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Sep 11

DCU Week 1

Posted on Sunday, September 11, 2011 by Paul in x-axis

As per the previous post, I’m going to split the reviews into two this month.  So the X-books are one post down, and in this post we’re going to do (some of) the new DC titles.

Before we start: yes, I know it’s technically week two, of the relaunch, but I’m treating Justice League as week zero.

And no, I didn’t buy Detective Comics, Green Arrow, Hawk & Dove, Justice League International, or Men of War.  Just to save you scrolling down.

Oh, and for those of you who missed the plug on Twitter, Al is the guest co-host on this month’s episode of The Thumbcast, which is well worth a listen.

Action Comics #1 – Well, this is the big one, isn’t it?  As far as online fandom is concerned, at any rate.  The challenge for Superman writers is his overfamiliarity; like Mickey Mouse, he’s so iconic that he’s a brand first and a character a distant second, if at all.  With All-Star Superman, Grant Morrison addressed that problem by doing a definitive modern take on the classic (ie Silver Age) Superman set-up, but with Action Comics he’s taking a more radical approach.

It’s shortly after the dawn of superheroes – which, in revamped DC continuity, is about five years ago – and Superman’s been around for a few months, still with a makeshift costume, and still growing in power.  Here, Morrison is going right back to the very early, Golden Age Superman, who used to take on slum landlords and so forth.  That sort of thing went out of the window partly because the increasingly fantastic tone of the series didn’t fit with such villains, but also because Superman himself drifted into an establishment role, as the embodiment of unthreatening moral authority and the preservation of the picket-fenced status quo.

Yet these are cynical and anti-establishment times, so there’s much to be said for dusting off this long-buried aspect of the character.  So, while he’s still got Lex Luthor to fight and there are still plenty of big action sequences, the early Superman is a man-of-the-people vigilante activist, and a challenge to the established order, if not an outright threat.  Technically none of this is new, but it’s been so heavily buried for so many decades that it might as well be.  Whether DC will allow this to interpretation to extend beyond the “Year One” stories remains to be seen, but it certainly does pull off the very difficult task of making Superman seem not just fresh, but like a proper character again.

There’s no origin story here; we pick up with Superman already somewhat established.  The issue sets up the status quo, delivers a few action scenes, sketches out the supporting cast, and reaches a decent cliffhanger, while dropping a couple of hints for obvious later developments.  There’s a lot in here if you’re looking for it, but it doesn’t clutter the central story.  Morales is a good choice of artist; there’s enough of a classical superhero feel to the work to balance out the changes and keep a sense of familiarity.  All told, a good first issue and a very promising start to the series.

Animal Man #1 – Not one that I originally ordered, but I picked it up from the DC app on the strength of the reviews.  Animal Man hasn’t had his own ongoing series since 1995, and he’s still primarily associated in most people’s minds with the seminal Grant Morrison run that linked him inextricably to metafiction.  Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman’s revival goes nowhere near that, but otherwise the character’s history seems to be intact; this could well be a relaunch that was coming anyway and happens to have been scheduled as part of the reboot.

The series picks up with Buddy Baker as a sort of semi-retired suburban superhero who no longer keeps up a dual identity, spends more time doing animal rights work than actually fighting crime, has a pleasant suburban life with the wife and kids, and does a bit of acting on the side.  It’s a nice change of pace for a superhero book, giving him a refreshingly angst-free life.  Naturally, the first issue spends much of its time building up a genuinely creepy threat of something that might disturb all this.

Foreman does some lovely dream sequences here, and there’s something pleasingly retro about his sequences with Animal Man in costume – the first few pages seem at times to be trying too hard to liven up a conversation scene with weirdly-shaped panels, but he gets that out of his system quickly.  This is a strong first issue – it’s a book that quickly establishes its own voice, and it seems like one that’ll be worth sticking with.

Batgirl #1 – I don’t think anyone envied Gail Simone with this one.  Barbara Gordon, who has been in a wheelchair since “Killing Joke” over twenty years ago, is now Batgirl again, even though she’d settled into a rather more distinctive role as the DCU’s information broker Oracle.  Why is she being made into Other Batman Character #3 again?  I don’t know!

It has evidently been decreed that “Killing Joke” is still in continuity, because this version of Batgirl has still spent several years in a wheelchair before “a miracle happened”, which the story doesn’t explain – hopefully because it’s a storyline for further down the road.  While her time as Oracle isn’t explicitly booted from the continuity, the story certainly seems to suggest it never happened, since there’s no mention of it and she’s back to getting information from her police commissioner father.

This rewind of the character has been more than a little controversial among the fans, and Simone elects to confront it head on by making Batgirl’s return to action the central theme of the main story: she’s only just returned to action and is still a bit shaky, while the villain is apparently some sort of Final Destination-style serial killer hunting down people who have escaped death.

It pains me to say it, but it doesn’t really work.  Enough of Barbara’s history has been deleted to make this feel like a separate character, so I don’t really understand why they bothered keeping “A Killing Joke” in continuity to start with.  The issue of Barbara recovering from her paralysis dominates the story to such an extent that we never really find out why she became Batgirl, how she fits in with the rest of the Batman cast, or indeed what this book might be about once it stops being about someone who’s recently got out of a wheelchair, which surely can’t be the focal point forever.  There’s also some uncharacteristically clumsy dialogue in the opening scene.

But the fundamental issue is that nobody was really crying out to see Barbara Gordon returned to this frankly less interesting role as a distaff Batman knock-off.  The first issue had to sell us on why we’d like to read about her as Batgirl… and it doesn’t, really.

Batwing #1 – Batman Incorporated has evidently survived the continuity purge, because here’s Judd Winick and Ben Oliver with a whole series about Batwing, the Batman of Africa.  And boy, is that a hook that makes me uncomfortable, because Africa’s not merely enormous, it’s also incredibly diverse, and there’s something queasily reductive about having the same character notionally representing Marrakesh, Nairobi, Johannesberg, Harare, Cairo and the Sahara.

In fact, Batwing’s home base is established pretty emphatically as a (fictional) city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he doubles as the local Batman franchise and an officer in the room-for-improvement local police force.  It would be nice to think that the character is going to be given a more specific setting than “Africa” – in fact, Kinshasa would be a potentially interesting new setting for a superhero book – but so far as I can discern from the art, the opening flash-forward looks worryingly like it’s taking place in the pyramids, which are thousands of miles away.

Which brings me to another point: while Ben Oliver draws lovely figures with good use of shadow, and Brian Reber’s colouring gives the book a distinctive washed-out look, the book’s rather light on establishing shots and backgrounds – so that a comic whose central hook is supposed to be its unique setting ends up feeling a bit dislocated.  On the other hand, the lead character is likeable enough, and there’s a promising relationship being set up with the love interest cop who’s not corrupt, but isn’t exactly a crusader for reform either.  There’s some potential in there.  Overall, it’s okay, but it never quite manages the sense of place that it would need to be truly successful.

Static Shock #1 – This is a relaunch of the Milestone character who was incorporated into the DC Universe a while back.  Static was, very loosely, Milestone’s equivalent of Spider-Man, in as much as he was the boy-next-door teenage hero.  He’s also more marketable than most of the Milestone characters, since he had a TV show that ran for four years at the start of the decade.

This version is written and drawn by Scott McDaniel, with John Rozum co-writing.  As seems to be the norm (unless you’re Justice League), this isn’t an origin issue; we’re joining the story in progress and the details will evidently be filled in later if there’s enough interest.  So Virgil Hawkins is now a teenager whose family has recently relocated to New York, and in a shameless piece of plot-driving he’s both (a) some sort of protege of Hardware (another Milestone character, though his exact nature is a bit mysterious in this story), and (b) an intern at STAR Labs (one of those institutions, so commonplace in superhero comics, that specialise in Things Going Horribly Wrong).  The first issue sets up that, and introduces the family, against the background of Static taking on a Thing Going Wrong at STAR Labs in order to demonstrate his powers and attract the attention of some bad guys.

As a power demonstration, it actually leaves a little to be desired; the overall impression is that Static has the power to do anything that can be described in terms of electrically-themed technobabble, which I suspect is not what they were going for.  But the character seems likeable enough, the book does the smart thing of setting up plenty of plot threads alongside a simple central story, McDaniel’s chunky and stylised art is always fun, and the cliffhanger’s a good one.  I’ll give it some time to see how it beds in.

Stormwatch #1 – With the integration of the WildStorm characters into the DC Universe, the question is how they’re going to fit in.  In the case of Stormwatch, the answer is that they’re the secret organisation that was dealing with weird stuff behind the scenes before any of these amateurish superheroes showed up.

That makes this something of an in-name-only revival of the original Stormwatch, who started life as WildStorm’s equivalent of the Avengers, and then (following a well-received run by Warren Ellis) mutated into the Authority.  The cast here are a mixture of Ellis characters and new creations, with the Martian Manhunter as the token DCU arriviste.

Paul Cornell and Miguel Sepulveda are certainly going full speed with their first issue, in which the team try to recruit Apollo (he and Midnighter have both been rebooted entirely), the Moon seems to be coming to life, and there’s something rather hard to follow involving a giant horn, which will apparently make more sense once Superman #1 ships at the end of the month.  The background of Stormwatch is hinted at without being spelled out – there’s a suggestion that this version is a secret society going back all the way to Cornell’s Demon Knights book, which would be a nice tie-in.

While there are some ideas with potential, it doesn’t really gel.  It’s all rather bitty, and Paul Cornell’s own voice rather gets lost under a welter of inherited concepts fighting for space.  I’m sure it’ll settle down once it hits its stride, but it’s not a great first issue.

Swamp Thing #1 – Another one that I didn’t originally buy, but the reviews have been decent enough for me to download it.  (And this, publishers, is why day and date is a good idea.  Do you know what I normally do when I hear that something I didn’t buy had good reviews?  I make a mental note to buy the trade – and unless it’s a book that everyone‘s talking about, by the time the trade is solicited six months later, I’ve probably forgotten all about it.  DC got two extra sales out of me this week, solely because when I read the reviews, I could impulse-buy the comics.)

I gather that pre-reboot Swamp Thing continuity was something of a mess, but that needn’t be a problem for this title – though I suspect that writer Scott Snyder has been saddled with some of the recent developments anyway, perhaps because DC can’t bring themselves to simply jettison a story that only just came out.  The lead character here isn’t Swamp Thing but Alec Holland, who recounts a version of the familiar origin story in which he dies, comes back to life years later, and vaguely remembers being Swamp Thing in the middle.  Judging from some other reviews I’ve seen, this may actually be a better read for not knowing the previous state of his continuity, since Snyder turns the connection between Holland and Swamp Thing into a mystery in its own right.

It’s debatable whether this strictly counts as a horror book – Superman’s in it, for heaven’s sake, and it has something of a weakness for Brian Vaughan-style biology factoids – but it does have a surprisingly effective slow build of something being just plain Wrong, building to a rather unpleasant sequence near the end.  And of course, just because you can’t do explicit gore in a DCU title, it doesn’t stop you doing a general mood of unease, which usually has more impact anyway.

Yanick Paquette seemed an odd choice for this book – he’s always struck me as having something of a weakness for cheesecake art.  But this story is so far removed from that territory that we can focus instead on the strength of his storytelling.  His Superman’s a little bit stiff, but I think a few artists seem to be struggling with that semi-armoured costume.  When the book needs to turn nasty, he shifts gears well, and he can make a room full of innocuous flowers look threatening.  Swamp Thing is a series I’ve never really got into, but this is a promising debut issue, and it brings a bit of variety back to the main DC Universe.

Bring on the comments

  1. Patrick H says:

    Paul:

    I think you mean “The Killing Joke,” not “Death in the Family” in your review of Batgirl #1. The latter is where Robin/Jason Todd was killed by the Joker.

  2. Paul says:

    Oops. I’ve fixed that.

  3. Niall says:

    What device did you use to read the comics and how did you find it?

  4. Xercies says:

    I kind of liked Batgirl actually, the stuff about her still being traumatised about the shooting thing made me feel for her and made me actually kind of want that to be a plot element that stays for awhile since its quite interesting for a hero to have that kind of weakness.

    Action Comics was really nice. And Animal Man and Swamp Thing has gotten me hooked and very interested to see where it goes.

  5. Brian says:

    “Oops. I’ve fixed that.”

    Paul, you missed one. First paragraph.

  6. Paul says:

    Niall: I’m using an iPad. I find it fine for reading comics, though in an ideal world the pages wouldn’t have to be slightly reduced in size for the iPad screen.

  7. Kid Nixon says:

    I feel like I enjoyed Stormwatch quite a bit more than most everyone else. It was indeed a bit cramped, but I think that is by design, demonstrating the scope and depth this secret organization operates on. Plus the Moon is the primary antagonist. That alone has me hooked to the end of this arc.

  8. Adam says:

    In regards to the technobabble of STATIC SHOCK: Scott McDaniels’ plotting/co-plotting may be a strong plus for this book, since he has a degree in… Electrical Engineering, I think? I assume most of it’s still BS, but at least there’ll be some generally recognizable laws and terms involved.

    But that said, my only disagreement with these reviews is that you’re a little kinder to STATIC SHOCK than me. I bought the issue out of hope (along with BATWING, which was a essentially a decent 90s Image comic): because the character’s at least an OKcreation, Rozum earned some cred on XOMBI, I flat-out want an original black character to make it at DC, and I too enjoy Scott McDaniels’s art.

    Unfortunately, that art is kinda…. sketchy here. There was a much stronger, fluid-looking line on the NIGHTWING run that introduced me to him. Maybe that’s how his style has evolved, which is perfectly valid, but I don’t like it as much. And why does the sister’s (sisters’? Are there two? Are they twins?) face always looks the same?

    Likewise, Rozum’s script could’ve used one quick polish. I can’t imagine it’s important we know the names of all these unmasked biking guys, but Rozum uses their dialogue to not-so-subtly clue us in and it gets distracting since there are so many. I’m not going to break out the comic to quote verbatim, but it goes like:

    “We have to do something, Steve.”

    “You’re right, Ellen. But what? Phil?”

    “Well, Nancy here may know. Nancy?”

    “Greg is our leader. Let’s listen to him.”

    Etc.

    Finally, I always feel like pointing this out is probably unfair of me, but ending with the superhero about to get killed isn’t that harrowing anymore. I would’ve been more hooked, probably, learning what was wrong with Static’s sister.

    Summarily, I’m not sure I’ll know whether I’ll be getting the next issue of this until I’m actually in the comic shop.

  9. Adam says:

    But then (he added, still hesitant), if DC gets new readers out of this New 52 push, especially any younger ones (even if “younger” is teens or college), STATIC SHOCK’s cliffhanger ending is probably just the ticket, right?

    Ah, well. I don’t hold my own lukewarm response born of reading comics too long against the book. It just doesn’t do anything for me.

  10. Daibhid Ceannaideach says:

    If I can talk about one of the books you didn’t get, Justice League International is also an origin story. And it’s an origin where all the characters who appear on the cover feature in the book, and many of them form a team, so it’s got Justice League beat there.

  11. Brian says:

    “Enough of Barbara’s history has been deleted to make this feel like a separate character, so I don’t really understand why they bothered keeping “A Killing Joke” in continuity to start with.”

    I was wondering that myself. Come to think of it, establishing that Barbara was never Oracle during her paralysis is even worse than saying she’d never been paralyzed to begin with. The appeal with Oracle was that Barbara became a significant and distinctive hero in spite of her handicap. If DC removes this aspect from her backstory but keeps the paralysis, then they’re basically saying that not only was Barbara handicapped for some time, she was crippled as well.

  12. Mark Clapham says:

    I know that Paquette had to redraw the Swamp Thing pages with other superheroes to include the new costumes, so I suspect that the Swamp Thing and Animal Man relaunches have been planned for a while before the ‘New 52’ was mooted. This would make sense, as Brightest Day was pointing in that direction anyway, and the extra lead time may explain why those books feel less rushed and are getting better reviews.

  13. Jeff says:

    “…you can’t do explicit gore in DC comics…” Apparently Tony Daniel can. Detective comics was repulsive.

    Action was great. I really like this version of Superman and I like the new costume, too.

  14. AndyD says:

    “And of course, just because you can’t do explicit gore in a DCU title”

    How would you define gore? 🙂 If Detective is any evidence, the DCU is still about maiming and gore as it used to be in the last years.

    So they basically took everything away which was interesting about Stormwatch, killed the Apollo/Midnighter angle, and put the Martian Manhunter on board. Hm. Why on earth should anyone buy this? The book was terrible before Ellis did his revamp (even if the Apollo/Midnighter-joke was getting old fast)and was terrible in the diverse unsuccessful relaunches. Still, if I interpret your review right they sanitized the only things which made it different in its best phase. That makes it not desperatly interesting.

  15. Brian says:

    “Action was great. I really like this version of Superman and I like the new costume, too”

    Same here. I actually prefer the t-shirt/jeans costume to the Jim Lee design.

    I can see now why they got Morrison to write this series. Not just because he’s an excellent writer, but because this is such a different approach, it was a good idea to hire someone who had already proven to fans that they can write a good “classic Superman.” (i.e. All-Star Superman). So, regardless of how readers feel about this particular approach, at least no one can accuse of Morrison of not “getting” Superman, or not knowing how to write the character “properly.”

  16. Weblaus says:

    Justice League International was surprisingly entertaining. Not as good as Generation Lost, but close enough that I’m looking forward to reading more about that group of heroes.

    I also liked Batgirl, but I do agree that keeping select parts of the history they decided to do doesn’t rather distracts than enhances the story.

    Detective felt like it was ugly and gory just for its own sake. If there’s no better way to do a Batman story, I’ll happily pass.

  17. Kid Nixon says:

    @AndyD: They haven’t killed the Apollo/Midnighter angle persay, they merely set back the clock. Cornell that has stated in interviews that they are A) both still gay and B) will still be a couple, and that the plan was to write the first gay romance story in superhero comics rather than have them be together from the moment they walk on stage.

  18. Paul Notar says:

    I realize continuity is a naughty word, but it would have been nice for Action Comics to say “Five Years Ago” or something similar so everything could be framed properly. Ditto for Detective Comics, since it looks like having a strained relationship with Gotham PD will be a recurring theme regardless of what year it is.

  19. Robert Fuller says:

    I’m with you, Kid Nixon. I thought Stormwatch was by far the best of the new DC so far, so I’m surprised by the lukewarm reception it’s been getting from just about everyone.

    I agree with the comments here about Batgirl, especially the clumsy dialogue. And plus the ending was just dumb. Why would a police detective goad a civilian to attack a man who is POINTING A GUN AT HER, and then call her a murderer for not doing so? She doesn’t even know who Batgirl is. She could just be some nut in a bat costume, for all she knows.

  20. Valhallahan says:

    The only one I bought was Animal Man and I thought it was superb.

  21. Daibhid Ceannaideach says:

    @Paul Notar: I don’t think Detective is set five years ago; yes, there’s a line that suggests this is Joker’s first visit to Gotham’s fine mental health facility, but there’s also one that suggests Batman’s been after him for six years.

  22. Suzene says:

    @Kid Nixon: Poor Mr. Cornell…it’s a nice goal, but BKV beat him to it by several years.

  23. kelvingreen says:

    the answer is that they’re the secret organisation that was dealing with weird stuff behind the scenes before any of these amateurish superheroes showed up.

    Oh, they’re not trying to fold Planetary into it, are they?

  24. Andy Walsh says:

    @Kid Nixon, @Suzene: Allen Heinberg and Peter David would probably also have something to say on the matter.

  25. Suzene says:

    @Andy Wiccan and Hulking were pretty much together from the start of Young Avengers, though. Likewise, Shatterstar and Ric’s relationship was pre-established. Same with Northstar and Kyle. We see them together, we see them work on the current relationship, but we either don’t really see how that relationship was established, or it’s very peripheral and mostly off-screen (re: Ult!Colossus and Northstar, Obsidian and Damon). Xavin and Karolina we got to see from first meeting on, though.

  26. Andy Walsh says:

    @Suzene: I see you point. My recollection was that the start of Young Avengers was the start of Wiccan & Hulking’s relationship as well, but I could be remembering wrong.

    As for Rictor & Shatterstar, you’re right that whatever the nature of their relationship was prior to X-Factor, they did have a history that Peter David didn’t write. Nevertheless, I stand by my assertion that he’d probably have something to say on the matter, because he’s not exactly shy with his thoughts (good, bad, or otherwise). 🙂

  27. Brian says:

    “I stand by my assertion that he’d probably have something to say on the matter because he’s not exactly shy with his thoughts.”

    Doesn’t mean he has any strong ones about this particular matter.

  28. Andy Walsh says:

    Dear HTML5 committee: Please consider the addition of a tag. The lack of same is hindering my ability to deflect my errors with humor. 🙂 is too ambiguous. Thank you for you consideration in this matter.

  29. Kid Nixon says:

    I may be misquoting Cornell, to be fair. I just know he was quite jazzed to be writing two men falling in love, and equally annoyed that he had to more or less give what constitutes a major plot spoiler is several interviews because people were assuming Apollo and Midnighter were no longer gay, let alone together.

  30. Andy Walsh says:

    Argh! And of course my “angle-bracket joke angle-bracket” was just swallowed by the comment form. I’ve been defeated by the Internets; I surrender.

  31. Luke H says:

    {{If DC removes this aspect from her backstory but keeps the paralysis, then they’re basically saying that not only was Barbara handicapped for some time, she was crippled as well.}}

    @Brian that’s a really great point. Can’t understand what they’re thinking here other than to get a cheap pop of returning classic Batgirl. After that fades, what do you have that you couldn’t get from any young female character under the mask? In trade, you lose SO much. I’m disappointed Simone was up for this after devoting so much effort to the Oracle incarnation.

  32. Xercies says:

    I think the Oracle stuff did happen from reading the comic, it was talking about her doing stuff with the wheelchair and growing which could mean that she was Oracle still. I think I trust the writer to still keep that in continuity.

  33. Jim Kinsey says:

    No OMAC?

  34. Brian says:

    @Xercies – I suppose it’s possible Simone elected not to make mention of Barbara-as-Oracle because she didn’t want to clutter this first issue (aimed at new readers) down with back-story that isn’t really vital to the plot. The fact that she didn’t bother to explain why Barbara became Batgirl in the first place could support this, I suppose. Barbara having been shot before is obviously vital to Simone’s plot, but I guess the Oracle stuff isn’t, and neither is Batgirl’s origin. So, maybe all of this is ground she intends to cover at a later date.

    Anyway, whether Barbara was or wasn’t Oracle, she’s definitely not Oracle anymore and I think DC should still have an Oracle. Or at least, someone who fulfills that function. The concept of an information provider for the superhero community is too good a concept to just throw away, and if it can’t be Barbara Gordon, then it may as well be someone else.

  35. sam says:

    @Luke H: “the cheap pop of returning classic Batgirl.” Yep.

    I’d given any Gail Simone comic a try, but after only one issue it’s obvious that there’s really nothing to say about Barbara Gordon suddenly being Batgirl again. She was just…miraculously healed. By Dan DiDio, perhaps. If he shows up as the mysterious metafictional force behind her, I’ll buy that issue. Otherwise I’m done.

  36. Xercies says:

    @Brian

    Something tells me that the holographic Alfred that Batman had in Detective Comics might be their Oracle. But that might be silly.

  37. AndyD says:

    “Something tells me that the holographic Alfred that Batman had in Detective Comics might be their Oracle”

    Damn, Voyager has invaded the timestream again and it caused a malfunction 🙂

  38. James Moar says:

    “Damn, Voyager has invaded the timestream again and it caused a malfunction”

    Please state the nature of the etiquette emergency.

  39. Billy Bissette says:

    @Brian

    If DC still has an Oracle, then we’ll know that they were lying about at least part of the reason they made Barbara Batgirl again.

    After all, one of the arguments given for removing Oracle was that her existence diminished Batman-as-a-detective, as he’d simply go to her for information rather than doing it himself.

  40. Mike says:

    Paul, you mention that there wasn’t much of a clamor from fans for Barbara to go back to being Batgirl – and you are right. They had long ago accepted and embraced her as Oracle, arguably a much stronger and layered character. But see, much like when Geoff Johns (who overall, I really like) got a chubby for Barry Allen as Flash and subsequently, his very popular and established successor Wally West got shuffled off into oblivion – Dan Didio has been angling for Barbara’s return to Batgirl for a while now. He simply finally found the right opportunity to do it, fans be damned. It seems right now – while I do believe this is an attempt to bring in new readers – it’s also a way for some influential creators at DC to revel in being able to contemporize the characters they grew up reading.

  41. Brian says:

    “one of the arguments given for removing Oracle was that her existence diminished Batman-as-a-detective, as he’d simply go to her for information rather than doing it himself.”

    Wasn’t aware of that, but with this, it seems like they were just reaching for any argument as an excuse to put Barbara back in spandex.

    Oracle can only provide Batman with information that can be accessed electronically. Batman still needs to do legwork. Being present at a crime scene to investigate it first-hand. Closely examining a corpse. Using his senses (identifying a poison by smell, for example). Oracle can’t do any of these things for him, and this is the more interesting detective stuff. The forensic stuff.

  42. wwk5d says:

    Also, just because Oracle gives him the info, doesn’t mean she can tie it all together for him. And, not everything related to every crime is on a computer somewhere for Oracle to access…but whatever, arguing with DC management is futile.

  43. Adam says:

    To be fair, arguing with fans isn’t that productive either. 😉

  44. Argus says:

    Wait, so Grant Morrison rebooted the ailing X-Men franchise, and is now leading the DCU reboot on Superman? Is he the go-to guy for this kind of thing? 🙂

  45. Brian says:

    “To be fair, arguing with fans isn’t that productive either.”

    True enough.

    I’m reminded of Emerald Twilight. After the Green Lantern Corps got eradicated in 1994, one of the arguments DC editorial made at the time was that the existence of an entire Green Lantern Corps made a single Green Lantern seem “less special.” I remember reading that in one of the letters pages.

    Given what’s happened since, I think we can safely conclude that this wasn’t an argument that Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio agreed with. It’s just that Johns and DiDio weren’t running DC at the time. Now they are, and now they’re coming up with their own arguments for doing things that they know will cause a stir.

    And then in fifteen years time, the readers and creators of today who don’t agree with these arguments will invariably reverse them once they’re running things.

    I had a point, but I can’t remember what it was.

  46. The original Matt says:

    The point being that it’s comics and all the toys get put back in the box eventually? Hell, even Peter Parker couldn’t stay married.

  47. Max says:

    I just noticed that the Harley Quinn costume doesn’t looks so bad once you see the interior art. Suicide Squad might be fun.

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