madcougar

I need to get me some of these variants.

reubs82

It does look pretty cool; I don't know anything about Shazam, so I'm interested in some of these back-ups that will appear with his backstory.

fujishig

Uh... they did slowly but surely revert back from CoIE. The only thing they didn't do was place the JSA back on Earth 2 or whatever.
Superman was not the only Kryptonian.
Krypton itself was basically reverted to pre-Crisis status
Krypto, Supergirl, Argo, etc. were reintroduced
Superman's powers were basically reverted to pre-Crisis or near pre-Crisis levels.
Lex got skinnier, went back to the battle armor
While this will always confuse me, Superboy became part of Legion canon again, as did Supergirl
Wonder Woman was part of the Golden Age JSA
Superman and Batman were around, but not necessarily founding members of, the JLA. Still, Supes, Batman, and WW somehow became the acknowledged heads of the JL
The characters that were left in "paradise" (Kal-l, Lois, Alexander Luthor, Superboy Prime) came back, mainly as villains
Barry came back
The multiverse came back

This was mainly because of creators like Geoff Johsn who had fond memories of the pre-Crisis DC universe.

kgrogers1979

You do realize all those changes didn't happen until 15-20 years after COIE, right? I was talking more like the immediate future within the few years, which people seem to think is going to happen with Flashpoint.

Superman was the only kryptonian up until Kara was reintroduced in the early 2000s. Matrix Supergirl was not kryptonian and she was the Supergirl throughout all of the late 80s and 90s. Krypto was a normal Earth dog that Bibbo adopted to honor Superman after Doomsday killed Superman. The actual Krypto kryptonian dog wasn't reintroduced until the 2000s. Lex didn't get his Pre-Crisis battle armor until after his presidency fell apart and that was again in the 2000s.

Basically from 1986 to around 2004 or so, nothing reverted back to Pre-Crisis standings. Around the time of Infinite Crisis is when all that stuff started happening. Sure things will most likely change within the next 20 years regarding Flashpoint as well. I was just talking about the next few years. Just like how Geoff Johns grew up reading Pre-Crisis and brought a lot of it back, the next creators will have grown up reading the Post-Crisis and will bring it back.

fujishig

I tend to believe there was a strong editorial mandate back then to keep their hands off pre-Crisis stuff, that lifted a bit as sales softened and talented creators wanted to do other things. I think their's a better likelihood of them reverting back in this day and age, should sales slip (and they haven't been).

Of course, we still don't know what the real reason behind this all was; if there's some mandate from on high, higher than DC comics division, that wanted to do all this as has been speculated. In that case, depending on who made that call (and I still don't believe that Johns pulled the trigger on this), things could be mandated to stay the same no matter what. It's not like the comics division is the major profit division.

Look at Marvel. They essentially reboot their franchises every few years with major shakeups that get discarded for the next major shakeup. Didn't one of them even admit at some point that they know people only follow comics for X number of years on average?

Adam Tyner

Agreed, and I don't really think that what DC did 26 years ago under different leadership and in a completely different sales climate necessarily has much to do with what'd happen today (although like you said, the success of the relaunch makes that a seemingly moot point now).

I mostly came here to post this picture of the updated Jay Garrick which makes me want to curl up in the fetal position and cry:

PhantomStranger

That is the first time I've seen the new Superman costume and totally accepted it. Other artists need to copy how Frank is drawing it. The Shazam design looks interesting, though it will probably look like an Image reject in the hands of lesser artists.

JasonF

Am I the only one who thinks the Captain Marvel* redesign is terrible and completely wrong for the character? The entire point of CM is light-heartedness, earnestness, and innocence. Why can't they build off that?

* You can't make me call him Shazam, Geoff Johns.

kgrogers1979

Does Shazam the wizard still exist?

WTF @ bringing Jay Garrick back but still no plans for Wally.

Its funny that Earth-2 Clark and Lois are apparently married, but not so in DCNU anymore.

stingermck

Its on purpose, according to Johns and Frank

ytrez

I'm right there with you! Another thing that irks me is that they're calling it the CURSE of Shazam. Curse? Really? Intentional or not I do not want.

Captain Marvel Adventures was one of the first comics I was introduced to 40 years ago and everything about this feels wrong. Pretty much everything about the new 52 feels wrong to me. That picture of Jay Garrick is just icing on the cake. A cake of shit.

kgrogers1979

Aquaman once again sell more than every Marvel title in February.

http://comics.ign.com/articles/122/1220434p1.html

Aquaman was #10 in January, and now #9 in February.

How in the heck does Batman: The Dark Knight beat Batman and Robin? BaR is a much better Bat-book.

Also it is interesting to see TMNT take the #10 spot on the trade paperback list. Is it really that good? I loved the original Eastman and Laird TMNT, but nobody else has ever come close to matching their quality in my opinion. I haven't read the new series though.

matrixrok9

I think Batman: Dark Knight beats Batman and Robin because of the title alone. It reminds people of the movie..plus fan favorite David Finch does the art (I think). Also people still see Robin as a bit campy.

Travis McClain

Picked up this month's offerings of New 52s (the three I read, anyway) and got around to reading them last night. My thoughts, in the order in which I read them:

Batwoman #7
They've already done the "X Days/Hours Ago," "X-Y Days/Hours Ago" structure once in this series. It just seems lame to come back to it a second time in seven issues. Also, I just don't have a sense that Kate is driven by any actual emotion as Batwoman. She doesn't seem particularly invested in finding her enemies and even her emotional reaction to Bette's recent injuries seems almost obligatory rather than something that actually eats away at her. This emotional detachment is most glaring to me when I contrast this book with Batgirl. I gotta say, I really wish they'd keep Amy Reeder on as the regular artist. I really like her work on this book. I've rarely been comfortable with paranormal content in my superhero books, but I'm on board with this Bones guy and the DEO. It can work, if Williams and Blackman can figure out how to pace their stories instead of this haphazard mesh of action and melodrama.

Detective Comics #7
This second arc hasn't been nearly as compelling as the opening "Dollmaker" 4-parter. I had to pause and try to remember what the hell happened in issue #6 on a couple of pages. Good sense of pace and focus, unlike Batwoman, but kind of "average" overall.

Batgirl #7
I've gotten in the habit of reading this book last because it's the most satisfying. Having already seen Babs work out some inner thoughts while chasing Nightwing across Gotham, I felt it was a bit too early to dip back into that same well and have her drag Black Canary out of bed and into the dojo, but the chemistry between the two characters (informed by Gail Simone's personal attachment to the two) makes it just work. Seven issues in, and Batgirl continues to deliver everything I want in an ongoing superhero book: It's fun, it's got plenty of action, and a consistent frequency of WTF twists. I'm stoked about issue #8.

stingermck

So what does everyone think about Superman's "extremis" armor?



I like it. It works. No way Clark could hide the armor under his clothes. And if im buying a flying alien, I can buy armor that appears out of nowhere.

kodave

Context? None of that makes sense to me.

stingermck

Its a Kryptonian Bio-Tech suit

fujishig

So he still wears his S-shield and suit, just the armor appears?

I'm still so used to his normal suit that the all blue pants still throws me.

kgrogers1979

The funny thing is that they didn't need to take away the red trunks at all. Since his new suit is completely armor, they could have just painted the trunk area red. That would have appeased both the traditional people that like the red trunk look and also the people that can't take superheroes seriously with the "underwear on the outside" since it wouldn't even be underwear/trunks but rather armor.

kodave

I'm not a big Superman guy, and I'm not overly anal about new costumes, especially in the fashion some fan boys were when the DCnU details were coming out, but that's just dumb IMO. And that's not to say I like Stark's Extremis stuff much better. I see how Superman is an alien so anything can happen in terms of what he can do when you're re-writing the rules, but it just seems like different and unnecessary for the sake of being so. Plus armor takes away some of the allure of him being a super-man.

I take it Supergirl's and Superboy's DCnU costumes are Extremis-like armor as well?

PhantomStranger

I'm not a huge fan of Superman wearing anything that smacks of armor. Why would an invulnerable man need to wear armor? This looks like something that was thought up because it would look cool in CGI during a movie.

Lastdaysofrain

Couldn't they not have the red trucks due to the Simon/Shuster lawsuit about the costume design? It was a "change it just enough for it to be 'new'" kind of deal?

So in a year's time will Todd McFarlane be taking over Superman and we'll see the costume going it's separate way and bonding with a rival Daily Planet reporter to make an EXTREME! superman villain?

ytrez

Why does Superman need armor? Or even a Kryptonian bio-suit?

And the picture above makes it appear that the suit appears out of nowhere since it looks like his arms and legs are exposed. Put the panel page has him with the outfit on underneath his street clothes. I'm not liking this new DC.

madcougar

I don't think it's been established his impervious to EVERYTHING in this new universe. Or maybe the suit acts as solar panels for Superman. Who knows.

Travis McClain

One thing my friend and I noticed at C2E2 this weekend was that DC's booth was very light on movie/TV content. Yes, they had TVs running with trailers for their content, but beyond that the emphasis was quite clearly on the comic books. I had the distinct impression that DC is asserting itself as a comic book publisher and not as an idea farm for Hollywood.