All right, starting 2010.
The Agenda
Books I’ve already read:
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Detective Comics: I believe this was… the Batwoman stretch, right? As much as I dunk on Rucka, this was actually very solid other than some weird pacing.
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Batman: This was Winick on Dick as Batman, as I recall, which was a disaster zone.
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Wonder Woman: I think Simone would still have been on the title at this point. That had highlights and lowlights. Was never sure what to think of it. Better than a lot of runs, but the later parts of it sort of deteriorated.
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Green Lantern: Johns’ run was fairly solid through the end, though it was a bit less exciting after Blackest Night.
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Green Lantern Corps: Tomasi, by contrast, sucks.
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Batman Confidential: Been forever since I read this. I think it was just one digitized issue from this year, and cut off in the middle of an arc, so hard to comment.
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R.E.B.E.L.S.: This wound up being a pleasant surprise, at least in its latter half, which I think this was.
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Batman and Robin: Dear god no.
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The Flash: Rebirth: Also pretty bad.
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Batman: Streets of Gotham: I want to like it because it’s Paul Dini, but much of it wasn’t really up to his standards. I think 2010 in particular wasn’t great.
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Red Robin: This was pretty disappointing all the way through.
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Batgirl: This was, if nothing else, less relentlessly miserable than most of the concurrent Batbooks, and the 2011 Batgirl series makes it look like a masterpiece, but neither of those things actually necessarily makes it good.
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Batman: The Widening Gyre: So, the weird thing with this was that all the problem points were in the last issue of it. Which means it was a pretty solid read until then, actually?
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Arkham Reborn: This seemed to have no point at all.
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Batman: Unseen: This was bad, but a harmless sort of bad that didn’t break anything.
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Brightest Day: What a mess.
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The Flash: Felt kinda phoned-in after all the hype about bringing Barry back.
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Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne: Started out almost readable, albeit immersed in the essence of pure nonsense like all of Morrison’s stuff, but it doesn’t really hold together, especially towards the end.
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Birds of Prey: Not really up to the original title’s standards in several ways, but an overall reasonable continuation.
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Red Hood: The Lost Days: While I do feel like this doesn’t really add much, it was competently done and probably the closest thing in the Batbook lineup from this year to actually being good.
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Batman: Odyssey: Well, except for this legendary timeless masterpiece, maybe.
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Emerald Warriors: More of Tomasi doing his annoying Tomasi routine.
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Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: A real disjointed wreck of a mini.
Books I intend to read, and expectations:
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Action Comics: Oh god no.
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Superman: I’m cautiously optimistic about this book’s direction focusing on Mon-El? Weirdly?
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Teen Titans: Is this book still going? Why?
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Superman/Batman: Uh… fourth verse, same as the third: Why?
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Justice League of America: Robinson sometimes weirdly pulls a rabbit out of a hat, but I’ve seen chunks of this that I’m really not feeling.
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Justice Society of America: Yeah, Magog is killing my shortlived hype for this book pretty fast.
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Titans: Welp, we’re on our way to the mess that was Villains for Hire.
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Secret Six: I don’t know, I want to like this. It’s just… the characters… aren’t likeable? They’re funny, but that doesn’t mean I want to see them succeed or especially care for their welfare.
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Red Tornado: This wasn’t actively offending me and could turn interesting, but feels a bit uninspired.
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JSA All-Stars: I have no expectations on this, since I don’t know who’s writing it. Hopefully it’ll be better than whatever Willingham is doing.
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Justice League: Generation Lost: This comes highly recommended, and I’m not going to lie? I don’t believe it. This is sending up a ton of red flags, and I do not trust Judd Winick with basically any of these characters.
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Freedom Fighters: If you’ve been paying uncannily close attention, you may have noticed that Power Girl quietly disappeared from my reading list. That’s because Gray and Palmiotti are gross and uncomfortable and I decided to spare myself. However, I’m already kind of committed to slogging through this Freedom Fighters stuff to the bitter, disturbingly sexualized end. Send help.
For something to alternate with, I think I’ll pop back to the earliest stuff on my reading list and just start going through some Golden Age books. Don’t entirely know what to expect from most of these, but I’ve been enjoying Finger on Batman and a bit dubious of Siegel on Superman.
Superbooks: 45 issues from 2010
Writers: James Robinson (7 issues of Superman, 1 issue of Adventure Comics, co-writer on 4 issues of World of New Krypton, co-writer on 3 issues of Last Stand of New Krypton, co-writer on 1 issue of Adventure Comics, co-writer on 5 issues of War of the Supermen, 7 Captain Atom backups in Action Comics, 1 Superboy backup in Adventure Comics, 1 Legion of Superheroes backup in Adventure Comics), Greg Rucka (co-writer on 4 issues of World of New Krypton, co-writer on 7 issues of Action Comics, co-plotter on 2 Captain Atom backups in Action Comics), Eric Trautmann (co-writer on 7 issues of Action Comics, “Awake” backup in 3 issues of Adventure Comics), Sterling Gates (6 issues of Supergirl, 2 issues of Adventure Comics, co-writer on 3 issues of Last Stand of New Krypton, co-writer on 1 issue of Adventure Comics, co-writer on 5 issues of War of the Supermen, “Unify” backup in 1 issue of Adventure Comics, backup in 1 issue of War of the Supermen), Jake Black (co-writer on backup in 1 issue of Supergirl), Helen Slater (co-writer on backup in 1 issue of Supergirl), Dan Jurgens (backup in 1 issue of Superman), J. Michael Straczynski (3 issues of Superman, backup in 1 issue of Superman), Paul Cornell (5 issues of Action Comics), Jeff Lemire (Superboy backup in 1 issue of Action Comics), Nick Spencer (Jimmy Olsen backup in 2 issues of Action Comics), G. Willow Wilson (1 issue of Superman)
Golly, that’s a lotta writer.
So, for the concluding stretch of the “World Against Superman” arc:
World of New Krypton continues to be surprisingly solid for a premise that usually sucks written by two writers I usually don’t like. I’m still trying to figure out how that even happened. Also holy ■■■■ is Zod farming Silver Shield entities? Maybe somebody did read Captain Atom. (If so, though, nothing ever comes of it.) Though… wait a second. Zod believed Tam-Or was innocent, yes? So… the Council reinstates Zod, but then at the exact same time goes over his head to have Tam-Or arrested? Which they apparently don’t have the authority to do? What do any of these clowns think they’re accomplishing?
Action Comics continues to bore me. Like, I feel like this is the one that has the least to do with anything else going on, and is mostly based on uncomfortable age-up romance stuff. Also, if there’s one thing Final Crisis got me sick of, it’s Greg Rucka writing fake religious texts for pages at a time. I don’t care about the Kryptonian creation myth. This is filler. I mean there’s the apparent idea that Chris, Thara, and Jax-Ur are somehow reincarnations of or otherwise possessed by Khufu, Chay-Ara, and Hath-Set uh, I mean, Rucka’s totally original concepts for Nightwing and Flamebird, do not steal. But this has been built up for quite some time with extremely little consideration for why it’s remotely important. It kind of leads to something in War of the Supermen, but mostly by way of clearing all of these plot elements off the board at the same time so the actually important stuff can continue.
- The Captain Atom backup is bland at best. I’m invested in the Monarch mess being undone somehow, but not really in it just kind of being there. They’re trying to dance away from it, but only really by half measures. Also, Captain Atom literally flew into the afterlife one time. I think he’s interacted with the Green, too. It’s all a little confusing in the ‘80s series, so I don’t know if I’d say his powers are magic, exactly, but they’re certainly not “anti”-magic, and saying he can’t enter magical realms is patently untrue. Especially if you’ve actually paid attention to enough of his history to reference Silver Shield, which is at the center of all this confusing nonsense. Furthermore, though, I am reasonably certain that the doorway to Skartaris is not in the Himalayas? It’s in the Arctic, right? Or the Yukon, maybe? But, like, that’s the whole premise. And looking at maps of it, there’d presumably be a second opening in the Antarctic or close to it, but certainly not the Himalayas. And… long story on this, but ultimately the resolution is… “lol, turns out mordru was here all along, and he’s actually a pretty cool guy,” which, what?
Supergirl is frustrating. After some more of Alura being the worst, it shifts to the one subplot from the previous year I was actually finding compelling, Lana being sick. Well, turns out, that’s just the gross fetishy “Insect Queen” plot from ’08 sneaking back up and it all pops up and is promptly resolved in the middle of otherwise vaguely New Krypton-related things.
Superman is also surprisingly okay, again with the oddity of the Superman title not featuring anyone named Superman notwithstanding. It’s surreal for me that the best parts of this era are by James Robinson while also actually being concurrent with Cry for Justice. I don’t know how to deal with that.
Going into Last Stand of New Krypton, I gotta say all these random undercover Legion people are starting to lose me. Like, not in my usual “I have zero investment in the Legion and get cranky when they start messing around in the present,” way, because that’s my secret, Cap; I’m always cranky. I mean in a “This is extremely silly on its face even if you do like these characters,” way.
At least Lois is finally doing things. She’s been sidelined really aggressively in this story when, given the utterly baffling decision to make her father and sister the big bads, you’d think she’d have more to do. Even once she does start to get involved, she’s more in the sidenote that is Action Comics’ plot, and on the main threads just gives the readers recaps sometimes.
I also still feel like Sam Lane, Evil Mastermind takes away an interesting indirectly antagonistic supporting character in favor of a bland villain who is pretty interchangeable with a lot of others in both means and motivations. And I guess Lucy’s not dead (you know, after Kara deliberately murdered her), but she doesn’t do much other than be evil and crazy and then lose fights off-panel, so honestly death might’ve been merciful. On the part of the writers, not Kara. Kara actually is evil and crazy.
Anyway, this overall New Krypton saga involved seven separate titles (by four writers, but in various continuously-shifting combinations). Three of those titles (World of New Krypton, Last Stand of New Krypton, and War of the Supermen) were created solely for the overall arc, and successively replaced each other with different teams and formats. One, Adventure Comics, was added to the rotation in the last two months or so of the story arc, and contained random, shifting collections of stories, I guess to bring in Superboy and the Legion, but basically feeling like a sort of catch-all for random stuff they didn’t have page count for anywhere else, with the one or two threads that seemed to continue between issues ultimately not going anywhere. Action Comics is included in the shared numbering on the covers that’s supposed to help you follow the reading order, but its plot has absolutely nothing to do with any of the other titles (again, other than the bare-minimum effort necessary to get rid of all the characters from it in War of the Supermen). And there was at least one part this year, and I think it happened before, when they changed the order you’re supposed to read the titles in between months. Or during a month, actually; they somehow squeezed two issues of something in a row in there or… something like that.
Basically, it took a lot of homework just to figure out how to read this mess. And the bulk of the plot winds up just being an indirect origin for the Legion, which would be a lot less obnoxious if they’d had literally anything to do with it until the very last minute.
And, honestly, even Brainiac kind of comes out of nowhere. Like, he was clearly important to how this situation was created, but completely extraneous to the conflict in the whole middle part, so everything has to get paused while everybody fights robots for a while. Like, a long while. We get fourteen issues of “punch Brainiac” and five issues of “actually resolve the General Zod vs. General Lane plot this has all ostensibly been building to for like two years.”
And, like, I wasn’t kidding myself that this was going to end any way other than just all the Kryptonians dying again, but it’s kind of an abrupt board-clearing after putting so much work into establishing them as a current, relevant presence. And, like, Sam Lane just Alderaan’d an entire inhabited planet and basically nobody is going to care or mention it again before the reboot.
Overall… I wanted to like this, actually. The scope and depth of this format is cool. It’s frankly more exciting than most of what’s going on concurrently in this era. It made me actually care about Krypton, which any number of attempts by previous writers have utterly failed at. But that doesn’t really mean it’s necessarily good at any point. Because there’s not really any part of it that isn’t pervaded with… just… incredibly stupid decisions?
And then there’s the subsequent runs. Have I mentioned that this was a lot?
Straczynski’s “Grounded” arc in the Superman title has been widely mocked, and it deserves it. Clark is being kind of a dick. Like, first he got sad because he was too busy trying to keep 80,000 people he’s personally responsible for alive to keep one guy he doesn’t know alive. And his solution is to walk around and condescend to people about problems that, sorry, no, really are well under his pay grade? I’m just saying that there are a lot of people who can fix a car, and only a few who can punch Brainiac. So, whatever grand principle he thinks he’s proving by cleaning a diner’s storeroom feels pretty hollow. And, like, there ought to be something at least basically charming about Superman helping people with mundane, personal problems of varying severity, enough that I might forgive the Bizarro logic that segued into the premise. The trouble is that he comes across even more aloof and condescending doing this than he ever did flitting around space and punching Mongul or whatever. Don’t worry, little people. Superman is going to come by and make a Speech, and it’s going to put your little problems into context for you. Or he’s just going to bully you until you stop questioning him. Hope you like a supersonic flight into orbit, mildly annoying reporter. I get that it’s trying to be the next Hard-Travelin’ Heroes, but Hard-Travelin’ Heroes was annoying too. Also, Dick makes a good effort to talk sense into him, but I liked Bruce’s version of this lecture in Justice League Unlimited: “Those giant monsters you don’t fight? They tend to step on little guys.”
Cornell’s Luthor-focused stuff on Action is… well, I think I’ve said this before, and if not, I’m saying it now: A good rule of thumb for Superbooks is that the most interesting thing happening at any given point is whatever Lex Luthor is doing. At this point, that is an extraordinarily low bar, but the rule holds true. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s certainly more interesting than Superman taking a walk.
In the Jimmy Olsen backup… uh, you realize that Jimmy was actually doing quite a bit while Superman was off-world, right? And did have a girlfriend for a bit of that stretch, but not the same one? I just, what? Who the hell is writing- Oh, Nick Spencer. That… actually checks out. Some superficially good laughs paired with utterly infuriating illogic and lack of attention to what literally anyone else is doing lines up pretty well with his Captain America work. Just didn’t realize he’d ever inflicted his unholy presence on DC.
1,338.
Detective Comics: 12 issues from 1940
Anthology
First off: Whenever I go back to Golden Age books, I always think I’m prepared for how racist the ‘40s were, and they always still manage to exceed (or… fall short of, depending on how you look at it) my expectations. Even the material that’s of comparatively highest quality comes with a big fat “Of Its Time™” asterisk. I’ll just leave that point at that.
That aside, I guess I’ll approach it this way:
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The Batman, by Bill Finger: I love how the narration more often than not refers to the Batman as “the Batman,” bolded and with the “the.” Obviously there’s quite a bit of the Batman in the the Batman stories, so you’ll get multiple references on a single page to the Batman, just in case you forgot that you’re reading about the Batman. The Batman is genuinely probably the best-written feature, though, in terms of having reasonably varied and memorable plots. In particular, I’m kind of poking around for interesting villain deep pulls, but the useful villains here are… so good that they’re still famous? Like, about six issues had notable villains who weren’t just random killers or gangsters: Hugo Strange, Tony Zucco (kind of a random gangster but one who people actually remember), Clayface, the Painter of Death, the Joker, and Hugo Strange again. Only the Painter of Death never recurred, and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that he pretty unambiguously dies at the end of the story. But by comparison, I wouldn’t say any other feature managed to have more than one or two even vaguely notable villains. Finger does have a habit of setting up murder mysteries, giving you several obvious suspects and one guy who gets disproportionate focus for not being suspicious in any direct way, and then expecting you to be surprised when the odd man out is the killer.
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The Bart Regan- I mean, uh, Bart Regan, Spy, by Jerry Siegel: This should be good, but it plays out exactly like the others, except the culprit is always a sinister foreign saboteur (frequently from Germany A nonspecific or fictional foreign nation which is a combatant in a nonspecific or fictional overseas war against a nonspecific or fictional American ally) instead of merely usually being one like all the other features. I do like the story where Bart swims several miles through the ocean, and at the end his pocket square isn’t even out of place. Suck it, Bond. And the bizarre goldfish fixation of the villain in the last issue of this year.
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There are only a couple of Buck Marshall, Range Detective stories (by Homer Fleming), but they’re both actually pretty clever.
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The Steve Malone feature (writer uncredited; Gardner Fox did at least a couple of them) doesn’t often do much with the fact that he’s a district attorney, and most of the time has him just rushing out with a gun to investigate crimes like all the other detectives. Shoutout to the story where his plan for catching some extortionists and kidnappers is to hire some guys to do extortion and kidnapping. Like, he just… becomes a gangster.
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Speed Saunders (writer usually uncredited; again, Gardner Fox did at least a couple, and I think Fran Miller, credited on the last few, might be a writer and not an artist since the wiki lists Ed Winiarski as the artist) is dull, though I am amused by how many times getting shot in the head turns out to be only a minor inconvenience for him. I’m not sure how Golden Age writers thought either bullets or heads worked such that a grazing hit can render someone unconscious but not cause any permanent damage, and such that this happens frequently in multiple features (the other one I saw this in was Steve Malone, so it might be a Foxism).
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Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise (by Sven Elven) isn’t bad. The weird lettering makes it hard to read sometimes, but he’s a bit less generically hard-boiled than most of these others.
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There’s not much of Bruce Nelson (by Tom Hickey) this year to judge it by.
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Slam Bradley (by Jerry Siegel) is probably the Batman’s only rival in terms of actually having vaguely readably acceptable quality, mainly because this one has a more comedic tone and is actually pretty funny sometimes. Actually makes modern Slam look kind of weird, because Brubaker took like the one Golden Age Detective Comics guy with a distinct personality and then completely changed it.
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The Crimson Avenger (one by Jim Chambers and the rest by Jack Lehti) is… wow, not even pretending not to be a Green Hornet knockoff, is he? He even has a gas gun. Still, probably one of the more memorable features, at least? Though Wing is a bit, um, yeah. I mean, all of these features get a bit, um, yeah, at some point or another, but Crimson Avenger has an uncomfortable racial stereotype in the main cast instead of just half of the villains of the month. Not that Wing is shown on-panel or gets dialogue all that often. Mostly it’s just Lee barking orders at him somewhere offscreen. Not sure if any of that is better, worse, or lateral. On another note, I love that whenever a line of dialogue is short enough, it will be rendered in BIG FONT, making it look like people are shouting everything at the top of their lungs, especially when otherwise ostensibly trying to be stealthy.
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Cliff Crosby (by Chad Grothkopf) is kind of hilariously bad. The plots are complete over-the-top nonsense, action scenes are strung together in rapid succession with increasingly contrived setups (like when he falls out of a plane and gets into a knife fight with a shark that has nothing to do with anything), his job seems to change every month, he’s racist even by this era’s low standards, and frankly, the art sucks. Or, like, he’s not the only character here to have a previously unseen table lamp (with no power cord!) conveniently materialize in his hand so he can throw it at someone who has a gun trained on him. But he’s the only one to find such a convenience on a submarine. As of September, he’s apparently “Young America’s Hero,” whatever that means, and, separately, rather disconcertingly blasé about discovering that his enemy is a skeleton. And in the next issue, he is able to recognize vampire tracks on sight despite the vampires in question not being noticeably anatomically distinct from humans. Also, in the first issue he appears in this year, he’s a reporter. This is not mentioned again for most of the year, until the December issue, when he’s suddenly a publisher. No, there’s no indication that he’s doing anything newspaper-related in the intervening period, but he is ostensibly variously an actual detective, a test pilot, a polo player, a spy, and a castaway at various points.
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Red Logan (writer unknown for certain, but there’s some reason to think Ed Winiarski wrote a chunk of it) is just kind of average as these features go, not doing anything super interesting or outrageously wrong for the most part. Shoutout to Doctor McKay, the police chemist from one story, though.
Dude got all of that from a hat. That’s talent. Shoutout to, in the same story, Commissioner Ryan personally making arrests, conducting ballistics tests, and interrogating suspects. I thought Jim Gordon played detective too much for someone with an essentially bureaucratic position, but he’s got nothing on this guy. Between that and asking a reporter to help investigate the case, the Department must be really short-staffed.
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Larry Steele (writer unknown) brings in some uncomfortable gender stuff for variety by having him really aggressively hitting on like every woman he sees.
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The short prose stories (by Richard Lawlor, Richard Martin, Gardner Fox, John Randall, R. Emmett Pace, Frank Cooper, Sean McDougal, Clem Gordon, and Dale Conroy, respectively) are usually solid relative to their brevity, but I don’t have much to say about them.
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There are also some stray one-page comedic strips sprinkled around, usually of dubious quality at best.
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