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

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').

wait what? i thought the Johns was on top of the whole GL thing
also how is "bottling" 52 universes different from how it already is? i'm so confused

No, he had carte blanche to do what he liked - or so it seemed. GL:NG was completely 52niverse rebooted so that Kyle Rayner was chosen to be a Lantern in a brand new post-Flashpoint continuity. GL (the main title) got to keep all the pre-Flashpoint continuity, so Hal Jordan was already GL and had had all the pre-Flashpoint activities (Blackest Day etc). Red Lanterns and GLC had some elements of continuity retained and some forgotten. GL:NG then adopted bits of the GL continuity when crossing over with that book, specifically all the stuff with Carol Ferris.

And of course while this was going on, Hal Jordan hasn't had any GL shenanigans in Johns' Justice League, which in 52niverse continuity forms 5 years after the characters origins (except Action comics which was 5 years previous to all the other books for GMoz's run then took place at the same time as all the others). So Hal Jordan specifically has different continuities depending which book he's in.

The DC Universes were all different, as a fudge to allow Golden Age and Silver Age versions of heroes to exists concurrently and to 'fix' continuity. Then CoIE 'fixed' this and publishing History of the DCU (and the first Who's Who) there was a single consistent universe/origin etc. Anything inconsistent with this got published (eventually) as Elseworlds imagined stories. Final Crisis then had Superboy Punch The Universe but this quickly got forgotten because Flashpoint/Johnsiverse. But then Mr Terrific got cancelled and DiDio has a boner for him so Earth 2 in the Johnsiverse then New Gods etc so oops.

My guess is that they might try and go back just as far as SuperBoy Punch The Universe therefore 52 universes exist.

Your explanation was perfectly lucid and yet still made no sense. Thank you, DC.

Is there any way they can really 'go back' without tacitly admitting that the new52 was a failure?

I don't think (outside of the first couple of months) there was anyone other than me reading everything - even the staff, hence all my complaints about editors - so I don't think anyone actually gaf. Plus this will open up Vertigo into the multiverse so may actually improve Constantine/JLD.

It looks like they're going 'back' to 52/Countdown, so this isn't any more of a failure for the 52niverse than the 52niverse made 52/Final Crisis. A cynic might speculate it's part of a bigger ploy to get GMoz writing more books for them.

Haha that took a long time (no criticism of your excellent clusterfuck-summarising) to get to something I care about in the last sentence!

Not to be all extra nerdy, but it was Infinite Crisis not Final Crisis where Superboy punched the universe.

You're right, I had a Crisis of Faith.

Ha! Final Crisis was where he merged into the Time Trapper or some such hooey.

Final Crisis was where Superboy was revealed to be an ILXor, IIRC.

I see. I mean I thought one of the main ideas behind the New 52 was streamlining and while GL and Batman continuity made that impossible in the long run, we can concede in principle that it worked in other areas. Just that the stories weren't good enough to make it worth anybodies while.

Infinite Crisis wasn't a hard reboot in the same sense that Flashpoint was so its a lot easier to walk back from the aftermath of Countdown. If they try to maintain current continuity whilst going back to Countdown then they've only made things worse. At the same time do they really just pick back up where they left off?

Can't imagine how they turn the shitshow around.

Tie it in to Multiversity and explain the last few years only happened in the comic books. Sad voila.

"Simple" plot resolution could be:

CoIE was the bottling process
The post Crisis universe was the bottlers' attempt at covering their tracks
Punchy Superboy/52/countdown etc have all been coverup of the results of somebody trying to beat the bottlers (Superboy punching, for example, created the different Earths but also they recombined within the same story)
The aliens out of Animal Man (since they're the things we know that work best outside of comics panels) finally beat the bottlers and reinstate normality. Convergence is their metatext of how they achieved it.

It's going to be weird that things like Red Sun and True Brit will be 'proper' versions of Superman in a couple of months.

i was still kinda following this up through Final Crisis and i'm still like whaaaaatttt
though i still appreciate your summary, aldo

i totally thought at some point the DCU got shunted back into 52 Earths but now i'm having hard time backing that up

they might try and go back just as far as SuperBoy Punch The Universe therefore 52 universes exist.

isn't the whole point of Multiversity that 52 universes is in fact the Nu52 status quo?

The conclusion of 52 was that 52 Earths still existed but very few people knew. Everybody assumed Countdown, but more crucially Final Crisis (because it had Crisis in the title) would be about them becoming known again, and crossing between boundaries would happen but from memory apart from Superman 3d none of that really came across and imo it became more like a new version of History of the DCU hidden in a New Gods murder mystery with a time travelling Batman and seemed more about the return of Barry Allen as anything else.

Nu52 cant have 52 Earths, because as a minimum Earth Zero, Earth Thirteen (Vertigo) and Eath Fifty (Wildstorm) were merged into the one Earth.

How many were on Rian Hughes' map?

Some of the potential 52 are just daft, for example a 1998 Wonder Woman story that DiDio said in DC Nation editorial #89 happened on Earth 34, the only reference to it.

Have at it:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse_(DC_Comics)

i've spent decades as a superhero fan but i find this utterly impossible to follow. how did they manage to fuck this up so badly?

http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Diane+Nelson+DC+Entertainment+Hosts+Darkness+01pJ3UBMTOWl.jpg

I sort of expect nothing to change at all after Convergence, given that so much of the nu-52 is wrapped up in actual moneymaking things like the Injustice game, movies, TV stuff, etc.

Looking back it feels llke DC lost itself way before nu-52, maybe as far back as 2007 -- I can't think of anything memorable they've put out since then that wasn't Grant Morrison's, excluding maybe that weird blip when Geoff Johns and Gail Simone wrote good comics for a few months.

aldo can u explain how continuity is working in action comics? obv some stuff is totally rebooted but then it seems like doomsday had killed superman in the past? or did that never happen? i am very confused.

<I>Nu52 cant have 52 Earths, because as a minimum Earth Zero, Earth Thirteen (Vertigo) and Eath Fifty (Wildstorm) were merged into the one Earth.</I>

B-b-but couldn't that make four different Earths? Or has it been explicitly shown that Pandora made new52 out of exactly that?

<I>nu-52 is wrapped up in actual moneymaking things like the Injustice game, movies, TV stuff, etc.</I>

Is it though? I see brand new young readers novels in the Bruce Timm style. My son just got Batman Duplo--Lego Batman is arguably the best known iteration of the character. I'm not sure where all the different video games fit in. If anything, I think DC has figured out that there doesn't need to be a dominant version of the DCU. Cripes, the giant grocery store I go to once a month was still selling sticker packs of the Meltzer/Benes JLA (Red Arrow!) a few months ago.

Mordy,

The answer is simple. THEY DO WHAT THEY FUCKING LIKE. It's all notionally rebooted (the Titano story, for example, was the first encounter) but as you say Doomsday and Dead Supes happened. The handwave is that they happened in the Five Year Gap.

52 (the series) said there were 52 Earths, which was why 52 was such a secret. Pandora's Flashpoint merge came after that and was made from the Multiverse as stated in 52. DiDio says there are still 52 Earths despite two not existing so he could give Rob Liefeld shitloads of ex-Wildstorm books and have Supes fight Lord Hellspont (or whatever he's called). Because it's not like there aren't enough Superman villains to choose from.

In other news, the Giffen/Maguire JLI is turning up piecemeal in JLA3000. Booster and Beetle have been there for a couple of months, Ice turned up this month and Fire is on the way. Plus their Superman behaves just like Guy Gardner.

but it's still drawn by Howard Porter

I mean, I assume - I never even remembered to pick up a copy in the shop and see if there was the faintest echo of a joke detectable

Yes, still drawn by Howard Porter and no, not much in the way of jokes.

My point is, the *actual* Giffen/JMdM/Maguire JLI is turning up. Not the time period equivalents. Not a reimagining of the characters. Not even the Nu52 versions of them (OK, Booster only there). I mean the same Booster/Ted Kord. I mean Ted Kord as shot in the head my Maxwell Lord Ted Kord.

Totally up for an all-Duplo reboot.

http://www.hirescovers.net/gallery/albums/userpics/29733/normal_dcauc_batman_lego_v1_d1.jpg
^almost certainly better than most of the constituent comics or any of the movies.

watched one of the Batman Lego movies with my kid the other day (the one where he joins JLA) - it was funny

at this point, i would buy into a hard reboot to non-grim-gritty superboy-fights-the-martians

Honestly, I haven't followed much at all outside of the main Batman title (although I recently read a bunch of the weekly one) and all I can say is that Batman probably hasn't slept for five years if all this shit has happened in his life during that time

Nice legs Bats

http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The-Multiversity-Mastermen-2014-001-013.jpg

http://thisdayindeath.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ROCHUS_MISCH-e1378912637711.jpg

Calves are worse tbh.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bUa_VOx3Gd0/SdL6161E4mI/AAAAAAAACE4/sAyQSoILh5Q/s400/Picture+10.png

turns out the muscles were not meant to be a jodhpurs reference, they were literally meant to be jodhpurs but Jim Lee has not learnt to draw after three decades as a professional artist

https://twitter.com/JimLee/status/568274080438177792

still haven't seen the issue myself, I'd drop the whole series if i could :-/

wow, his belt is bigger than his head. that's fuckin baller