1.) I know how crushed you guys were on Wednesday night when you clicked on over to Every Day Is Like Wednesday for the comics blogsophere’s most hastily written reviews to see what I thought of the new Omega The Unknown series, only to find my Weekly Haul Omega The Unknown-less. Diamond shorted my store, and as of Saturday had yet to get them all of the books they were supposed to have shipped them by Tuesday.
But now your wait is finally over! As I was eventually able to find a copy and review it, and you can click on over to Newsarama.com to read my review of it in today’s Best Shots column.
Just make sure you stop reading before you get to the comments section, because shit gets stupid in there, as it all too often does.
(For the record, Booster Gold is one of my favorite DC super-comics at the moment, and is among one of DC’s better written and drawn books, while my interest in Iron and the Maiden stops at the fairly amusing title, which makes me think of a funny band).
And if you need a refresher course in the original Omega The Unknown series, might I suggest this excellent post from a very handsome comics blogger: Fifteen Random Thoughst about Omega The Unknown Classic.
For more bonus Caleb content, I also reviewed the first issue of DC’s new Simon Dark series by Steve Niles and Scott Hampton.
2.) See that picture above? That is a terrible digital photograph, taken by the tiny little camera embedded in my lap top screen (which flips everything, so you’d follow the panels right to left, not left to right), of the last page of the original Omega The Unknown on the right, and the last page of the new Omega The Unknown on the left.
You can see how similar they are, with the last panel being the exact same.
Well, with one difference.
In the new version, the doctor’s dialogue is “…take the form of the Greek letter Omega?”
In the original, the doctor’s dialogue was “…take the form of the Greek letter Omega!” with the dialogue bubble growing spikey like a scream/shout bubble, rather than a plain old dialogue bubble.
Based on how these two panels alone stack up, one must conclude that the original was more exciting.
Need more evidence? In the lower right hand corner of the last panel of the new version, the word “Continued…” is lettered, and that’s the last word the comic has to offer.
In the original, beneath the last panel ran these words: “Next… Mystery, menace, and madness… James-Michael in Hell’s Kitchen--A super-being on the skids--And the chaos called--The Incredible Hulk!”
Mystery, menace, madness, chaos, and The Hulk, plus some other stuff too? Holy shit, that’s going to be awesome!
3.) Speaking of Newsarama, I’m sure you’ve already heard, but, if not…
I have no idea what it means yet, but I’m hoping it means Lou Dobbs will be joining the Best Shots review team…
4.) Go read Dick Hyacinth’s thoughts on the change. They’re smart.
5.) Tom Spurgeon has a fantastic review of JLoA #13 up. It doesn’t reach quite the heights of brilliant hilarity that his Flash #13 review did (Hey, what’s with Spurgeon and the #13 issues of DC super-comics?), but it’s good stuff. I particularly liked it because his opinion mirrored my own (and that of many others), but he conveyed it with the sort of remove I can never muster, being so close to the characters and their world. Since I tend to think of the DCU as a real place (because I’m mentally ill, I guess), when I see the Injustice League, I immediately start thinking, “Huh, that’s weird these guys just did this last year, and are going to do it again next week at the wedding we already saw…” whereas Spurgeon notices things like the fact that they’re name betrays an inherent ridiculous and the fact that seeing them after a 30 year absence from seeing all of DC’s big villains aligned isn’t the least bit exciting to him.
I wonder why DC sends Spurgeon things like Countdown, Flash #13 and this issue of JLoA. I’m sure there are books at DC that are much, much, much, much (much, much, much) more likely to get a positive review from Spurgeon (the just-concluded Batman arc, All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder, maybe the Eric Powell issues of Action, et cetera).
6.) I don’t know why I continue to be so fascinated by a comic book I quit reading months ago, but I am. CBR rumormonger Rich Johnston kinda sorta reports on something related to Countdown that is potentially interesting. His column is here, but the here’s the relevant portion:
I understand that there are a number of DC creators who have worked on the "Countdown" series who are expressing deep misgivings about their future workload.
LITG previously reported that Mike Carlin was intending to "heavyweight up" the series, bringing in big name creators in light of sliding sales, and now certain existing talent on the series has found themselves not knowing what their next job will be, if it's there at all.
Except they don't know that that's what's going on.
They do now.
I understand why Johnston constructed that the way he did, to give maximum punch to his big reveal. (I think it’s a big reveal; but the stop light picture next to it is blinking “caution” not “go,” so that means it’s something that’s probably true but not definitely true, right?)
But I really wish he would have constructed it more clearly, because I’m not quite sure what he’s saying. Is it that creators working on Countdown are going to get booted from the title? Or that they won’t be getting any future work?
Because if DC’s going to punish anyone for creating such a shitty comic book, it’s probably going to be the writers. And since Paul Dini’s plotting, he seems to be the one in need of the ass-kicking, but I can’t see why he’d get one, as his name remains big and profitable, no matter how bad Countdown is.
Sean McKeever has two ongoing titles, Birds of Prey and Teen Titans. The former sells poorly enough that I could see it being cancelled at some point (particularly since the title’s become lost without its co-star in it), but Titans? I can’t see DC yanking McKeever off it so soon after putting him on it. It’s not like his first issues were as godawful as Adam Beechen’s.
“Graymiotti” also have an ongoing, Jonah Hex, which constantly hovers around cancellation, plus they should have at least seven more months of work on Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters.
Tony Bedard’s only ongoing is Batman and the Outsiders, but since it’s Batman, that’s gotta be a pretty safe gig, right? I always feel a little bad for Bedard, since he’s the guy DC seems to call to write bridge stories between other people’s stories. I can’t decide if that’s a great compliment to his skills (“Let’s call Bedard! He can do anything! If anyone can straighten out these disparate stories by Judd Winick, Brad Meltzer and Gail Simone it’s him!”) or an insult (“Oh man, we need to kill three months in Supergirl why we get the contracts signed, who do we call?”).
Adam Beechen’s only got a limited going right now, Countdown To Adventures. And he’s also an awful, awful, awful writer (At least from what I’ve read of his—Titans, five issues of Robin, two of his Countdown issues and much of his JLU stuff.)
But then, he’s only one creator, and Johnston’s piece said “a number of DC creators” (yeah, yeah, smart ass, one is “a number”).
Whatever the case, it seems awfully unfair to blame Beechen or any of the others for how bad Countdown is. I’ve seen good stories from all six of the writers who get credit for the series elsewhere, and the biggest problems in Countdown come from the plot points the writers who aren’t Dini have to deal with. I mean, there’s no way you can make a Mary Marvel Gets Black Adam’s Suddenly All Different Superpowers and Becomes a Totally Evil Slut story make sense.
As someone who had his brain assaulted by a half-dozen issues of the series, I sure would like to see someone get punished for how bad it is, but it seems to me that the greatest problems with the series like with editors Mike Marts, Mike Carlin, and whoever it was who sat down with Dini and concocted this dumb-ass plot in the first place.
Of course, Johnston could have been talking about the artists, whom, yeah, are doing a terrible, terrible job. Thing is, they are all pretty great artists, who have done good work elsewhere. Have they been given enough lead time? Have they been given model sheets so they know what the characters look like? Is anyone editing the art? While the art on Countdown has been universally bad—event the covers have been, on the whole, rather terrible—I hope DC doesn't think that's why people don't like Countdown as much as DC wants them to. The very same readers put up with often times subpar art work on 52, but because everything else worked so well, we just forgave it as a symptom of too little lead time (Having revisited some triangle era Superman comics though, I'm less inclined to forgive 52's sub-par art then I was at the time.
You can get the Kuberts (who don't seem to be doing much of anything) or Jim Lee to pencil a few issues, you can get Alex Ross to paint the covers, but that's not going to solve the inherent problems in the series, it's just going to help sales a little. Oh, wait...
4 comments:
Is it wrong of me to quite like Iron and the Maiden in a guilty sort of way?
Thank you thank you thank you. Adam Beechen IS an awful writer, and it extends over into his prose work as well. He wrote a young adult book (I think it's supposed to be a children's book, but it wasn't written on a level that grade schoolers would really follow, yet it was too dumbed down--and dumb--for a tweenie to be interested in) that was just horrible and cliche ridden. It's got a title as long as my femur, something along the lines of "How I Spent My Intergalactic Summer Vacation" or somesuch. I reviewed the book, pointing out its weaknesses and faults and how it was just an act, not only of absurdity, but of a publisher's fiscal irresponsibility, to bring such detritus into the world (were this a human about to be birthed, it would have been a state-sponsored abortion) and was promptly dogpiled by the Adam Acolytes and their 'how-dare-yous' and 'how-could-yous'.
I thought his work on Robin was dreck, but couldn't find anyone to stand beside me, so I figured I just didn't have a clue. But, now I know that I'm not completely off base.
Is it wrong of me to quite like Iron and the Maiden in a guilty sort of way?
No, not at all. But I appreciate your looking to me for validation on what is right and wrong. I've never read it, so don't really have an opinion, that was just an aside to the dumb-ass Newsarama argument over whether it was inherently better than Booster Gold or if if it represented the mainstream and/or indie comics.
One of the reasons Countdown is so bad is that it should never have been made a weekly. Drunk off the success of 52, DC/Dini never seemed to realize that they didn't have anywhere enough story to stretch out over 52 weeks. So it's just padding, padding, repeat what we've already seen, pad some more. Seriously, the mag should have been titled Killing Time Until Final Crisis.
I can't help but wonder if it would have been smarter, at least creatively, to take some time after 52, and then do these stories as a series of mini-series, a la Seven Soldiers. It would almost have to have worked better, even with sucktacular plotlines...
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