The New 52 (One Year Later...More or Less)

August 31, 2011....that marked the day that the Old DCU came to an end with "Flashpoint" and the day the New 52 was born with Justice League #1.  So as of the day of this writing, September 3rd, it has been...

- 369 days  (not counting today)
- 1 year, 33 days
-  31,881,600 seconds
- 531,360 minutes
- 8856 hours
- 52 weeks (rounded down)

Since I'm spitting out facts & figures, let me run those down before I get into the nitty gritty of this piece...ya know the part where I rant about the things I loved, liked, and hated.

So we started with 52 core books, the ones indicated in that banner right up there, but it was announced in January 2011 that the following "First Wave" books would be cancelled after eight issues:

- Mister Terrific
- Static Shock
- Hawk and Dove
- OMAC
- Blackhawks
- Men of War

Those titles were replaced with the "Second Wave" of the New 52 made up of:

- Batman Incorporated
- Earth 2
- Worlds' Finest
- Dial H
- GI Combat
- The Ravagers

Then we had a second wave of cancellations over the course of August & September, most of these ending at a #0 issue, consisting of:

- Justice League International
- Captain Atom
- Resurrection Man
- Voodoo

And now we've got the "Third Wave" kicking off in September as well with all of the following starting their runs with #0 issues:

- Talon
- Sword of Sorcery
- The Phantom Stranger
- Team 7

So obviously DC is trying to stick with a core of 52 on-going books but there are a slew of mini's, one-shots, and now a "National Comics" anthology that aren't considered part of this number for various reasons, but the one being the ability to say "we only publish 52 books" would be the top of the list I imagine.

Now as for the most important part, for the companies at least, and the primary reason for any company to do anything of this magnitude: sales!  Here's a look at the July 2012 sales charts which are the most recent:

Retail Market Share -
DC Comics - 32.71%
Marvel - 31.96%

Unit Market Share -
DC Comics - 36.55%
Marvel Comics - 35.45%

One year earlier, prior to the start of the New 52, it was the exact opposite:

Retail market Share- - Marvel 43.59 - DC 30.55%   Unit Market Share - Marvel 43.59% - DC 34.76%

 

 

So with the top ten in July 2012, DC had 6 of the top 10 spots and 11 of the top 20 compared to Marvel's 3 of the top 10 and 8 of the top 20 (all of Marvel's were tied into AVX somehow). The lone spot not belonging to Marvel or DC was the #1 and that was owned by Image's "The Walking Dead" #100.

One year earlier it was Marvel with 5 of the top 10, DC with 5, and Marvel with 12 of the top 20 while DC had 8 of that 20.

So I think it's safe to say that comparing the one year later numbers, DC did something right in generating interest in SOME of their books. There are still some books, like Grifter, Blue Beetle, & DC Universe Presents that have somehow survived the axe despite sales for their #11 issues hovering around 13,000 while books like Resurrection Man and Justice League International are getting chopped despite better numbers (14,715 & 29,802 respectively).

Personally I don't get the decision to chop the former because it's something different & unique in the DCU and with the latter it seems...based on the recent Justice League of America announcement...that the choice to kill JLI has more to do with future plans than anything the book has done wrong.
 

So it seems from a financial stand-point that DC made a good decision in this reboot but what about creatively? Well, now that I've got the BS out of the way...it's time for me to address what's worked for me and what hasn't in the form of a Best & Worst List!!!

 

 

Best of the New 52

Batman (obviously)

 

For me, and for a whole lot of folks, this has been the standout book of the New 52. With a very strong writer in Scott Snyder and art by Greg Capullo that shocked the hell out of me in how awesome it has been, "Batman" is the best example of taking what existed prior to the reset, honoring it, but continuing on with a story that didn't require new fans to know the decades of history that existed in the Old DCU. With the Court of Owls, Snyder played within the confines of what old fans know has always existed but brought us into a darkened corner of that room, illuminating it for the very first time. The Court's existence never felt shoehorned into Bruce's, or Batman's, life...well maybe a little with the back-up that ran through Night of the Owls...and it seemed like if fit right into the seams of Gotham, as if it was indeed right in front of readers for all this time but we never noticed it...just like Bruce.
 

Capullo, who I knew from Spawn & X-Force but hadn't seen on a book in forever, was the main question mark I had going into this but my doubts were very, very quickly rendered inert by the amazing work he did in everything from simple faces to page layouts. He made the Court feel horrifying, a feeling often hard to generate in comics, and made Bruce seem fragile at times...another difficult feat to pull off as well. This is the book I look most forward to every month, and cannot wait

until The Joker arc kicks off in October!

 

 Animal Man (left) & Swamp Thing (right)

 

These were both books I discovered after what many declare their creative heyday (Animal Man by Grant Morrison & Alan Moore's Swamp Thing) but those arcs quickly became two of my all-time faves, which is retroactively amusing to me with Animal Man because he was also one of my favorite aspects of the "52" maxi-series which I read way before I ever touched Animal Man.

Unfortunately these were two properties essentially dead in the Old DCU, more so Buddy Baker.  Animal Man had been relegated to an afterthought post-"52", popping up randomly in JLA stories, while Swamp Thing was seemingly in the midst of a rebirth via the "Brightest Day" maxi-series & "Search For Swamp Thing" which returned Constantine to the DCU proper after having been exclusively a Vertigo character since 1993. The "Search" book sucked...

So when the announcements of the New 52 titles came around these were two books I was psyched for, Swamp Thing because of the creative team of Scott Snyder & Yannick Paquette and Animal Man because an interview I read with Jeff Lemire essentially said he was shooting for a Morrison-esque take on Buddy Baker. Sold on both titles!

And I must say that these two books are what I would think the New 52 was all about as they took two properties that were essentially obscure to the general public and made them two of the most successful books both creatively AND financially.  In the July '12 sales, Animal Man #11 ranked 60 and Swamp Thing #11 was 55.  Not bad for two books on the fringe really...and the way the two books have been interlaced with one another, and with their pre-New 52 history, almost since the beginning has been masterful. The concepts of the Red & Green are ones forged in the Old DCU, the history between Swampy & The Arcanes is old territory, but it has all been introduced as freshly as possible to the uninitiated audience.  Hell I give Swamp Thing lots of points just based on the fact that it was the first, and maybe still the only, book to acknowledge that Superman did indeed die in the New 52:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two books have been on a collision course since jump street and have finally reached that convergence with the "Rotworld" arc that begins in September and it has been a tremendous ride so far watching Buddy and his family, experiencing Alec Holland reluctantly embrace his destiny, and that's not even mentioning the amazing artistic work by Travel Foreman on Animal Man & Paquette on Swamp Thing.  They have defined the visuals of this new world and, honestly, Animal Man doesn't seem the same without Foreman. Now that was an artistic switch I was dreading but am adjusting to now.  This pair of "Dark" books are two of my highest recommend titles in the New 52 in large part because of how it took the obscure characters and made them top tier.

Aquaman

 

"Aquaman" on the other hand is a great example of taking a mainstream character, one who is kind of derided and mocked, and turning him into an uber-badass by tackling those jibes head-on.  Right from the first issue Geoff Johns works his magic, the same way he did on Green Lantern, and begins to change all of the preconceived notions of just who Aquaman is by basically having the randoms he encounters point out all their inaccurate beliefs. Johns even has an Aquaman fan quizzing Arthur on exactly what his powers are and how he feels about being the guy that no-one takes seriously.

 

So what does Johns do in response? Show everyone, the fans and characters alike, just how awesomely powerful Aquaman is and with each issue continues to demonstrate why he deserves to be considered one of the Big Seven.  The issues read fast, and are an absolute beauty to look at with the Ivan Reis art.  He is without a doubt one of my absolute favorites working for DC right now, up there with Doug Manhke, JH Williams III, Capullo, and Foreman..artists whose work is just stunning to look at for a varied reasons.  This, as with Swampy and Animal Man, is a great example of just how the New 52 should work to reinvigorate/redefine a character.

 

Honorable Mentions:

- Batgirl

- Green Lantern

- Batwoman's 1st Arc

- Nightwing

- Wonder Woman

 

Worst of the New 52

 

Hawkman

 

This is without a doubt the biggest disappointment of the entire New 52 for me.  I have long been a fan of the idea of Hawkman dating back to my first real exposure to the character during "Zero Hour" and the subsequent series that followed.  Yet as with nearly every iteration of the character I have read, save his role in "JSA" and "Brightest Day", the idea of Hawkman was a lot more interesting than the actual execution of the character.  Johns did a decent job in his handling of Carter in the aforementioned JSA book but that didn't carry over to his solo spin-off book and I dropped that after about a year. 

 

So I had my hopes up for a New 52 version of the character, one with all of that utterly confusing origin wiped away.  Instead what I got was a really wtf first issue with Carter trying to burn the costume for whatever reason accompanied by some really awful art from Phillip Tan. Bad dialogue, bad art, and an opening sequence that is never addressed in the six issues I managed to tolerate this book for...massive failure.  I mean Carter Hall, the archaeologist, repeatedly states he has had the Nth Metal armor for years but apparently knows absolutely nothing about it as the villains keep having to tell him things and he just generally seems clueless as to his own abilities.  I think that works with a character who we are just witnessing come into their powers like say a Blue Beetle, but not when the lead keeps expressing that he's had his abilities for years.  I lasted six issues and from everything I saw/read, things did NOT improve when Rob Liefeld came onto the book...but that's a whole other issue for later.

 

Superman

 

Call it editorial interference or whatever...the bottom line is that this book has never been good.  I have read George Perez's statements about editorial and how he didn't know what he could do because no one knew what Grant Morrison was doing with the history-based "Action Comics", and I am sure that had a direct effect on the story Perez wanted to tell.  Does it excuse the story he ended up telling though?  I just found this book pointless and boring and it just felt old...the exact opposite of what a flagship book should feel like and that exact opposite of the feeling that Batman was, and still is, generating. 

 

The change in writers did nothing to improve the quality of the book either, despite it being Dan Jurgens who piloted Supes through his Death & Rebirth, as we got tie-ins to Wildstorm characters, a character whose name was originally Masochist but got changed to Anguish because the former was too controversial I guess, and then I stopped because I just didn't care anymore.  The art was fine I suppose, but this was a book that just felt...detached...that might be the best word, yeah detached from any other depiction of Superman we were seeing in the New 52. And the worst crime of all...it was BORING, the antithesis of everything your flagship character should be and that is why it makes my Worst Of section.

 

The Ravagers

 

 

So initially I thought I would keep my judgement to the books that had a decent shelf life to judge but when my brain keeps coming back to one book, I had to bring it up.  "The Ravagers" is bad spin-off from a really bad "Superboy", "Teen Titans", "Legion Lost" crossover that was so bad it made me stop paying for Teen Titans, insured I would never pay for Superboy, and guaranteed I would never read a Legion issue ever.  So that sounds like the perfect recipe for a spin-off doesn't it?  This book, perhaps more than any other, just screams of 90s Marvel with its creative team and it reads like it too...in all the bad ways.  There is little redeemable about any of these characters, I hate this usage of Beast Boy after falling in love with the character as a result of Geoff Johns' Teen Titans book, and I found this book so repulsive I lasted all of two issues.  They were two issues of just terrible dialogue and plot.  This is the only blight on the "2nd Wave" as I really like "Earth 2" and "World's Finest" (don't really consider Batman Inc. a New 52 book as I will explain shortly).  This book should just be set on fire....

 

Dishonorable Mentions

- Deathstroke as soon as Liefeld took over

- Superboy

- Green Arrow

- The Dark Knight (prior to #9)

 

Most Improved

 

Red Hood & The Outlaws

 

I can see getting flack for this one but I think this book has made a strong turn-around since its highly criticized debut...criticism that centered around the depiction of Starfire as a brain-dead sex kitten and criticism that was rightfully deserved.  Regardless of what Lobdell tried to claim a year ago, I think any growth in that character, and evolving her into the warrior princess she is know being depicted as, was a direct response to the extreme backlash he received after this issue hit stands. 

 

For that reason as well as the vapid depiction of Roy Harper (a character I fell in love with through Judd Winick's "Outsiders") I just about dropped the book after the third issue.  Yet something kept me going, and that something was watching the character of Jason Todd grow before my eyes.  Now JT is a character I have undying love for ever since Winick's Red Hood arc and I am always excited to see him used by a writer.  He was the draw for me to this book, and Lobdell's spin on the bastard Robin kept me coming back for more despite Arsenal having no purpose for existing and in spite of how Starfire was, at first, treated.

 

My patience has been rewarded I feel as I have watched Starfire grow into a more full character and I have enjoyed watching JT dance on the fringes of the Bat Universe as well and am quite excited for this book's Zero issue as well as it's involvement in the Joker story in coming months.  It has been fun to watch this motley crew grow into something resembling a family, now I only hope that Lobdell actually gives us some rationale as to why Harper is hanging around...he just doesn't seem to belong yet.

 

Suicide Squad, for a few months, was a contender for this one but pretty much went to pot after (maybe even during) the Harley Quinn arc and Catwoman was up there too, especially considering its similarly controversial sexy start, but it just hasn't maintained that upward momentum so I wouldn't put it in there either.

Honorables

- Green Lantern Corps

- The New Guardians

- Batman: The Dark Knight (Starting with #9)

 

Biggest Disappointment

Teen Titans

Undoubtedly, unequivocally this has been the biggest of the New 52 for me despite having the same author as my "most improved" (but also having the same author as one of my worst).  I love Tim Drake, he is my Robin, meaning that he was Robin when I started reading comics and maintained that role for the vast majority of my time as a reader.  It's kind of like how Hal Jordan is some people's GL or maybe it's Kyle, or Wally West is your Flash (certainly mine) as opposed to Barry Allen.

Well that desire to follow the exploits of Tim Drake is what pulled me into Teen Titans and I think this is the book that I had to convince myself that I liked for the first few issues.  I mean there were some moments that I liked, the inclusion of Morrison's Danny the Street character from Doom Patrol for example, and I am a sucker for Bret Booth's art , but on the whole it was just lacking.  The story wasn't there for me, didn't give a damn about Brick or Skitter or Solstice, Superboy is an ass, and that was all before the god awful crossover with Superboy & Legion Lost.  That was the straw that broke my back because it was terrible in every sense...story, art, purpose...everything. 

Oh and Lobdell had to go and state that the Zero ish will reveal Tim Drake was never a Robin...despite stating that he was a Robin in the very first issue of this book as well as it being mentioned in a few other places like so:

Which brings me to my next topic of discussion...what's the biggest thing wrong with the New 52...

Continuity Problems

 

This is something I've blogged about before (here & here) and it is something that continues to plague the New 52 one year later.  How do you cram this much crap in five years time?  We've got the birth of superheroes which is essentially chronicled in Justice League, the birth of Superman which is chronicled in Action Comics and takes place one year...ish...prior to Justice League, or at least it did at first, now it seems to be running somewhat concurrent with JL - Year One.  

 

We had multiple Crisis events in the Old DC but those are now longer canon apparently, but the problem there arises when you look at some of the necessary details that I addressed in the previous blogs, most importantly the existence of The Anti-Monitor & Superboy Prime as their existence is absolutely crucial to Hal Jordan's story unfolding as it did from Rebirth going forward.  See Anti-Monitor & Superboy-Prime were crucial parts of the Original Crisis, Prime was an integral part of Infinite Crisis, both were necessary to the Sinestro Corps War Story which was also 1000000% necessary, especially the fate of Anti-Monitor, to the Blackest Night story which we know is still canon because the current GL story is still playing off threads that Geoff Johns initiated when GL: Rebirth first started. 

 

But wait...what about all that...that all requires Hal Jordan to have died, which requires Hal to have been possessed by Parallax and gone bat-shit and destroyed the Central Power Battery to free Parallax & Sinestro which requires Coast City to have been destroyed which requires the existence of Cyborg Superman & Mongul which requires Superman to have died which requires Doomsday to have existed which requires ancient Kryptonians to have created him.

 

Which means the DCU is the worst place you could ever possibly choose to live because all of that happened in five years time.  Imagine Batman's world.... if everything remains intact he became Batman, Dick Grayson became Robin then Nightwing, Jason Todd became Robin then died then came back and became Red Hood, Tim Drake found out the secret, became Robin, his parents were killed, later he became Red Robin, Damian Wayne was born and aged ten years then became Robin, Barbara Gordon was paralyzed, Bruce was paralyzed by Bane, Jean Paul Valley became Batman, Bruce took his mantle back, there was a plague, there was round two of the plague, an earthquake, No Man's Land, a Gang War, Hush, the entire Black Glove conspiracy, a trip through time courtesy of Darkseid's Omega Effect, Dick Grayson becoming Batman after fighting it out with Jason Todd, Bruce reclaiming his mantle and finding out his big enemy is actually his relative hundreds of years removed. 

 

...Five years...

 

Of all those events what do we know for certain happened?  Well we know via flashbacks from Guy Gardner that the Anti-Monitor existed, we know from Swamp Thing that Superman died, we know that Bane broke Batman's back, we know Dick Grayson was Batman for roughly a year for some unexplained New 52 reason. We know that Blackest Night happened in some fashion and well, that pretty much everything Geoff Johns has done in the GL-verse seems intact. 

 

I would go so far as to say it almost feels as if the events in Green Lantern are taking place in some other world because it feels totally removed from the rest of the DCU, and the Hal Jordan in this book bears little resemblance to the one in Justice League.  The same can pretty much be said for every character in the Justice League, save Cyborg because he is undoubtedly a token presence in the League based on how unimportant he seems to the group, and doesn't exist anywhere else outside that book.  The characterization of the other 6 in no way reads like the fashion in which they are being written in their own books, and there's something to be said for that when Johns writes JL, GL, and Aquaman.  How does he get the voices to wrong from one to the next?  It's just one of the problems I have with Justice League...another being how I am excited for what I think is coming but not excited for the actual story that I am reading month-to-month.  The story I have in my head...the one in which the JL know that something isn't right with this timeline...that is more interesting to me than anything Johns has served up so far.

 

Anywho, these inconsistencies have been the biggest problem with the New 52 overall as a lot of lip service was given to the idea of world building but I would be hard-pressed to think that the Wonder Woman & Green Lantern as written in their own title exist in any world shared by the Superman & Batman in their books.  Hell, it would be hard convincing met that the Supes in Action & the one in Superman reside in the same reality....

 

I think, to rectify so many of these problems, DC needs to establish some key things about these characters histories, in particular for the big guns who haven't been utterly rewritten.  I think it's safe to say Wonder Woman's story is a totally new one in the New 52 but it seems important to flesh out the events in the life of a Superman or Batman or Green Lantern. 

 

In some ways it seems as if DC would have had an easier time handling this, and probably gotten less flack from fans, if they had gone all the way with the reboot and wiped slates clean across the board, especially when you have a book like "Batman Inc." that just seems to dance with whatever continuity it feels like bringing to the dance that issue.  It seems as if the "2nd Wave" version is picking up 100% where it left off, but then we've got a character like Batwing who "died" in the original Inc run but has been running around the New 52 since the beginning and yet in the new Inc are still talking like he faked his death.  My head hurts....

 

A new "Who's Who" or "History of the DC Universe" might solve a lot of these problems, but DC needs to be willing to stick to whatever new history they establish, even if it means erasing certain  parts of a character's story that were beloved in the Old DCU.  In doing so though, they have to make sure they are aware of the butterfly effect of continuity...like how do we get to Blackest Night if Superman never died & the Original Crisis didn't happen? Or how did Dick Grayson become Batman if Bruce Wayne was never sent into history by Darkseid to essentially create himself?  It can be a sticky situation when you follow the individual story threads back to their origin points...

 

So to wrap up this diatribe, let me say that I am still...one year later...mixed on the New 52.  Obviously it has been successful from a financial standpoint, and creatively it has seen some boons as well, but those story achievements are all ones that could have been done within the confines of the Old DCU.  There is nothing about Swamp Thing or Animal Man that couldn't have been done prior to Flashpoint, the Court of Owls idea certainly existed prior to the reboot, and Aquaman could have gotten the "rebirth" treatment at anytime. 

 

Sure DC might have had some problems melding the Wildstorm world into the DCU in the Old World, but seriously, has ANYTHING ported over from Wildstorm been good?  Stormwatch started with some promise but that floundered...Grifter nope...Voodoo cancelled...I guess we will see what happens with Team 7. 

 

And as far as that continuity stuff goes, let's see if the Zero issues starting this week answer any questions for us.  I am not holding my breath for that...just hoping for a few good yarns is all.  It will be interesting to see where we are with the New 25 in another year with the Trinity War on the horizon as well as the spawning of the Justice League of America title, and this underlying thread that all is not right with the Justice League and the future will go tragically because Supes & WW kissed (which btw, I thought was devoid of feeling).

 

Just like one year ago, I am excited and apprehensive but I think it is the second one winning out...