The Book of Hsssh

At first I thought about making separate posts for these two crossovers, but there really isn't that much to talk about them. Or not much that I care about to talk. So lets wrap this up in one go. Savage Dawn directly follows Truth storylines and involves all the same titles: Superman, Action, Batman/Superman and Superman/Wonder Woman. And with the same writers, while artists move around a bit. So end result was pretty much more of the same.  If you read Truth then you know that Vandal Savage had bunch of kids and with their help tries to take over the world or something like that. So this story is about dealing with Savage and his various kids that were fighting Superbro in various Truth story arcs. It all starts with Superman Annual #3 that recaps it, provides some connections between Savage and Superbro/Krypton and sets the stage for crossover.  First problem with the crossover is fairly obvious - multiple creative teams don't align very well. And next problem is that the e...

I remember when Michael Lane appeared towards the end of Morrison's Batman Inc. I was a bit confused. I thought he died when helicopter crashed during R.I.P., but he is alive and.. Azrael? Well, turns out he had a bit of focus after R.I.P. that I wasn't really aware of because I never cared about the original Azrael so why would I pick a series about another Azrael?  I don't know anything nor do I care about the original Azrael so I can't say how faithful and compatible this new version was with what came before. So yeah, it all starts during Battle for the Cowl event with Death's Dark Knight miniseries. And I'm going to jump ahead and say that those 3 issues are only ones with Azrael that are worth picking up.  Why? It sets up Lane in his new role and thats all you need for that later appearance to make sense. Irving also does the art and that provides some visual continuity with Morrison's run. As for Nicieza, I'm not a big fan of his writing, but he d...

Just as Superman's books managed to recover, for the most part, after Doomed crossover we got Truth, which wasn't really a crossover, but more like a new status quo for the following year. Regardless it did change things and led to some sad endings. And well, it is not a popular "era" at all, but maybe something decent was published during it? Lets find out. So lets start with the bad. Doing 4 monthlies with a radical change to the status quo - Clark depowered and without secret identity, is hard. You know what is even harder? When clearly creative teams (and probably editors) weren't on the same page and unsure how to approach things. It is not like different books matched very well each other back in the day and today it often feels like, for example, Batman and Detective are happening in different universes entirely. But I'd guess that when you do a new status quo it becomes a bit more noticeable and people in general were ready to nitpick everything DC did...

Evil super science squad on Oolong Island was my favorite storyline in 52. Morrison's attempt to "fix" Egg-Fu was also an important part of it. So lets see what DC later did with the island and Egg-Fu. Let's start with a history lesson. What is Oolong Island and who is Egg-Fu? Both debuted in Kanigher's WW run (#157-158). Basically it is an island on which evil Chinese plot to destroy America, or something like that. You might have heard that it was stereotypical racist propaganda, but I'm not very sensitive about such things. Sadly even ignoring all that it is terrible story with Dianna and Steve having some insane scenes. Not surprising that everyone at DC ignored it till Morrison had an idea to "fix it". Egg-Fu became Chang Tzu and instead of ridiculous he looked a bit more demonic. Did it work? Opinions might vary, but it certainly wasn't a smash hit rework that maybe Morrison and DC hoped for. Anyway, as 52 weekly was winding down Rucka and ...

Morrison rebooting Superman in Action comics was obviously a big thing in New 52. But arguably bigger impact was made in the pages of Justice League when Superman and Wonder Woman started their romance. As often happens with such thing writer of JL (Johns) did very little with it asides of setting it up and alluding that it is a big problem in JLI Annual #1. He left it for other writers to develop, but neither Superman nor WW writers did anything with it till we got Superman/Wonder Woman ongoing. So lets talk about it. Charles Soule has been a hit and miss writer for me. I really like his Swamp Thing and dislike his Red Lanterns. His brief run on Superman/Wonder Woman sits somewhere in the middle and Daniel's art on certainly doesn't hurt. First arc, #1-7, is strongest one since it does mostly its own thing and slowly moves towards Doomed crossover. It doesn't sell the relationship, but I'd argue that it is only time (and #12 with Swamp Thing appearance) where it looks ...

Battle for the Cowl wasn't written by Morrison, but it was important to the overall saga since thats where we saw the origins of the new Dynamic Duo. Naturally it had bunch of tie-ins/specials and two of them had acknowledgement to Morrison. One of them, Azrael: Death's Dark Knight, focused on the surviving fake Batman created by Dr. Hurt. But this time I'll write about the second one - Arkham Asylum. Why the nod to Morrison? I'd guess that was done due Amadeus Arkham getting name dropped few times. Or maybe Morrison passed few ideas as well, who knows. Anyway it focuses on Jeremiah Arkham. He was the director of Arkham Asylum at the time and was obviously related to Amadeus. Besides that we get introduced to 3 new Arkham inmates and hints of interesting things to come.  Story continues in Arkham Reborn #1-3 and Detective #864-865 and is collected in Arkham Reborn trade. Despite the irregular publishing schedule DC managed to keep the same creative team on the entire th...