“Heroes in Crisis” Limited Series by Tom King & Clay Mann to Start in September

[CaptCleghorn]

If a comic's entire purpose is shock value, doing terrible things just to get people upset and garner reactions, why are you so indignant that people are upset about it? It's succeeding, even if the practice of it is detestable.

This is a fear I'm having about this book. I hoped it would be a deeper, more thoughtful look at superhero trauma and dealing with it, but making it a murder mystery with an excess of bodies is not what I was expected or what I wanted. It's been a slow (too slow) building of Harley and Booster working out something of unknown content or origin. the Trinity are showing the competence of Moe, Larry, and Shemp. Really, Harley swipes Wonder Woman's lasso, lassos Batman, and Superman is unable to speed in and subdue her?

The list of dead seems huge. I am torn between there being a reset button here or DC just bringing back the bigger names. And all we've seen of the makings of Sanctuary are characters doing one page reality show confessions. Now if we dealt with one or teo characters doing this and saw additional pages with them show some progression, that would work.

It is a very pretty book, and the dialog is pretty good, but it's a lot of dressing and detail on something without much substance so far.

[skyvolt2000]

Are there people out there enjoying this book??

On this site anyway, it seems to be a mostly negative response to this storyline.

The concept is interesting under what King originally wanted to do.

The issue is SOME OTHER GUY had different direction and his reputation with whose on the kill list did this book no service.
Maybe if we had a lead up to this over say 12-24 issues that LEAD to this bloodbath-you would see a different reaction.

Right now you got a bunch of folks whose histories vary because no one knows who knows who.
Someone asked why would Aquaman be upset about Lagoon Boy-when have they met beforehand?

What about Red Devil-Blue Devil should have met him before he became that.

In other words show me WHY these guys were there from the START and build up on that and eventually lead to this. Who else went there and left beforehand? Would a Jason Rusch be there after losing his powers?
Would Aqualad be there dealing with his sexuality and being Manta's kid and linked to Atlantis?
Kyle dealing with his ex-girlfriend being fridged?
What about John Stewart? His MIA wife and issues with women?

DC had the PERFECT book to showcase A-Z listers at their most PRIVATE moments. Or reintroduce folks back to DC.

Instead we get this mess.

[skyvolt2000]

No they weren’t. Just another instance of a particular subset of insufferable Poison Ivy fans using their usual abusive, gaslighting, bullying tactics to get their way again.

I am not an Ivy fan and found that cover in poor taste.

I also take issue with her not being in her costume much like Hotspot not being in his and looking like Trayvon Martin.

Along with him not looking the way he did in Sideways with cut eyebrows and designs in his hair. Oddly enough this book and that book share the same editor.

Not to mention bodies being misplaced from issue 1 to current issue.

This is the third DC Rebirth book with editorial issues (funny all 3 that I have seen feature Titans) that get ignored.

You got a pretty book that has issues.

[Doctor Bifrost]

They have no relationship. The only time he ever interacted with Arthur in any real way was some brief snippets in Abnett's run and even that is making a mountain out of a molehill. Garth has not really interacted with Arthur in decades. They're strangers. When they meet Garth just shows deference to a King rather than a mentor.

But the whole history of the original Teen Titans was wiped out of reality - and everybody's memories, and archived newspaper stories, and, for all I know, FB posts - due to Ginger Wally West's time in the Speed Force and Mr. Twister and who knows what else. And over the last few years that history has been "coming back," in some piecemeal fashion that nobody seems to be able to describe, and that differs from comic to comic.

So now that Donna Troy clearly remembers Garth from when they were all young teenagers who formed the Teen Titans - who was Garth back then? What superhero name did he use? Was he someone's sidekick?

Really, I'm just commenting on the fact that since Rebirth and Titans Hunt scrambled everybody's memory of history yet again, "bringing back" some aspects and not others, we as readers really have no clear idea of the backstories of some major characters, and their relationships with each other and other major characters. So to have to guess what's in continuity and what's not for a character like Lagoon Boy (beyond the tiny amount of information supplied in this issue of this series) - well, it's anybody's guess.

[Frontier]

I still don't even know what the relationship between Aquaman and Garth/Tempest is - was Garth ever his sidekick Aqualad, were they or are they friends, and so on. (I'm not even sure I've seen a conversation between them since The New 52 started.) So any connection between Orin and Lagoon Boy is just a flip of a coin these days...

Aquaman hasn't even met the current Aqualad yet .

[Dred]

But the whole history of the original Teen Titans was wiped out of reality - and everybody's memories, and archived newspaper stories, and, for all I know, FB posts - due to Ginger Wally West's time in the Speed Force and Mr. Twister and who knows what else. And over the last few years that history has been "coming back," in some piecemeal fashion that nobody seems to be able to describe, and that differs from comic to comic.

So now that Donna Troy clearly remembers Garth from when they were all young teenagers who formed the Teen Titans - who was Garth back then? What superhero name did he use? Was he someone's sidekick?

Really, I'm just commenting on the fact that since Rebirth and Titans Hunt scrambled everybody's memory of history yet again, "bringing back" some aspects and not others, we as readers really have no clear idea of the backstories of some major characters, and their relationships with each other and other major characters. So to have to guess what's in continuity and what's not for a character like Lagoon Boy (beyond the tiny amount of information supplied in this issue of this series) - well, it's anybody's guess.

Wally's returning of their memories was actually returning some Frankenstein style New 52 version of the Teen Titans who somehow existed in DC's dumb compressed 5 year timeline. Maybe this bastardized version of the Fab Five had Garth pop out of the water without ever meeting Arthur and team up with the kids, who knows. DC threw away their history so this is what we get.

[tako]

I'm having a good week

[kjn]

IGN picked up DC's retreat on the cover.

IGN spoke to a DC employee with knowledge of the situation, who said the art in question was an unfinished cover that was never given final editorial approval and was not intended to be made public. How the art leaked is currently being investigated by DC. A new version of that same art drawn by Mann was recolored to change the tone of the image to be more reflective of the contents of the comic and will be used to solicit Heroes in Crisis #7 to retailers in next week’s retailer catalog, although it’s marked as “Not Final Art,” meaning the final cover for that issue may wind up being completely different.

Since the same cover is apparently being used in the catalogue, only more tastefully shaded, my guess is that this was indeed on the way to be the final cover for #7, but that someone who understood which PR disaster DC was heading towards here choose to leak it early. (I believe tako could tell a lot more, but I'm explicitly not asking him. DC needs their clueful employees.)

I don't care much for Ivy and I made the same complaint everyone else did when it first came out before the Ivy fans roused. It's not some crazy take only raving fans can make. It's actually so dang obvious that a large amount of people noticed it because, let me tell you, the Poison Ivy fanbase isn't big enough or loud enough to get what they want on their own. If they were she wouldn't be dead in the first place.

I think that, while true, isn't all of the story. Like most organisations, DC has institutional biases and ideas on how the world around them operate. Their creators also have the same. Among those things are preconceptions and wishes on who their fans and readers are, and how they look and behave. This means they are more likely to listen to certain groups of fans and less likely to listen and understand other groups of fans, or listen on certain channels. They are more likely to listen to white straight dudes, because most of them are white straight dudes.

But the Poison Ivy fandom is simply too dissimilar to the movers and shakers at DC to understand, so they simply don't hear it until the fandom gets so loud that they have to listen anyway. And then the fans might be told that they are too "strident". It's a vicious cycle, and the only ones who can break it is DC themselves.

[Lee Stone]

Another example of good art doesn't make a good story.

I'll take stick figures with a compelling story than something like HiC any day.

It's truly a shame that such nice art gets wasted on something like this.

Meanwhile, I had just finished watching the recent Lost in Space series on Netflix and thought "I wonder if there's a comic for this version, yet?" and was mildly excited when I discovered there was.
Until I saw the art.
(That artist should be doing this, IMO.)

[iron chimp]

utterly shameful that "fans" are censoring artists. It's ending up like a new 50s witch hunt but by readers rather than the government

[dimo1]

utterly shameful that "fans" are censoring artists. It's ending up like a new 50s witch hunt but by readers rather than the government

So true.

For the love of whoever you believe or don‘t believe in, I can‘t see anything objectifying in that initial cover, but I guess that doesn‘t even matter anymore today.
We should just sell blank pages, but then again people of colour might comlain.

[Lee]

So true.

For the love of whoever you believe or don‘t believe in, I can‘t see anything objectifying in that initial cover, but I guess that doesn‘t even matter anymore today.
We should just sell blank pages, but then again people of colour might comlain.

The writer didn't like the cover either, and the editors ended up agreeing with the points he made.

Do you not think the writer's opinion matters? Especially when the cover artist isn't the interior artist? Do you not think editors should be allowed to commission a new cover when one isn't quite working?

Should all works of art be beyond criticism, never to be discussed or analysed?

[kjn]

utterly shameful that "fans" are censoring artists. It's ending up like a new 50s witch hunt but by readers rather than the government

No. Fans are defending the integrity of the Poison Ivy they love, and the need for women to be depicted as human beings, not only sexualised objects, in comics and other art.

So true.

For the love of whoever you believe or don‘t believe in, I can‘t see anything objectifying in that initial cover, but I guess that doesn‘t even matter anymore today.
We should just sell blank pages, but then again people of colour might comlain.

Maybe you can't see anything objectifying in that cover, but lots of other people can. Maybe they didn't matter yesterday, but today they matter. And that's a good thing.

[Agent Z]

utterly shameful that "fans" are censoring artists. It's ending up like a new 50s witch hunt but by readers rather than the government

The writer asked for it to be pulled. That's not censorship. Far too may comic book fans do not know what that word means.

[iron chimp]

The writer asked for it to be pulled. That's not censorship. Far too may comic book fans do not know what that word means.

Put it this way - if the writer said love the cover let's do it - do you think it would get published? I don't. It's been "leaked" for a reason.... Precedent has already been set because covers have been pulled before.