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

It's very odd, they decided to go whole hog with the section of the Wildstorm universe that I mostly ignored (I was always way more team Stormwatch/Authority than team WildCATS, with occasional diversions into Gen13/DV8) and my basic verdict is the exact opposite of how I felt about the characters when they were still in the Wildstorm universe, where I thought Voodoo was a wasted character, Grifter was occasionally entertaining and I would devour anything Stormwatch/Authority-related starting with Ellis's run.

I haven't picked up an issue of nu-Stormwatch since #1 but it pissed me off to so much that Cornell's team was basically "the white ppl from The Authority + Martian Manhunter and some nobodies" that I have no interest in seeing if it got better. Swift was a great character mostly because she didn't have a ridiculously flashy power but she was still a badass and credible as a member of The Authority and excising her in favor of some random made-up characters was intensely annoying, particularly when there were a ton of interesting Stormwatch characters to choose from (Battalion, Flint, Fahrenheit, Fuji, Hellstrike, Winter, Rose Tattoo, Synergy) if you wanted to do more than just "The Authority in the DC Universe".

lol I googled "grift typo titans" to read the page myself and http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/dc-comics/54437-teen-titans-typo-%5Ctisn%5Ct.html

Some serious benefit of the doubt being given there imo.

Action Comics #6: I accidentally read the review of this on CBR before the comic and can't help agree with what was written there - this could be where a lot of people fall out of love with GMoz. I think the easiest criticism is that it seems to wilfully obscure itself. The villains from the last issue are (potentially) dispensed with in a couple of panels with no explanation of who they ever were; the plot detailed at the beginning of the issue doesn't actually happen; the issue takes place in more than one time zone; the resolution is never explained; the closest thing the issue has to a main character happened previously to Superman in another (untold) story which is explained through telepathy... do you see what I'm getting at? It feels like he's taking the piss, almost. I do actually like it, but I don't know why. Plus we get the least worst Solly Fisch backup to date. So not all bad news.

Animal Man #6: Great stuff, but do we really need a non-plot issue less than six months in? I'm guessing it's to let Swamp Thing do what it needs to do before they run with the same story, but all the same... this is about a film Buddy made back when he was an actor. It's all about a guy who shouldn't really be a hero because it's fucking up his home life but he can't stay away. All a bit DO YOU SEE but well written and with great art (it looks like Daredevil). Just an oddity.

Batwing #6: I definitely cancelled this, but it turned up anyway. Oh well. "Three years ago" "Giza, Egypt" "One year ago" - boy, this flashes back and forward. And ends up in issue 1. It turns out the baddie is one of Batwang's old mates from when he was a mercenary but with some kind of augmentation so he can't feel pain (yes, in the same year as Bane hits the big screen) and is on his way to Gotham to kill some gay African superheroes. Despite this we still don't find out why Massacre is after the members of The Kingdom. C'mon guys, throw us some crumbs here? The final page shows Nightwing and Robin (meaning this is either in another universe from B&R or in another time?) joining in as one big giant Batfamily. Gotta catch 'em all!

Detective Comics #6: Next month, Carlsberg sues DC. Seriously, the logo of the Penguin's casino is a direct rip-off, to the extent it even has the same flourish underneath which makes zero sense if it doesn't start with a C. This is pretty good though, although arguably more of an explanatory book with no real signs of resolving anything. We find out who some of the bad guys are and by the end of the issue Bats has done enough detecting (or just plain beating people up tbh) to be at the same position as we are. Can we wrap this plot up soon? Thanks.

OMAC #6: KIRBY KNOCKDOWN FIGHTY GOODNESS. One of the Furies turns up looking for Mother Box in a restaurant (actually, she's the recruitment consultant from previous issues) and we get a bit more interaction between Maxwell Lord and Brother Eye. Then a Kord Industries employee fails to shoot Lord. Wait a minute, KORD Industries? Ted Kord is in the Johnsiverse? Why have we got such a shitty Blue Beetle then? And this book only has two issues to go. Honestly, it's like DC aren't pandering exactly to me or something. Buck up your ideas chaps.

Red Lanterns #6: Yet more "Britain isn't in America" shouting by me is imminent. Oxford appears to be in Florida and the police here routinely carry billy clubs and tazers which they use whenever they feel like. An awful lot of the dialogue in this is GRAAARRRRRR RARRRRR etc, but Milligan has already undone his own plotting. So the Red Lanterns have conventional thoughts, it's just that they can't speak? How does that square with brainless rage machines that have to get thrown in the sea of blood to be self-aware? We get a bit of a fight between Atrocitus and Bleez, which frankly is only in there as an excuse to show us her arse and then next month is teased with Guy Gardner turning up. So where is this in relation to Green Lantern Corps, where Guy's in space stealing guns to fight lantern farmers? My head hurts trying to keep all these together.

Stormwatch #6: OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE. "To find out why see Superman #7" ON THE FIRST FUCKING PAGE. Oh and that picture of Jenny near the end. SHE'S A CHILD, NOT A FUCKING DWARF. Can we pretend this never happened? It turns out the ship is nanobots held together by a tortured Daemonite, which works because Jack has realised that means it's a city. So he persuades it not blow up. In other news, Midnighter comes out as gay which makes him extra considerate of children, apparently. MAKE IT STOP.

Swamp Thing #6: Impossible to describe without major spoilers, this is the best issue yet. Beautiful and horrible and near-perfect. This is such a good book I may even buy the collection. You should too.

Green Arrow #6: So, gun woman can't shoot as she misses Ollie's head from point blank range. But that's all right because it gives him the chance to tell us he's in Justice League #8 while his mate puts a sticking plaster on the graze. It turns out she's an ex-gf of Ollies only she doesn't recognise him and he doesn't recognise her. And then she's a robot. Who gets blown up. Ollie has a beer to celebrate. Ann Nocenti can't make this worse. That's damning with faint praise.

Hawk & Dove #6: Things Rob Liefeld does not understand; a list.

Perspective
Anatomy
The age of children
Scale
Sexuality
Feet
Standing upright
Kneeling
Physics
The meaning of infinity
Harry Potter
Physical strength
Hawk
Batman
Sarcasm

So, not much wrong with this, then. Why not turn over the whole line to him?

(I have just remembered I quite liked the last Hawkman, but Rob's taking that over soon which is a good reason not to put it back on a pull list.)

Justice League International #6: Shit. The team that has existed for the previous 5 issues now actually exists. Godiva defuses a bomb with her hair, which is possibly more useful than wanking Batman off with it (although maybe Bats doesn't agree). There are lots of panels which are just pointless staged shots. IT'S NOT THE EIGHTIES ANY MORE.

Men of War #6: It'll be a mercy killing when this Rock series gets cancelled. Super invincible impossibly old soldiers get beaten by a bloke nobody knew had superpowers shooting light out of his ears, or something. This magically moves the ropes off Rock's mates and ties up the bad guys in an instant, who he then decides just to let go after they've had a nice chat. It actually reads like this is the end of Rock. Dropped from your own book before it gets cancelled. Now that's ignominy. The backup is pretty good though - although the fact it's by John Arcudi and Rich Corben exposes it for the throwaway Hellboy plot it is. Not good enough.

Static Shock #6: In which he is joined by his friends Hardware and Technique. And then the all-black X-Men get invented on the last two pages. That's the best thing I can think of to say about it. It's just a chore to read now.

It'll be a mercy killing when this Rock series gets cancelled.

already done!

me four weeks ago:

UPDATE!
Ivan Brandon is reported to have walked off Men Of War after #6 due to due to frustration with the heavy-handed editorial meddling and micro-management. DC is like “pfft what? That’s silly, everything’s totes chill over here, everything’s under control".
FURTHER UPDATE!
Men Of War #7 will contain not one but TWO separate fill-in stories, by James Robinson and HEROIC MAN OF THE HOUR J.T. Krul!

EZ Snappin three weeks ago:
first cancellations announced, all ending with issue 8 (leaving the final two out of the already announced collections - way to go DC!):

BLACKHAWKS, HAWK AND DOVE, MEN OF WAR, MISTER TERRIFIC, O.M.A.C. and STATIC SHOCK

Yeah I know, but it's not nearly soon enough.

are the "black X-Men" the Blood Syndicate, or did they invent pointless new characters?

No, they just all decide to live in Alva House. "It's a special... school. There are others there that know exactly what you've gone through."

Google only offers skyrim answers, so I'm guessing it's new. (NB I think it's in Harlem. The text isn't clear on that though.)

Action 6 was the first Morrison comic (well, besides that Joker all-text issue) that I just couldn't wait to be over. Though I knew I'd read all the previous issues, this made me feel as though I'd missed a whole bunch somehow. And the Legion stuff... fuck the Legion. The Legion is so fucking boring.

HEY FUCK YOU on behalf of Siegel, teenage-only Shooter, and Giffen. The rest I can't argue with*


*actually I <3 Levitz' second solo run too, but wouldn't throw someone into its deep, soapy end

No no, fuck the boring Legion is about right.

JERRY SIEGEL! KEITH GIFFEN!

To be fair, I haven't read "the good" Legion stuff, it's just they're so shiny and plastic and camp and 1950s-Jetsons-future and dull and dated and stupid that every time they appear in something I actually like my heart sinks. specially when that something, like Action 6, is reduced to gibberish by my lack of assumed knowledge.

ACTION is just not doing much for me. And I was as big a booster of ALL-STAR as you could get. There have been one or two neat things per issue (which, granted, is better than most of the Big Two line). But this feels like coming back to leftovers. It's just not feeling very inspired, and I'm also getting the feeling that like with FINAL CRISIS, I'm reading about half of what could be a good comic, like every other page or something.

with Morrison not even wanting to write this two-ish fill-in, it's no wonder it's falling so drastically flat. having to have Kubert Minor on it can't help. (I've not even bothered to go and get #6, I'll pick it up when #7 or the next Batwoman or Snarked come out)

since he was only committed for 6 issues to begin with, we should be finding out any week now if he's on past #8. if so and it stays $3.99 for 20pp I'm probably bailing.

ACTION is just not doing much for me. And I was as big a booster of ALL-STAR as you could get.

Very much so. ALL-STAR was sooooooo good. This has had some fun ideas, but it's really a bit of a mess.

What would have been good would have been to somehow have the All-Star Superman as the new 52 version. Then if Morrison still had Superman stories to tell, he could have done it as a vol 2

I tend to forgive GM's messiness, because he usually finds a way to tie all his multiple narratives together -- albeit sometimes only several years later -- in a way that retroactively justifies all yr efforts.

But yeah, this, with the random story switcheroos and shitty backups, feels properly messy in a non-redemptive way.

THE LIEFELD LINE-UP!

Universally reviled hack Frank Tieri to script Liefeld's GRIFTER! Writer of Rob Liefeld's Avengelyne and Rob Liefeld's Brigade to script Liefeld's THE UNPLEASANT HAWKMAN! Absolutely EVERYBODY GETS A SWORD!!!

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2012/02/liefeldlineup.jpg

ok Oprah

haven't been following Green Lantern over the last five years, can someone tell me why Hal Jordan is wearing a tie?
http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album_view.php?gid=4012&page=3

That is some dull as dishwater art.

Don't know about the tie, but I see he got the Bomber Jacket memo.

Hal Jordan, protector of thieves.

wait how did I not hear about him taking over Grifter

maybe I just blocked that from my memory

well, at least it reflects how dull hal jordan is

I have been reading Green Lantern comics for 30+ years and I've never seen him wear a tie. I can't tell if the takeaway from the fight scene is that Hal Jordan wears a clip-on or that he wears cheap, easily ripped ties. Anyway, glad to see a fresh take on the character.

The script is predictably terrib, but that's the best (or at least most modern-looking) art I've seen in a DC comic for a while.

yehwha? It looks like something you'd seen in an Avatar comic.

yeah, when I saw it I thought "god this artwork is bad even for DC" (kinda sub-sub-sub steve mcniven, based on that sample)

it was fairly appalling iirc but I don't want to click again

RIGHT OF REPLY!

Scott McDaniel vigorously defends himself against John Rozum's claims that Rozum had no input on Static Shock and the book was subject to idiotic, action-driven editorial over-control... by spending 15,555 words detailing how the editor gave Rozum no input on the book, and insisted on idiotic action being piled into it while multiple levels of higher-up perused every detail of story submissions.

Also resoundingly proves by example what a drastically incompetent writer he is. Also cites God repeatedly, and goes on about NASCAR and NFL on separate occasions for some reason. Also quotes chunks of Rozum's scripts, and reacts to each by saying "This is totally interesting and reads like John Rozum, but it's not BADASS!" Literally has no idea what "literally" means.

Amusingly, the comments are mostly ppl going "fyi dude you sound like a total dickbag in this scenario."

Wow, he really does. I think he needs more WORDS that are CAPITALIZED to really make his POINT though.

Dude seems completely insane

Travel Foreman is done as the artist of Animal Man. However, it was not because of DC. His statement (from CBR forums via Jeff Lemire's twitter):

"I just want to chime in briefly, because everyone here has been so supportive of the book and because there's so much behind the scenes stuff that goes on with these books... I read a lot of comics and I too get confused about whats going on in some books and ultimately feel like we're getting a raw deal sometimes.

The change on Animal Man boils down to the reason I was on the book to begin with, which was that I needed to take on a job after my mother died (to deal with the financial end of someone being sick for a while and then passing) and Animal Man was the only thing DC was going to let me do. Which in any other time frame would have been perfect.
But really the context of me dealing with the death of my mom and drawing the kind of content in Animal Man just burned me out sooner than I thought.

I had hoped to stay on the book until at least the spring so that the artist I wanted to replace me was free from his commitments, but I would have ultimately just dragged the book down if I did, because it was becoming harder and harder to concentrate on the work.

Steve was bending over backwards on his fill-ins to keep the book on schedule so you have to keep that in consideration. Really, he won't skip a beat once he's doing the book full time.

Thanks, everyone."

UPDATE!
while Delano-era Animal Man artist Steve Pugh is the permanent replacement for Travel Foreman on ANIMAL MAN, as noted above, Foreman is now drawing BIRDS OF PREY ongoing from #9. Let's see if he lasts more than one issue!

UPDATE!
Birds Of Prey artist Jesus Saiz, already been filled-in-for once, having one unpublished fill-in by Perez banked, and having been booted and reinstated once, now moves to RESURRECTION MAN due to being bumped by Foreman.

UPDATE!
Resurrection Man artist Fernando Dagnino is bumped by Saiz, while Resurrection Man is crossing over with Suicide Squad, to SUICIDE SQUAD.

FILL-IN-YOUR-OWN-UPDATE:
Since there were already FIVE artists on Suicide Squad in the first six issues, I have no fucking idea who was drawing Suicide Squad now and where they're going.

UPDATE!
Paul Jenkins dropped as writer on DAVID FINCH'S THE DARK KNIGHT BY DAVID FINCH VOLUME 2 from #9, Penguin: Pain & Prejudice writer Gregg Hurwitz to take over.

UPDATE!
- Jim Lee and Dan Didio launch the new 52 by stating that late books will absolutely positively not be tolerated under any circumstances, that monthly timeliness is an iron-clad guarantee.
- retailers notice that JUSTICE LEAGUE #5 by Jim Lee is not on shipping lists for its scheduled shipping date, raise this issue on internets.
- DC PR officially reassure readers and customers that: “We can confirm that Justice League #5 from @jimlee and @geoffjohns is indeed hitting shelves next week.”
- DC PR, hours later, tell you you were confused. Or they were confused. Or something: “Sorry for the confusion: Justice League 5 will hit shelves on January 25th.”

FURTHER UPDATE!
- guess what! the second (of two total, ever, for the whole future) allowed late book of The New 52 will be Co-Publisher & Executive Muckamuck Jim Lee's JUSTICE LEAGUE #6, currently scheduled to ship two weeks late, on February 29th.
- since everything in the New 52 is on an immovable iron-clad "100% delivery" schedule, and this is the fifth Wednesday of the month, I'm inferring that this means DC are paying an entire week's shipping for ONE SINGLE FLOPPY, maybe?

STUNNING TWIST UPDATE!
- Grand High Poobah and Executive Example-Setter Jim Lee will be absent from JUSTICE LEAGUE #7, to be drawn by Gene Ha instead.

UNPREDICTABLE ASTOUNDING UPDATE!
- Elevated Poobah and Example-Setter-In-Chief Jim Lee will be absent from JUSTICE LEAGUE #8, to be drawn by Carlos D'Anda instead.

PREVIOUSLY, ON ACTION UPDATE!
After drawing all 2/3rds of the solicited Action Comics that was actually published, as already noted, Rags Morales got a bit tuckered out and only managed to draw a little over 1/3 of the solicited pages on issues 2-4, with fill-in artists doing 1/6th of the pages and Nobody At All doing 1/6th on 2-3, fill-in Gene Ha doing 1/6th on #4, and a shithouse backup team pumping out a useless turd that lessens the main story doing another 1/6th.
Then due to Morales continuing exhaustion, the storyline was put on pause for two issues while Morrison was forced to write his own fill-in for issues 5 and 6.
When we left off, Morales was returning to do the proper #5-6 as #7-8, ending Morrison's initial 6-issue run on the title, at which point the series was meant to catch up to the timeframe of The Rest Of The New 52 Except Demon Knights And Justice League.

SURPRISE FURTHER ACTION UPDATES!
- Morrison is staying on for at least one issue!
- Morales has quite probably finished those two consecutive issues - his first in the entire ten-issue run of the book - as the poor wee lamb has collapsed in a fever of overwork again and won't be drawing #9.
- ACTION COMICS #9 is another exciting fill-in issue! This time by Grant Morrison and Gene Ha, with the adventures of a parallel universe Superman fighting another, different parallel universe Superman!
- and a sodding backup by cunting Solly Fhisch, with a different adventure of the same parallel universe Superman.

- Morales will be back for #10. No word on whether Morrison will be, or if we will now be at the story point that #7 was originally meant to be.

- I remind you that the FLAGSHIP TITLE OF THE ENTIRE DC LINE has now managed THREE OUT OF NINE issues to be unplanned fill-in stories, and exactly ZERO (0) issues out of nine to be the originally-intended-or-announced number of pages or artist.

ha, i am SURE these updates are more fun to read than the actual comics.

I kinda like Carlos D'Anda, but he's no Gene Ha, who's no Jim Lee himself.

ha, i am SURE these updates are more fun to read than the actual comics.

co-sign

I'd rank the four new 52 books I'm reading like this:

Justice League Dark
Voodoo
Grifter
Justice League

JLD is legitimately WEIRD/disorienting and I think the only actual likeable character in it is Zatanna

:( Now I think Batwoman is losing me.

For a female artist, Amy Reeder sure does indulge in the "costume so skintight you can see her navel and nipples" cliche a surprising amount

yeah, the whole "Wow, I hate everyone in this book" was the only thing of interest in JLD.

Of course, the first BULLETPROOF COFFIN smoked the whole run of that book in its grave, so I know where I'm throwing my money.

oh wait Greg Capullo is drawing the Snyder Batman? stop trying to trick us by leaving credits off, aldo

It was Capullo's idea in issue 5 to utilize a page-turning effect where the reader felt the same psychological breakdown as Bruce Wayne. (He admits he had to remind his rock-star buddy, Chris Daughtry, that iPads have a lock button when the pages kept flipping around on him.)

it is pretty lol how completely obvious Bob Harras being a nu-52 editor is becoming, with all the 90s Marvel hasbeens washing up upon DC 2012's shores.

UPDATE!
Did you find it too easy to follow stories in the nu-DC with everything having a clear start point and not crossing over with everything else for about five months? Well, breathe easy, as superstar script-genius HOWARD MACKIE comes to DC with a thrilling new teenage super-team book, spinning off out of a crossover between Superboy, Teen Titans, and coming to the 20th Century for I guess the third time in as many months, whatever remnants of the LSH are in Legion Lost! Prepare yourself for the teen-friendly teen adventures of the amiably-titled THE RAVAGERS!

A teenage girl pictured at front by Ian Churchill.

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Ravagers_1_as90d8f7asdjhl.jpg

Oh, are they finally bringing back Fairchild?

Oh man, I hope they show her origin as awesomely as it was in the 90s, including her oversized librarian glasses

Ha called it! Not that it's difficult, really; even in the world of comics she has a pretty distinctive look.

Ppl unfamiliar with the character will be thrilled to know that her being a ridiculously busty teenager is actually a plot point in her backstory and tied to how she got her powers. Not kidding.

oh lol one of those is supposed to be Warblade???? Maybe the giant lizard dude?

(Wiki sez:) Rewritten by Gail Simone to be part of an actual attempt to make a hotttt Gen-Active teen.

Cailtin retains her notable traits of intelligence and attractiveness but is continually suspicious and unhappy about her appearance, given the prurient nature of her creators

I am hoping her 'creators' are Jim Choi and Brandon Lee.

Batgirl #6: WELL OF COURSE BRUCE DOESN'T KILL BABS. With that out of the way, it's difficult to know what else to say about this book since it doesn't actually say anything. We find out how the latest superbaddie got her hypnotic powers and My Two Bats talk her out of fighting, but the story ends with us knowing nothing about her motivation, or why she targeted Bruce, or what she was hoping to get out of anything she was doing. Other than 'rich white men are bad'. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't hoped for a bit more. Still we find out that Babs' mum likes to bake a lot of cakes. YEAH! DEFEAT THAT GENDER STEREOTYPING MYTH! RIGHT ON SISTAH!

Batman & Robin #6: TEARS OF A ROBIN! It turns out Damian was just playing along the whole time so that Bruce can turn up and beat the crap out of the bad guy. Rolo Tomassi does a solid job on it but it's never actually exciting and is, dare I say it, predictable throughout. Except maybe THE SON OF TALIA CRYING because he loves his daddy too much. Hurrrm.

Batwoman #6: Umm. This sucks. JH Williams, your strengths are art over writing. Your writing is OK, all right, but start drawing again please. Let's just pretend this issue never happened.

Demon Knights #6: Put simply, nothing happens this month as it's all just set-up for the next issue in which (presumably) there's going to be a big FITE. That's all very well, but it means nothing has really happened in ANY of the first four of the books I paid for this week. Which doesn't make it look like very good VFM now, does it, eh DiDio? You won't get people continuing to spend money this way, you know.*

*This may be a lie and I will keep on buying books from DC. So sue me.

Frankenstein #6: Ah, NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE. If you make all the other books suck this week then Frankenstein will look good in comparison and people will like it. I mean, seriously? This has an entire sequence that steals wholesale from Watchmen as it tells the story of Frankie and "Colonel Quantum" in Vietnam. And that's the best part of the book by some way. I don't know why I'm buying this.

Legion Lost #6: "SPEW TEETH, NOT DOGMA!" Obviously no book can recover from opening dialogue as good as that, and this is no exception but it has a brave go and gets most of the way there. After a fair bit of exposition and a lot of help from the Martian Manhunter (with some ridiculous 80s casual racism along the way - I mean really? The best way you can choose to refer to a black guy is "Lenny Kravitz"?) the Legion realise the whole truth about how desperate their situation is and get back to where they were at the very beginning of #1. Hooray! Next plot please (although this is going to get such into the clusterfuck-in-waiting that is The Ravagers, so I reckon it's doomed).

Suicide Squad #6: oh FFS. How could adding Lime & Light from Nu Green Arrow make anything BETTER? Hopefully it telegraphs who dies. Apart from that, this issue is kind of disappointing as it exists to flesh out Nu Harley Quinn and explore her relationship with Nu Joker who may or may not or might or might not be dead or alive or skinless. It's kind of annoying that after 6 months we still haven't resolved this if I'm honest but I guess they're waiting for the Owls to clear out of the batbooks first? Not awful, but doesn't really stand out from anything else, I suppose.

The plan for Batwoman has always, for two years or w/e, been five issues of JHW3, five of Reeder. That said I read it today and the two inkers are TERRIBLE and almost certainly a dastardly plan by Didio to force a chick off his awesome book about an asskicking lesbian