The Weeklies

[poroto678]

I loved Batman Eternal. Overall was very good... at least i like it a lot more than the Batman title.

Future's End was great too, but the ending was super dissapointing.

World's End was a disaster. I don't blame Wilson though... somebody had to write that to "fill the blanks".

I'm really looking forward to read the new Batman eternal. I love the interactions between the family members.
If i could ask for a weekly, i'd like something like the JLU cartoon, when they made episodes with GA, Canary, Huntress and the Question.
Something like "DC Universe presents" but within the continuity and canon.

[resipsaloquitur]

Might be worth comparing ALL of DC's weeklies here. Although among the three...well, I didn't read World's End. So of the two...I think Eternal produced the better overall product. I agree with the others that the story went on for too long, and I also think the appearance of the main baddie--the MAIN baddie--was out of left field even though we were all expecting it.

Futures End was an interesting concept that completely negated itself. I think it reached a high point in the big fight with Brainiac, but then utterly lost it in the last issue. I think a few tweaks to the ending could have fixed things, but we got what we got, and it ruined things. Worse, it was supposed to be a big Convergence setup, but its main contribution was Brainiac's disappearance. The 35 Years Later cyborgs were only very tangentially involved, when their use could have been much better.

[RobinFan4880]

All three titles suffered from the same problem, they had an arbitrary end date set for them by editorial. All three titles could easily have been 3, 4, 5, maybe even 6 issues shorter.

Of the 3, I believe futures end was the best of the bunch. It, by far, had the best pacing due in no small part to the way in which the writers split up the writing duty. Eternals method of giving each writer three whole issues to detail out their stories sounded great, in principle however over time it allowed certain stories to languish for weeks, sometimes even months, at a time. This was especially true for the story arcs involving Tim and Harper as well as Corrigan and bat wing. Although these stories could have been great they suffered due to that unrelenting neglect that is time. By the time some of the writing duty had looped around to writer X, the bede we had on the story was lost. People simply lost interest in story y due to the amount of time it took to resolve and/or continue those stories.

The method employed by the creative team for futures end, whereby each creator was given a small number of pages per issue to tell their stories, turned out to be the superior method. Unlike eternal, stories were continuously updated each week. There wasnt the same level of story neglect that we experienced with eternal. It really created more of an engaging experience, especially when read week to week to week.

World's End, by contrast, had a sharper focus for its story but, was allowed by the creators to be filled with scenes that were not necessary to the overall plot and were, therefore, filler of the worst variety. Whole scenes were added to issues where nothing happened. The characters simply spun their wheels for no reason other than to have a scene in the comic and fill time until the other stories had progressed. This filler content was made all the worse by the fact that earth 2 was turned into a filler factory for the world's end series. It eventually became such a problem that, even a gigantic earth 2 fanboy (like myself) was soured on the entire earth 2 line of comics. I simply could not justify spending that kind of money on such an inferior product.

There were other issues with all three books. Art, principally. Especially in eternal. The style was never even, you wound up with guys doing the house style next to super indy artists doing really strange art. It really contributed to the uneven feel of Eternal.

[PyroSikTh]

Batman Eternal was the best by a country mile. It was entertaining week-by-week with an enthralling and slowly unravelling plot. Literally my only complaint of the whole series is that, while we saw the big final twist coming from a mile away, there was nothing actually in the story to build it up, so it came relatively out of nowhere. Very small niggle though. I enjoyed it just as much as the main Batman title, which in my opinion is DC's best title at the moment.

Future's End started bad, got better in the middle, got really good once Brainiac arrived, and then ended dreadfully with a number of hanging plot points and cliffhanger leading straight into Batman Beyond (which I have no interest in reading). No matter how good the four or five Brainiac issues were, the ending made me feel like I wasted £100.

World's End was dire from beginning to end. There were no surprises and no revelations. The writing was awful, dialogue cringeworthy, and the art was as flaky as a croissant. It was a paint-by-numbers weekly, given to a toddler.

[Flash Gordon]

I think a TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS weekly could work really well with the right rotating creative team. Break it up into short arcs with different writers and artists, so people have time to breathe and work freely. I'm not sure it'd sell well though.

In my mind I'd love to see it as an anthology book, just starring Hal Jordan and friends.

A Superman weekly I'd advise against. They need to get that ship sailing and they finally have two strong teams on both titles. Let them do their thing.

[Nix Uotan]

Will give my own opinion...
*Personally, I felt that Batman Eternal was the strongest of the three. It kind of dragged a bit at the end but I felt it tackled a big portion of the Batverse and had some nice moments as well as changed things for the book afterwards. We got things like Steph back and Harper going as Bluebird. It set up a new status quo for Selina kind of and there were nice character moments.

*Future's End I would rank next, I think it started nice and had some interesting stories but I felt that a large portion of stories were left abandoned and did not go anywhere. The Firestorm plot was largely boring for me when compared to seeing Terry McGinnins and we never got to find out why Mr. Terrific seemed so different in character. Plus, the ending kind of negated itself.

*World's End kind of the bottom for me. I felt we kind of knew where the story was going so it was a constant case 'We're dyinnngggggggggggg' and that happened every issue. Earth-2 never stood a chance and it would have been more silly if they saved it against a full scale Darkseid invasion but things like the Barda betrayal and stuff just seemed pointless. And the story felt kind of disjointed at times. Really, this was just an event designed to make a new status quo for Earth-2 but it wasn't as nicely done in my opinion. I know others might disagree but that's just my opinion, if you enjoyed it then good. All books don't cater to everyone.

If they did another two weeklies, I wouldn't mind one involving the Green Lanterns. They certainly have a wide scale universe that could benefit for multiple viewpoints. Prior to Convergence, we pretty much had a GL book out every week even. Beyond that, I would say perhaps a Justice League Dark weekly? Something from the magic side and developing from that side of things?