DC New 52 Review – Justice League #01

All you comic nerds out there know that this week DC Comics began their relaunch of all their titles with the first issue of Justice League. It was paired with the final issue of Flashpoint which would be the last story of the old continuity (but more on that in another post). I probably won’t do a post for all 52 new books (I’ll probably read them all and give them a shot though), but the one’s that stick out I’ll do a post on and give you my thoughts and opinions on how it turns out. AND OBVIOUSLY, SPOILERS!!!

Quick Info

So this new series of Justice League is being written by Geoff Johns (who is probably my favorite writer from DC) who been in charge of the last few DC mega-events including Infinite Crisis, Blackest Night, and Flashpoint. This will be his return to writing League stories since his short run on a couple issues of JLA. Other New 52 books he will write are Aquaman and Green Lantern.

The artist on this one is the legendary Jim Lee, known for his work on Uncanny X-Men in the 90′s, WildC.a.t.s. in the 90′s and the short lived All-Star Batman & Robin. This will be his return to being a series artist since 2008.

About the Story…

• Never realized that you know the origin story of Superman, Batman and such, but there isn’t a clear origin story for the Justice League (as oppose to the Avengers – heroes come together to fight an enemy that one of them can’t do alone), this issue kicks off the opening story that will bring them together

• The first characters we are introduced to are Batman and Green Lantern, so far their abilities and powers seem unchanged, one thing I noticed though is that this Batman seems less hard-nosed and confident as we are used to, while the new Hal Jordan seems more like Guy Gardner (more cocky and brash – guess similar to his movie persona then)
• In these “past stories” they’re playing off this the heroes are new and not trusted by the public thing and with the opening frames it seems to work with the GCPD hunting down Batman (strangely though even using lethal force on the guy – what did he do exactly to piss them off?)
• It was really hard to figure out who the villain Batman was fighting in the beginning (I originally thought it was a smaller revamp of Killer Croc) but you get to the reveal of it saying “For Darkseid!” and then its obvious now – it’s a parademon. Definitely love this new cyborg looking look to the parademon
• Then the discovery of the new Motherbox, but the dumb thing was that since Green Lantern or Batman didn’t know what to do with it, they go to their “resident alien” Superman
• Then there’s a little Vic Stone (aka Cyborg) sidestory which doesn’t give me confidence on him being picked to the Justice League over the usual Teen Titans, in fact he hasn’t even gotten his powers yet. In my eyes, Martian Manhunter was snubbed!

About the Art & Design…

• Jim Lee’s art is just amazing, he really good at depicting excitement and adventure which is totally what Justice League is about. He also puts a lot of detail into his work which is a little troubling since he’s had deadline troubles in the past (can he do this month-to-month again?).
• Another great thing is all of Batman’s gadgets are actually drawn in and not just “assumed there” in use (for example Bats will just but grab his grappling hook, not just jump to a line that’s magically already there)

• One thing I dislike is even though it is more practical, all the new costumes look like body armor, instead of the fabric look we are used to, many are wearing hard shell looking costumes – might take some time to get used to
• There’s also a thing some people have against many of the costumes having collers now especially on Superman, also with Superman his red “trunks” are missing and though this also makes sense to loose those it just looks off in a way

 

Final Thoughts

It’s a short and sweet open to the a new story arc/origin story to the Justice League. We are sort of jumped right into things so I guess we’ll have to read the other 52 titles hopefully to fill in some of the blanks of what’s new and why things are the way they are. We’ll see if it keeps up next month when issue two drops.

 

Comic Con ’11 Newsworthy

Comic Con weekend comes to a close tonight and we’re bringing you the rest of the big stories that came out of the largest comic convention in the world. We did a quick Day 1 update back Thursday night that you can see (HERE).

• Similar to what Dark Reign was post-Secret Invasion, Marvel’s post-Fear Itself branding will be Battle Scars

• Besides the Amazing Spider-Man books, the Spider Island saga will include tie-ins with Cloak & Dagger, Spider-Girl, and the Marvel martial arts characters

• fan favorite red lantern Dex-Starr will get his own one-shot Dex Starr’s Valentine’s Day Special

• the next year of Green Lantern comics will be broken into 3 arcs (Sinestro vs the Sinestro Corp, the Indigo Tribe, and the first Green Lantern)

• the relaunch of Action Comics will focus on Superman back in his first months as Superman

• The team of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness are teaming up to resurrect Cable of the X-Men

• Matt Fraction and Terry Dodson team up again to bring back Marvel’s Defenders team

• Brian K. Vaugh creator of Y. The Last Man and Deux Ex Machina is debuting a new comic next year titled Saga

• Marvel’s partnership with Disney might lead to new series for Hulk and Jessica Jones on ABC and Cloak & Dagger on ABC Family
• A new spinoff of the comic series Fables will be coming and it is being called Fairest

Below is the full Avengers movie poster from Comic Con, click to see the full image…

Comic Con ’11 News

The first day of the nerdfest that is Comic Con has come and gone and here are the top headlines that has come out so far…

• DC Comics confirms that Flashpoint will be the reasoning behind the new DC 52 Relaunch coming this fall, and everything will be revealed in a splash panel in the final issue of Flashpoint. So if you are behind its about time you get caught up

• Marvel is beginning digital and print simultaneous releasing with their comics starting with issues of the Amazing Spider-Man (in fact starting with issue #666 next week which kicks off the Spider Island saga, other titles following suit will be Venom, Uncanny X-Men, and the new Wolverine and the X-Men), this is a huge step forward is saving the floppies in the comic industry
• In DC 52 relaunch news, Barbara Gordon will once again be Batgirl (and not the crippled Oracle any longer), also many of the young adult characters got regressed in age (Arsenal in particular), Wildstorm will be integrated into the DCU
• There will be a comic book crossover between Star Trek and the Legion of Superheroes

• Avengers Academy is continue post-Fear Itself, but one member of the team will not make it and a legacy character White Tiger will take his/her place

• Hugh Jackman has confirmed that in the sequel to X-Men Origins Wolverine, The Wolverine, his enemy will be the Silver Samurai

There wasn’t much from the first day of Comic Con, but I leave you guys with the new trailer for the Amazing Spider-Man which I did a post on a few days back. I’ll do another Comic Con post possibly this Sunday after it all wraps up.

Amazing Spider-Man Film Update

In case you did not know, there’s going to be a brand new Spider-Man movie coming next year and it’s not going to continue the Spider-Man trilogy from the 2000′s, but reboot it all over again. The film is currently in post-production and this is what we know so far…

Cast -

• Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker (you know him as Eduardo Saverin from The Social Network)

• Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy (you know her as Wichita from Zombieland or Jules from Superbad)

• Rhys Ifans as The Lizard (you know him as Xenophilius Lovegood from the Potter films)

The director will be Marc Webb who has only worked on one other movie and that’s (500) Days of Summer. So we’ll see how well he does with the jump from indie romance to superhero blockbuster.

The Costume -

The real reason I’m doing this post today is because Entertainment Weekly released new photos of the film today and it includes the full Spider-Man costume and other stuff.

Summer Comic Events – Flashpoint

It’s another summer so it means another batch of summer comic events. Last year, the big two ran with Siege and Brightest Day. This year, it’s about Fear Itself and Flashpoint. Today, we’re going to go over the DC summer event, Flashpoint…

-Warning there will be some minor spoilers-

Background

This event spawned out of Geoff Johns relaunch of The Flash comics after the revival of the 2nd Flash, Barry Allen. This is Johns’ third DC mega-event after Infinite Crisis and Blackest Night. And for penciller Andy Kubert, this is his first time doing the art for any company’s mega-event. We are about halfway through the series which is being kept short in 5 issues, but with many extra tie-ins to fill in the backstory.

What’s It About?

So the archenemy of The Flash is a character called Reverse Flash. He has many of the same abilities as The Flash, but one powerful extra one is time travel. Right now it’s still being kept a mystery, but Reverse Flash went back in time to change something quintessential about The Flash’s past that it changed the entire world’s history. Barry Allen wakes up in a world where he doesn’t have powers and some other main differences…

• Cyborg is the only good superhero on Earth
• Aquaman (and Atlantis) is at war with Wonder Woman (and the Amazons)
• Batman is more hardened and actually kills
• Justice League doesn’t exist
• Half of Europe is underwater after Atlantis attack