Which DC run/story considered a "Classic" did you never understand the hype?

[Robanker]

...





Dark Knight Returns...


I just couldn’t get what the whole hoopla was about.
Aside from the intro of Carrie Kelley as Robin, it just didn’t interest me.

Pretty much anything by Tom Taylor but especially Injustice. I find the story banal and mind numbing in how utterly braindead it is, just Taylor writing the dumbest f****** deaths he possibly can, Harley Sue being everyone’s wacky pal and getting off from nuking a city with nary a slap on the wrist, everything about how WW is portrayed, the amount of Batwanking, it’s just an awful story.

Are you trying to pick a fight or something? It’s one thing to not like something, it’s another to say everyone who does like what you don’t is wrong and needs to get taste. The reason most of us don’t point to main continuity stuff is DC is constantly dicking around with continuity, taking stuff in and out of canon. None of Superman’s comic origins even work for the mainline guy right now. My favorite run is Morrison Action and that might as well be an Elseworld now.

DING DING-- Dollar dollar. DKR in particular I've harped on about on these very forums far too long to repeat. I can link if someone's interested in the last time I went long-winded on it, but I'll refrain.

I'll add to the agreement that Hush is overrated. It's all about the Jim Lee art and everything else is pretty shallow. I liked it when I was younger but it hasn't aged well.

The Batman/Superman fight is pretty solid, though. I think both come out fairly, although Bruce gets very melodramatic in his monologue.

I find Kingdom Come and Action Comics #775 to be strawmannish and immature takes on lethal force and an insecure overreaction in defense of Superman.

They're both a bit clumsy with the argument about the slippery slope and I think that 775 comes dangerously close to actually broaching a better foothold (how terrifying Clark can be if he just decided might makes the rules and why he personally needs to have heavy checks and balances in his line of work) but is too in love with the idea of Superman as a symbol for altruism that it forgets him as a character. Still it's an earnest attempt, but as with most stories asking "do we need a Superman," they're so preoccupied with the question that they trip over the answer that so many others have illustrated with him simply being himself. That one page from All-Star does a better job showing why the world needs him than all the naval gazing we've done since 1986.

But 775 specifically tries to take a moral stance over what we all know is borne of business and was woven into character for that reason-- villains are profitable and this is a perpetual story engine. Yes, Clark can have his justifications but the minute you're kicking your feet up and saying "got 'em, chief" you probably stepped in it.

Again, it's earnest so I don't try to **** on it too much. They really wanted to have Clark plant his feet and have a moral win over Manchester but it was clumsily handled. Honestly, he'd be more respectable if he opened with "peer pressuring anyone into taking a life is wrong and that you're so preoccupied with manufacturing a system in which I'm driven to taking lives shows that you're not fit to be a moral authority to anyone. I'm taking you down. You'll not be martyred nor will you start a revolution. You're getting locked away where your ideas will wither along with your relevance, Manchester. Now square up, I don't have all day."

Instead he waxed philosophical as a mic drop and peaced before he could hear a rebuttal; like Bruce in DKR, frankly. Beats up on his foe, says his peace and leaves the fight before he got wrecked because he absolutely would have been if the other brought their A-Game.

[Agent Z]

I think it's because fans believe it is a way for newer developments that build off of old stuff organically (YMMV on that, at least case by case basis) and provide new things in the name of recapturing the magic of the old days, often the ones the creators in question grew up with.

Not that I think it's as simple as "Silver/Bronze" age nostalgia, that is overly simplistic hyperbole. The mere presence of some characters like Barry, Hal, Babrara as Batgirl or Kara does not suddenly transport us back to the 70s as if those characters could only exist then. Yeah we got Batgirl back, but instead of doing a clean reboot and giving us a new version of Barbara Gordon, they kept TKJ in continuity and created an in-between take that really satisfied nobody. Barry came back at the expense of Wally which was bad enough but classic Barry fans didn't like the changes to Barry either. And if the nostalgia for the bronze age was really as strong as people claim, Dick Grayson's generation of sidekicks wouldn't be consistently screwed over in favor of creating more teen heroes because they were the Bronze age characters.

Plus, while the majority of flawed nostalgia reasoning in creative decisions at DC is probably rooted in the Silver/Bronze age, it is not the only era. Ex: the Multiverse never really takes off anymore despite some half assed attempts to kickstart it, they can't run away from old school Superman fast enough so they keep circling back to the bland Byrne model, etc.

That's the problem. For every one post-crisis element there is nostalgia for, there are ten more pre-crisis elements that get preference. Infinite Crisis killed off numerous post-crisis characters despite the story's central theme about toxic nostalgia and even had some wrongheaded ideas about why DC was going wrong (i.e. replacing Diana as Artemis even though that was never meant to be permanent and the entire point of that story was Artemis was as inferior Wonder Woman to Diana. And between Supergirl's return, the numerous Kryptonians that keep popping up, the focus on Luthor's mad scientist characterization than the evil CEO (the latter of which is ironically more relevant than ever before), Superman's power levels being restored to much closer to his Silver Age version, I'm not seeing how they're running back to the Byrne model. And that's just one example.

No, not all Silver and Bronze Age characters benefit from it but DC has been putting a great deal of effort into making sure the characters seen as iconic to that time period get the lion's share of favoritism.

[Agent Z]

DING DING-- Dollar dollar. DKR in particular I've harped on about on these very forums far too long to repeat. I can link if someone's interested in the last time I went long-winded on it, but I'll refrain.

I'll add to the agreement that Hush is overrated. It's all about the Jim Lee art and everything else is pretty shallow. I liked it when I was younger but it hasn't aged well.

The Batman/Superman fight is pretty solid, though. I think both come out fairly, although Bruce gets very melodramatic in his monologue.



They're both a bit clumsy with the argument about the slippery slope and I think that 775 comes dangerously close to actually broaching a better foothold (how terrifying Clark can be if he just decided might makes the rules and why he personally needs to have heavy checks and balances in his line of work) but is too in love with the idea of Superman as a symbol for altruism that it forgets him as a character. Still it's an earnest attempt, but as with most stories asking "do we need a Superman," they're so preoccupied with the question that they trip over the answer that so many others have illustrated with him simply being himself. That one page from All-Star does a better job showing why the world needs him than all the naval gazing we've done since 1986.

But 775 specifically tries to take a moral stance over what we all know is borne of business and was woven into character for that reason-- villains are profitable and this is a perpetual story engine. Yes, Clark can have his justifications but the minute you're kicking your feet up and saying "got 'em, chief" you probably stepped in it.

Again, it's earnest so I don't try to **** on it too much. They really wanted to have Clark plant his feet and have a moral win over Manchester but it was clumsily handled. Honestly, he'd be more respectable if he opened with "peer pressuring anyone into taking a life is wrong and that you're so preoccupied with manufacturing a system in which I'm driven to taking lives shows that you're not fit to be a moral authority to anyone. I'm taking you down. You'll not be martyred nor will you start a revolution. You're getting locked away where your ideas will wither along with your relevance, Manchester. Now square up, I don't have all day."

Instead he waxed philosophical as a mic drop and peaced before he could hear a rebuttal; like Bruce in DKR, frankly. Beats up on his foe, says his peace and leaves the fight before he got wrecked because he absolutely would have been if the other brought their A-Game.

I also have no idea who thought Coldcast's design should have been let through.



A large, scary-looking black guy with chains around his wrist. To say nothing of the story being titled "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?" which ends with a white guy beating on a team of racially diverse enemies to prove his moral superiority. This story just ages worse and worse each day. But this is the story that "gets Superman" according to so many fans.

[Robanker]

...





Dark Knight Returns...


I just couldn’t get what the whole hoopla was about.
Aside from the intro of Carrie Kelley as Robin, it just didn’t interest me.

Pretty much anything by Tom Taylor but especially Injustice. I find the story banal and mind numbing in how utterly braindead it is, just Taylor writing the dumbest f****** deaths he possibly can, Harley Sue being everyone’s wacky pal and getting off from nuking a city with nary a slap on the wrist, everything about how WW is portrayed, the amount of Batwanking, it’s just an awful story.

Are you trying to pick a fight or something? It’s one thing to not like something, it’s another to say everyone who does like what you don’t is wrong and needs to get taste. The reason most of us don’t point to main continuity stuff is DC is constantly dicking around with continuity, taking stuff in and out of canon. None of Superman’s comic origins even work for the mainline guy right now. My favorite run is Morrison Action and that might as well be an Elseworld now.

I find Kingdom Come and Action Comics #775 to be strawmannish and immature takes on lethal force and an insecure overreaction in defense of Superman.

I also have no idea who thought Coldcast's design should have been let through.



A large, scary-looking black guy with chains around his wrist. To say nothing of the story being titled "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?" which ends with a white guy beating on a team of racially diverse enemies to prove his moral superiority. This story just ages worse and worse each day. But this is the story that "gets Superman" according to so many fans.

It gets Superman in the broadest stroke imaginable-- he finds a better way than simply executing a problem because he can.

It's like throwing a grenade to open a door. The door's not going to be in your way anymore when you're done, sure. Technically it works.



There's no excusing Coldcast. I want to think his design (silent hulking figure in black leather and chains/zippers) is kind of a sendup of the extreme anti-hero, but that's me reaching.

[Aahz]

Regardless of the hate a lot of people have for Tom King, he really went from the plot formulaic Scott Snyder hype machine we no pay off (other than Zero Year) to an attempt at exploring the character in a sincere way. I think the panel in "Thr Button" where Thomas Wayne tells Bruce he never wanted him to be Batman, and which he could be happy is something we've needed for decades. I think over the decades new people will look back and read the conversations in those stories and see that he tried something really dangerous in that run, to make the modern Batman happy. Ignoring the wedding issue, up until the end of Cold Hearts (which I think was issue 55) the run was amazing. Yes he really squandered it after the fact, and honestly, had no pay off, but what he did before that was some genuine development.

The big problem with Tom Kings run is, that most of the stuff he has written is pretty "experimental" hardly anything is a "meat and potatoes" Batman story.
This kind of writing might be good or even great for a mini series, or a single arc in an ongoing, but not for an 85 issue ongoing run (let alone the 100 issues he wanted to do).

Btw. wasn't "The Button" mostly written by Williamson anyway?

[Alpha]

The button is credited to both. Tom King's whole run is about Bruce trying to define how to be happy. I don't see why Williamson would've contributed that speech by Thomas Wayne

[Aahz]

IIRC Williamson was the main writer of three of the 4 issues of the Button.

That panel might of course been written by him, but who knows.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Let's see...

Hush. Nothing but fan service, when Jim Lee is on art duties kinda know what the intent for the story is...

Snyder's Batman incl Black Mirror. On a recent re-read I found it all so... boring. The arcs start off well enough I suppose before just fizzling out. DoTF was so awful.

Johns GL. Never finished it, it just got too boring.

[SiegePerilous02]

Again, we got technologically advanced Amazons later so it isn't like Perez's changes meant that aspect was gone forever. Could he have done both? Yes. But I think making the Amazons feel like a fleshed out and developed society of characters the audience should care about is more important than advanced technology which for most of its existence didn't seem to serve any interesting story purpose.

It established that the female super power could create advanced technology like the escapist male fantasies. That fact that it was executed in a silly way (along with everything else) doesn't change that basic idea, which is very important to the foundations of Wonder Woman.
What story purpose do you think it would need to serve beyond "rule of cool," which superhero comics run on? Why is this higher story purpose need hitting them when everyone else just continues on as always with being escapist sci-fi/fantasy stories that aren't realistic?

And them getting advanced tech later on was very cool, but that was down to Jimenez wanting to work pre-Crisis stuff back in.

Your argument was that Perez nerfed the "one area in the DC universe with female scientists". That clearly was not the case. The fact we didn't have any female scientists in DC outside of the Wonder Woman comics until post-crisis is a far more egregious problem than Perez removing the Amazons' advanced science.

I was wrong in the fact that there are other female super scientists in the DCU. But you were wrong in saying three of them existed when Peres revamped the Amazons, when they didn't. Only Kimiyo Hoshi was around at that point.

It is a wider problem, but I don’t see how the Perez revamp helped.

That's the problem. For every one post-crisis element there is nostalgia for, there are ten more pre-crisis elements that get preference. Infinite Crisis killed off numerous post-crisis characters despite the story's central theme about toxic nostalgia and even had some wrongheaded ideas about why DC was going wrong (i.e. replacing Diana as Artemis even though that was never meant to be permanent and the entire point of that story was Artemis was as inferior Wonder Woman to Diana. And between Supergirl's return, the numerous Kryptonians that keep popping up, the focus on Luthor's mad scientist characterization than the evil CEO (the latter of which is ironically more relevant than ever before), Superman's power levels being restored to much closer to his Silver Age version, I'm not seeing how they're running back to the Byrne model. And that's just one example.

No, not all Silver and Bronze Age characters benefit from it but DC has been putting a great deal of effort into making sure the characters seen as iconic to that time period get the lion's share of favoritism.

They also blew up the New 52 Superman (modeled after the Golden and Silver ages) and couldn't run back to the post-Crisis model fast enough to satisfy that nostalgic itch. The major beats of the post-Crisis era are restored like the marriage and Doomsday, Lex's continuity at least allows him to fall back into the CEO model and has been in it in the past, the Kents are still alive, to my knowledge Clark's time as Superboy and with the Legion is gone yet again and given to his son, his characterization is in some weird place where he's like the naive farmboy of post-Crisis but not quite. The editorial edicts preventing the other Kryptonians and Kara at least existing in continuity were always stupid and short sighted, so it's not a bad thing those are gone IMO. Matrix and Linda Danvers were not created to be legacies of her (like Cass and Steph are to Barbara), but wholesale replacements in continuity. With her back, the need for them and their kind of weird/disconnected feel from the proper Superman mythos isn't necessary, though they can and should do more to re-integrate them if there is an audience.

Basically, DC writing dumb **** isn’t limited to one era and the pendulum always swings back and forth. Post-Crisis characters like Cass, Steph and Wally as Flash have been horribly screwed over. But post-Crisis nostalgia/favoritism IMO sometimes blinds people to the fact that not everything was rosy for every character before that. Yeah, Barry had an epic and heroic send off and Barbara was salvaged very well as Oracle; while Hal got Paralaxed, Kara had a heroic sacrifice and was exiled from continuity, Helena Wayne’s end was a cosmic horror story that was pretty depressing for the transition into the period of “legacy.” And stuff like Infinite Crisis and Identity Crisis may be meant to appeal to that nostalgia in theory, but doesn’t seem to have landed in execution for most fans of that era (especially the latter with Sue Dibny). The NTT characters were some of the biggest icons of that era, and they've been screwed over the hardest while the 90s kids get treated better (if not by much) and there is yet another new generation of sidekicks being built up around Damian.
“Bronze age nostalgia” is fandom short hand that definitely has some truth to it, but is an oversimplification as well that doesn’t take everything into consideration.

[poroto678]

Everything Scott Snyder has ever written, specially his Batman run. Everyone seems to love it, but i found it mostly very stupid and the whole Batgod vs Joker-god thing is the worse kind of thing comics have to offer.

[Johnny Thunders!]

I think of Hype as Hyperbole, I don't know if I would consider a lot of those old books as overhyped.

[Citizen Kane]

COIE: It's a nice popcorn event, but the 80's-style writing really ages this book a little too much for my liking.

The Killing Joke: First off, the story is great, no question, but this one story birthed the second-most most heinous version of Joker that's ever been put to print: mass murder Joker. That reason alone has permanently sullied my reading experience of The Killing Joke. We really need to give Joker his zany paraphernalia again (Joker teeth, Joker gas, Joker jack-in-the-box, the gag gun).

TDKR: Garbage art paired with a rather ho-hum story. Dialogue is really the only saving-grace.

Mister Miracle (Tom King): Not sure if it's considered a classic, but it received a lot of praise. I was thoroughly bored 3 issues in. No buildup, no mystery, nothing really made of Mister Miracle's situation—the story is just hollow and unengaging.

Arkham Asylum: Dialogue is decent and the art is exceptional, but the story was rather uninteresting as a whole. The best part of the entire novel is Two-Face's conclusion, but it was never properly built-up, making his decision at the end very out of place and uncharacteristic.

Everything with Scott Snyder: Good popcorn media, but they quite often lack any substance, degrading the reading experience.

Injustice: Maybe not considered a classic, but it's received generally positive acclaim. It's a great game, but I just simply couldn't get engrossed into the world and story. It was too out of character for me and just a simply depressing elseworld. Didn't help that the series had dragged on for so long (I never did finish it, mind you).

Sandman (Neil Gaiman): In my opinion, this is my hottest take so far. While it can't be denied that the story structure, dialogue, and themes have been expertly crafted by Gaiman, the series lost me with its subject matter and tone. When it came to Sandman, it really just felt like I was reading an edgy Tim Burton story...or we could just say that Gaiman's worst writing tropes were brazenly on display in the Sandman series—it's all the same feeling for me.

[marvelprince]

Does 'Cry for Justice' count? Beautiful artwork couldn't save that utter piece of crap script.

I think that one is universally loathed lol. I have soft spot for it though. I remember being so excited when it was initially announced as a second ongoing with a “proactive” team (we’ve heard that so much times before). And I remember it was supposed to feature Batwoman but she only ended making an appearance for like a panel. I like Robinson and his characters (like Congorilla and Starman, so I’m biased but can admit the book reads like a book parody at times).

[Timothy Hunter]

The second half of Starman is a slog to get through. I loved the first 40 or so issues but Stars My Destination and Grand Guignol were so tediously long that I actually prefer Roger Stern's Will Peyton Starman despite that series not being as good as first couple years of Robinson's Starman.

[Timothy Hunter]

It established that the female super power could create advanced technology like the escapist male fantasies. That fact that it was executed in a silly way (along with everything else) doesn't change that basic idea, which is very important to the foundations of Wonder Woman.
What story purpose do you think it would need to serve beyond "rule of cool," which superhero comics run on? Why is this higher story purpose need hitting them when everyone else just continues on as always with being escapist sci-fi/fantasy stories that aren't realistic?

And them getting advanced tech later on was very cool, but that was down to Jimenez wanting to work pre-Crisis stuff back in.



I was wrong in the fact that there are other female super scientists in the DCU. But you were wrong in saying three of them existed when Peres revamped the Amazons, when they didn't. Only Kimiyo Hoshi was around at that point.

It is a wider problem, but I don’t see how the Perez revamp helped.



They also blew up the New 52 Superman (modeled after the Golden and Silver ages) and couldn't run back to the post-Crisis model fast enough to satisfy that nostalgic itch. The major beats of the post-Crisis era are restored like the marriage and Doomsday, Lex's continuity at least allows him to fall back into the CEO model and has been in it in the past, the Kents are still alive, to my knowledge Clark's time as Superboy and with the Legion is gone yet again and given to his son, his characterization is in some weird place where he's like the naive farmboy of post-Crisis but not quite. The editorial edicts preventing the other Kryptonians and Kara at least existing in continuity were always stupid and short sighted, so it's not a bad thing those are gone IMO. Matrix and Linda Danvers were not created to be legacies of her (like Cass and Steph are to Barbara), but wholesale replacements in continuity. With her back, the need for them and their kind of weird/disconnected feel from the proper Superman mythos isn't necessary, though they can and should do more to re-integrate them if there is an audience.

Basically, DC writing dumb **** isn’t limited to one era and the pendulum always swings back and forth. Post-Crisis characters like Cass, Steph and Wally as Flash have been horribly screwed over. But post-Crisis nostalgia/favoritism IMO sometimes blinds people to the fact that not everything was rosy for every character before that. Yeah, Barry had an epic and heroic send off and Barbara was salvaged very well as Oracle; while Hal got Paralaxed, Kara had a heroic sacrifice and was exiled from continuity, Helena Wayne’s end was a cosmic horror story that was pretty depressing for the transition into the period of “legacy.” And stuff like Infinite Crisis and Identity Crisis may be meant to appeal to that nostalgia in theory, but doesn’t seem to have landed in execution for most fans of that era (especially the latter with Sue Dibny). The NTT characters were some of the biggest icons of that era, and they've been screwed over the hardest while the 90s kids get treated better (if not by much) and there is yet another new generation of sidekicks being built up around Damian.
“Bronze age nostalgia” is fandom short hand that definitely has some truth to it, but is an oversimplification as well that doesn’t take everything into consideration.

I feel like DC's mistreatment of certain characters was always present, but it was a cancer that grew over time.