Aldo reads DC's New 52 (So you don't have to)

THINGS I DON'T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT TO BUY UPDATE

Batwing #5: OOOH, gender conflict. Truly, it is BECAUSE OF THE WANG. And then lol at people who have no idea about African geography, politics, geo-politics or in fact anything outside their own continent. Seriously, what does Egypt matter to any Africans who aren't from Egypt? Without these two utter wtf parts the rest of the book is actually pretty good, but indebted to GMoz' Batman Inc in more than just the origin of the hero, more in the overall faceless bad-guy-terrorist-organisation-The-Base level. I just don't get why anybody would buy this, which is probably explained by the sales levels.

Green Arrow #5: So the bad guy from a couple of issues ago has now become unbelievably stupid and wants to undo everything from those episodes (presumably because he doesn't remember it). Plus he sees Ollie walking off-page as a civvy and coming back onpage as GA and makes no connection. That was the most intelligent thing written either in this issue or in connection to it. Mid-80s fourth rate crap hero book, nothing more.

Hawk & Dove #5: ROB LIEFELD TAKES OVER! THE FUTURE STARTS HERE! But wait, Rob needs help. So who does he bring in? MARAT FUCKING MICHAELS. Sub-porno shitty Avatar standby of the first water. But seriously, page 10 is maybe the most ridiculous page in a mainstream bok maybe EVER. Dawn's "normal clothes" are a good start, and the levitating foot is a stroke of genius, but kicking down the chimney is laugh-out-loud hysterical. And that is better than the following 10 pages. Reading this shot is barely tolerable any more. Anyway, Dawn and Deadman have split up which fucks up the continuity (and a huge chunk of plot) in two other ongoing books which in <6 months is a pretty spectacular collapse. Nearly as good as changing 20% of your staff.

JLI #5: "She puts the diva in Godiva." That is genuinely the best thing about this book, and even that doesn't work in terms of pronunciation. 'dEEva' vs 'godEYEva'. Anyway, this is all about INTERNAL TENSION. Vixen vs Batman = optimist vs pessimist. Booster and Guy Gardner fighting for who's the best. Me fighting the bile rising as I read this bollocks. Booster and Godiva are fucking right now, off page. That's a comforting though, isn't it?

Men of War #5: YES, YES THAT'S TRUE. BEING FROM ONE OF THE QUARTERS OF NEW YORK MAKES YOU NATURALLY BETTER THAN A RESSURECTED HERO OF WATERLOO.Gung-ho is one thing, this is something else. The backup story is maybe even worse, a cross between a Brangelina action film and an overly romanticised pair of Cold War soldiers. In a week of shit 'shit books' this is maybe the worst.

Static Shock #5: Last issue cliffhanger dealt with in two pages. Check. Multiple references to Wildstorm property. Check. New character introduced in lieu of plot. Check. Racist NOT RACIST REALLY language. Check. Implication everybody who is not in this book is racist? Check. Dreadful comic? Check.

You know, I might be conflating the ST peach thing with the one near to the end of Moore's run (proving Alec is back after Gotham?) when a room gets filled with peach blossom.

Peter Milligan, you are British.

So I hear.

There is, therefore, no excuse for the last four pages of this.

What's on them?

Not a single one. THAT IS NOT BRITAIN.

What isn't?

As if that wasn't enough,

What wasn't?

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

So do you think the whole "new 52" exercise is already starting to lose it's momentum?

it never had any, they started out running late with no coherent creative vision of the reboot, and by four months in are running multi-title crossovers between Wildstorm titles

given that and the creators hired, Didio's grand vision appears to be "be 90s Image" without the lateness

dude wonderwoman blows

OK, the Pete Milligan thing is a scene where a guy gets pulled out of an American house with an American car outside of it, by three cops in American unifroms driving an American car and then beaten to death with American clubs in the street in front of his brother (who then becomes a Red Lantern. It's set, for no apparent reason in "Little Ockdon, United Kingdom". Which doesn't exist - closest match I can find is Little Ockenden, which is in Essex. And if you want to know what that's like... start googling "The Only Way Is Essex" or TOWIE and prepare to be amazed.

Best case is that it's all the artist and Pete Milligan never bothered to collaborate with him at all, or didn't care to correct where he didn't understand what he was being told to draw - worst case is that Milligan wrote it that way. So why the random location?

by four months in are running multi-title crossovers between Wildstorm titles

New board description.

Best case is that it's all the artist and Pete Milligan never bothered to collaborate with him at all, or didn't care to correct where he didn't understand what he was being told to draw

dude, loooooool at the idea that Milligan gets to see a copy of the art before it's printed, let alone that on the running-late-from-the-start nu52 deadlines that any editor would have time to ask for corrections. not that DC have seemed to have editors capable of seeking corrections at all, generally, in the last 15 years.

IIRC the John Smith issue of Hellblazer had American cop cars in it? And check out the Sydney Opera House in DC's Invasion! mini someday.

hawk&dove = classic when done by ditko (just the other day i saw in forbidden planet a nice new hardback collecting all the ditko H&Ds - retail price = £45!!)

btw is it just me or was Mr Bones not rhyming at all? I know Johnson and Williams hid them in Chase, but I didn't spot a sneaky rhyme scheme in this.

― robocop last year was a 'shop (sic), Sunday, 18 September 2011 21:38 (3 months ago)

now we've got an extended scene of him in Batwomang #5, and maybe I'm looking too much for a rhythm to clue off of, but I can't pick any consistent rhyming.

China Mieville to write a new title based on existing property

Not sure how I feel about that

Never heard of China Mieville, who is she?

oh that is just perfection

I feel so proud, I don't think I've ever said anything that resulted in a Tuomas question before.

he was supposed to be doing Swamp Thing at one point wasn't he?

oh right, it's Dial H for Hero. With Brian Bolland tho

where did you get that from, i'm curious about this idea / can't work out what kind of dc property i'd want to see him write

xpost oh. what the hell is that

Dial H = 60s DC series, revivied in the 80s. Every issue a teenage boy would use his magical phone to transform into a different superhero that had been designed/suggested by the readers. It was balls.

Is Bolland actually going to be drawing a comic strip again? And if so, what's the publication schedule?

Just going by google
http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/story/2012-01-12/dc-comics-unveils-six-new-series/52504982/1

that does not sound like something i can imagine wanting to see a mieville version of, though i don't know what would be. new gods, maybe.

The irony is so delicious as to be borderline toxic.

I can't imagine having much interest in this, though I do wonder what Mr. Miéville will do without towering edifices of prose.

He wrote/drew his own web comic on his tumblr site, although it's a single panel per installment and was short-lived: http://chinamieville.net/tagged/London_intrusion

BTW, Mr. Bolland isn't doing interiors, just covers.

And I remember seeing a few of his comics and not being particularly struck by any of them.

first cancellations announced, all ending with issue 8 (leaving the final two out of the already announced collections - way to go DC!):

BLACKHAWKS, HAWK AND DOVE, MEN OF WAR, MISTER TERRIFIC, O.M.A.C. and STATIC SHOCK

sad to see O.M.A.C. go, if only for the art.

Batgirl #5: This feels like it does less, but achieves more than any of the previous issues. The cliffhanger last time about Babs' mum is almost thrown away as they have a coffee together and Babs tells her she's not that interested (although it'll undoubtedly come back to the plot as she's moving to Gotham - HELLO SOAP OPERA!). Anyway, this new plot deals with a character called Gretel who, to be honest is a bit hackneyed - she has some kind of mind control gun which makes people violent, but she seems to be doing it to complain about Bruce buying a building to do urban renewal. Which makes this probably the least likely campaign against the gentrification of New York since Alex in NYC kept on going round CBGBs taking photos of his kids in front of it. Still, we find out that Babs' recovery from being crippled was down to some 'neural implant surgery' which probably means it was down to Bruce, following Mister Terrific's plans, or something. It ends with Bruce attacking Batgirl with a crowbar under Gretel's power, which presumably means he isn't because I'm not having it that he isn't so much better than her at fighting that he wouldn't win in the first few seconds. But, you know, let's keep up the pretence so we're still excited next month.

Batman & Robin #5: I really wish this was better. Bruce and Alfred find out what we knew last month about Damien going off with the bad guy, then Bruce tells us a lot about him without actually telling us anything. Still, we get to a climax with Robin pointing a gun at the head of a slave trader. Let's see them go another month without advancing this after that.

Batwoman #5: Beautiful as ever, but the writing here feels a bit rushed in order to get the Weeping Woman stuff out of the way and have Bones give Kate the same gig as she should be on. Maybe I've been giving the writing too much of a free pass becasue of how this looks. I mean, if it's been building to this reveal of YET ANOTHER global crime operation running out of Gotham, doesn't this suggest Batman isn't really that effective? Not that I'd say it to his face, but maybe he should stick to shaking down petty thugs after people's fur coats after all. At least he seems able to cope with that.

Demon Knights #5: After last month's trip into GMoz territory this is far simpler but no less fun. The shooting of last week was just to cause pain and teach Exoristos, who in turn is revealed as a precursor to Wonder Woman (and who, secretly, I hope she turns out to be - continuity be damned). Merlin, Mordred and Morgaine all turn up as ghosts to push up the Arthurian content then BAM! Vandal Savage reveals his true colours and people get attcked by a giant stone rhinocerous. I'll just repeat that. A GIANT STONE RHINOCEROUS. You don't get that in your X-Mans now, do you? Eh?

Frankenstein #5: This tells the same story as OMAC#5, yet it's not the one being cancelled. GET BETTER STANDARDS, DC READERS. Still, Ray Palmer becomes The Atom (kind of) and Frankie is clearly going too shag Not Abe Sapien, despite the fact he's married. OOH, CONTROVERSIAL. Why can't this get cut instead?

Legion Lost #5: A fantastic cop-out ending as the bad guy gets shown he's actually done the right thing after all and the plague he was bringing is the next stage of human development to take us to THE FUTURE i.e. Legion-era proper. Then the Martian Manhunter talks up and gives one of those introductions where his name appears in a fancy font like it does on the cover of his own book when he speaks it - except of course he doesn't have his own book so this is the first time anybody sees it, and by G_d it's hideous. On the other hand, SPROCKING HELL, Gates is back! That's worth celebrating, isn't it? We were all supposed to thing he died a couple of issues back. Take your plusses where you find them, I say. Other wise you end up in Sadface territory, mark my words.

Suicide Squad #5: Floyd shoots lots of people, Diablo burns lots of other, King Shark has a light snack that JUST MIGHT extend his sentence. Oops. Amanda Waller has a conversation with her husband that rips off the guy in the power station in The Hand Of Fear, but since that's one of my favourite things ever I don't really care. She's then an absolute bitch to Floyd, mainly because she needs him to go straight back out on the road - it turns out Harley Quinn is much cleverer than she is and set up the whole thing. This undoubtedly links back into her being told the Joker was dead last time round, but it's hard to see how the Squad can do what they do and her remain alive which is kind of a limiting plot as far as the DCU is concerned. Never mind, this is still one of the highlight books of the Johnsiverse and commended to all of you.

Deathstroke #5: I should love a comic where somebody throws a nuclear submarine at somebody else, right? So why do I hate this? Well, first off they get to the aforementioned submarine throwing appropos of nothing. The thrower turns up on Page 16, then 17-18 and 19-20 are splash pages. Does that seem lazy? The rest is Deathstroke wandering round being GRUFF AND MANLY talking to himself, when he's not criticising trainees. He has an ice bath to show he's old and it's very nearly the most exciting thing that happens. A travesty.

Green Lantern #5: All you need to know about this is that Sinestro decomissions his giant yellow lantern, which means the Sinestro Lanterns don't exist any more. Presumably including the one that's currently in the Kyle Rayner book, but I'm betting not given we have such on-the-ball, continuity-monitoring editors and editors-in-chief. Sinestro them dumps Hal on Earth and lets him keep his ring but doesn't give him a lantern to charge it. Hal has a bit of a rage about it (unfortunately for him he's not sufficiently upset that the Red Lantern recruiting beacon which turns somebody on Earth into one at the same time wasn't looking at him, or maybe he just wasn't RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH enough) then has a bit of a snog with Carol. For the finale we cut to the Guardians who, in YET ANOTHER UTTERLY DICK MOVE decide they're going to create another army to replace the GLC. Because they Manhunters were such a success at that, obviously. Aw, little blue guys. Will you never learn?

Grifter #5: You know what this reminds me of? An Avatar book, designed to show off the talents of an artist who isn't really all that good. I couldn't care less about the blue ghosty things or the black curate, whoever that is, to be honest. Page 10 typifies what's wrong with the writing on this: Grifter shoots an alium on the last panel of P9 - in panel one he gloats and shouts about it bare-faced and wearing a jacket - in panel two it is shown he's surrounded by them only with the closest only about two feet away and they all spot him, he still is barefaced and wearing a jacket - in panel three he draws a gun out from his underpants, still wearing the jacket - in panel four he puts on his mask, while not wearing the jacket, and with both hands free - in panel five he takes the jacket off - in the first panel of the next page he's firing guns with both hands. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? I thought about saying Rob Liefeld isn't that incompetent, but he clearly is so that isn't a very good example. Any halfway decent artist isn't that incompetent. Does that work? This is an absolute chore to read and is arguably worse than Hawk & Dove. There, I said it.

Mister Terrific #5: Michael thinks his way out of the fight by setting everybody else free, then gets sadfaced about slavery in front of a picture of a panel which implies the 19th C slave traders used to throw their captives overboard in massive numbers for shits & giggles, which of course would have made complete economic sense... he then tries to draw a parallel between being black and being a hermaphrodite... who then blows up a spaceship with a blast of pure hermaphroditism. He then steps through a blue wibbly think and ends up in his lab, having been upstaged in his own book by every other character for the second month on the bounce. The end of this will be a mercy killing, but it's possibly more amazing this ever got the green light in the first place.

Resurrection Man #5: So, last issue's cliffhanger is resolved in that he only got hit so hard so he won't resurrect "on Earth". So how does an angel fix that? She gets on her mobile phone to Heaven and asks them to look for Mitch when he gets admitted to Heaven Hospital. Obviously. Deathstroke shows up and kills some people and a speech bubble saves a REALLY weird piece of art where a woman's arm shrinks by about 50% (and don't try and claim it's perspective, please). The script actually draws attention to it, although it's actually talking about a different character whose arm has ACTUALLY gone. THIS ALL SEEMS TO BE A FLASHBACK TO BEFORE THE BOOK STARTED. Maybe. It turns out in the end that the angel fucked up. So much for infallibility.

Superboy #5: Hmm. It is "impossible" for a superhuman (or a robot mimicking a superhuman) to lift three tons. Which isn't much heavier than most American cars. Do writers read anything these days? This also features a man turns into shadow dogs when he's annoyed, Superboy being Not Magneto and some bedroom antics. OK, that last one is a bit of a blind - some bad guys turn up in Superboy's room and call him names. I want to love this, but this is the most Wildstorm book in the Johnsiverse and I have no affection or nostalgia for it. A shame.

UPDATE!
Hawk & Dove cancelled two issues after Rob Liefeld made writer & artist, before a single one of his authorial issues ships.
FURTHER UPDATE!
Kyle Higgins and Joe Bennett fired off Deathstroke, to be replaced by writer/artist Rob Liefeld!
Artist-turned-writer Tony Daniel fired off The Savage Hawkman, to be replaced by artist-turned-writer Rob Liefeld!
One of (if not the) the only new-to-DC writers on The Nu52, Nathan Edmondson, fired off Grifter, to be replaced with 24-year-DC-veteran-without-ever-showing-one-iota-of-skill-development, Rob Liefeld.

I love that the answer to a Liefield comic being cancelled for low sales is more Liefeld. Maybe they want those other three to die too.

http://i1.cdnds.net/12/02/618x940/comics_deathstroke_rob_liefeld.jpg

There are claims online this is an X-Force cover of Cable which has been tracecd and re-drawn.

I like how he incorporated a life jacket into the outfit. Those are nice and soft looking shoulder whatever they ares.

Liefeld, still drawing shoulder pads on comic characters in 2012. You've got to love it.

DC2012 = Marvel 1992?

Only without the foil embossed covers.

YET

DC2012 = Marvel 1992?

given that and the creators hired, Didio's grand vision appears to be "be 90s Image" without the lateness

― Θ ̨Θƪ (sic), Monday, 9 January 2012 16:25 (1 week ago)

Batman #5: Umm. Wow. This is one of the best Batbooks of all time. There are undoubtedly times when people could compare it to GMoz's Batman of Zur-en-arrh, and I'm sure there have been some superb 'trapped Batman gets a bit deranged' stories in the past, but this is never less than brilliant. The raggedy Batman's disorientation leaps off the page, abetted by some good old-fashioned creative pagination, but the payoff has to be a hallucination, right? RIGHT? Why isn't it time for the next issue yet? This is how reading comics is supposed to feel.

DCU Presents Deadman #5: Is it wrong to be glad this is over and we'll (hopefully) get a better story next time round? This is basically a monologue about OOOH MYSTIC AAAH DO YOU SEE with the odd interjection from someone who wants to be a God but isn't up to the job yet. And a largely pointless fight at the end with weird observations from strangers - "Hey! I know that guy! We swapped spit!" might just be the standout. I guess there's an argument which says this is about 30 issues of Cerebus condensed to 20 pages but I'd rather read Dave Sim any day. Not great, but it's the Challs up next. Unfortunately it's written by Dan DiDio. Ho hum.

LoSH #5: After the conclusion of the plot in the last issue we get the semi-traditional 'look at the Legion in downtime' issue where nothing happens and we see personal lives. I don't mind these at all, but is issue 5 not maybe a bit early for one in the run of a series? Oh well. I know I always say 'for the fans' but it's more true than ever this month. NOT FOR YOU.

Nightwing #5: SPOOKYTIMES AT THE CIRCUS. The book we found last time maybe has something to do with demons and shit. This is not the direction I expected the book to go in. For me, this is not a good thing although I can live with it. Part of me wants it to go down the 9PM ON FOX route of it just being about a travelling circus where one of them dresses up to fight crime and fuck a hot chick off camera every week. I would read the shit out of that book. Someone should write it. Maybe I will.

Supergirl #5: Plot, plot and more plot. We get the background story that explains all the Superman stuff from the first couple of issues and we find out just about everything we needto know about Kara. Despite the stuff with Reign at the end this is pretty much all filler no thriller - I guess it's inevitable when you're setting up a new universe you have to explain things eventually, it just feels like this book is doing all the backstory first which instinctively seems wrong. It's still better than most of the Johnsiverse output at the end of the day though.

Wonder Woman #5: The first thing you need to know about this book is that Poseidon is now living in the River Thames. Actually, that's pretty much all you need to know. A giant talking fish and some mer-horses. Throw in a cameo fron Cerberus and you've pretty much got everything you could want. Marvellous. Is it wrong to want Lennox to the one from Animal Man rather than Constantine-lite?

Birds of Prey #5: Now with added lesbians! So it turns out the events of the previous issues may not now have happened, or if they did then everybody's forgotten about them. In fact, everybody seems to have amnesia in this, and Black Canary may have set up Starling but it'll probably turn out she didn't and it was all set up by our mystery exploding bad guys and nobody will remember anyway so they'll all go for a cup of coffee and a muffin and talk about guys they fancy but are out of their league and the latest ways to accessorise a cape with sexy crime-fighting boots. I think I like the bad books more than the good books these days.

Blue Beetle #5: A summary. The hero gives his best mate a beetle robot to make him better after trying to kill him last month, which turns him into Darth Maul at the end of the issue. The bad woman reveals herself as the bad woman, while simultaneously offending any Indians reading (Did you know they routinely blind orphans in ritualised ceremonies? Neither did I.) and almost but doesn't quite capture our hero. Meanwhile in space, the Older Than The Lanterns good/bad guys who own the scarab forget what they're supposed to be doing because they're going to fight a space elephant in Green Lantern New Guardians #10. Two issues after this title has been cancelled. You couldn't make it up. Although Tony Bedard obviously did.

Captain Atom #5: The good Captain has a dream, which he discusses at length with a terrapin. Then "some kind of organic bile" surrounds a diner. How do you fight organic bile? WITH ATOMS. Unfortunately it has weird mouth/arm things which are better than atoms, it seems according to the final panel. JT Krul gets paid for this, you know.

Catwoman #5: Judd Wimick does not understand physics. Falling half a mile out of the sky then stopping in a matter of feet is going to hurt more than dislocating your shoulder. And I'm not quite convinced it gives you the strength to punch out somebody who might be as powerful as Superman either. Throw in an opportunity to get nekkid and show Selina nekkid trying to get into bed with a masseur and HEY PRESTO that's DC today. So, Catwoman has all the money that bents cops in Gotham ever took which just happens to be in the same bag at the same time? WHO CARES. Just give us more T&A.

Green Lantern Corps #5: Lanterns grow like plants and act as fertiliser. Do you need any more than that? Now wonder the Keepers got pissed off when their World Manure got taken away by the little bald blue guys. Guy Gardner puts together a team of old hard men to go and beat them up. Anyone would think he'd been watching recent Stallone films. It turns out they need guns to do it so they steal them from Space Pirates. This cannot end well.

Red Hood #5: Arsenal shoots a dragon/gargoyle thing with an electric arrow, and then heats Starfire up with one of his special thermal arrows. Meanwhile Red Hood is fighting the half-headed ploice alium woman who seems to have gone all Witchblade on us. Still, he manages to kill her by pretending she's the Joker and Batman combined or something. Which, unsurprisingly since she's the police, doesn't endear himself to the locals. The gargoyle gets blown up with Roy's self-destruct device and we realise Starfire's powers aren't actually much use. "My power isn't a subtle one, Roy. It's pretty much set to "incinerate". I think we need a new plan." Then they all run away to the origin issue. I love that the editor of this book twice refers to the last issue and expresses surprise we don't remember exactly what happened in it. Anybody would think he thought this was a disposable portion of Thrill Power too. Still the biggest guilty pleasure of the Johnsiverse.

who's Batman by?

In a stunning twist of fate, I have managed to last longer on the books than one of the creative teams - John Rozum has announced he's left Static Shock.

― 50,000 raspberries with the face of Peter Ndlovu (aldo), Monday, 19 September 2011 21:45 (4 months ago)

John Rozum has now revealed the reason he left the book: it was "garbage" and "a total turd."

(Also the editor was an unsupportive interfering idiot, which I've freely inferred upthread as a reason for creators dropping like flies, but good to have it actually confirmed):

"I went into Static Shock with a lot of high hopes. Among them was showing that Static wasn’t simply an A-list character, but one of the most powerful in the DCnU. I really wanted this series to be fun and exciting and to bring the same degree of creativity to it that I put into Xombi balanced with making Virgil’s personal life at least as engaging as his superhero life. I also saw Static Shock as an excellent gateway through which to pull the rest of the Milestone characters into the DCnU.

"I quickly learned that none of these plans were going to see fruition. I wound up being shunted to the sidelines as the writer while Scott McDaniel’s “high concept” criminal syndicate made up of Power Rangers and a big monosyllabic thug took center stage and Harvey’s [nb: editor] ideas of the 2 Sharons and slicing off Static’s arm were implemented as desperate means of trying to draw attention to the book.

"I tried my best to keep it from being a total turd, but as I said, I was completely sidelined. My main contributions were the Pale Man character, Guillotina, naming the school after Dwayne McDuffie, and including Hardware, along with random lines of dialogue. I decided it was unethical to stick with a title that a) I thought was garbage b) that people were buying because of my involvement, due to Xombi, when really I had nothing to do with it c) because I wasn’t being utilized on the title.

"Frankly, Static deserved a lot better."

Ouch.

Batman is by Scott Snyder.

He was writing one of the Bat-books before the reboot to some acclaim, yeah? I believe I'm going to borrow the TPB off a friend, after he buys it.

More from Rozum, unfairly excerpted by me:

I've had people announce that due to the low quality of comic that they would no longer buy anything that had my name on it. I've had an editor at a publisher other than DC say they weren't interested in having me write for them because they thought Static Shock was a poor comic book series.

All of my ideas and suggestions were met with disdain, and Scott McDaniel lectured me on how my method for writing was wrong because it wasn't what the Robert McKee screenwriting book he read told him was the way to do things. The man who'd never written anything was suddenly more expert than me and the editor was agreeing with him. Scott had also never read a Static comic book, nor seen the cartoon series, yet was telling me that my dialogue didn't sound true to the character and would "fix it."

One of my scripts was deemed too slow because there were a total of 4 pages where no one was hitting or shooting anything.

Essentially my job was to transcribe Scott's voluminous and often clunky dialogue into a script format. Any efforts I made to try and finesse, edit, or reduce his dialogue or captions, offended him, and everything had to be changed back to how he'd originally written it, while my dialogue always required his improvement. Scott, to be fair, had a lot of great ideas, but did not have the writing skills necessary to make these ideas compelling stories, but was not willing to take any suggestions, or changes that I'd give him.

All Star Western #5: Gray and Palmiotti LOVE LOVE LOVE being in Gotham. The next stage of the plot has them being terrorised by the Miagani (from Batman: The Cult and retconned during Return of Bruce Wayne). Amadeus shits himself. Hex realises at the end he hates Gotham, but this may be because he's being attacked by a GIANT bat. This book really has taken on a new lease of life since moving to the city and I can easily see it running for years, if sales allow. In the backup which means the book is an extra buck, we get the origin of the Barbary Ghost. I'm not sure I wouldn't have the extra dollar tbh.

Aquaman #5: As this issues#'s joke at the expense of Aquaman makes clear, the Navy save Aquaman's life this month after he gets stuck and almost dies. In the middle of the desert. That must have been done before, no? Anyway, in the ACTUAL plot the Atlantean spaceship discovered down where the Trench live is revealed to be... ummm... an Atlantean spaceship. And the shocking secret behind Atlantis being destroyed is... ummm... Atlantis gets destroyed. If this was anyone other than GJ I'd suggest they were better than this. I'm not sure he is.

Batman The Dark Knight #5: I've reached the point where I'd like to know how much of the plotting is actually done by David Finch, but in this issue it probably doesn't matter much. We get some expansion on the Scarecrow reveal from the end of last month but OH NOES Bats is infected by the poison like Two-Face and the rest were in prior issues. Surprisingly, this makes his strong enough to punch out Superman. Unfortunately Supes isn't the one of the pair that does the detecting and so gets the effects wrong - it doesn't give Bats invincibility YA BIG DUMMY! Have you punche dhim to death? (The answer will be no, obviously, but nice cliffhanger.) Still on the good side of average, but with odd bursts of greatness.

Flash #5: This is still a blinding read, from the notion that Captain Cold's powers are WAY more powerful in the Johnsiverse to the revelation at the end that it's ALL the Flash's fault as the Speed Force (or manipulating it) REALLY fucks up space and time. They could have just read Flashpoint really, as that makes the same point far less well. Barry also seems to be chasing more than one woman - does this make him the Flash of Two Burds? Consistently thrill-powered whatever.

I, Vampire #5: As ever, gorgeous to look at but (and continuingly so) making no sense within the Johnsiverse. Batman turns up in this, so it's clearly in continuity. But how can it possibly be with the content? Boston, Star City, Los Angeles and others have seen horrific outbursts of violence and masses of the population have died and then become a plague of vampires on a Crossed level yet no superheroes noticed until now? One would expect, perhaps, that this will introduce zoning boundaries and no-fly zones for vigilantism and federal super-offences - like the Flash stopping chasing a bad guy because he's 10km outside Central City. I bet it doesn't. Still worth looking at though I'm probably not getting enough out of it to keep paying for it.

Justice League #5: I'm pretty sure "We got this" is the worst superhero cheer of the modern era. This is one of only a couple of minutes levity in a book of unrelenting Sadface. The other is Flash wishing he could fly, but an unintentional contender is Hal Jordan being so vacant and dumb he has no idea who MULTI-MILLIONAIRE AND GENERAL ALL-ROUND IMPORTANT GUY Bruce Wayne is. I'm pretty sure this is just a blip in the story, but this was two weeks late? I'm not really sure how much worse this would actually have been had it come out on time, but probably not much.

Justice League Dark #5: Hooray! The team actually forms! Unfortunately it's only for about a page as Constantine (somewhat inevitably) decides everyone else is crap compared to him. Throw in some low-level sexual behaviour (Zatanna french-kisses Shade to show him what a tongue tastes like), and Deadman desperate to get his end away now Dawn's dumped him and it's more of the same, really. A solid 'C', but probably ripe for cutting from pull lists.

Superman #5: This has about half as many words as the previous issues but the downside of this is that it makes half as much sense. I guess there was a reason for the swathes of text after all then. Supes defeats the aliums from before OR DOES HE, HMM? He speaks like he's reading a script and just kills people when he feels like it - surely this can't be the Man of Steel? Of course not, he's a cinder floating in Spain. (The download code to my Ultimate Spider-Man for the first to get that reference. See? Competitions and everything. Aren't I good to you?) Be here next month if you can be arsed. I'm not sure I can, and George Perez must be getting itchy feet too.

This book really has taken on a new lease of life since moving to the city and I can easily see it running for years, if sales allow.

This has been cancelled iirc

or maybe that's another Gray/Palmiotti joint

I hope not! The couple of issues of All Star Western I've read have been some of the best of the new 52.

It's not one of the announced ones, but I won't be that surprised as Jonah Hex always flirted with cancellation.

(Just checked the sales numbers, just under 30k in December - 3 times what Hex sold - which means there are 21 worse sellers in the New 52.)

DC has become the NBC of the comics world...but somehow more incompetent? It makes me wonder if the brass at Time Warner care enough about some of these properties to boot Didio out on his ass before every creator worth a toss refuses to do any further work for them.

I think I was thinking of Men Of War, sorry

The brass at Time Warner plainly don't have any comprehension of "the properties," let alone care

Rob Liefeld inking while driving and filming himself, nbd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ9hjJabvaI

this explains everything really