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

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.

as much as i enjoy the thread, i would support that decision

I might go another month and see how I feel, but I think it's beginning to detract from my comprehension of actually good comics.

I too would support you stopping this.

Yeah, it's like watching someone eat a bunch of lightbulbs. It's fascinating but you kinda want them to stop for the sake of their own well-being.

INTERVENTION

Entirely selfishly, I would vote for Aldo to continue.

I am down with Intervention - what will you get from issues 16-27 that you didn't from 1-15?

GPWM

Aquaman 15 and Justice League 15 came out last week. I'll finish them for completeness then wrap it. The Marvel one will wither on the vine as well, I'm not feeling it at all.

I salute your work here! But yeah, save yourself from the wreckage.

http://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/goodbye.jpg

With some pieces of shit written by Geoff Johns, resulting in a slightly dirty feeling.

Or not. These are parts one and two of the third or fourth simultaneous crossovers going on (Third Army, Black Diamond, Death of the Family) in Throne of Atlantis so it seems unfair to tease with the beginning of something rather than the end. Needless to say, this is Geoff John's take on a Michael Bay film - don't worry about doing something big because you can do it bigger a couple of pages later and then REALLY FUCKING BIG at the end. Basically, everybody on the whole East coast of America is dead, apart from half a dozen people or so. Yeah. Get out of that.

And after those, the last two Johnsiverse books of 2012, I'm done with it. I can't keep on putting myself through it any more. At first it was a laugh, but I'm not sure whether my net appreciation of comics themselves wasn't suffering as a result. Who did DC think these were for and, more tellingly, who was actually buying some of this crap? Some of these were impenetrable to anybody with even the vaguest sense of plot, English or form YET PEOPLE RECEIVED MONEY FOR WRITING, DRAWING AND EDITING THEM. Editing has actually been my bugbear through the whole thing, as you may have gathered - Johnsiverse continuity existed, and didn't exist, in varying books, sometimes even in the same book and in the case of GL:NG THE SAME ISSUE. I know I seem like a continuity obsessive but that was the WHOLE damn point of the New 52. That post-Flashpoint, everything started again. We even got the hooded woman from Flashpoint in every #1 to ram the point home. Except Geoff Johns loved GL so much he couldn't give up any of the stuff he'd written before. Except when he was writing Hal in Justice League, because that was a different Hal to the one in GL. Add to that reboots within the first year, Captain Atom being God (and now isn't), keeping cancelled characters going in new books, the obsession with the Daemonites being the thing that makes the DCU work and ROB FUCKING LIEFELD and it just got too much. I hope I've at least amused over the course of this, because if not then it's been even more of a waste of my brain cells. I'd love to know what somebody like DiDio would think of the opinions of a normal reader instead of the usual Johns cheerleaders that must have been telling him how much everybody liked them, but some things are just beyond our ken. I wish I could say it's been fun, but for the most part it hasn't.

I'm drawing a line under doing Marvel NOW as well - it's a completely different proposition as pretty much all the books are just 20 pages which stand independently and don't have enough of a theme together to make it a thing. Plus, if I'm honest, I never really cared for Marvel. Sorry Stan.

http://media.dcentertainment.com/sites/default/files/files/2010/04/brcover4rough1.jpg

http://chzheroes.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/superheroes-batman-superman-no-more.png

A beautiful coda. Yes, you have amused and entertained and informed throughout this endeavour. Thank you for your oft-painful service.

My understanding, from talking to people who work in comic shops, is that there are a lot of (dare I say...unsophisticated?) comics readers/buyers who just follow characters and are generally less concerned with whether a particular title is any good than they are with whether someone with a ring on their finger shows up and uses it to make things with colored light. It's no more discerning a process than dutifully showing up to see the latest Transformers shitshow at the theater. The typical comic book nerd is shifting from someone who will lose their shit over continuity errors (I completely agree with you on this, though: if you explicitly state that there's going to be an overarching continui, get off your lazy editorial aqss and make it fucking work) to someone who will buy all of the direct-market figures and statues of Thor. Yeah, it's an oversimplification, but a tendency in that direction is the only rational explanation for why bullshit like the New 52 didn't die on the vine. We could blame it on the kids but I think we all know better than that at this point.

are you going to keep reading any of these (thinking mostly of Dial H)

Batman Inc!

I will still be buying: Action (till GMoz is done then I'll read it for a bit then re-evaluate), Dial H, Batman Inc (again, till GMoz is done), Batman, All-Star Western, Flash, Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing and Suicide Squad. I guess I'll still read another half dozen or so (Animal Man, for example).

From memory of before the Johnsiverse it's about the same number of books, maybe less, than I was buying before the jump. I can't imagine I'm unique in this.

ha I couldn't remember if you was in the tank for Suicide Squad as I was

have to say I am most pissed about how thoroughly they fucked up all the Wildstorm properties, which going into this contained most of my favorite characters tied to this whole shebang (PARTICULARLY the white-washing of Stormwatch/The Authority; I mean how are you even going to have a Stormwatch book without Jackson King in it)

still keeping up with Dial H, SS, Justice League and JL Dark

I'm still reading Batman Inc, and that's it, which puts me in the rare position of buying more Marvel than DC comics -- although even there I'm only buying Daredevil and Hawkeye.

I'll probably check Dial H, Flash and Action when the TPBs come out. I think DC's main issue has been losing its solid (if not always great) writers like Waid, Brubaker and Rucka.

Waid is a sack of shit, though

or at least he was when he tried to write X-Men; somehow he managed to make Scott Lobdell look like Claremont in his prime

I would have agreed with that until his Daredevil run started.
xpost

Between this debacle and Marvel NO! I've pretty much given up on floppies all together. I'll pick up Dial H and Batman Incorporated when they collect them, and maybe Wonder Woman if there is a good sale. If DC ever gets off their asses and creates a DC Digital Unlimited I'll throw them $60 like I will continue to do with Marvel, and maybe catch up on some stuff like All Star Western which wasn't half bad.

Aldo - thanks for entertaining us for the past year +. I owe you many a pint should we meet.

Yeah, thanks for your great work Aldo. Don't think I've visited ILC this often since 52.

yeah, sad yer giving this up, the updates have been a joy but fully understand. also sad re marvel as i am a marvel zombie but again understand. now i need to know where to get my fix as enjoying abt reading all the stuff much more than actually reading t

I salute your fine line between masochism and sadism, Aldo. I couldn't do it.

And while I'm here, I saw a bit of the DC NATION cartoon series yesterday, which featured a short AMETHYST bit. Character/setting had been reconceived, hitting a bunch of modern notes (8-bit aesthetic, many manga/anime stylings, not particularly grim or gritty setting.) Totally workable recreation particularly for contemporary tastes. My daughter who is 9, dug it. She asked about comics for the character, since she knows all the DC NATION stuff has comics attached. I showed her the current AMETHYST and she was pretty unimpressed.

DC's management wouldn't know what to do with itself if it was on fire. In any other media/channel, that character/setting/vibe would work for a cartoon, comics, toy series, whatever. But not in the DM because DM comics, particularly DC at this point, are only for the DM and not for anyone/anything else. I've never been treated to such a blatant display of corporate idiocy with regards to their own properties. They whine that their audiences are shrinking and yet are incapable or unwilling to do anything about it.

Let it burn.

DC Nation is killing it IMO, both Green Lantern and Young Justice have been super enjoyable (and I'm glad they're back on)

I wish they would make more Legion of Super Heroes episodes, personally

(primarily so my daughter could watch them)

I don't really get LoSH at all tbh but I think that's because by the time I got around to them I was old enough that I couldn't get over the character names

what's not to love about Matter Eater Lad

okay lol according to Wikipedia there was a "False Pretenses Lad"

omg this is a treat:

http://geek-news.mtv.com/2011/02/25/the-10-weirdest-members-of-the-legion-of-super-heroes/

HATE FACE

I always loved that after he died they made a statue of Ferro Lad, who could basically turn into a statue.

LOOOOL

I like the ridiculous/taken-to-logical-extreme nature of the Legion but I am a big Silver Age DC stan so

Hate Face is next level

Dan should have started with the Five Year Gap in 1989 to avoid silly names

okay lol according to Wikipedia there was a "False Pretenses Lad"

this is a one-panel joke from 1964 btw

I mean a fan joke ABOUT one panel from 1964

Five Year Gap in 1989 to avoid silly names

also I mean if you accept Reep or Salu as being less silly names than Chameleon Boy or Shrinking Violet

Haha how long would Salo last in LoSH

would watch version of Salo featuring LoSH

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodam Yat.

One major storyline during this period was the discovery of Batch SW6, a group of clones of the early Legion, c. their Adventure Comics days, created by the Dominators. Keith Giffen's original conclusion for the storyline was that the clones would eventually have been revealed to be the real Legion, and the ones whose adventures had been chronicled since the 1950s were actually the clones. The adult Legion's secret programming would kick in, forcing them to fight the younger Legion and leading to a fight to the death in which Legionnaires on both teams would die, with the victims’ names being picked at random out of a hat.

lol I didn't know about this. continuity is the silliest shit ever