Last Wednesday, in recognition of the first full week of DC Comics’ New 52 promotion, I recommended the six five new DC titles that I thought were most likely to be worthy of your attention and your money sight unseen. Now that we’ve had a week to digest them, the question is how did I do? Undoubtably I think it’s safe to characterize the week as a monster success for DC at least in terms of PR: tons of sellouts, reprints and series being ordered in the six figures.  Overall, I can honestly say the quality of the actual product was stronger than I was expecting. I personally recommended the following series in order of expected quality: Swamp Thing, Action Comics, Animal Man, Batgirl and Stormwatch (and Hawk and Dove). So how were they in reality? Read more of this article »

So tonight’s the night. At midnight, DC Comics releases Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1 and the DC Universe as we’ve known it will be washed away to some currently unknown extent and replaced by 52 new titles; many with brand new continuity.

I don’t know what to think about all of this. I’m excited to see what DC has up its sleeves, but I’m sad to know some piece of this universe I’ve loved for twenty years can never really ever quite be the same again. I have a great deal of distrust for DC publisher Dan Didio and his personal tastes. I know they don’t align with mine. But I love the grand ambition behind all of this. This is a giant gamble and I dig that.

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Last week saw the conclusion to DC Comics’ Brightest Day maxi-series that spilled out of the wildly popular Blackest Night story. Blackest Night was the culmination of years of Green Lantern stories by writer Geoff Johns, while Brightest Day turned the spotlight to other DC mainstays like Aquaman, Hawkman, Maritan Manhunter and Firestorm. The story was driven entirely by the recently discovered White Lantern Battery that represents life and is the opposite of the zombie generating Black Lantern Battery that plagued the cosmos during Blackest Night. Brightest Day is the latest in a line of year long maxi-series from DC that unfortunately couldn’t stick the landing. After seeing the run cut from 26 issues to 24 and the unexpected reintroduction of the Swamp Thing in issue #23, a shaky ending shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

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