Thursday, December 08, 2011

80-Page Thursdays: Brave New World!


Every Thursday, for as long as I can find more, we'll be looking at an 80-page comic! Not 64, not 100, 80-pagers! And today's kinda sucks. Sorry.

After Infinite Crisis, DC put out Brave New World #1, 80-pages for a dollar! It was a preview of six new series and limited series...none of which took off, at all. I think the most successful of the lot was the All-New Atom, which featured Grant Morrison concepts, Gail Simone writing, John Byrne art on a few issues, and lasted 25 issues. Said new Atom, Ryan Choi, was killed off by Deathstroke, in part of the ongoing pre-reboot attempt to make him seem badass again...but Ryan maybe may return in the new DC.

I'm a fan of the Creeper, but the Steve Niles version didn't do it for me. Possibly because this story continued DC's proud tradition of maybe sorta rebooting a single character, as opposed to a line-wide reboot. That and I hate the gimmick of the main character denouncing his own secret identity. Clark Kent usually doesn't have to say Superman sucks...

This issue also features Skrull-chinned J'onn J'onzz, a new batch of Freedom Fighters to replace the ones murdered in Infinite Crisis, a Shazam! story, and an OMAC intro that was actually better than I'd expected. That's even with the blue, Batman-derived robots as opposed to the good, Kirby version. A former junkie from Gotham finds himself in Vegas with a girlfriend he doesn't remember and on the run from killer robots and Superman. I don't know if the limited series that followed was any good (in fact, I'm willing to bet no, it wasn't) but that was an OK start.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Don't get me started on what a waste that whole "Brave New World" experiment was; I agree that it had potential, but Didio&co. killed that pretty damn quick! Not to mention that Captain Marvel feature was the last time he appeared before him and his whole family were "updated". Truly horrendous!

I did like the Countdown to Infinite Crisis even if it featured Blue Beetle getting killed. But at least he went out with a bang right?