Project 52: The Aftermath
It’s been two weeks since we wrapped up Project 52’s coverage of the DC Comics relaunch. It didn’t take long for us to start jonesing for more, and so we all got together in a dark corner of the internet, and laid out our thoughts on the relaunch, the comics, and the process of reading and reviewing a hell of a lot of comics. The results, heavily cut down to make them faintly readable, are produced below. How many of your titles will you be picking up next month, now you’re not reviewing them?Michael: Batman and Wonder Woman. Snyder has a good take on Batman and I really want to see how he writes Bruce Wayne some more. I’m a Greek Mythology nut so I like that they’re playing that up in Wonder Woman.Alex: In my case…. Action Comics, because Grant Morrison is Grant Morrison and I want to know where he’s going with it all. Swamp Thing, because it was brilliant and the art was sumptuous.Oh, and probably Wonder Woman and Batman, though I might wait for the digital copies to drop in price after a month. With the exception of Swamp Thing, though, they’re all just out of curiosity of what they’ll do with it.Bret: Animal Man and the Green Lantern one that I’ve already forgotten the name of. The one with Kyle Rayner [New Guardians]. I would also like to pick up Action Comics #1 as I never actually read it.Tim: I think the only thing I’m going back to in singles will be Frankenstein, but I’ll definitely pick up some in trades. Probably Aquaman, Wonder Woman (I’m a myth nut too) and Birds of Prey.Oh – I might do singles for Stormwatch too, but that’s more for affection for the characters than on the strength of the first issue, which looking back was probably weaker than I originally thought. And I’ll steal Bret’s Animal Man and New Guardians. Will you be buying anything when it comes out in collected trades?Alex: I’ll probably pick up the trade of Batwoman, and maybe Justice League Dark if it gets good reviews.Bret: To be honest, now that I think about it I’m probably going to wait till they’re all out in trades. I’ve just never been a fan of singles really. I wanna read the whole story at once, not in parts.Tim: Writing for the trade is a real problem that this relaunch highlighted. It feels like few people know how to write a compelling single issue anymore.Alex: My non-comics-reading friend Geoff was asking about that from reading the reviews, actually. He’s looking for comics recommendations at the moment, but we totally put him off the idea of reading single issues.Michael: I really think this relaunch would have been stronger if the first issues felt complete and managed to hook people. Relatively speaking, we’re all non-DC readers: what preconceptions did you have about what makes DC comics different, and did this impact on your enjoyment?Michael: I think DC is better known for their cosmic stuff now than some of the other companies. Marvel has the street-level characters and DC has the Gods, and those who live amongst the starsBret: DC for me is now summed up by the idea of great powers and some flimsy characters behind them, like we got back in the four-colour days.Alex: My opinion of DC has always been tied up with the idea of convoluted continuity we mentioned in a lot of the reviews. For example, I’ve also been rereading Final Crisis, and while I enjoyed it, I still have no real idea what’s going on or who half the characters are.Tim: It varied from title to title. The two Legion titles were almost completely incomprehensible to a newbie, but I thought something like Aquaman did well by relying on general public perception of the character, rather than lots of continuity nods.Michael: I actually think my very vague perception of Deadman hindered my reading of it in a different way. I was slightly aware of the character from his appearances in the animated DC Universe and yet I was still put off by the amount of time the book spent telling me the new status quo.Tim: It was a tricky balancing act as far as status quo and continuity goes – trying to make things accessible to new readers without alienating old ones, and explaining how things sit in the new relaunch without turning issue one into a flood of exposition. That ties back into the whole ‘done in one’ first issue thing – if you give yourself one issue to hook people in, they’re more likely to stay if Issue #2 is explaining the character’s place in the new universe for all the continuity nerds out there.[Ten minutes are spent grumbling about continuity, the minutiae of how everything fits together DC’s new ‘Five Years’ timeline, and suggesting DC might already be writing themselves into another Crisis.]Bret: …Ultimately though (and I feel this is something DC just doesn’t understand) story is more important in a comic than continuity. If you can tell a good tale, it shouldn’t matter if it lines up with something that happened 30 years ago. That said, there is that weird woman in red. I take it you all spotted her? It looks like she appears in every issue.Tim: Yeah. Maybe a year down the line, she’ll have a miniseries just explaining how all the continuity lines up. I’m sure it will be riveting reading.Michael: Seems like she might be there for DC to take this all back if they need to. An escape strategy. What were your first impressions, and what do you think will be the lasting legacy of this relaunch?Bret: When I heard about the New 52, I wasn’t excited. I just rolled my eyes.Michael: I honestly thought it could be a good idea in theory. If they stick to it. I think it’s one of the best chances comics have ever had to bring in new readers, […]