New 52 - some random thoughts
Sep. 2nd, 2011 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcOkay, based on the last issue of Flashpoint, Justice League and some blurbs, here's my thoughts so far:
At the end of Flashpoint, the history of the DCU is restored, but changed by the merging of three universes together: the DCU (New Earth), the Wildstorm Universe (Earth-50) and ... the Vertigo-verse.
Except the Vertigo-verse has never been a seperate universe[1], it's been more of a semi-permiable membrane. Daniel played a role in Justice Society, since two of the main characters were his parents. Death appeared in Action Comics last year. The finale of Geoff Johns's last big event involved Swamp Thing, with John freakin' Constantine in the stinger, leading to a three-issue miniseries in which Johnny C teamed up with Superman and Batman. And immediately following that, we're told Vertigo is now part of the DCU? Doubleyou. Tee. Eff.
The only purpose for this I can imagine is that Justice League Dark will have feetneet saying "Hey kids! Follow John into the pages of Hellblazer, out next week!" Which would probably be a bad idea.
(ETA: I've just learnt that Peter Milligan, writer of Hellblazer and JLD, has said they won't be doing that, and the DCU!Constantine is seperate from Vertigo!Constantine. So the merging makes even less sense, because now they're seperate universes!)
Justice League is ... well, it's a pretty good introduction to Batman and GL, rookie heroes in a world which ... sigh ... hates and fears superhumans. (I'm just waiting for the big robots.) Surprising to see them setting up Cyborg's backstory; I know he's going to be a part of the team in the present, but are they saying he was always a Leaguer now? The blurb for Teen Titans is maddeningly unclear on whether such a team existed before, so I don't know.
"Five years ago"? They've said all the "major events" still happened ... if you compress 52 down to about six weeks, and assume nothing else happened, with the heroes just lurching from The Death of Superman to Zero Hour to Infinite Crisis, with no time to stop and take stock of the situation, or even just fight B-list villains who are robbing a warehouse, I suppose it's doable. Maybe. But Damian Wayne is still going to be around ... so Son of the Demon happened before Bruce was Batman? Or Damian becomes Robin at the age of three?
And then there's that Superman outfit. Because it makes total sense for Superman to be wearing armour.
While everyone else seems to be treating this as a perfect jumping-off point, there's actually a few titles I'm interested in. There's some I'm checking out due to sheer bizarreness: All-Star Western (Jonah Hex in Gotham!); Justice League Dark (Vertigo characters in the League!). But I'm genuinely excited about Grant Morrison's Action Comics, which I'm assuming he'll use to make the All-Star Superman version of the character the "real" version. I don't want them to replace the current Superman (although there have been so many reworkings since Crisis, he's barely the Byrne Superman anyway), but if they're going to, I'd rather see the All-Star version.
I'm intrigued by the new Superboy: Conner Kent has had his status quo altered so often that rebooting his entire story doesn't bother me much, and the blurb sounds pretty Morrison-esque, especially Project Cadmus being replaced by "Project N.O.W.H.E.R.E.", which seems to be tying at least two Morrison reinventions together. (In All-Star Superman, the Project becomes "The DNA P.R.O.J.E.C.T.", and Seven Soldiers features a take on the Newsboy Legion [the original version of which grew up to be the directors of Cadmus] called "the Newsboys of Nowhere Street".)
And I'm cautiously checking out Batgirl, a terrible, terrible regression of a charcter, by a writer who's shown an excellent grasp of that character.
[1]Yes, Wikipedia's List of DC Multiverse worlds says Earth-13 is "Vertigo, sort of", but it also says "It has been repeatedly stated that the Vertigo imprint itself isn't one of the fifty-two alternate universes".
At the end of Flashpoint, the history of the DCU is restored, but changed by the merging of three universes together: the DCU (New Earth), the Wildstorm Universe (Earth-50) and ... the Vertigo-verse.
Except the Vertigo-verse has never been a seperate universe[1], it's been more of a semi-permiable membrane. Daniel played a role in Justice Society, since two of the main characters were his parents. Death appeared in Action Comics last year. The finale of Geoff Johns's last big event involved Swamp Thing, with John freakin' Constantine in the stinger, leading to a three-issue miniseries in which Johnny C teamed up with Superman and Batman. And immediately following that, we're told Vertigo is now part of the DCU? Doubleyou. Tee. Eff.
The only purpose for this I can imagine is that Justice League Dark will have feetneet saying "Hey kids! Follow John into the pages of Hellblazer, out next week!" Which would probably be a bad idea.
(ETA: I've just learnt that Peter Milligan, writer of Hellblazer and JLD, has said they won't be doing that, and the DCU!Constantine is seperate from Vertigo!Constantine. So the merging makes even less sense, because now they're seperate universes!)
Justice League is ... well, it's a pretty good introduction to Batman and GL, rookie heroes in a world which ... sigh ... hates and fears superhumans. (I'm just waiting for the big robots.) Surprising to see them setting up Cyborg's backstory; I know he's going to be a part of the team in the present, but are they saying he was always a Leaguer now? The blurb for Teen Titans is maddeningly unclear on whether such a team existed before, so I don't know.
"Five years ago"? They've said all the "major events" still happened ... if you compress 52 down to about six weeks, and assume nothing else happened, with the heroes just lurching from The Death of Superman to Zero Hour to Infinite Crisis, with no time to stop and take stock of the situation, or even just fight B-list villains who are robbing a warehouse, I suppose it's doable. Maybe. But Damian Wayne is still going to be around ... so Son of the Demon happened before Bruce was Batman? Or Damian becomes Robin at the age of three?
And then there's that Superman outfit. Because it makes total sense for Superman to be wearing armour.
While everyone else seems to be treating this as a perfect jumping-off point, there's actually a few titles I'm interested in. There's some I'm checking out due to sheer bizarreness: All-Star Western (Jonah Hex in Gotham!); Justice League Dark (Vertigo characters in the League!). But I'm genuinely excited about Grant Morrison's Action Comics, which I'm assuming he'll use to make the All-Star Superman version of the character the "real" version. I don't want them to replace the current Superman (although there have been so many reworkings since Crisis, he's barely the Byrne Superman anyway), but if they're going to, I'd rather see the All-Star version.
I'm intrigued by the new Superboy: Conner Kent has had his status quo altered so often that rebooting his entire story doesn't bother me much, and the blurb sounds pretty Morrison-esque, especially Project Cadmus being replaced by "Project N.O.W.H.E.R.E.", which seems to be tying at least two Morrison reinventions together. (In All-Star Superman, the Project becomes "The DNA P.R.O.J.E.C.T.", and Seven Soldiers features a take on the Newsboy Legion [the original version of which grew up to be the directors of Cadmus] called "the Newsboys of Nowhere Street".)
And I'm cautiously checking out Batgirl, a terrible, terrible regression of a charcter, by a writer who's shown an excellent grasp of that character.
[1]Yes, Wikipedia's List of DC Multiverse worlds says Earth-13 is "Vertigo, sort of", but it also says "It has been repeatedly stated that the Vertigo imprint itself isn't one of the fifty-two alternate universes".
