DC "New 52": Biggest Disappointments

The ones I most looked forward to–Blackhawks, Our Army at War and Red Hood & The Outlaws–were all huge disappointments. The “Sgt. Rock” book needs a lot less cross-contamination from superhero titles (That’s what the Blackhawks are for). Blackhawks and Outlaws really should have led off with an origin story, but I’m sure that’s around the bend for both.

Scott Lobdell has lost his Starfire-writing privileges, as far as I’m concerned. The writer in me understands that he’s foreshadowing a big reveal on her new backstory, but the reader in me wonders if Lobdell has ever had sex with a woman. This just feels like it was written by the two boys from John Hughes’ Weird Science. He dropped the ball by making her an unsympathetic, indiscriminate nymphomaniac right out of the gate. He’s probably going for the “pathology of a rape survivor” angle, but the book will certainly be canceled before he gets around to it, and anyway he’s not that talented a writer for heavy content. It’s as if he never read or understood the Wolfman/Perez stuff and doesn’t know why readers like the character, or how much. She’s supposed to be a superhero version of Kurtzman’s “Little Annie Fanny”: Over-the-top sexy, but still kind of innocent, in contrast with Donna Troy’s all-American tomboy and Raven’s kinda-sexy-kinda-creepy vibe. DC has already replaced two writers from the “New 52” books, and should strongly consider replacing this one as well.

Bump. I was hoping other people might have some favorite examples from the past month as well…

The only one of your complaints I agree with is the characterization of Starfire.

Men of War was never supposed to be a realistic war story, it was always supposed to be ‘regular soldiers in a world with metahumans’. Which, of the potential war titles they could have done, is the least well-tread, and thus, more interesting. Regular realistic war stories are a dime a gross. Super-soldiers (such as the Blackhawks), a dime a dozen. Regular cops dealing with supers is a bit better explored (Gotham Central, Powers), but regular soldiers, not so much.

As to Outlaws or Blackhawks needing an origin issue…nah.

Blackhawks got exactly as much of an origin issue as it needed - it disposed of the team origin in a single line (‘the UN is paying us to do this’), and spent the bulk of the issue on what was important - introducing the characters and the general conflict they were going with.

Outlaws could have done better on establishing Jason and Roy’s sidekick histories - but they’ve set up enough with Jason that when it’s finally mentioned he used to be Robin, even the most unfamiliar reader should be only moderately surprised, and they do establish, clearly, Roy and Kori’s history with the Titans (even if the team is never named). The important parts of Kori’s history are all established. Essence’s conversation with Jason gives every bit as much information as needed to follow that part of the story.

It was…a fairly boring issue, frankly, and loading it down with too much more ‘origins!’ stuff, especially when Jason and Roy are both badass normals, who were sidekicks to their rich guardians, thus hardly having origins to speak of.

As to my disappointments…aside from Outlaws, I only have 2 - Mister Terrific and Catwoman. Catwoman, the issue is the same as Outlaws, really - Selina’s characterization, including (especially) her sexual relationship with Bruce is being mishandled. Mister Terrific, the racial stuff is just incredibly awkward. On the other hand, there’s a lot of potential, there, and aside from the racial stuff, Wallace seems to get Michael well. (Catwoman is just fairly generic…wouldn’t be great, or terrible without the problematic stuff.)

Not that all the others are without problems - Hawk and Dove was physically painful to read, due to the art, and Suicide Squad had some facepalm-worthy moments, but both of those I went in with low expectations, and they both managed to actually improve upon what I was expecting. The others that didn’t impress me, I also had no or low expectations for.

Books that exceeded expectations that actually had some:

All the Super-family books (though Superman is the lowest score of the lot), Red Lanterns, Animal Man, Wonder Woman, Demon Knights, Batwoman, Birds of Prey.

Biggest surprises in the ‘low/no expectations, but, hey, this is good’ category:

Captain Atom, All-Star Western (OMFG, that was good), OMAC

Books that I probably won’t continue reading for long (I’ll give them another issue or two to shape up):

Men of War (it’s just not my kind of story, but it may get there), Deathstroke, Suicide Squad, Hawk and Dove, Outlaws, Catwoman, Voodoo, Grifter (although, he actually GRIFTED, so that’s pretty cool, if they keep it up).

Reactions to the new Starfire in animated GIF format.

So, as predicted, DC is turning into Image. That’ll teach them to hire Jim Lee.

I have had quite the ups and downs with the new 52.

First of all, I’m still confused, maybe twenty titles total later, whether this is a reboot, a reimagine, a redo, a rollback, or what the heck it is. I think they need to do a two to three paragraph primer at the beginning of each book to say “here’s what you need to know” or “here’s what we are keeping from this character and here’s what we are changing.”

I say this because:

Batwoman: I was very confused by this. For a “first issue” it didn’t explain a lot. And it didn’t leave me wanting to know more about what’s going to happen, either.

Catwoman: Again, where the heck are we in this? It’s like starting in media res but with ten different storylines, including her rlxp with Batman, the other robberies she has done, her friend, etc. While it was at least written well enough that I’m curious about more, overall, there is still a lot I don’t understand what they did or what they are trying to do with it.

I could go on about the titles I read but I won’t as I think this sums it up well. I don’t need an origin right away but many titles left me confused as to the point or what they were doing with it.

And I will feel very cheated if all they did, at the end of the day, was simply reset the issue number back to one but leave everything else unchanged.

I’m guessing DC doesn’t, either.

Huge caveat: for various and sundry reasons, I like to peridodically keep abreast of major comics, but I don’t read them. I don’t have a couple hundred to blow every month, not really the inclination if I did. I like comics - but there’s practicality at stake.

That said, comics have long had a nasty problem where they saver between editorial control, marketing control, and writer control. Any of these might work - I’m not writer-fixated, especially after seeing soe of the incredibly idiotic storylines created entirely from the writer’s end.

You could let writers run wild, but the comic lines might nto make sense afterward and you’d end up with messes like Marvel’s Civil War, where by the end you practically had two separate lines given the wild characterization swings between Pro/Anti sides, and the whole thing degenerating into an very real internal civil war.

Or you could let Editors run wild, and you’d have a more consistent tone, but it would be blander. Editors have a bad habit of meddling in book lines where they don’t actually have any experience or information (“This has always been about Norman Osborne and Peter Parker!”) So you’ll get more than a few wildly inconsistent moments.

Or you could let Marketers rule, and you’d probably have a very consistent product. It might be more middle-of-the-road than currently, but they’d likely be able to target it pretty well with a good selection of varied fare. Marketers, however, tend to overreact to the themselves, and when they had good or bad responses from sales would be inclined to go for broke.

As it is, we have a bad habit ogf getting all three in one nice, neat package.

Three. Perez is off Superman as of issue 7. :rolleyes:

And given Perez’s notoriously excellent work-ethic, you gotta assume that there was either major corporate douchebaggery or…I dunno…brain-eating aliens or something. Perez has one of the best reputations for being drama-free.

SB: Thanks. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one and thanks for the explanation!

And I’m torn on what I want. More writer/editor stuff, probably, for emphasis on storyline and continuity.

Anyway, several individual issues seemed to be quite good but the more I read of the #1’s, the more I wasn’t sure about the whole thing and was ready not to collect any of them. Maybe get a trade compilation of a story later.

Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws were awful. And dull.

Hawkman was pretty bad. Most of the rest (that I read) crept into mediocre territory at a minimum. Though Batgirl was very disappointing.

Although I have no interest in most of the 52 titles – Catwoman & others just didn’t appeal, while Titans & Outsiders & Hawk/Dove inspired aversion from the previews alone – what has surprised me is how boring it’s all been.

Their “change it all up” reboot/redo/reimaging/rewhatever has… pretty much been exactly the same as came before. Utterly pointless marketing stunt, basically.

Except for Action and Batwoman, which were fab, for different reasons.

FWIW, I thought that Geoff Johns’s take on Aquaman was pretty good.

DC dropped a bombshell today-Crisis? What Crisis?

Great googly moogly.

Geez…one more reason I’m glad I quit.

There’s some surprise at that? Really?

There is utterly no way it could have worked to have kept any of the Crises in-continuity. Everyone’s history has been (re)compressed to 5-years.

Moreover, in that time the GL Corps has been destroyed leaving Kyle as the only GL, and Bruce Wayne has been gone at least 1-year leaving Dick Grayson as the Batman. There’s no time for them to have undergone the Crises.

With the Clark + Lois situation and Superboy undone as it all has been, it’s almost certain that the Death of Superman never happened, either. Any surprise at that?

The one thing that this all does push forward is that the LSH once again needs some sort of continuity-patch. With the Lightning Saga retro-reset or whatever you’d call that, most of LSH past continuity is back in-continuity… but more to the point, Superboy Prime is now in the LSH continuity (via the Legion of Three Worlds following from Final Crisis). And since he’s central to the Crises, and the Crises are now gone… hello, Zero Hour redux.

Ralph and Sue Dibney-are they alive?
Superboy Prime-does he exist and if so, is he still evil?
52-did it happen, and are there still 52 Earths?
New Gods-Alive?

Nah, L3W just didn’t happen. Easy. Gates’ continuity can fold into the main timeline, and no new readers will care or notice.

My money’s on No Superboy Prime, yes to the Dibnys, yes on the multiple Earths (given that they’ve still got Grant Morrison’s Multiversity project in the pipeline) and possibly on the last question, since they apparently decided to dredge up Darkseid already…

I’m curious- do all superhero comics nowadays feature computer generated (or what looks like it) gradiated coloring, or do any of them have the flat colors of yesteryear?