The Book of Hsssh

At this point mostly everything from Morrison's Action run is forgotten and retconned out of existence. One notable exception is Xa-Du, a new villain introduced by Morrison. He is not a major player in current comics, but he does appear from time to time here and there. So lets have a look if anything interesting was done with him after Morrison's run. First post-Morrison appearance happens during Superman: Doomed crossover. His role is not big there and this crossover is real big so it is definitely not worth getting it only for Xa-Du's appearances. But is it any good? I'll probably cover in a separate post. Anyway, important thing is that Xa-du was written by Greg Pak during that crossover and he'd end up using him in a bigger role. Superman has to face a mysterious enemy in Batman/Superman #16-20 and Batman dubs him as Superman's Joker. In the end it is revealed that Xa-Du is behind everything here, I think that it is a very good New 52 Superman story and you...

From Infinite Frontier till Absolute Power we did get many cameos from other Earths and some storylines that focused on those specific Earths or "big picture Multiverse" stories. I remember being very excited when these projects were announced, but at this point I don't even have enough interest left to cover each of them properly. So I'm wrapping up this "era" in one article. Asides of various cameos we got bigger focus on Multiverse in Suicide Squad series. It had potential, but premise was a bit weird - if you could hunt the entire Multiverse for Suicide Squad members would you really go out of your way to recruit Earth-3's version of Black Canary? But bigger problem was that the series was building up towards War for Earth-3 crossover and as I already covered ... it was terrible. So it all feels like a waste without giving us really anything good in return. Williamson tried to do a big picture Multiverse story with Infinite Frontier, Justice League I...

Morrison's rebooted Superman, often called Superbro to differentiate from other Supermen, ended up dying, or getting absorbed into another Superman or whatever. Good ending is the one where you feel comfortable with leaving character and Final Days or Reborn storylines certainly weren't that. So lets try to find a better place to end things. Easy answer would be to say Action Comics #18, Morrison's run ended and thats where we end things. Or we could pick some random issue from Pak's run and say that this is where it ended. But where would be fun in that? Lets try to go forward as much as we can before we hit the wall. So obviously Final Days ain't it, what else was being published at around same time? Maybe lets start with what wasn't. As the New 52 initiative (and Superbro with it) was ending some stuff got cancelled early or didn't get collected editions. In Superbro's case we got 5 issues that weren't published in monthly format and were added to...

Another mini-series that maybe should have had Multiversity label during Infinite Frontier era was Crime Syndicate. I enjoyed Forever Evil event and CSA characters in it, but unfortunately Johns ended up killing most of them because... Watchmen forced him to I guess. Anyway, since then DC had multiple soft reboots/retcons so I guess someone decided that CSA should get some focus again. First obvious change is the name, America was dropped. In recent years DC has preferred Justice League name over the classic Justice League of America so I guess it makes sense to drop it for Earth-3 version of the team as well. There were many other changes and sadly this was the only one that I was fine with. Without going too much into pointless details biggest changes are new Flash and Superwoman. I was not really a fan of Busiek introducing black Power Ring, but at least I could understand the logic behind it. This time Superwoman is... Donna Troy. She pretty much acts same as Lois Lane did so what ...

Technically Beryl was created during Morrison's JLA run, but I think that she became a bit more well known in the pages of Batman. Her "communication powers" also got eventually downplayed (or removed entirely) so I feel like she is definitely more of a Batman character than JLA's. Her appearances in Morrison's JLA and Batman are obviously must reads for any fan of Morrison, but is there anything else worth checking out? There was Knight and Squire miniseries by Cornell and Hodgkins. It fleshes out their partnership and tries to expand DC universe in UK by introducing (and re-introducing) various characters. Nothing spectacular, but solid stuff and it is not like we can be very picky for content with Beryl. After that there was a guest appearance in Batgirl #22. Again, nothing spectacular, but solid stuff that is worth checking out. As a bonus it works as a set-up for Stephanie getting involved with Spyral in Morrison's Batman Inc. storyline.  A bit of a side ...

Before Flashpoint happened Metal Men didn't really move lots of units, but since Didio is a big fan of them it was only a matter of time before they appeared in this "new" continuity. So how was it and can we trace any of it back to Morrison? I don't know if it was a push from Didio or it was Johns' idea, but Metal Men got their first appearances in New 52 JL book. And it is not a random appearance, but they get a decent amount of pages for 2 part story with Cyborg during Forever Evil event. So you know, high profile debut all things considered. Technically Tina appears several issues earlier in JL #18, but I'm not a fan of Trinity crossover (and the road to it) so I'd say that issue can, and probably should, be ignored. Anyway, Cyborg was removed from Titans environment and he needed new allies and enemies. For enemies we got Grid and Metal Men helped Cyborg overcome it. This was basically their origin story so there wasn't anything Morrison related, ...