(52 new answers)

I'm not sure about dividing each issue up into days. We find out on day 3, with the Elongated Man, about Sue's grave being desecrated, but we won't find out how until 4-5 days later, story time, which means - what? do we just skip a lot of stuff.

But there's nothing really bad in it, and though the cool bits were trailed by DC, they're still cool. Tentative thumbs up.

Thanks dudes!

YES!

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22alan+moore%22%2C+%22neil+gaiman%22&ctab=0&date=all&geo=all

(I seem to have wandered off topic)

Elongo Man: Waid or Johns, though he's talking to Fire, who's part of Rucka's stable, still, I'm gonna go with Waid, just since nobody else seems to be blatantly Waidian.
Booster Gold: Time travel gone wrong, goofy goggles, encroaching NASCAR imagery, gotta be Morrison
Steel: Johns w/o a d.
Black Adam: Johns
Montoya: Rucka
Question: Rucka, though I hope Morrison steals him, but that's unlikely, since Question and Montoya are both in Gotham and their plots seem to be intertwined

It is sort of applicable by analogy to the rhythm of comic reading: read left page, read right page, turn page, repeat. Garth Ennis used to put it to good use sometimes, in Preacher.

(Obviously I read comics somewhat differently from this 'turning pages' malarkey these days)

'Story beats'... more like stylistic tricks that go with the physical medium (although not the digital) - the end of the page is a golden opportunity that shouldn't be thrown away, and the turn-page-SURPRISE trick is one that most people in comics use now because frankly, it works.

i think its popularisation might be something to do with robert mckee.

that said i can see how it might've got from television to either of those two, obviously.

I can buy the dynamic changing thing as that definitely seems to be what (say) Johns is after with his endless WE-ARE-ENEMIES-NOW no wait WE-ARE-FRIENDS-NOW meaningful stare scenes.

:D

From wikipedia:

A Beat-script or beatscript is a scripting aid used for describing story ideas. It offers a level of detail not afforded by the standard feature-film screenplay format. This makes it especially useful for describing short film, animation and short sequence ideas.

Its structure is focused on action rather than thought. This allows screenwriters to organise their narrative ideas in a concise manner that is conducive to screen presentation. It prevents authors from describing non-tangible, subjective elements that are unable to be effectively represented in screen form.

Beat-scripts are used as the starting-point for generating storyboards and shooting-scripts. While beats are used to describe action, shots are used to describe the visual screen presentation of action.

The relationship between individual beats and shots is not direct. In situations where an event is significant in a sequence, a single beat might equate to a single shot (and is likely to be framed as a close-up). Whereas where a series of beats might describe a general idea, these beats might collectively equate to a single shot (which is likely to be framed as a long-shot). The specific visual treatment of beat-script ideas is usually determined by the cinematographer or director (which on small projects is usually the same person).

I buckled and read all of Infinite Crisis for the first time yesterday (thinking that it would help ease me into 52, which it did to an extent). Which was not nearly as clusterfucky or incoherent as I'd been led to believe (or at least no moreso than every other overly-grandiose superhero clusterfuck). Despite having never really read anything by Geoff Johns previous to this, I feel fairly confident about my ability to suss out what dialogue in 52 is his.

How did Mannheim become uh big giant in that early Busiek issue of Superman?

Real life Oolong Island!
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-brew/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html

Hey comics nerds, I need help. I don't know that much about comics. But, through a twist of fate, I have come into possession of this:

http://www.amazon.com/52-Omnibus-Geoff-Johns/dp/1401235565/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352486072&sr=8-1&keywords=52+omnibus

But it confuses me. Is it single, understandable storyline? Or is 52 first issues of 52 different comics? Can I even read it if I haven't read this:

http://www.amazon.com/DC-Comics-The-New-52/dp/1401234518/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352486072&sr=8-2&keywords=52+omnibus

Help a brother out.

The omnibus is a collection of 52 weekly issues of a single series. You can read up on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_52.

From the article, "The story was originally conceived of as being a chronicle of what happened in the "missing year" between the end of Infinite Crisis and the beginning of One Year Later. It would especially focus on how the world dealt with the disappearance of the "big three" heroes in the DCU, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. As the series went on it became more of a way to set the stage for upcoming storylines in the DC Universe."

So your questions' answers would be: yes(ymmv), no, yes.

Many thanks.

So does this second omnibus take place *between* Infinite Crisis and the first omnibus?

No, the second omnibus (which is 52 first issues of 52 comics, I guess?) is completely unrelated.

52 stands almost entirely on its own two feet (and is surprisingly solid, given all the cooks involved) but it is pretty mired in continuity. Seek out Douglas Wolk's annotations online and you should be fine.

I appreciate these answers but I remain confused. The questions, really, are 1) Do I need to have read anything previous to reading the 2nd omnibus, which *appears* to be a whole different ballgame. 2) Is the 2nd omnibus a story with a through line or is it 52 1st issues, which sounds really un-fun.

It's easy to be confusing because both omnibuses basically are titled the same ("52 Omnibus") even though they appear to be significantly different.

Well you could read Aldo reads DC's New 52 (So you don't have to) , which might give you an idea of whether they have taken full advantage of the opportunity to clearly and simply explain the characters and their continuity (spoilers: No).

So the answers are "no" and "un-fun"

Yeah, if the second omnibus is just a collection of New 52 first issues, it might make a nice doorstop or, in a pinch, an excellent substitute if someday you don't have a Duraflame log handy.

I'd say 52 is moreorless self-contained, as long as you're not too bothered by odd bits of obscure continuity stuff (yellow aliens!) that don't get explained.

Also 52 is supposed to tee off a bunch of other stories at the end, but they either never happened or were pretty terrible. If you need to follow up from 52 with something similar, or at least moves the story on a bit, try Grant Morrison's Batman run and Final Crisis, or go backwards and read Seven Soldiers (which is also a long, self-contained series with some of the same characters).

(But NB you don't need to have read Seven Soldiers to read 52.)

yeah, 52 is fine on its own

But if you're inclined to delve further, Morrison's recent trip to the DC playground (Seven Soldiers, 52, Batman, Final Crisis, Batman & Robin, Return Of Bruce Wayne, Batman Inc., in rough chronological order) is probably my favorite mainstream comics run of the last decade or more.

JLA Classified 3-issue run was a prologue to Seven Soldiers too

I've been thinking about re-reading 52, but have been too busy reading comics I don't like (and Marvel Now! blogging is about to begin) interspersed with some Golden Age reprints for fun. Currently working through Alan Scott's first issues as Green Lantern and, somewhat unbelievably, there are mind-wipes in it already. Maybe Geoff Johns wasn't just being a dick? (No, wait, of course he was.)

For me, and I think from here while it was going on, much of the joy of reading it was about the reintroduction to continuity of fan-favourites such as everybody's favourite racist ovoid. I remember trying to explain what was happening near the end to YMOF and DV in a pub in Camber and ending up just repeating SUPERBOY PUNCHED THE UNIVERSE until it stuck. I also think it's pretty obvious who wrote which parts, in that 2/3 of the plot is good and the rest is by Geoff Johns.

I couldn't recommend that second omnibus to anybody though - 52 first issues of the Johnsiverse titles, of which only about a dozen are any cop and one (Red Hood) is the only objectively bad issue of a book I've grown to really quite enjoy. But then I've ranted about the Johnsiverse enough elsewhere.

wasn't Superboy Punched The Universe in Johns' Infinite Crisis, not Johns / Rucka / Waid / Morrison's 52?

(I've not read either, bar one Morrisony Bat-issue and the one Giffeny Bug-issue of 52, so this memory is just of ambient nerdrage.)

You're right, it is. But in a way it's the event which causes the need to tell 52 - Superboy Punching The Universe is what re-creates the multiverse which is revealed to exist over the course of 52 as DiDio explains using a hidden message through the year. (This is from memory, so may be rubbish)

JLA Classified 3-issue run was a prologue to Seven Soldiers too

I misremembered this being collected in the SS trades, but yes: this, too. And if you wanna go hog wild, Morrison's JLA, 1,000,000, Animal Man, and ASS all tie into his recent work in one way or another. I think the only mainstream DCU thing he's done that didn't have significant plot/thematic ties to everything else was Doom Patrol.

Totally making a beeline to dig all this stuff out of storage today, btw.

Arkham Asylum and Gothic don't actually tie into his later Batman run at all

the secret origin of the JLA's headquarters doesn't tie into the JLA run

and the What Kid Flash Did On His Summer Vacation story doesn't match up with anything else

the Flash run is standalone except for a little bit of character development from the JLA series matching up with the one Green Lantern crossover issue

Animal Man only connects with 52 continuity-wise afaik

I misremembered this being collected in the SS trades

was this collected? *googles* US$14.99 for 66pp of comics! fuuuuuuck off.

Action Comics doesn't really connect! Maybe that's (partially) why it's not really working.

US$14.99 for 66pp of comics! fuuuuuuck off.

But...JLA/WildCATs!

they should pay you at least $6.99 to take that tbh

Action Comics doesn't really connect!

absolutely true, but also doesn't really count as DCU, for the purposes of the thesis

<i>I also think it's pretty obvious who wrote which parts, in that 2/3 of the plot is good and the rest is by Geoff Johns.</i>

Isn't this from the brief window when Geoff Johns was producing actually-okay comics? All that Black Adam stuff was sort of fun and dopey. Part of the fun of 52 were all those weird tonal shifts.

I seem to remember kind of hating it by the final quarter (some of the art - dear God!) but it read much better the second time around.

Also OF COURSE Doug's blog (and ILC!) helped a bunch.

Yeah, but the Black Adam stuff was only there so he could do WWIII afterwards/at the same time, if I'm cynical.

I don't know, I think we had started hating on Johns by then. The drooling kid picture became a meme at about that point?

I expected it to be not-great because of Johns' involvement but it totally exceeded my expectations, which I still think is due to Johns working so directly with better writers. And his own stuff (e.g. the kickoff of the Booster Gold series, his Superman/LOSH stuff with Gary Frank) was noticeably better for a little while afterwards.

This was after Infinite Crisis (and his bringing Hal Jordan, dullest superhero in the universe, back) = It was pretty clear (to me) that he wasn't any good, but his shadow had not yet grown to cover the multiverse.

The Action Comics and Legion of 3 Worlds stuff - that was all pretty decent. All downhill before and after, though.

The stuff that's melting my brain here is the casual use of "52" as a series of comics to be read. Going back to my original question, the not-out-yet 2nd "52 Omnibus," which I now own, seems to exist in somewhat of a vacuum from the original "52 Omnibus," which I think was comprised of all the separate stories you guys are mostly talking about. Which is why I *think* I can dive into the 2nd omnibus without any prior knowledge whatsoever. So confusing!

Obviously I should just start reading it and see if I'm correct.

The second book is supposed to be a jumping on point for brand new readers, so your premise is right. Unfortunately it's mostly unreadable crap.

The 52 we're talking about is the series 52, which is yr first omnibus and so called because it reinstated the Multiverse to the DCU and specifically 52 Earths. The second omnibus is the first issues of all the books in the New 52, the current post-Flashpoint reported DCU which has one Earth (until Earth 2 shows up later), but you don't need to know anything about Flashpoint to read it. It's not a story though, it's 52 unrelated comics. Not many of which are any good.

It's not a story though, it's 52 unrelated comics.

Well, this sounds horrible.

And you haven't even read them yet. Only about a dozen are any good.

NB aldo is being very very generous because he has a crippling case of stockholm syndrome

Legion of 3 Worlds stuff - that was all pretty decent.

I picked up the first issue of this bcz hey 80s man Perez drawing the 80s Legion, flipped open to a page where someone (Lightning Lad?) tore both arms off someone and blood sprayed out across the panel - gtfo forever Geoff Johns

I stole it from somewhere else, but Geoff Johns does Action Figure Funtime at the worst possible level - he rarely think more than WOULDN'T IT BE COOL IF... then does, TINY FOOTPRINTS or something.

No, I'd say there are maybe a dozen good #1s in the Johnsiverse - Flash, Wonder Woman, Action, Batman, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Demon Knights, Aquaman (yes, the rest suck but #1 is great), OMAC, Detective, Titans, All Star Western, Suicide Squad, Stormwatch (ok, the only one really)... 14 things I could be persuaded to read again. Maybe that's the best hit rate month though.

I concede I give them leeway, but a large chunk of that is the growing realisation that the Heroic Age may well end in our lifetime. I've been drafting a blog post in my head on the topic for some time.

New question: I have also come into possession of "The New 52 Zero Omnibus." Now, this one also looks to be 52 separate first issues, but should be pretty newbie-friendly since these are the origin stories of all of the heroes. So I'm inclined to read this one. But I'll take opinions -- were the New 52 Zero issues any good?

http://www.dccomics.com/tags/dc-comics-the-new-52-zero-omnibus

No.

They're not even the origin issues of the 52 characters in yr 52 omnibus, because some of the books had been cancelled by then. Some (Phantom Stranger, Team 7) are origins for series that hadn't even started yet, some are final issues and don't deal with the origin (Resurrection Man) and one (GL: NG) ignores the fact completely it's supposed to be an origin and instead follows on from Green Lantern #12.

Good luck.

Basically, if DC published it in the past 1.5 years, you need to do some hardcore cherrypicking. I do not even understand the rationale behind these New 52 omnibi (except as a purely cynical cash grab). But then I basically don't understand the rationale behind most things DC from Flashpoint on (particularly with respect to hiring Bob Harras).

"A must-have for any comics fan" - I think someone had to have more than a few showers after work that day.

I'm just a sucker for an 1,000+ page book with pretty colors. But I'm not paying money for these ominbi(?) so I'm under no obligation to read. So the dire warnings are much appreciated.