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

The obvious person to get to write such a thing would be Peter Milligan with his history with both characters. I'd do it as a flashback story, perhaps with some reference to the old 80s Swamp Thing story with Holland going to get Abby out of Gotham and/or JLA Floronic Man story.

didn't those stories not happen anymore now?

Yes, they not happened for several reasons, not least that the Jason Woodrue backstory was rewritten in the past 6 months to give him his New52 history. (Quick version, Jason was a random bloke selected by The Green as The Seeder, a competitor for the Champion of The Green in a trial they have from time to time to ensure they have made the right choice with The Champion.)

The Seeder

amazing

Onan The Seeder

47 “New 52” books have been cancelled in three years of the New 52; DC currently axing about one book every three weeks.

http://comicsalliance.com/dc-comics-new-52-47-cancelation/

wow. worse than i even suspected.

I think the key takeaway isn't the number of books that have been cancelled (because to be honest some of them have been mini or maxi series trading as ongoing titles) but that so many of them have been cancelled and then just migrated to new titles - Mister Terrific was cancelled and then put into Earth 2, Grifter was cancelled and then given Team 7, Titans is just being straight rebooted... and weirdly the titles don't seem to end, even when they do. I've been keeping up with all the books (and it's still as painful as ever it was) and I hadn't even realised Animal Man was cancelled - DC have been finishing story arcs with 'THE END' as a trait of the line, and there didn't feel like there was anything climactic about the last issue. I can see why it reads as the end of Jeff Lemire's run, but apart from that it just kind of petered out.

The most galling for me is to see All-Star Western cancelled. Still the most obviously 'different' of the DC books, everybody pretended it was New 52 rebooted when it was just Jonah Hex rebranded; in the last 3 years we've seen Hex in the present day and have his face fixed by modern surgery before being cast back to the Wild West where nobody recognises him any more. And it's been genuinely a great ride, without it DC will just become an unhappy grimface pile of Johnsiverse action figure playtime.

Things currently worth reading:

Flash is still good. Not as consistently great as it was to start with, but there's a decent set of rogues. I'm also not convinced by the New Wally, but that's a whole other story.

Green Arrow has turned totally on its head. It's changed the mythology to the Arrow series mixed with Longbow Hunters, and has some really, really cool layouts and a great art style. Easily DC's best looking book, although it could be more readable.

Wonder Woman still has Azarello on board, and it will be great for as long as he is (which is only another couple of months I think).

World's Finest is probably the weakest book listed here, a sort of buddy movie with Power Girl and The Huntress but cancelled anyway. The early issues with Kev Maguire art are the best of the bunch.

Batman has disappeared up the Bat-mythology wazoo. Scott Snyder is a good enough writer to pull it back but I kind of feel he needs to soon.

Catwoman shows the overall weakness of this list, an averagely written caper plot stretched out beyond normal telling limits. Readable at least, which places it in the top half of the DC output.

Harley Quinn is the closest thing DC have to a Marvel book at the moment, by which I mean one like Young Avengers or Journey Into Mystery or She Hulk; one that deals in broad comedy along with the action. It's maybe the single title I look forward to most, because I like dumb fun. Plus it has Glenn Danzig as a sidekick!

Of the upcoming stuff the Giffen/DiDio Forever People series might be good, because OMAC was good. Suicide Squad will always have a place in my heart because Suicide Squad, but time will tell (and it has Joker's Daughter as a kick-off character. Yuck.) GI Zombie is Palmiotti and Gray, so of course I'm going to give it a break.

That's not a very impressive list now, is it?

Ha, lol at them cancelling the Trinity of Sin stuff. Did that ever amount to anything?

aldo - even that list looks like Stockholm syndrome, dude.

Also, Forever Evil 7 is out today. Checked it. Incomprehensible. And with Trinity War turning out to have been a prologue, they've been telling this story for 11 months...

I have to admit, with all this being a trainwreck, I still want to read this! I guess I never really expect anything better

This is the marginiest of marginals and the faintingest of praise, but it feels like the books are finally getting a bit better. I'm at least interested enough to sneakily download them, rather than ignore them altogether. Eternal is actually okay - certainly an improvement on Chuck Dixon. (Again: faint praise.)

Aldo, was the whole thing with the moon ever talked a bit more about in Forever Evil? Otherwise, that might be the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Ultraman moves the moon in front of the sun, and... apparantly nobody ever figures out that the earth is round, and they could just take the fight somewhere not hit by eclipse. And then... no, won't spoil the end, but it was head-slappingly dumb as well.

Of course not, nothing ever has any lasting effect in the DCU. Remember, this is the line that had the entire East Coast submerged by Atlanteans (who turned out not to be, sort of, but that's a whole other year of plotting) while they were not even vaguely wet in every other book, and the flood was only even vaguely mentioned in the next issue.

For at least the last 6 months reading the line has only been to see how much worse it can get. My LCS pull list has less than half a dozen books by the Big Two in it these days.

Man, that is dumb... That moon-thing... And really, ultra-man was sorta the only real tough guy in the Crime Syndicate at the start (iirc, which, probably not, since I didn't really give a damn), so they could have just removed the moon and be done with it in book two.

i read the first two issues of injustice that apple is giving away and they're fucking horrible

Yeah, call me fickle but I read this week's books and retract my previous statement. Although nothing from DC as bad as Kirkman's Invicible. Yeesh.

I remember the every kitchen sink approach he has with that quite fondly, haven't picked up an issue in a few years but I'd still be confident in saying that DC are putting out plenty worse than it.

Last I heard about Invincible it had a nude evil superwoman raping a man

lolwhut

can we get a fiction-wide moratorium on rape for, say, five years?

lol, that sounds awful

at least Alan Moore had the decency to do it off-panel in Tom Strong

for the full horror: http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4676905.html

jeeeeeeeeezus that is the fucking worst

Actually the fucking worst should be reserved for the comment thread on that

It's safe to say the new DiDio/Giffen homage to Kirby is less successful than OMAC.

Also all 52 alternate Earth Superboys appear to have turned up in Superboy. I expect universe punching to take place imminently.

Tuomas might want to look away, because David Finch's wife Meredith is taking over writing on Wonder Woman and her writing of Tales of Oz is... err... something.

Mark you, David Finch is supposed to be drawing it so it'll probably come out in 2017.

Ann Nocenti (which I've just discovered autocorrects to Nonentity) to write a new ongoing series of Klarion, last seen as part of GMoz' Seven Soldiers. LOOK AWAY NOW.

The bad guy in it runs a 'dark' Metal club and his evil powers increase when he plays metal or techno.

I am afeared.

man i might actually buy that
Worst Ann Nocenti Asides/Monologues/Dialogue

Nocenti has never been a terribly good writer, technically speaking, but her writing comes from such a strange headspace that I almost always find it fascinating. That said, I haven't read anything she's done since she came out of semi-retirement so I have no idea how this particular idea will pan out. But it doesn't sound out of character for her by any means.

oh God, I love Ann Nocenti's dialogue so much, that thread is so misconceived

defend "loving, living... FIST"

Nocenti's dialogue reminds me a bit of Jack Kirby's dialogue from his 70s Captain America comic books (Jack Kirby's 70s Captain America dialogue is also brilliant, btw)

kirby gets a pass because he's kirby imo; i can't imagine getting excited about a kirby book without his art though

xpost

OTM. Nocenti dialogue is very similar to Kirby dialogue inasmuch as it comes off as neither naturalistic nor intentionally stylized but more like they're transcribing otherworldly broadcasts that are only incidentally in some form of English.

And in case any of this sounds like critique, I should say I mostly really like Nocenti and wish there were more mainstream comics writers like her. Not by way of emulating her but in giving voice to their own particular strange mental landscapes.

http://comicsbeat.com/trouble-in-gotham-writer-alan-brennert-says-wb-is-stiffing-him-over-45-an-episode/

not exactly thread-relevant, but still due to the Nelson era

DC Implosion 2: half of the current 52 to be axed, 22 of which are less than a year old

Looking forward (not really) to Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #3.

i hope several people are getting fired on the editorial/executive end but likely just creatives, eh?

if anything they'll be increasing executives with the move to Burbank

like, a lot

Some weird accounting there - 16 titles finishing (the fact three of them are weeklies is irrelevant), 7 of which will be within 12 issues. On top of that I'm sure the DiDio/Giffen Infinity Man book was always planned to be a maxi-series, it certainly read that way (and OMAC was the precedent for that).

The two Future's End weeklies would always have ended at Convergence, and have been replaced with the Convergence weekly. Plus there are two new starting books in March, a Batman one and a sports book that looks like a straight swap with Star Spangled War Stories (which was only ever Palmiotti & Grey's GI Zombie + a backup, and never really fit the war brief).

Aquaman never deserved a second book and the Others has felt like a single plot maxi at best; Secret Origins was a terrible commission that has struggled for focus since the Johnsiverse continuity is so utterly fucked, and about to become fuckeder with Convergence; Arkham Manor doesn't know what it is other than ridiculously slight and Gail Simone's Klarion is cringe-inducing dad-dancing, so a mercy killing. Trinity of Sin is just an excuse to give Pandora an ongoing role, so only ever pandering to Johns anyway.

I'm all for knocking DC for publishing shite - I mean, seriously, who has so much of a hard-on for Deathstroke, A BOOK ALREADY CANCELLED ONCE IN THE JOHNSIVERSE, that starting a new run seems like a good idea? This, on the other hand, doesn't seem that big a deal.

Sorry, Klarion is/was by Ann Nocenti WHICH OBVIOUSLY MAKES IT BETTER.

And I confused Arkham Manor with Gotham Academy. Arkham Manor was clearly never anything more that a mini-series, it's a one-off story about Bats undercover in Arkham as Matches Malone.

Being written by Ann Nocenti makes everything better!

I really haven't been paying any attention to DC - what is Convergence?

Convergence is the sticking plaster which is filling the downtime as DC moves from NYC to Burbank. It's a giant crossover event that covers all titles and replaces them - or we'll see Convergence-only versions of them - in April and May.

The plot is

SPOILER ALERT

Reinstatement of the DC multiverse not only to Superboy Punching the Universe Levels, but to pre-Crisis levels.

Rumours are

MORE SPOILER ALERTS

to expect Kandor Bottle City type plot resolution but across entire Earths/Universes

SPOILERS END

So this is supposed to undo the changes caused by Flashpoint? With the characters returning to their pre-Flashpoint continuities?

What does "Kandor Bottle City type plot resolution" mean here? That the DC universe is revealed to exist in small container that's located in a larger universe?

Apparently (and none of this is published yet so speculation and/or caveat emptor) some will be affected by Flashpoint, and some not. (But this is largely irrelevant, as even in the Johnsiverse some continuities ignore Flashpoint such as SOME, NOT ALL of the GL titles - see me ^^^^^^^^ somewhere.)

Exactly that for the Kandor resolution - that each Earth/Universe (bearing in mind many Earth is only shorthand for the earth-centric continuity of each universe) is in a 'bottle' (for differing values of 'bottle').