TF Views

I love how Doc Ock as Spiderman reverts to his old supervillain methods and not only creates a lair for himself, but hires henchmen. And he can barely restrain his ego when he's interacting with people. It's the characterization of Ock trying to play hero while not always being able to break out of his old ways of thinking that makes this book so much fun.

Still planning to read "Superior".

That's great and all, but that's not how the term "retro" works. Generally it's applied to something that is at least ten years or older. Or at least long enough for it to have faded from recent zeitgeist into pop culture obscurity. Superior Spiderman certainly doesn't fit that as it was my recent memory of Prowl's reviews that led me to check it out in the first place. Red Son on the other hand, I believe does fit that description, at least in terms of how old it is.

I am considering changes in direction by the companies to be the line between "now" and "retro", as Anderson did with pre-"Flashpoint" DC.

andersonh1 wrote:I love how Doc Ock as Spiderman reverts to his old supervillain methods and not only creates a lair for himself, but hires henchmen. And he can barely restrain his ego when he's interacting with people. It's the characterization of Ock trying to play hero while not always being able to break out of his old ways of thinking that makes this book so much fun.

Exactly and it's executed so well. This was one of those concepts that could have so easily jumped the shark, but the fact that they were able to put this much thought and meaning into it is fantastic. And the art is great too, effectively showing the emotional impact of both the villains dealing with this new Spiderman and the people in Peter's life wondering what the heck got into him.

Dominic wrote:Still planning to read "Superior".

That's great and all, but that's not how the term "retro" works. Generally it's applied to something that is at least ten years or older. Or at least long enough for it to have faded from recent zeitgeist into pop culture obscurity. Superior Spiderman certainly doesn't fit that as it was my recent memory of Prowl's reviews that led me to check it out in the first place. Red Son on the other hand, I believe does fit that description, at least in terms of how old it is.

I am considering changes in direction by the companies to be the line between "now" and "retro", as Anderson did with pre-"Flashpoint" DC.

If 2 years ago is "retro" you're doing it wrong. I can understand what you mean, and yeah, that might seem like a good judge on the face of it, but time is still the ultimate measure of whether or not something is "retro". I get Blackest Night being in that category, that was at least 5 years ago and as you have pointed out, things are vastly different now than they were then, that it could be considered the previous "era" for that continuity. But sorry, at only 2 yrs old, Superior Spiderman is not retro, regardless of shifts in tone. If we start using that as the measure then you'd get stuck in an endless cycle of the previous year's comics suddenly getting labelled as retro. And... that just seems ridiculous.

Sinestro #20
Sinestro faces off against the Pale Bishop, who begins his process of purging Sinestro of his emotions. Sinestro finds himself connected to the Bishop, and sees his own moment of greatest fear. As it turns out he abandoned the Guardians of the Universe because he was overwhelmed by terror during their experimentations with the emotional energies. With the Bishops weakness exposed, Sinestro calls upon his Corps to boost his power, and destroys the Bishop, and thus also ends the Paling.

Finally we get to see the background of the Pale Bishop, which I've been waiting for ever since he was revealed to have been a Guardian. Honestly, I was hoping for more than simply "he got scared" and rejected emotion.

Sinestro #21
With Sinestro weakened after his encounter with the Pale Bishop, he puts his daughter in charge. Natu undoes the recruitment from the past several issues, leaving Earth with no Yellow Lanterns. The locals object to their new saviors leaving, so Natu asks Arkillo to remain in sector 2814. Saint Walker also requests to stay, and while Sinestro objects to loosing him as an advantage, but Natu says as a Blue Lantern, Walker doesn't have to follow her orders. Sidestep thanks Black Adam for his assistance, leaving him a Yellow ring, and the Sinestro Corps leaves Earth.

Despite the lacking back story to the Paling, I really enjoyed this storyline. It's good to see the Sinestro Corps working as a police force helping people in the absence of the Green Lanterns. There was even a nice little scene between Arkillo and Saint Walker, with Arkillo saying he wished he could have helped Walker from being tortured by the science division. But Walker assures him he needed it to show him to expand his abilities with Hope. And despite second guessing Natu's first orders, Sinestro appears to approve of her decisions.

DC Rebirth details:

http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news/ ... -revealed/

– “Detective Comics” is now a Bat-team up book, featuring Batman, Red Robin, Cassandra Cain, Spoiler, Clayface, and Batwoman.

– The writers of “Batgirl and the Birds of Prey” are new to comics, but currently write for The 100 on the CW.

– Both Scott Snyder and Amanda Conner are now DC exclusive, and part of Conner’s contract is that she must draw three books for DC over the life of the contract.

– Snyder is writing “All-Star Batman” with a series of star artists, beginning with John Romita Jr. The book will focus on some of the Bat-villains he never got to play with, including Two-Face and Catwoman. The title will ship twice monthly started in August.

– “Action Comics” will focus on both Lex Luthor, who declares himself the Superman of Metropolis, as well as the pre-Flashpoint Lois and Clark.

– “The Super Man” is a Gene Luen Yang book that tells the story of a young Chinese man who somehow gets the powers of Superman.

– “Wonder Woman” is telling two stories concurrently – in the odd issues, Liam Sharpe is illustrating a modern day story called “Lies,” and in the even issues Nicola Scott is illustrating “Wonder Woman: Year One.”

– “The Flash” involves many, many new speedsters after an incident in Central City.

– The “Suicide Squad” lineup is (partially) Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Deadshot, Katana, and Captain Boomerang.

– “Titans” is all about legacy characters ‘that are friends,’ which sounds great, but is illustrated by Brett Booth, which is not.

– “Teen Titans” are led by Damian Wayne, and features the New 52 Wally West, Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy.

– “The Hellblazer” involves both Constantine and Swamp Thing.

– Green Arrow and Black Canary will “finally meet” in “Green Arrow.”

– Both “Green Lanterns” and “Justice League” will feature Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz.

– Red Hood’s new Outlaws are Bizarro and Artemis.

– Of note is that “Earth 2” and “Gotham Academy: Second Semester” were not mentioned once, not even at the end of the presentation, when “Justice League of America” and “Super Sons” were presented sans-creative teams.


A lot of it honestly looks like more of the same. There's not a lot that really jumps out as a major change from the New 52/DC You. I will more than likely start reading Action Comics since it's continuing the story from Lois and Clark, and I'll look through a few other books and see if anything jumps out at me as interesting. So far, this looks like a lot of hype, but very little real change. We'll see.

I am not encouraged by this. How the hell can they not have creative teams announced for 4 series? Why did they put Abnett on "Earth 2" if they are pulling him from the book so quickly?

Gotta stay positive. King on "Batman" could be worth a look. Abnett on "Aquaman"? Maybe. "Earth 2"? Who knows what is happening with that series?

I do not see myself dropping on Marvel series to make room for these. But, if Marvel cancels series at the rate they are likely to, I might have room.

More details. I remain convinced that Didio and Lee don't have a clue about these characters. And the comment I've quoted after the link is very telling.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... ew-52-2016

DiDio: We went to New York Comic Con and we did a panel and we had all our best talent on it. ... Not only did when the panel portion ended did half the people leave, when we did the Q&A portion nobody had questions about story. They asked about superficial material or something else that had nothing to do with the fact that you read the book and you were excited about what happening in there and what was happening to your characters. That was one of the first times I felt that disconnect with our core fanbase, and it scared me. If we can't connect these people and they're fading away then there's no one to buy our books. That's when we sat down and said, "Let's redouble our efforts. Let's connect with our core and then build out from there."

The man is still tone deaf. I could have told him five years ago that he was going to alienate the core audience. But DC didn't care back then... they were convinced that catering to the long-time reader was a mistake, and that they needed to bring in all those hypothetical new readers and "grow the audence". And in so doing, they jettisoned everything that made DC unique and gave us a very hollow universe. All those new fair weather readers are leaving in droves, and so are the long-time readers.

They're putting post-Crisis Superman back into Action Comics, but apparently they're still not going to let him have his classic costume. DC seems determined to keep trying to redesign it.

http://www.newsarama.com/28639-action-c ... erman.html

I would guess that DC is trying to avoid confusion by keeping the old costume off the table.


On a related note, anybody see the DC solicits from this week's Diamond catalogue?

andersonh1 wrote:They're putting post-Crisis Superman back into Action Comics, but apparently they're still not going to let him have his classic costume. DC seems determined to keep trying to redesign it.

I like it personally. I get the feeling this Superman would redesign the costume out of respect for the New52 Superman or something like that, considering we don't know what becomes of the New52 version. Although I do have to say, there was one cover I saw where I think they accidentally colored the boots red, and I think that still looks better than changing them to mostly match the blue of the costume.