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Author Topic: The New 52 - Six Issues On  (Read 14570 times)
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Klar Ken T5477
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« Reply #16 on: May 24, 2012, 03:18:58 AM »

I flip thru the new stuff at the store and it is all wretched. So-called photo tracings called art and writing a nitwit could do.

Frankly I'd rather read about Jimmy's romance with a viking robot designed to get Lucy jealous for the one billionth time than pay $ for that drek. But then again those books are the world are not marketed to what I want.

The Avengers flick got me jonesing to read "new" material so I bought some Ditko Spideys -- new to me anyways. And I'm reading them in reverse order.  When I get to the end her'll be bitten.  Now That's HIGH concept.
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DakotaSmith
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« Reply #17 on: June 06, 2012, 06:08:18 AM »

Nine issues in, and my opinion hasn't changed about Action and Superman.  The protagonist remains unengaging and a bit of a jerk.  Not worth spending money on.

Worse, they've now frakked up Earth-Two.

I like the idea of a multiverse.  While I understood what they were doing with Crisis on Infinite Earths, I think the DC cosmos lost a great deal when they eliminated infinitely parallel worlds.  There are some really good stories in a multiverse that have never been tapped.  The Phantom Zone has got to be some kind of parallel reality.  What if super-criminals like Darkseid who can't possibly be held in any Earthly prison are sent to alternate Earths -- ones where human beings never evolved?  It's a perfectly humane sentence for an immortal:  ample food and water, nice scenery ... and no one to bother.  Ever.

Or what if some character crossed over to an alternate universe so nearly identical to his own that no one notices the difference for months?  Over in the other books, this character has disappeared entirely, but in his own, everything seems to be going fine -- including occasional visits from other super-heros.

After a few issues, the character discovers they're in an alternate universe whose sole difference is that the Liberty Bell cracked ten years later.

As I say, lots of interesting stories in a multiverse, and DC was the worse for eliminating it.  I like that New 52 has brought that back.  I dislike what they've done with it so far.

Earth 2 is no Earth-Two.  I wish it were, but it simply isn't.

Here's the deal:  Earth-Two is where the Golden Age characters lived.  That was the cool idea.  It gave continuity to the past and gave readers a warm fuzzy feeling that the character from the old comics were still running around out there.

This Earth 2 is just an alternate universe.  We've seen those.  There are neat stories in the multiverse, but the appeal of Earth-Two was that it literally was the characters of the Golden Age.

If they wanted to make it a cool idea, this Earth 2 would literally be Earth-One of the pre-Crisis Silver Age.    Having reinstated the Multiverse, Earth-One now exists out there, somewhere.  In fact, so is Earth-Two.

That's the cool idea: the nostalgia of the heroes of the past and present meeting.

That said, I like Power Girl and Huntress very much.  This was the origin PG always deserved rather than the continually hacked-together mess that her post-Crisis backstory became.  She's a refugee from a disaster in an alternate universe:  perfect.

I must mention that her costume is, if anything, even less practical than the original.  Yes, I know she's always been the women's libber with the giant circle displaying her cleavage, but this costume has literally painted a nipple with a target around it on her left breast.  I mean, seriously?  It smacks of a slutty lower-back tattoo.

Huntress also works, but only the Batman's daughter is a cool idea.  DC's previous attempts to shoe-horn the Huntress into the post-Crisis continuity didn't work for the simple reason that the Huntress isn't the cool idea.  The Batman's daughter is the cool idea.

The two of them are a nice team after the friction between Superman and Batman post-Crisis.  PG and Huntress work as the Superman/Batman team we'll never see again.

Those two work.  Jay Garrick and Alan Scott, not so much.

I'm on the fence about the idea that Jay gets his powers from one of the Amazons' fallen gods.  "Heavy water vapors" is, indeed, a bit too naive for modern audiences.  So is "struck by electrified chemicals," for that matter.  But the best part of the Flash is that he's always been science-based.

Well, he was until they invented the Speed Force and frakked it all up.  But when the character is written well, he's science-based.

So I like that it's not "heavy water."  I'm not sure I like it being magical.

What I really don't like is the character.  Jay Garrick was a frakking scientist and this kid seems like a loser, unlikable, and too frakking young.

The two cool idea of the Flash since the Silver Age are the multiverse and the Flash "legacy."  Whether it's Barry getting the idea to become a super-hero from a Golden Age Flash comic or Wally having an accident exactly like his uncle's, it's got a "family" feel.  It's lost now, and in its place is this snot-nosed loser.

Alan Scott ... ok, I'm just going to say it:  pandering.

Look, I have no problem with gay characters.  I thought it really worked with Apollo and Midnighter in The Authority (not in Stormwatch -- that's just a pale imitation of the original).

I think that it makes total sense that Wonder Woman would be gay.  However, in Diana's case, I would use her background to explore some aspects of the character.  Rather than make her "here, queer, and in your face," I'd write her as just being matter-of-fact about it.

It's an island of women where men haven't set foot in a millennia or two -- of course they're lesbians.  Duh.  Don't have her talk about it or be public about it.  It's a society where lesbianism is the norm, it's not a big deal, and nobody goes around trying to "scare the stiffs" because there are no stiffs to scare.

Then you put this character into her first interactions with men -- not only in her lifetime, but in her entire culture's history.  And what if ...

What if she experiments with men?

I mean seriously:  the vast majority of women she knows in Man's World have sex with men.  What if she started wondering, "Do I actually prefer women, or was it just that I know nothing else?"

It's a perfectly valid question, and better still it invites all sorts of conflict of the kind usually reserved for homosexuals:  tension at home when her mother finds out she's sleeping with men, hysteria from activist groups that she's gone to the other side, conservative talk-show hosts tripping over themselves to interview her ...

It takes everything that homosexuals have to deal with and turns it on its ear.  It could even wind up that Diana isn't into men after all.  The opportunity for commentary is there, and DC won't do it.  Instead, she'll just have "a strong lesbian" to try and pander to lesbians.

Sadly, this is exactly what they're doing with Alan Scott.  Sadly, it has precedent.

Green Lantern has always been a reflection of his age.  In the Golden Age, when magic was of interest to the 10-year-old readers of comics, GL was magical.  In the Silver Age, when technological progress was king and test pilots the daring knights of the sky, GL was a test pilot.

Then they frakked up GL completely by making him a super-villain.  Still, he was a reflection of an age where culture had turned toward pop psychology.  Consequently GL had a psychological bent.

The next GL was an artist.  This coincided with a strong advancements in pop art.  I don't mean Art in museums, but rather commercial art:  CGI in advertising, new blockbuster movies with CGI, etc.

It wasn't of long-term interest to the public, however, and eventually the test pilot was back.  Only this time he was an Air Force officer, to coincide with a decade of war in the public consciousness.  Additionally, private-citizen test pilots had long since been legislated out of existence.  The only way Hal Jordan could possibly fly advanced jets today is if he were in the military.

(This also make Hal a less interesting character, by the way.  Hal's hallmark is that he's an individualist who wields the most powerful weapon in the universe.  Making him a part of an Earthly collective -- even the military -- just isn't Hal Jordan's style.  He's an Old West US Marshal in space -- with all the individual latitude that implies.)

Now we've got a gay GL because it's become vogue.

The cool idea about GL is that he's an intergalactic cop with a magic ring.  A gay GL would make sense -- to be honest, I could see that working for Kyle Rayner or even Guy Gardner.  Perhaps John Stewart, depending on which version of him you mean.

But not Alan Scott.  I'm sorry, but that's just pandering.  They're shoe-horning the character into a sexuality that was just never intended.  Alan Scott always came off as a pretty conservative guy.  The 1970s had him occasionally taking time off from the JSA to run his business (which ultimately failed because he spent so much time ring-slinging).  I could see writing Alan as a Rupert Murdoch:  king of a media empire with a strong conservative bent to it.

But this Alan Scott is just ... bland.  They're pandering, and it shows.  You can tell this for certain because they're hedging their bets.  They didn't make Hal Jordan gay:  he's GL #1 and you can't afford to piss off the fanboys.  Instead, they made GL #2 or #3 or #4 gay -- and GL of an alternate universe, to boot.

Pandering, pure and simple.

The triumverate of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman of Earth 2 we barely get to know ... which is probably just as well, since DC likely would have frakked them up as well.

In any case, the only thing I've actually enjoyed so far has been Power Girl and the Huntress.  The rest ... meh.  The lunatics are still running the asylum.  I fear they'll run the entire damned industry into the ground.

Where are you, Julie?  We desperately need you!

Dakota Smith
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« Reply #18 on: June 26, 2012, 03:11:05 PM »

George Perez did a Q&A session at the Superman celebration and confirmed that DC is a directionless mess on the character. Some quotes:

Quote
“and unfortunately not through any fault of Dan DiDio — he was no longer the last word, I mean a lot of people were now making decisions [..] they were constantly going against each other, contradicting, again in mid-story. The people who love my Superman arc, the first six issues, I thank you. What you read, I don’t know. Because the fact that, after I wrote it I was having such frustration that I told them, ‘Here, this is my script. If you change it, that’s your prerogative, don’t tell me. Don’t ask me to edit it, don’t ask me to correct it, because  I don’t want to change something that you’re going to change again in case you disagree.” No no, Superman is a big character. I was flattered by the responsibility, but I thought this was getting a little tough.”

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“I didn’t mind the changes in Superman, I just wish it was the same decision Issue 1 or Issue 2,” he continued. “And I had to kept rewriting things because another person changed their mind, and that was a lot tougher. It wasn’t the same as doing Wonder Woman. I was basically given a full year to get Wonder Woman established before she actually had to be enfolded into the DC Universe properly. And I had a wonderful editor Karen Berger who ran shotgun for me. They wanted me to recreate what I did from Wonder Woman, but it’s not the same age, not the same atmosphere, I couldn’t do it any more. And the writer who replaced me, Keith Giffen, was very, very nice. I’ve known Keith since we both started in the industry, he called me up when they asked him to do Superman to make sure I wasn’t being fired off Superman. And regrettably I did have to tell him no, I can’t wait to get off Superman. It was not the experience I wanted it to be.”

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“I had no idea Grant Morrison was going to be working on another Superman title,” he said. “I had no idea I was doing it five years ahead, which means … my story, I couldn’t do certain things without knowing what he did, and Grant wasn’t telling everybody. So I was kind of stuck. ‘Oh, my gosh, are the Kents alive? What’s his relationship with all of these characters? Who exists?’ And DC couldn’t give me answers. I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re deciding all these things and you mean even you don’t know what’s going on in your own books?’ So I became very frustrated …”

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b9Llfv-AQ0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b9Llfv-AQ0</a>

Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians.
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