DC's WORLD WAR III

>=O @ Batman's pantaloon.s

I really like his drawing of Mary Marvel in this thing -- really great gesture/body language.

This image seems to refer to the same image as the image on the cover of the Sopranos season 5 dvd, but I can't remember what the source was of the top of my head. Anyone?

And so it's a reasonable assumption that this is World War III, though my understanding is that happens in 52, and it makes no sense that Superman would be there since he wouldn't have powers at that point. But then again, there's the whole SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER return of the multiverse thing, and so that makes sense of a lot of things in this image.

Why does DC have to keep reminding me that Blue Beetle got shot? ;_;

WWIII is happening in 52, but it's being spun off into 4 one-shots (written by superstar-in-training-pants Keith Champagne and former-world-beater John Ostrander). Whether more's coming of this, I dunno. If there's one thing DC needs more of, tho, it's sadface (hopefully accompanied by punches going through torsos / skulls / the universe).

As for the image itself - half the folks look cut-n-pasted in, but Maxwell Lord has a fine ass (& he'd agree, since he's looking at it FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE) (& so would Green Arrow). Also - Dr. Midnite?

I was going to say I'm tired of sadface, but I like Brubaker's Captain America and Daredevil so much that I don't know if I can make that claim. Tired of the kind of sadface this one picture brings to mind, though.

Maybe Superman is upset about that whole Sleez fiasco. I mean, Mr. Miracle and Barda are right there.

OTM, look at Green Lantern!

Its understandable, given a shrunken marketplace, that they must do this, but I just wish that that both would quit soaking readers, have a moritorium on crossovers and just go forward and tell some goddamn stories.

I'm sure mucho fans are going batshit that Kingdom Come appears to be now incorporating into mainstream continuity.

And is Mary Marvel the only gal in the DC universe with nice, humble lil' titties, instead of the galacto-gazongas common to WW, BB and BC?

And then a lot of the OYL stuff has, shall we say, underperformed, and suddenly it's "Yes we are now in Act Two of a Three Act Structure, we planned it all along."

Weirdly with Marvel I get a different feeling - that they had no real idea Civil War would be THIS big, and having struck gold they're retooling their whole universe quite hurriedly to try and keep up.

But this happens all the time, and will happen all the time, and is part of the beauty of superhero comics.

I don't think they were bullshitting about the "we are in act two of a three act structure" -- if anything, they are lying about it being a three-act structure, and we're looking at the template for the forseeable future, with one event leading into the next year's event, and so on, and planning out the major arc of the DCU storyline two or three years in advance of publication. And you know, even if there's a lot of crassness and some lameness inherent in that sort of thing I applaud DC for having a plan, understanding the marketplace, and actually making people (and not just their base readership) care about all of this enough to buy the stuff.

Andrew, I don't think that the semi (or totally) improvised style of comics writing is a bad thing! It's just not something that has been working out too well recently, mainly because a lot of the people doing it were totally lame.

I do remember a sense last year when The Illuminati #1 came out that it would lead into Civil War and Planet Hulk, and they were at the time basically pushing them as being of equal importance!

Also in a way it's big because they're rubbish - the entire thing is supposed to be over by now, but delays meant other titles kept getting sucked in (HI DERE Black Panther) and kept the momentum rolling.

I guess my biggest beef with all this nonsense (& the "lots of folks doing this in the past were totally lame") is: there was an ever-so-brief moment (right before Marvel went crazy-go-nuts w/ House of M, their first BIG event in a looong time, IIRC) where a fair # of creators (Bendis on DD & Alias, Busiek on Avengers, GM on NXM, Bruce Jones on Hulk for about 45 minutes, JMS on Spidey before he screwed the pooch, maybe a few others) were writing interesting & progressive stories that had fuck-all to do with the unnecessary pomp & circumstance of Big Events. They were just STORIES.

Of course, Marvel was driven to such "dire straits" because of the state of the market their previous regimes helped inculcate. As soon as they regained their sealegs, it was back to business as usual. The fact that Marvel chose to dive back into the Big Event pool would've sent up warning flairs were it not for the involvement of the folks that were creating these STORIES I enjoyed. But, of course, turns out the gag was on moi.

[super major xpost]

(I'm NEVER wrong - I'm just not right a lot.) (*superwink*)

Also, David, do you figure your "disenfranchisement" is exacerbated by the fact that you're buying an enormous chunk of what Marvel and DC publish every month? I buy a LOT less, and read very few titles in which these crossovers actually enter the text of the monthly series, and so it's hard for me to care too much. I mean, to me, Civil War was something that happened in the main Civil War mini, and five issues of New Avengers that were all pretty solid self-contained one-issue stories. Oh, and those two issues of X-Factor, but c'mon, those just felt like regular issues of that title.

Jemas was spooking the market with his aggressive PR tactics and habit of dicking around with the company's top brands? I liked that era too, from what I've read of it.

Also, I miss Gotham Central. ;______________;

-- nu-mongrel (n...), January 26th, 2007. (later)

Hey!! I'm no superhero!

I think that's probably just some Amazon ceremonial formalwear that Wonder Woman's on.