A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
I’d never thought of Aquaman as anything less than cool.
Hell, I remember the first time I encountered the idea that he was boring and uncool (it was in high school) and being baffled.
What?
How was this guy anything except the most slick superhero?! I was truly, properly, confused by the notion. [Read more…] about The Old 52: On Jeff Parker/Paul Pelletier’s Aquaman
Grayson is a comic that, by all rights, should not have worked. It’s a follow up to a Grant Morrison concept done by people who aren’t Grant Morrison. A spin-off of a Geoff Johns comic. The first comic by a co-writer whose sole writing credits prior to this are a short story and a middling novel (who only got the gig because he’s ex-CIA), another co-writer whose superhero work has (largely) been more supportive of other visions than expressing his own, and an artist whose work has mostly been on covers rather than interiors. Worst of all, it has a central premise that is, to be quite blunt, a bit trite and obvious, especially in the context of the New 52. Yet another spy comic released by DC about some nebulous organization out to do dirty deeds while the superheroes look clean. SHADE, Blackhawks, ARGUS, and now Spyral. These are not the elements of a successful comic. And yet, Grayson
With Infinite Frontier in full swing, there is a new era at DC Comics, and no group of comics has seen its benefits more than the Batman line of stories. Each book has taken characters we’ve always loved in bold directions and put them in new places. From Nightwing’s new sister in Nightwing #81
Infinite Frontier has challenged the way Bat-Family stories work together. New 52 and Rebirth were periods that captured how Batman used to be. Both eras tried out variations on what had been done before. Characters maintained (or slowly returned to) the status quo without much character growth to show for it. For example, the most significant thing to happen to Bruce in his last story was that he still didn’t marry Catwoman. Fundamentally, the Gotham at the beginning of New 52 is the same Gotham that exists throughout Rebirth. Similarly, the Bat-Family failed to expand or change in any noticeable way, with the only major additions being Duke Thomas and Harper Row, two characters who only appear once in a blue moon. Compare that lack of expansion to Infinite Frontier, where the Bat-Family has already added Ghostmaker, Clownhunter, and the Gardener to the list of “heroic” characters. [Read more…] about Batman’s Infinite Frontier: The Bold New World of Gotham
In 1985, DC Comics began publishing an event comic known as Crisis on Infinite Earths. Written by Marv Wolfman with art by George Pérez, the comic detailed the collapse of the DC Multiverse into a single universe. One where Superheroes were a relatively new idea with Wonder Woman only coming into play at the then modern day. All the imaginary stories, all the alternate earths were discarded in favor of the single vision of what the DC Universe should be.
In contrast, Marvel Comics has an occasional series known as What If…? wherein readers are presented with an alternate version of events where things work out differently. In some, we are presented with worlds where the worst-case scenario goes horribly for everyone while in others that worst-case actually leads to a better world. Some What Ifs take on major events like the Death of Gwen Stacy or Captain America coming into the modern-day. Others take minor things like giving a boy a Sentinel or pondering if Bruce Banner was the monster and the Hulk a good man. But with all of these stories (the best at least), even in the bleaker narratives where the Nazis win and domestic abusers go unpunished, there is a sense that this was the only way it could have gone, even if we know alternatives exist. [Read more…] about Tales From the DC Dark Multiverse II Review
Buddy Baker, Animal Man, is often referred to as DC’s “everyman.” In Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman, Steve Pugh, Rafael Abluquerque and John Paul Leon’s 30 plus issue Animal Man
But Buddy is also the inauspicious figurehead for something much larger than himself. He’s the eyes and ears of the animal world, beautifully sharing and communing with it — the Red — in a way few can, as a citizen and a family member. He’s also their avatar, their immune system, and their mantle for responsibility, a superhero. More often a victim than not, his life with all of its individualized traumas expresses the global trauma and rot begetting the New 52 world. [Read more…] about The Old 52: Animal Man’s Autopsy