DCnew52 Month 1 Roundup, Part 2

Round 2! I think I managed to get all the comics I haven't already discussed here. If not, I'm sure you'll survive. There will be some minor spoilers.

Swamp Thing

This was the first comic I actually read of the new 52. When human Swamp Thing has his nice long chat with Superman, the book gets a little dry and the momentum of the story sort of wanes. I was a little surprised at the pace, as Swamp Thing has always seemed like a bit of a campy book. Of course, maybe I'm not giving the plant monster enough respect as a literary figure.

The end of the comic makes up for the middle though, when shit gets real for those dudes. That moment when the first guy breaks his own neck under the influence of the evil fly swarm really sold me on the idea that horror comics can actually have some juice. I wasn't scared, (seriously, I wasn't, like not even a little) but it was certainly graphic and shocking.

Wow Superman is Super Boring Award
Is there or isn't there a Swamp Thing in this Comic? Award

Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad wins the award for being the most predictable comic of what I read of the new 52. They are being tortured to reveal information by the very people that formed the team to test their loyalty and bad-assnes? Wow, crazy twist.


Predictability aside, the comic is okay. Nothing too special. Harley Quinn is super sexualized which bugs the shit out of me, and it seems as if Joker kicked her out rather than Quinn leaving him. That's a bad choice if you ask me. Quinn would be a stronger character if she left Joker because she is fed up with his abusive ass, instead we have her pining for the man that uses her.

The shark guy is fucking great though.

The Shark Guy is Fucking Great Though Award

All Star Western

Who would have thought a Jonah Hex comic would be so damn wordy. I swear this one took all night to read. I kind of like the idea of pairing Hex with a bookish type. I wouldn't want to keep this character around by any means, but a partner that is actually studied and prudent would compliment Hex's brute disposition.

The continual psychoanalysis is a nice slightly meta element that allows me to enjoy the book a little more than I probably would. Freud and Jonah Hex. Seems about right.

Best Sitcom Idea Award

Birds of Prey

Honestly, I don't remember much about this particular comic. I remember some transparent ninjas, nonlinear narrative, and the fact that neither the samurai lady or Poison Ivy were in the first issue. As this is another team comic (sigh) I don't expect the team to be fully formed when I pick it up, but I do get confused when characters on the cover aren't in the book. I've heard jokes about Wolverine being on every cover despite never appearing in the comic, but I didn't know Ivy had such power.

Wait, isn't Poison Ivy a fairly consistent villain? I'm not sure how she would fit into this fem-Bat-team. I guess I'll just have to buy more issues to figure out how she fits in. Dammit.

I Wanted to Make a Charlie's Angels Joke but I Thought it Might be Sexist Award

Legion Lost

This comic makes no goddamn sense. Legion Lost is at once both incomprehensibly opaque and narratively clumsy. When characters provide exposition, it's like they're trying to shove a round ham through a square hole. None of it gets through, it just ends up as a huge stinky mess.

Then half the team dies. Like the bug guy. I was curious about the bug guy above everything else. Seriously, he reminded me of Baxter from Ninja Turtles. Lay off.

Belaboured Ham Metaphor Award

Resurrection Man

So this guy doesn't die, just resurrects with powers that are derived from the way he died. How this actually plays out is unclear. In the book he dies in a plane crash and gains the ability to melt. How does that follow precisely?

I'm not sure what Resurrection Man typically does as a hero, but it looks like heaven and hell don't like whatever it is because they have decided the adventure is over and he has die once and for all. Given the character it makes a lot of sense. What doesn't make sense is that each eternal destination's representatives are fetishized women. Hmm.

I like the joke about the angel being "Ga Ga sexy", but at the end when the demons are like slutty evil school girls, I thought there might be a classier way to go about the whole drawing female antagonists. I guess if they aren't Catwoman, people are fine with these particular women being meant for titillation.

Moving on.

Really? School girls? Award


Voodoo

Wow, where to fucking start. So, this takes place in a strip club. And we watch Voodoo strip for page after page. There are some cops watching her. The man cop then has a private dance, and then Voodoo kills him. When she's naked. And a lizard.

Things that really pissed me off:

• This panel:

Male gaze anyone? Christ.

• Another panel I couldn't find a picture of, where we get a nice shot full of the waitress' cleavage. Yeah, that's all that's in the panel. Not her head or face or anything else. It's hard to think this comic thinks women are anything but how it depicts the waitress in this panel.
• Voodoo transforms into a lizard monster but still retains the ridiculous female figure. WITH BREASTS! WHY DOES THE LIZARD WOMAN HAVE BOOBS!?

I'm too tired to tear this comic apart.

Fuck you Voodoo This isn't an award.

I, Vampire

This entire comic is two vampires talking. One seems to be evil and plans to take over the world, the other seems to be one of those vampires with a soul or something. During the conversation, the book flips back and forth between a scene of the two dracula-fromping through the night, and a scene of Angel, I mean guy vampire, combing through dead bodies in what appears to be a post apocalyptic city.

The conversation is fairly tired, since I've seen this story told before. This is the problem for I, Vampire (besides a damn ridiculous title if you ask me): we've all taken in a fair dose of vampires in the last decade(ish). There's Buffy and Angel, Twilight, True Blood, then a slew of other vampire stories. We're inundated with Vampire, thanks.

This isn't necessarily I, Vampire's fault though (the name, however, most certainly is), but they don't manage to press too hard on the mold.

That said, the book doesn't reek of cliche, only a familiar scent. The vampire apocalypse seems interesting, especially as it acknowledges the existence of super heroes. I'm slightly intrigued, especially as it seems the story starts when the vampires have already won.

I have one sticking question though, could vampires really take the Justice League? I mean, Supa Man, Green Lanterns, and Wonder Woman seem like they'd be fairly capable of taking some vampires. For one, I'm pretty damn sure that their fangs couldn't pierce Superman's skin, and secondly, I'm a hundred percent certain that all Batman would have to do is type "plan #alucard" into the Bat computer and it would spit out a series of plans on how to deal with a vampire apocalypse, with global and local strategies, for heroes with super powers and normies like himself.

I guess I'll have to see how I, Vampire plans to deal with this. Dammit again.

Too Soon? Award

The Flash

I kind of like The Flash. I have no real reason why, other than how I know he can run through things and then blow them up. This comic gave me no new reasons to like The Flash though.

What amused me most about this #1 were the campy layouts. The title page reveal is so classic comics I laughed when I hit it. I can't really tell if the creators are trying to make the comic campy or if it was just an ill-conceived page.

Other than a few odd layouts, I really liked the art of the comic. It looks crisp and cartoony. Really fits with how I always thought a super hero comic would be drawn.

Aside from the art, the story telling is a little hamfisted. We see a character die and then we go back and show how the character is a long time friend of The Flash. Seems sort of coincidental that the only guy that dies in the team attack on the science fair is his friend. Of course by the end of the comic we have an inkling for why it isn't a coincidence, but the contrivance remains.

He does go Through Something and Blow it up After, so Yay Award

Justice League Dark

Home stretch. So one thing I'd like to get off my chest is my dislike for changing the narrator mid comic. I understand this is something that comics do and maybe I should just get over it, but when it happens for only a page, and when that character didn't interact with the narrative at all, it seems like that page could have been, you know, trimmed out.

Constantine shows up in JLU, narrates for no reason and then we move on. I'm pretty sure he was included because if he wasn't sales of #2 would be lower as a consequence.

So remember back when I wondered how a vampire could take down Superman and the like? Well, in JLD we see how a witch would take down the JL: teeth. Swarms of old dirty teeth.

Yes, you are right. That is ew.

JLD also falls under the category of not much happened this comic as we are too busy trying to explain a lot of stuff up front, guess I'll have to buy #2 just to get a sense of how the characters will relate to each other and the narrative.

I will buy it too, because Constantine showed up for a page.

Weirdest Way that Superman has ever been Brought to his Knees Award


Tomorrow I plan to grab a lot of comics. Then I can start this whole process over again. Rather than do two GIANT posts, I'll make sure to get smaller ones out more frequently. Yay, action plans.

Is DCnU a Real Reboot?

Today we discuss the "n" of DCnU fame.

I've read a month worth of the DC"n"U comics. Not all of them, but enough. I probably hovered around half. <UPDATE: I counted, it is precisely 26> Some of the comics seem like reboots (Action Comics, Frankenstein), a lot seem like relaunches (Swamp Thing, Animal Man), and the rest just seem like new arcs for existing stories (Green Lantern, Batman).

So where does that leave us with this reboot? It's bullshit, but a brand of bullshit that makes a lot of sense.

Batman #1 provided my tipping point last week:

Can a ginge get some diversity?

Really? Thanks for the labels to indicate which Robin is which, but how the hell am I supposed to know what these characters mean? Wouldn't a reboot mean I'd meet each Robin in turn? This single panel hints at quite a lot of back story. Certainly more than five years, the time period DC claims this new U has existed.

I know a little bit about these Robins, but this panel screams bloated canon, the very thing I thought this reboot was supposed to deliver me from.

So while I do think that DC has in some sense lied or BSed us about where these new 52 books fall as reboots, maybe I'm not really angry about it.

As I read through these books, I did become frustrated at times when they presented characters with  backgrounds obviously not rebooted. After all, I started reading comics this month because I thought I could get into these stories with the slight-more-than-cursory knowledge I possessed. This was to be a starting point for me.

Green Lantern and Legion Lost are great examples of characters that seem to have just had a #1 slapped on their new adventure. These stories mean nothing on their own without each story's continuity.

Green Lantern succeeds as an introduction because it provides enough reference to fill in back story for a new reader. I don't know a lot about Green Lantern, but I know the basics. This story is a new arc, not a reboot, but it was written as a point of introduction.

Legion Lost, however, fails at introducing me to the Legion Lost's universe. Admittedly, I bring zero knowledge of these characters to my first read, so perhaps the book isn't as opaque as it seems to me, but the book also doesn't even try to help me catch up with the world. From Legion Lost #1:

Red Robot Guy: Tyroc, I told you the longer we waited following Alastor's wake, the harder it would be to pierce the Flashpoint Breakwall!

Dude with Goggles and White Vest, probably Tyroc: People needed our help in the 31st Century First, Wildfire. We came after him as soon as we could.

That is some excellent exposition. Just exquisite. I appreciate it trying but Legion Lost fails as a new arc / relaunch because without prerequisite knowledge this makes no goddamn sense at all.

The conclusion that I have come to about all of this DC reboot hand-waving, is that it is not so much a relaunch as a collective effort to make the continuities across the board more accessible.There are quibbles about what is still continuity, and what isn't. There are people that just want DC to lay out what has happened in the universe and what hasn't, what they are keeping as canon.

But, this is the wrong approach. DCnU is DC's attempt to let people in. We aren't starting each character over from scratch, but asking us as readers to let them recreate canon.

So, the reason DC can't give a straight answer about what has happened and what hasn't happened in this new DCU is that they plainly don't know. Canon is gone. Some characters are in similar places as they were before, some characters are now different, and there are some new additions to the DCU, but what has happened before the #1s is something that DC will create. Canon will be what the writers of the new 52 comics and the other comics to follow construct. And ultimately, what the eventual audience of this DCnU decide is canon.

Asking DC what is canon is like asking DC from 10 years ago what canon would be now. DC may have some preliminary plans and courses for this new launch, but from their comments online, their plans seem more than a little bit hazy. Whether DC has everything planned out already, or whether they have no idea, as an audience, I'm curious why some believe DC owes us an explanation of this nU's canon at all. How I see it now, DC's story and characters haven't been rebooted per say, rather the history of these characters.

Batman does have a bajillion different Robins still, just like he had before the reboot, but now maybe he has them for different reasons. Their back stories might be similar, but we can't necessarily assume that. They all might be his clones for all we know. God sakes, they look the same after all.

After a month I now think that the DCU isn't new, it just having it's history reworked. This reworking might be for narrative reasons, but more likely, is is a way to expand DC's readership. DC may seem to be running around like a crazed chicken, but maybe that's because they are trying to figure this thing out just like everyone else.

As a creative process, I respect that DC might not have a master plan, that they are trying to refocus the collaborative Universe of stories and character to make their product more accessible. As a purely financial decision, I respect that decision. At the present moment it might seem like DC has taken a step out onto the tightrope without ever thinking about training, but I am willing to let them try and figure it out. That's storytelling.

If they actually do fall and go splats, I stand to save a nice wad of money on comics every month. Win, win.

Tomorrow's Shopping List: Sept. 14, 2011

There is some sort of shark man on this team. Um, can he swim through concrete, because I remember those guys.

Looking over what's set to release this week, my eyes go a little fuzzy. Who is Deathstroke, or Legion? Could Mister Terrific really be that terrific if he can't come up with a better moniker than Mister Terrific. I don't know what his powers are, but I bet they are more specific than simply being terrific.

I recognize the Green Lantern and Batbrand books, but they don't garner much interest for me. I read about the Blackest Night on Wikipedia and it put me off Lanterns pretty good, and while I do like Batman, reading the description of Batman and Robin, I get lost after Damien Wayne. And Batwoman? Is she different than Batgirl?

I thought the point of the reboot was to help people that are put off by the backlog of continuity. Maybe I'm just too lazy too look this stuff up. But whose fault is that DC? Hmm?

I do recognize Frankenstein Agent of Shade though, but only because a) Frankenstein, drr, and b) Jeff Lemire is writing this one too.

But on to what I'm planning on picking up tomorrow:

• Frankenstein Agent of Shade (I'm sure this will be sold out by the time I get there but I can always try)
• Batwoman (put my confusion where my eyes are)
• Suicide Squad (I'm hoping a the villain ops team proves to be worth reading, but really hoping Harley Quinn keeps her clothes on)
• Resurrection Man (mainly because his powers sound weird)
• maybe Legion Lost if it looks good in a flip through

There we go. God knows what I'll be coming home with.

I think I'm going to start calling myself Mister Better-than-Average. Better-than-Average Boy?