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Saturday, September 3, 2011

The New 52, or How I learned about Comics Again

Ok, so for those of you out of the loop, DC Comics has for the past 5 months been paving the way to a "reboot", or a new marketing effort to revive print media.  As such they had their typical "Event/Crisis"; This year it was centered around the Flash, Barry Allen for those of you not sure which Flash I am referring to.  So Barry wakes up in an altered reality where Aquaman and Wonder Woman are in a huge fight (which gets very little screen time) and a lot of alternate versions of earths well known heroes.  Superman has been locked away and not give access to our yellow sun, which as we all know is the source of his powers, (spoiler alert, he appears in the start of the series as a gangly, weak and tired version of his normal self).  Continuing spoilers, Bruce Wayne died with his mother in Crime Alley, and Dr. Thomas Wayne has donned the mantle of the Bat.  Thomas and Barry have some great one liners between themselves my personal favorite is a Flash to Bats jab, "Bruce would have gone..." Pack the bags nice guilt trip!  So the past five months we've been trying to figure out whats going to happen, how Professor Zoom AKA Reverse Flash fits in, and then we get to issue 5 and the shit hits the fan, the heroes recruit the Shazam family, gotta love some Captain Marvel!  Turns out this whole alternate universe was created by Barry, he's the villain!  He was so upset over the death of his mother that he jumped on the cosmic treadmill and altered the timeline, and cause all the other ripples, why don't people listen to Dr. Emmet Brown, for a crack point, he knew about the timeline, and you don't mess with the timeline.

So flashpoint 5 led directly into Justice League #1, the first of the new 52, to be honest I had to read it twice to catch all the subtleties, and also because it was so hard to turn off everything I know about the DC universe, I mean 30 years is hard to turn off.  So basically, none of the heroes know each other, at this point there is no league, and well, I am lost, I always thought it was the trinity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman who were the founding members, but from this issue it looks like its going to be Batman, Green Lantern and Superman.  Best line, Superman to Batman, "I don't handle easy, so what can you do?"  Everyone looks 20-30 years younger, teasers around, like the LexCorp sign "Building the city of tomorrow...today" (Delta City from Robocop anyone?)  I also loved that GL's constructs were a fire truck and a jet fighter. Also love that they have no clue who Darkseid or what a Motherbox is for that matter.

All in all, I am excited, Jim Lee has to be one of my favorite artists, Geoff Johns can really tell a story, Go back and read some of their older stuff, its all good.  Loved Jim's work on Batman: Hush, and well anything Geoff has worked on in the last 18 months has kinda been the building blocks toward the new 52.

Ok, your caught up, hope I didn't spoil it for you, and if I didn't then I hope you might want to read it.

I'll see you in the back issues!

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