Big week. Marvel Zombies wraps; Young Avengers reveals some more backstory and is all kinds of cool; Infinite Crisis #6 hits with some neat glimpses into the DC Multiverse, and a major bummer of a death. OMAC Project I-Cri special is out, and sets the stage for the new Checkmate book; Outsiders #5 is okay, but I look forward to seeing the villain next ish; JSA #84 makes some continuity references that I want explained; Teen Titans #34 shows us the new team. And, god help us, Wendy and Marvin.
Anyone care to spoil IC #6 for me?
Y: The Last Man #44: “Robots are the natural enemies of monkeys.” Partially just a “man, Japan is fucked-up” romp, but still fun.
Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #41: The epic continues. Nice to see King Shark’s sudden ability to talk explained. I’m really liking this.
Jonah Hex #6: I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be reading this title. I mean, it’s a damned good story, but it’s the *same *story every issue. A little more variation would be nice.
Teen Titans #34: One has to wonder what Robin thinks he’s doing. I mean, that’s not a great crew he’s got there. I did like the Robocop flashes of the missing year.
The Omac Project Special #1: Ah crap. Now I have to buy Checkmate. Damn it. I love it when geopolitical intrigue and superheroes mix.
Detective Comics #818: No! Not the Ventriloquist! Magpie, KGBeast sure, but I liked that goober.
Infinite Crisis #6: Yeah. Saw that coming. It was great right up to the climax (especially Black Adam, damn!), where it suffered from being overly telegraphed and a bit anti-climatic. And what was the point of the Spectre scene?
Batman and his Crew from IC #5 take out Brother Eye. Alex experiments with the other Earths, slamming them together two at a time. He loses a finger to the space-team. Superboy Prime returns as Nightwing, Wonder Girl, and Kon-El assault Alex’s tower. Psycho Pirate is killed, messily. The two Superboys battle and crash into Alex’s tower - resulting in the multiple Earths collapsing into “new Earth”. Kon-El dies.
The Spectre scene may be building to something. Reminds me of another spoiler though.
Star Sapphire gets fragged by the Spectre.
My shop missed pulling Detective for me, dangit.
Random** IC6** thought…
They managed to sneak in a Swamp Thing cameo!
Less random thoughts.
Black Adam is officially badass. You cannot beat Stooging someone to death. We’ve seen the body. 
Alas poor Kid…at least he died well. I knew rumours there was a delay to change the ending to put 2 Earths in were bull.
Marvel Zombies #5 - Nice wrapup to the series. Not as funny as the first four, but it worked. Looks like the Zombie-verse is…in trouble. 5 Galacti. O_O
Jonah Hex 6 - Meh. Not a BAD issue, really. But not as good as the last 5 have been. It didn’t really hang together that well.
Inf Cri #6: Good, but not great. I wasn’t too attached to any of the deceased so that didn’t fade me too much. He went down like a champ though. Kinda pissed that they didn’t do anything with the Flash(es?) this issue. Favorite lines:
-So you really call yourself Mr. Terrific?
-You really call yourself Black Lightning?
Teen Titans #34: Read IC before this! Good set-up issue, but it didn’t quite hook me. New New Teen Titans, heh.
Some observations on Inf Cri: [spoiler]When Luthor goes for Earth-Prime, he’s addressing us, and reaching right out of the comic. It’s our world he’s found and is coming for. So, Conner didn’t just save the DCU, he saved our world. He saved us. Here’s to you, Kon-El.
Also, I’m not quite sure what to make of the scene of the earths collapsing into “New Earth”. There’s some stuff that contradicts previous continuity there. Joe Chill named as the Wayne’s murderer. Wonder Woman among the original Justice League. A caped Superboy with Krypto. That last one could be SB-Prime. So, there’s a reboot after all. Albeit, from what we’ve seen of the OYL, not a tremendously momentous one. [/spoiler]
And yeah, what’s up with dangling Barry in front of us and not following up?
I think you’re seriously misunderstanding this. This isn’t flashes of the combined continuity, this is flashes of the alternate Earths as they collapse back into the single Earth.
I don’t think so. There’s stuff that’s happening right now (Batman and GL arriving, Kal-L and Superboy screaming), and then there’s stuff that’s almost like Post-Crisis continuity, but not quite. And the shots of Chill, Wonder Woman as a tree, and happy Superboy are repeated several times. Previously, alternate universe stuff has been more chaotic and more obviously not any continuity building to what we have now. It’d be Batman being a viking or something bizarre like that, not knowing who killed his parents, if they were going for the multiverse stuff.
Your interpretation contradicts what we’ve seen of OYL - specifically in Superman.
Superman’s history, before coming to Metropolis, is clearly unknown. The makers of the movie about his life have to make most of the details up. And they get most of them - specifically where he grew up (they speculate Chicago) and what kind of dog he had (they say collie) - wrong. Meaning he wasn’t Superboy, since a public superhero in Smallville, Kansas with his pet superdog (whose breed is unknown (to me at least), but is clearly not a collie) would be known.
Your arguments aren’t very convincing even in and of themselves, either.
The ‘things happening right now’…are happening on at least 2 different Earths, and involve the Superman of Earth-2 and Superboy-Prime - who have no place in the combined world. The Alternate Earths we saw earlier in the issue included the post-Zero Hour Legion, so another Earth, including pre-Zero Hour continuity - like, for instance, the pre-Crisis Earth-1 - fits with what we’ve seen in this issue. The general theme of the image is the same as that of Peres’s cover for the issue - which, again, shows flashes of multiple earths as they combine into one.
Teen Titans 34 - Cries They broke up Raven and Beast Boy! We got, what, 2 issues? Meanies! OTOH, I loved the rest of it.
The new roster looks solid. I like Kid Devil, particularly. Also…Wendy and Marvin. Wendy and bloody Marvin. That’s actually beautiful.
Everyone’s reactions to what’s going on are pretty much right on, I think. Particularly Vic and Cassie.
‘Bart’s retired’ is an…interesting line. Be interesting to see just what it means.
OMAC special - Lame, lame, lamety lame. But…the same goes for the OMAC mini, so that’s not a surprise.
JSA 84 - No real comment, except…Rags drew Alan’s ring right this time!
No they don’t. We know that Clark was spotted before he came to Metropolis. Who said “the mysterious ‘Super-Boy’” had to operate openly?
Yes, it does. He’s posing, in a bright red and blue costume, right in front of the Welcome to Smallville sign. That’s either operating openly, or such an inept attempt at hiding, ‘the Superboy of Smallville’ would be known whether he wanted it or not.
This is also ignoring, now that I look back to see exactly what that picture looks like that this bit is happening explicitly before the worlds recombined.
The problem I have with your interpretation is that these events are way too subtle to be scenes from alternate earths. Nothing from Earth-2 or Earth-X or any of teh really divergent Aztec earths or anything like that. If that was what was being shown they’d be more obvious, and, more to the point, there’d be more of them, instead of showing a few key scenes over and over again. I think we’re meant to believe that tehse things are now part of the history again.
Time, and the supporting feature in 52, will tell.
RE: Infinite Crisis #6.
Hey, I thought you were supposed to be dead!
Nerd fights are awesome. Seriously… I have no clue what’s going on but I love it.
Apparently, I am. Or at least my namesake is dead. What a waste! I loved the Psycho Pirate character (obviously I loved the character enough to make it my username on this board) and they had to kill him off. I’m bummed, to say the least.
Off to read Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run. AGAIN.
Again - look back at the Earths we saw earlier. The Western characters, an old Imaginary Story featuring the second generation Batman and Superman, Earth-S, the post-Zero Hour 30th Century and a fairly generic world I can find no particular theme to. The Tangents and Bizarro World are the only worlds the least bit ‘off’. The ‘too subtle’ shards are in the same flavour. There’s nothing about them at all that suggests they’re the new canon - and, again, they contradict what we know from OYL.