Posts

Frankenstein: Ray Palmer

Image
Since there is nothing really new being released with Frankenstein I figure that I might as well cover some of the supporting characters that appeared in his stories or are somehow related. And what better place to start than with Ray Palmer? Now, I can see someone raising an eyebrow here. After all, Ray Palmer is classic Silver Age character with many appearances and solo stories. Meanwhile Frankenstein had like a decade of prominence and now is fading into obscurity. Well, regardless of that Palmer did appear as a supporting character in Frankenstein's ongoing and was attached to SHADE during New 52 era. But we'll start a bit earlier. Just like with Frankenstein and Creature Commandos during Flashpoint, Lemire actually wrote Ray Palmer before New 52. After All-New Atom flopped for one reason or another DC decided to try again with Ray Palmer as Atom with Nucleus storyline. This story starts in Brightest Day: The Atom #1, then continues as backups in Adventures Comics #516-521
Post a Comment
Read more

From Morrison's mind: Freedom Fighters

Image
Mastermen of Earth-10 was not the only revamp of Freedom Fighters that Morrison did. After Infinite Crisis DC (or just Didio?) wanted to launch new FF series set on main Earth. I guess it is a good thing that Multiversity and Morrison's Mastermen series were delayed for years or it would have caused some confusion. So anyway, Morrison came up with some ideas for FF series set on main Earth that were latter used, changed and developed by writing team of Gray and Palmiotti (GP). Was it any good? The whole thing starts in Infinite Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven mini. It is one of those mini series that try to address some plot points from recent event and set up new plot point for future storylines. It was followed up by Brave New World one-shot that set-up multiple new DC series. In these two books we got a basic set up of Freedom Fighters being in opposition to Father Time and SHADE.  So Morrison wrote FF proposal and we also got another Morrison's concept in the sam
Post a Comment
Read more

Multiversity: Countdown

Image
Multiverse was back after Infinite Crisis and 52 weekly. Supposedly the idea was to follow it up with various multiverse based books by the writers of 52 weekly. For one reason or another this never materialized and instead multiverse was heavily used in Countdown to Final Crisis weekly. Countdown, at this point, is regarded as one of the worst things that DC has ever published, but maybe multiverse related bits in it were decent? Lets find out. When I first started thinking about this post I figured I'd cover all the different Earths showcased and what was cool or bad about them, but at some point I realized that it would just be a waste of words. Instead I'll just cover things that aren't terrible or are somehow related to Morrison's work. If something is not mentioned in this post then assume that it is real bad. Thank god that Flashpoint erased all of it since with Morrison being Morrison it is probably safe guess that most of the bad and stupid stuff that happened
Post a Comment
Read more

From Morrison's mind: Death of The All-New Atom

Image
So what happened with our new Atom after Simone's run ended? Looking at the title of this post we can already see that fate wasn't kind to Ryan. But before we get to that we have to cover few other things. Simone's run had two fill-ins and they were good fill-ins. Good in a sense that they advanced the main plot of the series and their one and done stories weren't bad. But I didn't find the main plot well executed even before Countdown derailed everything. If you liked what Simone was doing then they are worth checking out, otherwise? Not really. After Simone left we got a new writer - Rick Remender, and I'm not sure what DC was really thinking here. Simone's run didn't end with good sales numbers so were they really expecting that Remender, who wasn't well known at the time, was going to turn the ship around in couple of issues? So what happened is that the title got canceled after 5 issues. But were those issues good? It is hard to judge them since
Post a Comment
Read more

From the Batcave: Batwing of Africa

Image
Batwing, David Zavimbe, was basically African Batman that Morrison created during Batman Inc. Not much was done with him there, but as is usual with Morrison's work there were enough bits and pieces that could be explored and built upon to something interesting. So New 52 happens in the middle of the Batman Inc. run and DC felt like it was a good opportunity to try him out as a solo hero. Did it work? First red flag for me was that Winnick got to write this ongoing. I know that he has his fans and some of his stuff like Red Hood turned out to be big commercial hits, but his work really never clicked for me. On the positive he got Ben Oliver on the art who I tend to enjoy. So yeah, I wasn't very thrilled with the creative team, but I was interested enough to try it. Unfortunately, while he still has the same name and is based in Africa it does feel like this is entirely different character. Maybe editors wanted this, maybe Winnick wanted it. Who knows, who cares. At the end of t
2 comments
Read more

Multiversity: Teen Justice and E-11

Image
This mini was main motivation for me to start these Multiversity posts, yet I'm getting to it only now, why? Well the main reason is that I'm not very familiar with Titans and Young Justice franchises (I guess they are one franchise by this point?) and I never found them very interesting. So I figured that I might talk a bit about E-11 in general as well. I'm sure that there are some old stories where gender flips where first used (after all, what is Supergirl if not a gender flipped Superman?), but it is generally considered that the roots of E-11 are in Loeb's Superman/Batman run, issues #23-24 to be more precise. Loeb doesn't do much really with it there, just shows us few gender flipped characters and writes some things that don't really make much sense if you spend 5 minutes thinking about it. But to be fair Loeb never intended for it to matter, it was just a silly idea to fill some pages. After that we got an expansion on this idea with Search for Ray Palm
Post a Comment
Read more

JLA Presents: CSA

Image
After I finished writing about Busiek's Trinity work I figured that I might as well cover the remaining Morrison's CSA appearances. After all, there aren't that many left. We probably should start with some trivia. First time Antimatter CSA was mentioned was in 1992's Double Trouble (Justice League Quarterly #8) story by Mark Waid. That is some years before JLA: Earth-2, so were they actually created by Waid and not Morrison? Not really. CSA gets only one panel cameo and they look nothing like Morrison's version, their looks are closer to classic version of CSA. Anyway, the point of the story was to introduce Conglomerate team from Antimatter world. I guess idea here was that new version of Justice League could use their own version of CSA? In the end it doesn't matter since they never appeared again. Before I started writing about CSA in my mind I had Syndicate Rules as #2 and Casey's "Mirror, Mirror" as #3, both after JLA: Earth-2. But cool thin
Post a Comment
Read more