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

[Jim Kelly]

The comic book fanbase seems to use nostalgia to mean an overly sentimental attachment to the past. So I guess they are trying to shame readers for loving their past experience too much. But actually nostalgia used to essentially mean home sickness. It's the kind of feeling that immigrants have, when they know they can never return to the land of their birth. Or soldiers on the battlefield experience, when they long for their families but face the harsh reality that they might never return. Or what everyone goes through when they lose their loved ones, knowing that those happy times can never be had again.

[Hol]

Like another poster said, that was a failed Batman clone and not the original Batman.

FC was meant to be the culmination of what Morrison was doing in Seven Soldiers and his Batman run. It was never meant to be a Crisis event ala COIE or IC.

I feel like that still doesn't explain why half the story was about New Gods and the second half about a Vampire Monitor. I read his Seven Soldiers and complete Batman run and still did not appreciate it. I do not remember them explaining the clone part in his Batman run but I am sure you are right. I haven't read it since the original publication.

Morrison is so hit or miss for me. I either LOVE his stuff (Animal Man, All Star Superman, JLA) or I hate it (Final Crisis, second Half of his Batman run, etc).

[Menacer]

It's not really catering just to 70s nostalgia that can cut new books short or stagnate directions. Nostalgia for the late 80s/90s Superman (especially the Byrne run) has been hampering Superman off and on for a while and preventing some experimentation. Grayson got cut short to capitalize on nostalgia for the 90s/2000s Dixion Nightwing days, the writer for Nightwing left because he grew disinterested in that direction, and eventually we get stuff like Dick getting shot in the head and in a worse spot than he was in before.

Yes agreed.

Ive just notice this forum in particular as a very active, vocal older fandom that leans heavy toward 70s materials.

But you are correct...

I Hope I'm always interested in reading and being excited to read new and old...

Would suck to get stuck

[TheBatman]

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.

The constant cycling back to one dimensional Miller-Esque Batman, Joker being stuck in Killing Joke/Death in the Family mode, the JSA predating Superman...

DC is often motivated by nostalgia from multiple eras, and fans selectively pick which nostalgia to be mad about.

[Tzigone]

The constant cycling back to one dimensional Miller-Esque Batman, Joker being stuck in Killing Joke/Death in the Family mode, the JSA predating Superman...

DC is often motivated by nostalgia from multiple eras, and fans selectively pick which nostalgia to be mad about.

Sure, but if we're going to trash talk fans for nostalgia, I'd like to chime that we also have fans who claim to want to new blood/characters, but also want those new characters to have the code-names/places in the universe of the old characters instead of actually being wholly new and building/earning their places from the ground up. Or fans want to basically rewrite entire characters so name/codename/physical appearance (not necessarily all three) are all that remain of the existing character, but then act confused as to why other fans might not like characters completely erased - again, they don't want ground-up new characters, but want to "borrow" the fame of the existing ones instead of having new characters earn their own fame (which I acknowledge is much more difficult now than than it was 60 years ago).

And, of course, let's acknowledge that "new" or "different" doesn't automatically equal "good" any more than "retro" does.

And I've said before, and will say again - what's good for DC isn't necessarily good for me. And I don't particularly care about DCs (or the various IP's) success if it's not generating material I like. And since what's best for DC (sells most) seems to be grimdark and edgy and no consistent on-going continuity, what's best for DC really isn't what works for me right now.

[SiegePerilous02]

The constant cycling back to one dimensional Miller-Esque Batman, Joker being stuck in Killing Joke/Death in the Family mode, the JSA predating Superman...

DC is often motivated by nostalgia from multiple eras, and fans selectively pick which nostalgia to be mad about.

To be fair to the JSA thing, while they do keep cycling back to that they also ignore the JSA a lot even when they are on the same Earth

Sure, but if we're going to trash talk fans for nostalgia, I'd like to chime that we also have fans who claim to want to new blood/characters, but also want those new characters to have the code-names/places in the universe of the old characters instead of actually being wholly new and building/earning their places from the ground up. Or fans want to basically rewrite entire characters so name/codename/physical appearance (not necessarily all three) are all that remain of the existing character, but then act confused as to why other fans might not like characters completely erased - again, they don't want ground-up new characters, but want to "borrow" the fame of the existing ones instead of having new characters earn their own fame (which I acknowledge is much more difficult now than than it was 60 years ago).

Yeah, I agree with disliking the mantle sharing and bloating franchises with new supporting characters. But the market just does now allow new characters to gain any traction, so throwing a legacy mantle onto them is the surest way to give them a chance. And often times, it's the only chance minority characters can get. Not to mention creators often want to save their best ideas for their own work instead of the shared universes.

And it really sucks that that's the case, because I doubt we will see a real explosion of creativity and new universes being built like we did during the Silver Age at DC and (especially) Marvel, with the added benefit of any contemporary version of that being much more diverse.

[marvelprince]

Let’s throw a little more gasoline in here:

Azzarelo’s Joker - I’ve seen this book rated highly and I’ve never understood why. It’s just as empty and awful as Damned, just pure Azz edge with nothing interesting to say. The taunt from Batman to Joker is ok I guess, but it also just feels kinda childish? Nowhere near as impactful as Superman’s rebuttal to Lex in the far superior Luthor imo. It’s just empty “badassery” bravado.

Scott Snyder’s Batman - I like Black Mirror and I like Court of Owls and I’ll always go to bat for those stories, but man otherwise this run is just not aging well for me the more I look back on it. Snyder’s “bombastic” storytelling frequently ended up being the equivalent of a Hollywood summer blockbuster: braindead but pretty to look at thanks to Capullo, and the killer inker/colorist. At the time I loved it because it and JL were the two consistent oases of stability amidst the dumpster fire of DC but I can’t help but feel like Snyder trying to ape Morrison ended up costing him his own unique voice. Also Snyder’s tics as a writer really started to get on my nerves the more I noticed them, the constant “when I was a lad my dad told me this plot relevant story that really makes me think”, Batman constantly monologuing through narration boxes, Snyder’s boner for the Joker despite really not having anything meaningful to say about Joker, and the entire GordonBats saga which seemed to sum up to “no the average person can’t be Batman” which is a message that probably needed to be said, but then there’s the bizarre cloning scheme which went too far imo. A lot of good ideas, not so much great execution.

Still love the Metal events though because events are meant to be dumb, and I do like Snyder’s Riddler because Riddler is a character that gels perfectly with Snyder’s tics.

Tomasi Superman - Before Black Dawn, Multiplicity was a massive flop, a multiversal team up of Supermen should’ve been a slam dunk. Instead they were wasted on a boring ass villain that was even more forgettable than Rogal Zaar, and with terrible filler art. After Black Dawn the whole run fell off a cliff, the family vacation was godawful, Imperious Lex reset Lex back to being a villain, tons of crap filler stories with boring house style art. At least Tomasi ended strong with the Bizarro arc, and issue 45 is legit fantastic, but he was clearly running out of gas and simply couldn’t keep up with book idea wise. Ultimately it’s an ok run but nowhere near the masterpiece it’s fans say it is imo.

This is pretty much my same exact list. I HATED Joker when I read it and its only aged worse since, I remember my best friend hyping it up so much but I just didn't get it. Joker raping that guys wife just does not strike me as the kind of thing that Joker would do, that whole scene is why that book didn't work. Thought I was weird not echoing the love for Synder's Batman run but outside of a few arcs and some interesting ideas for the most part the execution just fell flat for me. Particularly the Gordon as Batman stuff.

Will add Infinite Crisis to that list. It had some cool moments and reveals for long time readers which made it exciting when it was coming out but I don't understand what it's trying to be. On one hand it's a repudiation of the ultra violence of the time but it does this with ultra gratuitous over the top violence. And Tomasi on Batman and Robin seemed to have a lot of fans but I was just bored.

[Immortal Weapon]

Geoff Johns Green Lantern run - This run was among the first DC books I read when I got into comics. The thing that stuck me the most about Johns run on this book is how there was a bunch of interesting and engaging things about around Hal but Hal himself was a plunk of wood. During the built up for Sinstero Corp War, and The Red Lanterns I was far more interested in the villains and the supporting characters. I found it puzzling how this book with a blockbuster movie style writing can be so underwhelming with the character I'm suppose to be heavily invested in. My interest began dropping at the start of the Third Army arc where the Guardians went full dumbass and less said about the first lantern the better. I think I finally dropped it by the time Blackest Night was kicking into gear.

52 - I don't know if this would be considered a classic but I remember it being well received at the time it was released. I wait traded this one and a lot of the stories left me cold. Renee and The Question and the trio of Starfire, Animal Man and Adam Strange being lost in space were the plots in the book that hooked me. The rest of it left me cold. There was so much time devoted to Booster story early on and I remember so many fans dissecting those pages for any clues for future plot points and I couldn't bring myself to care about the Lex Luthor plot.

[Gaius]

Grant Morrison's Justice League. It's good, definitely one of the only things with Justice League I've considered worth my time, but still has all the same problems of most JL stories I've read featuring the big name characters in that they all go into their most least interesting auto-pilot versions of themselves (save for Kyle maybe who hadn't been around long enough to have a least interesting auto-pilot version of himself).

And also contributed to Bat-God (even if Morrison is the only one who wrote a tolerable Bat-God), so big mark against it right there.

I would say this about the DCAU JL/JLU show as well.

[Alpha]

Let’s throw a little more gasoline in here:

Azzarelo’s Joker - I’ve seen this book rated highly and I’ve never understood why. It’s just as empty and awful as Damned, just pure Azz edge with nothing interesting to say. The taunt from Batman to Joker is ok I guess, but it also just feels kinda childish? Nowhere near as impactful as Superman’s rebuttal to Lex in the far superior Luthor imo. It’s just empty “badassery” bravado.

Scott Snyder’s Batman - I like Black Mirror and I like Court of Owls and I’ll always go to bat for those stories, but man otherwise this run is just not aging well for me the more I look back on it. Snyder’s “bombastic” storytelling frequently ended up being the equivalent of a Hollywood summer blockbuster: braindead but pretty to look at thanks to Capullo, and the killer inker/colorist. At the time I loved it because it and JL were the two consistent oases of stability amidst the dumpster fire of DC but I can’t help but feel like Snyder trying to ape Morrison ended up costing him his own unique voice. Also Snyder’s tics as a writer really started to get on my nerves the more I noticed them, the constant “when I was a lad my dad told me this plot relevant story that really makes me think”, Batman constantly monologuing through narration boxes, Snyder’s boner for the Joker despite really not having anything meaningful to say about Joker, and the entire GordonBats saga which seemed to sum up to “no the average person can’t be Batman” which is a message that probably needed to be said, but then there’s the bizarre cloning scheme which went too far imo. A lot of good ideas, not so much great execution.

Still love the Metal events though because events are meant to be dumb, and I do like Snyder’s Riddler because Riddler is a character that gels perfectly with Snyder’s tics.

Tomasi Superman - Before Black Dawn, Multiplicity was a massive flop, a multiversal team up of Supermen should’ve been a slam dunk. Instead they were wasted on a boring ass villain that was even more forgettable than Rogal Zaar, and with terrible filler art. After Black Dawn the whole run fell off a cliff, the family vacation was godawful, Imperious Lex reset Lex back to being a villain, tons of crap filler stories with boring house style art. At least Tomasi ended strong with the Bizarro arc, and issue 45 is legit fantastic, but he was clearly running out of gas and simply couldn’t keep up with book idea wise. Ultimately it’s an ok run but nowhere near the masterpiece it’s fans say it is imo.

Since you offered, I haven't read Black Mirror, but I loved Zero Year and felt like the rest of the stories he wrote in new 52 were pointless. Explain to me why you like Court Of Owls as a story. I understand the interest of the Labyrinth and the Court themselves, but defend the story itself which to me is all hype for nothing.

[AnakinFlair]

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

[Frontier]

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

I don't think anyone views "Cry of Justice" as a classic story.

[AnakinFlair]

Gonna say Watchmen; tried reading it and found it to be an ugly story with little artistic value.

I'm gonna catch hell for saying this, but I enjoyed the movie Watchmen more than the comic. And I tend to enjoy the film adaptations of Alan Moore's works more than the works themselves (except for the movie version of The Killing Joke. Batman and Batgirl having sex on a roof... yeah, no). I just don't enjoy reading his writing, and sometimes the artwork just isn't my style.

Batman also acts like he never kissed a girl before. "She...kissed me...." he thought as he brooded over the train.

Hush is something that I've soured on over the years. I loved it when it first came out and it was my gateway to mainstream Batman comics after years of watching DCAU and reading it's tie in comics. The story doesn't make much sense. There are logical errors everywhere. The omission of Cass Cain and the disrespect to Lady Shiva is glaring considering what Peter Shikonda accused him of on the Daredevil set.

I feel that way about Identity Crisis. Before I read that, I was strictly a Marvel guy who only knew DC characters from films and cartoons. Then I picked this up on a lark (I think because it had a forward by Joss Wheedon), and I really liked it- at the time. But as I got into DC and read more comics, I've really soured on the book. But it still holds a place in my heart for being my gateway into DC at the time. I also tend to be more forgiving of a story (like Identity Crisis or Hush) if the artwork is really good.


Unless you're Cry for Justice. What a piece of crap...

FINAL CRISIS. I do not get how anyone loves or even likes it. It had so much potential as this fantastic New Gods story and then WHAM! as jarring as the art change was from JG Jones to DM we all of a sudden are in a story about Vampire Monitors. I felt like I read half of two stories. Just didn't fit.

I've never liked Final Crisis. It felt like a confused, muddled mess that made no sense. Suddenly there was a black Superman and I was like "Where the hell did he come from?" And you want to talk about character assassinations, look no further than Mary Marvel.

The '90s... The age of Wizard and Hero Illustrated.
Both of which preferred to hype Marvel over DC, until Image formed and it became their favorite.
A lot of Image's early success is due to those two magazines.

God, I haven't thought of Wizard magazine in years. I used to love getting that- every so often, they'd have a bonus pack of Fleer X-Men trading cards stapled inside.

Sure, but if we're going to trash talk fans for nostalgia, I'd like to chime that we also have fans who claim to want to new blood/characters, but also want those new characters to have the code-names/places in the universe of the old characters instead of actually being wholly new and building/earning their places from the ground up. Or fans want to basically rewrite entire characters so name/codename/physical appearance (not necessarily all three) are all that remain of the existing character, but then act confused as to why other fans might not like characters completely erased - again, they don't want ground-up new characters, but want to "borrow" the fame of the existing ones instead of having new characters earn their own fame (which I acknowledge is much more difficult now than than it was 60 years ago).

Yeah, I agree with disliking the mantle sharing and bloating franchises with new supporting characters. But the market just does now allow new characters to gain any traction, so throwing a legacy mantle onto them is the surest way to give them a chance. And often times, it's the only chance minority characters can get. Not to mention creators often want to save their best ideas for their own work instead of the shared universes.

And it really sucks that that's the case, because I doubt we will see a real explosion of creativity and new universes being built like we did during the Silver Age at DC and (especially) Marvel, with the added benefit of any contemporary version of that being much more diverse.

To the first point, I'm someone who WANTS them to create new characters. I'd prefer if they created completely new characters, with new code names and back stories, and allowed them to grow in the large universe and develop a fan base, though that is partly so the film side of the business will have new, diverse characters to showcase on screen instead of the colorblind casting they are doing now.

But to the second point, in the past few years I know they've created new characters, but the only one that stands out to me is Harper Row, who went on to become Bluebird.... and was promptly then written out of the comics altogether. You could even say the same thing about Stephanie Brown- she was a new character that became extremely popular to many fans... and then they killed her off. And when they finally did bring her back, it wasn't that long until they abandoned her original costumed identity and made her Batgirl. So it feels like even when they create new characters, unless they can find a way to force them into a legacy identity now, the character just won't last very long.

[Agent Z]

Why not show both? His greatest contribution is providing more named Amazons with fleshed out personalities, and providing more differing opinions for them and their relationship with the outside world, but the technology being present wouldn't negate any of that. it would still be on the table for others to use, plus its part of the escapist feminist power fantasy that Wonder Woman's world provides. It's cool and the female characters get to be responsible for it, sometimes that basic reason suffices.

The Bana got some of their tech by trading their services as combatants for guns and other weapons (as well as male sex slaves), so that's not the most glowing endorsement. Even then, they were no more advanced than anybody else in our world.

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.

The latter three weren't created yet when Perez did his reinvention, so that doesn't really help matters.

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.

Plus: why not have more than just them? Why is it ok for the Amazons to lose their accomplishments if we have other female scientists, as if there should be a limit?

See my above responses. I did not and never have once said these should be the only female scientists.

[Psy-lock]

Perez may have "nerfed" the Amazons but he also gave us Julia Kapetalis, a female scientist and a major supporting character. He also made Cheetah a scientist. And many female supporting characters and villains who came after were scientist also (Giganta, Dr Poison, Helena Sandsmark, Leslie Anderson, Veronica Cale), so I wouldn't say the franchise is lacking in female scientists post-Perez.