Aldo reads DC's New 52 (So you don't have to)

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goddammit, i LIKE captain carrot
don't give him the fucking giffen treatment

What the?!? I'm a proud owner of a complete run of Captain Carrot and I like Keith Giffen but FUCK NO.

They're just doing this to try to keep up with Marvel's Rocket Raccoon revival.

Yeah, but...Marvel didn't give Rocket Racoon a hard & edgy makeover. They just unforgot his existence. Particularly disappointing since Giffen's the dude who brought RR back!

Oh Jesus fucking Christ.

Batgirl #15: I know the Bat franchise is all about vengeance, but jeez, Gail Simone ladles it on. Batgirl wants to kill the Joker because he's hurting her mum. No, because of the whole cripple thing. No, her mum. No, the cripple thing. No, because of James. No, because of her mum. How do you live your life as such a seething ball of hate? It's amazing she's able to function, she's so led by her emotions. Anyway, (one of) the Joker's plans is revealed and... it's the plot to Boxing Helena. Which might almost be ironic and/or cute if one of the characters was called Helena, but since there isn't just feels lazy. I'd like to hope it was this "shocking revelation" that got Gail sacked.

Batman #15: Bruce, your skills of denial are fearsome but you're wrong. Of course the Joker's been in the Batcave and of course he knows who everybody is. Even Jason Todd, WHO HE KILLED, knows this is true and him zinging you over it is the highlight of this otherwise overly wordy issue. Not Jurgens Superman wordy, I'll give you, but very full of exposition and explanation. Maybe if a plot's that complex then it's too complicated? Maybe? The backup is far more like it, giving us the Joker's escape from Arkham and bring the (presumbly unreformed in the Johnsiverse) Riddler along for the ride. Poor old Steve though. Being ruined too like that.

Batman & Robim #15: See Gail? Peter Tomasi gets it. Actually, he possibly has more fun with the Joker than any of the other current Bat-writers, having him play with his face and sticking his hands through the mouth - even wearing it upside-down in a pretty disturbing image. I can't help thinking the whole Alfred plot is nothing more than sleight of hand during this crossover, and I stand by my guess that Damian is the one who dies after reading this issue.

Deathstroke #15: Not improved by lack of Liefeld. Now that's a claim.

Demon Knights #15: Some day a real rain will come and wash the magic off the bad guys. Not really how I thought this plot would end, but you can't have everything. It ends with the formalisation of the group as Stormwatch, and we all know if Merlin calls you a name you decide to keep it. This book has, unfortunately, petered out month on month after about the first 9 months and is probably nearing the end of worth. The next issue is set "thirty years later" though, so maybe a new team (presumably?) will revitalise it. Sales figures would suggest it's a lost cause though.

Frankenstein #15: So, now we know the missing link between Frankenstein #14 and Animal Man #15, which is that the magic women who turned up on the final page of last issue all die 2 pages into this issue in order for Frankie to beat the big monster. The rest of the issue is emo nonsense as it turns out F is head over heels with Not Abe Sapien and has made her pregnant. When did she stop wearing her water helmet? I've only just realised she doesn't have it on during this issue. Limping over the line rather than finishing strongly, the scent of failure is all over this title now and it's a chore to finish.

Green Lantern Corps #15: Guy isn't a Lantern any more. John Stewart is with one of the Star Sapphires, who tethers her heart with love to the bit of Mogo that JS has found to help it meet all the other bits of Mogo. Salaak is now the best Lantern in the history of Lanterning ever, as he's just about able to work out what the Guardians are doing (which seems to be proving ridiculously easy, so maybe the Lanterns aren't all that after all). Guy decides he going to bluff it against bad guys and goes out to bust some heads, but only ends up ruining a lengthy police honey trap for an arms dealer. Which, it seems, gets you arrested. There had to be something arresting about this book, I guess. Badum-tish.

Grifter #15: Wow. Marat Michaels goes all-out with his Liefeld worship here. It's much cleaner inked than Rob, but the poses and layouts are just as bad - arguably worse. King Shark, for example, is a noticeably different size in all four panels he's in. There's a plot in here somewhere but it's buried so far below the overwhelming tide of crap that I can't be arsed expending the effort to find it. Something to do with Mormon Daemonites I think. C'mon. I couldn't be making that up, could I? Anyway, this takes place about 6 months ago in continuity, I think, based on the Suicide Squad represented here. Is it so difficult to get basic things right, like WHO'S ALIVE?

Legion Lost #15: Wildfire sacrifices himself to no avail, although apparently they're going to try and rebuild him. I thought this was the last issue, but it turns out the next one is. Or not, as apparently it's merging (of sorts) with the Ravagers. You have to query the editorial mentality at DC, really. EVERY cancelled book - which has been cancelled because of poor sales, remember - has been merged or continued in another title. Here's the thing: people weren't buying it because they didn't like it. They still won't like it if/when you change the name and continue it in secret. Or am I missing something?

Suicide Squad #15: I think this will actually turn out to be a key point in Death of the Family in the end, as we find out a lot about the Joker's general motivation in the Johnsiverse. But that last page. I look forward to how THAT'S explained.

Superboy #15: Oh God, I had forgotten this crossover was still going. Superboy is beaten almost to death, so Supes flies him off to the Fortress of Solitude and tries to put his armour on Superboy to cure him. His logic is that it will recognise Kryptonian bloodline and help him but it doesn't work properly. Supes rationalises this as proof Superboy is a clone of him. Yes. The thing that works by recognising Kryptonians (in his head) doesn't work because he's perfectly identical to Kryptonians. Still, how can you take a man seriously who stops between two panels to put on a cape for no obvious reason? He'l looks like he's winning, which clearly means he'll lose in the next issue of Supergirl.

Team 7 #3: The hiding place of cancelled characters does a fairly basic spy team book as they try and break up whatever it is the singer from Ghost is trying to do. None of it really matters as the point of the whole thing is Deathstroke being turned into Eclipso on the last page. I doubt it'll make this readable next month, but you never know.

Ravagers #7: Fairchild sees a future where the Ravagers destroy the world. Yes, it's them that do it, not the definitely true Rotworld, or the Guardians' Third Army, or the New Krypton, or anything else that is definitely the future which will destroy everything. If you're having continuity, you sort of have to stick with it. (By the same token, where is this in relation to Legion Lost?) Deathstroke's going to be in the next one. Because he improves everything, obviously.

If you're having continuity, you sort of have to stick with it.

I kind of think you're the only person who believes this, dude. I certainly don't want to believe in this case - I am perfectly happy for Swamp Thing's future apocalypse to not have to tie itself in contortions to accommodate the Guardian's, and vice versa.

The whole point in the Johnsiverse is that it's supposed to be a post Flashpoint Year Zero and that continuity was supposed to reset and be an thing. It's the ENTIRE premise for the line of comics.

I can accept that it's all too difficult bad they want to abandon it all, but would it really be so hard to admit it in one of the seemingly weekly press conferences they give? Or, you know, not keep crossing over all titles and making explicit in editorial buyouts that they're happening at the sane time?

*boxouts

You have to query the editorial mentality at DC, really. EVERY cancelled book - which has been cancelled because of poor sales, remember - has been merged or continued in another title. Here's the thing: people weren't buying it because they didn't like it. They still won't like it if/when you change the name and continue it in secret. Or am I missing something?

The only characters and plot that exist are dictated by editorial fiat, not writer's impetus. If a take on a character, or a storyline, fails in the marketplace, then it is the fault of the market, not of the content. To come up with new characters or stories would require more time than is available, or rely on writers' ideas. Thus they must be continued in another interchangeable module of The Nu-52.

The 52 is all. The 52 is everything. There is no reading outside The 52.

All DC comics are great because they contain DC stories. All DC stories are great because they contain DC characters. All DC characters are great because they appear in DC comics.

If it's established that all the titles of a particular line are supposed to exist within a shared continuity, then yeah, I sure as shit expect the editors to do the job they're being paid to do and make it happen. If it's understood that certain titles or lines have their own continuity, that's cool, too. But you don't get to constantly shift the goalposts and call it a sundae.

what the fuck kind of sundaes are you eating

tuomassundae.jpg

a friend of mine gave me a pile of new comics the other day, including a fair few 'new 52s' - the first time i've really looked at any of them. all i can say is, HOW CAN YOU READ THIS SHIT?

protective eyewear

xpost It's a mixed metaphor sundae, with nuts.

I dunno, this brings up a very obvious question that's been plaguing me a lot lately: namely, am I finally getting too old for superheroes, or are mainstream comics just incerdibly shit at the moment?

I'm still getting a lot of pleasure out of other, better comics right now (Dungeon!) so I suspect it's the latter, as much as I personally enjoy my inner me-as-curmudgeon meme.

Anyway, sundaes.

I mean, even the Marvel Now stuff, which is leagues more competent than DC's stuff, I still find basically unreadable.

I think the two main purveyors of superhero comics are in creative troughs right now, but I'm not prepared to write off the genre just yet. It's a good time to divert $$$ to other stuff, for sure.

Yeah, I'm just reading, like, '80s Spider-Man and Love & Rockets and Finder (and Dungeon!) right now so I really only care about most of this stuff in a gossipy way and to the extent that I'd generally prefer that the Big Two don't implode.

Ah, maybe I'll check out Finder. I've mentally filed it under "mid-range black and white indie comic that no one ever borrows from the library", which is probably unfair.

I've got all the Beto volumes of L&R but never read them! Excited, but still waiting for the opportune moment to dive in.

Ward, you might have missed from the title I'm doing this because there's no way I'd recommend you do it yourself. I'm supposed to be picking out the actual good issues out of the overwhelming tide of crap.

(I'm getting by because I'm cutting it with Golden and Silver Age classics. I'm currently just finishing off Roy Thomas faves the Seven Soldiers of Victory and will next work on the second Kanigher/Andru Metal Men collection.)

I dunno, this brings up a very obvious question that's been plaguing me a lot lately: namely, am I finally getting too old for superheroes, or are mainstream comics just incerdibly shit at the moment?

I feel much the same. Reading funny stuff ABOUt the comics, like Aldo's commentary, is almost invariably more entertaining than Big 2 superhero stuff these days.

Chuck, both Finder (as far as I've gotten into it) and Beto's L&R are awesome. Highly recommended.

"or are mainstream comics just incerdibly shit at the moment?"

Other than Hickman's Fantastic Four/FF, which was really great, I think the super hero comics have been pretty underwelming the past couple years. Journey into Mystery was pretty fun, but that came to an end. Everything else is pretty average at best and I probably have more fun reading the old 60s-70s stuff, as it is just way more wacky and filled with oddball thrillpower. I tried some of the nu-DC stuff and pretty much dropped it all (and I am a pretty big Batman fan and loved the Secret Six).

I have liked the two Valient reboots I have checked out XO Manowar and Harbinger. Never read the original comics at all, so it's all new to me, but so far I have liked both titles. That said, they are total reboots, so there isn't any backstory earlier than #1, so they got that going for them.

I generally mark Secret Invasion and Blackest Night as the points where my interest started to wane. The Big Two still put out some great stuff after that (e.g. Morrison's Bat-stuff and Second Coming), but those bloated and half-cooked epics seemed to halt a lot of their respective lines' momentum.

I really liked Secret Invasion, it seemed well set up and had a great hook (and a toolbox for tidying away previous continuity) - in fact I think I've grown fonder of the Bendis the Mighty era of crossovers, from a fairly hostile start.

No argument about Blackest Night though - is DC1,000,000 the only decent crossover from DC?

I've been brewing a lengthy piece for So You Don't Have To for some time with my opinions on the end of the heroic age in comics - spurred on undoubtedly by the torture of having to read so many awful comics over the past year. Maybe I'll try and get it out for Christmas.

xpost I really like most of the Bendis-era Avengers stuff I've read. And I realized on a second readthrough that Secret Invasion was more well-constructed than I had initially thought...which is the problem, in a way. The mini was wholly unsatisfying on its own (the climactic battle took place "offscreen" and was only related via exposition!) but worked rather well as eight chapters in a 432-chapter, $5,678 "book", which was itself simply a large chapter nestled between the inception of Bendis' run and Dark Reign. Once every title became a component of this larger machine, it became too exhausting (and too expensive) to follow. And now that even the X-line (which, for my sins, I've read the bulk of from the first Claremont up until Fear Itself) has been consumed by the Behemoth, I'm pretty much just done with it all until/unless I have the wherewithal to play catch-up.

And Blackest Night was a pile of shit.

No argument about Blackest Night though - is DC1,000,000 the only decent crossover from DC?

Invasion! is the best "event" crossover ever, plotted by Giffen and able to be followed 100% with the core 3 issues and whatever you were reading anyway.

Agreed. Reading through the post-Crisis Superman + events a few years back, that was both surprisingly easy to follow and pretty good. As opposed to the occasional incoherence of Legends and the "dredged from a public toilet" quality of Millennium.

I still have fond memories of Armageddon 2001, even although I know in my heart of hearts it was objectively terrible. Whatever happened to Waverider, the Sensational Character Find of 1991, anyway?

Would have been nice if publishers decided to restrict more crossover mega-events to a miniseries and regular series' annuals like A2001 did.

As bad as DC has been with crossovers, they've never hit the lows of the three straight years of Atlantis Attacks, Acts of Vengeance and Days of Future Present.

Those only hit a subset of books, though, right?

Yes. Secret Wars 2 was the nadir of all-encompassing crossovers.

FACT: Waverider was melted by evil Skeets in 52, who used his skin to make an EVIL SUIT OF TIME

or thereabouts

RIP Waverider ;_;

http://youtu.be/4lOb799cTxM

In a shocking twist nobody saw coming, the Batgirl writer replacing the sacked Gail Simone is...

is...

is...

Gail Simone.

Yes. Secret Wars 2 was the nadir of all-encompassing crossovers.

It was fantastic for a crossover premised largely on a hair style.

amazing re Simone

same editor?

Believe so, yes.

Batwoman #15: A completely nothing issue involving a vaguely Christmassy church scene about gun-toting vigilantes worshipping the Mother of All Children. Told as though Batwoman is watching it in a scrying glass, which probably is as much as you need to know.

Birds of Prey #15: Bye bye Katana. As a way of writing someone out of a book, it's 20 pages too long. As a readable comic it's 21 pages too long. The bomb, which the bloke who left never to return in the last issue having betrayed everyone and knocked out Dinah, rescues a bomb from a sewer and doesn't blow anyone up with it because Katana cuts it in half. Because everyone thinks that will make it blow up. Then the bad guys all just give up, and so the good guys let them all go off-panel. Terrible stuff, all told.

Blue Beetle #15: After the ENTIRELY UNCONNECTED COVER (which may well be meant for the next issue instead but ended up here by accident) we get some crappy Star Wars pastiche and some "Mexico is the worst/best place in the world" bollocks. As ever. Then the Mayan bloke turns up but is blown out of the bar by Galactic Talent Agents looking for BB to be be on the next series of Big Brother. The end can't come soon enough.

Catwoman #15: Catwoman's part in the current ONGOING Bat-crossover (which, let's not forget, the last issue was part of) is dispatched in a single line in the hurry to get to a different giant crossover. The rest is just some straight bullshit as Catwoam does 10 pages of just regular robbery shite then 10 pages of OOOH MYSTIC SHE MIGHT BE TOUCHED BY ECLIPSO OOOH stuff which involves her wearing a false nose and pretending to be a SEXEY scientist. In the end she cuddles up with a demon and the severed arm of a black Irishman. Not the best thing I've read.

DCU Presents #15: The final page says "to be concluded". Which is the best thing about this pile of Blue Devil getting-wrong crap. Seriously? Nebiros was ruined by Etrigan which means his favourite thing is to see Dan naked? Ugh.

Green Lantern #15: The Third Army is now a swarm the size of a planet. Baz thinks it was all just some kind of coincidence that the van he stole was FULL OF BOMBS and goes to apologise to the guy who it belonged to but stumbled into a plot that the likes of Baz from Four Lions would come up with. Sinestro and Hal walk about in black and white being the most awesomest Lanterns ever EVARR. It ends with the First Lantern, who it still isn't clear whether he's on the Guardians' side despite him being in a cell of their making. His name is Volthoom, which is the Johnsiest thing I can imagine this close to Christmas.

Green Lantern New Guardians #15: Continuity busted! Issue 1 took place two years before the rest of the DCU (except for the things that took place 5 years beforehand like Justice League and Action) which explains... nothing as it happens. Anyway, Kyle and the Third Army are both racing to see Larfleeze as he (apparently) is the URGENT AND MOST IMPORTANT key to all things Lantern. Presumably also making him the most important and the best. At the end, because Kyle is the best Lantern ever (who isn't Hal, or indeed Larfleeze) he is so much better than the Third Army that only a Guardian can bring him in. I can't remember where we are in power escalation storylines, but that just doesn't feel right.

LoSH #15: A dinosaur in future Barcelona. That's about it.

Nightwing #15: The Joker kills some of Dick's mates from the circus he does/doesn't own/perform in in some quite boring ways. Dull, more than anything else.

Red Hood #15: Jason kills a whole pile fo policemen to prove he's not a murderer. Roy and Starfire nearly have sex then turn up to save the day. Bleh.

Supergirl #15: MAKE IT STOP. The H'El on Earth crossover is interminable. Kara gets sent into the bottle city of Kandor to bring back a crystal that the H'El within Kandor has. Which does make you wonder if he had the power to send her in and out why he just didn't take himself out. Dreadful stuff.

Sword of Sorcery #3: "Death is the only fate I seek!" Death is preferable to the Amethyst part of this book. In the Boewulf backup Marilyn Manson explains how we got from the one state of affairs to the other state of affairs, or how Boewulf came to be. Then she blows shit up, just because. It's the most readable pages thus far this week, and still isn't very good.

Wonder Woman #15: ORION ORION ORION ORION ORION (the WW stuff is a bit Byrne-y) ORION ORION ORION ORION ORION. Then Abominable Snowmen. YAY. SOMETHING WORTH READING.

Told as though Batwoman is watching it in a scrying glass, which probably is as much as you need to know.

This is completely narrated by Maggie Sawyer, with Batwoman elswhere and unaware of any of the events

That glossed over me. I may have read too many New 52 books for my health.

I've been behind on Tom Spurgeon's end-of-year interviews:

What's strange about DC Comics to me right now is that I'm not enjoying reading their actual comics all that much -- there's only two "New 52" titles I'm still subscribed to at my local comic shop -- but good God is it fun watching DC Comics itself these days.

This is how I've come to think of the publisher. Imagine standing across the street from moderately sized office building. You can't see what exactly is going on in there, and you can't really hear what's going on in any great detail, but there are all these signs that something really dramatic and probably terribly wrong is happening in the building. Flashes of light, strange noises, screaming, smoke, vibrations -- whatever.

Every once in a while, someone will jump out a window or get thrown through a window. Or come running screaming out of the door. They will have horror stories on their lips, and as they're relating them, someone still in the building will open up a second story window and shout, "Don't worry, everything's fine. Don't listen to them. They're crazy!"

Sad to see you missed out in the new years honours list aldo....

this thread has been very helpful for me.

I am thinking my New Year Resolution mught be to give this shit up.