The Book of Hsssh

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...

Doomed was one of those crossovers that went way too long and derailed Action and Superman/Wonder Woman series. But we all probably have some stories that we know aren't very good, but for one reason or another we like them. Doomed is one of those for me. And well, I'm not going to try to persuade anyone that it is worth getting or totally key event in Superbro's life. I got something weirder instead. As any totally not insane person I sometimes wonder how to improve a flawed story. And Doomed is, if anything, very flawed. So I did what any other normal person would do - "found" digital files of Doomed and decided to improve it by altering those files. So what follows is a list of changes that I made and my explanation for why I made them. I'm okay with Pak's and Soule's writing, Lobdell and Bedard? Not so much. So one of the goals was to remove as much of their writing as possible since it usually was noticeably weaker than Pak's or Soule's. F...

As we all know, Ryan Choi died and some time later DC did the New 52 reboot. Everyone was younger and many important storylines hadn't happened "yet" so naturally Ryan wasn't around either. This changed during Rebirth when DC did even more weird things with their continuity. As a result Ryan returned as well, but did he really return or something else happened? Many fans, and sometimes DC, claims that with Rebirth DC returned to post-Crisis continuity. But Ryan Choi is good example showing that it is not really what happened. He does get his first few pages in DC Rebirth #1 one-shot and it is obvious immediately that his relationship with Ray Palmer is different. But we didn't get any more information till DC launched Justice League of America by Orlando. And well, there were lots of changes. In fact, asides of his name and nationality I'm not sure if anything at all was kept. And he obviously never died since his "adventure" starts only now. How doe...

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...