Comics Reviews (May 25th, 2016)
DC Universe Rebirth #1
💩
DC Universe Rebirth #1 Review That Isn’t Just a Poop Emoji
This seems almost entirely unnecessary, but of course, that’s still more necessary than this. I’d say “never mind the appallingly stupid incorporation of Watchmen,” but of course, I really can’t do that. Suffice it to say that Johns demonstrates absolutely zero understanding of Watchmen or of Doctor Manhattan, that the characters teased elsewhere to be Watchmen-related look like utterly stupid and banal twists, and that this entire farrago appears motivated out of nothing so much as sheer and utter contempt for the best writer DC has ever or will ever have. On top of that, the issue is a confused muddle of plot teases, most of them fairly incoherent to me as someone who’s dropped most of his DC books over the course of the New 52 experiment that this book not only brings an end to but attempts to loudly reject. I don’t know these people. Two-panel cameos don’t make me care. Johns can stamp his feet all he wants about legacy, but the only legacy this confirms is DC’s long history of screwing over its actual creators and its long-term health in favor of making a quick buck now. Really, 💩 summed it up nicely.
Batgirl #52
It’s probably not possible for me to actually like a DC book this week, and there’s more here than I’m inclined to give it credit for, but it’s still a weak and unsatisfying finish to the Fletcher-Stewart-Tarr era, two issues after the real finish, and without much more to say than “well wasn’t this lovely.” I still love this cast and style. I hope the next Batgirl run is fun like this was. I might even buy an issue of it.
Cry Havoc #5
Still seems like it could be a great book, but I’m going to have to revisit it after the first arc at this point. Still, it’s doing better than a lot of comics in that sort of position do, in that I more or less understand what’s going on at this point. It’s just that I’ve next to no idea how the pieces quite fit together, and I’m sure there’s a bevy of implications I’ve completely missed. So yes – looking forward to rereading this, but may well switch to trades soon.
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #8
I am thankfully capable of enjoying Marvel this week through the clever trick of not buying Captain America. (Which one assumes is rather more of a feint/trick than Rebirth anyway.) The dating montage in this is all that the bottom-page captions promised. Past that, a typically entertaining and clever issue of one of Marvel’s most entertaining and clever books. With lots of other good jokes about dating.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #7
Yet another super-fun issue of the sort of Marvel book I’m actually enjoying these days. The decision to hold off on revealing Lunella’s Inhuman powers is good, Captain Kree is an endearing twerp of a villain, the art is pretty, and there is regularly a dinosaur. In other words, still as much fun as you can have in a comic shop.
Ms. Marvel #7
My new biggest problem with Civil War II is the literal impossibility that it will be anywhere near as good as a Ms. Marvel vs Miles Morales science fair throwdown. That is the inter-superhero feud we need. Not this Minority Report rip-off shit. Anyway, this is a total hoot of an issue that really is almost all science fair, which is brilliant in the way those old X-Men softball games were brilliant. Yes, there’s a Civil War II tease/tie-in at the end, but don’t worry about it. It’s still a good comic.
May 26, 2016 @ 6:30 am
DC Universe Rebirth is certainly a comic. Having managed to stay spoiler-free from the weekend (foolishly I had no interest in finding out the Joker’s real name, turns out I was Wrongy Mcwrongface on that idea…) ‘What the fuck’ was my reaction to the reveal. The story itself had the usual Johns issues with obviousness and the poster at the end seems to be saying that the DC heroes are their own worst enemies.
Find it galling that the architect of the New 52 relaunch is a hostile action from Dr Manhattan who represents cynicism and the DCU represents optimism, especially given that they use visuals in the epilogue relate to the conversation on Mars that is an explicit rejection of cynical determinism. Nice that Warner Brothers get to pay someone hansomely to work through their daddy issues and trolling the person responsible for their success for the past 30 years.
Would have been more honest if the smiley badge had ‘ © DC Comics’ on the edge just for that extra fuck you to Moore as a reminder of the material object that was a literal emblem to his split.
Whilst I’m puzzled to see how this particular car crash works out, this along with the double-shipping trick their playing means I won’t be getting any DC apart from the second half of the Prez series, which I believe is scheduled for November (although I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets quietly shelved)
May 26, 2016 @ 8:13 pm
It reads slightly better if you pretend that it’s an “Earth 3” equivalent of Moore’s Watchmen universe and that it’s an evil subpar version of Dr Manhattan who did this. It’s still not a good idea trying to assign the “negativity” to him, though. If they had really wanted to go with hope vs cynical determinism, they’d have been better off tying in with Planetary and the New 52 Earth be an experiment of Randall Dowling’s, possibly the Plenet Fiction that was done in one story. But, they seem to want to avoid Planetary (probably fortunately) while still wanting to plunder Watchmen.
May 26, 2016 @ 9:30 pm
another way of getting it to read better is if you view white Wally West as the obvious surrogate for Johns he is & judiciously add ‘it was a nasty, nasty beardy man from Northampton’s fault’ and the end of his dialogue boxes, particularly on page 13 the chapter 1:Lost.
May 26, 2016 @ 8:27 am
The fact that there are people who read Rebirth #1 and cried tears of joy at certain points embodies everything I hope I will never understand about cape comics.
May 26, 2016 @ 10:02 am
This is one of the exceptionally captivating posts. Since I am new in blogging and I require mind boggling instructional action like your post.
May 26, 2016 @ 12:28 pm
I, too, found the poop emoji to be captivating.
May 26, 2016 @ 11:28 pm
This needs to start appearing at the top of the page along with the other blog slogan. “Mind boggling instructional action”.
May 26, 2016 @ 11:32 pm
Goddammit, now I can’t delete the spam. 😛
May 27, 2016 @ 10:33 am
You can’t. This is a gold-plated can of spam.
May 26, 2016 @ 2:45 pm
Emojis don’t render on my browser. They never have. I wonder what the deal is…
May 26, 2016 @ 3:02 pm
Got it fixed, had to download a font to get it working but hey, there it is.
“Under people skills, she drew a… I think it’s a little poop. With knives sticking out of it.”
June 2, 2016 @ 2:05 pm
If you’d told me when the New 52 started “In four years, DC will bring back Wally West and Ted Kord, and you’ll hate it”, I’d have … well, actually I’d have thought that sounded like something they could do, yes.
Like Tim B., what gets me is the sheer hypocrisy of Geoff freakin’ Johns criticising the New 52 for being cynical and loveless, and then tossing the blame onto someone else’s characters. Well, that and declaring the new Kid Flash isn’t the “real” Wally West before he’s even become Kid Flash.
June 7, 2016 @ 12:10 pm
Being a lover of a good trainwreck, plus having always had a soft spot in my heart for DC’s deliberately reader-hostile style of continuity wanking, I picked up Rebirth #1 via comixology. I mean, it couldn’t be that bad, could it…?
Uh, holy crap. A poop emoji may have been generous. This Geoff Johns person… he’s is a professional writer? Who committed a terrible crime in his past and is being blackmailed by various executives at Warner Media to do their bidding and is rebelling by doing it in as deliberately off-putting and incompetent a way as possible? I’m reaching here: there has to be some explanation for this other than a colossal failure of judgement at every step of the way: otherwise why in the name of god would you open your “event comic” with a 9-panel allusion to Watchmen and then spend the next three hundred pages (I may have lost track) on “Wally West runs around and yells at people who don’t recognize him that something is wrong”?! It’s like Johns is literally saying “yeah, Moore’s formal innovations were…actually they were dumb, and what Watchmen needed was more shouty cape people.”
For neither the first time nor I am sure the last, I found myself thinking that the best possible thing that could have happened to DC’s characters would have been for Warner to license them to Marvel as they were planning to back in the 80s.