The new 52: Green Lantern to Red Lanterns!

Let me kick off by saying I’m a major Green Lantern fan. I’ve been reading the main title since the 80s and he’s always been my favourite of DC’s heroes. It’s been a bit of a roller-coaster through the years. From the underwhelming Third Law to the sucker-punch of Emerald Twilight/Zero Hour and the grey years of Marz and Winnick. Like most people, I’ve generally loved what Geoff Johns has done for the character since Rebirth, and much of his run has been an absolute love letter. But with success brings more titles and the new 52 has four, count ’em, four titles in the Green Lantern family. Let’s take a look!

Green Lantern
Johns basically gets to continue the story as if it wasn’t a new #1, which I think could prove a bit of an issue for new readers perhaps coming to the title off the back of the GL movie. Sinestro is a recognisible character from the film, sure, and again in the role of GL. But there’s an enormous amount of comics history with Sinestro as a villain in between that new fans might feel thrown by. I’m sure John’s will do great work with the “very new direction” he has planned, and I’ll certainly be reading this title, but is this going to be enough of a jumping on point for the new readers DC is chasing with the whole New 52 initiative?

Green Lantern Corps
As with the main GL title, it’s almost business as usual in the title following the Corps. Guy Gardner and (sigh) John Stewart take centre stage, under Peter Tomasi again, and there’s no sense of any real change. If it ain’t broke, why fix it, I guess? For me it’s by far the lesser of the two main GL titles, but  for some fans a Corps book is much more exciting than just having a single Earth GL kicking around. While an opportunity has been lost to really shake things up, if this book can keep it’s own identity and not just be a slave to whatever is happening in the main title, it’s going to be much more valuable.

Green Lantern: The New Guardians
From the ashes of Blackest Night / Brightest Day, an all new title with Kyle leading the hosts of the entities against.. well… who knows? The extended entities really felt like Johns was treading water over the last year, so I’m not totally sold on the concept of a whole book about them. It’s also hard to shake the feeling of the dreadful New Guardians title of yesteryear with the Floronic man, Gloss and all the other losers. As much as I like Kyle, this book doesn’t seem in any way essential.

Red Lanterns
We’ve already established in GL mythology that a red ring is not to be messed with. You’re almost mindless with anger and your heart (literally and in some sense metaphorically – good old Geoff Johns) is destroyed and you need the ring to keep you alive. It’s a big deal and bad news. The Red Lanterns themselves were almost forces of nature, and only a few of them seemed to manage any semblance of self-control. Now this new ongoing repackages them from villains to anti-heroes. For me that’s too much of a stretch. Where there are stories of redemption, I’d personally rather see that from an appearance or two in GL, playing against how we’ve seen them in the past.  Having them fighting injustice also feels like a lot to take. Is that what being angry is all about? Despite some of them having some pretty awful back stories, I don’t agree that injustice is what’s at the core of a Red lantern. While I’m somewhat curious, this feels like a stretch and risks diluting what could have been decent villains for GL.

Next time: The Dark

The new 52: Batman! (Batman to Red Hood and the Outlaws).

We’ve looked at what DC has in store for Superman, but now it’s time for Batman. There’s not a great deal that can be said since they seem to be keeping him pretty much the same. Bruce Wayne is back as Gotham’s Dark Knight (Dick having moved aside). Batman Incorporated still seems to be on the go and there are Batmen all around the world with the support of Wayne Enterprises.

Wider changes include no solo Robin, or Red Robin, book, and we’ll get to some of the others as we work through them.

A significant point, and one that’s harder to swallow the more you think about it, is that Batman’s entire history is supposed to fit into the 5 year span of the new DCU. There’s some flexibility in that he’s supposed to be active before Superman, albeit secretly, but within that 5 years we’re supposed to swallow that he’s had no fewer than five Robins! (Dick, Jason, Tim, Stephanie and Damian!) How long was the teenage Dick Grayson operating as Robin before he became the adult Nightwing? I guess Gotham City really ages a guy.

   

Batman, Detective Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight, Batman and Robin
Yes, four books featuring Bruce Wayne as Batman. If you include JLI and Justice League, that’s six in total. There doesn’t seem to be any particular difference between the main Bat books with only Batman and Robin standing out. Now that Dick has stood down as Batman, it’s Bruce and his feisty son Damian trying to work together. Dick and Damian were a great combination, turning the established Batman and Robin relationship on it’s head and pairing a more positive and better adjusted Batman with an angrier Robin out to prove he’s his father’s match. Replacing Dick with Bruce feels like a step backwards, but in the short term this could still be fun. It’s something new, and that’s more than can be said for the other three books.

Batwoman
It’s been a long time coming and for me this is the best thing in the whole Bat-line. A refreshing new character who can stand on her own two feet. DC did a great job with her. Essentially Kate is a career soldier who was booted out of the military as part of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell anti-gay policy. She fights crime with the help of her ex-soldier father and there’s a great story there about a need to prove herself. It even goes further: she and her father survived a horrible hostage situation in Kate’s childhood which led to her mothers death and her sisters assumed death. Years later, her twin sister returns as “Alice”, a Lewis Carol obsessed nut leading an army of mutants out for revenge. It’s great stuff. The ongoing title has been delayed time and again and it seems they were holding off until the rebooted DCU. With the talented JH Williams on the art chores, this is probably the first must-have book of the line.

Batwing
Batman Incorporated allowed the creation of what are basically Bat-franchises around the world. Paris has one, and Tokyo. Now meet the Batman of Africa. Yes, Africa. This guys beat is apparently the whole continent; mind-numbingly unbelievable. It’s pretty much the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time, and vaguely racist while it’s at it. I don’t buy the concept, I don’t like the concept, and Judd Winnick at the helm is sealing the deal. No thanks.

Batgirl
One of the more controversial decisions was to restore Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, or more accurately restore the use of her legs. Since she was crippled in The Killing Joke roughly 20 years ago, Barbara has been the go-to girl for information in the DCU as Oracle. One assumes that, at least in part, they wanted to get rid of that crutch (ouch), although she was a character who could appear in almost any book and was a nice way of presenting a joined-up DCU. In any event, I guess she recovered. What’s there to say about this new book? Is the character even relevant any more? Gail Simone has her work cut out for her.

Nightwing
Booting Dick back to Nightwing status after he made an excellent Batman stand-in feels like a massive step in the wrong direction for the character. I can’t be sure that Bludhaven is still a smoking crater in the Earth, but at least this first story has Dick operating in Gotham City, which is probably where he belongs. He is set to confront demons from his past and uncover more revelations about Haley’s Circus, but, you know, it’s just hard to get excited about any of it. Haven’t we seen it all before? Dick deserves better than this.

Catwoman
Speaking of deserving better, just because Halle Berry was terrible in the Catwoman movie, it isn’t fair to punish poor Selina. Her new ongoing will be written by Judd Winnick, absolutely the kiss of death in a title. Selina should run a mile! Winnick undoubtedly means well but he has a tendency to clumsily insert stories about HIV or LGBT into his books to horrible effect. From outing Kyle’s teenage friend Terry in GL, to revealing Green Arrow’s promising new sidekick was HIV positive, it’s a terribly cheap way of getting attention. Given Selina’s history we can only assume the worst is in store for her. You could point a gun at me and I still wouldn’t be reading this.

Bird of Prey
With the loss of Oracle, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen with the Birds of Prey team and it’s certainly got that going for it. Will it still have the globe-trotting feel the book had in the old DCU? Possibly not as the team now seems to be operating in the back-streets of Gotham. The line-up is rather uninspiring too. But even the dullest characters can shine with a decent writer and mystery writer Duane Swierczynski is a bit of an unknown quantity. I think this one could be a sleeper hit.

Red Hood and the Outlaws
With some adjustments to their characters, Jason Todd is teamed with former Titans Arsenal and Starfire. Jason is trying to make amends after his stint as the Red Hood, Arsenal is now a mercenary and Green Arrow’s “rejected sidekick”(wha??) and Starfire is a former alien prisoner. The failed sidekick angle for Jason and Roy is pretty original, but I’d hate to see this descend into the standard X-Force style black-ops team. I’ll be keeping one eye on this book.

Next time, Green Lantern to Red Lanterns!

The new 52: Superman! (Action Comics to Superboy)

This is the most fundamentally changed ‘family’ of books in DC’s entire line and the revamped Superman has become the poster boy of the New 52. It’s a brave move from DC to do something so huge after Marvel’s massively unpopular decision to do much the same with Spider-man in Brand New Day. In that one, Mephisto essentially wipes out Peter’s marriage to MJ so that it never happened. Years of history junked. In a similar way, DC have used time travel to mess around with Superman’s established history in an attempt to give him (and his writers) a clean slate. Let’s review some alterations:

1) No Kents. Superman’s adopted parents are dead by the time he even hits Metropolis.
2) No flying when he first starts out. His powers developed as an adult, which means…
3) No Superboy in Smallville. This massively impacts the Legion of Superheroes and sadly bins the recent Secret Origin.
4) Lois and Clark are not married and their whole relationship has been wiped from history. Lois is even involved with another guy.
5) New costume; jeans, t-shirt and mini-cape for when he starts out, and what looks like an armoured high collar variant of the traditional costume for the all new present day.

This isn’t so much a new way of looking at Superman, as much as it is an all new character doing the same job.

Action Comics
Grant Morrison showcases Superman’s early days in Metropolis. A Superman yet to gain the trust of the world and can only leap tall buildings in a single bound. I’ve no doubt this will be a great read, but even going in it feels like this is designed for a trade and there’s the question why they didn’t just do it in the first place. Will Grant Morrison stick around after the first story? It honesty seems unlikely, which is one heck of a risk for DC to take. Like everyone else I guess I’ll be checking this out, but it’s got some way yet to convince me that this was the right decision for DC.

Superman
It’s going to take even more convincing with this. Superman has an all new status quo to such an extent that he’s basically a new character with, we can assume, a new history. Or can we? We’re told certain stories happened, but others didn’t and with Superman it’s rather more problematic than some.  How can a story like The Death of Superman happen without the Lois and Clark relationship in place? So no Death and no Doomsday? As one of the more iconic bad guys, he’ll almost certainly show up and that’s part of the problem. It’s almost like Superman Returns again. A supposed fresh start that actually creates more problems than simply wiping the board clean and saying nothing we’ve seen before actually happened. With all that said, I’ve always been a Superman fan and have periodically picked up the title if the story interested me. I want the character to do well. I’ll be picking this up, but I think the key point is that this does not yet feel like Superman. It’s more like one of the many Superman analogues we’ve seen over the years from DC’s competitors. Great reads, sure, but they’re not the real deal.

Supergirl
Poor old Kara doesn’t have the best luck. By my reckoning this is the 5th (possibly 6th) incarnation of the same character. Is it really that hard to get her right? She’s only Superman’s cousin, for gods sake. I have to admit, I didn’t think that the last version was all that bad and there was plenty of room for her to grow as a character. Unfortunately she’s gone. The new Kara is very much an outsider on Earth and lacking Kal’s Kansas upbringing doesn’t have the same affection or understanding of humanity he does. To be fair, that’s a reasonable concept, but part of me misses a happy Supergirl who smiles. Lydia Deetz in a cape is not Supergirl.

Superboy
I loved Reign of the Supermen back in the day, and over the years the wise-cracking clone of Superman had steadily become a bit of a fixture in the DCU with a major role in Young Justice on top of periodic shots at his own title. Like Kara, he’s gone. The new Superboy is again a half-human half-kryptonian clone and, going by the artwork in the preview, possibly even cybernetic.  A Superboy robot for a new generation? I’ve got to say that nothing about this character is grabbing my attention. I liked Conner because he had a personality and he was a likeable kid. I’m seeing none of that in this new character. It pains me to do it, but it’s not making the cut.

Next time, we look at the all new Bat-titles!

The new 52: Captain Atom to Mister Terrific.

The next batch of titles under the Justice League banner is something of a mixed bag. It’s hard to see some of them lasting past the usual 6 issue test run. Let’s take a look….

Captain Atom
The blueprint for Watchmen‘s god-like Dr Manhattan character, Captain Atom has understandably had a troubled publishing history and aside from a pretty healthy run of 57 issues in the 90’s, he’s mainly loitered around the background of the DCU. What do you do with a character who has the power to do virtually anything? DC didn’t seem to know for sure and the character had a particularly bad spell around Infinite Crisis / 52 / Final Crisis which can best be described as a thundering mess. He adopted a more recognisable persona in the recent pretty decent Generation Lost, but this new book seems to be doing something else again. We appear to be firmly back in Doctor Manhattan territory with a hero at risk of losing himself to his vast power, which again could be interesting if they take a suitably mature approach. It’s just hard to see how that can be sustainable in the long run. I can’t see this one sticking around.

Green Arrow
Let me say it’s great to see new Green Arrow book doesn’t have anything to so with Judd Winnick. If you struggled through that last run you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.  Ollie has always been someone who needed to challenge authority, whether he was in the right or not, and the new book seems to be giving us plenty of that, pitching Oliver Queen as a troubled hero who breaks every rule in the book to bring bad guys to justice. Ollie as outlaw has potential and the recent success of the character in Smallville gives me the feeling that this book could be in good hands. With one caveat: a Green Arrow who kills people is a Green Arrow I don’t want to be reading about. If it can stick to that rule, then I’ll be giving this one a shot.

The Savage Hawkman
Once considered a ‘radioactive’ character with a massively convoluted history and multiple conflicting variations over the years that made him virtually impossible to use, Hawkman has been trusted with his own series again. His most recent backstory made sense if you didn’t think about it too much(: an egyptian prince and princess on a constant cycle of death and rebirth through the ages after exposure to an alien metal) but it was still awkward and something about it didn’t quite gel. The Hawkpeople of the planet Thanagar and Hawkman’s connection to them seemed terribly artificial and a bit forced. While this new book has Carter Hall again in the role of Hawkman, it seems to be  a complete reboot. Could he now just be an ordinary human using alien technology? I think I’m fine with that, and that’s as a long time fan of Hawkman. But “Savage Hawkman” makes me a little nervous here, and the costume looks terrible. It’s clear that they’ve went with what’s obviously alien rather than historical weaponry, but it’s messy looking and lacks the style and grace that I’ve come to expect. It’s all a bit brutal. That said, this is a chance for DC to finally clean house with the character and make him accessible. I want to see what they do, so I’ll definitely be there.

DC Universe Presents
The Brave and the Bold in another form? It’s the traditional book which gives a chance for characters without their own title to shine. This can make for a lot of fun and some of the best stories DC have produced over the years have come from this format. While this new book could have been a chance for DC to do a bit of world-building and tell us more about the new DCU, I’m rather underwhelmed that their choice for the first story arc is what sounds like a terribly routine 5 part Deadman story. Yes, the guy who has to possess other people to interact with our world at all. I have to be honest and say that I’ve never read a Deadman story that I found particularly engaging. Even his role in Brightest Day could have been given to someone else without too much trouble. This is probably a book to look at again at the 6th month mark, assuming it makes it that far.

Mister Terrific
The Justice Society are nowhere to be seen in the new DCU, so it’s a little odd to see their former chairman getting his own book. That said, I’m delighted. Michael Holt is a bit of a hidden gem in the DCU. He’s the third smartest man in the world and uses his intellect and his incredible inventions to fight for fair play and justice. There’s just so much you can do with him. In his own title, which I’m assuming is a virtual reboot, he heads the DC equivalent of Marvel’s Future Foundation and fights “science gone mad”. I’m not blown away by the minor tweaks to his costume, but I can live with them. I love a character who uses his mind as much as his fists, so this book is on my essentials list. Incidentally this character and the crazy imaginative world he inhabits would be perfect for Grant Morrison. But I guess Grant Morrison had another character in his sights..

Next up, Grant Morrison’s Action Comics and the rest of the Superman books.

The new 52: Justice League to The Fury of Firestorm

A little later than planned, but lets crack open the preview book and take a look at some of the titles shipping under the Justice League banner.

 

Justice League

The old is new again and Geoff Johns brings back the traditional line-up of Superman, Batman (Bruce), Flash (Barry), Aquaman, Green Lantern (Hal) and Wonder Woman. He’s not in the preview art but joining them is Cyborg, fulfilling much the same function as Steel in Morrison’s run. There’s nothing terribly exciting about the choices here, but Geoff John’s has transformed Hal, Arthur and (to a lesser extent) Barry in recent years and seems to understand how to make them cool. In that regard, Justice League holds a lot of promise: Johns might finally give us a version of the Big Three that works. And no-one needs that more than Wonder Woman at this point.

Jim Lee’s costumes are strictly ok. Flash, Batman and Aquaman do well. Superman’s high collar stands out more than the others and may take some getting used to. Hal’s new shoulder armour hints at something a little more substantial. Right at the bottom of the heap is poor old Wonder Woman. Her costume really doesn’t look right. Diana’s always been more than the sum of her wardrobe, and while her traditional costume was probably a little goofy, it sure as hell didn’t matter and boy was it iconic. This new one just makes her look boring. She could be Donna Troy for all we know and no amount of “W” shaped accessories is making up for it. The preview art has her in black leggings and while I understand that when the book ships she’ll be in something closer to her traditional bikini shorts (albeit black), but everything about Diana at this point feels desperate.

Telling the story of how Batman got the team together at the start of the new 5 year DCU timespan, John’s Justice League is arguably the most important of the entire line and could be essential if we’re going to understand how the rest of the universe fits together. I think I’ll be picking this one up.

Justice League International
The terribly serious looking JLI seems to have dumped the jokes and taken on the same role as the Global Guardians in the One Year Later storyline of a few years ago: a United Nations funded superteam to promote cultural unity and protect the world against super-powered threats. It’s not clear where in the timeline this fits but possible concurrently with the Justice League relaunch at the dawn of superheroes. We might assume that the JLI has more global legitimacy than the Justice League. What is trickier is what the heck Batman is doing on this team. Does it have anything to do with Batman Incorporated? He doesn’t seem to fit at all here. In any event, he joins the traditional JLI roster of Rocket Red, Ice, Fire, Booster Gold (looking very serious again), and Guy Gardner. New to the party is August General in Iron from Chinese superteam The Great Ten, who might shake things up a little. Finally, there’s Animal Man knock-off, Vixen. Nothing about this character inspires. She was awful in Justice League and her presence here just makes the team seem even more mediocre. A UN-sponsored superteam isn’t a bad idea at all, but this book just isn’t grabbing my attention.

Aquaman
Geoff John’s did the impossible in Brightest Day and made Aquaman a character people wanted to read about. Can he keep that up in a new ongoing? It’s hard to tell. I really do want this book to be a success but we don’t know much of anything about it yet. Sure, Arthur has apparently renounced his throne and there’s some new bad guys to worry about (The Trench), but every Aquaman launch has had a promising start. What I want to know as a potential new reader is what Aquaman’s powers are going to be, and if they’ve sorted out the more embarrassing elements that have got in the way of us taking the character seriously in the past. Does he still need to be immersed in water every hour? Let’s hope they tidy all that up once and for all. I’ll certainly be there at the start of this book to get my questions answered.

Wonder Woman
After JMS virtually murdered the character we essentially have an all new rebooted Wonder Woman and it’s anyone’s guess what’s going to be happening. The concept appears to be something along the lines of the gods of old are real and WW is the only person who’s prepared to protect us against them. It goes without saying that WW’s massive backstory and involvement in WWII is junked. Urgh. I really do like Diana of old. I’m just not convinced that this book is going to give me that. I can’t overemphasise how much JMS’s seemingly endless Odyssey story steadily eroded my excitement in Wonder Woman. Diana just wasn’t Diana and it looks like more of the same here. Azzarello on the book is the last straw. No thanks!

The Flash
I have to be honest and say that Flash has never grabbed me as a character in anything but team books. I’m not familiar with the new writing team, but it’s not enough to make this one stand out for me.

The Fury of Firestorm
Firestorm’s been through a hell of a lot of changes recently. A major player in Brightest Day, there’s still a sense of excitement and unpredictability about him. The relaunch seems to stick reasonably close to where we left Jason and Ronnie, but the preview art is quite mysterious. We seem to have Jason and Ronnie in completely different Firestorm costumes. Will they be separate characters? Taking control of the matrix in turns? And what’s with the crazy looking third Firestorm towering above them both? (Maybe we haven’t seen the last of Deathstorm). It’s all anyone’s guess and with Gail Simone and Van Sciver on the writing chores, I want to check this out to see just what the hell is going on!

That’s enough from me on the new 52 for today! Next up…. Captain Atom to Mister Terrific!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the comic shop…

It’s been a busy summer so far for comic fans. A whole bunch of comic book movies in cinemas, including Green Lantern (watchable) and Captain America (fun), and then DC go and announce they’re relaunching their entire comics line in September with 52 new #1s after Flashpoint, a reality altering summer crossover, winds up.

In the new and apparently permanent universe, the public have only known about superheroes for 5 years and decades worth of comics history is condensed into that new timeframe.

Some classic stories will remain canon, others will be wiped from history. Some characters will be mostly unchanged, others ‘reimagined’ and a few notable characters like Wally West, Donna Troy and virtually the entire JSA will seemingly never have existed. DC have always played about with the line with the series of Crises to tidy up continuity, relaunch characters and set up new titles, but never before have they gone this far or it felt so final. Lois and Clark’s marriage never happened? Batman is an urban legend? Barbara Gordon is Batgirl again?

It’s a risky move, and one that, unsurprisingly, has annoyed a lot of long-term fans who feel that DC is abandoning them in search of a wider audience.

Whether that audience actually exists and whether that can in any way be a viable long-term strategy has been discussed to death by far angrier comic geeks. The sad fact is that, for good or bad, the whole DC universe is changing to something new and something we’ve never seen before.

So what about the titles? Well, happily DC have produced a promo guide to the 52 ongoing books, dividing them into 7 umbrella titles; Justice League, Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Dark, The Edge, and Young Justice.

We’ll start ripping them apart tomorrow…

OH FFS GET OVER IT! The controversy over Superman’s citizenship.

So in one of a number of stories in Action Comics #900 Superman decides to contact the UN and inform them that he’s renouncing his American citizenship. It’s proven both an interesting development for the character and a cute little soundbite for screaming lunatics who have absolutely no interest in comics or know anything about the story in context.

And the context is very important here. In acclaimed writer/director David S. Goyer’s “The Incident”, Superman attends a pro-democracy demo in Iran but his presence there is misrepresented by critics as carrying out the interests of the US government. This is obviously a big deal as it’s a) untrue, and b) potentially putting American lives at risk. So Superman does the right thing and decides to publicly distance himself from the American government by renouncing his citizenship. Superman is then effectively a global citizen and not allied with any one government.

Simple enough, right? I guess the really important point here is…

THIS IS IN NO WAY A CRITICISM OF AMERICA OR IT’S PEOPLE.

And, importantly, Superman is not Clark Kent! Clark is still happily a US citizen. Superman, a disguise Clark wears to allow him to use his superpowers to do good, is now a global symbol of truth, justice and the American Way [of egalitarianism!] and not a political tool for the American (or any) government.

Now whether the fictional people of America in the DC Universe agree with that or not could provide some interesting stories, but DC could hardly have imagined the shit-storm this has caused online and in the media, largely driven by thick-headed idiots who aren’t buying the comics and wouldn’t buy a Superman comic anyway if you held a gun to their head. Hipster halfwits and rabid patriots have turned a fairly mature and interesting development into an “attack on America” in the most ridiculous over the top way, I just can’t sit and ignore it any more. The hatred is absolutely sickening.

It’s a work of fiction about a kind hearted man from another world who has amazing powers and uses them to save lives and help inspire us to become better people. If your entire self worth is dependant on one view of this character, or for that matter whatever another fictional character, Captain America, thinks or says, you need a better counsellor or stronger medication. But the real truth here is that the loudest detractors are the ones with no interest in comics at all.

DC should be applauded for continuing to evolve a  long-running and popular character in interesting relevant ways for a global audience. ‘Superman the traitor’ is a non-story. Get on with your lives.

Bullet Points: Batman and Robin #21, Justice League Generation Lost #21

Batman and Robin #21

A new villain called the White Knight is loose in Gotham and it’s up to Dick and Damien to stop him. Post Morrison it’s good to see that the new Batman and Robin team has DC’s backing and the lighter Batman and serious and overly confident Robin makes for a much more engaging dynamic than the know-it-all Bruce and equally predictable Tim as Robin. That’s not to say Bruce and Tim made for a bad team but there’s only so far you can go with the same cast members before there’s really nothing more you can say about them. While killing Bruce, or blasting him through time (let’s face it, it was completely inconsistent with Seven Soldiers anyway and made no sense) was extreme, replacing the characters completely gave the concept a new lease of life. And it seems to have given the writers a shot in the arm too. The White Knight is essentially a glowing serial killer who creates martyrs out of the family members of Arkham inmates to redeem their souls. To do this he drugs them, dresses them up like angels and gets them to kill themselves. When this is young kids jumping off of buildings, it’s pretty grim stuff. But thankfully it sticks to the right side of the line and is more interesting and exciting than horrific. Yet again Dick has a solid new villain. It’s not the strongest arc but every page feels fresh and unpredictable. If DC has any sense this golden age will continue for a long time.  4/5

Justice League Generation Lost #21

If anyone knows failure it’s Booster Gold. The guy just can’t catch a break and any success he has you know it’s not long before it turns to crap. Right now he’s not having the greatest time, and for Booster Gold that’s really saying something.  He and the former Justice League have been doing what they can to stop the newly resurrected Maxwell Lord and it’s gone from bad to worse. Magog’s death at Max’s hands lead to the death of hundred of people in Chicago, and now the teenage Blue Beetle has fallen. This issue has the team members licking their wounds and dealing with the emotional fallout. It’s slow but the characters come across well, particularly Rocket Red who refuses to give into grief, and Captain Atom gets a nice standout scene with Ice when he faces the fact that he’ll outlast everyone he loves. It’s a huge surprise that this is coming from Judd Winnick, a writer who was hit and miss at the best of times and had long since past his expiry date after a seemingly unending capacity to inflict disaster on whatever character he was taking over. At worst his shock tactics and blunderbuss PC infomercials threatened to derail series entirely. Has he learned from the homophobic assault on Terry in GL, or making Speedy HIV Positive in Green Arrow? On the strength of the characterisation shown here, things are promising. Generation Lost, even in Winnick’s hands, is one to watch.   3/5

Bullet Points: Marvel Zombies Supreme #1, Superman / Doomsday 100 Page Spectacular

Marvel Zombies Supreme #1 of 5

The concept of Marvels Zombies was a great one way back in Ultimate Fantastic 4 but they were massively overused. Every series was weaker than the last and by the final death rattle of Marvel Zombies 5 it was clear that the idea had long since run out of steam. It needed a genuinely good idea to make things interesting again. Happily Marvel seem to have realised this and so we have MZ Supreme. Squadron Supreme, that is. Yes, since every regular Marvel hero has faced and fallen to the zombies before why not see how Marvel’s JLA analogue would fare? It’s deliciously good fun for comic fans. A crack military team is dispatched to the Silo to find out why contact has been lost and the bunker sealed from the inside. Before long it’s clear that the rescue mission is A Very Bad Idea.  Indeed, there’s a zombified ‘JLA’ on the loose and desperate to escape for fresh meat. Aside from the fun of figuring out which zombie is which DC hero, there’s a lot of tension around who, if any, of the soldiers is going to make it out alive. The danger is back and the excitement with it! The Squadron Supreme are out to change the world again, but will the world survive it?  4/5

 

Superman / Doomsday 100 Page Spectacular (one-shot)

To tie in with the Reign of Doomsday event DC have collected together some Doomsday stories you may have missed from days gone by. The largest section is a 3 part Doomsday special that takes place at some point after Superman – Doomsday (which gave him an origin) and tagged on at the end is a reprint of the 100th issue since the Death of Superman. It’s ironic that despite the dated 90s artwork, the earlier material actually holds up better than the more recent story post Our Worlds At War which suffers under Ed McGuinness’s overly exaggerated manga-influenced artwork. It looked bad at the time, and now it looks even more like it belongs in Roger Rabbits ‘Toonville. It’s just entirely distracting and feels like you’re reading something out of continuity entirely. The earlier material brings back some survivors of Doomsday’s original rampage, reveals what happened when Doomsday met Darkseid, how Doomsday inadvertently united Khundia, and yet another secret chapter (and massacre!) of the Green Lanterns Corps. The artwork is dated, but if you were reading comics back in the 90s, it’s a fun little nostalgia trip. It’s just a shame that DC sours things by including the newer story: it doesn’t sit well in the package at all and is an ugly reminder of one of the worst eras in Superman’s recent history.   3/5

Next: Batman & Robin #21, Justice League Generation Lost #21

Comic box coffin dodgers.

It was always going to happen, and I’d been putting if off for the longest time. But this weekend I finally went through the oldest of my comic boxes to see what should be kept and what’s moving on to the comic stack in the sky. These were the oldest of the old, from the grim teenage years and even earlier. Back when you could just pick up a random issue and get a good read, and money-sucking crossovers were few and far between.

I got most of them from jumble sales and loved every one of them. The Iron Man issue when he fought the Endotherm. (It should be a totally one sided fight but damn if the writer doesn’t make Stark work for every inch he gets). Another Iron Man one that introduced me to the terrifying Grey Gargoyle.  A fantastic old Incredible Hulk book when the Vision was trying to integrate the Hulk and Banner and winds up trapped inside the Hulk’s body. Awesome stuff, all.

When I was a little older I discovered a comic shop next to my Aunts in Byres Road, Future Shock, and started to pick up as many cheap comics as I could get my hands on. I could get a whole stack of Quality Comics Judge Dredd reprints for two quid, and then I was picking up Scavengers. That was a nasty little book that reprinted the Flesh storyline from 2000AD, but the biggest draw for me was a forgotten little gem of a story which played in the back pages called Helltrek. So far as I know it’s never been collected in any form since. It was a merciless story about what happens to a group of settlers making out from Dredd’s Mega City 1 to a new life on the other side of the Cursed Earth and, without fail, every single instalment had at least one horrific death from either dinosaurs, cannibal mutants, or the dreaded “black scab.”

When the 90s hit, it spread like a virus through my comic collection. I got really into Jim Shooter’s Defiant line, especially his Warriors of Plasm, and ate up everything Dark Horse released on their Aliens line. Foil covers, trading cards, I wanted them all.

That’s not to say there aren’t a few embarrassments in there. Frankly, I don’t know what I was thinking with Spawn, but I think my regular purchase of Wizard had something to do with it. My rationale for collecting X-Men 2099 went something like I figured it’d be easier to get into the X-Men without needing to know all the backstory of the modern titles , but.. yeah.. that bombed. Doom 2099, let’s not talk about, and you know when it gets to Hulk 2099 that there are some serious problems in there.

I refuse to apologise for my love of Zero Hour, even though it’s pretty shoddy now and the line-up of heroes when they assemble in one of the early issues is thunderingly unimpressive. Entropy! The end of the universe! Time paradoxes! I inhaled it and as many tie-ins and I could get my hands on.

Every comic collection has to have an abomination though. Something that really is beyond the pale and there’s no reasonable explanation for why it stayed in there, and for me it’s… John Byrne’s Marvel: the Lost Generation. It’s supposed to tell the story of a kind of linking generation of Marvel heroes between the 40s and the 60s and reading it you’d be forgiving for wishing they’d stayed lost. It’s like Astro City but with sillier names and none of Kurt Busiek’s skill or love of the genre. It’s also numbered in reverse to make it even more annoying and difficult to follow, and the only thing it succeeds at it over 12 painful issues is being completely incomprehensible.

That piece of crap aside, I’m sorry to see them go, especially my beloved  Judge Dredd’s. But it’s time for them to move on to new owners. I hope that wherever they wind up, some kid will pick up one of the books and discover a whole different world and get inspired by the old school heroics. Or at least that the giant spiders in Scavengers will give them nightmares.