Bore Comics Thread: Crisis On Infinite Megathreads

[bork]

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/06/30/her-name-is-rien-and-shes-wolverines-daughter/

Another one!? 

[Momo]

why.

[kingv]

Wolverine has weak pull out game.

[D3RANG3D]

Eel is pissed off rn in his retirement home.

[Tasty]

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/06/30/her-name-is-rien-and-shes-wolverines-daughter/

Another one!? 

(Image removed from quote.)

Looks like Valkyrie or female Thor... stunningly creative character design right here.

[Tasty]

Fuck, could even be Emma Frost tbh...

[Momo]

That's Valkyrie/Fhor/zatanna lip girl. Blandest design ever

[benjipwns]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[kingv]

That's Valkyrie/Fhor/zatanna lip girl. Blandest design ever

Female Thor is the mom.

[bluemax]

(Image removed from quote.)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Batman makes quips now?

[Momo]

thanks marvel!

[benjipwns]

Batman has been increasingly doing quips since All-Star Batman & Robin's "goddamn Batman" as almost every writer has wanted to parody it at one point. Those are from like 2014.

To be fair, that is an amnesia suffering Batman who just before tried to get Lois Lane to bang while dressed as Batgirl instead of preparing for the massive fight he starts with that motorcycle.

[Momo]

The only time I really see Bats 'quip' is when it's Bats and Cat, I dont really read so much off brand Batman 

[Purple Filth]

To be fair, that is an amnesia suffering Batman who just before tried to get Lois Lane to bang while dressed as Batgirl instead of preparing for the massive fight he starts with that motorcycle.

Wut

[benjipwns]

Tom King's The Omega Men

[Momo]

Tom King's everything

[Tasty]

Tom King's Grayson

Tom King's Batman

[Joe Molotov]

My local Books-A-Million (I assume other stores are doing it, but I haven't confirmed) are clearancing out a bunch of TPB/HC comic collections for super cheap. A lot of New 52 era DC stuff, and I assume the Mahvel stuff is probably similar time period. Saw some cool stuff like Vol 1 & 2 of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol and Vol. 1 & 2 of Alan Moore's Miracle Man mixed in there.

I ended up buying the first five HC volumes of Conner/Palmiotti's Harley Quinn for $1.50 each. They were marked $7.97, then reduced to $3, then 50% off.

[benjipwns]

It's good to see that Robert Kirkman was feeling the same way about the series in his essay in The Walking Dead #193, that hero worship of Rick is lulz. He should have tied that original ending in to one of the time skips.

Still think the prison and not say, Negan or worse, the Whisperers, was the peak of the series. Invincible similarly out ran the plots, and at least there half the people weren't all drawn the same way.

[benjipwns]

Monitoring the Past: DC Comics' Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Narrativization of Comic Book History

comic nerds in academia using historiography as applied to comics internal histories 

[kingv]

It's good to see that Robert Kirkman was feeling the same way about the series in his essay in The Walking Dead #193, that hero worship of Rick is lulz. He should have tied that original ending in to one of the time skips.

Still think the prison and not say, Negan or worse, the Whisperers, was the peak of the series. Invincible similarly out ran the plots, and at least there half the people weren't all drawn the same way.

It’s hard for me to pinpoint the peak, but the first 100 issues was all a pretty good run.

In issue #100 when Glenn died, I was like “fuuuuck, they killed glen”. By the time they tick died, I was like “huh, they actually killed rick”.

[benjipwns]

I still liked it almost all the way through (same with Invincible even if I dislike its time skip a ton) but there was something about that first time it truly felt like they were safe for a while and that some characters were going to be near untouchable, and the prison changed all that. I also appreciate it for how you can see Kirkman first truly grasping just how his villains will be humans and the zombies are best used as background noise that's inserted into things the humans start.

They effectively find a defense against the zombies and they become just a minor nuisance to the day to day life (and even start to become one even outside the fence), it doesn't break until the Governor drives a tank through the fence. Really, it's such an obvious mistake that Rick should have better planned Alexandria for it after seeing it done with a fucking tank.

[benjipwns]

Also, having been catching up on various series through their New 52 runs I need to rescind and modify my statement about DC's art not being as shit as Marvel's, it's much closer than I thought, drawing Batman well apparently is easy.

Look at Diana and Supes' faces in this panel, but especially Diana's, the rest aren't all that great either, Cyborg is doing some weird stuff with his waist:

what the fuck was his reference photo for Diana's head on that body, also look how far down her arm the elbow is lol

bodies bending in general seems like a thing some artists can't do, I've stared at way too many panels wondering if the artist has never seen the 99% of people with a normal spine and hips

this is the next full page panel in the issue:


her face/body goes back and forth between decent like this and whatever is happening in that above image, and it's the same artist, this happens for like five straight issues every other page

the artist also happens to be the husband of the writer

this is also the time they gave Diana that new outfit people got upset about so it randomly disappears after having a big deal made about it meaning something as her being a WOMAN not a GIRL (even though she was never Wonder Girl so...), only nobody seemed to tell the cover artists so she still has it on the covers; they also they make a big deal about Donna Troy getting a new outfit too, then she entirely disappears, it's like a curse

[Momo]

How did i miss this

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/djeljosevic/status/1118180306731712512

[benjipwns]

does a comic exist if nobody's ever read it like Bounty and Kim/Kim?

[kingv]

This seems like some dumb shit to get offended over.

Almost all fiction is derivative. This is like triple+ true in comics of all things, where almost every new concept is “he’s a mix of x,y,z” or “he’s like Y but EVIL” or just “he’s dc’s version of Z”

He’ll isn’t the whole entire point of the squadron supreme is that “they are basically the justice league?”

[benjipwns]

yeah, and the champions of angor/lord havok and the extremists/the maximums are the avengers in dc, grant morrison even made earth-7/earth-8 in the dc multiverse officially earth-616/ultimate marvel (i forget which order) except in name

although the empty hand did kinda take over earth-7 and kill everyone but thor

[Joe Molotov]

[Momo]

[bluemax]

It's good to see that Robert Kirkman was feeling the same way about the series in his essay in The Walking Dead #193, that hero worship of Rick is lulz. He should have tied that original ending in to one of the time skips.

Still think the prison and not say, Negan or worse, the Whisperers, was the peak of the series. Invincible similarly out ran the plots, and at least there half the people weren't all drawn the same way.

I think at some point after the Prison, I realized that the series was just going to be repetitive "humanity is the real monster" nonsense with important people dying any time the sales flagged. Knowing that Kirkman had no planned end point helped as well.

[Tasty]

https://screenrant.com/superman-dc-comic-superboy-future-legion/

Those who have been following Bendis's changes to the Superman line of comics may have also been able to guess (perhaps cynically) that after turning Superboy from a child to a teenager, the Legion will now show up to remove him from Lois and Clark's world completely.

FUCK
BENDIS

[Momo]

bend us sama

[benjipwns]

you guys ever read Alan Moore's proposal for a DC supercrossover: Twilight of the Superheroes? It's been copyright stricken off the internet (which helped confirm it being real) but the internet never forgets of course so...

Neil Gaiman
"Well, your description sounds exactly like the description of Twilight I got from Alan one afternoon in 1986, so I'd assume it's the same thing."

Dave Gibbons
"I've had a look at the Twilight file and have no hesitation in declaring it the real McCoy. I can't recall if I ever actually read it way back then or if Alan told me about it (which amounts to the same thing, content-wise!) in one of our three-hour phone calls. I vividly remember the bit with Dollman in the vivarium!"

Chris Miller
"I have no idea where the original was obtained, but I have an Nth-generation photocopy courtesy of a friend in CAPA-alpha. It's 39 pages long, and definitely genuine Moore. He proposed it circa 1986, right after Watchmen. He worked out everything in tremendous detail, including merchandising possibilities, a springboard for a (then-nonexistent) John Constantine series, and even a very clever time bubble idea that would have 'opened up' DC's single-earth continuity without actually undoing the effects of the Crisis."

Intro: https://web.archive.org/web/19970411102312/http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/twilite1.html

Firstly, as I see the commercial side, taking into account what Paul was kind enough to pass on to me, the perfect mass crossover would be something like the following: it would have a sensible and logical reason for crossing over with other titles, so that the readers who were prompted to try a new title as a result of the crossover or vice versa didn't feel cheated by some tenuous linkage of storylines that was at best spurious and at worst nonexistent. It would provide a strong and resonant springboard from which to launch a number of new series or with which to revitalize old ones again in a manner that was not obviously crassly exploitative so as to insult the reader's intelligence. With an eye to the merchandising that Marvel managed to spin out of Secret Wars, I think it's safe to assume that if it were possible to credibly spin role playing games, toys, "Waiting for Twilight" posters and T-shirts and badges and all the rest of that stuff from the title, then that would be a good idea too. Ideally, it might even be possible, while appealing to the diehard superhero junkie, to produce a central story idea simple, powerful and resonant enough to bear translation to other media. I mean, I know that I'm probably still intoxicated by the Watchmen deal, but it never hurts to allow for these things as a possibility, does it?

A long way to get to the start of his pitch: https://web.archive.org/web/19970411102325/http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/twilite2.html

At some point during his unwanted stay in the future, Rip Hunter has met a twenty-years-older version of John Constantine, who, as ever, seems to be a prime mover behind the scenes in the events going down in this world. Prior to Hunter's escape, Constantine circa A.D. 2000 has told Hunter that he must find and enlist the aid of John Constantine circa 1987, who will help him in alerting Earth's super-people to the possible danger waiting in their future and thus avert it. This Constantine and Hunter proceed to do, crossing over into a couple of current books in the process, or merely making phone calls and writing letters if a guest appearance was too much trouble for the various creative teams involved--they could also talk to a few people in the pages of Twilight itself, this narrative providing the stuff that makes up this linking/framing device, as the two prophets of doom meet different reactions to their tale of a nightmare future waiting to claim the world. The mechanics of this as a crossover device, as explained above, allow all the creative people involved to do or not do whatever the hell they please while still directly or indirectly involving them in the concept of Twilight as a whole. Think how much mileage the Thor writers have got from the idea of the Norse Gods trying to do something to prevent Ragnarok, or fearing that Ragnarok was about to come upon them and I'm sure you'll get the possibilities.

The World: https://web.archive.org/web/19970411102334/http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/twilite3.html

The world of Twilight is not a world where the superheroes have deliberately taken over, but one where they have inherited the Earth almost by default as various social institutions started to crumble in the face of accelerating social change, leaving the superheroes in the often unwilling position of being a sort of new royalty. Even though government and civic authority has all but disintegrated, the various areas of America each have their own coteries of protecting superfolk to look after them, and the superheroes have thus tended to group into clans, each looking after a certain province. There are numerous "Houses" of this nature dividing America up into a kind of feudal barony system effectively, in terms of politics if not in terms of technology, which is as advanced as one might expect by 2000 A.D.

At the time in which our central Twilight storyline takes place, there are eight "Houses", each containing a different superhero clan, scattered across America, although as we shall see some of these are pretty well abandoned or non-functioning in any active sense. I'll deal with these one at a time, and introduce our main characters along the way, House by House.

The Eight Houses: https://web.archive.org/web/19970411102342/http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/twilite4.html

House of Steel
This is one of the two most powerful clans, and it dominates the eastern seaboard around New York and environs. Alternatively, if I change my mind it could be outside America altogether and set in the Arctic Circle, based around a new Fortress of Solitude. This is because the House of Steel consists of the clan founded by Superman--we have Superman himself, a morally troubled figure who doesn't know what's best to do about the chaos he sees surrounding him, but who has come to accept that the Houses provide the only real permanent structure in a destabilizing world and are thus important to maintain. Superman has married and raised a couple of kids, and the person that he has married is Wonder Woman, who has had an identity change to Superwoman to accommodate her new stature--we see the genuine and powerful love between these two in the face of the perils of the world surrounding them and the desire to do what's best. They are also troubled by their two offspring--one of these is a new Superboy, and he's about eighteen when the story opens, and he's real bad news. The other child is a less delinquent Supergirl, a new one who, like Superboy, has been born of the union between Superman and Wonder Woman but who is much kinder and gentler, more her mother's child. Having three members in the Superman class and Wonder Woman (Superwoman) herself, they are obviously a clan to be reckoned with.

House of Thunder
The House of Thunder is the other major power, and possesses members with power in the same class as that of the House of Steel. The House of Thunder is composed of the Marvel family, plus additions. Captain Marvel himself is the patriarch, and is if possible even more estranged and troubled by the state of the world than Superman is, perhaps because the Marvel family are having to come to terms with the difficulties of having human alter egos along with everything else, a point I'll return to when I outline the plot. Alongside Captain Marvel, there is Mary Marvel, who the Captain has married more to form a bona fide clan in opposition to that of Superman than for any other reason. There is also Captain Marvel Jr., now an adult superhero every bit as powerful and imposing as Captain Marvel in his prime, but forced to labor under the eternal shadow of a senior protégé. To complicate things, Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel are having an affair behind the Captain's back, Guinevere and Lancelot style, which has every bit as dire consequences as in the Arthurian legends. The other member of the Marvel clan is Mary Marvel Jr., the daughter of Captain and Mary Marvel Sr. Mary Jr. is fated to be part of a planned arranged marriage to the nasty delinquent Superboy during the course of our story, in order to form a powerful union between the two Houses. Peripheral to all this but perhaps interesting, somewhere in the House of Thunder (which rises up from the middle of Los Angeles over on the west coast, by the way) there are quarters occupied by those characters from the Fawcett universe who can no longer cope with life in an increasingly realistic and difficult outside world. These include a sad and aging Mr. Tawky Tawny and perhaps even Mr. Mind. Please don't laugh... I think I can make it work. The Houses of Steel and Thunder face each other across the country, with the various minor Houses and constellations gathered somewhere in between, vying for the power that's left over after the two major Houses have had their share.

House of Titans
One of the two foremost clans making up this collection of lesser Houses is a clan composed of the remains of the Teen Titans, now grown up and a hell of a lot grimmer and more frightening than they ever were in the past. They are led by an adult Nightwing ...

Other Characters: https://web.archive.org/web/19970411102350/http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/twilite5.html

Okay, so that's about it for the Houses. Not all the superheroes, however, are actually members of clans. Those who aren't in clans are almost totally inactive, and for the most part inhabit one of the rundown barrio areas of either Gotham or Metropolis, both cities transformed beyond anything we've seen previously by the passage of time and change. The way I see it, the scenes in the barrio will take up much of the book and will probably be some of the livelier ones. The barrio is a superhero slum where all the old heroes come to die. As I see it, almost every passerby, shopkeeper and incidental background character there used to be some sort of super character or other twenty years ago. A lot of them are drunks, some of them are hookers or panhandlers; the majority eke whatever living they can out of dead end jobs, while there are a few who have actually adapted to their changed circumstances quite successfully and certain others who still actively carry on their own personal vendettas against injustice, albeit secretly. I'll list these various characters one at a time, mainly because I have fairly specific ideas about all of them that I'd like to get across so that you'll know who we're talking about before I get on to the actual plot. Most of the following have been altered almost beyond recognition, so this is fairly necessary.

The Plot Itself: https://web.archive.org/web/19970411102407/http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/twilite6.html

And that's it. I hope you can see how it's meant to fulfill all the requirements mentioned earlier. There are opportunities for new characters to get a springboard, old characters to get a shot in the arm and all the merchandising you can handle in terms of games and stuff, at least as I see it. The warring Houses idea sounds ideal for role-playing games, or maybe even a video game. The overall continuity is hopefully enhanced without being damaged in any irreversible way, and I think we might get a damn good yarn out of it in the bargain. Anyway, I seem to have gone on far longer than I intended, so I better wrap this up. I'll be looking forward with interest to hearing what any of you have to say about all this when you've had a chance to read it. If any sections are incomprehensible and need clarifying then please give me a call.

[Tasty]

Time bubbles kinda sound like the original idea for hypertime.

[Tasty]

Also the rest of that Twilight pitch sounds like what I had heard of, and obviously you can see the DNA shared with Kingdom Come later on too.

[kingv]

Imo kingdom come is overrated and people only really it so much because of the painted art.

If that shit was drawn by like dan jurgens it’d be remembered about as fondly as Bloodlines.

[Tasty]

Nah I dig the overall plot, the characters' motivations, and how things go down at the end. The epilogue is good too.

I can't say whether Injustice did the same concept but better, however before Injustice it was really the only major "bad future" type work with dubiously canonical status in the DC universe, and that was pretty exciting even years and years after it first came out.

The art is a mastwork though, and I agree it does outshine the rest of the work.

[kingv]

I don’t think Kingdom Come is bad, I enjoy it too and have probably read it 3 or 4 times. It just never really sticks with me.

I probably need to read it again to have a more fully formed opinion.

It’s a hell of a lot better than Planet X though, lol.

That series is super weird and Barely makes sense... also, I think it is canon... or was.

[kingv]

Earth x, not Planet X.

[benjipwns]

Kingdom Come was just a superman story with a bunch of cool character designs. A story that been done a thousand times before.

Earth X was more of a twisted celebration of the Marvel Universe and all it's weirdness. You had Tony Stark turning into Howard Hughes, a broken Captain America bumming around a former America trying to figure out what to do next. Cyclops fighting for mutant rights in a world full of mutants. And the twist at the end was so crazy, it still shocks me too this day.

Plus Mutant Hawkeye is the shit, dead during the story, but still hilariously awesome

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://www.resetera.com/threads/comic-era-is-it-wrong-that-i-think-earth-x-marvel-is-a-better-story-than-kingdom-come-dc.128506/ 

[close]

[Tasty]

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

I like warren ellis so now that I saw he'd actually finished his planned run on the Wild Storm reboot, I read it, and it was pretty good.

I guess its easier to do a universe wide reboot when
a) you have someone who actually has something to say and a plan with where they're going in charge of the whole thing
b) nobody really gives that much of a fuck about that universe in the first place nowadays, so you're not constrained by expectation

e:
but it is fucking strange that he is writing magnificent bastard Henry Bendix as Spider Jerusalem

[benjipwns]

Ellis didn't even miss too many deadlines on The Wildstorm, I think he had much of it pre-planned/written since it was always supposed to be a limited series.

Trying to integrate Wildstorm into the New 52 was a hilarious disaster, especially Stormwatch.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Ellis didn't even miss too many deadlines on The Wildstorm, I think he had much of it pre-planned/written since it was always supposed to be a limited series.

Trying to integrate Wildstorm into the New 52 was a hilarious disaster, especially Stormwatch.

yeah, the wildstorm universe just doesn't fit the dcu main at all, and he's not even trying, so its a pretty interesting take on using all of the elements it always had and doing a from scratch rebuild of its own self contained universe, and I guess it sold enough to get a sequel greenlit

[benjipwns]

I quite liked much of Wildstorm post Alan Moore's rewrite of WildCATS. Especially The Authority and Sleeper.

[benjipwns]

Doomsday Clock #11 is now delayed to AUGUST 28th. Originally was March 27th, got delayed to May 22nd which obviously didn't happen since #10 didn't come out until the 29th. That's after the original delay because it was supposed to have ended in December 2018.

I have no idea how Johns actually resolves this story in a satisfactory way anyway. All the plot points are going to crash together at the end of #11 and #12 will have the JSA sending the Watchmen folx back to their universe and re-establish them as young enough again to play in the DC Universe like after Zero Hour. Nothing is actually going to be truly resolved.

It's amazing how much nonsense they are undergoing because of their regrets of doing New 52 after they did it, and extending it all the way back to undo Crisis. This will be 21 issues (counting Convergence) over four years to erase Crisis with a literal deus ex machina personified while also NOT touching the canon established post-Flashpoint because Johns is too canon-explained-obsessed. The funny part is this is Infinite Crisis repeated again, only like then and like the New 52, nobody's actually going to go play in the Multiverse (OR Metaverse) anyway except Grant Morrison while everyone else ignores what he tees up for them. Plus because of the delays pushing it so far past the "one year later" it was supposed to be they've already established that Doomsday Clock isn't going to be canon immediately anyway, much like with the Three Jokers nonsense.

Best comment:

Superman is hitting Doc so hard his comic is being shunted further into the future in real life

[kingv]

Three jokers will he explained in the 10+ dc universe I guess.

[Purple Filth]

aren't there 2 chapters left of Doomsday Clock?

Also how does it work in the current timeline of the broken source wall, etc 

Comic continuity is a hell of a thing 

[benjipwns]

Doomsday Clock was originally supposed to take a year to produce, and it was set a year ahead of every other book. So that when it finished the other books would have caught up to it in the timeline. Except, this obviously didn't happen as the book has fallen a year behind and now every book has already caught up and surpassed it in the timeline. So DC has kicked it out of canon in terms of not requiring any writers to hold back and wait on it and will decide later what does or does not count about it.

To make a chart of sorts for the purposes of ease I'm ignoring the "sliding time" scale and setting the publishing date as "the present" so when the first issue of Doomsday Clock came out the time periods were:
Every other DC book: November 2017
Doomsday Clock: November 2018

This blew up when they did two delays, so by May 2018, the books were set at:
Every other DC book: May 2018
Doomsday Clock: January 2019

Then when the second wave of delays happened it left a situation where they had already nearly lined up:
Every other DC book: December 2018
Doomsday Clock: February 2019

And now we have:
Every other DC book: July 2019
Doomsday Clock: April 2019

by the time Doomsday Clock finishes, it could be in story timeline a year behind every other DC book, that's why they aren't able to fix the canon, and they can't use any of the story reveals in the other books as it would reveal the Doomsday Clock story so everyone is just ignoring it

I think the canon thing is best illustrated by how clearly DC Editorial has told Bendis he didn't have to kill time waiting on Johns and that he could go ahead and do his Legion relaunch as well as setup his crossover as DC has already setup blocks in the schedule for all of these even though they have no clue when Doomsday Clock is going to finish, there's also been a rumor that DC has another year-long weekly (ala New 52 Futures End, Batman Eternal, etc.) prepped to go that starts this year so they're clearly not waiting on Johns for that

apparently this whole thing may actually be Johns fault, as there's been very few rumors about Gary Frank's art being this far behind, one rumor was that when Doomsday Clock #1 came out, Johns hadn't yet cracked what would be happening in #3 and #4; the rumors weren't too well sourced but if you go back and look at the issues you can see there's a TON of time being killed on the Marionette and neo-Rorschach in those issues and that the issues after Manhattan finally showed up in #7 have totally ignored all these characters

[Tasty]

It was kinda daff to make this whole shebang canon in the first place... I understand that was the point, but you really need to hit a monthly schedule if you're essentially legit holding up the entire line storyline-wise...

Honestly the entire thing kinda feels like an Elseworlds anyways... Probably owing to it being more of a Watchmen sequel than a typical DC crossover event.

[Tasty]

apparently this whole thing may actually be Johns fault, as there's been very few rumors about Gary Frank's art being this far behind, one rumor was that when Doomsday Clock #1 came out, Johns hadn't yet cracked what would be happening in #3 and #4; the rumors weren't too well sourced but if you go back and look at the issues you can see there's a TON of time being killed on the Marionette and neo-Rorschach in those issues and that the issues after Manhattan finally showed up in #7 have totally ignored all these characters

Following the series, this is the impression I've gotten... 3 and 4 were great from an artistic standpoint, and really enjoyable in a vacuum, but yeah "wasting time" is totally apt.

Johns was also the holdup on New 52 Shazam (not Frank), one of the few bright spots around that reboot.

[Tasty]

Also, I believe Johns said himself that they announced Doomsday Clock before he even had a solid plot for it, so I buy that rumor even more.

Edit- Ah it was the Rebirth special when they first hinted at Watchmen. I assume by The Button things still weren't fully in place and they were trying to figure out what Doomsday Clock would be like.

[benjipwns]

The Button was hilarious, literally nothing happened

[benjipwns]

This whole thing after the last few issues has seemed like a lengthy setup to bring back the JSA, but I don't really see the point if Johns or James Robinson aren't going to write it because like nobody else even cares about those characters

I do, I loved the JSA run pre-New 52 by those guys, and it was part of why I liked Earth 2, even as it fell apart after Robinson left, but DC barely touches any of this kind of stuff, Earth 2 was shoved into a storyline ghetto, Earth One has just done origin stories really, they sat on Multiversity when the whole point was to clearly label all the various Earths so people could do series with them, etc.

Oh well, I guess I should take solace in the fact they aren't trying to rewrite and rebuild the characters as ever so slightly different every other year like Superman or Diana or even the extended Bat Family (Drake, Batwoman, etc.).

[Tasty]

The Button was hilarious, literally nothing happened

It was basically telling Batman what the audience knew. I get the idea behind the comic; it's better if the DC characters know part of wtf is happening before shit goes down, but yeah it's basically just a pre-commercial for Doomsday Clock.

"Tune in next time to figure out what the hell this means!"

(It means Watchmen are in the DCU, we know this, we've known this since Rebirth, we know Dr. Manhatten screwing with things caused the New 52.)

Although I will say the latest(?) issue, or the one before, showing

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Manhatten constantly changing things to get different outcomes, and skipping around time with that actor as a framing device --  THAT was fucking great.

[close]

[Tasty]

Oh well, I guess I should take solace in the fact they aren't trying to rewrite and rebuild the characters as ever so slightly different every other year like Superman or Diana or even the extended Bat Family (Drake, Batwoman, etc.).

I'm OK with them rewriting and rebuilding Drake, as each time they do they take a half-step back towards making him the Tim I knew pre-New 52.

Edit- This even sort of includes the dumb "Savior" shit, because that plotline at least still showed him as associates of the same Cassie and Conner as the pre-New 52 Young Justice golden era. And it gave a bit of hope that the Kon-El/Tim bromance that was wiped out by New 52 might come back.

Also that Tec run with the Bat-family was fantastic. That and Batman Eternal show how to make some of these characters really shine, but without anybody hogging the spotlight for too long.

Part of me hopes Doomsday Clock's conclusion pulls a Superman Reborn, just with every character's pre- and post-New 52 selves merging instead of only Superman and Lois. (Though that was building on years of plotlines starting in Convergence...)

Honestly Convergence and DCYOU may have been mega failures, but narratively Convergence is probably Crisis-level with how important it's become and how much it shifted things back in a good direction. Rebirth was honestly just repackaging a lot of that, just with much better marketing and some fans being thrown a bone (Supes' undies, hey-oh.)

[benjipwns]

Yeah, that was probably some of the best stuff in the series so far.

I do wonder how many of those references to Crisis, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint, etc. went over people's heads since the series is selling to more than us hardcores. That issue was based entirely around Manhattan staying static as the DC universe kept rebooting itself and moving forward in time in the real world owing to his confusion. I quite liked the part where he kept getting confused about Clark's birthdate jumping forward every thirty years.

One thing I think has gotten totally dropped is that in Rebirth and The Button, the whole thing was that "somebody stole ten years" except we're clearly far beyond that with what Manhattan is going to do or has done already.

[Tasty]

Yeah, that was probably some of the best stuff in the series so far.

I do wonder how many of those references to Crisis, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint, etc. went over people's heads since the series is selling to more than us hardcores. That issue was based entirely around Manhattan staying static as the DC universe kept rebooting itself and moving forward in time in the real world owing to his confusion. I quite liked the part where he kept getting confused about Clark's birthdate jumping forward every thirty years.

By my count I think the Dark Knights had more references to various Crises, although I think they were slightly more subtle than "DURING THE LAST CRISIS, HERE'S WHAT WENT DOWN."

I think that stuff plays like comic book references in comic book movies; hardcore fans go "oh neat!" but it's just wallpaper to the rest of the readership.

[Tasty]

One thing I think has gotten totally dropped is that in Rebirth and The Button, the whole thing was that "somebody stole ten years" except we're clearly far beyond that with what Manhattan is going to do or has done already.

My assumption has been they're going to soft-retcon that from "someone stole 10 years" to "doc M messed with the timeline and shit and even WE don't know what's changed!!" [insert obvious 'we can redo anybody's origin again' plan to print money]