Honestly I always appreciate a more simple design for our classic evil villains, I don't need them to be overly busy.
"It's fun and it's cool, so that's all that matters. It's what comics are for, Duh."
Words to live by.
I'm going to be 100% honest: I avoided the Death Metal event like the plague. No way I would go down that rabbit-hole after the experience that was Scott Snyder's Metal, i.e. a colossal waste of my precious time. So I don't know anything about Death Metal's repercussions on what passes for DC's continuity and/or the characters themselves. This is a collection of impressions during a genuine leap into the dark.
- "Our reality has been changed forever"? How about "our reality is forever changing"? Or maybe "we didn't know what reality was like before, why should we know it now"? At least you would gain points for honesty! Isn't that what people writing superhero sotries should be all about?
- An event called Death Metal, hailed as the most metal comic book crossover ever... and everybody was saved in the end by love and mercy? I was saying before this whole thingumajig started that everyone involved with it was a complete poser and apparently I was right!
- You don't understand what you are seeing, Diana? And I don't understand how John Timms still has a career in comics! THIS is what passes as cosmic chaos in 2021? Steve Ditko would have done a better job with a ball-point pen and a napkin in the time it took him to finish a cup of Espresso!
- "Who have watched over your reality", huh? To quote the immortal words of Sean Pertwee, "sterling work there then, mates, innit?". I swear, what's the point of depicting these failures as towering giants when a more appropriate representation would be a bunch of Homer Simpson's sleeping at their console?
- Shazadam sounds incredibly stupid. No, scratch that, it sounds like the name of a Pokémon! 'Congratulations, your Alakazam evolved into a Shazadam' and all that. I could be considered a Black Adam fan, in a sense, but I don't see myself visiting the Captain Marvel corner of the DCU any time soon after this preview.
- Great! After decades of comic books and a movie (Batman '89), now the Joker's gas doesn't leave you with a permanent grin on your dead face anymore... it leaves your corpse with a disarticulated jaw! Because that's exactly what Batman comics were lacking recently: body horror! A new, exciting universe, kids!
- Aaaaand... the Rebirth-era Birds of Prey are already gone from continuity. It's not like we've just lost the cure for leukemia, mind you, but I'll never understand some writers's apparent glee at deleting previous history so that they can have a blank slate. Especially when that writer is called James Tynion IV and usually ruins everything with his inept writing even when he can start anew.
- And Oracle is back because Barbara feels like it. The message behind 1990's Babs: "being paralyzed from the waist down doesn't mean your life has ended! You can reinvent yourself and turn into something more than you were before!". The message behind 2010's Babs: "Being paralyzed is for trailer trash who does not hang out with multi-billionaires who can pay for medical gizmos you smelly proles can't even dream of! And now I can do whatever I feel like, like getting my cake and eating it too!". If this isn't the most scathing indictment of the current state of the world I don't know what it is.
- Heeeeeere's Grifter! And the crowd goes mild.
- "They're all grinning but nobody's laughing". A sentence anybody would utter while dashing across the hallways of an asylum full of corpses, isn't it? Stuff they teach you in Realistic Dialogue 101 classes, no doubts.
- I've always thought all the attention that was given to Nubia by some very online people throughout the years to be baffling and I stand by my words... but at least I can look at this artwork. I can't say the same thing about the recently published Nubia GN. This has little to do with Infinite Frontier but it bears repeating that there's no reason for the artwork of several of those YA GN to look so unappealing.
- Mind not clouded by ambition? Then why did you choose the Amazons who were beating the crap out of each other in a public place to see who was the strongest and the most worthy? That looks like a perfect reason to exclude them from your shortlist!
- "No mother should live to see their child die". All correct... if it weren't for the fact that Hippolyta's whole schtick by now is seeing her daughter die! Remember War of the Gods? Diana died! Remember John Byrne's run on WW? Diana died again! And Hippolyta took her place in that occasion. So... hooray for the return of the classics?
- *sigh* And here we are... Yara Flor. Future State Wonder Woman was one of the few FS titles I checked out in January-February and I'll be very clear: her title is going to be a joy for the eyes and a complete mess story-wise. I thought a writer couldn't botch that great classic of story-telling, the Descent to the Land of the Dead, until Joelle Jones proved me wrong. She's as terrific an artist as she's terrible as a writer. And she's supposed to capture an extremely complex, multi-faceted reality like the country of Brazil... God help us all. It's a real pity letting that incredible artwork go to waste (look at that double spread! look at it!) but no amount of excellent linework can make me overlook shoddy plots, pacing and dialogue.
- Obsidian and Jade are back from limbo and the history of the JSA has been reinstated? Now we're talking!
- A few of the boys in the JSA knew about it, huh? And what about the women (not woman, WOMEN!) you loved with all your mind and lied to for all those years? Don't those deserve any further mentions? No? OK.
- How would I react if my 100-year-old father came out of the closet right in front of me? Hmm... Probably with a single word: "ANDROPAUSE". Giving Alan an older look after his return definitely doesn't help. Let alone that Alan was perfect as the avuncular old mentor figure in past JSA comics, somebody who definitely had sex in the past but removed himself from the market decades ago due to age limits. Who thought that bringing his sexuality to the forefront was a good idea?
- "Incredibly brave", Diana? Really? Again, he came out at the age of 100! One. Hundred. Let alone that he spent decades married to women who were mostly there to give him an alibi! Just because WW84 was successful enough to earn a sequel, it doesn't mean we should start seeing acts of heroism where there really aren't in WW comic books too.
- So this is Titans Academy. Well, for a school, it looks like a beautiful prison! Luckily I know better. Otherwise that panel with the enroled students, the majority of whom are minorities (plus the ape, let's not forget the ape!), would have had MAJOR unfortunate implications.
- Red X... a subplot from a cartoon which ended in 2006. Oh, well, in that group shot I saw a talking ape because half a century ago issues which featured a gorilla on the cover used to sell more, so why am I even surprised?
- By the way, why are all these kids excited anyway? Everything's in continuity now, right? Then why are all these teens excited to join an institution with ties to the Titans, one of the unluckiest hero teams in history? Don't they know about the time the group used to lose a member per arc? Or all the times the group was disbanded out of the blue? Or... but I digress.
- I've never cared for Jonathan Kent. I'll just say one thing: that summary of Jon's life so far makes the origin stories of some Marvel mutants from the Nineties look almost accessible in comparison. Maybe Morrison lied to us from the beginning... they killed the Nineties' era of comics to start the real Dark Age.
- Writing Green Arrow and Black Canary's relationship has become SO easy in the last two decades! Every scene they appear together either features them flirting in the most cringe-inducing way possible, having post-coital conversations that go nowhere or fighting. Truly a lazy writer's dream!
- Aaaaand Roy is also back from the dead! Which is OK, mind you, but at this point, couldn't you just wipe Heroes In Crisis off? I can think of few people who would miss it and it would solve the problem of having the dead being alive again just because.
- I might have never cared for Jon Kent but I'm positively sick and tired of Stargirl! 20 years of editorial history and she's still as boring as she was on day 1. SKIP!
- This whole Batman sequence and its heavy narration made my mind drift away every few panels and I don't think that was the intended effect.
- That new Scarecrow look... talk about overdesigned! I really wonder how good it will look whenever Dr. Crane appears in a panel which is not a splash page!
- My very personal opinion: Keli's NOT important. BMB's Young Justice unceremoniously tanked in the span of 20 issues and we have already enough buffoons with a Green Lantern ring flying around! Sequester that gizmo of hers and send her back to Bolivia.
- Great, another underwhelming vision of cosmic grandeur! Here's the most amazing thing you've ever seen in your life, child: a normal planet with a green halo around it and some starships going to or departing from it.
- "Every step Barry takes races us toward a better future". *cough cough* Flashpoint *cough cough*
- And again with that stupid Obamamania Superman. I'll never fogive Morrison for Final Crisis, not only because the whole event was his n-th failure at writing something entertaining instead of the usual self-congratulating garbage, but also for unleashing this low-effort political statement on the DC Universe as a whole.
- And the torch was passed... again! I stopped caring about the Flash franchise long ago, so it's hard for me to write something meaningful about this pivotal moment in the history of comics (lol).
[to be continued]
Last edited by Powertool; 03-21-2021 at 07:20 AM.
[it continues here]
- And again with the overdesigned costumes! Let alone that Timms couldn't draw a genuine-looking smile if his life depended on it.
- Go, Quintessence, show us how badass you are! And... they're all dead. Great showing, guys. Great showing.
- Well, at least Big Dark is not wearing any overdesigned attire in his umpteenth return. Yay for small consolations!
- By the way, Highfather was totally one-shotted, right? Is it me or the usual assumption is that "Apokolips rules, New Genesis drools" these days? When was the last time the New Genesis guys (no, Mr. Miracle and Barda do not count) had a good showing in comic books?
And we reach the end of Infinite Frontier! It was definitely a comic book. It also showed that nobody should be afraid of the new course of the DC Universe: the amount of "same old $hit" in these pages is so high that everybody will feel right at home.
Educational town, Rolemodel city and Moralofthestory land are the places where good comics go to die.
DC writers and editors looked up and shouted "Save us!"
And Alan Moore looked down and whispered "No."
I'm kinda surprised Snyder didn't want Superman to watch Lois and Bruce conceive their love child. All the while singing the "Na na na na na na Batman!" theme song - Robotman, 03/06/2021
So this is the new status quo after Death Metal, is that right?
Educational town, Rolemodel city and Moralofthestory land are the places where good comics go to die.
DC writers and editors looked up and shouted "Save us!"
And Alan Moore looked down and whispered "No."
I'm kinda surprised Snyder didn't want Superman to watch Lois and Bruce conceive their love child. All the while singing the "Na na na na na na Batman!" theme song - Robotman, 03/06/2021
For when my rants on the forums just aren’t enough: https://thevindicativevordan.tumblr.com/
I thought the art in Nubia's GN was pretty solid and on-point, but a lot of those GN's go for unconventional art styles because they're not necessarily conventional Superhero stories.
They're a sexy couple. I think they got all the drama out of their system at the end of the last run.- Writing Green Arrow and Black Canary's relationship has become SO easy in the last two decades! Every scene they appear together either features them flirting in the most cringe-inducing way possible, having post-coital conversations that go nowhere or fighting. Truly a lazy writer's dream!
Probably will at some point.- Aaaaand Roy is also back from the dead! Which is OK, mind you, but at this point, couldn't you just wipe Heroes In Crisis off? I can think of few people who would miss it and it would solve the problem of having the dead being alive again just because.
Ah, I love Courtney. She's such a wholesome firecracker .- I might have never cared for Jon Kent but I'm positively sick and tired of Stargirl! 20 years of editorial history and she's still as boring as she was on day 1. SKIP!