The New 52: Fifteen Years Later #5
The Launch Titles, Vol. 5: The Dark
Another week, another set of New 52 comics! This time we take a trip down the twisting paths and eerie shadows of the Dark!
I would say this took the biggest swings of the reboot. Outside of Batman, this was the line that I remember being the most popular and acclaimed of the N52. Creators were doing a lot of weird and fun experiments in the main continuity, which we really have not seen since.
Do they hold up? Do they crash and burn? Or is this a very specific niche that I do not have much interest in? Find out now!
@zahri-melitor’s thoughts.
Justice League Dark
Right off the bat, I feel like I’m going to have to justify my take on this one a little bit (yeah obviously AP, you dipshit, that’s the whole point of a review). While I thought this was a perfectly good issue, I don’t have much desire to see more.
I should lead with this: I’m not much of a magic reader. In the same way I don’t read a lot of cosmic stuff, I really am not interested in the magic side of things. I love horror, and the idea of a more twisted Justice League is very appealing to me, but in practice it falls into a niche that I just am not interested in. That’ll be a problem across the board for this slate, but it’s in particular force here.
Everyone on the cover is in the book, so that’s good. I don’t know much about anyone here, aside from Zee and Deadman (who is more of a cameo), but what we get here at least gives me a feel for what’s going on. None of it really lights enough of a fire under me to need more, but we do get it. Shade’s fake girlfriend thing is kind of interesting? She’s like a construct I guess. That’s sort of neat. The plot is revolving around one of my favorite parts of Ostrander/Yale’s Suicide Squad—June Moone and the Enchantress. Love all that lore, but I’d want to have Nighshade involved to get the full experience. Madame Xanadu seems very interesting, but not enough for me to commit to like 30+ more issues.
The art is great, but you can tell this is early Janin. Even by 2016, his art will be even better and more expressive. It’s still far beyond anything I could hope to do, but it does feel distinct from his modern work.
I think this is the only time in history a Superman cameo didn’t get me pumped. Look at him!
That costume is a plague upon the ink. The hair, the new suit, that’s just not Superman after a certain point.
As I said at the start, this is a good book that pretty much checks all my boxes. It’s just not really offering me anything that makes me really want to go and keep reading, but given my current habits who knows if it even could have?
The Verdict: 👎
Swamp Thing
Much like the previous entry, this is good. I think for fans interested in Swamp Thing and not wanting to be like me and go start in the 1970s, this is probably not the worst way to do so.
That said, I think you should read the older books.
Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, those heroes flow with time and mold to the needs of new generations of writers. There’s an expectation that you start with what you’re comfortable with and continue on from there. I don’t think Swamp Thing should be like that.
I think Swampy should be a character who you read from the beginning, from the creators. The book isn’t even that old in comics terms. I think new readers to Swamp Thing should push beyond their comfort zone for the title, and I say that as a newcomer to Alec Holland and his Louisiana bogs.
Now, aside from that, I thought this was quite decent. Yanick Paquette’s art is spectacular (and actually manages to somewhat overcome the New 52 Superman costume). The monsters are appropriately horrifying, while Swamp Thing himself (though effectively a cameo) looks about on point. The mystery of all the animals dying and the reanimated bone monsters is pretty solid.
I’m reasonably interested in how that happened, and would be willing to read a trade’s worth of issues to find out, but personally only after reading Swamp Thing in chronological order. Again, a title that is good, but doesn’t interest me. Though this one is for more complex reasons than just, “I don’t really want to continue on.” It succeeds under my parameters, but I don’t intend on continuing in the near future.
To maintain consistency with the next entry, I’m gonna give it the nod, but again it will not be covered here in the full retrospective.
The Verdict: 👍
Animal Man
And yet again we come to a really good book. The family dynamics are introduced seamlessly and really suck the reader into Buddy’s life right from the first few pages.
Travel Foreman’s art is haunting and grotesque while being simultaneously very beautiful. I am not a fan of the new costume (especially since my favorite color is orange), but it’s not the worst of the New 52 redesigns.
The mystery set up here around Animal Man’s dream and Maxine’s new powers I think is strong enough on its own that I’d say I would continue on regardless; it really is just a perfect hook for the audience. Gruesome, yet strangely sweet. A very fun place tonally to play around in.
This book is a perfect balance of horror and heroics, which is exactly what you’d want from a superhero book in the Dark line. Now, I’ve still yet to decide if I wanted to cover this for the full series retrospectives. I think I’d rather read Grant Morrison’s Animal Man first, mostly since I bought the compendium a few months back and still haven’t made time for it. That said, this book still earns a positive rating from me.
The verdict: 👍
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
Why is Uncle Sam a small child?
…
Don’t answer that, actually, I don’t want to know.
I have some pet peeves that this and a later title fall into that just immediately turn me off. I call it comics mad-libs, where the writer just throws a bunch of cool words on the page and the audience would just say “woah cool!”
Yeah, all those words are cool and comics are cool, but we don’t have any character development here and that is always cooler.
It’s also at odds with the aesthetic, right? This superscience technobabble is better for LOSH or whatever, this book is about classic monsters. Why aren’t they in an abandoned cathedral, or a spooky castle in the Alps? Something with some atmosphere. As it stands it feels kewl for the sake of it.
Aside from that, it just doesn’t present me with a lot to latch onto. I love the Universal Monsters–Dracula is actually my favorite movie ever–but aside from these guys just being cool monsters I didn’t get much from them. There was a taste of characterization, but I’d want a great deal more if I were to spend money on this.
When it comes down to it, these modern day, revamped World War II concepts just don’t really work for me. I think war comics, and specifically DC’s war comics, are interesting. I bought the War DC Finest with the intent to read it. But these context extracted, present-set versions do nothing for me.
The thing that made the Creature Commandos cool was that they were sick monsters who killed Nazis, and they did so in like 8-12 pages as a back-up story. That’s awesome.
A full length comic about the actual Frankenstein monster doing missions for an old man in a little girl’s body with other monsters is…not something I need to read more of, we’ll say.
The verdict: 👎
I, Vampire
Hehe, now we’re talkin’.
I love vampires.
Love all kinds of vampires. Every kind of vampire. Well, almost. Not a fan of the ones from Last Man on Earth. But this is just what I was looking for. A great comic book about vampires. This mixes a few different strains of vampire fiction together. We have a bit of I Am Legend in the big pack of vampires rampaging through Boston in the end, very classic Victorian vampires in Andrew and Mary, and finally we have a bit of Vampire: The Masquerade (which is probably my favorite lore for vampires ever).
Beautiful art by Andrea Sorrentino. Gloomy and macabre, it instills dread in the audience from the very first page. Much like in the Vincent Price classic, every moment has you waiting for the horde to burst forth and crush Andrew. The way they shift into animals or fly up into the sky has a bittersweet quality I can’t quite put my finger on, just something about it strikes that perfect note of “last moment before the end times.” It’s great.
It’s one of my favorite issues I’ve read so far. It’s moody and melancholic and horrifying and haunting and astonishing all in one. Andrew and Mary, lovers to creatures of the night to bitter enemies, are a great protagonist/antagonist duo.
I cannot wait to read the rest.
The verdict: 👍
Resurrection Man
This would have made a sick ass HBO show in 1999, wouldn’t it? Like couldn’t you see that plane crash happening in the first episode of a show about a guy that can’t die?
Well I could.
I guess I’m also getting Supernatural vibes, but I think I’ve seen a total of four episodes so I acknowledge I could be talking shit here.
“AP, are you stalling because you don’t have dick to say on this?”
Why yes, reader, I am because I don’t. This issue was just sort of neat. It was perfectly competent. The art was good, the characters were introduced well enough, and we got a gist for the direction of the arc…but it really didn’t do much for me. I’m just not interested. I can see why someone would be, but personally I have no desire to continue on.
If heaven and hell are gonna fight me over Resurrection Man, they’re free to have him.
The Verdict: 👎
Demon Knights
This is one often held up as one of the strongest titles of the New 52, one of the bright spots from the obscure launch titles, but I will be completely honest with you: I didn’t like it.
Now I am not a sword and sorcery person. I’ve been playing DnD with my friends every week for 6 years, and yet I still don’t care for this genre. I play the game because I love my friends (and because we’re all too lazy to learn a good system). So a DnD-esque book probably wouldn’t appeal to me anyway.
It doesn’t help that there is a lot of exposition, but not much explaining? We get a ton of info, but then we don’t get a lot of context or development. I understand this is the first issue, but like I’m not getting invested if I don’t understand anything? Also it does some comic Mad-Libs at the end and boy howdy that did not endear me.
I can’t even give it that it gives me everyone on the cover, no dip everyone is here! Only Etrigan is featured on the damn thing! In that case this book should have focused on the Demon almost exclusively! Get us to really like Jason and his demonic dual self before we meet everyone else, at least then I’d have someone to latch onto. Not ideal for a team book, but neither is not really favoring anyone.
I’m gonna cut it off here, because I think you all get the gist. I expect this to be my hottest take, but hey that’s how it goes some days.
The verdict: 👎
We are down to the final two slates of books! I’ll be honest, neither of which did much for me either. I’m about to spend the next two parts in mostly negative mode. But we’ll worry about that next time, I think. For now, thank you for reading and I’ll see you in part six!
