I think this is the first week in...well, as long as I can remember buying comics weekly...that I only picked up one single book. Just one. Yikes. In that case, my one review is going to be extra rambly and long-winded and non-sequiturful.
52 Week 37
It's not just about how far you can make your heroes fall, how badly you can mess up their lives, how depressing the world could become...it's also about how far those heroes will go to climb back up, how solidly they can rebuild their lives, and how resolute the world can be in the face of insurmountable darkness.
DC understands this at the moment, and Marvel doesn't. I don't think this is just my opinion, I think this is pretty self-evident fact by this point. No, not every member of the crew at DC understands this; however, enough people there with powerful enough positions understand it so that, by and large, the general scope and direction of the DCU adhere to this dogma. Likewise, there
are writers at Marvel who can relate to this ideal as well; but, they are not nearly numerous nor influential enough to affect the current Marvel universe tonally, whereas those numerous and influential enough are pretty hell-bent on dragging the Marvel U -- literally kicking and screaming -- in the complete opposite direction.
For every single "major event" in recent Marvel universe memory, the heroes have invariably
lost. Either through their own damn faults or through forces beyond their control, the superheroes of the Marvel universe have consistently failed to live up to the examples that they
themselves had set. Avengers Diassembled...utter defeat. House of M...utter, crippling defeat. X-Men Deadly Genesis...utter, embarrassing defeat. And now Civil War...I don't care how justified you think you can make the registration act; this is superhero comics, not social movement theory 101, and rebels who fight for liberty and freedom losing to a government that works with mass-murderers and shts all over the highest law in the land cannot be construed, in any way shape or form, as a positive landmark in superhero comics.
(The exception, as I'm constantly being told, is Annihilation. I promise to get caught up at some point before it's over.)
Keeping that in mind, can you imagine the measure of pride, satisfaction, and irrational excitement I got just from reading the solicits for DC's World War III and seeing that "the DC Universe bands together against the wrath of an ancient evil"? My fan bias is showing, and God I don't care. How f'ing cool is it that, when Marvel heroes are being all divided and infighting and promise to
continue doing so for the foreseeable future, DC is there to give us a break from that by doing the exact opposite? It makes it so
easy to root for one over the other. It's completely dorky for me to feel that way, I know, not to mention shallow and unsophisticated and a bit unfair. But frankly I don't care. Don't you see, this is exactly what it's all about. 52 has been sending its characters through notable lows and pretty cringeworthy depths, what with the deaths and the cancer, but at the end of the day we
know it's not about that.
Which brings me, finally, to this issue. Yes, every single person here has guessed, at least once, that Supernova was Booster Gold; it was the single most predictable outcome. And you know
why? Because it was the single
best outcome. Of course everyone had speculated about it; it was the one outcome that everyone wanted to happen, that would have best served the characters. Booster acting like an ass for the last few weeks of his life? All an act. Booster acting like a hero and fighting the good fight? Canon. In the eyes of DC, it wasn't just about Booster failing; it was also about Booster redeeming himself. Buddy Baker, Animal Man, was so definitely completely dead last issue. They even made sure to fit in that cliched "loved one somehow senses his death from afar" scene. Today? So alive. Not just about death, but also about rebirth. When was the last time something like this happened not just once, but
twice in a single issue?
This one single week of 52 completely exemplifies, to me, everything
good about the way DC has been running their store lately. I don't think people even realize it, because we're constantly busy being jaded and critical about the genre in general. Frankly, I think it behooves us all to be a bit more appreciative of this sort of thinking, because you never quite know when it's going to be taken away, how long this "tone" is going to last. And we all know by now what the
alternative is.
(10 out of 10)
. Even I stopped watching Angel during season three 'cause it was too depressing, and if I can drop something from f'ing Whedon -- something I was watching for free, to boot -- I have all the confidence that you can also do the right thing here.
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