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Underground > Comic Books >

One Year Later

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18:49 / 22.03.06

I think they should hire Mike Allred or Jay Stephens to do a Super-Baby solo title.

20:02 / 22.03.06

Now I have the Matthew Sweet song "Superbaby" in my head for the past hour.

20:06 / 22.03.06

Any news on Teen Titans OYL? I guess they aren't going to capitalize on the TV show. Wonder Girl and Robin will apparently be joined by Kid Devil and Ravager.

13:28 / 23.03.06

well, the TV show has been cancelled, but they might still do a direct-to-video-or-shown-only-on-Cartoon-Network Teen Titans movie, so I doubt that the comic needs to reflect anything from the cartoon anymore.

There's a lot of talk about a Titans East showing up in the monthly TT book now, and Geoff Johns has also mentioned using the Doom Patrol a bit now that he's made all the versions of Doom Patrol valid (GM, Byrne, pre-GM superhero costumes, etc.).

13:33 / 23.03.06

The new Batman issue was pretty lackluster...nice cover by Shining Knight artist Simone Bianchi (who seems to be one of DC's new go-to guys for cover art), but the issue was pretty boring. Batman & Robin (love the new Robin costume) stop Poison Ivy, then an old obscure John Byrne-created Batman villiain is found murdered. Yawn. Hopefully James Robinson will kick this up a few notches soon.

So Catwoman has a baby, but we don't know who the father is yet. I'm guessing Catwoman cast members Slam Bradley. And Holly appears to be the new Catwoman but they didn't really say it in the issue itself, right? (I dunno, I just skimmed it)

Hawkgirl by Simonson & Chakykin is interesting, kind of light fun, not too much happening here. Chaykin's art is nice but looks less nice on newsprint stock.

13:52 / 23.03.06

I'd just like to state that I hear the Ray Charles song "Unchain my heart" in my head , but with the words "Kickstart my heart" as in this thread's subtitle heading, whenever I see this thread on the screen.

In Robin this week (which was entertaining) or Batman, I forget which, I think Robin, Batman says that at the very end of the One Year That We Are Just Beginning To Learn About, Tim Drake took off and left Dick & Bruce alone while the 3 of them were in Budapest. ???? Innnnteresting...

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

15:02 / 23.03.06

Drag, though that Keschel is only on for this first issue, as I'm quite into his work. Mr. Miracle is taking over if not next issue then the one after that.

Manhunter would've been a lot more interesting if I'd read the stack of back issues I have. It was a decent read and confirmed that the Society does SOMETHING with Doomsday big time somewhere in Infinite Crisis. I really didn't believe that they'd be bringing that back, even after Superman #650 but it was really difficult to miss in this book. (Manhunter's civilian identity has to defend Dr. Psycho and you see him with a very Doomsdayian sillouhete [SP???] next to him.)

JSA Classified is a decent Vandal Savage story with a bit of Villains United tie-in. And Gulacy is much better suited to this kind of story than Catwoman.

Speaking of which. Catwoman is intriguing on a fundamental level, as Holly has always been a favorite of mine. However, I really hate these kinds of completely wack-ass villains in second tier batbooks. I mean, aren't there 200 villains in the Society? Has everyone else claimed dibs on everyone?

Batman definitely suffered on the art side and drifted away from all the good stuff in Part 1. Fundamentally it would've been a much better issue if the art was a bit more engaging. This is my primary fear for 52.

Did I miss anyone? I already talked about Legion.

15:07 / 23.03.06

Yeah, it seems like about every 4 years someone wants to do a take on Angle Man. Bizarre. (Phil Jimenez did it in Wonder Woman, I thought Gail Simone used Angle Man in Villains United but I could be mistaken, and I swear I've seen Angle Man somewhere else too)

13:17 / 24.03.06

Batman was awful - bland. Considering how bad the art was, the script asked for the issue to rely on the images too much for it to be good.

20:41 / 24.03.06

Mmm. The first part at least looked nice, but I'm dreadfully worried that James Robinson's work has turned to wank. Boring stuff so far, and the only OYL title/arc that's had any appeal whatsoever to me (I have been thinking about the Simone Secret Six thing a bit, maybe.)

17:40 / 29.03.06

Aquaman was pretty messed up; it's very unclear whether this a reboot or simply there's a brand-new character whose name is also Arthur Curry who comes after the first Aquaman (seems to be the latter since other characters, like King Shark, know of the original Aquaman). I wanted to like this issue more than I did. Klein's lettering is still great, though. King Shark's 'dumb strong creature' dialogue annoys me.

ROBIN was really good - entertaining, simple but well-written and beautifully drawn, I thought. Love that new costume! Could be a real return to quality for Robin's solo book after the awful Willingham run.

17:41 / 29.03.06

It's the latter. Aquaman is not a reboot.

21:51 / 03.04.06

The end of the issue seemed to imply that tentacle-face guy ("the [something or other] in the deep") was the original Aquaman, morphed and confused. May be a red herring though -- 1st issue would be way to soon for Busiek to tip his hand like that, or at least so one would hope.

03:25 / 04.04.06

Yeah Robin was actually good, and the new Batman's an ok guy is shown more in this issue than in his own title. Batman let's Robin take control, and reminds him that he always has his back. They also talk about the missing year, where it sounds like Bats, Dick, and Tim spent a year in Budapest training and rebuilding a bond.

Phex: Dorset Doom

00:08 / 11.04.06

-Bump-

I've just got the new Detective Comics, which continues the Face to Face story. Bats is definitely getting softer with Robin, and at the same time seems to have trained him up (in Budapest, I guess with Dick*'s help) to the point where he's saying Tim will surpass Dick.
It all putters along for a while, they beat up Mad Hatter's goons while Harvey Dent watches... and then....

SPOILER

Harvey Dent kills Scarface and the Ventriloquist.
Shoots 'em dead, right when they were having dinner. Now, I don't know how y'all feel about those characters- they were pretty silly and Scarface's B>G substitution is grating- but they've been around a while, long enough to give them a kinda dontfuckwithability.
Oh, and there's this one really beautiful panel where the Ventriloquist reaches out to touch Scarface's hand before he dies. Got me all misty...

* speaking of Nightwing, does anyone but me get the feeling, after reading the last few issues of the Outsiders, that maybe, just maybe, Outsiders Nightwing isn't Dick Grayson... it's Jason Todd? They're near identical, at least in costume, Jason could probably disguise his voice, plus he has the proclivity for violence that Outsiders Nightwing displays. I so want for some big payoff after a dozen or so more issues of Outsiders.

00:24 / 11.04.06

I'm pretty sure the writer of Outsiders has gone on record as saying his Nightwing is Dick.

15:01 / 11.04.06

Retro alert! Wendy and Marvin, the teenagers from the old SuperFriends cartoon show (they had no powers and they would hang out with the Super Friends, sort of like the Snapper Carr type 'have teenagers there to give the show a younger feel/have kids so the viewers could identify with them more instead of the grown-up superheroes) have shown up in the new Teen Titans issue!

They have bad "W" and "M" logos (since the original Wendy and Marvin had bad letter logos on their shirts; although these new ones are even worse than the huge block letters of the 70s cartoon, IMHO) and they're teenage geniuses. They are the new tech. specialists at Titans Tower...One Year Later. Kinda fun & silly.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

06:06 / 15.04.06

Just to clarify, that was never confirmed to be Harvey Dent pulling the trigger.

One thing that has been confirmed? A "Golem From New York" is helping out in the Battle For Bludhaven. That whole mini-series, by the way, seems like just a half-entertaining installment of Spot The Morrison Concept. Did I say half? That's rather generous, actually.

07:06 / 15.04.06

I liked battle for bludhaven: it's a good fast superhero read. I'm intrigued by the Atomic Knights (who seem modeled after ROM, Spaceknight, at least in this incarnation) and by the foreshadowed rebooting of the Freedom Fighters.

Did anybody else not care for the Nightwing OYL? I liked Robin, and the Robinson Bats tale kicked it up a notch in installment three. Also Teen Titans has the best OYL jump: lots of enigmas to solve, etc.

10:47 / 15.04.06

Superman's boring me. Two issues in and it's the old "Superman with no powers! He can still be a hero with no powers! I can't wait to see his triumphant return with his powers! Powers powers powers!". Boring.

10:48 / 15.04.06

Did anybody else not care for the Nightwing OYL?
I skipped every panel that didn't have Jason Todd. I Byrne stole it. Robin is pretty good though, and I've never liked that character.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

11:05 / 15.04.06

Nightwing is pretty patently awful at this point, which is highly disappointing considering how nicely they've been handling him in 8C.

12:34 / 15.04.06

Superman relying solely on Kryptonian technologies like a bright Batman might be worth a read, but if Jack says the premise is boring, it will be.

Anyone heard about the premise of the new Wonder Woman?
SPOLIERS

As punishment for her crime of murdering Max Lord, Themyscira-less Diana will become the United States Armed Forces' secret weapon! At first, I thought this would be BORING as well, but now I'm thinking otherwise. Diana's Golden Age is all about bondage and fighting against enemies of the United States, so I'm beginnning to see the appeal. She's bound as a superhuman "slave" to the US, whether it's against her philosophy or not, because it's in her philosophy to submit to "justice" in all its forms. Finally makes her costume a teensy bit relevant.

12:41 / 15.04.06

Interesting, but I'm not sure the concept has legs. Sooner or later, she's going to have to cut loose, and given the way comics follow patterns, it wouldn't surprise me if her government liason turns corrupt, gets mind-controlled, or is secretely a supervillain.

12:43 / 15.04.06

Like Ares?

13:25 / 15.04.06

interesting - where did you hear the Wonder Woman concept?

13:38 / 15.04.06

Alvaro's Comicboards. I guess Wizard and DC put forth a multiple choice thing a while ago, and one of the questions was: Which big hero will be the United States Secret Weapon?

Diana was the only one left that made sense. They started debating and building. Seems plausible, no?

14:21 / 15.04.06

I'm a little bit horrified by the Wonder Woman schtick - it seems like that idea is about somehow Americanising her. I much prefer the idea of her as being a kind of stranger to the modern world in general, who operates as an ambassador to the world in the US because that's the place that's currently setting the international agenda. In the 19th Century she'd have been in Britain. In the late 21st Century, maybe she'd be in China or Hong Kong or whatever. She's a kind of representative of honour rather than justice - of behaving well in the world as an individual, and I always liked that about her. The post-Crisis reboot for her was extraordinarily good - there's an undercurrent to the world that only she sees which she has to fight against (emerging mythical, fundamental threats with many arms and eyes), and the capriciousness of divinity that surrounds her, while her ethics seem beautifully simplistic and clean. Up to and including the stuff with maxwell lord, I see that happening in place. This is not a woman who over-thinks philosophically and sets up absolute barriers that she must not cross, this is a woman who believes family, and individuals and behaving well in the world and doing what needs to be done not in the kind of cynical way of giving in to her dark impulses or feeling guilty about it (like you sense Batman does somewhere - he knows what he does is dodgy), but in a very clear and balanced, 'this is the thing that I must do in this situation'. She's a fucking ancient greek, for god's sake, used to narratives of murder and betrayal and of warfare and of behaving honourably in that environment.

Sorry - i'm rambling a bit, but basically I was just a little disappointed that these attributes were now going to be put to the service of America in some way, performing cynical political acts on behalf of a nation that I can't believe she understands or believes in. The ideology of the US is so completely different to her own, that I simply can't believe it's one that she could directly fight for - not that it's a worse ideology - but just that it's so very different.

14:38 / 15.04.06

Like Ares?

Possibly, although that would likely lead to the return of Paradise Island and all that. I was thinking someone more mundane, like Doctor Psycho or Nyssa al Ghul.

15:46 / 15.04.06

In other OYL related gubbins, I just read the new issue of Green Arrow which was, rather surprisingly, pretty good. Unlike last issue's setting-up of the characters and the overarching plot, this issue gave the reader (well, me, anyway) what they've been waiting for.

First off, we get Ollie being all witty and honest as the mayor of Star City. It's probably a bit of liberal wish-fulfillment this, but I really enjoyed Ollie's press conference. It made sense with his charming/skirt-chasing character, as well as his lefty politics and no-nonsense demenour. I thought the stuff about gay marriages was a tad forced and will probably date the book in years to come, but it was a nice way of putting across in shorthand the kind of mayor Ollie will be, and establishes his 'brand' of politics in a relevant and easy-to-grasp manner so that even new readers will 'get' what kind of character he is.

Then we got to see him in costume, setting up the 'differences' between his mayoral role and his identity as Green Arrow. Although it puzzles me a bit as to how the people of star city can't connect these two quite prominent people as one-and-the-same. I mean, you've got the pointy blond beard, the love of green (check his tie!), the fact that he's kind of helping the moyor in his actions... I wonder how this will play out, and if winick will acknowledge this later on in the run.

I'm also glad to see winick's not mucking about with kicking the book back into high gear. The last page seems to hint that it's all going to kick off pretty soon, which can only be a good thing, methinks. All in all, recommended.

16:33 / 15.04.06

Although it puzzles me a bit as to how the people of star city can't connect these two quite prominent people as one-and-the-same

Especially when everyone at the Daily Planet figured out Clark was Superman before he was even born.

17:21 / 15.04.06

Indeed. I meant to make a supes reference in that post, but I forgot, honest. I'll go this way now... *edges out of the comics forum*

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

17:21 / 15.04.06

I'm also glad to see winick's not mucking about with kicking the book back into high gear. The last page seems to hint that it's all going to kick off pretty soon, which can only be a good thing, methinks. All in all, recommended.

This is why Nightwing is so mystifying. On paper, it's balls to the wall, Robin vs. Robin, but the execution is just unspeakably poor. Jones managed to find the least interesting way to frame this conflict. And yet, I'll probably still read it to see what happens with the two of them, to see if there's even the slightest hint as to what's been going on with them.

17:26 / 15.04.06

Exactly, the Nightwing plot does feel terribly limp. I think it's a cross between some fairly awful dialogue (why is Dick all street all of a sudden? I always thought he spoke quite well, not this mangling of English that's in his caption boxes). Also, the villains are faceless Matrix rip-offs, without the cool see-thru ghost thingies either. I got a sinking feeling reading this that a) Bruce Jones doesn't really understand the character of Dick Grayson and b) the Jason plot is going to end up like Hush in Gotham Knights, becoming more ridiculous and Team Rocket-ish with ever appearance.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

15:31 / 16.04.06

A "Golem From New York" is helping out in the Battle For Bludhaven.

It's not the Manhatan Guardian golem, for the record, it's Gray and Palmotti's Monolith. So far in the B for B (which I only picked up to see the Father Time app) there's only one Morrison spinoff concept I can see.

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