The Book of Hsssh

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...

Once upon a time Morrison gave to DC some ideas on how to update some of their old properties. These ideas would then be developed by other writers. One such case was the ongoing series about new Atom, Ryan Choi, written by Gail Simone. Compared to other Morrison's ideas All-New Atom made the most impact and this led to a somewhat divisive question, who created Ryan Choi? Simone has basically said that she had read only parts of Morrison's proposal and he was mostly created by her. How much can you read for it to still be your creation? Who knows. So anyway, how was Simone's run? It was very Gail Simone. Some weirdness, comedy and characters being horny. Since Ryan ends up dating Giganta we also got some borderline fetish stuff with small guy, big girl panels. I remember back in the day Simone's Secret Six was one of my favorite ongoings, easily sitting next to GL by Johns and Morrison's Batman. But since those years I never really revisited it. And well, this year ...

Second of the new series to have Multiversity branding focused on Harley. Not the character that would come to mind when thinking about multiverse, but thinking outside of the box sometimes leads to interesting results. So, what about this one? The story goes that sometime during New 52 Dan DiDio looked at how well Deadpool was selling at Marvel and decided to replicate that success with Harley. The job was given to Conner/Palmiotti duo and they ran away with it. They revamped the character, made her a bit more similar to Deadpool than she was before and you could argue that they removed some complexity from her as well. Some fans have even argued that they destroyed the character, but since it was a massive sales hit... DC probably doesn't care about that at all. Once Conner/Palmiotti ended their run other writers tried to leave their own mark on the character and while the difference is not obvious I'd say that she is not the same as she was during Conner/Palmiotti run. Anywa...

I remember being rather excited for Futures End weekly and enjoying at least first half of it. Then it collapsed and had one of the weirder non-endings. But sometimes series reads better on a second go. Not this one. Heck, I'd probably argue that it reads even worse on a second go. But we are here to talk about Frank and not the series itself. So, what about Frank? Like every other weekly this one has a core of characters that we follow and Frank with Amethyst are one of them. But unlike others, their story is rather isolated from the main story so they have to deal with less bullshit. I assume that this section of the weekly was mostly written by Lemire because it works well with his Agent of Shade run. Basic idea is that someone blew up Stormwatch's spaceship and Shade sends Frank, Amethyst and Ray Palmer to investigate what happened. During the investigation Frank loses his arm and Ray Palmer figures that the best thing to do is to attach to him Hawkman's arm. Don't ...

Trinity is one of those series that looks big and important on paper, but it is mostly forgotten today. But did it lead to some new things back when it just wrapped up? After the series ended Bagley went to draw Robinson's JLA and one of their story arcs, Omega, featured CSA so that feels like a good place to start. And oh boy, it is real bad. At one point Robinson even mixes up Earth-3 with Anti-matter universe. I wouldn't be surprised if later this story was used as an argument for why going forward DC should use only Earth-3's CSA. It also has lazy plot device of another Earth getting destroyed to make the threat look big and then randomly restored at the end because who cares. Krona was later used by Geoff Johns in his GL epic, but it didn't really have anything to do with Trinity. As everything else in this saga he was revealed to be connected to emotional spectrum. Sadly at this point Johns was already going on fumes and it is all very forgettable. DC tried to cre...

Ultimate Spider-Man, and by extension Ultimate Universe, is probably the main reason why I got into monthly comics. But with time my tastes changed and Bendis went from the writer that I really liked to one of my least liked writers. So I wasn't thrilled when he got the control of Superman's line and new Wonder Comics line was launched. But I really like Dial's concept so I decided to try new Dial H for Hero series. After all, how bad could it get? I didn't really have much experience with Humphries. I read his Nightwing arc before and wasn't too impressed. And this was probably first time I was reading something drawn by Quinones. Well, no, I had read Wednesday Comics, but that was ages ago. Either way creative team didn't inspire much confidence. But this turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Anyway, first collection (or first 6 issues) mostly introduces the characters and sets up things. Writing is okay, it has its charm and does what it needs to do, but...

We finally reached the third and final act of this story. It also ends Busiek's DC run in general so it is kinda important all things considered. So how did it end, with a bang or a whimper? It ends with a... neither of those two? It certainly was not a slam dunk, but it wasn't some disaster either, it is more of the same. And well, if you liked first two acts then not much happens in final act that could change your mind. All the positives are still there: lots of characters, good visuals and strong characterizations. What really prevents this from being a slam dunk is that negatives are still there as well. Biggest of them being padding. I mentioned in previous posts that it doesn't look like Busiek had story for 52 issues and to me the ending is where it is felt the most. Some fights and betrayals feel like they are there only to fill the pages and don't really serve any narrative purpose. In one of the interviews after the series ended Busiek mentions that DC's ...