The Book of Hsssh

On paper idea of Convergence Brainiac is rather simple, if regular Brainiac collects cities from doomed worlds then maybe there is super Brainiac who collects cities from doomed realities? But according to Jeff King, the writer of Convergence, this idea came from Morrison during a conversation with DiDio and King. So what happened next? Entire thing started in Futures End weekly series. Brainiac was treated like the big bad until Brother Eye came out as the main bad guy. Nothing really wrong with that, problem was that we got multiple versions of Brainiac. One version is present in Frankenstein's story. Brainiac there isn't very unique or interesting. Key point I guess was that this is the real Brainiac while everyone else is just a shell, or something. It is a common trope with robotic or artificial beings - reveal that everyone you fought before wasn't the real deal. I liked Frankenstein's story and Brainiac played his role fine, but it wasn't something spectacula...

Morrison's JLA run was a big deal back in the day. So it is not surprising that we got a number of spin-offs that were connected in some way to what Morrison was doing. Many of them were bad like JLA: Paradise Lost that focused on Zauriel. Even Aztek, despite Morrison's direct involvement, never really became a must-read for me. So I was not in a rush to try Hourman's ongoing when many shorter stories weren't any good. And on top of that it was written by this Peyer guy. What was my problem with Peyer? I tried his JLA: Tomorrow Woman and thought that it was terrible. He did write some DC One Million tie-ins and I wasn't impressed by them either. Then there was this interview about the time he was editing Morrison's Doom Patrol where he basically says that he didn't understand it. And he is going to write an ongoing using Morrison's character? Thanks, but no. On the other hand it was drawn by Rags Morales and some people with decent comics opinions kept ...

These days when writer wraps up his run toys are usually put back into the toybox so that the next writer could do what he wants instead of being forced to continue the previous run. But just as often not everything is wrapped up nicely. Some plot points, intentionally or not, are left open. One such plot point in Morrison's Batman run was Lord Death Man - last we saw him he was captured by Ra's with his blood being harvested for Lazarus pit. So whatever happened after that? While it never gets fully resolved we do get couple of follow ups that move things slightly forward. First there was such a thing as Talon ongoing. Court of Owls was a big hit so naturally we got some related titles out of it. Talon didn't last long and Tim Seeley wrote last two issues (#16-17) that wrapped up Talon's story and at the same time brought back Death Man. Anyway, main characters of Talon, for their personal reasons, invade Ra's secret base where Death Man is being kept and it just h...

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...

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 sa...

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 ...

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...