10 Things to Learn from the March DC Comics Solicitations

The March solicitations for DC Comics have been released. Check it out. Here are my thoughts about what we’ve been shown this month.

1. Reintroductions. Several titles for the month of March focus on the reintroduction and reinterpretation of old characters from the pre-New 52 era. Some of the seem to be All New All Different and other look to be about the same. Still, they say they’re brand new, so maybe we’re still missing something.

The H.I.V.E. has traditionally been an enemy of the Teen Titans, however it appears to be focusing on Metropolis and therefore will come to blows with Superman. The H.I.V.E. has been subject to several changes to its core concept over the many years. It was originally a group of unnamed villains brought together to fight the Teen Titans, then it became a much bigger organization, until finally being taken over by the Queen Bee and becoming her actual ‘hive’. Time will tell how the group will be portrayed here. It could be something completely new.

Zealot will be joining Stormwatch in issue #18 and she appears to be creating problems for the group’s dynamic duo of Apollo and Midnighter. Zealot is a Kherubim, an alien race that has been at war with the Daemonites for thousands of years. If the conflict between these two races is still canon I think it’s likely that DC is building up to the introduction of the Wildcats. Grifter is now without a title and now that Spartan and possibly something to do with Mr. Majestic are being introduced in February, I think once Zealot plays her part in Stormwatch she could be showing up elsewhere.

Never The End.

If there’s one thing people love, it’s ‘end of days’ scenarios. Everyone dies, the legend ends, the final story is told. But then everything gets fixed and that story is voided. Or it gets relegated to a future time, one we’ll never see.

Marvel would like you to think that Daredevil: End of Days is the final Daredevil story. Matt Murdock is brutally murdered by Bullseye and we’re supposed to sit through the next seven issues and witness the fallout. It’s really hard to think of this story as little more than an ‘alternate’ story. Alternate universe, alternate ending, alternate events. In the end it doesn’t matter because none of it is the real story. You can’t have the last Daredevil story while they’re still publishing ongoing Daredevil stories. If it was the end it should be the end.

Discussion: What’s Wrong with the New 52?

We decided to discuss what we felt was wrong about DC Comics’ New 52 and compare it to Marvel NOW! We talk about costumes, Jack Kirby, Superman, Spider-Man, Hulk, Daredevil and a lot more.

Jason: There’s nothing interesting happening in the New DCU. It’s all just repetition of old comics and stories we’ve already seen.

Superman looks like he’s wearing a big blue diaper now

Johnnie: Yeah, that was my impression as well. I mean, ideally the New 52 was designed to bring in new readers. But what they’re doing with it is so uninteresting to me, I just didn’t bother with 99% of the revamp. The only one I’ve gotten into is Batman. And even then I was already interested in reading Batman. Plus those costumes. My God.

Jason: We could write an entire book about why every costume in the New 52 is absolutely horrible. Superman has so many lines going all over his body that it’s hard to know what to look at. It’s like they tried so hard to make the costumes look ‘real’ that they look so unbelievably overdrawn and unrealistic.

Johnnie: Yeah, I think Superman is probably the worst offender I’ve seen. But it goes beyond just those totally unnecessary, goofy lines. His suit is also not like, cloth. It’s this weird alien technology. Like, I don’t even know how to describe it. What is it exactly?

Jason: It’s some kind of technology that materializes when he wants it to. No more itchy costume under his business attire. He can just rip off his shirt and mentally command his suit to materialize! It’s so necessary!

Confusing Realism With Pessimism

There is a growing trend, it seems, towards making comics “realistic.” The realism that they adhere to, though, is anything but. Comics where people die in depressing ways, where the hero doesn’t always win, where the villain is some kind of unspeakable rapist serial killer pedophile, that’s not realism. That’s pessimism.

Pessimism is an adolescent train of thought. There’s a time in your life where you grow disillusioned with the world and see everything as rotten, but that’s simply an illusion of the real world. When you’re a child, the world is wonderful, new, and awe-inspiring, but as a teenager you’re exposed to all these new facets of the world you previously had no interest in. Politics, heartbreak, genocide, these are suddenly new things in your life that before you were ignorant of. This exposure is scary, and you react in the only way you can, with pessimism. Surely, this world I previously thought to be so great and wonderful is actually a rotting carcass, you think. But like I said, it’s an illusion.

No one will be happy again

The Walking Dead is one of the most popular comic books being published right now, and with a hit TV series that continually shatters ratings, it’s certainly not going away any time soon. It’s appeal is certainly the “realistic” approach it takes towards the zombie genre, where every day is a struggle for survival, no one is safe, and the real enemies aren’t the zombies but the humans. But, this is confusing realism with pessimism. Reality isn’t a bleak, meaningless existence. Reality isn’t a world where humans revert to their base instincts of sex and violence when society collapses. That’s foolishness. The Walking Dead is a series where there’s no light at the end of a tunnel, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no hope amongst all the despair. Nowhere is safe, and no one is to be trusted. People who fall into those traps end up raped, tortured, or worse. The philosophy behind the series is “no one is safe”. That’s not real world, despite the best efforts to convince us otherwise. It’s fantasy, pure and simple.

10 Things to be Learned from DC Comics’ February Solicitations

DC Comics released their solicitations for February 2013 and now we know what the DC Universe will be like in three months time. It’s given us clues as to what will be happening soon as well as down the road. There’s plenty of guesswork, but it’s all we can really do.

1. Justice League Expansion? The solicits for Justice League #17 mentions the possibility of the Justice League finally expanding its roster. While it might not be right away, it still could be happening in the very near future. Maybe we’ll finally see the likes of Firestorm, Atom, Deadman, Element Girl, Mera and Lady Luck(?) We were told would join the Justice League eventually.

The odd part about this is the inclusion of Hawkman and Green Arrow in this picture. The two will soon be appearing in Justice League of America and this picture was released before that title was even in a twinkle in Geoff Johns eye. It’s pretty obvious that the title was not something they had on their schedule at that point, since Justice League International was supposed to be the ‘other’ Justice League team. Then again, Deadman is there and he’s been in Justice League Dark since the beginning, so maybe I should be giving them more credit.

Get Into The All-New Atom

The All-New Atom: My Life In Miniature (#1-6)
The All-New Atom: Future/Past (#7-11)
The All-New Atom: The Hunt For Ray Palmer (#12-16)
The All-New Atom: Small Wonder (#17-18, 20-25)

Do you know about the old Atom? You should, but even if you don’t, that won’t stop you from enjoying the new one. The Atom is a character who can shrink down to minuscule size to fight crime. That is actually a useful power when you need to be stealthy and you get the chance to explore tiny civilizations or dive into the human body. He can also punch people in the face really hard when he shifts his molecular density. The All-New Atom comes into possession of the Bangstick, a staff that allows him to fly and shoot energy blasts, so he does pack some heat.

The Atom as we know him today was created by the legendary Gardner Fox in 1961. It was part of National Publications’ (soon to be DC Comics) effort to revitalize and reintroduce their super-heroes after they had fallen out of favor in the 1950s. This era would be known as the Silver Age of comics, begun by the revamp of the Flash from Jay Garrick to Barry Allen, Ray Palmer replaced the Golden Age Atom, Al Pratt, as well. While the concept of the Flash remained intact, the Atom was reinvented for a new generation. Al Pratt was simply a really short man who fought crime with his fists. With science-fiction booming, the Atom was now a man of science who developed a way to shrink himself and decided to fight crime. He was one of the first Justice League recruits and even mentored a new group of Teen Titans for a time, but no one likes to talk about that anymore.