JUSTICE LEAGUE #1: The reason people keep calling this “like a comic you get with an action figure” is because it’s just that: it’s very generic and barely does anything. Geoff Johns has a few good lines, and Jim Lee is still an excellent superhero artist (a terribly boring costume designer, mind you, but a great artist), but you could have Alan Moore and George Perez teaming up to create the greatest superhero book of all time and if it was twenty-four pages of Batman and Green Lantern snarking at one another plus a brief fight with a parademon it would still be boring.1 There’s just no there there; it’s empty and moribund, and all the craft in the world can’t disguise that. Surely we can aspire to better than competency for DC’s supposed flagship book? (See also: John Solomon’s old complaint about webcomics where the first installment is “hey everybody here’s my cast and I promise exciting fun times starting with next week” and apply it here.)
ACTION COMICS #1: This is a really great comic in all respects, except that the Blue Jeans Superman costume is stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Every time I see it in a panel I am reminded that I am reading a Superman comic where Superman is dressed like a dork. It just takes me out of an otherwise first-rate Superman book, which hearkens back to Superman’s 1930s trustbusting roots in a way that feels organic and unforced and fresh, and gets Clark’s Lois and Jimmy early-relationship dynamics right, and has Clark exploring his growing powers in a neat way, and on top of all of that comes up with some clever minor revisions to the Superman mythos (either Clark or Lois are working for a paper other than the Daily Planet? Whaaaaaa?). But seriously, it is like Grant Morrison saw the Super-Armor costume and thought “well, I can top that.”
JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #1: Surprisingly tepid. There are some good ideas here (Batman being an “unofficial” member of the team who shows up despite nobody in power wanting him there) alongside some odd ones (Godiva? Really? I mean… really?) and Yet Another Guy Gardner Tantrum, but this book doesn’t have any of the personality I think everybody hoped a new JLI comic would have and that Generation Lost in fact did have. It’s not terrible by any means, but it’s very much Just Another Team Book, which has to be regarded as a disappointment given the brand in question. Also, Vixen is once again so obviously just there to round out the demographics that I mentally have started calling her “Token.”
GREEN ARROW #1: Basically Green Arrow is a hero who is also kind of a douche, except it’s not Guy Gardner-style entertaining in the least.
STORMWATCH #1: You kind of have to love that Paul Cornell’s answer to the redundancy of Stormwatch in a universe that already had the Justice League is to say that Stormwatch are the real defenders of Earth and that the Justice League are posers, and to have the Martian Manhunter be the one to say that to boot. That takes balls I didn’t think anybody writing for DC still had. Plus, it turns out that this book is the temporal successor to Demon Knights, Cornell’s other nuDCU comic, and that’s cute. I’m not sure how long all of this will last before the DC Importance Police show up and remind us all that Hal and Barry and Ray Palmer are so much cooler than anybody else you guys, but for now it’s amusing and a decent book.
OMAC #1: It’s twenty-two pages of Keith Giffen doing an extended Jack Kirby homage. Because I like Keith Giffen as an artist and a writer, I will not use the words “jacking off” to describe this in any way.
BATWING #1: This was really quite decent. I don’t think it’ll last very long, but they’ve clearly gone and worked up an entire African superheroing mythos for the backstory of the comic, which I can appreciate even if it’s only to have victims for Batwing to avenge, and the art and story are genuinely strong. This was probably the nicest surprise of the first week’s batch of #1s and I hope I’m proven wrong and that DC can write a book about an African protagonist that their core audience of fanboys (who are their lifeblood and we all know it) wants to read. I don’t think I will be, though.
MEN OF WAR #1: I like war comics. This is a lousy one. I get that the idea of “war comic in a superhero universe” is a good one, but other than a token superhero-related disaster – one so generic that this could be set in any universe at all, one that could have as easily been a meteor strike because it was just that abstracted – they instead spend an issue writing a terrible war comic, one where a soldier lures a bunch of enemies into a cave and then comes out with an assault rifle in one hand and a shotgun in the other like he’s Arnold circa 1986, except it’s a beefy white dude with a moustache instead because you can still have those in war comics.2 Then there’s a backup story where the soldiers have to make the tough call of whether or not to kill an insurgent girl child soldier, which is actually a great idea for a war comic short story, until it turns out that she’s not a soldier at all and instead an evil terrorist was using her as a decoy, which sucks. Garth Ennis would not use this comic as toilet paper.
SWAMP THING #1: A really good start to a comic that seems to remember that Swamp Thing is supposed to be a horror book, and generally heads in that direction, and is only marred by the fact that Yanick Paquette is forced to demonstrate, yet again, that there is not a single superhero artist on the planet who can make the Super-Armor look good.
STATIC SHOCK #1: Perfectly acceptable comics, but feels like issue #47 of an ongoing Static Shock series rather than a fresh #1. Static’s powers are poorly explained, and that doesn’t matter to me because I’ve already read all the Static comics there are, but maybe in a #1 issue that comes alongside a reboot of the entire comics universe the comic is in, the writers could possibly take a panel to explain who the hell Hardware is and why he is in my Static comic, on the assumption that someone who wants to read this as their first comic – and remember, this is a comic slightly tied into a once-successful cartoon – could know the basics about Static’s MO? I mean, I get that not every issue can or should read as a potential reader’s first issue (I think that trope can oversimplify the comics reading experience), but I think that rule should always apply for the first issue of a book.
HAWK AND DOVE #1: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAA oh god they’re serious
LATE ADDITION: BATGIRL #1: Wow, this was lackluster, and I never thought I’d say that about a comic written by Gail Simone. I mean, Simone has made one or two mistakes as a writer – everybody has – but she’s never written a comic I would honestly call “boring” before. But Batgirl is a boring comic, despite it ostensibly doing what a first issue of a superhero comic should – I mean, there are the requisite number of fights and everything. But the constant narration is overwrought in the extreme, the choice to make Barbara’s physical return as Batgirl a sort of sequel to her Oracle days via some odd unexplained miracle of spinal regrowth is just weird, and the most interesting thing about the entire comic turns out to be that now Commissioner Gordon is also a redhead like his daughter.
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No Animal Man (probably my favourite book so far)?
Might you educate us more on Hawk & Dove, as a public service to avoid it?
Given you’ve said your dad is South African, I’d have thought you wouldn’t fall into the sad cliche of referring to Africa as a nationality…
Also while I enjoyed the first issue of Static more than you (if only for the disembodied mentor thing) I’d have to agree that Batgirl was pretty damn lackluster…
Given you’ve said your dad is South African, I’d have thought you wouldn’t fall into the sad cliche of referring to Africa as a nationality…
The new heroes in Batwing are pretty explicitly supposed to be pan-African, rather than specifically Congolese. So: don’t hate the playa, hate the game.
“Every time I see it in a panel I am reminded that I am reading a Superman comic where Superman is dressed like a dork. ”
As opposed to…?
I was rather underwhelmed by Action#1; The art felt rushed and lackluster (which given Morales stated opinion on Superman and the rushed timeframe isn’t a big surprise) and that the story could have used more fleshing out.
Is it strange that the book I’m most looking forward to in the New 52 is the one that reboots Penguin’s origin?
The first page of Action Comics features Super-Guy-With-Blankey audibly sniffing the air and then blathering about smelling rats and taking out the trash. That shit is wack.
All I can say is I appreciate these kinds of reviews, because I’m staying the hell away from every single one of these #1s until I get a better sense of the landscape. God only knows what lies ahead in Grant Morrison’s Action Comics or that Teen Titans approximation.
See also: John Solomon’s old complaint about webcomics where the first installment is “hey everybody here’s my cast and I promise exciting fun times starting with next week” and apply it here.
Except Justice League only introduced half the cast.
On Action Comics: pretty sure Clark is working for the Daily Star, and I think George Taylor is his editor–just like the original. But yeah, that jeans and work boots costume is half-assed.
Did you not mention Detective Comics because it was collectively more laughably bad than anything Rob Liefeld has ever drawn.
Dawqriquez & ApathyMonger:
Since this post’s title says “part the first”, maybe he’ll review those other titles in part 2.
[…] Mightygodking.com » Post Topic » Brief thoughts about new DC #1 … Geoff Johns has a few good lines, and Jim Lee is still an excellent superhero artist (a terribly boring costume designer, mind you, but a great artist), but you could have Alan Moore and George Perez teaming up to create the […]
Does the new Batgirl series at least have some of the FUN that Miller’s Steph Brown series had or is it just a generic Bat-book?
In Action, I like the blue jeans and work boots costume. Mostly because the alternative is the terrible new Super Armor. It’s a silly look, but Superman isn’t afraid to look silly — Superconfidence is one of his powers.
The art in the issue was pretty lackluster though. Lex Luthor seems to gain and loose weight in his face between panels.
Rags Morales seems to get a lot more love than he should. His art is often messy and always late.
Nope, no fun.
Yeah, Fat Luthor is a take I could definitely live without.
[…] sometimes an origin is a good thing, a dramatic story with great characters. At other times, (as this Mighty God King post puts it), it’s “here’s my cast and I promise exciting fun times […]
I could buy the shirt and jeans look (hell, Superboy has been pulling it off for a while). It’s the cape along with it that makes it dorky. A shirt and jeans seems like a practical costume, that was sort of thrown together with materials at hand (and with the added bonus of being easier to replace than a custom made costume). The cape just seems to be at cross purposes as a result.
Everyone criticizing the Superman costume in Action #1 is not thinking about context. Supes is the first super-hero on the planet, having him in a slick costume to begin with would be dumbass. Okay, maybe they could have designed a better improv costume but at least mention the WHY of the non-costume costume if you’re going to complain about it. ****
Also, as I think someone else mentioned, Clark Kent did not work for The Planet first off but worked at the rival crosstown paper, The Star. And you’ve got the Peter Parker vibe backward, Clark Kent did that shit first.
As for Stormwatch #1, I didn’t know who any of those characters (except J’onn) were before reading it and I still don’t. Ask me if I care? Not much. **
Hawk and Dove was about as bad as expected, handing Ditko’s characters to Liefeld to draw was not the biggest mistake there. *
I liked Men Of War better than you did, but I saw the weaknesses there.
OMAC and Batwing were better than expected. Batgirl disappointed but only a little. JLI felt tired and even recycled. .
Justice League, Swamp Thing, Static Shock and Green Arrow were all about as expected with some good and some bad. G.A. is probably not long for the schedule without more interest but the idea of third string villains being sneered at by a second string (see what I did there) hero tickled me.
And the two you didn’t mention:
Detective was as good of a Batman comic as one could expect to see in a continuing series.
Animal Man… Almost predictable but not quite, and that meant in a good way.
well Morrison is doing a call back to the Golden Age and initially SUperman worked for the Daily Star.
Anyone else getting the feeling that this reboot… isn’t really a reboot? I mean Hawk and Dove is keeping their previous continuity (right down to Deadman and Dove hang out a lot and the previous Dove died during A HORRIBLE CRISIS THAT WE WILL NOT NAME AND IS TOTALLY NOT CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS)…
Swamp Thing keeps his old books, as well as the Brightest Day stuff (not to mention has Superman bringing up that he, yanno, died)…
Static is, as MGK says, basically the latest issue in the Static Story. Not a reboot.
Of course, the 9 bat-family books aren’t reboots either, nor are the 4 GL books, but we knew coming in that they’d somehow keep their continuity in a mangled and depressed state. But when what are essentially b-list heroes (or lower), in terms of DC’s advertising at least, get to keep their continuity that can stretch over 20 years back into obscure comics…
What the hell, DC?
Every book but Animal Man and ‘Tec, huh? IMO Animal Man was pretty much tied with Action Comics as the best of this week. It was awesome.
As a huge Wildstorm fan (we exist I swear) I was set to hate Stormwatch, but Paul Cornell pleasantly surprised me (well it wasn’t too unexpected he did write Captain Britain and MI13). I still can’t stand Midnighters new costume, but the idea of Century babies existing in the DCU is pretty cool (I wonder if they’ll retcon any one famous as being one).
I’m tremendously conflicted by this whole reboot. All of these books look at least a little terrible and the whole thing seems like a stupid waste of everyone’s time (Plus, you know, I am severely disappointed by the whole “Eliminating younger interesting characters because they aren’t the ones Geoff Johns grew up reading about” thing.), but on the other hand, Jaime got his own book again. And I feel really obligated to support Jaime, because his last series was fantastic and when we stop reading Blue Beetle books they kill the character off for add drama. <.<
The small African kerfuffle up there reminds me, completely off-topic comicwise, that I recently read a science fiction book that 1) had a black character of any kind written as if the author might have actually even seen a black person outside of a Tyler Perry commerical; and b) took place in South Africa, which is a pretty mind-blowing locale for any scifi book. AND it was even good, which was extra mind-blowing. I’d rather scifi and comics just go back to pretending the world is entirely Caucasian than see Vixen invited out in public. (Although I think Token might be an awesome supervillain concept. The power to make Superman strangely uncomfortable about hitting a minority could come in handy.)
@Monkey – Two words : Rob Liefield. He makes Jim Lee look like Alex Ross by comparison. My LCS guy pointed out that, in the space of three pages, Liefield can’t remember what the cockpit of his plane looks like, so he just slaps together a new one.
I was going to say something about comic book history and and hindsight being 20/20 and all, but I think I’m just going to skip all that crap and just call it what it is.
Hubris. Hubris with brass balls this big (_)(_)
Uh, the “Super-Armor” is supposed to be explained in Action Comics at some point. Also, the “Bruce Springsteen” Superman look is pretty cool in my opinion. I would be genuinely worried about running into a dude with work boots on who can stand up to a tank shell.
Mecha Velma: Those would be pretty tiny balls. At least on my screen at its native resolution…
Problem I’ve got with ‘we regrew Oracle’s spine’ is that this actually WAS presented as an option in the original line, which she turned down on the basis of the technology not being broadly enough available yet.
I wonder how many issues Giffen could do of Omac just smashing the hell out of crazy Kirby crap. No real plot, no origins, just smashing bigger and weirder monsters and soldiers and stuff. Hmm.
Count me in as another advocate for Animal Man. Lemire definitely delivered with this issue and it probably gets my vote for most distrubing cliffhanger of the week (and yes, I am including Dectective Comics in that.)
Can’t wait to see what Lemire does with Frankenstein this coming week.
For African fantasy, Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American author who does very good stuff set in Africa.
What really bothers me, I think, about getting Barbara Gordon out of the wheelchair is that if they’d just waited about ten more years, it wouldn’t even be unbelievable. The technology for repairing spinal injuries is growing by leaps and bounds, and I feel pretty confident that by 2021, a comic book featuring a paraplegic woman who regains the ability to walk won’t even be science fiction. Instead, we get a handwave.
(I wonder if there would have been this much comment if there was an Internet back when Tony Stark got shot, paralyzed, and then gained the ability to walk again when Marvel got bored with the story. Hmm. Interesting.)
The problem with Gordon walking again is that Oracle was a fully functioning character on her own. She was a true asset without ever having to directly punch someone.
A female character who was respected for her brain, not her body. A paraplegic who was depended on during crises.
And now she’s firmly back in the shadow of the bat.
Action Comics was a really interesting series of bullet points, too bad there isn’t an actual writer somewhere who wanted to write a story out of them.
On Batgirl…It was just poorly done. Was her new room mate’s name even mentioned? And the final panel “I am a cop who will point my gun at the bystander of a murder, rather than at the murderer who is standing right in front of me.” ecch.
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Action didn’t do it for me…had too much “This is an Elseworlds, let’s see what’s different feel” to me…and I got fixated on the cape. Why does he have a cape? He’s the first super hero, so there aren’t other’s he’s emulating. JEans, workbooks, tshirt makes sense, in a thrown together blue collar way…but the cape doesn’t.