It's that time again...

So what’s up with DC Comics as of late? I mean it seems like there must be a board meeting where DC’s higher ups all get together and say “Hey, what can we do this month to piss off Ol’ Jonny Prophet?” 

My complaints actually start from back a couple years ago when they hinted at return of one my favorite characters from the Batman universe… Jean-Paul Valley (who by the way should have been Hush’s secret identity… hell, even the clues pointed in his direction. He knew all of Bruce Wayne’s secrets and could conceivably hold a grudge. Plus he has been shown to be unstable. But no, they create some character to conveniently be retconned into Bruce’s past. By the way, I also would have accepted Jason Todd as Hush, which they really should have done since they brought him back shortly after anyway!)   I know that JPV wasn’t the most popular Bat-family member, but he had loads of untapped potential.  (If he had gotten his own rogues rather than Batman’s scraps, Azrael could have been a great book.)  So instead of the return of Jean-Paul Valley as Azrael, we get some suck-job named Michael Lane as a crappy whiny emo lame-ass excuse for someone with that mantle.  Better yet (sarcasm alert!) we get to see JPV as a Black Lantern despite the fact that NO BODY WAS EVER FOUND.  

Fine. Whatever.  Then there was the crappy Countdown story line. Mary Marvel turning evil… cool right? It wasn’t.  It was so bad you start to wonder if you haven’t wasted your life by collecting and reading comics or starting to care about the characters.  What was so terrible about Countdown you ask? (To be fair, I doubt any of you are asking that since it is universally despised by fanboys anywhere.)  How about Monitors who discuss taking action but never actually taking action? What action? Nobody knows. Or Jimmy Olsen becoming a horrible superhero with a costume that made Blankman look like a badass? How about building up “the Great Disaster,” even putting together a group of heroes like Donna Troy, Jason Todd and dumbass, er I mean Kyle Rayner, seeking out the help from the missing Ray Palmer, the Atom… and what was this disaster? It was a virus on Earth-51. Wow. Riveting. Still not convinced? Mary Marvel returns to her home to find Darkseid sitting on her couch. No, I don’t think you got that. Allow me to repeat. Darkseid, the unquestioned despot of planet Apokolips, pure evil incarnate that even Satan himself bows before, was just “chilling” on Mary Marvel’s couch. Ugh… does anyone know what a brain hemorrhage feels like? 

However I soldiered on in hopes of greener pastures.  But there were only more mixed bags to follow, and by mixed bags we are talking flaming bags of dog crap! We had the unending boredom that was The Trials of Shazam, the “Grant Morrison must be downing cough syrup” train wreck that was Final Crisis and Brightest Day or as I like to call it ‘Let’s get rid of everything Alan Moore created in the DC universe.’ Then we had Flashpoint which led to the reboot of the entire DC universe (cause normally this was done with a ‘crisis’ but Final Crisis was suppose be the last one) which is odd because didn’t we reboot the universe like 6 or so years back with Infinite Crisis? But whatever, we need to get rid of time traveling Bruce Wayne and Superman being married to Lois Lane.

Flashpoint was hit or miss; when it hit it was pretty good (Legion of Doom, Grodd of War – which should have been a miniseries, not a one-shot), but when it missed, it really sucked. My best example of this was The Outsider. We are led to assume that he is that world’s equivalent of Lex Luthor (who was killed as a child by Krypto, one of the more creative moments of the Flashpoint event) but with an unspecified superpower that is never defined and always seems to be exactly what is needed at the moment. Seriously, I have no idea what his powers were! It didn’t matter because The Outsider used his evil genius more than metahuman abilities anyways. They made him out to be a total badass from the get go. Yes folks, he took down Black Adam by doing a ventriloquist trick. Apparently magic has nothing to do with it, if you can mimic Teth Adams’ voice, you can control the power of Shazam! What the hell? If that were the case why hasn’t Superman done this every time to any member of the Marvel Family that challenges him to a fight?  What an amazing ending to Kingdom Come that would have been, the climactic showdown of Superman versus a mind controlled Captain Marvel… “Shazam.” Oh look, the fight’s over. Yay.  Also, they expect me to believe that Black Adam will act like a little bitch to The Outsider after he killed Teth’s wife Isis? Apparently nobody at DC read 52 and World War 3 a couple years ago. 

How about in Project Superman when Project Zero, an insane soldier given the DNA of Doomsday, gets loose and only Kal El can stop him from killing everyone? What an amazing climactic battle that was. Surely if Doomsday killed our Superman then this scrawnier, inexperienced Supes will really have the odds stacked against him? Nope. Superman punched Project Zero once and he disintegrated. Scrawny, pale, emo Superman punched Project Zero one time and it made him explode or something. Wow. Money well spent.

So now we have the “New 52” that relaunches almost everything from the DC universe for better or for worse. It’s been a crap-shoot to say the least. Wildstorm has been merged with the DCU, but not exactly seamlessly. Where’s Astro City? Is that just going to be forgotten or will it be a random metropolitan area somewhere in the DC United States (i.e. Fawcett City)?  You have Grifter, but now he’s just Punisher-lite with the power to hear Daemonite thoughts. Where the hell is the rest of the WildC.A.T.s? There’s Voodoo, but she is completely different from her previous character. What about Zealot? Or Maul? Or Warblade? Do we just not need them? I guess we are to assume that Grifter isn’t part Kherubim, so is that just not going to exist either? You have Helspont and Daemonites but not the Kherubim? Or is this just more of DC’s efforts to eliminate anything Alan Moore ever contributed toward?

They eliminated the Vertigo universe with only a few characters ending up in the DCU to no doubt be bastardized into the mainstream. DC apparently forgot that the whole point of the Vertigo line was to create a prestige line, grown up comics if you will. Where will all those great books that follow in the footsteps of 100 Bullets, Sandman, Preacher and Transmetropolitan be published?

You have Fairchild, but where are the rest of Gen 13? You have Stormwatch, not the Authority, except they have gone out of their way to basically make Stormwatch into the Authority. They were already on a big ass ship in hyperspace and now any character that wasn’t with the Authority has been written out. It’s the same team of Jack Hawksmoor, Midnighter, Apollo, Jenny Quantum, the Engineer and I guess Martian Manhunter instead of the Doctor and Swift.

Which leads us to the Justice League comic… It’s Earth’s greatest heroes… and Cyborg. I guess he’s the new Martian Manhunter. Now if I had the option of picking up a super strong super fast telepathic shapeshifter versus a guy who can hack computers and make guns out of his hands, I’m pickin’ the green guy. But I guess that’s just me. I won’t bash the comic, it isn’t bad, but some of the dialogue isn’t great. Batman and Green Lantern tend to banter like children, Superman comes across like a dick and Wonder Woman seems like a violence craving airhead. I am interested to see what they do with Shazam in the next story arc. No, not Captain Marvel, he’s just Shazam. I guess he and the wizard can share the name. And make way for Shazam Jr. and Mary Shazam (which is totally not a stripper name).

Then there are just plain puzzling things. Where is Wally West? He just doesn’t exist? Was it revealed he had ties to Al Qaeda or was part of the Penn State scandal? Why was he just erased from existence like a photo of Marty McFly? Apparently Starfire is a apathetically violent slut who can’t remember people now? And in her place on the Teen Titans is Solstice who can fly, has long energy hair, a bubbly optimistic personality but is totally not Starfire, she’s an all new character. (Right.) Why have Mr. Terrific but no Justice Society? Static was the only representative of the Milestone universe and now his book is canceled? Are we just going to ignore him along with Icon and Hardware? I even hear they are getting rid of Power Girl’s “boob window” on her outfit! Not to sound sexist, but she kind of needs it. It’s a part of her character. Before all comic women had triple D breasts, her large rack was made her own. There are numerous jokes made about her bust. Come on, people got all up in arms about Wonder Woman wearing pants; let’s get some love for the boob window!

This leads us to the present and the upcoming event of Before Watchmen for which I’ve already made my comments about.   I now have to ask the powers that be of DC Comics… do you enjoy pissing me off? Do you want me start reading Marvel and Image comics instead of yours ? Do you want me stop reading comics altogether?  You seem to want nothing more than to take everything I have ever loved from your universe and piss all over it! Why? Are you just out of ideas? Do you need to rehash old stories to sell comics now? Do you really need to make prequels to classic books? What is your legacy worth to you?

Like an idiot I’ll be waiting around for the next thing you do to piss me off.  Heck I’ll even get the ball rolling for you too.  Reintroduce Black Adam as Pink Adam, complete with pink tights, a lisp and have him get a gay crush on Superman. Then have him hook up with a long bearded weirdo from England named Callen Boore and they go off to perform sodomy on each other and watch a movie marathon of From Hell, Constantine, V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the Watchmen… then it’s back to Sodomy.