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52*

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Haus of Mystery

20:20 / 29.04.07

I have to disagree. I grew up reading 2000ad, and the fact that it came out weekly meant you would put up with the dry spells, cos you knew something like Zenith, or Bad Co. was possible. For all it's shiteness (and believe me I threw certain issues down in true contempt) the fact that it was there every week regardless made me persevere and happily give up my £1.50.

20:53 / 29.04.07

Well I think, and this was up to around week 36, 37 I last tried it, but the thing does cohere actually remarkably well - up to that point at least, and I don't think that'll have changed. I have completely ignored the time structure except where it's novel - Dibny back in time, Waverider & Skeets in some sinkhole, that's it - because it makes a nonsense of rather a lot of things; I think New Year's day was actually the second or third for a basic, fundamental example. It certainly wasn't seven days after Xmas, anyway.

Signifier's blog does make the quite inarguable point that there is a difficulty pinning what it's supposed to be 'about', as I imagine there is with really 99% of DC's superhero output, to be honest:

"Pop quiz: in a sentence, what's 52 about? What's the elevator pitch? "A year without Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman" doesn't actually tell us anything much that's relevant to the story. Is it about the return of the parallel earths? Well, the ending seems to be--but most of the story isn't about that, or even building up to that. Is it about the reintroduction of 30-to-35-year-old Jack Kirby material into the main narrative current of the DCU? That's an effect, not a premise, and a setup for future stories, not a story itself. Civil War was a hair-tearing-out affair in a lot of ways, but it had a specific plot and some larger ideas behind that plot. 52? Not so much, as entertaining as its high points have been."

20:57 / 29.04.07

Oh, yes, I wanted to say, in response to gumbitch!!!11!1!:

I thought weeks 31 and 32 were the standouts of the whole series, personally. The lonesome semi-death of Captain Comet, those horrible space cubes... it induced some cartoonish fit of existential terror, anyway, only for that to be salved by Ralph Dibny's transcendental journey up the mountains of Nanda Parbat the week later. (I have to think Waid wrote a fair bit of this, and am super-impressed by his having done so.) Accomplished Perfect Physician became my new favourite superhero that week; great powers, lovely outlook.

Phex: Dorset Doom

21:12 / 29.04.07

Pop quiz: in a sentence, what's 52 about? What's the elevator pitch?

Obviously there isn't one, but then could you ask the question 'in a sentence, what's the DC Universe about?'. 52 was a year in the 'life' of a universe that goes from the Gotham backalleys to the firepits of Apokalips and, realistically, you're not going to connect the dots between Ralph Dibney shaking down Neron, Renee Montoya becoming The Question, three heroes returning home through space and whatever The 52 is. This is all stuff that can go in the 52: Pickup thread next week (I'm calling it that unless somebody can think of a better title. Don't think I won't).

For now: Does anybody have any idea what the 'Garden' Skeets/Mr.Mind/Cthulu talks about is?

(Fun fact: that bigass gun Rip Hunter is carrying? Check out this month's Legion of Superheroes to find out how he got it)

21:44 / 29.04.07

I imagine the garden is where new universes are grown and tended in 5-d soil, watered with hypertime and sheared with retconshears.

22:07 / 29.04.07

I think you've every right to expect a few running themes in a finite series, or even storyarc, though, Phex. Preferably ones that aren't the hollow soundbite 'what's the meaning of heroism?'

It could be argued that many of the cast found redemption, I suppose; Montoya and Ralph getting over the deaths of partners and friends and putting the lockdown on Intergang/Neron, Natasha Irons... ummm, something something, beating Lexy Luthor, not being a dick to her awesome uncle and expecting everything on a plate anymore, Will Magnus overcoming his depression and blockage also to halt Intergang/Egg-Fu, Booster stopping being a walking billboard and actually saving all the universes - but, there again, summarise the Buddy or Adam arcs like that and you can't. One's a space odyssey, no redemption required whatsoever, the other's an exercise in see-sawing and all the more irritating for it. It's hard to summarise without sounding revoltingly trite, but then nearly every page Geoffrey Johnathans (!!) wrote was exactly that; 'In the end, everybody found their true selves'.

23:15 / 29.04.07

Random question: Did "Oolong Island" ever appear in the DCU prior to 52? Where did that weird name come from? Is it some old-school tribute to early appearances of 'Egg-Fu' (now 'Chang-Tzu') or something like that...? (And I love how this weird huge yellow head with a robot body - sort of MODOK-like, now that I think of it - shows up and no one ever really says 'Where did YOU come from? What's YOUR story, dude?!?')

23:50 / 29.04.07

Is it some old-school tribute to early appearances of 'Egg-Fu' (now 'Chang-Tzu') or something like that

Yep. Specifically Wonder Woman #157, from 1965. Oolong itself is a kind of tea... it comes from the Chinese words "wu lung", or "black dragon"

12:33 / 30.04.07

Ahh, Falc, thanks for filling in the blanks in my post. When I talked about interconnectedness I wasn't so much talking about the actual dynamics of the plot, I was talking about the themes and the goals of the narrative. For me 52 was just a jumble of stuff, some of it good, a lof of it bad, a smidgen great, and I wanted a bit more than that, I wanted a real story, something that would work to unify the psychedelic beast that is the DCU* and somehow I suspect the creators did too.

*Isn't that what we all wanted? Seriously

20:44 / 30.04.07

My favorite artists to make their mark on 52: Chris Batista and Guiseppe Camicoli (not sure about the spelling of that last fellow there). Both deserve ongoing art assignments.

09:32 / 01.05.07

In as much as there is a unifying theme, I'd have to go with "Steven's" thesis. He's the 3rd commentator down in the issue 51 section of the 52:Pickup blog cited above as 'Signifiers Blog'

...forces ranging from Lex Luthor to Black Adam to Intergang to "Evil Skeets" set out to remake the world(s) in their own image. Even Ralph Dibny tries to rewrite the laws of life and death.

...No, change has to come from within. Ralph can't bring back his wife, he can only become the hero he once was. Natasha has to build her own armor. And Vic Sage can't make Renee Montoya the new Question, she has to become it on her own.

...So of course the caterpillar is the Big Bad!

And these themes of revolution vs evolution might be termed 'Morrisonian', no?

As to the success of the project, (beyond the punctuality) the whole thing did give the impression of a unified world, where magic/mythology, scientific progress run wild, noirish street-sleuthing and super-powered geo-politics intermingle. The richness of the history the writers have to draw on was also well illustrated. Ralph's mystic objects date from v early JLA stories, Mr Mind dates from the early 40s, even Booster is from an era that, while some of us would have little affection for, is now a bona fide 'age' to be drawn from like all the others.

The cosmic intergalactic element wasn't melded in so well, and did read like a completely seperate story. This strand was further weakened by the fact that we had no idea why Adam was blind, why Kory was sick and possibly dying, what they had seen and in what circumstances and why they were being hunted through the cosmos.

The fact that each strand would seem to have its own seperate climax, and these have been staggered over 10 or so episodes, does take away from the overall 'punch' of the tale.

And the pay-off of the one strand which might have commented on the whole point of the series 'as a comic-book series' happened off-screen! Why DID the Yellow pointy headed guys restore Buddy to life? What purpose did they see the Infinite Crisis and its aftermath as serving? The answers to that one will probably not be answered within the series itself and this weakens 52 as a standalone comics landmark.

Phex: Dorset Doom

11:23 / 01.05.07

Adam was blinded when he used the Zeta Beam which was intended to take everybody back to Earth- the one that fused Cyborg and Firestorm, stole one of Green Lantern's eyes and made the World's Most Giant Hawkgirl. It sent him, Buddy and Kory to Devilance's planet. As for Kory, I think her powers are sun-based, so being in deep space for so long probably drained her. They're being pursued since they may have seen something when the shit hit the cosmic fan in Infinite Crisis that they weren't supposed to have seen, though all the heroes who were around then seem to have forgotten whatever it was they saw.

11:59 / 01.05.07

But all of the above happened outside the pages of 52, so they do detract from the 'completeness' of the Odyssey strand in that comic.

To compare it to the Odyssey: granted the Trojan War is only referred to at the beginning of that story and not described in detail, and it makes the whole story about the return journey, but I don't think that the parallel holds here as Buddy and co's journey is not as fully fleshed out as wily Odysseus' travels. Instead we get a story with a hazy starting point, a mysterious deus ex-machina climax and a gentle warm-hearted ending (nothing wrong with the ending - to be fair.)

And this is comics - aren't those lurid and fantastical events you describe the very meat and potatoes of superhero comics and shouldn't they have been rendered in all their graphic and bizarre glory? Comics is a 'Show not Tell' medium and instead we've got a drip feeding of 'Tell' and almost no 'Show'.

I think the missing elements I'm talking about here were supposed to be part of 52, but the editors have decided to stretch out the revelations even longer to keep us poor suckers hanging on. The events that initiated Buddy's odyssey happened at the climax of Infinite Crisis for god's sakes! A year ago! And they themselves were the climax of Donna Troy's mysterious Space Mission as part of that story, which was initiated long before the finale of Infinite Crisis. Do we have any idea what that mission was about yet?

At least reading the Odyssey most readers would know roughly what Odysseus and his rapacious allies were doing in Turkey.

13:46 / 01.05.07

I dug all the Will Magnus bits especially. No grand theme or thesis there, just good fun readin'!

13:55 / 01.05.07

Ahh, Falc, thanks for filling in the blanks in my post.

Yeah, I mean, it's not to say I agree completely with you - I like what Fraction has to say about it, although there's a degree of overenthusiasm there, for example -

"An internet ironist parlor game of WHO WROTE WHAT sprung up almost immediately-- hell, even when the goddamn PREVIEW PAGES had been released, people were insisting Morrison wrote this or that. (In fact, it’s amusing ((infuriating)) to read the bitterly hip insisting up and down that the only bits of 52 they enjoy are Morrison’s, and Morrison’s alone, as if they have some kind of Magical Grant Detector and they would never, EVER deem to read any of that AWFUL Geoff Johns’ comics and-- ewwww-- actually enjoy them.) And while there are times when you could swear, in spite of yourself, that the ship is being steered by a certain captain, much to my delight it becomes harder and harder to even pretend to detect as the book goes on."

- is just not true, Matt. Steel, did you like Steel? And the new Titans and Infinity Inc.? Did you really really?

...actually in a way, I've enjoyed hating Geoff Johns as much as quite liking Rucka, really quite liking Waid and really really liking (most of) the Morrison bits therein.

15:05 / 01.05.07

I also ended up reading this series in huge chunks, as I feel horribly behind on my comics reading in general and thereby would read about 15 issues of 52 at a time. I recently read issues 35 or so to the present and it was really enjoyable in one huge reading session.

And damn, that Mr. Mind evil butterfly/Cthulu thing WAS scary. Nice job to whichever artist drew that (Eddy Barrows, maybe)?

15:25 / 01.05.07

So there are only 52 different worlds/universes? I thought the multiverse was infinite. Or maybe the idea is that there are only 52 left after Infinite Crisis' Alex Luthor cleaned house. Or maybe it was just convenient to have them be 52 since that's the name of the book. I'm probably thinking waaay too much about this...

Looking forward to T.O. Morrow, Booster Gold and Rip Hunter vs. Mr. Mind next issue, though. And from the cover of 52 #52, it looks like Ralph stays dead...but I personally am expecting a resurrection for ol' Mr. Dibny.

15:31 / 01.05.07

My acquaintance with Geoff Johns' ouevre is at best limited, but at certain points it's seemed clear that no other writer could have been responsible. In that sense, his work on '52' has perhaps stood out more than Grant's, Grant having apparently functioned as an ideas man for a lot of it. In terms of familiar Mitchell tropes being smacked about the place like misunderstood young 'uns throughout. If saying that makes me 'bitterly hip', so be it. I rather take it as a compliment, actually.

Hats off to everyone for getting this project together logistically, but it's basically just been a load of bollocks, hasn't it?

17:27 / 01.05.07

Yeah, I mean, it's not to say I agree completely with you

Yes you do. You completely agree with me.

17:28 / 01.05.07

And sometimes, in the night, you try and sex me.

17:33 / 01.05.07

Guilty on charge two, I suppose. My dirty, dirty hands.

Anyway, o/t - Finder, will you stop saying the art was good?! On the basis of their contributions to 52, I would give no-one involved other than Jiminez, Darick R, Joe Bennett and Justiniano work in comics ever again. If I were the god of comics, which in a way, if you think of it, I am. I may have forgotten one decentish performance, but basically, it has been a f...ugly bastard of a comic 90% of the time.

17:36 / 01.05.07

I have to agree on the art. I kept up with the weeklies nearly halfway through, but my final decision to ditch and just follow it online (thanks, Barbelith!) was mostly based on not wanting a weekly purchase that looked like ass.

It's disappointing, too, because-- as someone pointed out quite a while ago in this thread-- Giffen's layouts often have a lot of flair and life that the finished products sorely lacked.

17:44 / 01.05.07

Yeah, every time I open this thread, I read Ben's exhortation not to "let Pascual Ferry near it" - it was a difficult time, we all said things we didn't mean - but it's a bitter, bitter irony, really. If. Fucking. Only.

17:44 / 01.05.07

And Giffen had Zattara in fishnets and heels. That's hard to cut and still level up.

I haven't been able to keep up, for various reasons, but I'm definitely considering at least borrowing the trades from a library.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

18:01 / 01.05.07

The art being primarily rather flat and listless, adhering to some madman's idea of a "house style" was one of the factors that made me stop reading it. Even with the Metal Men being in it. Even with the Question. There were some nice fill-ins but...meh. It's not even ugly, it's just "barely competent."

19:41 / 01.05.07

well, art-wise, other than Jimenez, Darick Robertson, Joe Bennett and Justiano, you had Pat Oliffe (who I don't like very much), Dan Jurgens (who I also don't like all that much), Eddy Barrows (who was just passable), Guiseppe Camiciole (pretty good, I thought), Andy Smith (ehhh), Tom Derenick (weak), and Chris Batista (who I think is quite good).

Joe Bennett and Oliffe seem to have drawn most of the issues, with Jurgens and Batista coming in at second-most.

19:59 / 01.05.07

Why can't 'house style' ever mean 'everybody make it look like the last ten years of Goya' or 'draw like Bruce Lee kicks', instead of dodgy half realist-slave and half sketchy shorthand?

In-betweeners in animation have to at least try to work in a specific style that may be totally removed from their own, but most of them can do it. I sucked at it. Tim Burton was fired for sucking at it. But, y'know, most styles are at least usable in the short-term. Especially in comics where the range isn't usually that broad. Jim Lee might be the only one to do Jim Lee for a long time, but for a page or six? There were twelve issues of nothing but Kirby tribute during the FF anniversary year, and while nobody's at the top of their game doing a Kirby riff and actual Kirby frequently blows them out of the water, it was all pretty passable stuff.

You know whose work would seem to be really hard to use as a house style? Cameron Stewart or Usamaru Furuya (did the Short Cuts comic, currently scanlation only for english). Because try as I may I can't figure out what makes the styles work. I've tried redrawing panels looking at them, analysing the angles, the line thickness, et cet. and there's just some magicky magick thing going on that I miss and therefore assume a lot of artists would miss if they were trying to cop the style for a bit.

20:09 / 01.05.07

Anyway, o/t - Finder, will you stop saying the art was good?!

This is the man who praised Infinite Crisis on these very boards, Falke. Baptised it. Nearly.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

20:12 / 01.05.07

Why can't 'house style' ever mean 'everybody make it look like the last ten years of Goya' or 'draw like Bruce Lee kicks', instead of dodgy half realist-slave and half sketchy shorthand?

It's not always bad, Des. Look at Ryan Sook's work -- he worked for some time in the Hellboy "house style" -- aping Mignola -- and did a good job of it without losing his own vibe -- if anything it actually improved his work because he walked away with some new elements.

But, yeah, 52's house style seems to be flat and skinny (everybody's face looks compressed to me), and I think at least part of that falls on the colours. I would have loved the slightly bizarro Duncan Rouleau on it for a bit more than the Metal Men origin (I remember back when he was terrible on Impulse; he's come a long, long way).

20:18 / 01.05.07

Yeah, Sook's a good example of it working. I think I was just having flashbacks of too many fill-in specialists and the entire Image studio-clone processing. The fill-in pages in Marvel Boy I find interesting because they're not particularly in the style of the rest of the mini.

Rachel Evil McCall

03:36 / 02.05.07

One good thing I'll say about the series, as a whole:

J.G. Jones did some fucking beautiful covers.

8, 9, 16, 18, 20, 22, 26, 27, 30, 31, 38, 43, 44, and 49 are my favorites.

Especially 31.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

03:46 / 02.05.07

I think the covers are why I bought it as long as I did. I always wanted the interiors to be the same quality.

10:53 / 02.05.07

Trips, let's not dogpile the guy. Poor bloke's never gonna live the Infinite Crisis stuff down.

Could there be straighforward technical reasons why the art's the way it is?

13:26 / 02.05.07

I think it's just speed and the attempt to stick to a house style; I'm assuming that, even with rotating artists, the production process for 52 didn't lend itself to putting lots of time into the artwork.

13:29 / 02.05.07

That's basically what I'm thinking, Cobra, but I wondering what any pros (people who have practical experience of creating art to a deadline) had to say on the subject.

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