The New 52. What a ride, am I right? An attempt to reimagine the DC Universe from the ground up that was almost immediately bogged down by increasingly complex continuity and a series of retcons-for-retcons-sake that would ultimately get wiped off the board when the need for another company-wide reboot was required in just five short years. Yet, a lot of fans that are still reading today had their entry to comics during this era, and it would be disingenuous to say that there was nothing good to be found here. Crossovers may not have delivered, but there were certainly some good ideas being thrown around, and Villains Month
Focusing on antagonists and antiheroes like Poison Ivy, Bizarro, Darkseid, Solomon Grundy, Black Manta, and Cheetah, this crossover-within-a-crossover indicates both the best and the worst of New 52. Lacking the time and space to actually explore the new ideas they set forward, these stories range from the incredibly satisfying to the wildly disappointing, but on average tend toward the middle of the road. [Read more…] about The Old 52: Revisiting DC’s Villains Month
with writer Si Surrier. We talk about writing X-Men characters like Nightcrawler and Legion, what to expect from the X-Office after Jonathan Hickman’s departure, and Spurrier’s long comics career including Hellblazer.
is the latest such creative effort. Collecting the first six issues of a new ongoing Eternals series from writer Kieron Gillen and artist Esad Ribic, the book is clearly being positioned to capitalize on and contribute to the Eternals’ upcoming moment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe zeitgeist, with their feature film (after a lengthy pandemic-induced delay) scheduled to premiere just a scant few months after the publication of this volume. In Gillen & Ribic, Marvel has again entrusted top-tier talent to this effort, and Gillen and Ribic, to their credit, reward that trust. Every iteration of the Eternals attempts to put a new spin on the concept in some way, and the inaugural launch of this series is no different.