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

keerist

I started the reviews yesterday but after ILX ate my post on Action for the third time I gave up. I guess I'll try again tonight.

Superman Action Comics W: Grant Morrison P: Rags Morales & Brent Anderson I: Rick Bryant & Brent Anderson

GMoz is the best writer involved anywhere in the Nu DCU. He knows this. Dan DiDio knows this. How do we know Dan DiDio knows this? This:

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WTF? Has Superman had a stroke? And how come his head is tiny?

But you know, the writing in this is brilliant. I mean seriously great and never less than captivating. Even if the art does rip off the Invisibles (as the original Invisibles page with Mr Quimper that looks like this is on my wall I'd like to think I know what I'm talking about here).

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The whole sequence with Superman in chains and, most tellingly, Lex's behaviour - his insistence on referring to Supes as "it" in particular - is stunning and some of the best comics being written just now. But the most exciting this about the issue is the proof GMoz reads ILX:

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L-R: Tuomas, Deadshot.

Don't miss out on this book.

you'd think that if you're going to have grant morrison relaunch your flagship comic with your most important iconic character, you'd get a great artist to work with him. but (as with Batman RIP) I'm constantly shocked by the shitty caliber of art they give him. i have to imagine at this point that it's intentional, like maybe they figure they should save their great artists to sell the shitty written books and use morrison to help sell a poorly drawn book.

I think Morrison's too big a name to be "used" that way.

how else do you explain DC's consistent pairing of him with terrible artists? (with the obv exception of Quitely)

I thought most of the RoBW artists were pretty ok! What other titles has he had specifically bad ones one? iirc there were some sketchy ones in the early part of his Batman run

Morrison's name pre-sells a book, so they can (foolishly imo) play Musical Art Chairs in an attempt to keep it on schedule. But it's not a case of "here's a title with a volatile unpredictable artist or art team -- let's put GM on it so it will sell better." Morrison is the horse, not the cart.

Oh, ok. I didn't quite mean it like that. More like, "Well, GM is writing this book so we don't have to bother with great artists since he'll sell it on his name alone"

I thought that was it -- we're pretty much in agreement then.

Animal Man W: Jeff Lemire A: Travel Foreman

You know what? It's not just GMoz that gets stiffed with artists I can't stand, Jeff Lemire does to. I know people said last month that ymmv and they liked him but for me

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I mean seriously?

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6049/6231646225_097f4f2a70.jpg

WTF is this shit?

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The writing is pretty great though, even if it is a rewrite of the post-GMoz A-Man plot. The Red is back, and has some mentallist avatars in the real world. Meanwhile, Buddy and Maxine are off looking for a giant hidden tree to eat them.

You heard me. I just wish I could get over the art.

one of the major problems for DC since abt 1970 is their generally 2nd-rate artists, once you get beyond the few big name dudes like j.h.williams - ie marvel's second and third string guys are generally way way better than DC's second and third string guys (ts: sal buscema vs dick dillin!) in part, it's just institutionalised intertia/idiocy/corporate arrogance: back in the 60s, DC really did think that marvel were outselling them because marvel's comics had 'bad art' compared to the sleeker, more sophisticated and exceptionally BORING post-Dan Barry style of the DC mainstay guys (kirby, romita and colan, to name 3 key silver age marvel artists, were never allowed anywhere near DC's major superhero titles when they worked for DC in the 50s and 60s. gil kane, another guy who switched from dc to marvel, always moaned about the inking he received at DC from ppl like joe giella and bernie sachs, which robbed his pencils of so much of their expressive power.)

I always thought of DC as having art that was generally poorer than Marvel's, but I was never really able to pin it down.

I think the problem with pairing Morrison with a "name" artist is that Morrison is known for turning his scripts in late, and most of the biggest artists at the moment do the same with their art, so the combination of the two is too volatile for a flagship title like Action Comics or Batman. Just look at what happened with the last two issues of Final Crisis, with Seven Soldiers #1, with New X-Men, etc. The last time Morrison managed to produce an monthly title with a truly good regular artist was with Phil Jimenez on The Invisibles, 15 years ago.

Just look at what happened with the last two issues of Final Crisis, with Seven Soldiers #1, with New X-Men, etc.

Those were all late-script problems?

I think FC and SS were a combination of late script and slow artist. New X-Men might've been solely because of Quitely... But the point remains: marrying Morrison and any of the name superhero artists of today does not result in a comic that would run on schedule, at least not without fill-in artists.

You don't need to be a "name superhero artist" to not be shit.

Morrison is known for turning his scripts in late

Is this true? I mean, I have heard this about a number of writers, and possibly Morrison, but it's not coming to mind at the minute.

Yeah, I don't really buy this yet, especially since Tuomas immediately qualified it when I asked. Maybe he could cite some sources?

It's definitely a thing, and has been going back to The Invisibles - Phil Jiminez actually left because Morrison wasn't able to keep monthly, therefore reducing Jiminez' income. However, the fact that it sometimes happens means people immediately blame any and all delays on GM being late, rather than the artist being late, or the publisher dicking with things, etc.

On DC’s historical second-rate artists – to some degree this has a strong argument behind it, but there’s also a definite taste counterarg (as a kid I found Kirby weird and repellent, but generally loved the entire tone of Weisinger-era reprints, down to the sedate storytelling and non-dynamics of Swan and Mooney. And to this day the first year of Spider-Man is the only Stan Lee I’ve ever rly been able to bear reading. [I’ll try Fantastic Four sometime, maybe.]). But who are the avatars of DC who really did think that marvel were outselling them because marvel's comics had 'bad art'? Most of the heads of depts. were old farts who’d never known whether anything was good or not, they just knew their jobsworth and how to buckle their belts above their navels iirc.

But the time period Ward’s citing was when Cinfa was EIC or publisher, and out of anyone who’d been promoted from artist to exec from the DC ranks, you’d think he would have a good grasp on dynamic anatomy and exciting panel layouts being a positive in superhero comics? And Adams had revitalised Batman by here, I think?

Anyway, I’m reading Ostrander’s Suicide Squad for the first time at the moment, and oh man does this fit in with Ward’s endemic theory – the artist is just awful, basically, but you can pretty much tell who people are and where they’re standing, and by god he cranks it out monthly. 20 issues in and he’s had no fill-ins yet, I think. (though the inkers have changed, and he inked one issue himself, to his advantage.) The other DC ongoing of the time I’m familiar with (JL/I) had needed about five fill-ins from three different artists by now. Admittedly, all four were good to excellent, so.

Marvel art isn't necessarily much better from the period once you get off the first tier though - I once recklessly bought a pile of books from ebay in a Warren Ellis Completist frenzy (I may have been drunk) like Hellstorm and Druid and by Christ they looked terrible.

sic, i'll try and find a bit more of a concrete reference for all this when i'm not at work, hurriedly tapping this out - my memory tells me that it's something i've picked up from mark evanier, somewhere. again, evanier may also be the 'source' for my gut feeling that infantino never really liked or understood the kirby aesthetic - although yeah, he clearly LOVED adams and made him the unofficial style template for his era as EIC. in general, i would say that infantino's tastes still ran to the illustrative - nestor rendondo! - and the elegantly designed over and above the dynamic and powerful (although again, kirby and ditko were, in their own ways, just as much masters of design as infa...) as you say, it's also a matter of taste - my perference has always been for the artist-led 'marvel style' over the editor-led 'full script' DC method.

i also wanted to introduce the subject of MONEY into all this, but then i realised that i know almost nothing about modern-day contractual rewards at marvel and dc for their corporate-comic bks - is there even a royalty system still in place? back when the royalty system was first introduced in the 80s, the fact that most marvel comics outsold most dc comics certainly helped marvel to attract or keep the 'better' artists, and my suspicion is still that marvel prob pays better than dc, on the whole.

Anyway, I’m reading Ostrander’s Suicide Squad for the first time at the moment, and oh man does this fit in with Ward’s endemic theory – the artist is just awful, basically, but you can pretty much tell who people are and where they’re standing, and by god he cranks it out monthly. 20 issues in and he’s had no fill-ins yet, I think.

When I first read scanned copies of SS I too thought McDonnell's art was awful... But when the first trade came out and I reread it on paper for the first time, it didn't look so awful anymore (possibly because the colours look much better than on the low-quality scans). Sure, McDonnell's character work is totally generic, but at least he has a solid grasp of anatomy, perspective, and visual storytelling in general. By the time 1990s came, all that was often missing even from flagship Marvel and DC titles. IIRC the final issues of SS suffer from this kind of Leifeldian art that makes McDonnell look like Kirby.

I'm reading the originals! (picked up half the run for 50c each at lunch one day, then got drunk a week or three later and bought almost all the rest at 60% off and free int'l shipping from Mile High.) I would substitute "insecure but just barely evident" for "solid," I think. But we should probably find a better thread. (It's definitely hugely preferable to, say, dude from Morrison's JLA, the sort of thing you're talking about. But even then, you had eg JH Williams on Chase, and John McCrea being allowed to half-underground, half-bigfoot monthly on DCU stuff for about seven years straight...)

Can definitely see Infantino not comprehending Kirby - brute power vs elegance!

I was about to say - the period of "Grant Morrison can write a flagship title" started with JLA and terrible Howard Porter art - I can definitely imagine the takeaway lesson being "GM's writing sells by itself".

(also on the subject of DC vs Marvel I was thinking the other day that although I have a lot of issues with Bendis, there really is no comparison between him and DiDio/Johns as regards having a coherent plan for how to shake things up rather than just wanking dead superheroes back to life)

Okay, _apart_ from the fact that he hasn't written a crossover since Siege :)

I get the impression he exerts plenty of influence on long-range planning of the whole MU, not just the Avengers titles.

And the Ultimate universe, really.

is there even a royalty system still in place?

IIRC: DC pays royalties, though they had to revise their thresholds when the market slipped below where they used to actually kick in for almost everyone. Marvel pays "incentives" when they feel like it, and as a rule pay nothing at all for foreign licenses - ie if your big successful Marvel books get reprinted in the UK and Spain and Italy and France, you're probably not getting a reprint fee or bonus or royalty of any kind. They're starting to extend this to domestic now - the big pretty magazine-size reprints of Roger Langridge's Muppets comics (without Langridge art on the cover, or any creator credit whatsoever) are not paying him anything, nor did they even tell him they were doing them.

from Jim Shooter's hugely untrustworthy blog:

"Jim, there's an old story that there was an editorial meeting at DC and someone said that the secret to Marvel's success was "bad art". In an Alter-Ego article George Kashdan didn't recall such an event but said he might have agreed with such a statement. Your recollection here would seem to validate the idea that the Marvel material was looked down upon by the old timers."

I wasn't at the alleged meeting in question, but I was in several smaller-scale discussions at DC that echoed the sentiments allegedly expressed at said meeting. DC editors thought Marvel's art, especially Kirby, Ditko and Ayers', was "crude" and child-like. Mort mused that maybe kids related to it because it was like their own scribbles in their school notebooks. I never actually heard anyone tell an artist "draw worse," but that was the implication.

Evanier, writing about the go-go checks period, says:

In later years, some of them would deny it but others say it was true; that the DC execs thought the Marvel books were horrible — bad art, bad stories, bad characters, bad everything. DC artist Mike Sekowsky used to do an impression of the company's publisher throwing down a Marvel book and gasping, "This is garbage! The readers have no taste!" At some point, an explanation began to emerge for the ghastly sales trends. Obviously, it went, readers were getting confused and were buying non-DC books thinking they were DCs.

Count me as one of the people who think these are so much better than what actually came out. I have some issues (Lantern having no ring, Supes' 'alien form') but I would actually buy and read the DC reboots if they were nearly as clever (I am digging Action though). Reminds me of Tom Strong, which I love.

Actually, as far as Marvel's long-term planning goes, I feel like they're "pulling a DC" at the moment -- i.e. crossovers and continuity fanwankery, no jumping on points. (Loving Daredevil, though.)

actually X-Men just reached an excellent jumping on point (Cyke/Wolvie ideological fallout where Cyke continues running a separatist paramilitary team on Utopia and Wolvie goes back to Westchester to rebuild the school with the major X-Men splitting along interesting and sometimes unexpected lines behind them)

UPDATE!

Green Arrow: #1 - inker replaced. #4 - horrible writer JT Krul dropped. Another writer offered book, turned it down. Didio tags regular shrugging sidekick Giffen to step in alongside penciller Dan Jurgens as co-writing team.

Giffen/Jurgens out as writers with #7, to be replaced by ANN NOCENTI. Yes, three months after challenging those complaints about gender imbalance at SDCC, Didio has reconsidered, racked his brains, and boldly brought into the fold The Only Woman Superhero Comics Writer He's Ever Heard Of.

at this rate, I'm guessing we can expect Gerry Conway to take over from issue #10.

This must be due to Giffen replacing Perez on Superman, no?

Luke McDonnell's art does look better when he inked himself. I'd think with as much black he liked to use, those Suicide Squads would have looked pretty good in a black and white Showcase.

If you are a fan of that run of Suicide Squad, be sure to check out the Deadshot mini-series that Ostrander, Kim Yale and McDonnell did when the series was going That's one of the best of the lot.

Yeah, I realised after my noting his reliable monthliness upthread that he also did a four-issue spin-off miniseries at the same time. Take that, Rags Morales!

He also did 12 consecutive issues of The Phantom around that time.

There's actually a couple-ish jumping on points at Marvel now, particularly in THUNDERBOLTS and THE HULK, but I'd be the first to admit that they're "blink and you miss 'em."

But overall, Marvel is where DC was just a couple years ago: Line Architects, Too Many Crossovers, Fanservice 101.

A book like DD is completely unexpected and wonderful, and honestly, it's simply bog-standard superheroics. But it's bog-standard superheroics that have largely jettisoned the baggage that the character has been stuck with since one F. Miller took over the book in NINETEEN EIGHTY ONE. It should not have taken this long, and yet it did.

I really do wonder what the DC line is going to look like in a year. How many number twelves will there be?

10

20

$1 office pool, anyone?

I'll chuck one in.

I was gonna say 23, but I'm going with 17.

Ewige blumenkraft!

30, although they may not all be from the launch 52.

My LCS had their order sent to the wrong place this week, so I will be catching up on last week's titles this weekend.

We might want to put caveats in there. I was basing my number off of the original 52.

I was assuming that everything would be so delayed that by the end of the first year something that hasn't been published yet might manage to cram 12 issues in.

I've only been hitting the comic shop once every 2-4 weeks and this is the first time there was more than a couple of the titles on the shelves, as my local store got stocked up with a bunch of the reprints.

I have liked everything I have read so far, even though there is a whole lot of 'this is so and so' and this is how it is going on. But I really dug how all of the epic back story is kind of swept away and it's a new start, it really made some of the old ideas seem kind of fresh like OMAC which is definitely Kirby as genre and welcome now that Godland is almost done.

Action 1-2
Frankenstein Agent of SHADE 1-2
Animal-man 1-2
Stormfront 1-2
OMAC 1-2

Sad thing is that I know I am going to love some of the weird titles and they are just going to run 8 issues.

Still to read-
Swamp Thing 1-2
Superman 1
Batman 1
Detective 1
Batwoman 1

On the Marvel tip, Thunderbolts is quite a bit of fun even the tie in to Fear Itself which was actually used as a good way to shake things up and change the status quo.

Then again it does often seem the better comics at Marvel and DC are the one's furthest from the major characters.

"one of the major problems for DC since abt 1970 is their generally 2nd-rate artists"

DC seemed to be run so different than Marvel back in those days, as you would have editors that worked almost with their own lines and seemed to have regular artists that stayed on their titles.

Oddly enough many of the the better artists DC would have outside of Jim Aparo would regularly not be doing the super hero comics instead could be found on the war or western or mystery horror titles. And some others like Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez or Neal Adams would do quite a bit of work for DC in the 70s, but often generally doing advertising or artwork used outside the comics for toys etc.

Outside of Swan on Superman and say Aparo on Brave and the Bold, you also got a quite a bit of artist change up all the time and I think it goes back to the editorial difference on comics with DC in that it was much more rare to ever have a story go beyond a single issue or even sometimes fill up a whole issue, as DC continued to use the shorter format stories so much more so than Marvel in the 70s, especially in the comics that were not super hero books. They kind of used their back stock a bit different than Marvel, as even in the mid to later 70s you see occasional drop in issues that are reprints- which became a big no-no at Marvel after a certain point in the early 70s. DC's lines always had a ton of reprints going too with the 80 and 100 page giants.

come back, aldo!