DC’s The New 52 – cool or not cool? Part 1/2

In September 2011 – two years and eight months ago – DC started this New 52 thing. So it’s hardly “new” anymore, but they still put “The New 52” on their comic book covers. Maybe this time is as good as any to ask: was it all worth it?

First of all, what is The New 52? Some people call it a relaunch, or a reboot. Essentially, though, it was a renumbering: all of DC’s monthly comic book series were set to “#1” in September 2011. Therefore, Action Comics #904 from August 2011 is followed by Action Comics #1 in September instead of #905. Likewise, there is no Detective Comics #882, and so on. This seems like a risky idea, but commercially, it worked wonders for DC, at least in the beginning. By now, it looks to me as if the sales boost effect has waned, judging by the estimates published on The Beat, for instance (see e.g. this column by Marc-Oliver Frisch on DC’s July 2013 sales).

Back in 2011, the goal behind this move seems to have been to make people start reading DC comics who had not been reading them before, advertising the new “first” issues as good “jumping-on points”. The problem with these #1 issues was, they were not actually “relaunching” or “rebooting” their respective series, at least not in my understanding of these terms. A proper relaunch or reboot would have been to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch by introducing the characters and their settings again, without relying on knowledge that readers have acquired through other, previous material. Although the creative teams of each series changed and new story arcs began, it was never clear how much the new series built on the old continuity, or to what extent that backstory would be retconned. Later, DC tried to alleviate this problem and fill in the blanks through events like “Zero Month” (or the current “Secret Origins”). At any rate, I don’t think DC did a good job at catering to new readers (probably in order not to lose their old core readership), as I will show in this two-part blog post using the example of six number ones from The New 52. Here are the first three, in no particular order:

The Flash #1

Language: English
Authors: Francis Manapul (writer/artist), Brian Buccellato (writer/colourist)
Publisher: DC
Released: 2011-09-28
Pages: 20
Price: $2.99
Website: the links given on the DC website are all broken.

I picked up the first Flash trade paperback mainly because of Marc-Oliver Frisch’s glowing review of #1, and because I wanted to see how this unusual creative team setup (writer plus writer/artist) worked out. The merits of this comic aside, it’s not a particularly good jumping-on point for readers unfamiliar with its eponymous protagonist. The title page on p. 4-5 briefly tells his origin story:

Struck by a bolt of lightning and doused in chemicals, Central City police scientist Barry Allen was transformed into the fastest man alive. Tapping into the energy field called the Speed Force, he applies a tenacious sense of justice to protect and serve the world as The Flash.

Seriously? Lightning? Chemicals? “The energy field called the Speed Force”? We’re in the 21st century now, but this reads like some Golden Age origin story full of magical thinking. And it doesn’t explain where Barry got his ring from, from which his costume somehow emerges and wraps around him. The Flash’s basic superpower – speed – is easy enough to understand, but on p. 8, he uses two secondary powers that aren’t as easy to grasp: levitating things by producing vortices from his hands, and vibrating through solid objects. Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato surely didn’t make these things up, but that is of no help to the new reader.

For readers who are somewhat but not overly familiar with The Flash, it may be confusing that there’s this character called Iris West, hinting at the possibility that Wally West, another Flash, might still be introduced later in the story to complicate things further. Another weak point of this story is the characterisation of Barry, or lack thereof. In the next few issues, the supporting character Manuel seems more fleshed-out than Barry.

Batman #1

Language: English
Authors: Scott Snyder (writer), Greg Capullo (penciller), Jonathan Glapion (inker), FCO (colourist)
Publisher: DC
Released: 2011-09-21
Pages: 24
Price: $2.99

From its launch up to now, Batman was always one of the best-selling comics book series on the American direct market, regularly outselling all other series except for new launches, crossover events or other special issues. (On the other hand, it is the only series with estimated monthly sales consistently over 100,000 copies, which says a lot about the current state of the industry.) It probably couldn’t have enjoyed that success on the basis of its title alone, so I eventually read the first TPB and wasn’t disappointed: Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo did craft a gripping story.

It is also a story that is accessible to new readers, although it may help to know who e.g. the Joker is. There are only two scenes that might be problematic for the newbie: one is Batman fighting a multitude of villains at Arkham Asylum at the beginning of the comic, some of which are quite obscure and “wasted” as extras in a melee. The other is the brief introduction of the “Bat-Family”: Dick Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing, Tim Drake a.k.a. Red Robin, and Damian Wayne a.k.a. Robin. Only one of the three is relevant to the story, so they’re only introduced here for (intra-New-52) continuity’s sake.

Animal Man #1

Language: English
Authors: Jeff Lemire (writer), Travel Foreman (penciller), Lovern Kindzierski (colourist)
Publisher: DC
Released: 2011-09-07
Pages: 20
Price: $2.99

Animal Man is another comic that I only bought in collected form, probably around the time of the crossover with Swamp Thing. Jeff Lemire is, beside the aforementioned Scott Snyder, the other new “superstar” writer to emerge from The New 52. That status, however, wasn’t enough to prevent the cancellation of Animal Man with #29 two months ago.

Initially, Animal Man’s superpower was to temporarily gain one single ability of one single nearby animal, e.g. strength from an elephant, or flight from a bird. A goofy but fun concept. Later (but still before The New 52), he gained the ability to take on powers from all living beings, not only those nearby. That made him one of the most boring superheroes ever, as he can now at any time gain superstrength and flight etc., like so many other superheroes.

In Animal Man #1, this leads to clumsy storytelling by way of internal monologue in captions, such as “I just take on the weight of a bumblebee”, or “I reach out and grab the napping ability of a cat” (p. 14). Anyway, unfortunately for new readers, the story in this issue isn’t so much about Animal Man and his powers, but rather the beginning of an arc that puts Animal Man’s daughter Maxine in the foreground as the “avatar of the Red”. This new metaphysical concept of the three struggling primordial forces, the Red, the Green and the Rot, is relatively well explained in the following issues, but it overshadows Animal Man as a character.

Another potential problem with this comic for old and new readers alike is Travel Foreman’s art, which is certainly distinctive with its expressive lines and scarce but heavy cross hatching. I for one never got used to it. Readers already familiar with Animal Man will notice how similar the setting is to that of Grant Morrison’s acclaimed run from the late 1980s, with a focus on Animal Man’s domestic life with his wife and two children. This raises the question, though, how these runs are interconnected, or why all the familiar characters are still the same age as back in the 80s, even though the story is clearly set in the present day.

For two other interesting takes on The New 52 and its convoluted continuity, see Vaneta Rogers’s blogpost “The NEW 52 Two Years Later: The Reboot’s Biggest Surprises” at Newsarama and Paul C’s “The New 52 Continuity: It ain’t so bad!” at Last of the Famous International Fanboys.