The return of the Mighty Mighty New 52 Discussion thread

[Ilan Preskovsky]

I dunno, the whole framed spy on the run just sounds really generic to me.

Oh that part is, yeah. I'm talking primarily about the idea of what if Mrs Moneypenny was actually the most deadly person in the room.

[Joe Kalicki]

This guy Joe is the voice of reason!

Seriously, when I read Red Winter's post, I felt like he was a fan.

Seems like one to me too. 2 books a week from a publisher? That's almost love.

[officersmile1466]

So when I say "Public letdown" I mean a title or a creative team or an event or whatever that was heavily in the spotlight for a while but fell apart either creatively or simply didn't live up to expectations.

My candidates would be (In order of disappointment):

- Justice League of America
Heavily hyped in Justice League itself for ages. Posters plastered everywhere. 52 insane variant covers and for what exactly? Five issues that led rather half heartedly in to the Trinity War story. Five issues featuring rapidly deteriorating art by David Finch and then Brett Booth. Insane delays on the title between issues 2 and 3 (!!!). That overly long Forever Evil was a total waste of time and money. Hopefully Justice League United will be better.

-Superman Unchained
Jim Lee and Scott Snyder and Superman!!! Right after the Man of Steel movie as well! Crazy poster sized spread sheet page in the first issue! Multiple Variant covers every issue!!! But for me, Superman Unchained has been a real letdown. Jim Lee's art is all over the place and isn't nearly as sharp as what it normally is. Snyder's story has multiple events going on but very little progress each issue. Batman is crow-barred into the story because he's Batman that's why! Sporadic issue releases plus months between plot progression (Remember when Lex Luthor was doing stuff in the comic, like, five months ago? Me neither) really kill off what could have been either a fantastic limited series or a really cool ongoing superman title.

-Andy Diggle on Action Comics
Heavily hyped with splashy preview pages in every book and a really cool original cover art by Tony S Daniel. It really seemed like this would be new awesome comic book. Diggle seemed pumped in interviews to do amazing things, Daniel was creating beautiful art. But then...well I still don't know what happened! Diggle bolted before a single issue hit the stands. The lovely cover for issue 18 was replaced with a half hearted WTF fold out cover. Tony S Daniel took over plotting for a bizarre and nonsensical story of a hybrid...thing that did...something...I think? Hey wasn't Parasite supposed to be in here?

-Pandora
Who is Pandora? What does she want? How did she reboot the universe? Why did she reboot the universe? All these questions and more certainly will never see a satisfying answer ever as Pandora went from sinister hooded mystery woman to boring stupid person her moaned about a box that held all the sins, only it was a really a gateway to earth 3 and blah blah blah, go away Pandora!!!

-Trinity War (and the whole trinity of sin story in general)
Ever since that cool free comic book day issue, the trinity of sin was at the forefront of DC. What did they have in store? What was the trinity war? Well who knows!? And who really cares anyway because now it's all about Forever Evil and whahey!!! Now we have Pandora wandering around doing who knows what and a creepy Question who's not Montoya so I don't really care what he does now. At least we got a really cool Phantom Stranger out of it.

-Forever Evil's constant delays
Because sometimes all you can do is laugh.

[Kid A]

Ales Kot booted off Suicide Squad.

[Kuwagaton]

Pretty much everything regarding Superman. Morrison was the one guy holding it down, then he left... and now Action has a solid creative team, but they're still at the bottom of the hill going up.

Also, no trigger ever pulled on Shazam, and the struggle to make the Legion or a second League work.

[red winter]

I still think it's the Wildstorm integration, it could have been better especially with all the government operatives & former soldiers in Wildstorm. Books like Blackhawks,Suicide Squad, and Men of War could have done better with some Wildstorm characters.

[officersmile1466]

Also, no trigger ever pulled on Shazam

Do you mean like how they should have launched an ongoing Shazam comic immediately after his amazingly successful run of Justice League back ups?

Because if so, I partially agree. The Shazam back ups by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank were amazing (some of the best stuff I've read in the new 52) but the time hasn't been right for a Shazam book. He's had the ill timed Trinity War/Forever Evil event clogging up the the timeline he's in for one thing. Having Gary Frank unavailable certainly doesn't help. But he'll be a key member on the new Justice League from the looks of things.

[Conway]

Pretty much everything regarding Superman. Morrison was the one guy holding it down, then he left... and now Action has a solid creative team, but they're still at the bottom of the hill going up.

Also, no trigger ever pulled on Shazam, and the struggle to make the Legion or a second League work.

This is almost exactly everything I was going to say. I would have added the Joker, the endings to all of Snyder's Batman Epics, and his entire Requiem issue.

[Joe Kalicki]

The handful of writers who couldn't work well in DC's editorial system who got mad and left. I suppose it was worth a shot, but they've almost all been replaced by someone much better who's much more comfortable in the system.

[AlexanderLuthor]

Out of your list I would vote none of the above.

(1) JLA was a prelude to Trinity War/FE. Nothing more. The whole team was assembled by the government to battle the JL - that reason went away. It's now been replaced by something better.

(2) Superman Unchained - Jim Lee doesn't draw many comics anymore. Jim Lee is still easily the most popular comic book artist. Jim Lee puts out work slowly. If you buy another book that has Jim Lee as an artist, guess what - there are going to be delays. Happens every single time. For me, it's worth the wait.

(3) Andy Diggle on Action - For all of the crazy speculation, this one is pretty simple. Andy Diggle left Action because he got a better offer. He may have tried to blame it on X, Y or Z, but that was just deflection for an unprofessional move. Robert Kirkman offered him his own book (which is going to be turned into a TV Show) and Diggle saw Walking Dead $$$$$$$$. He jumped, that's it.

(4) Was anyone ever that invested in Pandora to really care that much? But why do people act like it hasn't been explained? Her "box" was a device that allowed transport between Earth-1 and Earth-3 (and probably elsewhere in the multiverse). That's all you really need to know

My biggest disappointment would be the absolute gutting of the Teen Titans. Just a flat out dumpster fire in one of my favorite DC brands

[PyroSikTh]

I wouldn't say most of those were public failures, mainly because I thoroughly enjoyed everything Trinity War and it's build-up. The 5 JLA issues were great, Pandora became one of the most interesting characters over night, and Trinity War itself had a first half that demanded I keep reading.

Forever Evil has been enjoyable, but the delays have been awful. Three month wait for the final issue?! That's just taking the piss. If the delay was more in the middle of the story then it would be annoying, but not nearly as bad.

Also echoing the lack of a Shazam title. The back-ups were in Justice League for over a year, everyone loved it, and then...nothing.

[AlexanderLuthor]

I wouldn't say most of those were public failures, mainly because I thoroughly enjoyed everything Trinity War and it's build-up. The 5 JLA issues were great, Pandora became one of the most interesting characters over night, and Trinity War itself had a first half that demanded I keep reading.

Forever Evil has been enjoyable, but the delays have been awful. Three month wait for the final issue?! That's just taking the piss. If the delay was more in the middle of the story then it would be annoying, but not nearly as bad.

Also echoing the lack of a Shazam title. The back-ups were in Justice League for over a year, everyone loved it, and then...nothing.

With regards to Shazam. I really don't understand how reviving a character, having it receive critical and popular success and leaving people wanting more can be labeled a "failure" - public or otherwise. We don't have a Shazam book because Johns owns the character now and he's been limited by higher ups to 2 books. They seem to have made the calculation that kicking Superman in the rear is more important than a Shazam monthly and I don't see how you can disagree with that. You'll notice Shazam will be in the JL starting with #32 so that Johns can expand on the character

[JasonTodd428]

-Lack of a Shazam title after all the build up it had in back-ups. They had something going there and they dropped the ball with it completely.

-The snafu with Teen Titans. DC should know better than to try to recreate the old NTT magic by now. It never works out well for the characters and creatives involved.

[officersmile1466]

(3) Andy Diggle on Action - For all of the crazy speculation, this one is pretty simple. Andy Diggle left Action because he got a better offer. He may have tried to blame it on X, Y or Z, but that was just deflection for an unprofessional move. Robert Kirkman offered him his own book (which is going to be turned into a TV Show) and Diggle saw Walking Dead $$$$$$$$. He jumped, that's it.

(4) Was anyone ever that invested in Pandora to really care that much? But why do people act like it hasn't been explained? Her "box" was a device that allowed transport between Earth-1 and Earth-3 (and probably elsewhere in the multiverse). That's all you really need to know

I wasn't aware of the Andy Diggle story but if true that's kind of shoddy of him. Any links for this story? I'm interested to read more about it.

Pandora's "box" was explained that's for sure. It was a crappy explanation that makes very little sense but yes, it was explained. But what about her fancy appearance at the end of Flashpoint? You know, the scene that started the whole new 52? Or how she made a cameo in every first new 52 issue? What was with that? Even as late as Justice League issue 6 she and Phantom Stranger discuss how she rewrote reality (or "strengthed it" in her words). I want to read about THAT Pandora not the gullible girl who spent thousands of years being given the run around by Evil Alfred.

[Conway]

I wasn't aware of the Andy Diggle story but if true that's kind of shoddy of him. Any links for this story? I'm interested to read more about it.

The story that was presented to us is that editorial wouldn't let Diggle write the story he wanted to so he left: Specifically he wanted to cut off Superman's hand and was told "Absolutely not." There is some speculation that the job offer from Kirkman was before he left, but I've never seen anything that actually corroborated that.