The Book of Hsssh

When you ask these days about New 52 Superman people will usually say that Pak took up, or at least tried, the baton after Morrison's run ended. But at the time it wasn't as obvious. Pak was basically going from crossover to crossover and DC did two big Superman launches: Superman Unchained by Snyder/Lee and short run in Superman (The Men of Tomorrow) by Johns/Romita. So why not many people talk about them today? Despite being done by two very different creative teams both stories are somewhat similar. Core of the plot in both stories is about arrival of another "Superman level" character and writers trying to tell something about Superman by showing that he is not just about his power levels. I think that both fail to say anything meaningful, but at least Snyder was trying. Johns just coasted and had Superman being indirectly responsible for a genocide with zero repercussions. Snyder does introduce few additional ideas, but everything is really wrapped up in the run ...

Camelot is an iconic setting so it is not surprising that it is often used to establish a quick origin or background information for various characters, events or magical artifacts. Problem is that it can get confusing and messy when various different characters reference it in very different ways. Morrison obviously had the solution for that. Sure, it doesn't start with Morrison, Barr wrote (with Bolland on art) Camelot 3000 for example. Basic idea is that there have been many Camelots over the ages. You find some inconsistencies or contradictions in Camelot related stories? Well maybe thats because they happened in different Camelots. Morrison's most significant contribution here is that Seven Soldiers mini-event placed this idea firmly in DC's continuity and focused on it in one of its minis - Shining Knight. Alongside explanation that there have been multiple Camelots over the ages we also get a new Shining Knight in the series - Ystina. As with some other characters in...

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 ...