I'm at the DC Rebirth retailer road show

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But on his first Kirby appearance he's alone on Earth, while SS ends with him becoming (possibly?) the new king of Sheeda... So there's really no continuity from one to the other.

The same thing also happens with Frankenstein: in SS he's trapped in the Sheeda future, and IIRC Klarion is controlling him. But in FC he's back on 21s century Earth and working for some government agency, with no explanation.

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That was an answer to Old Lunch's comment on Klarion.

Also, I do get that Barry Allen's comeback in FC was used as a prelude to him getting a new ongoing series, but it really wouldn't have hurt if Morrison had at least inluced *some* explanation why he's back, now it just comes off as deus ex machina.

imo Morrison's Batman run kind of fell off in the coda w/the Leviathan plot, but by that point he was trying to work around or ignore the fact he wasn't working in anything connected to actual continuity anymore

Without the awful pacing in the final issue, it'd be the best comic he ever wrote.

I love that final issue of Final Crisis, I think it's the highlight of the series!

Agree that Action Comics/Annihilator/Nameless/Klaus/Multiversity/Happy were all not much cop, albeit with occasional standout issues like Sic mentioned.

Seven Soldiers/52/Final Crisis/Batman is Morrison's magnum opus

Totally, and I'd include JLA and JLA Classified in there too.

(And the second, nu-52 season of Batman Inc is a lot less inspired than what came before it, Batcows excepted.)

All-Star Superman is also technically tied in with that magnum opus (with the various permutations of Nebula Man being the thread tying that to 7S and JLA Classified).

I realize I still haven't read the new 52 Batman Inc yet. It appears that I may have dropped the Morrison ball at just the right time, eh?

It's pretty good! But it's a small, downbeat ending - it works better as a conclusion to the Batman story than as an ending to the magnum opus (which should probably end at Batman and Robin).

Oh yeah, the first issues of those aborted WildCATs and Authority runs were whatever-whatever too.

Was there ever an explanation as to what happened with these never getting to issue 2?

Same thing that happened to the 1963 Annual.

(The Authority did make it to #2, five months later, and then had #3-12 by a different creative team a few years after that.)

Don't even talk to be about that damn 1963 annual!

what is that exactly? morrison couldn't be arsed? artist problems?

#1 was so spectacular he decided to stop there

Jim Lee

Aside from the fact that it's a nonsensical, IP-stealing, passive-agressive, creatively bankrupt comic made by misogynist garbage people, I thought DC Rebirth was okay.

Well that's a pullquote.

Aside from the [...] aggressive [...] comic [...] people, [...] Rebirth was okay.

- Chuck Tatum

The reviews are in:

DC Rebirth [...]a[...]

Just reread Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, and, in its own way, it's just as violent and depressing dead end as The Killing Joke..

Yes, Moore has much to answer for wrt modern day DC's embrace of the grim and the grit. It's just that they tend to forget the attendant wit.

Torrented Rebirth, it was rubbish

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Yeah, Moore's worst stories feel like a prototype for Didio's DC - nostalgia mixed with ultraviolence - rather than the progressive grim and grit of the 80s-90s, which at least pushed some new narrative ideas, if too often humourlessly. In "whatever happened..." bizarro commits genocide, lana lang burns to death, superman cries alone in a room - it's quite a nasty, cynical comic, not the elegiac tone I remember.

I tried to read Rebirth. How can anyone get through this many badly written captions? Geoff Johns has absolutely no sense of language, of rhythm.

This was such a hit I didn't even get to read it to find out if it was complete shit (as I assume) before selling out.

seriously?!

Yep. Every retailer I know has blown through these. IDGI, but whatevs.

Moore has much to answer for wrt modern day DC's embrace of the grim and the grit.

Yes, it's definitely his responsibility.

yr literalism is striking as always

although he has answered, raised incantations, and summonses protective beards many a time against such accusations

https://www.instagram.com/p/BF6Mx7lm_F4/?hl=en

Tom E on Rebirth: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/145207290801/danare-we-the-baddies

The ad for Wonder Woman Rebirth at the back has copy along the lines of “EVERYTHING she KNOWS and TRUSTS will be TAKEN FROM HER”. Marketing quiz! Do you think this copy is written to appeal more to a) a woman who wants to jump on board the adventures of DC’s most iconic female superhero or b) a guy who likes the idea of women being taken down a peg?

headline is a reference to this sketch btw America

Tt, we may be generally pig-ignorant over here but we aren't complete savages.

Mitchell and Webb are taught in most American public schools these days.

I definitely appreciated "The Case Against Dan Didio". I don't follow the comics scene anymore because it's too toxic and depressing, so it's nice to have a digest-form version that explains _why_ I stay as far away from anything having to do with DC Comics as possible.

I know the business side isn't something ILC particularly gives a damn about but sales on the other Rebirth titles are absolutely insane today. IDGI, I just can't get excited about what I've read from either this or Civil War II.

do you think people buy that stuff thinking it's an investment because "it'll be worth money someday" or is it a legit proof of a sucker born every minute? or both?

I really like getting that kind of updates. I don't understand it either. Perhaps people just think it will be a good jumping on point?

if i was DC i would just number every issue of every comic i put out "1".

I don't think DC has a lot of readers, outside of select titles. Buyers, yeah, but it's people who buy every fucking Batman/Superman comic and two copies if it's #1 on the cover

Or more depressingly, they read them and actually want this shit

I don't hear about many speculators these days. I have one guy who buys one of every Image #1 because a few of their titles like The Walking Dead and Saga have gone way up, but no one that I know of with Marvel or DC, people have figured out that they print tens/hundreds of thousands of copies and a significant chunk of those are bagged and boarded even by people who just read and collect so scarcity is unlikely.

Only being able to sell Batman has been DC's biggest issue, the weird thing here is that all the other characters are selling at the same pace or even a little better than today's Batman. Let's say I normally order 20 Green Arrow, I ordered 50+10 of the monthly variant (because they were returnable) and they're all gone now. I would guess people actually believe that DC is going to push the rest of the universe this time instead of just Batman. Whether that sticks, God only knows.

if i was DC i would just number every issue of every comic i put out "1".

This is Marvel's strategy - everything is a miniseries. Darth Vader is one of their top-10 titles and is getting wrapped at 25, presumably to see an All New Darth Vader three months later.

I get it but I don't like it.

i'm fine with that, at least it kinda guarantees a closed story arc / hopefully continuous creative team for that run

btw milo I am super interested in your business takes. i know very little about that side

Yeah, my comics speculation begins and ends with speculating about why people buy the stuff they buy. It's fascinating to get the inside scoop.

The Darth Vader writer has been pretty clear that he'll have told the story he wanted to tell, it could of course be a line.