Flashpoint #5 – The Con Job Revealed

Hope to make this blog a more regular posting experience, but as I said before life happens.

The hype, the excitement, the concerns over DC’s new universe have all been leading up to this week and the book to end the old DCU Flashpoint #5 comes out and it was all a terrible joke. The Emperor is walking the streets naked, but the crowd wants to love the new clothes (old fable reference). 

The grand reveal is DC threw this idea together to re-launch their whole universe very, very fast. Flashpoint was used to as a mechanism to make the changes, but the changes have no rhyme or reason and this series was never intended to be what DC turned it into. 

In a few years someone will talk about how Didio wanted make this drastic change to the DCU and came up with DC retroactive and the ancillary Flashpoint books to give the creative crews a three month break to pull together the entire re-launch. I was hoping there was more planning behind it, but Flashpoint was obviously written as a series about Barry and why you can’t try and change time. DC decided to use two pages in this book as some bullsh*t gimmick to reset the DCU into whatever they want it to be. 

WHY NOTHING NEW

Just a short note to say that I have lots to say, but right now I'm in the midst of moving and have limited access to a computer. Plus this is not meant to be a daily blog. We may post three times a day or never.

The Passion of Wally West

Wally West is my favorite superhero in the DCU. Jack Knight (Starman) is a very close second, but Wally existed before Jack and he existed long after Starman was over. In the last couple of years the powers-that-be at DC developed a everything-Silver-Age-is-best sentimentality that found, among other things, Barry Allen returning after being dead a very long time. Now DC has made steps to temper older characters with newer ones, especially in the new relaunch, but Wally West is still nowhere to be found.

There are many reasons (albeit bad ones) that DC might have decided to go backwards with The Flash. It could have been that having Wally married with super-powered kids became an obstacle for the writers on the book. Perhaps DC is looking to have an easier accessible Flash in the comics for a proposed film version of the character. Or maybe the problem is certain creators decided they liked the version they grew up with and brought back their favorite once they achieved a position of power in the company.

The New 52 Makes Me Blue

DC comics suck. I read Detective Comics, Batgirl and Red Robin this week. Detective was just amazing and possibly the best Batman story told in the last 20 plus years. Batgirl and Red Robin were well done comics and enjoyable stories about characters that I have come to love and enjoy.

The Batman franchise was given a huge push forward by Grant Morrison. Outside of the JSA it was the only comic in the DCU that was going forwarding and building on a great history instead of doing soft re-sets, hard resets, or just plain wipe the earth clean type of stuff. 

I know DC had problems and their mid-list books were horrendous, but the new DCU is too much of throwing out the baby with the bath water. I’m prejudging all this stuff, but reading these endings made me said for what could have been. 

Frank Castle is a Bad Mutha – A Review of Punisher Max #16

Punisher Max #16 marks the final chapter of “Frank”, the story arc title. We get to see how Frank escapes from prison and what happen the day that Frank’s family got killed in the park. It all wraps up with the parallel of Frank escaping the prison of his normal family life as well as escaping from the prison he has been locked up in.

What has been so damn compelling about this arc is the portrayal of Frank Castle. I have felt many things about the Punisher over the years and felt that Garth Ennis has done a definitive run on the character and he did. Writer Jason Aaron is hitting some different notes and this book is standing up to Ennis' run. It is rare to have back to back definitive runs on a character, but that is what’s happening.

Innovation Must Be A Dirty Word

Why is it that innovation seems to be making a book yet another number one issue?

 

Marvel’s Big Guns promotion was yet another #1 issue of Moon Knight, Daredevil and The Punisher. Moon Knight’s first appearance was in 1975 – 36 years ago. Punisher is from 1974, so he is only one year older then Moon Knight at 37. Daredevil is from 1964 making him the old man of the group at 47 years old. After hundreds and thousands of stories about these characters Marvel pulled out all the stops and decided to re-launch each one of these heroes - AGAIN. Now from a pure professional story telling bit each book managed to find a new twist and take on the character or at least do a twist that is so old most people have forgotten about it. Moon Knight is so crazy he now talks to Spider-Man, Wolverine and Captain America. He even pretends to be them. That’s really crazy. Daredevil is actually going around happy and there is sunlight in his book, which has not been seen since before Frank Miller did Daredevil. The Punisher is the mysterious guy in the background taking out the bad guys. His obsessive mission is not the focus of the story. All three books are well done and if you like Bendis, all three books are enjoyable, but where is the real innovation. 

Batman Retro Active – 1980’s

So I decided I needed another outlet for my thoughts on comics and thought a totally negative connotation would be fun.

The “new” 1980’s story was done by Mike Barr and Jerry Bingham and all in all it was well done. Aping the style of that era makes me wonder if Barr could write for comics today as the style of writing today is dramatically different. Heck in reading the 1970’s Batman it was almost unreadable. Done in that style but made me wonder why I read comics at all during that era. It is not a coincidence that I stopped reading comics as I was turning 15 / 16 and at the same time we were in the 1970s. 

Comic books have been growing up over the years I have been reading them, which is since the early sixties. DC stayed in the mode of writing for 8-12 year olds and the growth spurts that it took for their comics to become more sophisticated were pretty painful. The 70’s were some lowlights, at the same time some of the best things were starting to happen. One step forward and two steps back.