Loved 100 Bullets, Moore’s Swamp Thing, Sandman Mystery Theatre, and even Watchmen.
But I don’t care for a whole universe of ‘things are tough all over’ and character assassinations just because they represent ‘happier times’ (Ralph and Sue, Ted Kord, Max Lord, Dick Grayson and now Roy and Wally).
I hated New52. Mainly because I bought into it. I bought every single DC comic for three months to give them all a chance.
And I was greeted with so much gore and darkness that the lighter things got buried.
In hindsight, I should’ve just picked a handful of titles to start with. At least then I wouldn’t have been bombarded with impaling, decapitations, bloody entrails and other exciting elements.
But this was DC coming straight out of leaving the Comics Code and they wanted to hit it home that they could be just as Walking Dead as Walking Dead.
Then DC You happened. Oh, joyous day! Grayson pulled me in, Batgirl of Burnside, Black Canary and Gotham Academy ran counter to what DC had been doing and I eagerly picked them up.
And then it was over.
And then Rebirth. The return of Wally. The possible return of the JSA and the Legion.
And then nothing.
And now Doomsday Clock, which was set to complete Rebirth, has been postponed so long that Heroes in Crisis was able to come in from out of nowhere and sideswipe it by ruining the character that initiated it.
I really wouldn’t even mind a brief dip into darkness once in a while.
Those moments can really test a character.
But I think it needs to be balanced with enough normalcy that when the darkness comes there’s a sense of urgency and a feeling that it doesn’t belong there.
A Lot of Wally’s best stories were adventures that we weren’t sure he’d make it back from. Terminal Velocity, Dead Heat, Chain Lightning… At the end (or very near the end) of each of these was a page that showed Wally had finally gone the way of Barry Allen and joined with the speed force. (Usually with a replacement Flash appearing in his stead) However, as Mark Waid once pointed out, The story that usually begins with the words “No One has ever braved the Cavern of Doom and lived to tell the tale”…is usually the story of a hero who does just that!
After Flashpoint and New52 however, this became a much more uncertain thing. It was clear way back then (actually, some would say it was becoming clear even a year before that point!) that there was no room for more than one Flash in Dan Didio’s DCU. Not only was Wally shuffled off to the Back burner, But even Jay Garrick was pushed off the page as well.
When Wally returned, it seemed as if the mistakes of the past were being corrected at last. however, there were still problems…
The Titans always called Wally by his name and not Flash. It was one thing when they were hanging out as friends in their new T-Tower, but even in the thick of a fight with some bad guy. he was always Wally and NOT Flash.
Then he was constantly being given various other problems. His existence was forgotten by everyone and he couldn’t bring himself to just re-integrate himself into the DCU at large. Linda dumped him and after a disastrous timey-wimey misadventure with the Titans, Deathstroke and Jason Todd 2.0 (Damian (robin) wayne, he ends up with a life/career threatening heart condition.
Unfortunately, we go from there to Flash War. Now flash War was supposed to be the ultimate Flash story that brought everyone back…
NOPE!
Oh it re-instated Wally as the fastest Man alive and it did bring about Impulse’s return from the Speed Force, but Jay Garrick, Max Mercury and Jesse Quick were still MIA and Wally ended up getting sent to Sanctuary at the end of it as “damaged goods”
Then we come to heroes in crisis. Wally is seemingly killed along with Roy harper and a few dozen other characters. Then we come to the end and while Wally’s life is saved, his reputation and standing in the DCU are tarnished in a way that we haven’t seen since Emerald Twilight!
So While I don’t mind our heroes facing challenges that test their resourcefulness, courage and limits…There is something to be said for actually letting them come out on top after the story is over.
The problem with Heroes in Crisis is that Sanctuary is just a terrible idea. Wally goes to get help and he gets put into a place with robots and virtual reality. The best way to work through problems is to talk to somebody about it. He doesn’t talk to anybody but a machine. I don’t see how that helps anybody. I read that Tom King gave an interview and Didio told him which characters to use. That still doesn’t mean that he had to make Wally look so bad. He said that Wally is his favorite character, but if you read this, then you would think that he hates him. I don’t thing Tom King knows how to write hero comics. He knows how to write comics, but not about heroes. At the end, how exactly is Wally supposed to get any help. The trinity and flash lock him up, and he’s left by himself. The whole reason why this happened was because he lost his family and felt alone. Now you put him in a prison by himself. Also the whole explanation for the murders doesn’t make sense. It’s like he had no idea how exactly Wally would accidentally kill all these people, so he just said we’ll blame it on the speed force. If you read all of the other comics, that is not how the speed force works. Also at the end of Flash War, it says that time travel is not possible anymore. The whole thing just doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m reading the Flash series from the 90’s, and this series just doesn’t seem to go along with Wally’s character at all. I just wish that we could forget this story and act like it never happened, but they can’t really do that. I really hope that they give Wally his family back and fix this whole mess. Also how it is it that Harley and Poison Ivy walk away at the end of this and Wally goes to jail. If the whole thing is an accident, then the only thing he is guilty of is trying to frame somebody else. There are other heroes who have done much worse, but they’re not in jail. Did they forget how many times that he has saved all of them? The marvel universe just seems to be in a better place than the dc universe right now. The war of realms is going on, but that is a fairly straight-forward bad guys versus good guys. Spider-man is now back together with Mary Jane, and the Fantastic Four are back. In the dc universe we have the failed Bat wedding, heroes in crisis and Ric Grayson.
It’s up there…I recall a bunch of Podcasts dumping on Millennium as a favorite punching bag. It might be interesting to see if this takes over as the new “Slime Central”
Heroes in Crisis definitely doesnt seem to be recieving the reception that Dark Nights Metal, Rebirth, New 52, etc got.
The amount of negativity towards it makes me want to read just to see what everyones all upset about. Its a shame, King seems to be a really big hit or miss with the fans. I loved his Mister Miracle and Grayson and Omega Men series, his Batman kind of lost me.
Doomsday Clock on the other hand seems to be pretty well liked. Its got a near 5/5 Stars on comixology out of quite a bit of reviews. Geoff Johns further cementing his status as a DC Legend.
What I don’t get is that if it’s not well liked, comic book sales were high with HiC every month. It was always in Top 5 or 10 each month. If people stopped buying, it wouldn’t have been completed.
That’s part of one of those sets of arguments where those who don’t like a series really can’t win. It usually follows this progression:
“You heard what the series was going to be about, decided you were going to hate it, and so you didn’t buy it? Prejudging isn’t fair. How can you know you’ll hate it if you don’t give it a chance?”
“You got a few issues in, decided you hated it, and stopped buying it? That’s not fair. You can’t judge it until you see how it ends!”
“Oh, you bought the whole thing even though you hated it? Why did you do that if you didn’t like it?”
Especially problematic when a series is billed as being a Big Event, where people might be getting it just to keep up with what’s going on in the DCU as a whole.
I mean, I get it, voting with your wallet is a thing and it’s important, but it still ends up being a no-win scenario.
Plus…
Diamond’s Sales Charts are based on Retailer purchases three months before the comic ships.
It doesn’t reflect readers buying the comics.
And when Retailers get the second or third issue in and get an idea about how good or bad something is, they’re usually ordering the fifth or sixth issue.
And there are people that have to have any major event.
Characters died in it.
Wally was in it and that linked it to Rebirth and Titans readers.
And Harley Quinn was in it.
And Tom King was writing it.
Some were only buying for the art.
And some people who bought it probably didn’t even read it before popping it into a slab to get signed and flipped on eBay.
@nihilrien.45546 You describe the conundrum quite accurately. I find it hard to not get a whole mini-series after I’ve started (with the exception of “Coming of the Supermen”), because I want to give it a fair shake. After all, in ongoings, there are elements that I might not immediately like, but they may make more sense a few issues later, like during Zero Year, and it appeared Gordon was not as upright a cop as he normally is.
All that being said, however, giving a story until the end hasn’t always improved things. The Eternal series, for example, remained as problematic as ever, and only got worse in some respects where I just cut all Batman-related titles from my pull list. I still own the comics (though I’m sure your hypothetical individual would trying an invalidate that, as well), but that doesn’t mean I like them. If anyone has the nerve to say I wasn’t fair to those stories, they’re confusing “giving it a chance” with “saying it’s good.”