{"id":1033,"date":"2011-09-11T18:54:03","date_gmt":"2011-09-11T17:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2011-09-11T19:22:19","modified_gmt":"2011-09-11T18:22:19","slug":"dcu-week-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1033","title":{"rendered":"DCU Week 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

As per the previous post, I’m going to split the reviews into two this month. \u00a0So the X-books are one post down<\/a>, and in this post we’re going to do (some of) the new DC titles.<\/p>\n

Before we start: yes, I know it’s technically week two, of the relaunch, but I’m treating Justice League<\/em>\u00a0as week zero.<\/p>\n

And no, I didn’t buy Detective Comics<\/em>, Green Arrow<\/em>, Hawk & Dove<\/em>, Justice League International<\/em>, or Men of War<\/em>. \u00a0Just to save you scrolling down.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, which is well worth a listen.<\/p>\n

Action Comics<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– Well, this is the big one, isn’t it? \u00a0As far as online fandom is concerned, at any rate. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0With All-Star Superman<\/em>, Grant Morrison addressed that problem by doing a definitive modern take on the classic (ie Silver Age) Superman set-up, but with Action Comics<\/em>\u00a0he’s taking a more radical approach.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Here, Morrison is going right back to the very early, Golden Age Superman, who used to take on slum landlords and so forth. \u00a0That 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0So, 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. \u00a0Technically none of this is new, but it’s been so heavily buried for so many decades that it might as well be. \u00a0Whether 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.<\/p>\n

There’s no origin story here; we pick up with Superman already somewhat established. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0There’s a lot in here if you’re looking for it, but it doesn’t clutter the central story. \u00a0Morales 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. \u00a0All told, a good first issue and a very promising start to the series.<\/p>\n

Animal Man<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– Not one that I originally ordered, but I picked it up from the DC app on the strength of the reviews. \u00a0Animal 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. \u00a0Jeff 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0It’s a nice change of pace for a superhero book, giving him a refreshingly angst-free life. \u00a0Naturally, the first issue spends much of its time building up a genuinely creepy threat of something that might disturb all this.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0This 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.<\/p>\n

Batgirl<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– I don’t think anyone envied Gail Simone with this one. \u00a0Barbara 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. \u00a0Why is she being made into Other Batman Character #3 again? \u00a0I don’t know!<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0While 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It pains me to say it, but it doesn’t really work. \u00a0Enough 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. \u00a0The 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<\/em>\u00a0being about someone who’s recently got out of a wheelchair, which surely can’t be the focal point forever. \u00a0There’s also some uncharacteristically clumsy dialogue in the opening scene.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0The first issue had to sell us on why we’d like to read about her as Batgirl… and it doesn’t, really.<\/p>\n

Batwing<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– 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. \u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0It 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0On 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. \u00a0There’s some potential in there. \u00a0Overall, it’s okay, but it never quite manages the sense of place that it would need to be truly successful.<\/p>\n

Static Shock<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– This is a relaunch of the Milestone character who was incorporated into the DC Universe a while back. \u00a0Static was, very loosely, Milestone’s equivalent of Spider-Man, in as much as he was the boy-next-door teenage hero. \u00a0He’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.<\/p>\n

This version is written and drawn by Scott McDaniel, with John Rozum co-writing. \u00a0As seems to be the norm (unless you’re Justice League<\/em>), 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. \u00a0So 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). \u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0But 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. \u00a0I’ll give it some time to see how it beds in.<\/p>\n

Stormwatch<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– With the integration of the WildStorm characters into the DC Universe, the question is how they’re going to fit in. \u00a0In the case of Stormwatch, the answer is that they’re the secret organisation that was dealing with weird stuff behind the scenes\u00a0before any of these amateurish superheroes showed up.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0The cast here are a mixture of Ellis characters and new creations, with the Martian Manhunter as the token DCU arriviste.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>\u00a0#1 ships at the end of the month. \u00a0The 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<\/em>\u00a0book, which would be a nice tie-in.<\/p>\n

While there are some ideas with potential, it doesn’t really gel. \u00a0It’s all rather bitty, and Paul Cornell’s own voice rather gets lost under a welter of inherited concepts fighting for space. \u00a0I’m sure it’ll settle down once it hits its stride, but it’s not a great first issue.<\/p>\n

Swamp Thing<\/em>\u00a0#1<\/strong>\u00a0– Another one that I didn’t originally buy, but the reviews have been decent enough for me to download it. \u00a0(And this, publishers, is why day and date is a good idea. \u00a0Do you know what I normally do when I hear that something I didn’t buy had good reviews? \u00a0I make a mental note to buy the trade – and unless it’s a book that everyone<\/em>‘s talking about, by the time the trade is solicited six months later, I’ve probably forgotten all about it. \u00a0DC got two extra sales out of me this week, solely because when I read the reviews, I could impulse-buy the comics.)<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0Judging from some other reviews I’ve seen, this may actually be a better read for not<\/em>\u00a0knowing the previous state of his continuity, since Snyder turns the connection between Holland and Swamp Thing into a mystery in its own right.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n

Yanick Paquette seemed an odd choice for this book – he’s always struck me as having something of a weakness for cheesecake art. \u00a0But this story is so far removed from that territory that we can focus instead on the strength of his storytelling. \u00a0His Superman’s a little bit stiff, but I think a few artists seem to be struggling with that semi-armoured costume. \u00a0When the book needs to turn nasty, he shifts gears well, and he can make a room full of innocuous flowers look threatening. \u00a0Swamp 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As per the previous post, I’m going to split the reviews into two this month. \u00a0So 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\u00a0as week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}