4.10.11

The New 52: My top five (and then some)

So, we're on the far side of the New 52 initiative, of which I ended up reading 40 titles (plus two I would have read if I could ever have found copies), and I have to say it aside from some issues that cropped up each week it was overall a positive experience. There were a handful of standouts, but I liked a lot more of the total than I expected to, and I intend to stick with a bunch, albeit a month late after the price drop for most of them. In lieu of writing forty reviews, which I probably would have done if I had time between actually reading my 20-odd-books-a-week pull (urgh), I'm just going to pick out my five favorites and a few honorable mentions and focus on the ones worth reading.


The Surprises: Between having a good night at the casino at the end of August, and birthday bux at the end of September, I had a bit more cash than normal and I ended up picking up some books I would have skipped otherwise. Some of these, that I would have gladly passed on, ended up being pretty swell. Some even made it into the top five, in the end. The New Guardians, for example, was the title I was least excited about out of the four Green Lantern books. It wasn't great by the standards set by some of the books, and it definitely didn't need so much of its page count devoted to Kyle Rayner's origin (even in making it accessible to new readers, there's something to be said for compressed storytelling) but it was definitely the most fun I had reading any of the Lantern lot. Out of the team books it's definitely leading into one of the quirkier, less-typical lineups, especially since up to now we've only seen most of these characters mired down in Geoff Johns "epic" Lantern mythology and events. Speaking of team books, immediately following the not-terrible-but-dreadfully-ponderous start that was Lee and John's Justice League, Justice League International was such a better example of how to do a first issue of introducing characters, building the team and getting them into the action. Superboy was one I was actively disinterested in, but I love (love love) R.B. Silva's art and figured giving new books a chance was part of the point of this whole thing, at least for me, and it was worth the $3 even if it was just to look at the pretty pretty pictures. Again, it ended up much better than I expected, to the point that it actually tricked me into getting interested in the much-maligned (and equally-regretted) Teen Titans relaunch. I thought slightly better of Supergirl, maybe out of having just recently read Cosmic Adventures In The Eighth Grade enamored me to the character a little more than usual, but I never would have guessed it would have been barely nudged out of my top five. It's uber-decompressed storytelling didn't help, the events (again, spending a lot of time revisiting established origin-story territory) of these 20 pages could have easily been fit into 15, if not less, and opened up some room for a little more actual story or even a small b-story. However, one must judge the book we have and not the one we want, and on its own merits this was pretty excellent. Even books like Savage Hawkman and Deathstroke, of which I certainly didn't have the highest expectations going in, may not have had the strongest first issues but ended up showing a lot of potential that I'll be more than happy to give them a chance for the first arc or so, the latter especially seemed to posit some fun ideas that only comics can do, even if our protagonist is a bit off-putting.

The Not-So-Surprising: Where hype and expectations can raise up my impression of a book simply by being Not Awful where I assumed otherwise, the pendulum can swing back the other way and make a book I had high hopes for seem like so much offal. And the New 52 is no exception to this phenomena (*coughRedLanternscough*). However, some slipped through the cracks and ended up being just as good as I hoped, or better even. All-Star Western was basically exactly what I wanted, with Hex and Arkham playing odd-couple detectives in 19th Century Gotham City. As I've seen a few people mention, the major problem with this book is it isn't really a western, so much as a period-piece detective comic with a cowboy in it. However, that same concept of cowboys being where cowboys ought not be is basically what has so enamored me to the career of Sam Elliott, and I can't take issue with it in comic form, either. OMAC, obviously, hearkened back to the original Kirby concept more than what the OMACs had been in the recent DCU and that excited me to start, but what it ended up delivering was an all-out Kirby-reference-palooza, with Giffen and Didio nailing the style, both in art and the over-the-top pure uniquely-comic-book action, making the book both an homage and a loving send-up as much as its own book. I only worry that this won't hold up in the long run, but for the moment this first issue is a uniquely fun, crazy corner of the New 52 books. Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire are unquestionably two of the best writers out there right now, both ending up with a book in my top five so it's not surprising that their other books in the relaunch were also hands-down awesome. Both Lemire's Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE and Snyder's Swamp Thing make excellent use hybridizing the horror comic genre with the New 52's insistence of shared-universe superheroic DC universe, and both bringing the pretty (or gruesome, as the case may be) with the art by Alberto Ponticelli and Yannick Paquette respectively. Similar praise can be tossed towards Abnett and Lanning's latest take on Resurrection Man. DC Universe Presents I was expecting to like, and it certainly didn't disappoint, it ended up being an solid single issue of a Deadman comic. I had admittedly somewhat hoped this title would be one-and-dones, but this was good enough that I'll happily come back for more for the time being. Even if, like Supergirl and Blue Beetle in the same week, it was just a retelling of the origin story as so many of us already know but left out there as an offering to the mythical New Reader this is theoretically all about, so I can't fault them for taking it down this path.

The Top Five:

5. Justice League Dark written by Peter Milligan, art by Mikel Janin, colors by Ulises Arreola, letters by Rob Leigh

As Vertigo titles get sucked into the fold of the DCU proper, books like this are exactly what I want to see. It's fine to see something like Swamp Thing to have Superman come down and remind everyone they're neighbors now and just carry on and tell it's own story, that certainly was one of my favorite books of this whole ordeal. But something like Justice League Dark takes certain elements left floating around the universe(s) and bring them together in a way that couldn't have been done without some grand event like this backing it up, finding a way to make all these disparate pieces fit together into a wholly new beast. This book, specifically, balanced well reintroducing the various magical characters that make up the team, while showing the DCU regulars and why, exactly, they needed to call in this black(-magic)-ops team at all (storm of teeth! ahahaha). Calling this a Justice League book feels like a bit of branding to make it stick out a little more on the shelf, but if that's going to be what it's called, it's definitely the best book of the three relaunch titles that carried that particular appellation.

4. Demon Knights written by Paul Cornell, art by Diogenes Neves, inks by Oclair Albert, colors by Marcelo Maiolo, letters by Jared K. Fletcher

I complained a lot about rehashing origin stories when they cropped up in the books, but in reality out of 52 titles, the horrible drudgery that is an origin story was blissfully underrepresented. I felt what really stepped up, certainly for the better, was the building-the-team stories, as all these characters set out from fresh starts and begin finding each other. And a lot of these were handled very well, like New Guardians and Justice League Dark but hands-down the most fun of the lot was Demon Knights. A sword-and-sorcery epic that manages to be a fantasy world all its own while still clearly set in the known DCU, all with (for the most part) established characters who would have been around in the dark ages, from immortal cavemen to Amazonian barbarians to, of course, the titular Etrigan. The book is a genre-hybrid, like many of the standout relaunch books, managing to be recognizably a DCU story, while still being something wholly unique among the fifty-one other books it was released alongside, or even fairly unique when held against anything else on the shelf.

3. The Flash art and co-written by Francis Manapul, colors and co-written by Brian Buccellato

The established Trinity of DC has always been Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but for me personally there's always been a sub-trinity of Wonder Woman, Aquaman and The Flash. These three are characters who I've always respected as those big, classic characters that have always been around but I've never actually read that one story of theirs that grabbed me and made me a fan. When I saw these three were each getting a title in the relaunch, I committed to give them all a chance, as I so often do (I don't think I own a Flash or Wonder Woman comic that isn't a number one of a new stab at the characters). Of course, Aquaman and Wonder Woman were the two books I have not been able to find copies of yet (usual digital price bitching here blah blah blah), although I think I've heard enough about both that I probably wouldn't enjoy the former but the latter may actually be my jumping-on point. I mention all this, however, to get to this point: not even one month ago, could I have ventured a guess that not only would a Flash comic be one of my favorite books of the entire month, let alone just DC's offerings. As I've observed, Flashpoint was a story about running really fast to fix a problem caused by running really fast. This, to me, was not particularly interesting. What Manapul and Buccellato are doing with this new series are putting the story and characters first and not tailoring the conflict of the book to Barry's unique power-set, forcing him to think how he can use these super-speed powers to accomplish what he needs to. It's almost MacGuyver-y, doing whatever he can with vibrating molecules instead of paperclips and string. The mystery set up pushes my suspension of disbelief, but doesn't quite break it yet and makes me want to keep reading. It really helps that Manapul and Baccuellato, also the art team, have made this book absolutely beautiful. This book is a great example of what DC could have done with this reboot, sadly one of few titles that I could say the same about. Again, I have gone fairly quickly from not caring at all about The Flash to getting antsy waiting for the next issue.

2. Batman written by Scott Snyder, art by Greg Capullo, inks by Jonathon Glapion, colors by FCO Plascencia, letters by Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

I said it on Twitter when I read the book and I say it now, if I had to pick one Bat-family book (and, as I cull my pull-list starting this month, I may be doing just that), it would be whichever one Scott Snyder is writing at the time. Pre-relaunch he worked on the fun Gates Of Gotham mini-series (tendrils of which are seeping into the relaunch) and an absolutely stellar run on Detective Comics. But where Detective was decidedly dark and creepy (especially when Francavilla was on art), post-relaunch Snyder is doing something special with Batman, something a lot of us have been calling for for years: he's lifting him out of the darkness and making him fun again. Just to start the book, he has Batman teaming up with the Joker* and beating the crap out of Arkham's inmates. All of them. And that takes up just about a quarter of the book. Then we get to see him as Bruce, except even amidst the high-class function he never really stops being Batman, while Snyder (alllmost-)seamlessly introduces the supporting cast using some of that crazy Bat-tech. Then, back to Batman, we see his relationship with the cops who aren't Gordon, and how he actually does detective work to get the job done. Far more than actually showed up in Detective Comics, which just again shows how much Snyder gets how to use the character to his fullest extent. Not only is this a wonderful Batman book to someone who's been following the character for their whole life, if there is some new reader who has managed to get through life without knowing who this Bat-man is and picks up this issue, they are given all the information they need at a glance to pick up what this character is all about. And all this is to say nothing of Greg Capullo's art, who has some beautifully stylized and expressive work in here, equally pulling off some amazing action, great character moments and creepy atmospheric crime scene set-pieces.

*Okay, not quite.

1. Animal Man written by Jeff Lemire, art by Travel Foreman, inks by Travel Foreman and Dan Green, colors by Lovern Kindzierski, letters by Jared K. Fletcher

If I had to pick my favorite aspect of the relaunch, it'd be the genre-hybridization a lot of the books seem to pull off pretty well. They're all over the map, but all still never quite get free of the fact that they're set in a world where people put on tights and capes fly around. We have fantasy books, military books, westerns (well, one western), but for my tastes my favorite mix is the horror/hero books, and the best of this crop was easily Lemire's Animal Man. Lemire gets the reintroduction of the character out of the way quick in a atypical but effective method by way of a text piece on the first page, an interview that contains all the information you'd need to know about Buddy to enjoy this book regardless of your prior familiarity with the character. After that, the book kicks off with a solid story of a man balancing family life with being a superhero. Even if this was all the story was, this could be a great book just with that hook. However, the horror aspects of the book start creeping in after Buddy does his superheroic duties and deals with a gunman in a hospital. Then, as you think its easing you into these things, the book takes a hard left into Creepy Town, via a dream sequence that hints at things to come and leads to Buddy waking up to an amazing last-page sting that really drives home how atypical a superhero book this may be. The art follows along with the plot, starting out with simple lines and growing more detailed as the story progresses until the dream sequence, where Foreman absolutely kills it and confirms that this thing really can be a horror book. Tying into their shared history, this can (and should) be read along with Snyder's Swamp Thing, as the two tap into their common past back in the Vertigo days and build up from it, tied together while still (so far) separate enough to be enjoyed independently.

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