Infinite Frontier ain't even close at the buzz Rebirth brought, hope I am wrong but not seeing any great enthusiasm for it.
Rebirth was a different situation. A lot of fans hated what the New 52 reboot had taken away from the DCU and Rebirth was a clear signal that they were changing course, which got people very excited for a few months.
Infinite Frontier is more of a refocusing of the line away from what Didio planned while still using the material that was generated for his aborted 5G relaunch while also trying to rebuild the bridged burned down within the fandoms that Didio had alienated.
No matter how you slice it, Rebirth felt like a single, focused story with Wally trying to make his return in all those sections.
Infinite Frontier was more like the old D.C. Sampler issues they had back in the 1980s, with a couple of pages written by each creator to spotlight what they would be doing in future issues. It felt like what Williamson was suppose to do was just find a way to tie all those separate preview chapters together with a very generic, boring narrative.
Didn’t have a bunch of “holy ****” moments which is Johns’ speciality. But it’s hard to beat the return of Wally West and a Watchman/DC Crossover. I actually like the line’s status as a whole, over reliance on Batman aside, and at least we aren’t waiting years to get follow ups to what’s been teased in Infinite Frontier.
But they really shouldn't have picked Darkseid as the big bad again. Feels like he’s been the big bad everywhere and in everything. Should’ve picked someone else.
For when my rants on the forums just aren’t enough: https://thevindicativevordan.tumblr.com/
For when my rants on the forums just aren’t enough: https://thevindicativevordan.tumblr.com/
Every story you hate is now canon is not a very strong selling point.
He also had very weird, at least to me, "arc" where he gets killed in the middle of Darkseid War, is reborn as a baby and then is a regular on JLO team for couple of years? To me it killed lots of hype around him. And what Williamson done to reveal him as a big bad was about as generic as you can get.
Thing is Neon kicked his butt, sentencing him to Dark Multiverse for the time being, rather easily even. Would he really be that great of a threat nowadays ?
I find that Darkseid was lockey a far greater threat than Perpetua or BWL were in Death Metal. The guy almost got his hands on a device which would have allowed him to rewrite all of reality, without the Anti-Life Equation, after all.
Yeah, I've noticed that too with Infinite Frontier as well. While I think Rebirth had a much stronger launch, it dragged its feet with a lot of its big revelations. IF didn't really have many huge mysteries it needed to pay off right away, other than the whole thing with Darkseid, so it doesn't have that same drawn-out feeling Rebirth ended up having (I type this as somehow who really loved Rebirth). On one hand, there are fewer things to speculate with IF, not enough big mysteries for fans to sink their teeth into. On the other hand, there's a less likely possibility of things feeling drawn out and feeling repetitive.
Nobody read that mini man, I had completely forgotten it even existed until I searched for a pic of Mandrakk to use. Most readers probably wouldn’t even know what his deal is so he’d basically be a blank slate for them to use. The basic gist of a cosmic vampire though is cool enough that I think it can work outside FC.
Williamson has said in a bunch of podcasts I’ve listened to that DC learned from their failings with Rebirth that they can’t tease stuff they don’t plan to follow up on soon.
For when my rants on the forums just aren’t enough: https://thevindicativevordan.tumblr.com/
That's all great to hear, and that hopefully means we will get more pay-offs in quicker succession. However, I always feel like DC would always learn from their mistakes in past initiatives and try not to repeat them, yet in the process always seem to make new mistakes. For example, they realized how much they screwed up with the New 52, and tried to bring back a lot of lost continuity in Rebirth, only to make the mistake of introducing a lot of mysteries with no pay-offs insight.
In terms of Infinite Frontier, I think the biggest mistake they're making is how they're dealing with continuity. In some ways, it's pretty cool that DC is choosing to accept all its continuity, both the good and bad. On the other hand, it just so super confusing right now. While it's super awesome to see even more pre-Flashpoint canon make it back to modern-day DC comics (Welcome back Connor and Lian!), how everything works timeline-wise is just too hard to wrap my head. I'm not really a huge continuity nut, and I think people take too much stock in what is canon or not. But in this case, the whole sequences of events make the whole thing hard to grasp and makes it difficult to understand how it all works.
He had an arc in Wonder Woman where it showed how he regained his strength after being a baby and adolescent. He basically went around and killed Old Gods and siphoned off their power.
I was disappointed that he was revealed as the big bad of Infinite Frontier. As much as I love Darkseid I would really like to see more cosmic threats other than just him. Though it did give him his ultimate feat by having him beat the hell out of some of the most powerful beings in the DCU. He literally stomped The Spectre.
But they really should have used someone else. Maybe Trigon. He hasn’t done anything significant since the 80s.
Last edited by Robotman; 05-15-2021 at 03:51 PM.