I'm not liking what I am seeing from where my entertainment money goes. I one consistent expense for my own amusement is my weekly comic fix. The majority of the comics I buy are DC. DC is heading in directions I don't like. What really galls me is that the writer attached to much of what I'm not liking is someone I had been a fan of: Geoff Johns.
What I liked about Johns was that the stuff he wrote was genuinely engaging to me. He's very good at hooking a reader in. I liked his FLASH run. I loved his TEEN TITANS run. He's still doing stuff I enjoy. I love BOOSTER GOLD. But then things start to pop up. GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH was the first big bump in the road. Its no secret to anyone who has followed this blog for a while that I feel that DC should have never brought back Hal Jordan. I think it degrades the excellent stories, like FINAL NIGHT, however I went along with it. I picked up the first few issues of the new Jordan starring series and now had evidence of something I knew all along:
Even though I loved Hal Jordan when I was a kid, I'm not a kid anymore, and Hal Jordan isn't really very interesting.
Seriously folks, who would you think I'd relate to: the fearless, skirt chasing jet test pilot or the artist/graphic designer who was in the right place at the right time but does his best to step up to the plate?
Fast forward to this week. LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #2 and ROGUES' REVENGE #3 hit the stands. Both penned by Johns. ROGUES' REVENGE wraps up things paving the way for the impending FLASH: REBIRTH (very imaginative title, insert eyeroll here please), bringing the return of Barry Allen to the title role of the FLASH comic. As I've written before, this is easily the stupidest move I've seen DC make. To make matters even stupider, at the end of the issue in question, the Rogues are referring to Allen's return, saying he's the Flash that never cut him any slack. If he's coming back then it's big time trouble.
Barry Allen? Hardcore? Whiskey tango foxtrot?
Moving over to the Legion. Yes, I've written and sent my letter trying to save the current series. Then I go and read LEGION OF THREE WORLDS. I want to say I haven't seen such bias in a long time, but its an election year so we know that's false. George Perez is the sole reason that this book wasn't a complete crapfest. Perez, as always, brings all the goods to the table, and while I rarely endorse a comic solely for the art, I will do so here. Kudos to Mister Perez. Jeers to Johns. We get the textbook, big super villain team up. We get the heroes bickering over whether or not to bump off Superboy-Prime. We get Sun Boy seeing the action from his apartment, making a really corny line about a sun shining and retreating into his apartment, likely to write self-loathing poetry. Nice to know the emo fad has lasted 1000 years into the future. We get the horribly uncharacteristic writing of the Threeboot Brainiac 5. Add in some Green Lantern fanboyism and of course a character from the current Green Lantern books managing to still be alive a millennium later. I'm really on the fence about dropping this book. Lousy writing, but spectacular art.
My current pull list has been hemorrhaging DC titles this year. So what will this mean for my future as a read? Will I go over to Marvel? No, I dropped them back in '96 and see nothing there to entice me back over. Will I drop DC entirely? Also no, they're still putting out great titles like WONDER WOMAN and TINY TITANS, and those are works I'm very much enjoying still.
So which direction will I head in? DC seems to not want my business as much anymore with their insipid "retro trend". Honestly, if I want to read about the silver age Justice league, I'd buy the old comics, I don't need the characters resurrected. I'm not heading back over to Marvel, because I'm not into the whole Skrull-o-rama deal.
It's time to explore other options. More on this later.
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