Green Lantern & The New 52: Pulling on Threads...

Before I get to the meat of this one, let me take a second to harken back to my last Bat-Centric blog and point out another mention of Tim Drake as Robin from "Batman & Robin" that was pointed out to me by Brian Thomer aka @PAComicExaminer:

Also something else that has occurred to me in the light of the fact that in Batman #13 it is explicitly stated that The Joker is coming back after a year away which means that Detective Comics #1 was one year ago, which means any Zero issue story marked "One Year Ago" took place around the start of the New 52, which means Damian's "Year and a Half Ago" moment of meeting Bruce (while he was still Batman & before he disappeared for a year) took place around 6 months prior to the beginning of the New 52, which means he has only been Robin for very a short time at the start of the New 52, which means it would be quite difficult for Dick to have been Batman for a year, which means I am going to make my f'n head explode trying to make sense out of it meaning sometimes I wish I could still think like I did when I was a little kid and not really care about this all continuity making some semblance of sense. End scene...

Waiiiiiiiit a second, another thing came out during NYCC after I wrote that opening paragraph, something playing into all that.  Courtesy of Bleeding Cool, Dan DiDio, Jim Lee, and Bob Wayne claimed that Tim Drake was NEVER intended to be a Robin and that the trade edits were intended to maintain the status quo they wanted in the first place.  Okay well,  I'm not going to argue my personal feelings on the whole "Not Robin" idea but rather point out that both the 1st New 52 Batman collection AND Batman & Robin collection came out with references to Tim as Robin before the edited Teen Titans collection came out. 

SO if the "Not Robin" stance on Tim was ALWAYS intended, then who fucked up A YEAR AGO when the New 52 began and then fucked up again in May & June when the collections were released? I mean did the ball get dropped by numerous people here or did the top level forget to tell everyone else that Tim was never supposed to be a Robin?  Too much to get DC Comics to just say "yup, we fucked up"?  Regularly scheduled program time now...

I almost feel like I should start this off by saying that I am a big fan of Green Lantern with Geoff Johns at the helm.  Prior to the day I was given "Rebirth" as a gift, I hadn't really kept up with the adventures of GL in his own book and aside from reading Hal Jordan in "Death of Superman", the only GL I had every really known was Kyle Rayner via his inclusion on the JLA team first penned by Grant Morrison.

Suffice to say that I was hooked and quickly got my hands on the "Emerald Twilight" story to see what happened with Hal Jordan as I had experienced his villainous side in "Zero Hour" and other major stories like his sacrifice to reignite the sun in "Final Night" and his dawning as The Spectre in "Day of Judgement".

After reading "GL: Rebirth", I quickly snatched up all of the collections I could, caught up just in time for the finale of the "Sinestro Corps War", and have continued to read the core book as well as "Green Lantern Corps", "Emerald Warriors", "Red Lanterns", and "The New Guardians". From the original DCU into The New 52, I have followed the exploits of Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and the rest of the GLC. 

I have enjoyed the story within the GL book probably more in the New 52 than I did in the latter months of the Original DCU. Sadly the same can't be said for GLC, The New Guardians, or Red Lanterns, at least not initially, but GLC & New Guardians have turned a corner for me in recent months.  Unfortunately I still find Red Lanterns to be a chore to read and if it wasn't for the manner in which I read it, I would have stopped long ago...

Now that the pleasantries and whatnot are out of the way, let me get down to the meat of the thing....my exploration of the threads that make up the current Green Lantern universe and what happens if you follow them back to their origins.

This is where the current face of the Green Lantern corner of the DCU was born...the day Coast City was annihilated by the machinations of The Cyborg Superman Hank Henshaw & Mongul.  Some would argue it began here...

...and that the story started there runs all the way through to this...

...and continues into the most recent issue #13. Yes, I do believe that that belief is right, but only partly right, even my thought that it began with the destruction of Coast City is only PART of the story.  See I firmly believe that the current face of the GL-verse, the face that Geoff Johns has worked so hard to construct, is quite dependant on a number of factors that pre-date his time in DC Comics and thus, obviously, pre-date the creation of the New 52.  This is not a statement on the quality of the New 52, this is not a judgement on the story that HAS Been told thus far in the last year.  Rather it is my look at the events of the Old DCU that played into the formation of the GL Johns-verse and my wondering how/if they fit into the New 52.

First up:

The Anti-Monitor & The Original Crisis.  This might seem like an odd place to begin but it is one of the two most essential elements of the current GL-scape in the New 52.  As we have learned over the last year, the events of Blackest Night still happened in some format in the world of the New 52.  Whether or not they are absolutely identical is not known, but highly unlikely given the involvement of the JSA members and the fact that the death of one Barry Allen (who obviously hasn't died in the the New 52) was a part of the story. 
Well at the core of the Blackest Night story, or rather at the core of the Black Lanterns was a certain BL Battery on the planet Ryut, the battery that powered the zombie tribe, just like the one on Oa powers the Green Lanterns.  Well the power source of that battery was none other than the Anti-Monitor!  How did he end up there you ask?

Well that makes another aspect of a certain old DCU story required in some format or another, and that story is none other than the Sinestro Corps War!  See in the Sinestro Corps War, the Anti-Monitor was part of an alliance of Sinestro, the Cyborg Superman, Superboy-Prime, and the Parallax entity (brought to "life" by possessing Kyle Rayner).  As the SCW neared its conclusion, the Anti-Monitor was near defeat following the detonation of the Central Yellow Lantern battery and was ultimately tossed into space by Superboy-Prime where the Anti-Monitor crash landed on Ryut and was consumed by the BL Battery.

Why did Superboy-Prime toss Anti-Monitor into space you ask?  Well that is also very dependant another aspect of the Old CU, probably the most important story in the history of the Old DCU actually, Crisis on Infinite Earths.  See Superboy-Prime was a resident of Earth-Prime where he was the only superhero of that Earth but it was destroyed by the Anti-Monitor during the Crisis.  Prime joined up with the heroes of Earth-One to stop Anti-Monitor but is exiled to a "paradise" dimension along with three others from alternate Earths including a Lois Lane & Superman from Earth-2 and Alexander Luthor from Earth-3.  Once there he grows frustrated and his punching of the walls of reality create changes including the resurrection of Jason Todd and inconsistent origins of Superman over the years. Eventually he, along with his trio, break free from their "prison" and the subsequent events are known as "Infinite Crisis".  In this crisis we see Superboy (the clone Superman) die, Superboy-Prime go nuts and kill a lot of people, and eventually get locked up inside the Science Cells on Oa.

Wait, what's up with the Superboy who is a clone of Superman you ask?

See that leads to the other story of the Old DCU that I believe is absolutely crucial to the mythos of the current GL-verse:

Superman died...killed at the hands of Doomsday, between the first issue of the New 52 Swamp Thing and recent comments by Grant Morrison at a comic-con, we can confirm that Superman died AND was in fact killed by Doomsday in the New 52.  Beyond that, the question is very much up in the air...well, to an extent.  It is safe to say that in the New 52, the Return/Reign of Superman story did NOT happen in anyway similar to how it happened in the Old DCU.  Superboy was only "born" around the time the New 52 started, meaning he could not have taken part in any story prior to this and Steel in the New 52 is not of the same origin as the original which we've seen in Grant Morrison's Action Comics. No clue if the Eradicator or Hank Henshaw have existed in the New 52, but in SOME FASHION this story needs to have taken place because it is where Coast City was blown up the Cyborg Superman & Mongul.

Why is it so integral that Coast City blew up?

Well Coast City's destruction is what set all the wheels in motion that brought us to this day as far as Hal Jordan's character go.  Hal went nuts following the events of Coast City, tried to use his ring to resurrect the city, but was shut down by the Guardians.  Hal then went to Oa to try and get the power he wanted and ultimately ends up killing all the Guardians save Ganthet as well as Lantern Killowog and the rogue Sinestro who had been imprisoned in the Green Lantern Battery.  Hal takes the name Parallax, tries to rewrite time in Zero Hour, sacrifices his life to reignite the sun in Final Night, becomes the Spectre in Day of Judgement, and that all lead to his resurrection in Rebirth. 

So within the story of Hal Jordan, just to get to what Geoff Johns established in Rebirth, we need Hal to decimate Oa (very likely because we saw a trashed Oa in the New 52 version of GLC #1 prior to Kyle Rayner getting his ring) and for Sinestro to be freed.  We need Hal to have been possessed by the Parallax entity, for it to have somehow survived his sacrifice to reignite the sun (as it did in the Old DCU) and for Hal to have been Spectre with the Parallax entity riding shotgun.

It has been established courtesy of Phantom Stranger #0 that The Spectre exists in the New 52 but, at least in its initial appearance, it is Jim Corrigan who is possessed by The Spectre.  Now this happens at some non-descript time but I couldn't imagine DC introducing Corrigan as the character in the Zero issue only to have him NOT still be Spectre in the following issues. 

I'm not even touching on the issues that play into the history of the assorted Earth GL's.  Did Xanshi still get destroyed in order to shape the character of John Stewart and actually give added weight to his destruction of Mogo (a pre-New 52 event btw)?  Was Kyle Rayner still possessed by the Ion entity or does his New 52 tag of Torchbearer have some different meaning?  Was Guy Gardner still in possession of a yellow ring at an earlier point in his career (it seems he was still possessed by a red ring)?

Those are all just pieces of the Old DCU that play heavily into the shape of the New 52 and while I've chosen to focus on the GL-Verse, specifically Hal Jordan, in this rant, I think it is safe to say that DC's decision to keep GL & Bat history relatively intact creates some problems with elements of the Old DCU.  For GL these are what I consider the key ingredients to have happened IN SOME FASHION for the shape of the current New 52 world:

1) The existence of an Anti-Monitor (power source for BL battery)
2) Coast City destroyed
3) Hal Jordan as Parallax, destroying Oa (partially confirmed)
4) Hal Jordan freeing Sinestro & Parallax entity from the Power Battery
5) Hal Jordan as Spectre
6) Sinestro Corps War happened
7) Blackest Night happened (this has been confirmed)
8) War of the Green Lanterns happened (Krona needs to exist for the events of Red Lanterns)

I am sure I am missing something here as I am trying to do this from memory as opposed to notes this time, but I hope you get the idea.  There are just certain key elements with the Old DCU that had to have happened in some fashion for the current Geoff Johns/GL-Verse to really make sense.  They don't have to be perfect, they don't have to have happened completely identical to the way they happened in the Old DCU, but they do have to have happened somehow. 

Coast City must die, Hal Jordan must have been evil...they are as important as Luke Skywalker seeing Obi-Wan die on the Death Star in "A New Hope" or Dexter being found in a pool of his mother's blood on "Dexter".  They are integral components of an origin story that I had hoped the Zero issues would be used to confirm or flesh out, but sadly that was not in any of the four GL series.  GL #0 told us the origin of a new character, New Guardians #0 gave us nothing origin-based, Red Lanterns #0 was a serious waste, and only GLC #0 gave us anything origin based and, while I enjoyed the look at Guy's back story, it did not fill in any of the blanks I have discussed above.

This isn't a cry for answers, not yet at least, rather this was just an exploration into how the Old DCU events could/should tie into the events of the New 52.  I will be very interested to see if DC Comics does anything to cement any aspects of the old world as part of the new, or if they find a way to rewrite these histories in a logical fashion.

Thus far they have done a subpar job with the Bat-world, creating inconsistencies in time and logic, particularly with the birth of Damian Wayne and their lack of a backbone on the Tim "Drake"/Robin situation as mentioned at the start of this rant.

I hope maybe, just maybe, they will solidify the ground on which the New 52 Green Lantern world is built rather than just the half-assed "everything still happened" explanation we have gotten over the last year.  I know it's a lot to cover in just 14 months of time, but I sincerely hope that maybe in the next 13 months the portrait of GL history is painted with more clarity.

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...

 

 

 

Accessibility & Continuity Part 2 (AKA Random Speculation)

 

Okay, it wasn't a shock to me to read that at the beginning of October when Dan DiDio posted it to his Facebook.  I don't know about you, but given the simple fact that Barry Allen was alive AND never had a relationship with Iris West essentially screamed that the Original Crisis could not have happened.  Barry could not have perished in the fight against the Anti-Monitor only to be restored from the Speed Force later in "Final Crisis" because that whole swing was predicated on the Allen/West love. That love was the anchor that kept Barry holding on, just as it did for Wally West & Linda Park the times he got lost in the Speed Force.  At least that's how I am remembering it =)

So that got my brain rolling around....wondering what the complications, the fallout, the problems that could potentially present themselves with this edict that none of the Crisis events happened.  Spin that out even further, and I start to wonder what else could go "wrong" if certain key moments in the original DC Universe never happened in the New 52?  This is all purely speculative material on my part as very little about the past of the New 52 has been addressed thus far, and I am sure it will all unravel slowly.  What has been confirmed is very little: 

- Super heroes have been mainstream for something like 5 years

- JLA takes place around year one of that 5 year plan

- Action Comics takes place 5 years before that

- Brucie has been Batman longer than that by a few years

- Superman did die at some point based on Swamp Thing #1 

- Dick Grayson was still Batman for a year

- Jason Todd still died & got rebirthed

- There have still been 4 Robin's

- Hal still got his ring taken

- Sinestro still has his own Corps

- Atrocitus still has the corpse of Krona

- Hell, basically everything tied to the GL-Verse seems the same; I mean Kyle still gets his ring in an alley....

Okay, that is what I know so far that is still the same, but if we go back and start to monkey around with major events let us see how things can unravel.  Let start with a fun one, albeit one that was essentially stated has still happened....

Man that's still such an iconic cover...

Anyway, it can be surmised by these couple pages from "Swamp Thing #1":

...that Superman still suffered some form of "death" in this new continuity, maybe not at the hands of Doomsday, but his conversation with Alec Holland certainly implies that Supes died at some point in the last 10 years or however long it's been since he debuted.  But what would the ramifications have been (BASED ON OLD CONTINUITY) if Superman's death had never occured???  Well the extended conclusion..at least the part I will choose to focus on...is that the entire Green Lantern-verse could not exist in its present state without the Death/Return of Superman storyline.  Here's the play-by-play, in broad strokes:

1) Superman dies

2) 4 Guys looking like Supes run around one being an evil Cyborg

3) Cyborg Superman, along with evil alien Mongul, blow up Hal Jordan's hometown Coast City

4) Real Superman comes back so he, Hal, and the good Supermen beat up Cybory & Mongul for the win

5) Hal goes nuts after The Guardians stop him from recreating Coast City

6) Guardians free Sinestro to stop Hal

7) Hal "kills" Sinestro, destroys Central Power Battery, frees fear entity Parallax who bonds to Hal

8) Hal does a bunch of crazy stuff including trying to reset history & remake the universe

9) Hal sacrifices himself to reignite the sun, becomes Spectre, Parallax tries to take over Spectre

10) Hal is brought back to life, Sinestro is revealed to have never died, Parallax is stopped for now...

That is just a small part of the interweaving tapestry of the DCU without getting into the Sinestro Corps Wars, Infinite Crisis, or Blackest Night, just to cite a few examples, and how all of them are unfolding as they did originally were entirely dependent on Superman's death & Hal's craziness that followed.

So what's that picture there you ask?  Well that is the Anti-Monitor bursting out of the Black Lantern Battery towards the end of "Blackest Night".  Who the hell is the Anti-Monitor you continue?  Well the Anti-Monitor was the Big Bad from the "Original Crisis" who died at the end but whose body parts were used as tuning forks by Alexander Luthor from Earth-3 (a guy who survived the Crisis) during "Infinite Crisis" in a bid to recreate the Multiverse as Alex Luthor saw fit.  By the end of "IC", the multiverse was reborn and apparently so was The Anti-Monitor because he popped back up in "Sinestro Corps War".  In "SCW" he was eventually decimated by Superboy-Prime (Another survivor of both the "Original Crisis" & "Infinite Crisis") and tossed off into space.  Anti-Monitor's broken, dying body eventually landed in Sector 666 on the planet Ryutt and was enveloped by the Black Lantern Battery, which used his Anti-matter energy as fuel I suppose.  He's evicted back to the Anti-Matter universe by Nekron, pops up during "Brightest Day", and then we get a whole new 52...so does anyone else see the chain of events if the good old Anti-Monitor didn't exist, or rather if the "Original Crisis" didn't go down.

If Crisis didn't happen, then there's no multiverse dilemma that brings Superboy-Prime, Alexander Luthor, or Anti-Monitor into the storyline. There's no Prime to toss the defeated corpse of Anti-Monitor into space for the Black Lantern Battery to attach itself to, meaning there's no power source for the battery to feed off of, meaning the whole "Blackest Night" story may not have even been possible.  And if there's no Crisis well then this moment has no basis for happening either:

The infamous punch from "Infinite Crisis" that DC could conveniently use to explain away any continuity issues from over the years.  Here's a list from Wiki of what changes these punches wrought:

- Jason Todd restored to life with everyone remembering his death

- Various origins of Superman

- Various incarnations of the Legion of Super Heroes since the Original Crisis

- Various incarnations of Hawkman

- Various origins of Donna Troy

- Multiple origins of the Metal Men

- Elasti-Girl & Negative Man restored to life; Chief restored to his original body & team's history reboot

- Hal Jordan was never an ex-con who served 90 days in jail for drunk driving

There are more continuity changes from "Infinite Crisis" you can read here, and you can read the ones from "Crisis on Infinite Earths" here, and then there is "Zero Hour" which, while not a crisis, wrought changes of its own you can read here. As you can see, DC loves to use these events to mess about with their own history....

Anyway, back to punching the walls...which may be some metaphorical artistic statement now that I think about it.

The most change for me as a fan has always been Jason Todd and his resurrection.  Yeah it's pretty goofy to think that punching the "walls of reality" enacted these cosmic changes, but it's comic books and we are discussing THE WALLS OF REALITY.  No stupider than implying that Barry Allen saving his mom would create such utter havoc to the world as we knew it...

So if the crisises never happened, then the wall never got punched, then what brought back Jason Todd?  In the "Red Hood & The Outlaws" book it is acknowledged that JT still died at some point and that The Joker did it...

So the question still to answered is if Superboy-Prime destroying the Walls Of Reality didn't resurrect JT then what did?  A mystery for the New 52 to answer in the coming months alongside "why is Barbara Gordon walking?" and "who decided to make Mr. Terrific suck?".

I could likely go on for hours pondering the various implications of the history of the New 52 in juxtaposition to the Old DCU, wondering if Bats still got his back broken, if Jack Drake still died the way he did in "Identity Crisis", or for that matter if "Identity Crisis" still happened in any form? How could Wally West apparently never existing make for problems? What about Donna Troy?  The Teen Titans?  The list of maybe's & what if's is quite endless, and I believe that a lot of the logistical problems that could potentially result from the new continuity in DC Comics stem from the Green Lantern corner of the universe. 

The GL-Verse seems, thus far, wholely unaffected by the new status quo of the DCU.  From what we have seen in GL, GLC, New Guardians, and Red Lanterns, everything that happened before still happened.  The Guardians were slaughtered at some point leading to Kyle getting the ring, Krona still slaughtered Atrocitus' people & and his corpse is still in Atrocitus' possession, which means the War of the GLs arc still happened, which means the New Guardians post-BN still existed, which means BN still happened, blah blah blah blah freakin' blah blah.  At least the logistical issues, due to the apparent lack of any real change within the Bat-verse (4 Robins, Damian's age, Batman Inc), only really have an impact on Gotham City.  The nightmare that could potentially be the GL-Verse is directly effected by, and in turn directly effects, the rest of the DCU. 

I don't find it entirely coincidental that the sub-verse with the least amount of change post-Flashpoint is the one headed up by Geoff Johns, arguably the most powerful creator in the company, but I am looking forward to seeing how the tapestry of this new DCU unfolds over the next few years.  And yes I do hope it is years, I want to see DC ride this out and not just cave in to any pressure to return things to pre-Flashpoint status quo.  They made the choice, they better stick with it. They more or less rode out the post-Crisis reboot for 26 years until Flashpoint with some tweeks here and there via "Zero Hour" and "Infinite Crisis", so I hope that the New 52 is at least giving some time to tell its story as well.

DC has not given themselves an easy task by trying to have their cake and it eat too in terms of pre- & post-Flashpoint continuity, acknowledging some moments but not others, some heroes but not others. It would likely have been easier on them creatively to start wholely from scratch with a "Year One"/"Man Of Steel" styled origin book for everyone, but that would actually prove far less interesting for me as a fan since I am kind of enjoying the continuity game, AND I am certain it would have resulted in an even louder reaction from the vocal minority.  It all makes me wish I could step into the brain of a DC Comics fan circa 1985 and see how they felt post-Crisis....

Oh, and as for DC's competition over there at Marvel, if I was part of that crew I think I would stand up and proudly state that Marvel Comics has never had to restort to whole-heartedly rebooting their continuity a single time, much less 2 or 3.  Marvel just creates a billion alternate realities if they want to run roughshod over their own history....