Howdy, folks!
Superman Beyond wraps up this week - it’s meta nonsense, but as fluff, it’s tasty.
We started threads at the same time–I’ll ask a mod to merge 'em. 
Works for me!
Birds of Prey this week was both interesting and disappointing. I like the focus on Calculator. I don’t like that they draw him so young or felt the need to give him a power-up.
Rather than ask for a merge, I’m just gonna repost my stuff here and the mods can close the other one–I recall that merging threads is a lot of work.
What’s the consensus on spoilers? Should they be boxed for this week’s comics? The TV threads don’t box spoilers after the episode has aired. Should we after the Weds that comics come out?
For now, I’ll box 'em but I’d rather not unless everyone else feels strongly that we should.
Astonishing X-Men: I want to like this book…but I don’t. Part of it is that I just hate the art. This Simone person really wants to be Alex Ross…and isn’t.
Trinity: More “Tarot” drivel. More “Cavemen retell us stuff we already know”. Lois is grossly out of character. More “Nothing actually happens”. Busiek has earned a LOT of credit with me for his other work and who knows…he may pull a rabbit out of his hat–that’s the ONLY reason (well…plus I LOVE Bagley’s art) I’m still buying it. If it was almost any other writer, this issue would be the capper for me quitting.
Tangent: Superman’s Reign: I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying this. It reminds me of that Captain Atom: Armageddon thing where Atom ends up in Wildstorm–I didn’t expect to like it and ended up really enjoying it.
Supergirl: Eh. They really need to take time to let us get to know who the real Kara is–I liked how these guys fixed all the dumb inconsistancies in her origin, but now…who is she? And I don’t care about this Superwoman.
Justice League: Did I miss an issue? Wasn’t there a whole thing with the Dakota heroes? And Superman let Icon take…I dunno–Dr Light’s corpse or something? Was that it? If so, I’m pissed. I don’t like paying for 2-3 issues and not getting a story. That said–it’s kind fun reading Len Wein’s stuff. I grew up with him and he was a consistently competent writer (not a knock–he never had a hit series but if you saw his name, you knew you’d be getting a good story). This issue was very…retro. In a good way. You could give it to someone from 1978 and they wouldn’t blink.
Green Lantern: I’m not enjoying the Red Lantern stuff as much as the Sinestro stuff. I liked the issue, but honestly? I wish we’d get a break and get a few non-cosmic issues–GL vs Sonar or something.
Brave & Bold–I’m lost. I think I have to go back and read the last three issues.
Final Crisis Superman Beyond 3-D: Wha?..
…so…um. [ul]
[li]Is Mandrakk the big-bad? Or is it Darkseid? How does Darkseid tie in anyway?[/li][li]They said the multiverse was collapsing because Darkseid incarnated on New Earth over in Final Crisis. Here, they’re saying it’s cause of Mandrakk. I’d assume that this was just bad coordination between writers, but it’s the same guy[/li][li]Over in the Wildstorm-verse, the multiverse is “A theoretical snowflake existing in 196,833 dimensional space. The snowflake rotates. Each element of the snowflake rotates. Each rotation describes an entirely new universe. This is the multiverse”–but over in the DC verse, there are only 52 universes in the bleed/multiverse. Wha’?[/li][li]I saw the “Superman carries Bleed-juice in his mouth” thing a mile off. But since it’s not that hard to get into the Bleed–isn’t part of the Hall of Justice there?–now Superman has access to a universal cure-all? That’s…problematic.[/li][li]Who’s Mandrakk’s master. He point black says “The Master, my brother awakes.”–or is that another Monitor who just happens to look exactly like Mandrakk?[/li][li]Shouldn’t Superman have ended up in the future in the Legion of Three Worlds before coming back to earth? How does last issue of Final Crisis tie into this issue? [/li][/ul]
I have no idea what’s going on.
Not a new book this week… but a question regarding Enemy Ace on the “Faces of Evil” cover for the most recent issue of Booster Gold. Is Enemy Ace evil these days?
He was actually a pretty decent guy.
Despite the comm warning, the content of this link is SFW.
Aaaargh! Too many people reading GL, comic store sold out! Curses!
Anyway, thought Trinity and Birds of Prey/Calculator were rather lackluster. No surprise on the former, of course.
Supergirl/Superwoman, yeah, not so interested in Superwoman. More interested in what the heck Kara is thinking, ditching Clark and signing up with her crazy mom.
Brave & Bold was liking the storyline… until they did that. No more revisiting that plotline with Hal Jordan EVER.
On that topic, a plea to whomever it is that keeps thinking that 3-D is something we’re all dying to see in print or movie media: Stop It. Seriously, it looks crappy and is annoying. It was a sad gimmick thirty+ years ago. And your comic readers are an aging population – why do you think we’d want to strain our eyes with goofy cheapass glasses that don’t fit and don’t fit over my glasses, anyway.
So Superman Beyond actually managed to be relevant and somewhat illuminate what is going on in Final Crisis (unlike, say, almost every other Final Crisis “tie-in”). Yeah, it is still Morrison, and the story is so compressed you have to read between every panel to figure out what he’s got going on. But, still.
However. He named the end boss “MANDRAKK”. Which I cannot help but read as “MANDARK”. So I had to spend the entire story, with the end boss’s voice in my head being played by Eddie Deezen.
This is not good. In fact, this is very, very wrong.
I accepted that we had to live with “Nix Uotan” and “Zillo Valla” and “Weeja Dell”. But Mandark is beyond the pale. (particularly in the story where the good guy dons a robot suit to have a grudge match with the bad guy.)
Superman Beyond is metafiction. Darkseid may be the multiverse’s problem in reality, but in the meta-reality, it’s Mandrakk. Then again, FC #7 comes out next week - Mandrakk may yet show up.
As far as the timeline of events, shortly after the end of Superman Beyond #2, Superman would get the trouble signal seen in Legion of Three Worlds…
The Bleed as experienced in the normal way isn’t a cureall - but from the Monitors’ hyperdimension, it can be manipulated differently. They’re looking down on it from above.
The Bleed used to have a lot of parallel universes. With the reboot of Wildstorm as included in the Captain Atom mini, it would seem those options have narrowed. It’s almost as if the DC multiverse developed a branch that resembles a world from the separate, larger Wildstorm multiverse. It’s worth noting that in Planetary/Batman, Elijah Frost refers to the Crisis on Infinite Earths as a “partial multiversal collapse” - so perhaps DC’s 52 is just one in a multiverse of multiverses.
I got:
Green Lantern: 37: Meh. I don’t care about the Blues, honestly.
Black Lightning 1#: Again meh, didn’t grab me.
Thunderbolts :It was ok, but I didn’t buy that the President would travel around without superpowered protection nowadays. I’ll be interested to see who’s on the team, though, and the art’s not bad.
I haven’t really been following the whole “Rainbow Coalition Lantern Corps” things - but let’s see if this is right:
Green = Good
Yellow (Sinestro Corps) = Evil
Red = Evil
Blue = … ummm, Good?
Are there any others?
That can’t work–we saw him return in Final Crisis #6 and Superman Beyond #2 says “Continued in Final Crisis #7”
Do we have a spoilers consensus? Does anyone have an opinion? As far as I’m concerned, I’d prefer to NOT have spoilers for any comic that comes out the week of the thread, but if everyone disagrees, I’ll be happy to abide by whatever the majority wants.
The Star Sapphires, who appear to be = Crazy, but are probably going to end up
Violet = Good
and there’s the Controllers and Agent Orange, which hasn’t ended up as a ring corps yet. Since their light is greed, they’ll probably be
Orange = Evil
Spoilers: I’d say, spoiler box it if it was this week, talk away if it was earlier. 'Course, I can’t resist reading spoiler boxes, either, so it won’t make much difference to me personally.
Not quite–from what we know from Geoff Johns: the further you are from the center of the spectrum (green) the more the power controls you.
Red & Violet – you’re an instrument of the power
Orange & Indigo – You gotta fight to control the power (we haven’t seen Indigo Lanterns yet, I don’t think–but they’re supposed to be healing types)
Yellow & Blue – mostly you’re in charge
Green - The power is your instrument
So it’s not so much a good/evil thing-remember the first candidate we saw on earth for a yellow ring was Batman ('cause he could instill great fear in his enemies)-- as a "Who’s in charge? You or the color? thing. Frankly, I expect to see “good” Red Lanterns by the end of this arc–being royally pissed off isn’t necessarily bad–think about the US after Pearl Harbor–it’s how you direct the rage.
I suspect that the end of all of this will be that the Guardians will learn that you need all the colors–you can’t just banish 'em. (And we may learn that Green doesn’t equal will-power (which isn’t an emotion) but rather courage, which is)
It does work. The footnote isn’t “Read Final Crisis #7 next” - it’s “Continued in…” meaning that we’ll see more of the ramifications of the story there.
Since the colors are emotion oriented and no emotion is inherently bad, I also think at some point we’ll see “good” Red and Yellow Lanterns. In fact, apart from the assertions about Hal I have a feeling by the end of Blackest Night we’ll see a shakedown in which heroes* lead each corps, approximately like:
Red - Guy (who else for controlled rage?)
*exception #1Orange - Maybe Agent Orange or maybe some other existing character
*exception #2 - Yellow - Sinestro
Green - Hal
Blue - Kyle
Indigo - John Stewart
Violet - Carol Ferris or the new Korugaran Lantern whose name escapes me at the moment.
I like that idea, but I’d argue that the Korugaran Lantern will end up Indigo–her whole schtick is “I’m a doctor, not a warrior” and the Indigo Lanterns are Red-Cross/Healer types.
Off-topic for Green Lantern, Final Crisis 7 is coming out in 3 days–this is your last chance to make predictions.
I’ll still bet that
Bruce Wayne ends up as a New God–probably in High-Father’s role and that J’onn ends up as a New God too.
Anyone else?
I don’t think the Rage Corps will end up as good guys. Nor will the Star Sapphires in the long run.
Incidentally, DC toy solicitations have revealed the identities of two of the Black Lanterns, which I will put in a spoiler box.
Kal-L of Earth Two, and J’onn J’onzz.
No real surprise there. What would be surprising would be if they were evil throughout the story and remained so afterwards.
For the record, Grant Morrison gives an “optimum reading order” for Final Crisis, Superman Beyond, the Batman tie-ins, and Submit in a new Newsarama interview.
He also notes that Legion of Three Worlds takes place immediately after Superman Beyond #2.
So wait–what about Resist? He left that off entirely.