion, though I don't know how long Trevor McCarthy can maintain a monthly schedule. Or how quickly DC would move him to something more high-profile if the book tanks.

Meanwhile, Marvel's having a bit more success with me. I was, as of July, up to 10 ongoings from Marvel, which is the first time I've been buying that many since about June of 2007. So Marvel's continuing strategy of seemingly letting a creative team take a character or concept they like and run with it for a year or two suits me pretty well. The fact Marvel usually - though not always - lets the book run its course doesn't hurt. I can generally be assured I will get a complete story out of it, at least as complete as the writer and artist had in mind. Dial H and Katana both had the feel of books with much longer threads planned, that had to be abruptly crammed into a scant few issues and resolved hastily. Which is less satisfying for me, even if it might make better sense for DC as a business. I don't know that it does, having collections with rushed endings, but that might be less of a concern than allowing an unprofitable book to continue until its writer is finished.

Of course, Marvel is still burying us under a relentless wave of BIG EVENTS, but the titles I buy are apparently ancillary enough they mostly don't get sucked in, Deadpool being a notable recent exception. But other than it and Daredevil, Original Sin passed my pull list by. Infinity only tagged Captain Marvel, I dodged Age of Ultron entirely (good, since it sounds like it was a nonsensical load of garbage), and Avengers vs. X-Men only mucked around with Secret Avengers. Granted, it really mucked around with, presenting my with an interminably boring 3-part story about how swell Mar-Vell was, when I could not care less about him if I tried, but at least it was just one book that got the AvX stink on it. There's also the fact Marvel can't resist running anything that's remotely successful into the ground. The Spider-Ock thing got a positive response, let's do an entire SpiderVerse thing. Deadpool's book is getting good reviews? More Deadpool mini-series! To be fair, they do that every time Deadpool gets a little positive buzz? Remember two or three years ago when he had something like 4 ongoing series at once? That was crazy. What the hell were they thinking?

So last year, Marvel had a year roughly equivalent to 2010, and better than either 2011 or 2012. This year looks to be even better, on par with 2009. Quality-wise, I'm pretty happy. Despite my fatigue from the excessive shipping and frequent tie-ins, Deadpool's very good, Daredevil's maintained its quality, and Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk are both excellent. Rocket Raccoon is going to present an interesting test, since I like the book in theory, but the portrayal of Rocket is a possible stumbling block. Superior Foes of Spider-Man has presented a similar challenge, and it has mostly been good enough I can roll with it. Nightcrawler and Captain Marvel are probably the two weakest books in the bunch. Well, maybe Hawkeye, when it comes out.

The question is whether it'll maintain. Three of the books I'm buying are ending in the next 3 months, and thus far, nothing is popping up to take their place. Combined with other decisions on my part, and Marvel could be back down to 5, or even 6 books, by the end of the year. Which would be a pretty abrupt swing, Marvel going from a 10-to-1 ratio over DC, down to 3-to-1.

While The Character Exists, The Chance For Good Stories Also Exists

One of my coworkers got up and left during Event Horizon because watching all the characters die was making her sad, which is a new one on me when it comes to horror films, but I can't disagree. I do wonder if the ship (which was supposedly alive after its return from wherever) began to reconsider its selection of Sam Neill as part of the crew after he shot out the glass on the bridge and nearly killed the remainder of the crew to be.

That's not what I wanted to discuss today, but I thought I'd update you, since I mentioned it yesterday.

You may have heard Stephanie Brown is finally off the bench in the new 52. I'm. . . cautiously optimistic. There's a part of me that doesn't put it past the higher-ups at DC (who apparently regarded Steph, and still regard Cassandra Cain, as "toxic") to bring her back just to kill her off horribly, as either a joke for their amusement, or a middle finger to the audience. Even if that isn't the case, there's always the chance she lands in the hands of a creative team that doesn't know what to do with her. Bad stories are just one of the risks in any form of entertainment. I can hope James Tynion (who I believe is going to be writing the first issue she appears in, though I can't say I'll be lining up for a weekly Batman comics) can do some good work with her. As long as her use was prohibited, she couldn't appear in any good stories. At least now there's a possibility, assuming of course, the editors don't meddle too much. One thing the relaunch has consistently demonstrated is DC's editors can't keep from interfering. Even if the writers have great ideas, it won't matter if editorial has other plans.

I don't have a problem with her going back to being Spoiler. I know it raises the question of whether she was Robin or Batgirl in the new 52, but I don't mind if she wasn't. I liked her as Batgirl - and don't understand why 4 Earth Green Lanterns or 4 young boy Bat-sidekicks were OK, but there could only be one Flash and one Batgirl - but she was Spoiler the longest. (War Games was crap, and I do my best to ignore it and all that led up to it, so I ignore her being Robin since the writers and editors did it simply to kill her). Spoiler was her own identity. It wasn't bestowed upon her by Batman as proof she gained his acceptance, or handed off to her by Cass and Barbara. She made herself Spoiler, often in direct opposition to Grumpy Bat's wishes, first to stop her father, then because she enjoyed it. If we get a Stephanie Brown who's a little new at crimefighting, but takes to it with enthusiasm and isn't going to stop no matter who tries to make her, I'll be pretty happy with that.

One other thing, does her return strike anyone else as a sign of desperation? A character that was absolutely off-limits for 2 years, even in books not set in the new 52, but just now, it's OK to use her? I suppose it's possible someone in charge realized the stupidity of not letting writers and artists use characters they had good ideas for. Or this could have been some strategy to get people excited for her return. Remember when Thor hadn't appeared in Marvel comics for 2 or 3 years? He died in his own book near the end of Avengers Disassembled, and was gone until after World War Hulk. They even had the fakeout in Civil War with the Clone Thor. Then he reappeared in his own book, and it was a big deal for a while, sales were pretty good (I'm sure JMS' name had something to do with that, since he hadn't completely developed a rep for bailing on projects halfway through at that point), maybe in part because Thor'd been away long enough there was real anticipation for his return. It felt like a big deal. Maybe DC's trying that. It's more likely they've brought her out because they're getting desperate, and they're willing to try anything at this stage. "Anything" meaning any Bat-character they can throw out there to help fill all those Bat-books they publish each month.

We give it a little more time and we might get Cass Cain and the Dibnys back in play. Sure, Ralph and Sue aren't Bat-characters, but they are a detective couple, so I'm sure DC can reconfigure that in some way.

As Fall Takes It's Sweet Time Arriving, Heroclix

Around this time every year - for the last three or four years - I take a look at DC characters I'd like to see made into Heroclix that haven't had a chance yet. Looking back over the prior posts, the actual date has slipped around a lot, mostly because I forget, or get preoccupied.

Last year was a busier year for DC 'Clix. There was a Batman set, then Streets of Gotham, a big Teen Titans set, and a Man of Steel based release. That last one didn't do much for me, but I figured I'd mention it. One thing that's starting to happen is the inclusion of Wildstorm properties and of characters in their New 52 designs. The Teen Titans set was especially notable for that, but the Batman set had Katana in both her pre and post-relaunch looks, for example. At least the new Harley Quinns we got were her classic look.

One game mechanic they've added this year is Team bases. It's a large base that you fit other, specific characters onto, and then it works like a single massively powerful figure, getting stronger the more of the team you place on there, though you aren't forced to put them on there if you don't want. I don't really care about that, much like Duo figures, it feels like something that limits the mobility of my pieces. I prefer to be able to scatter or regroup at my discretion. But that's a player's choice issue, no biggie. The concern is that in terms of rarity, some figures are listed as Team base figures (which is somehow above even Super Rare), and that makes them expensive as hell to get. Which is really irritating when it's someone like say, Raven, who hasn't had a new figure since the Icons set from about 9 years ago. Gee, tough luck, player who just wanted a new, more playable version of one of the core Wolfman/Perez Titans! You'll have to shell out the big bucks now! Maybe if I wait five years it'll get cheaper, when Team Bases fall by the wayside like 95% of the other mechanics they've tossed out there in the last 4 years.

They do this as well with their Marvel 'clix, but I won't get to that until next month, so I figured deal with it at the first opportunity.

When I did last year's post, none of my Top 5 had been made. To recap, those were:

1. Sand
2. Terra (the one that was friends with Power Girl)
3. The Haunted Tank
4. Enemy Ace
5. the Unknown Soldier

Of those, the only winner is the Haunted Tank, albeit with none of Jeb, Rick, Arch, or Slim coming along. Basically anyone can use it, though you receive certain bonuses if they have "Soldier" as a keyword. Not quite what I envisioned. Hey, at least one its powers was listed as "Clankety-Clankety-Clankety".

Outside of that, the closest we got otherwise was a Terra in the Tenn Titans set, but it's the new 52 version, which I think means it's basically the original Terra, more or less. We did get Thunder, which brings me a little closer to that Chuck Dixon Outsiders team I mentioned last year. They even gave us a new Katana and Metamorpho to add in (also a new Black Lightning and Geo-Force), but they all have earlier versions. Still no Grace, though, which seems silly. The dial designers have really gotten into adding special powers that trigger when two particular characters are working together. You know, Fire and Ice, Booster and Beetle, stuff like that. Grace and Thunder seem like a natural pairing, and isn't like Grace's dial would be hard to come up with. She's a Brick clix. High damage, no range, damage reducers, lots of Charge, Super Strength, Close Combat Expert, stuff like that. There's only about a hundred of them already they can use as a framework.

I feel like the chance was missed, though. The farther we get away from her actually appearing in comics, the less likely I think it is we'll see her. Or any of those other characters up there, none of whom have shown up in the new 52 to my knowledge.

Two Years Of The New 52, About A Year Of Marvel NOW!

I did this last year, but I'm cutting it down to one part. In terms of quantity, Year 2 (35 comics) was basically even with Year 1 (36). Keep in mind that both of those include some issues of Batman Beyond Unlimited, which isn't really part of the New 52. Even so, both are still well behind the last year before the relaunch (48). That would suggest my purchasing habits have largely stabilized for the relaunch, but I'm less sure. 2010 was a high water mark for DC with me, at 47 comics and 35% of my total. It's been downhill since then. Last year was 38 comics and about 28%, this year I don't expect it to reach 30 comics and 25%.

It's a missed opportunity, since the number of Marvel comics I was buying kept shrinking as well. Marvel was 79 books in 2010, but down to 65 last year. The space was there on my pull list, but DC couldn't take advantage. This year, Marvel looks as though it'll rebound to roughly 2010 levels. May be a temporary blip, or it may be a resurgence.

OK, that's a quantity perspective. In terms of quality, it's a mixed bag. Green Arrow never stopped having the same problem it had this time last year: Inconsistent art. Katana, which was the title Nocenti left Green Arrow to write, has much the same problem. In some ways it's worse, because at least Green Arrow typically used only one artist per issue. Katana is at two artists as often as one, and they aren't terribly similar artists. Both books also have a feeling of being overstuffed or rushed. My theory is Nocenti knows titles have a short leash these days, so she's trying to do as much as she can as quickly as she can. But it feels scattered. Maybe I'm just out of practice reading comics that aren't decompressed.

All that aside, Dial H was a distinct bright spot. I mentioned last year I thought it could be the new 52 title that would come closest to replicating Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl's quality, but I was hedging my bets 4 issues in. It's done now, cancelled far too soon, but it lived up to my hopes. When Resurrection Man was cancelled, I didn't mind much. It had meandered so much my goodwill was squandered. I wanted Dial H to go on for at least a couple more years. I feel like there was so much Mieville didn't get to do, or had to speed through to provide some sort of conclusion.

I've read retailers in a couple of places detail how Marvel NOW! (which is approaching one year at this point), as a sales strategy, didn't work as well for them as the New 52. I can see it. It's easier to explain to a customer how the entire fictional universe is being started over from scratch (except for the things that kept trucking along, like the Bat and Lantern books), compared to a strategy which seems to have been, "Give creative teams books and characters they want, let them tell the stories they want."  The latter does have the distinct advantage of not throwing a host of characters into the dumpster, compared to all the ones DC swept out (the Dibneys, Cass, Cain, Steph Brown, insert favorite character here), but that probably doesn't work as a selling point to people wandering in off the street.

For myself, I'm at the point where I'm buying titles because I want to see what the creative team will do with it. I'm not interested in tie-ins to whatever the latest Event is, unless the team has plans to use it to further their story. Marvel's largely given me that. Hawkeye and Daredevil predate Marvel NOW! (they feel like the precursors that convinced the higher-ups to try it on a wider scale), and both largely keep to themselves. DD crossed over with Amazing Spider-Man once, for a month, but Mark Waid wrote both parts, and made it fit. And there was the Omega Effect crossover, which felt less natural, but didn't screw with the direction of the book in any way. For all the problems I have with Captain America, Remender and Romita Jr. were left alone to do their thing. Ditto Avengers Arena, and until this Infinity tie-in, Captain Marvel (I wouldn't count the Avengers Assemble crossover since DeConnick wrote both parts. It wasn't the strongest part of the run so far, but I didn't feel like being a crossover was the problem).

It isn't as though Marvel hasn't had its share of letdowns for me. I dropped Fearless Defenders, I'm dropping Captain America. At the same time, I'm still at 5 other ongoings, I'm going to try Deadpool and Superior Foes of Spider-Man here in a few months, and I regret not trying Journey Into Mystery with Sif when I had the chance (I bought the first trade last month, loved it). Even though they're all within the superhero genre, there feels like there's more variety among the books. It isn't all distrust, anger, and clandestine government organizations (though there's still plenty of that). Contrast that to DC, where I'll be down to one ongoing here, at least until Harley Quinn starts, and I don't expect Katana has much time left.

Dial H carried that same sense of creative freedom. Mieville, with Santolouco at first, then Ponticelli, seemed free to do what he wanted. He didn't have to send Nelson on a jaunt to Gotham to tangle with the Court of Owls, or mess with Rotworld. He had some things he wanted to do, he did them. I loved it. So it got canceled. Naturally. I feel like Nocenti's books try for it, but the inconsistency in the artists hurts the effort. It isn't as though Marvel keeps the same artists on titles, certainly not with all their double-shipping, but they do a better job finding artists whose styles compliment each other, or divvying up the work by story arcs, so that at least each story maintains a style, if not the book as a whole. It isn't perfect (Captain Marvel going from Dexter Soy, to Emma Rios, to Andrade could give a person whiplash), but there's at least the appearance that some advance thought was put into it.

I don't know how long the two companies will continue with their respective strategies. DC might decide it's a good idea to stop annoying the vast majority of their writers and artists by messing with their stuff constantly. Marvel might decide they want to have a tighter hand on the reins for their stuff. At the moment though, Marvel's plan is working much better with me than DC's.

So I'll turn to you. How is the New 52 working out for you? How about Marvel NOW!? Have your buying habits shifted at all, or remained largely the same?

It Might Explain How Everything Ends Up There

I had a thought while I was doing that Dial H post two days ago. I was thinking about how odd it would be that so many dials wound up on Earth: Roxie's, Nelson's, the Canadian's S-Dial, Yabba's dial, and now the E-Dial wound up there. Plus, there was O's observations that if he were to use his Doom Dial, he'd more than likely dial an Apocalypse from Nelson's Earth.

You know those representations of the curve of space time? Like this one here? Where the mass of the object - star, planet, what have you - is causing a depression in the fabric of space time, and that's the representation of its gravitational effect.

At the end of Flashpoint, as Barry tries to make it back to the present and fix everything he fouled up, a woman speaks to him, Pandora. She tells him the problem is bigger than he thinks. There are three universes that were once one, and need to be again. And that's how we wound up with the new 52.

Here's what I was thinking. Could combining three universes into one produce a similar effect in the multiverse? Make the resulting universe a super-dense universe, a larger-scale neutron star? You can travel between them - we saw it in Dial H, and we've seen it with both Power Girl and Huntress, and with Mr. Terrific. The universes don't exist entirely separately from each other, they are in the same, I don't know, super-universe, meta-reality, whatever the term is. So the universes themselves could exert a pull on each other, or things that move between. The universes do contain matter, which has mass. So if there's one that's three times larger than the others, it would exert a greater effect on the others, draw things to it more readily.

Like dials, for example.

Once Again, I Don't Understand What DC's Thinking

So let me see if I follow this. Next month is DC's Villains Month, when a lot of their lower selling titles will be shelved in favor of shipping multiple issues of the higher selling books, each issue focusing on a specific villain. Originally, these were all going to be 4 bucks, because they had a special 3-D cover, whoo. Which is why I passed on the two I was most interested in, the Dial E one and the Creeper one. Each of those looked to essentially be another issue of the two DC titles I was buying (Dial H and Katana), but I don't care about special covers, and I wasn't willing to shell out the extra buck.

So DC made a big deal that there would be limited numbers of these books, and no second printings or whatever. Now it turns out they underestimated demand, so they're going to ship a few with the 3-D covers, but many of the books stores receive may had 2-D covers, and be only 3 bucks. Which can suck for the stores, since they probably have customers who did care about the special covers that won't get it. Also, it might have been nice to know the cheaper option was available from the start. Like I said, the price made me pass on the two I had mild interest in, but if I could have gotten them for 3 dollars, instead of 4, I'd have done it. I don't know how common a refrain that is, though I've seen at least one other person online make similar statements. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference for the stores. Reading some of Brian Hibbs' work, I think a book has to sell over five copies before the retailer actually makes any sort of profit from it, so one extra copy of a book for me doesn't mean much to them. But I would have appreciated it.

I don't understand the thinking here. I thought I'd read that DC was prepared to take a bath on these special covers, and if so, why not print a lot of them to make certain they have enough? Does DC gain something from the speculator market? I mean, they're selling them at a specific price point regardless of what idiot offers his copy for 20 dollars online, correct? Limiting the amount of product they have to sell doesn't help them that much does it, since it precludes the chance they sell enough to overcome the added cost of the special covers (I assume it's the covers that were going to cost them, maybe it's not).

I'm not angry about the whole thing. Maybe a bit annoyed for the people who own or work at comic book stores that have to deal with this mess. But it doesn't affect me in any real way. It just seems such a strange way to go about things.

If I'd Botched Things That Badly, I'd Want To Forget Too

Does The Flash remember that he changed everything at the end of Flashpoint? I would guess no, but a quick perusal of Wikipedia suggests he delivered Thomas Wayne's letter to Batman, so clearly he ought to remember something.

It's just, we're a year-and-a-half into the new52, and there's been no sign of the Dibnys. Ralph and Sue were pretty close friends of Barry's, once upon a time. I feel like if I were able to change the entire universe, I would do my damndest to make sure my friends were there when I was done.

I know, they were dead prior to Flashpoint. But Ralph - and presumably Sue, somewhere - were both alive in the Flashpoint universe. How hard is it to make sure that change sticks? He can do some speed thingamajigger to make three universe combine (but somehow is "restoring" the original timeline), but he can't spare a little effort for the Dibnys?

All he had was this Pandora's word that he needed to combine the universes, why go along with her? Why trust someone he doesn't know, who never appeared to help him when he was messing things up in the first place, but who instead as he tries to set things right, and tells him to do something very different from what he was planning? That didn't raise any red flags with Barry, that she had ulterior motives?

I think Hal Jordan's attempt as Parallax to wipe out the universe and start over was better thought out. And when you're being out-thought by Hal Jordan, you know you're in trouble.

Do I Contradict Myself? Apparently So

Sally had a post last week discussing some of her concerns with the Green Lantern books, and the new 52 in general. This has sparked a bit of discussion, a lot of it dealing with how DC threw out most of their old continuity with the relaunch, and how this has left many of the writers at a loss. Including (or especially) Geoff Johns, since he does love to mine the old stories for things he can build on.

I had a slightly different thought. Do you think the writers would have more success if they could just go nuts with their stories? Set aside how the creative teams are shuffled around like it's a game of 3-card monty. We've read interviews with more than one writer that talks about how their scripts are being rewritten after they've been turned in, or being told they can't do X, because it contradicts something. Sometimes the something is another writer's work, other times it's some rule the honchos want in place about whether a particular character exists or not. This doesn't seem like the best environment to encourage creativity.

If they really wanted to start fresh, get the characters back to basics and go in exciting new directions of whatever, they could do worse than letting the writers just write, and the artists draw. Tell them, "give us an entertaining issue each month." Let them use the characters they want to, or create new ones if they want. If one book contradicts another, the writers can decide if they want to bother addressing it. It's supposed to be a new universe, so things are in flux, a little unstable. They'll sort themselves out as they go along.

I don't know, the fans probably wouldn't accept it. They'd demand the books sync up, and why is this character evil in this book, but good in this book, you know the story. I've been as guilty of it as anyone. Still, if they're going to throw out (most) of the old stories, I'm not sure it makes sense to restrict the people responsible for coming up with the new stories.

The Light's Out

We seem to have lost a lot of good characters in the DC relaunch, but it occurred to me yesterday we're also rid of evil Dr. Light. We lost the good Dr. Light too, but I'm not counting that as a positive.

Anyway, evil Dr. Light. He hasn't shown up so far, and I have to say that's a good thing. Given the general turn the DC Universe seems to have taken (nice work there, Barry), I shudder to think what a relaunched Dr. Light would have been like.

I suppose there's always a chance he could have reverted to his loser ways, but I doubt it. Which is a disappointment. There's something to be said for a villain with incredible power, but no nerve. The kind who would rather commit robberies someplace unlikely to attract superheroes, or flee if he does encounter them. There's stuff to do with that. Make him try to plan things out (if you want him to remain sort of bumbling, have him forget really obvious problems with his schemes). Have him be obsessive about observing other criminals, either to learn from them, or to use their activities as cover for his own. And there's always the possibility he gets fed up being a joke and tries for some big, rep-making move, only to get smacked down. Combining power with fear and insecurity could be a good mix.

Or keep him as a joke villain to trot out every so often when you want to take a breather between big stories.

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?

One Year Of The New 52, Part 1

It's been about a year for the "New 52" DC. The first issue of Justice League came out in August, but there were also books from the old universe shipped that month, so I think of September 1st, 2011 as the starting point. Or ending point, as the case may be.

I felt like talking about the New 52 one year in over the next two days. In terms of quantity, buying habits, things like that today, and quality of the books tomorrow.

Some things to consider: Are you buying more DC comics now than you were before the relaunch? Less? Have there been other changes in your buying habits? These could include buying more books from other publishing companies, be it Marvel, IDW, Red 5, whoever. Maybe you've switched to trade-waiting, or switched to buying single issues (because you decided to try some of the first issues and just couldn't wait for the trades). Maybe you decided the New DC wasn't your style, and your focus turned to back issues. Or maybe you stopped buying comics entirely. And there are plenty of other paths, I'm sure.

As for me, I tried to do a count and what I came up with was:

September 1, 2010 - August 31, 2011 (the year prior to the relaunch): 48 new single issues
September 1, 2011 - August 31, 2012 (Year 1 of New 52): 36 new single issues

It's a definite step down from the previous year, though it only represents one fewer comic a month. The dollar gap is even smaller, since Batman Beyond Unlimited is a 4 dollar book. Though it is a bit questionable to count it, since it isn't part of the New 52, but a different title off in its own corner, doing its thing. But what the hey, DC publishes it, I buy it, I'll count it.

I have a general idea what the total for 2012 will be, and it's not only less than the previous two years, but also less than 2008. DC's percentage of the whole for 2012 should be better than '08's, but still not at the levels of 2010 or 2011.

For me, the sales that DC's losing are going to other, smaller publishers, Red 5's Atomic Robo being a major part of that. To be fair, I'm buying less Marvel as well, and the piece of the pie they're losing is going to the same place, so it isn't a DC-specific trend.

I haven't decided to trade wait on anything, though there are a couple of series I've heard enough positive things about to consider picking them up. Eventually. There are a lot of other trades on the list already, and anything else will have to wait its turn. I've continued picking up back issues of things, but I wouldn't say it's accelerated because of the relaunch. There have been a few mini-series I chose to buy as a spur of the moment thing, but all the ongoings I've been tracking down are ones I was already looking for prior to the relaunch.

So my trend since the relaunch is "less money for DC". Well, alright then. Feel free to share how things have been going on your end since the relaunch started, and be sure to come back tomorrow so we can all gripe about how terrible the current crop of books are compared to the ones that were canceled.

Alternatively, we can all gush about how much better the current books are than those that were canceled. Whichever.

A Little Bit On Marvel NOW

What are people's thoughts on the Marvel NOW! thing? Do you think it's a better way of, I guess "retooling" their line, than DC's approach? I know I saw a few people who said they would have liked to try more of the new titles, but with DC launching 52 books all at once, they just couldn't afford to try everything. I'm not sure if that was a widespread issue or not.

DC's approach seems better suited to garnering that media attention they and Marvel so desire. Which maybe, potentially, attracts some new readers (but probably doesn't hold them). It's a little easier to say "we're starting everything over from scratch*", than "we're canceling a few titles over the course of a few months, and launching some new titles with those characters in different situations". Maybe's that a misreading of the situation, but it's how I perceive what Marvel's doing, based on solicits and such.

I do like that Marvel isn't canceling everything and starting over, because it means I don't lose books I was enjoying in the service of some sales gimmick that otherwise doesn't affect me. That was the most frustrating aspect of DC's relaunch, that I lost Batgirl, and it's yet to be replaced with anything I enjoy quite as much. I don't know if that makes it a better approach than DC's, but it works better for me.

Thus far, Marvel hasn't solicited much that interests me. Maybe the new Captain America series. Putting Cap in another dimension is an opportunity to introduce interesting concepts, and Remender has been pretty good at that. Plus, the idea of putting Steve Rogers in a strange land, and seeing how he applies what he believes there sounds interesting. Put him in contact with people who, for example, don't value individual freedom. It's not a concept of importance to them. They like groupthink, or whatever. How does he react to that? John Romita Jr.'s artwork doesn't hurt, either, though it's been several years since I bought a title he drew regularly (Amazing Spider-Man with JMS?)

Maybe that book can take Defenders' place.

I don't expect this to help Marvel's sales in any significant way, certainly not in the longterm. But hopefully we'll get some good books out of it, and perhaps Marvel could even leave them alone long enough to find their footing. That was what really surprised me, that they would cancel Uncanny X-Men so soon after they just restarted it. Gillen really didn't have much time to do anything. Maybe that just means writers should learn to move their stories along faster. Less decompression, unless you want everything you have planned hopelessly disrupted by the next stupid summer event!

* Except not really since the Bat and Lantern books mostly kept the same plots going.

Why Can't Steph Brown Be In Smallville?

So why do you think DC scrapped Stephanie Brown in favor of Barbara Gordon being Batman's partner in the Smallville comic?

It just seems kind of silly. Smallville's a separate universe, so it doesn't seem like it should matter that Batman has a female partner who isn't Barbara Gordon. Has Barbara really been a partner/sidekick for Bats other than in the cartoon universes? Oracle started out working with the Squad, and later lent her expertise to the Batcrew, so that doesn't seem like the same thing. I don't know, maybe New 52 Batman had Barbara as a sidekick for awhile too, wedged in amongst all the Robins.

And if it really did matter, if having Steph was somehow going to confuse all those new readers just getting their heads wrapped around Barbara Gordon, then why is it Alan Scott as Green Lantern in Earth-2 instead of Hal/Guy/John/Kyle? That book is much more closely connected to the new 52, yet it's apparently OK to use different characters there. All those poor new readers' heads must be spinning.

Or maybe not.

It's too bad, really. As much as I'd like to see either Steph or Cassandra Cain show up in the new 52, I'm frankly terrified of which creative team might get ahold of them. Cass could wind up with Beechen again, or Winick. Liefeld. Lobdell. There's a long list of writers I prefer stay the hell away from characters I like, and they unfortunately outnumber the ones I have some measure of trust in. When it came to Stephanie Brown, Bryan Q. Miller was absolutely on the "trust" list.

Not to be, though. For whatever the reason.