Comics are Awesome II

[Dominic]

And, more comic reviews:

GI Joe Retaliation Prequel comic:
And, this was disappointing. I was kind of hoping/expecing that the Joe movies would be like the Bay-Former movies. The movies themselves would have a few good scenes while largely being crap. But, we might get some passable to good comics out of the deal. The Park and Van Hook "Snake Eyes" series a few years back supported that optimism. And, "Operation: HISS" was better than passable, if not great. And, Barber has proven not only that he can write, but that he can write movie tie-ins well. To be fair, the problems with this comic are less likely Barber's fault than they are simply the result of what Barber had to work with. Movie Roadblock is super-duper awesome. He is just so awesome that they need to tell you how awesome he is so you can comprehend his purely awesome awesomeness. Have I mentioned that Roadblock is awesome? Roadblock is more awesome than ninjas. (And, yes, I will assume that Barber was correct in saying that the plural of "ninja" is simply "ninja". But, I have been saying "ninjas" for years and it sounds more intuitively correct.)
Grade: C/D


All-New Spider-Man #14: Ah, gotta love Bendis. Despite this being billed as part of the big "Divided We Fall" cross-over, Bendis uses creative pacing, (his decompression), to more or less side-step the whole thing. Miles' gets Captain America's (cautious) blessing to continue on as Spider-Man. MJ fills the role of "awkward conversation sounding board" normally held by Ganke. (If Ganke is not going to be in every issue of "All-New Spider-Man", he needs to get his own series.) And, this issue lacks an "AR" panels, which is hopefully a tast of things to come. (I am considering dropping any books that start using them consistently.)
Grade: B


And now, two more zero-issues:

Action Comics #0:
I am probably missing something here. Morrison churns out a simple "Superman as a savior of the down-trodden" story. While that is the whole point of his run on "Action Comics", it feels like something of a let-down. (Most likely, this will read better in a compilation with the rest of Morrison's run.)
Grade: C


Green Lantern #0:
Rather than post my own thoughts, I am going to review by reaction here. (This will actually cover most of what I think of this issue.)

However, the bulk of the book then lurches politically to the left and paints the man as a victim of society and an unlucky car thief who just happened to steal a van with a bomb in it, and who is then pegged as a terrorist. You’ve got to hate it when that happens.

I think this is less a question of DC editorializing and more a question of them trying desperately to appear serious and current.

This issue hits one of my "no go" buttons by making fodder of the '01 attacks. DC's reboot side-steps the problem of it making no sense in story as the post-"Flash Point" history assumes that there were no meta-humans until ~6 years ago. But, referencing the event still brings up the questions of decorum and some of the other problems with narrative logic.

Putting aside the fact that something as serious as the '01 attacks deserves more serious consideration than fiction allows for, there is the problem of rooting a new character to a specific point in history. This all but guarantees that Simon Baz is going to be heavily revised with DC's next significant re-write, which all but guarantees that he is going to be a flash (point) in the pan.

Baz origin reads like something that was stolen from an idiot summer movie. (Come to think of it, I recall a movie that uses the "mistaken for a terrorist because of improbable events" angle a few years back.)

Though the character profile for Hal Jordan on the last page will tell you everything you need to know about how desperate DC is to jettison the past. According to the profile, Hal Jordan’s first appearance was Justice League #1, August 2011. Screw you, John Broome, Gil Kane, and everyone else who helped write, draw and read about the character for decades before the New 52. You don’t count any more. Way to respect your long-time creators and customers, DC. What’s next, listing Geoff Johns and Jim Lee as the character’s creators? It would certainly follow logically.

DC has done this before actually. After the original CoIE, their sourcebook entries, (and trading cards), listed many characters by their first modern (for the time) appearance. Superman was listed as appearing in "Man of Steel" #1. Batman appeared in "Year One" i think.... You get the idea. The character entries in the annuals and zero issues are "New 52" specific, so listing their first modern appearances makes sense.

Grade: D


Dom
-still has comics in the pull file....

[andersonh1]

Putting aside the fact that something as serious as the '01 attacks deserves more serious consideration than fiction allows for, there is the problem of rooting a new character to a specific point in history. This all but guarantees that Simon Baz is going to be heavily revised with DC's next significant re-write, which all but guarantees that he is going to be a flash (point) in the pan.

It could be. I mentioned the same thing myself, that tying him to a specific point in history when everyone else is on the floating timeline is going to be a problem. But who knows? DC may decide that starting all over (almost) was such a success this time, why not do it every five years or so? Problem solved, for everyone.


AvX #10

Almost caught up now. I haven't read any issues with Hope prior to reading this series, so do her many and varied powers come out of nowhere, or has this been set up before? There's not actually a lot of plot in this issue. It mainly consists of Iron Fist and others trying to keep Hope away from Cyclops, until she starts absorbing powers and beats him by herself. I don't know much about the character other than what I've read in the series. Her power-up would seem all too convenient if this was the first time it had ever even been hinted at. And who is the guy with the big head floating around the moon watching Cyclops recover from the fight?

[Dominic]

Hope's powers have been hinted at for a while now. (I could not give details. But, it was established before AvX started.) Maybe the big-headed fellah is Uatu the Watcher?

It could be. I mentioned the same thing myself, that tying him to a specific point in history when everyone else is on the floating timeline is going to be a problem. But who knows? DC may decide that starting all over (almost) was such a success this time, why not do it every five years or so? Problem solved, for everyone.

On average, DC seems to have a reboot every 7 years or so. (For the purpose of this, count "Infinite Crisis" and "Final Crisis" as being the same, based on DC counting them as part of a "Crisis Trilogy".)

Based on that, DC may well not round out the decade without another significant reboot. (And, before anybody points out that the various reboots were not 7 tears apart, I was talking about an average. And, I also did not feel like doing the precise math, or figuring out if it was best to count "from the start" or from the end".)

By the time that Baz gets too dated, DC will be about due for a reboot.


And, I left more books behind this week. But, I bought some home.

Bat-Family zero issues:
DC spends the zero issues sorting out the bat-time line. (Rather than grade them, I am just going to post random thoughts.)

Apparently, Barbara Gordon had a realy busy 5 or 6 years. (None of the stories make any mention of Darkseid's invasion. Apparently, the first meta-battle of the new 52 DCU was pretty forgettable.)

Damien Wayne is a clone of some sort, and is barely 10 as of now. Tim Drake is ~ 20, and was at least 14 when he became a Robin. Jason Todd was a member of "the Red Hood gang" before becoming a Robin at about the same age. Dick Grayson would have been 18 or so by this logic. This implies that all 3 of the Robins have been significantly re-written, even if we assume that each of them had a very short tenure as a Robin that started shortly after this issue takes place.

Bruce Wayne was travelling and training ~10 years ago, which makes him ~30 as of now. This also makes Batman the first superhero that I have canonically out-aged...which makes me feel old and cranky.

For all of the context and history that DC jettisoned with "Flash Point", they seemingly went out of their way to keep as much of the Bat-story as possible. And, the problems are already apparent. ~10 years ago, Wayne was finishing his training basing himself out of rough part of Gotham, sans any meaninful disguise, under the (strongly implied) suspiciouns of Jim Gordeon. 6 years ago, Wayne was operating alone as Batman. By my (optimistic) guesses based on the zero issues, Grayson was 17 or so when he put on the tights. (Is there any official word on which costume he started off with?) Todd would have been at least 16 when he took over, likely a year of so later. Drake would have been, assuming that I am accurately low-balling his age in the flash-back, 14 when he took over assuming that Todd's run as Robin was exceptionally short. (Did anybody ask Bruce Wayne what he was doing with all of those young men in his custody, especially the one that would have vanished mysteriously?) The Cassandra/Spoiler Robin presumably does not count.

Any attempt to use some kind of sliding time-line to "de-compress" Batman's history is going to be problematic because it will, by necessity, age Bruce. Assuming that Bruce Wayne is much older than I am would more or less obligate a return to "Grayson as Batman", which we can safely assume DC is not going to do again for a long time, if ever again. (I know a few guys who are ~40, and in excellent shape for their ages. But, they both have age related "creaks" that would make a life of vigilantism all but impossible.) I predict that some writers and editors are going to try to tweak and fix this over the years, and those "fixes" are likely to make things worse.

Traditionally, the bat-books are the ones least changed by the big reboots. But, "Flash Point" was the first reboot where Batman's history had so much explicite baggage and obligatory passage of time. DC really should have made some hard(er) choices about Batman at a conceptual level. They should have decided to get rid of more (if not all) of the character's history, or to make him older in context. If we assume that DC is going to reset again before the decade is out, allowing Batman to be older (and to continue aging) would have been for the best, maybe allowing for the cowl to be passed down across several Robins. But, given how much Batman was held to stasis quo during "Flash Point" (the biggest santioned change that DC is likely to sign off on for a while) any more big time-related changes are unlikely.



Dom
-wondering if Batman will be the new Hawkman...

[andersonh1]

So much for Batman remaining untouched by the reboot. If they've crammed everything into six years and spaced each Robin a year apart (why did Batman change sidekicks so often?), his history has been radically altered, and not for the better.

[Sparky Prime]

On average, DC seems to have a reboot every 7 years or so. (For the purpose of this, count "Infinite Crisis" and "Final Crisis" as being the same, based on DC counting them as part of a "Crisis Trilogy".)

Based on that, DC may well not round out the decade without another significant reboot. (And, before anybody points out that the various reboots were not 7 tears apart, I was talking about an average. And, I also did not feel like doing the precise math, or figuring out if it was best to count "from the start" or from the end".)

CoIE 1985, Zero Hour 1994, Infinite Crisis 2005, Flashpoint 2011. That's an average closer to 10 years. Just saying.

~10 years ago, Wayne was finishing his training basing himself out of rough part of Gotham, sans any meaninful disguise, under the (strongly implied) suspiciouns of Jim Gordeon. 6 years ago, Wayne was operating alone as Batman.

As I recall when the New 52 launched last year, the creators said Bruce was already operating at Batman prior to 10 years ago but was only known as an urban legend. It wasn't until 10 years ago that the public learned there really was a Batman, shortly after Superman became known as the first super hero.

Tim Drake is ~ 20, and was at least 14 when he became a Robin.

I think he's closer to 18. Just before the reboot, he was shown to still be in high school, yet old enough to be named CEO of Wayne Enterprises following Bruce's "death".

By my (optimistic) guesses based on the zero issues, Grayson was 17 or so when he put on the tights.

I get the impression he was ~13 when he became Robin, having taken on the role about a year or two after Batman became a publicly known and having spent his mid-late teens as Nightwing, making him ~22 now. Which then follows that Jason Todd is only a couple years younger, his time as Robin cut short.

[Dominic]

CoIE 1985, Zero Hour 1994, Infinite Crisis 2005, Flashpoint 2011. That's an average closer to 10 years. Just saying.

Think of it more as "4 reboots in not quite 30 years". Average 4 into "not quite 30". That works out to ~7 years.

As I recall when the New 52 launched last year, the creators said Bruce was already operating at Batman prior to 10 years ago but was only known as an urban legend. It wasn't until 10 years ago that the public learned there really was a Batman, shortly after Superman became known as the first super hero.

How much of "Batman falling through time" from "Final Crisis" still counts? After "Final Crisis", I recall somebody at DC saying that Batman's adventures in the time stream were being counted as a way to extend his career longevity.

The stuff I read this week has Batman training ~10 years ago, and operating without the alias shortly after that.

I think he's closer to 18. Just before the reboot, he was shown to still be in high school, yet old enough to be named CEO of Wayne Enterprises following Bruce's "death".

The stuff I read yesterday places Tim Drake in middle school ~6 years ago, *before* becoming Robin.

I get the impression he was ~13 when he became Robin, having taken on the role about a year or two after Batman became a publicly known and having spent his mid-late teens as Nightwing, making him ~22 now. Which then follows that Jason Todd is only a couple years younger, his time as Robin cut short.

This works if we assume that the post-"Flash Point" age spread between them has been much telescoped, and even then it is still problematic But, the new timeline for Batman is still problematic.

Which then follows that Jason Todd is only a couple years younger, his time as Robin cut short.

The only specific age reference we have for Todd is that he was 18 during "Hush", (and by extension 13 for "A Death in the Family" and 19 during "Countdown"). Of course, that is all pre-"Flash Point". Make of it what you will.

So much for Batman remaining untouched by the reboot. If they've crammed everything into six years and spaced each Robin a year apart (why did Batman change sidekicks so often?), his history has been radically altered, and not for the better.

The problem is that DC tried to keep too many specific items from Batman's history this time. In the past, they kept general facts and trivial. But, they were minimalist about specific events in an attempt to keep Batman more specific. The end result is that they made Batman more convoluted and mad specific retcons more necessary.

DC should have just made the hard decisions and tossed all of the Robins after Todd, or let Bruce age more. (I would prefer the second option. But, either would be better than what we have now.)


Dom
-figures letting the characters age is a better option when a reset is inevitable and predicatable.

[Sparky Prime]

Think of it more as "4 reboots in not quite 30 years". Average 4 into "not quite 30". That works out to ~7 years.

You can't average "not quite" a number. Looking at the intervals of time between reboots and taking an average of that, it's at least about 9 years between reboots.

How much of "Batman falling through time" from "Final Crisis" still counts? After "Final Crisis", I recall somebody at DC saying that Batman's adventures in the time stream were being counted as a way to extend his career longevity.

As far as I know, that all still counts. But that's all "falling through time" stuff. Can't really count that towards his time as Batman in the present.

The stuff I read this week has Batman training ~10 years ago, and operating without the alias shortly after that.

That... doesn't add up. 4 Robins in less than 5 years? I can see maybe 10 years, giving them each at least a couple years as Batman's sidekick but 5 is too short a time period. They each barely even get one year in that amount of time.

The stuff I read yesterday places Tim Drake in middle school ~6 years ago, *before* becoming Robin.

Yeah? That still fits with Tim being about 18 now with middle school age being around 11-14. And Tim being as intelligent as he is may have skipped some grades. But then again, that's assuming a 10 year span rather than 5.

[Dominic]

You can't average "not quite" a number. Looking at the intervals of time between reboots and taking an average of that, it's at least about 9 years between reboots.

"30" is a rough estimate. CoIE happened "not quite 30 years ago". 1985-2012 is 27 year. 27/4 is close enough to 7. If you prefer, count from the end of CoIE in 1986, which is an even 28. 28/4 is 7. In the last "note quite 30 years", DC has rebooted roughly every 7 years.

As far as I know, that all still counts. But that's all "falling through time" stuff. Can't really count that towards his time as Batman in the present.

There was some statement somewhere or another about DC wanting the "falling through time" to be a way to have Batman be a constant part of Gotham City, if only as a urban legend. (People in Gotham would remember hazy reports of a crazy man/monster dressed as a bat for years before Bruce Wayne was even born.)

That... doesn't add up. 4 Robins in less than 5 years? I can see maybe 10 years, giving them each at least a couple years as Batman's sidekick but 5 is too short a time period. They each barely even get one year in that amount of time.

Hey, take it up with DC. If we assume that Grayson became Robin immediately after the zero story, then you could bump it up to "4 Robins in 6 years". But, that is still a stretch.

Assuming that I am reading the issue right, the "age spread" between Grayson, Todd and Drake is much less, maybe 4 or 5 years. (Grayson looks and acts much younger, maybe being 19 or so (and not impressively mature for that age).

"A Lonely Place of Dying" puts Drake in the 10-12 range, with Grayson being ~20. (That age spread is *more* than Wayne's time as Batman in the new history.) If we extrapolate from "Zero Hour" and "Hush" (the latter being published before the "Crisis Trilogy"), Todd was 12 when he took the job and held it for about a year. (I hesistate to say he was killed, especially as this week's "Red Hood and the Outlaws" is likely to address that.)


And, more "New 52" musings.

I had a conversation with the guy at the comic store the other day. He had a good point. Both of the big 2 seem to be looking back to the 90s. (Look at their reprints, even the tone and art of some of DC's new 52.) In some cases, this makes sense. (The Nolan "Dark Knight" movies draw heavily on 90s "Batman".) But, in other cases, the reprints are inexplicable. (Does anybody really want to see more of "The Clone Saga", even if the new "Scarlett Spider" book is excellent?)

The guy at the store has a theory. The big 2 are both owned by large media/entertainment companies, (Disney owns Marvel and Warner Brothers owns DC). If you take a "bottom line" mentality, and do not trouble yourself to look at the numbers in context, the 90s look really good from a business perspective. Sales spiked in the early and middle years of the decade.

Granted, many of the comics were bad. The sales numbers were artifically inflated by speculators and multiple cover variants and....the bottom dropped out pretty hard at the end of the decade. But, the fact is, sales spiked. People bought comics. And, it would make sense, in the short term, for the big 2 to go back to that model in an attempt to (temporarily) boost sales. By the time things go really wrong, Quesada and Didio will likely be set-up elsewhere.


Visually, DC's new 52 has a very "Image" feel to it. And, the upcoming "Marvel Now" books seem to call back to the 90s as well.

Ironically, one of the ways that the guy at the store decribed the books, "guns firing all over the place", is very prominent in "Team 7", which I was buying that day. The high concept makes sense. After the emergence of the first Superhumans, the Feds put together a group of elite soldiers that would be able to counter superhuman threats. And, oh, is it ever 90s. The character designs, their dialogue, even the settings. (A "recruiting" sequence takes place in a drug dealer's underwater hideout. The team has a spaceship in low orbit arount the world.) Needless to say, I am not sticking with this one. In contrast with the old 90s series, the "7" references the number of members the team has, meaning that we are unlikely to get a "special" series describing the predictably horrible fate of "Team 1". (Somewhere, somebody who got started on comics with Image is weeping for the destruction of their childhood.)

"Storm Watch" actually feels more like an Image book now than it did a year ago, if only because the Martian Manhunter is no longer part of the team. (I am counting this as a "going back to the way things were" strike against this book.) DC seems to be positioning this book as a reference point series. "Storm Watch" ties in with "Demon Knights" (presenting the Storm Watch team as successors to the Knights), the Daemonites from "Voodoo" and other bits from DC's new "merged" history.

"Superboy" feels the most like a product of a pre-made setting, with his origin being re-written to include 90s style conspiracies, complete with "bad guy explication hour" narration. Fairchild, (from the old "Gen 13" book), figure in prominently, and ties the book to "Team 7".


At this point, I am kind of hoping that the big 2 manage to pull this off without the mistakes of the 90s. Back then, the editorial model was "throw everything awesome against the wall and see what sticks". This led to more "nothing will ever be the same again...until it gets undone" stories that I care to think about. There were also plenty of "good ideas never developed".

For the moment though, things do seem to be working out. The guy at the shop said that sales have stabilized since last year. The people like Anderson who have more or less given up on DC have been replaced by people like me and (more importantly, younger readers. The guy at the store was saying that he knows more than a few 15 (or so) year olds who are thrilled to be getting in on the ground floor. Some of the old rules still apply. (Somebody who is reading a bat-book may not bother with a super-book for example.) But, sales have stabilized, and DC has gained ground in the long term. DC has beaten Marvel unambigously at least once since the reboot. And, they are generally doing better in terms of "comics sold". (Marvel's higher prices tend to keep their "money taken in" numbers a bit higher.)



Dom
-actually curious about "Red Hood and the Outlaws".

[Sparky Prime]

"30" is a rough estimate. CoIE happened "not quite 30 years ago". 1985-2012 is 27 year. 27/4 is close enough to 7. If you prefer, count from the end of CoIE in 1986, which is an even 28. 28/4 is 7. In the last "note quite 30 years", DC has rebooted roughly every 7 years.

DC hasn't rebooted roughly every 7 years though. You're averaging the number of events by 30 years, not the actual time between those events. 9 years, 11 years and 6 years between when each reboot event began. That's an average of about 9 years.

There was some statement somewhere or another about DC wanting the "falling through time" to be a way to have Batman be a constant part of Gotham City, if only as a urban legend. (People in Gotham would remember hazy reports of a crazy man/monster dressed as a bat for years before Bruce Wayne was even born.)

There's a difference between an old urban legend and sudden rumors of a bat-man actually roaming the streets of Gotham. Especially in a world where a flying man just appeared in Metropolis, among other super powered beings.

Hey, take it up with DC. If we assume that Grayson became Robin immediately after the zero story, then you could bump it up to "4 Robins in 6 years". But, that is still a stretch.

The thing is, DC only just recently decided much of this for the 0 issues. They've actually changed some things since the New52 began. Teen Titans first issue for example has Tim talking about how he was once Robin, but the TPB has been edited to exclude the mention of him having ever been Robin. Now he was Red Robin to begin with.

[andersonh1]

DC has never actually rebooted before, not in the strict sense of "starting over from scratch". Yes, they have events every so often that make retroactive changes to continuity, but in no way can it be said that they reboot every X years.

Crisis: folded all the characters into one universe, but was not a reboot. Massive retcon of DC history, yes. Now some individual titles did reboot afterwards, with Superman, Wonder Woman and Hawkman being the most prominent. That's nowhere near the line-wide reboot we've seen here.

Legends and Invasion were't reboots. Again, more retcons, more attempts to spin off new titles and new characters.

Zero Hour wasn't a reboot either. The timeline changed a bit, but characters that went into that event came out without any major changes.

I can keep going, but in every one of these examples, the big crossover event did not restart the DC universe from day one, as Flashpoint and the New 52 have done. DC has had a cycle of continuing retcons/continuity tweaks, but nothing as drastic as we've seen this past year. The changes have been largely unprecedented. This is not just the latest reboot in a continual cycle of starting over every few years, not by any stretch of the imagination.

So there's no real justification for being philosophical and saying "This is just the latest in a long line of DC reboots", because it really isn't. We've had numerous tweaks to characters, but nothing like this.

For the moment though, things do seem to be working out. The guy at the shop said that sales have stabilized since last year. The people like Anderson who have more or less given up on DC have been replaced by people like me and (more importantly, younger readers. The guy at the store was saying that he knows more than a few 15 (or so) year olds who are thrilled to be getting in on the ground floor. Some of the old rules still apply. (Somebody who is reading a bat-book may not bother with a super-book for example.) But, sales have stabilized, and DC has gained ground in the long term. DC has beaten Marvel unambigously at least once since the reboot. And, they are generally doing better in terms of "comics sold". (Marvel's higher prices tend to keep their "money taken in" numbers a bit higher.)

Too bad. I hate to see this kind of slipshod, half-baked attempt at a reboot succeed. I supposed if I liked what they were doing I'd feel differently, but since just about everything DC has done amounts to changing or removing something I enjoyed from their fictional universe, it's hard to wish them the best.

The thing is, DC only just recently decided much of this for the 0 issues. They've actually changed some things since the New52 began. Teen Titans first issue for example has Tim talking about how he was once Robin, but the TPB has been edited to exclude the mention of him having ever been Robin. Now he was Red Robin to begin with.

So Tim Drake was never Robin? That's another strike against the New 52 as far as I'm concerned.

edit: the pages in question: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/09/16/ ... -titans-1/

Further proof that DC are just making it up as they go along.