Posts tagged dc

USA Today just announced that DC will be cancelling six titles after their eighth issue, which includes the following:

• Men Of War
• Mister Terrific
• O.M.A.C.
• Hawk And Dove
• Blackhawks
• Static Shock

This announcement doesn’t really surprise me, as most of these titles seemed destined for the chopping block due to poor sales and a lack of quality. I’ve only read three of the titles up there (Static, Mister Terrific, Blackhawks), so I can’t give full reviews, but here’s my thoughts.

Blackhawks

- This book had a very “GI Joe” feeling to it, which sadly included a lot of the throwaway characters without any solid development. 
- Like many New 52 titles, we were thrown into action without a chance to actually care about the people we were reading. Here’s a protip: if the first issue of the book closes with a “stunning murder!” cliffhanger, you are doing something wrong.
- The Blackhawks are an act based on Nostalgia: if you’re picking up the book you’re either looking for something completely new (and running into the problems above), or you’re looking for any similarity to the badasses of old. Sadly, that isn’t present here, which leads me to think they could have just made a leap of faith and used them as new IP.
- They had no relevance to the DC Universe. There was never any feeling (unlike with Secret Warriors/Avengers over at Marvel) that their action had some permanence or significance. There’s a number of DC books feel like they could be in their own imprint, instead of part of the universe proper.

Mister Terrific

- This book is possibly my biggest disappointment out of the New 52 (well, maybe besides the Gail Simone-helmed Batgirl). It took an awesome character with defining traits and turned him into a Black Reed Richards, dullness and all.
- Michael Holt was never about super science, but subtle science. He was an atheist while standing beside gods, and stuck to his guns. Medical emergency? Guy was there. Computer virus? Memetic villain? This guy’s your man. Time travel, teleportation and space adventures? Not exactly his forte.
- I’m not saying that that kind of comic scientist isn’t great, but it’s shit we’ve seen before. Michael’s old incarnation wasn’t. He was unique, and DC smeared some vaseline on him, gave him Karen Starr as a fuck-buddy and murdered someone in the first two issues (see above).

Static Shock

- This is perhaps the only surprising entry to this list of cancellations: I was under the impression that this book was at least the same quality as the surviving Blue Beetle. 
- Again, this book suffers from poor characterization and a rush to get to the action, leaving us to not care about the people we’re reading about. Static lost a lot of his “realness” as a teen hero, and a convoluted backstory (which is just being revealed now, four-five issues in) did not help him.
- He seems to be a know-it-all, well-funded super-genius, which, again, we have seen before. We didn’t see much interaction between Static and other teens except when he was in “stakeout” mode, and it just took away from the belief that he actually had a life when he wasn’t in the suit.
- The book was a terribly formulaic, poor attempt at replicating the “Spider-Man” success without any qualities for teen readers to identify with and latch onto. Villains would scheme, Vergil would show up, spout some science and zap them into submission.
- He would then go home and deal with his sister and her evil doppelgänger (which still hasn’t been explained and is still treated as a “normal thing”, five issues in), while the villains would scheme again. It was like Tim Burton’s Batman film: Batman ended up not being the main character at all.

A Growing Problem

It’s a pity that two books with African-American leads are cancelled at the same time, but the quality of the books were indicative of a growing problem. Terrific’s creative team changed issue-to-issue, and Static made no traction to actually getting the story under way.

It’s disappointing, because these were characters with a ton of potential. I enjoyed them in Teen Titans, the DCAU and Justice Society in the “old” DCU, and it pains me to see that the New 52 has chewed them up and spit them out.

Consistent quality is the most important factor in the opening months of a new book, as it establishes readers and gives a strong foundation to build off of. These books did not have that.

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(Source: USA Today)

[This was originally posted on my ComicVine blog in response to a growing number of comments I’ve received saying that I should be grading books higher based on… nothing really at all. I thought I would write a response.]

Every week, I write four to five comic book reviews for ComicVine as a freelancer. I’ve been working with them since May of 2010, and have enjoyed my time here immensely so far; the quests are fun and it gives me a platform to write about a medium I love.

Since CV requires me to quantify my reviews in a star rating, there seems to be an increasing number of people who take issue with them. While I’d like to say that every review gets at least one comment questioning a score, that wouldn’t be true: four to five-star reviews remain relative feedback ghost towns.

So instead of responding to each comment as they come, I’ve decided to head them off at the pass and post a blog on how I come to my score decisions.

I’d like to preface this by saying that I try to be as honest as possible, and that a book with a large amount of hype is not immune from bad scores. As always, reviews are supposed to be subjective, and the fact that I didn’t like a book doesn’t mean you will, as well.

In short, there’s really no reason to post angry comments saying “this score should be higher” because, really, it shouldn’t. I’m confident in what I gave the book, and stand by it.

Read more …

DC Comics

DMZ #71 (pictured above) - Oh gosh, the series is almost over. This is one of my favourite books of all time, so it’s a bit sad to see Matty Roth get put on trial for war crimes. If you haven’t read this book before, you’ve got some catching up to do before the finale in #72. Author Brian Wood said that this one is “the big one” in terms of story resolution, and I fully expect to be blown away.

Flash #3 - Francis Manapul’s art is awesome, and this comic is the first book to make me care about Barry Allen. I’m really enjoying the giant set-pieces that he’s drawing, and the whole “vibrating a plane through a bridge” scene has been set up/previewed for a long time.

Shade #2 (of 12) - Wait, The Shade’s series is out, and I wasn’t notified? Time to catch up! I wrote a column about why Shade needed his own series awhile ago, but it turns out that web site has stopped publishing; oh well. Bad-ass villain turned bad-ass character.

Image Comics

Invincible #84 - I’ve been a bit disappointed by this book as of late because of the large hangover period that came after the story’s major story arc. Mark Grayson has been making a growing series of bad choices as a superhero, and to see a complete 180 in such a small amount of time is disconcerting. 

Next issue marks the return of Cory Walker to the book, which I’m quite excited for; nothing against Ryan Ottley, but I just prefer the former’s work. This seems a bit dumb, as, well, the latter has been working on the majority of Invincible’s run, but for some reason the latest arc really turned me off.

I don’t really like when comics I usually enjoy reading unsettle me; I’ve written about this before, and sometimes Invincible’s gore and violence make me want to put it down for a bit.

Marvel Comics

Captain America and Bucky #624 - I’m reviewing a bunch of Marvel books for ComicVine this week, and this issue of Cap & Bucky is the first one I’ve ever read. Shall be fun diving into a new series, and I may pick up a couple back issues in order to get an idea of where the series is.

Invincible Iron Man #510 - Quality from Matt Fraction as always; can’t go wrong with Tony, Pepper and the boys at Stark Resilient. Another review for ComicVine on the way.

Mighty Thor #8 - I’ve been liking this series because it’s relatively continuity-light, and they’ve done some lovely things with Galactus and the Silber Surfer. I’m looking forward to the Fear Itself fallout and seeing some of this “New God of Thunder” business.

Secret Avengers #19 - Warren Ellis. Secret-y things. Beast, Moon Knight, Captain America and Black Widow. Hi-jinks. Secret Avengers is like a more serious Nextwave, and I enjoy every minute.