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

Latest ACTION was pretty okay, but then I remind myself that I'm paying three bucks for that much comics and then it feels thin.

At least this was the first issue in the run that actually had the page count of (Morrison) comics that DC promise at that price.

"one of the most disappointing changes in the new 52 was rectified this week in Secret Six when we were shown the secret origin of Deadshot's mustache."

I've been avoiding those as I am such a Deadshot fan and really thought he (and really the current Secret Six) were the kind of things that DC needed to showcase instead of trying to change up. Those characters are great. I think Floyd is about my favorite 'non major' super hero/bad guy character. I loved the old 80s Suicide Squad and Simone Secret Six.

I mean that for real, Floyd is one of my very favorites too and when he appeared clean-shaven in Suicide Squad (not secret six, oops) I was totally mad. But that one is actually a pretty fun title, not quite as good as Ostrander and Simone but it can sit right next to them.

Writer: Grant Morrison
Artists: Rags Morales, Rick Bryant, Brent Anderson, Gene Ha, Andy Kubert and Jesse Delperdang

Obviously Kubert isn’t so excited about drawing those two last-minute story-derailing issues that he can do them by himself. This shows amazing confidence that Morales will have his shit together enough to draw #7 and #8 though!

― ٩(̾●̮̮̃̾•̃̾)۶ (sic), Friday, 11 November 2011 07:58 (5 months ago)

So after two months off and substitute artists drawing half of each of the three issues before that, Rags Morales DID manage to draw 70% of #7! The remaining 8 pages being one of those unwanted, redundant, insulting back-up stories by Sholly Fisch that DC insist count towards the $3.99 = 28ish pp price tag.

In an amazing advance, #8 is the first issue to actually provide A FULL 30 PAGES OF MORRISON SUPERMAN for the $3.99 cover price. However, despite two months off to catch up and never turning in one single full issue to date (and only one, ever, without partial fill-ins to even make it to the should-be-$2.99 page count), Morales needs two CREDITED partial fill-in artists, and what looks like two more uncredited assistants or ghosts to my eye, to get this issue done.

The worst part is that to my eye, Rags Morales just isn't that good an artist. Competent, yes. But nothing to get excited over.

Barely this side of competent tbh (I've never read anything else by him)

Perhaps Morrison simply isn't writing to Morales' strengths (extremely sad rubber men)

DEVIL'S ADVOCATE:

He was very good on Peyer's Hourman. Mind you that was over a decade ago...

And now he's crap.

I've never read those HOURMANS. Actually, missed them altogether as I was mostly out of comics then. Should I seek 'em out?

And I'll admit that IDENTITY CRISIS probably ruined me on Rags Morales' art for all eternity.

Seemed to have a better inker for IC, maybe?

The new costume is still godawful. Like worse than electric mullet Superman.

Why was Superman's costume completely different for two panels in the middle of Action 8? Made no sense. And Batwoman 8 not much chop either. I think I'm off the new 52 now.

Superman's costume actually changed several times during that issue, as far as I could tell one time was for a story reason, the others might have been because of all the different artists or might have been for a story reason, who on earth can be expected to know

has replacement artist been announced for Batwoman yet? I can't imagine it won't be a shambles on the short notice

I just assumed it was the mescaline kicking in for me, but yeah, there were costume changes that I suppose might be explained by something else. Maybe.

When he gets knocked against Kandor it changes into a Jim-Lee-ised Silver Age Jor-El style

later on his normal Jim Lee style changes pattern and gets red piping on the collar and whatnot

but why?

i'm no longer reading any of the new 52. i keep thinking about picking up issues of superman and animal man, but...

I... am still getting Grifter, Voodoo, JLDark and JL

I like the Batman thing with the owls

I am about to restart on this btw - probably the weekend when things will start going up.

is there any noise about scrapping this abomination yet? is it still actually selling?

what would they publish if they scrap what is, now that Batman: Odyssey is done, 100% of their core line?

(The tops are still selling a little higher than the reboot, the bottoms are selling as low as before)

"What do we do if this goes tits-up?" is a key question that, by all rights, should have been bandied about in the halls of DC editorial before they undertook this gargantuan overhaul, but something tells me that they don't and never did have an exit strategy.

plan b is was and always has been CALL JOHN BYRNE

"Still here guys!"
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/John_Byrne.JPG/230px-John_Byrne.JPG

Nooooo

so mad I can't find a photo of the special elevated chair Byrne uses at signings to place him higher than other artists, right now

I thought he didn't go to shows anymore.

That pic did give me cause to bust out laughing for a moment, though. The other one, even moreso.

used, then, your strange North American world is basically permanently '80s to me

Surely we are discussing Plan C, where Plan B is All Liefeld All The Time?

He's the ginger Kevin Smith!

If it was permanently 80s, then Spacemen 3 might still be together, which would be weird.

Though I did see JB once at a show in 1988 or 1989. I've told the story here before, about the moment that I lost all respect for him. Will tell it again if needed.

go for it

reprint stamp?

NOT A DREAM SEQUENCE
NOT A HOAX

Not the reprint stamp.

JB would hold court at his table (with a normal-size chair), draw a sketch and hold it up for the clutch of fanboys hovering around. Then he would hold an auction right then and there amongst the gathered fans.

That same show, a friend got a fully inked sketch of the Joker by Bill Sienkiewicz for like ten bucks.

I still enjoy JB's FANTASTIC FOUR run and his UNCANNY, but lost a whole ton of respect for him at that moment.

Ha, that IS dickish!

Superdickish.

I swear I heard a similar story that involved Byrne dashing off a sketch at the request of some young kid, and then auctioning off the sketch while the kid was still standing there. Now, that's dickish.

Superdickish.

Current state of my 52 reading:

Still actually reading and enjoying: Batman

Might catch up on the trades: Swamp Thing/Demon Knights/Wonder Woman

T0rrenting for trainwreck curiosity: Justice League

Dropped: Batwoman

Being sad about: Action Comics

YOU READ 6 WEEKS OF DC BOOKS IN ONE GO. LOSE 5 SAN AND ROLL AGAINST WILL TO REMAIN ALIVE

All Star Western #7: Fairly standard Hex fare. We're still in Arkham and Hex is now undercover in a street fighting arena. There's a couple of fights and a bit of plot development. It's good stuff, but not groundbreaking. The backup is potentially good stuff, but in an attempt to hammer in a BLACK PEOPLE ARE ALL ATHEIST GENII message we find that the captain of a whaler owns either one of the first 3500 British copies of On The Origin Of Species or one of the first 500 American copies. Not impossible I suppose, but not very likely either and if I can look up publication dates on Wikipedia then so can you. But then this is a thing for me, people being lazy while writing. You chose to put the detail in, it could at least be right.

Aquaman #7: Um. Yeah. Black Manta appears and kills some woman - this is all connected to the doctor Aquaman was taking the piss out of a couple of issues ago. Some woman with a big cat pops out of a wormhole and attacks everybody but they might be all mates at the end. I'm sure it'll make sense eventually.

Batman #7: OK, this is big. Batman escapes and we find out the truth about the Court of Owls, or at least the amount we're supposed to know at the moment. Dick makes this very point in the comic, that we're being deliberately drip-fed info to keep us sucked in but the things which we don't know yet (but Bats does) is REALLY IMPORTANT but it's being kept from us. Seriously, everybody should be picking up the trades of this.

Batman The Dark Knight #7: David Finch needs to learn what "final" means. He must have time to read a dictionary, given how little he does on his own book now, so we should tell him to. BATMANG EVEN ADMITS THIS TOO FLASH THAT IT'S WRONG. Anyway, Bane goes for a swim and White Rabbit may well be Bruce's girlfriend, even though he seems to have dumped her. This started well and got worse every issue, truth to tell. Does that mean Finch is actually better than we thought? The more of him in it, the more readable it is. A conundrum for our times.

DCU Presents The Challs #7: Unreadable DiDio nonsense. The guy from last month that dided is alive again, the Challs go off to find some stuff from their brand new SECRET BILLION POUND BASE, some statues come to life and the dead guy kills some people. As you were.

Flash #7: Does nobody have powers under control in this book? Captain Cold's go wrong and Flash's go wrong AGAIN, this time sucking Iris through a wormhole. To get her back we break out the COSMIC TREADMILL. FUCK YEAH. And Gorilla City gets introduced too? In addition to the basic quality of the book, which is high, we're getting Flash Fanboy 101 to boot. Awesome.

I, Vampire #7: Takes place after JLD #7. Reads JLD #7. Reads I, V #7. Is none the wiser. This is very pretty but I can't make head nor tail of it. When the titular hero died he may or not have been reborn as Cain who has started the Vampire Apocalypse. Which is too powerful for all the magic heroes we know about in the Johnsiverse but is being held at bay by Batman and Batgirl. I think. It continues in both #8s anyway. It might make sense later.

Justice League #7: Train wreck. The Shazam backup/teaser is better. But they're both Ultimate Johns Sadface.

Justice League Dark #7: More coherent than I, Vampire but this may just be because the plot almost makes a little sense. They all hate each other, and all of them are crap in their own way. They all end up in different parts of the afterlife at the end. Unfortunately I doubt they'll stay there.

LoSH #7: The lustre is wearing off, if I'm honest. A flipper.

Nightwing #7: So, everything from the earlier issues is now shown to be a lead into the end of Batman #7. I can get with that, and it's well written stuff. This has been worthwhile up till now but I think I'll have had enough after the Owls crossover event.

Supergirl #7: The fight from the last issue sort of peters out into nothing. Now there's a metaphor for this book.

Superman #7: Bored with this. Helspont out of Wildstorm and previous issues of Stormwatch is the bad guy. It looks like they're building to Krypton being a Daemonite outpost, but I don't care to be honest.

Wonder Woman #7: Diana realises she gets things wrong sometimes. This maintains the high standard of previous issues but is moving kind of slowly. It's always a beacon this late in the reading list though, so I need to stick with it regardless or it'll just be depressingly awful.

Birds of Prey #7: Do you ever have one of those days? When you cut a man's head off with the sword your dead husband lives in, only for it to turn out you've killed the wrong guy? Exactly. Not that thrilling.

Blue Beetle #7: I have a nagging suspicion this is getting better, but incrementally and it's nigh impossible to tell. It just isn't doing anything that isn't being done 1000x better in Ultimate Spider-Man, for example. I think it should just try and work out what it wants to be and stick with it,which it seems unable to do, and accept that noboby really likes it. It's no wonder this and Captain Atom are the lowest sellers not cancelled.

And speaking of which... Captain Atom #7: A new backstory for a character we don't care about, written by a guy who makes Liefeld look like a genius, which ends with Captain Atom having a crying wank outside a restaurant while the girl he fancies (who he nearly burned to death the other issue, mind) goes on a date. And then an alium comes out of him and wants to have a philosophical chat. Written like that I almost wish I had read it.

Catwoman #7: This is just sort of a nothing book with no plot. Catwoman is stealing cars for a living, she has a snarky fence and a new car thief boyfriend. Her boobs look weird. I don't get why anyone would buy it.

GLC #7: It feels like an obvious trope as there must have been any number of "returning a dead Lantern to his family" issues before, and this is utterly treading water. Oddly, I don't remember the actual plot finishing and I don't think it has, even though Guy Gardner is getting told off for it. I struggled to stay awake while reading this.

Red Hood #7: I thought I liked this. I'm not so sure - there's a fight inside a plane with the ghost of a cavewoman made from smoke and Jason Todd is WAY more complicated than any of us ever thought. I think the simple answer is that it's about in the middle, quality wise. That makes it better than AT LEAST 20 other books DC publish in the Johnsiverse, which is a much worse looking stat than I thought it would be.

Blackhawks #7: ????? I read this and didn't understand a word. A plane crashes into a building two thirds of the way through. I say building, I mean a room in an underground base which it gets directly into. That's a big ventilation shaft. Thank G_d that's nearly over.

GL New Guardians #7: AND IT WAS A DOUBLE TREBLE QUADRUPLE BLUFF BY LARFLEEZE ALL ALONG FEATURING A GENETICALLY MODIFIED DUPLICATE VEGA SYSTEM. I can't believe I didn't spot that. (By the way, Larfleeze is now the worstest baddest GL enemy ever from the dawn of time etc, just like all the previous ones.) It's also revealed the Omega Men aren't in the Johnsiverse. ;_; All of Red Lanterns happened between the last issue of this and the current one, which is maybe the best fate for it. OH NOES KYLE RAYNER HAS TO KILL LARFLEEZE TO LIVE WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

Teen Titans #7: Much as I'm glad at the reveal that it actually is Danny The Street that's joined the Titans, and Kid Flash is still brilliant, this is going in circles. Month on month the bad guy is revealed to be controlled by the next level bad guy and this issue is no exception. I enjoy this as much as Red Hood. With all that entails.

Savage Hawkman #7: The Gentleman Ghost starts the zombie apocalypse to make himself whole again, and is beaten by a zombie in the process. Static shows up for no reason. Hawkman dumps teh ULTIMATE WEAPON where nobody will find (at the top of a mountain). I SMELL A PLOT POINT. He fights a shape-shifter in the next issue, which might be when Liefeld gets on board. The first thing she'll shift is her feet, I bet.

Firestorm #7: Jason is tortured when he sees his parents and has a little cry. Ronnie is tortured when he sees some Quraqis and has a little arm when they cut his hand off. Hardly seems like a fair deal. This is still so 80s it's ridiculous, and has yet one more new super Firestorm-a-like. I think they've introduced something like 10 now. Let's have a Liefeldening!

Voodoo #7: Huh? Was fun though, almost.

Action #8: Off the bus, I think. GMoz wraps the story in a couple of pages but pads heavily with the sort of will-he-won't-he challenge of a hero stuff he's done too many times before (it feels like). And the less said about the violent change in artist for the last half dozen pages the better. Tepid.

All Star Western #8: Bless. Hex, Nighthawk and Cinnamon are off fighting the anarchists so Arkham does what all doctors should - he gets stoned off his tits on opium then arrested. It's all part of a complicated double cross that looks to see our heroes blown up next month anyway, but I'm more concerned about the guy whose mother Arkham doesn't slag off in prison - what happened to him? Backup is irrelevant again, sadly.

Animal Man #8: I hate the artwork all the way through this as blackens my mood as I try and read it. Maxine learns how to control her powers and Buddy forgets that birds fly and ends up pecked to death. This is leading into a crossover where you have to buy annuals and Frankenstein. It makes you wonder where they would have taken the plot if it had been cancelled, really. I'm getting kind of sick of the race to cross everything over as early as possible and would like to see some plot development in isolation.

Aquaman #8: Marital strife as Mera finds out about the super-team Arthur was in behind her back with the woman from the last issue and her big cat. We get a flashback to them being heroic at the same time as Arthur was already in the Justice League - WHAT DO YOU MEAN I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO TAKE YOUR CONTINUITY SERIOUSLY? Like Aquaman, this is middle of the road and vaguely good.

Batgirl #8: So it turns out the bad guy's is one of the henchmen present when the Joker shot Babs. OH WAIT IS THIS MAYBE GAIL SIMONE'S WHOLE PLOT? Mummy Babs gets the blame for everybody James has killed since he was a child. CLANG! Who turns up on the last page to lead into the Owl saga? It's almost like this writes itself.

Batman #8:

http://youtu.be/M8el_P4yvfc

Great stuff.

Batman & Robin #8: 20 pages of DADDY ISSUES. Not really what I want from this book.

Batman the Dark Knight #8: David Finch content = the cover, which is at least partially related to the contents. A solid enough minor Batbook but nothing better. Would rather not have paid for it to be honest.

Batwing #8: So, the primary bad guy turns out to be Batwang's mate back from they were child soldiers but in charge is a guy who runs child soldier armies called Kone. HOLY HAM-FISTED CURRENT AFFAIRS! There's no way this will make it beyond the Owls. What was I saying earlier about cancellations?

Batwoman #8: Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I think we know what that means about the writing.

Aldo, you are a prince among men. These reviews have made my day.

I hate the artwork all the way through this as blackens my mood as I try and read it.

you're still not telling us who does the art or writing on any of these!

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I think we know what that means about the writing.

idk I really like the [IDEA of] multiple overlapping flashbacks of different characters all coming to the "present" at different speeds, but the art makes it painful to be able to figure out if it's ~working~ or not. still no idea who's taking over for the second half of the storyline, so I know whether to brace myself for the same awful 90s inking.

I started listing them but I've been finding it enough typing as it is and with the amount of artistic changes in most of the issues I'd have to put more thought into it than the editorial team.

For Animal Man it's really pages 1-5 I dislike the most, which are by "long-term" AM artist Travel Foreman. Particularly Buddy in the trailer - I don't know what he's trying to get across but it absolutely doesn't work. Steve Pugh does the remaining pages and they're better but I'm not that sold on the layouts or the shading.

I think I can sum up my feelings about the new 52 with the following statement:

I keep forgetting that Suicide Squad, my favorite book of the ones I'm reading, exists.

I read a few issues of Animal Man and thought they were pretty good! Is it still decent?

I mean, outside of the crossover shit which sounds horrible. Has he met up with Swamp Thing yet?