The Missing Year

In 52 Week 51, we learn what 52 refers to, and it isn't pretty. Well, one of things. A few threads reach a conclusion, it seems. Adam Strange is reunited with his family and gets a new pair of eyes, Buddy is reunited with his family, and Kory is back on Earth and returns Buddy's jacket. Ellen Baker is a very understanding wife.

Donna is Wonder Woman, Diana is playing agent in a job Bruce set up for her and Clark likes her glasses. In a nice splash illo across the top 2/3 of 2 pages, Power Girl is front and center. Nice to see a woman featured that way, but when her breasts and thighs are the prominent features (geez, that makes her sound like a chicken), the effect is a bit diluted. And the prominent butts are Liberty Belle (it looks like) and Star Girl. There's a decent crotch shot for Martian Manhunter, but that's it for male objectification.

Tim's got a new uniform with colors to honor Kon, Rose is obsessing, and Kid Devil asks her to intro him to Robin. Morrow is used to trap Skeets, who isn't really Skeets, anymore (ick on the description of that), and once again, Rip and Booster are a tad late as... well, that would be spoiling things. But the final issue of this yearlong romp promises to be fun. A nice little JLA origin 2-pager rounds out the issue. The editorial in this week's books honors the late (I hate saying that) Marshall Rogers.

In the Outsiders Annual, which continues the storyline from the Outsiders book, we learn that the team breaks Jefferson Pierce and Boomerang Jr out of prison, with Shift killing a lot of people by accident, sorta, and he can't live with the guilt, and grief over Indigo and Jade, so he merges back into Metamorpho, which explains why Rex and Boomer are now in the Outsiders. We also learn why the team is presumed dead, except for Roy and Dick and we see Roy quitting. He and Dick are on good terms, which was something I'd wondered about.

So, let's recap for a moment on the missing year as played out in 52 and filled in gradually in many OYL books. Events like Selina Kyle's pregnancy didn't affect other books and therefore, I haven't included them.

• Donna Troy becomes Wonder Woman at the end of the missing year.
• At the end of the Crisis, Ollie as Green Arrow was grievously injured and with Conor and Mia along, spent many months recovering and then retraining on a private island. Roy stayed, well, in the US, somewhere, I guess.
• When Ollie returns, near the end of the missing year, or maybe halfway through, he puts some plans into motion and runs for mayor.
  
• At the end of the Crisis, Dick Grayson as Nightwing was also critically injured and after being treated, as told in the recent Nightwing Annual, was nursed back to health by Babs, then went off with Bruce and Tim for some R&R. At some point, Bruce and Tim go off on their own so Bruce can spend time in a cave, finding himself.
• I believe it's during the just concluded war that Hal Jordan, sans power ring, was captured, spending time as a POW.
• Jefferson Pierce, under an assumed name, goes to prison for a murder he believes he committed.
• Jason Todd starts playing Nightwing with Dick out of town.
• Roy quits the Outsiders after the prison break fiasco. With Dick with the team, this must come late in the missing year, because Dick spent the first half or so first recovering from his injuries, then off with Bruce and Tim. So the Outsiders must've been busy with missions without him until the prison break storyline. But the issues leading up the annual made it seem like this all came much earlier after the Crisis. In either case, just what the hell has Roy been doing when he wasn't fighting baddies?

Have I missed anything vital? Is there an official timeline available for all this? How about an unofficial one?

52 51, which was much better than the Outsiders Annual, ended thusly:

Booster: "Where are we going?"
Rip Hunter: "Back. Back to where it all started."

So, could this mean changing what happened in the missing year. But we know that can't happen, not for everything. Hal, OYL, was still a POW. Selina still had a baby. Donna became Wonder Woman for a while. Dick was hurt, did spend time recovering with Babs, and did lead the Outsiders into a deep undercover op. Ollie did become mayor. I doubt DC would negate the OYL books and the 2 recent annuals, so if the past is changed, perhaps the status quo now remains, but the path to it changes? Or maybe Rip has something other than changing history in mind. Between 52 #52 and the 52 action figures coming out next week, it's going to be a long 7 days til then.

Post-IC Commentary with Reviews

There's been a lot of blogging going on re: Infinite Crisis 7 and the bit of retconning that went on. I must admit that to me it's not a big deal since for me, that's the way things have mostly been, no matter what's been written in the last 25 years in the DCU. That's partly what happens when you stop reading something like the DCU for a decade or so.

There was only about 4-5 years where I didn't read comics at all, when I gave up the last title I'd been reading, Teen Titans/Titans, around 1991. But in 1985, after the first Crisis (when Supergirl was killed), I stopped reading just about everything else. And when I picked up DC Comics again in the mid-'90s with the Nightwing mini and the Arsenal one-shot and slowly added titles, I didn't look back. There were big gaps in my DC knowledge that slowly got filled in by talking to people, reading the DC message boards, and from the tidbits dropped into the comics I was again reading.

I never read the Year One books, except for the Robin/Dick Grayson mini (I tried the Nightwing one, but thought it pretty dull). At least, I think those were Year One books, albeit a bit late in the game.

Gradually, I learned that Ollie Queen had died and his son, a new character, was the then-current GA. I learned about Hal turning bad and Kyle being GL. I couldn't ignore those changes, but others, the ones dealing with backgrounds or who founded the JLA (which I wasn't reading and hadn't read since pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths) were either unknown to me or were of no consequence since they didn't make a difference in the stories I was reading. So hearing that Wonder Woman again is a founder of the JLA isn't a big deal. She always has been to me.

I pretended the post-Crisis DCU was simply another alternate reality. I don't really buy the bit about realities converging. Sure, maybe for that moment, but I'm a big fan of the science fiction construct that realities are created at every decision point. As soon as the first decisions were made in the then new DCU, reality splintered once more. So the planets of the DCU were similar to the one I'd lost, just enough so that I could read and enjoy the stories without dwelling on Kara's death, or Ollie's, because I knew they were alive somewhere and anything I liked that happened to my favorite characters probably happened in those other unseen versions of the DCU, too. So seeing the Earth-2 Clark and Lois wasn't out of left field for me. More like a bit left of center.

It's hard for me at times to keep track of all the versions of a character. I grew up with the Silver Age and soon thereafter, the multiverse. Retconning of retcons makes me dizzy. In many things, what we learn when we're young tends to stick with us, sometimes more than what we learn later. It's hard to forget some early lessons, even misconceptions. So when I can't remember the current details of Batman's origin, I fall back on the version I've read the most: the old one.

And now, once again, realities have converged and I know, it's only for the moment. What the DCU is now, the stories we're reading, are just one version of reality, because one nanosecond after, someone made a decision and reality splintered once again, only the characters populating the DCU are unaware of it. Perhaps, they'll never find out, if that's what the writers and editors decide.

Once you accept that alternate realities can't help but exist (okay, I take this on faith and have no idea if they exist for real, but within fiction, I aim for consistency with this concept), you then can look to the future as being flexible in that millions of possible futures exist for each reality. So the future where the LSH exists is but one future. The future Booster Gold knows is but another future and if 52's first issue can be a guide, he's about to learn just that.

So, my reviews here are based on this view of the DCU.

Nightwing 120
Somewhere, the real Nightwing lives. This isn't it. If ever a character has been screwed over so quickly and completely, it's Dick Grayson. As bad as Devin's last arc was (and I'm a fan of her writing in general), as angst-driven as he was, at least I could recognize him. This version of Dick bears no more than a physical resemblence to him. And the story is just bad. I can't see why Clancy was brought back. I like her, but she's serving no purpose other than as someone Dick knows from before. She could've been anyone from before. The fashion show stuff was just crap. Cheyenne is a meta? Ho-hum. She's already been established as boring, immature, and idiotic, so why should I care about her? Where is Babs and why aren't she and Dick still together? That's what I care about. First, Tarantula, now Cheyenne? What is this need to surround Dick with out-of-control women? And I'm not going to get started on Jason, because I'm one of those people who was happy when he died and wished he'd stayed that way. The art is serviceable. The only reason I'm reading this book, still, is the hope that the next arc will be better. Well, I can dream.

JSA 85
The pace is a bit slow, but I'm enjoying the history of the Gentleman Ghost. Unlike the JSA Classfied arc featuring Vandal Savage and not much of the JSA, Levitz is weaving the Ghost's story in nicely with the JSAers. And I liked Jade's ghost visiting her father and trying to get him to fight to live. It was probably one of her better appearances. And nice art from Rags and company.

Checkmate 1
I never read about this group til the Crisis Countdown series. The concept intrigues me and the political aspect of the new series has a lot of potential. The art is nice, but I can't always tell some of the characters apart.

52 Week 1
Wow. I'm impressed. By ticking off the days, they really gave this a real-time feel. The cover is stunning, as good as the preview promised. The writing, especially the dialogue, is crisp and the art is wonderful, very evocative in places. The characters are full of life. Ralph's pain was palpable, even moreso than in Identity Crisis when so much else was going on and was distracting from the personal aspect of his loss. As with any good story, a lot happened, but not too much, giving a hint of things to come.

I suspect things to come includes the death of many beloved characters. One of the managers at the comic shop where I keep my pull list said a "ton of characters" will die in 52. I still suspect Roy "Arsenal" Harper will be one of them. If no, I don't know what DC hopes to gain by not giving us a hint of what's to come for him. And if he does die, the surprise in that is gone for many of us who are convinced he will die. If he doesn't, there will be no surprise, just enormous relief. With Dick playing boy toy and idiot du jour, if I lose Roy, I'll be hard pressed to find a new fav. Although, WildCats is supposed to return with a new book. There's no one quite like Cole "Grifter" Cash. It will be odd to have a fav comic character outside the DCU. Very odd. But unless Roy returns, or Dick shakes off the funk he's in, or someone else steps up and makes me take notice, Cole it will have to be.

Can't Put Off These Reviews Forever

Three for now; two feh, one great.

The Battle for Bludhaven 1
I will not be reading issue 2. I usually give a new title a few issues at the very least, and mini-series the full run, but this was just too dreadful for me to contemplate trying the next one. What an f'in mess. On the cover, in the bottom right corner, there's a sign intended as part of the art: "DO NOT ENTER By Order of the United States Government." Consider it a warning.

I couldn't keep track of all the poorly drawn characters, poorly drawn in the sense that it was dfficult to tell them apart, especially with the dark coloring. The telling point here is that I didn't care that I couldn't tell them apart. If something important happens in this series, I'll have to learn about it some other way, maybe by reading blogs. heh

JSA Classified 11
The Vandal Savage storyline continues. he continues to dominate, but at least some of the JSA appeared. I'm not overly fond of Gulacy's art. I tolerated it on Catwoman and I'm tolerating it here. The story is inching forward, but there isn't enough going on yet for me to have anything to discuss. Maybe next installment.

Birds of Prey 93
By far the best of the 3 and one of the few superior OYL books. The trade of place Shiva and Dinah have engaged in is explained a bit, Dinah shows what she's capable of and yet is off the mark as she struggled to figure out the tests Mother set for her. And the case the rest of the birds are on is moving forward.

The art is nice, but except for the hairstyles and costumes, it's difficult at times to tell the dark-haired female characters apart. I've been spoiled by artists who can draw nuances in the various characters.

But the main thing here is that Gail Simone understands the concept of OYL perhaps better than anyone writing at DC right now, or at least is among a very few. She's not changing things for change's sake. And the changes all have a logic for the characters. Dinah wanting to experience what Shiva did in her training is fully in character and the switching of places gives the group dynamic of the birds a bit of, uh, goosing (sorry, couldn't resist). Gail is mixing things up without making drastic changes. Above all, she's writing a solid story, blending two plotlines seamlessly, pacing things to perfection, and generally, entertaining BoP's readers by remembering character is as important as action.

So far, OYL has been a mixed bag.

Three OYL

Vandal Savage 1 JSA Classified 10
I have 2 problems with this issue.

1. On the cover: "Featuring Green Lantern." Now, I get that they mean this arc features him, but if you put it on the cover, it's a reasonable reader expectation that we'll see the character in the story somewhere.
2. No JSA. It's the JSA's book. Shouldn't one or two of them have shown up? Did they miss the bus? Not get the memo? Take a wrong turn after Infinite Crisis?

Seriously, I get the whole prologue to fill folks in re: Vandal Savage, but a whole issue devoted to that? With dull flashbacks that didn't add anything needed to understand the character. Maybe one would've been okay, but all the flashbacks accomplished was kill any sense of pacing or urgency, and forget about suspense. At least, in The Outsiders, some Outsiders showed up before the issue ended. This was just a waste of my time. Even the art failed to enthrall me. Is Gulacy incapable of drawing normal sized chins?

Hawkgirl 50
Interesting that they kept the numbering despite the title change. Especially since some books, like Wonder Woman, will start with #1. Ah well. Apparently, Carter is gone. Not dead. Or so it seemed to me. Kendra's dream of him to open was a cheat and beneath Walt Simonson, IMO. However, once things got going, they intrigued, although the pacing seemed a bit abrupt in places and following the dialogue was a bit tricky with the placement of panels. Chaykin's art still thrills me, but I wish all the characters didn't look like they were grimacing when speaking. All that baring of teeth would make an oral hygenist proud. At least things happened here and I'm looking forward to the next issue.

Catwoman 53
This was the OYL title I've been most eager for. No surprise, and therefore, no disappointment, as to the new Catwoman's identity. It was nice to see Slam. The cover is more stunning than the previews hinted at. The interior art was nice. Selina grew her hair out. She named the baby Helena, which was pretty cool for some reason. Bruce is still Bruce and no word, naturally, on Helena's daddy, or even why Selina got pregnant, went to term, and is keeping the baby. But, as with Hawkgirl, things happened, story threads were set in motion, and things look to get very interesting. I've been having conflicting feelings re: books getting all new teams vs keeping at least the writer. In this case, I'm glad Pfeifer is staying on. He's got a nice feel for Selina.