It's like the same...but really different.
This summer, DC played host to one of the coolest, most interesting, and game changing mini-series in a very long time. It was called Flashpoint, and even though it’s been over for a couple of weeks (as of this writing), its effects are far reaching, and will be for the foreseeable future. The premise was simple: what would you do if, one day, you wake up to find everything you knew was different? Your long dead mother is alive. Your wife has no clue who you are. Friends that were dead are now alive/alive that are now dead. Other friends are literally at war with each other. What would you do? That’s what Barry Allen, the Flash, the Fastest Man Alive, must figure out. Be warned, there be spoilers beyond this point.
Booster Gold was there, too.
While the primary 5-issue mini-series is phenomenal in-and-of itself, it’s the multiple limited series & one-shots that makes Flashpoint utterly fantastic. It turns a story in a comic book into a fully immersive world. You get to see how all of these characters you thought you knew turned completely sideways (Jason Todd a priest? Guy Gardner a pacifist? Thomas Wayne’s Batman and Martha’s the Joker? Dick Grayson is the new Doctor Fate?). Even better is the bleed over from the Vertigo & Wildstorm Universes, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Well said, Mr. Johns.
While I feel that the only required reading (besides Flashpoint itself) are the Wonder Woman & Emperor Aquaman spin-offs, I found that Frankenstein & the Creatures of the Unknown to be the best part of the Flashpoint Saga. Yeah, I know, right? Didn’t expect that either. In fact, my original gameplan didn’t even include reading that. It wasn’t until I read through a few of the books (and realized how awesome the Flashpoint-verse was) that I picked up Frankenstein. Do you like monsters? Do you like Nazis getting their comeuppance? How about murderous robots? If you said yes to even one of the previous questions, well then, ladies & gents, this is the book for you!
Seriously, who wouldn't want to read this?
As I’ve already said, there was a really cool bleed between what we knew as the DCU, the Wildstorm Universe, & the Vertigo Universe. There were major characters popping up throughout Flashpoint where I had to ask myself “Who in the blue Hell is that?” Well, thanks to a little thing called the internets, I was able to answer that. Apollo (an allegory for Superman from Wildstorm’s Stormwatch) shows up in the Project: Superman story. Grifter, another Wildstorm character, is the leader of the Resistance in Meta-war torn Europe. While new to some people, the addition of characters like this seemed seamless, so even if you didn’t know who these characters were, there wasn’t a problem. BIG SPOILER: In the waning pages of Flashpoint #5, as Barry runs to save the day, a voice speaks to him, telling him that his actions have caused the rejoining of three universes that were supposed to be one, but were somehow fractured in the past. In this scene, the reader was shown four groups of heroes: one of the DCU’s champions, one of Wildstorm’s, and one of Vertigo’s. The final was an amalgamation of the other three, with characters that seem familiar, but somewhat different. And that was the first frame of the DCnU/New 52.
OH SNAP, SPOILERS!!!
The New 52 is an initiative that I was both hotly anticipating, yet very hesitant about. If you don’t know what it is (for shame!), following Flashpoint, DC rebooted all of their books to #1. Now, some of the books will be (more-or-less) business as usual, and pick up from where they left off before the Flashpoint event (Green Lantern, I’m looking at you). There are some books that rewrite history, altering/deleting facts as they go along (Batgirl, what’s up?). Other books are an actual reboot to the series, and play as prequels to the current DCnU timeline (Action Comics plays out a few years before Superman, whilst Superboy takes place before Teen Titans, and Justice League is currently telling its origin story, but will revert to the current timeline).
Also: young Supes rocks the highwaters.
I love reading the books about the heroes as they are starting out. The Superman that we see in Action Comics is a bit of a dick. Hal Jordan in Justice League acts exactly how you would expect a cocky flyboy with a near limitless power ring to act. But, at least so far, for my money, you can never beat Justice League’s young Batman. Besides his reaction to whenever another superhero realizes that he’s just a crazy guy running around fighting crime without powers, his brazen attitude & zest for justice is extraordinarily reminiscent of Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman & Robin’s “Goddamn Batman.”
Batman: The Story of a Delusional Billionaire
Side note: I know he gets a lot of flak for it, but I love the “Goddamn Batman.” I even follow him on Twitter (you should too: @God_Damn_Batman). Most writers portray Bruce Wayne as a master tactician, who keeps a cool head in the middle of a fight. Not Frank Miller. His “Goddamn Batman” is a much more realistic approach. Okay, Bruce Wayne, as a child, witnessed his parents get blown away by either a random mugger or a professional hitman (depending on the continuity). That sh*t would traumatize anybody, of any age. Clearly, Bruce Wayne is some kind of sociopath, as it was there that he dedicated his life to the pursuit of justice. The man trained himself to the peak of perfection in a vast array of pursuits, be it multiple forms of martial arts or detective…ing? Detectiving? Is that a word? Detecting? Whatever. Know what he never learned? Friendship. Manners. Sweet dance moves (Batusi not withstanding). He is unhinged & unbalanced, and Frank Miller is the only writer to give that craziness its due.
THEGODDAMNBATMANLOVESHISGODDAMNBATMOBILE!
But, I digress. Over the rest of September, DC will continue to unveil its New 52, and will, eventually, put new books out. It’s these changes, among other things, that make me feel like DC is single-handedly making comic books interesting again. Even better? There isn’t a major crossover event on the horizon (yes, I’m looking at you, X-Men: Schism, Spider-man: Spider Island, Fear Itself, X-Men: Regenesis, whatever the Avengers/Cable crossover is being called). For the moment, there are/will be 52 new books out by a major publisher that aren’t dependant on the reader buying 15 different books a month, then reading them in a particular order just so don’t miss a piece of the story. Everything old is new again over at DC. Familiar faces, different situations. What you know might be there, but it might not. And that’s fine. It’s fun. Depending on how you look at it, pre-Flashpoint stories had between 25 (Crisis on Infinite Earths) & 75 (the birth of DC) years of continuity to deal with. With the DCnU, writers & artists can pick and choose what stays & what goes. They don’t need to worry about staying true to the canon. They’re creating the canon! That’s awesome. It’s interesting. It makes me actively want to read the books, not read because I’ve invested a decade of my life/money in them, so I might as well see what happens next. And, like I said, DC's future is looking bright.
I cry foul to all writers who don't portray Batman like this.
