Hoping this is okay, but Linda, if you feel like this should just be moved to the Comic Book News thread, I get it. Just thought I would try out a general purpose DC thread.

My opening topics:

1) DC, it's been 6 years. BRING ALFRED BACK ALREADY.

Bad enough you gave him one of the stupidest and most meaningless comic book deaths, but there has been a giant Alfred-sized hole in the heart of the Batman line that becomes even more obvious when you read any Batman story since set in the past when Alfred was still around.

Find a way to bring Alred back ASAP, please, preferably through some logical story means but at this point I'm not even against just bringing him back with no explanation and pretending he was never gone.

For that matter, please get Bruce living back in Wayne Manor again, and put a permanent ban on ever mentioning Zur-En-Arhh again once this current storyline finally ends.

2) While last year's Knight Terrors was an irritating waste that just put the whole DC line on hold for 2 months, I confess that I'm really looking forward to this year's Absolute Power series, especially with Mark Waid and Dan Mora helming it.

3) Anyone else think it's weird that DC has not published an Aquaman series in some time but WB still released a major motion picture featuring the character late last year?

Also...

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/dc-re ... exclusive/

I say this as someone who genuinely liked the Zero Hour series when it came out, LOVED all the Zero Hour tie-in issues I read in the regular books, and really enjoyed the Zero Month relaunch following the event....but go home, DC, you're drunk.

It made sense to do a 30th anniversary celebration of The Death of Superman since it's like the biggest-selling comic book event of all time, regardless of quality (it would have made MORE sense for a 25th anniversary celebration to me, but whatevs). It made slightly less sense to do a 30th anniversary celebration of The Return of Superman a year later, but I get the symmetry.

I genuinely don't get a 30th anniversary celebration for Zero Hour, something I don't think there's that much nostalgia for no matter how much I may have enjoyed it. Are we going to get a 20th anniversary celebration for Identity Crisis late this year as well? Infinite Crisis? Final (shudder) Crisis in 2008?

Enough with the nostalgia fests, DC.

I actually wrote a post about this for the "Comic Book News" thread, but I just couldn't press "submit", because I thought "Does any one care about Zero Hour now"? Like you, I enjoyed it at the time, but it's not anything I felt any reason to revisit (or really thought about over the years). It also irritated me that the solicitation hinted that there will be repercussions in upcoming storylines. We don't need yet another company wide crossover arising from a decades' old story. If you want to commemorate an old event and feel you have a good story, publish it. If it's successful and fan reaction warrants it AND you have a good story, then maybe you can expand on the tale.

Agreed. Alfred is a key part of Batman's story and the story killing him off was not worth doing to begin with, much less allowing him to stay dead for six years and counting.


I honestly forgot Bruce doesn't live in the Manor anymore, because he doesn't even seem to have a status quo. His life is constantly in turmoil and seems rootless. Every story seems to have to involve every member of the extended Bat Family and random supporting characters so there's no time to have any quiet moments. Gotham's always about to collapse into anarchy. It's exhausting and doesn't leave any room for anything as simple as showing Bruce at home.
As for Zur-En-Arhh, I don't loath him as much as you do, but this story has gone on far too long.


But I do loath Amanda Waller ever since John Ostrander stopped writing her, so I am skipping Absolute Power.



No series, but they did publish an "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Special" one shot in Dec. 2023 as well as a couple of collected editions. Unfortunately, I just don't think he is a character that sells that well in his own book.

Who here read Superman Space Age from a couple years ago? I've been wanting to discuss it, and Lil Jay has already refused.

I read it. I forgot to add his new Batman thing to my pull list tho.

I HAVE NOT REFUSED

Can I ask you a question? What keeps you reading Batman these days? I don't mean this as a negative, I'm just curious about what keeps people reading for years on end as I always tap out after a while on any series I'm reading except Savage Dragon (which is as much about keeping my run complete as it is keeping up with the story).

As a 44 year old man, I feel like there's almost no room for dramatic possibilities with a character like Batman for where I am in my life right now. He's fought every cool villain in his rogue's gallery 100 times, he's had his spine broken, he's had sidekicks killed, he's been engaged, he's had everything taken away, he's been through an Earthquake, he's been zapped back through time, etc. And that's not including all the Elseworlds and such. While I'm sure there's plenty of plot devices you can put him through, where is there to go with him as a character anymore? He's basically self-actualized, he's not going to really grow and change and anything really dramatic that could change his life -- like Alfred dying -- ends up being undone. Not only does death have no stakes, no other major life change really has any stakes -- the toys go back in the box.

As mentioned, I did stick with Savage Dragon -- but the status quo radically and permanently changes about every 40-75 issues. The original Dragon died in 225, his son is the current star of the book and he's got 3 or 4 little fin-headed kids who could take over the book at any point. But Dragon was a cop, got fired off the force in issue 37 or 38, became a government super-agent in #40, quit that after his wife was killed around #60, then went into a post-apocalyptic world around #76, etc. And all the changes stuck, no status quo or platonic ideal is ever restored.

I can 100% understand checking back in on a childhood friend -- every 1-2 years, I bust out the old comics, the Adam West and Mike Keaton joints, the Bruce Timm cartoon, all that. But month in and month out is a mystery to me. What keeps you reading?

I kind of wonder sometimes too. I like checking back on childhood favorites too. I've built a whole collection of books I remember reading when I was a kid. But I've long since moved on to reading different kinds of stories. It's why I read manga instead of American comics now.

I am not Professor Plum and you didn't ask me, but I am jumping in and replying anyway.
Batman is my favorite superhero. From 1970 I bought every Batman appearance, as well as any of the extended Batman family books (back then appearances by Robin, or Batgirl or any of Batman's villains were pretty easy to track as DC was still keeping each hero in their own titles pretty much). Early on that was 3-4 books a month, and I tended to enjoy them all. But around 2000 all the spin-offs and Elseworlds got to be too much. The quality was dropping and like you say, where else could you go with him as a character? I started to drop Bat tiles and by around 2005 I had stopped buying them altogether.
But of course in addition to reading Batman I was also developing as a comics reader. I love the artform. I would take books out of the library that told the history of comics, books and newspaper strips. I discovered head shops and underground comics. Marvel published their Comix Book where I got to see some of the major underground creators. Even in the Big Two there were certain creators who were obviously better than others. I'd noticed how great Steve Ditko was even as early as during his Blue Beetle/Captain Atom run around 1967. So I started following creators even more than the characters.
I am reading Batman again, but it's not really for Batman. I am a very big fan of Chip Zdarsky, who I have followed since he was a staff artist for Canada's National Post newspaper in the early 2000s (under his real name Steve Murray). He would draw hilarious cartoons to go along with the Post's movie and television reviews, he would write lifestyle piece, he started a weekly comic strip called "Extremely Bad Advice". Luckily for him during that period Christopher Nolan's Batman, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and then the MCU films all started becoming huge cultural touchstones so he had a lot of material to play off each week. It was nice to have a champion for my favorite artform in a major newspaper- I was even collecting his pages.
So I follow creators now, not characters, and I now collect Batman because Chip Zdarsky is writing it. I like to see what creators I enjoy can bring to a book. I know he can do more with his own creator owned title than he can a corporate one, but there's still enjoyment to be found in a skilled creator dealing with well-known tropes. Unless there's another creator I like following him on Batman, I will drop it (as I did Daredevil after he left that one).

Your thoughts on it ...?

IT FELT REFUSY TO ME

It's been a little while, so it's not really fresh in my mind, but I remember it being... okay. I've tried to turn over a new leaf in the last year or so to not comment on comics that I am not enthusiastic about since I feel there's already so much negativity in the world (unless I feel I have something interesting or insightful to say, which is rare). The story was an interesting exercise, I liked the concept of what Mark Russell was trying to do, and I tend to like meta-fiction in superhero comics, but I ultimately didn't connect with what was going on here.

I assume it's a "me thing" but I just don't like the way many modern comics read these days -- dialogue often feels contrived, unnatural, and cringey for my taste. It's odd I find it a stumbling block as I feel the same about comics from previous eras as well and I think you could argue that the older books are even more contrived and unnatural. But since I grew up with it, I am used to it and feel there's a charm about it. There's a quality to comics writing I find grating these days -- maybe it's smarmy or something, I can't really put my finger on it.

I looked up the comic online and I feel it right from the intro. It seems like every other comic has this little device where someone remembers an anecdote from when they were young that teaches some profound life lesson that applies to the story thematically... but it feels very sanctimonious to me and about as deep as reading Nickelback lyrics. I feel like it's the writer trying to call attention to how thoughtful and insightful they are, but who knows. I guess people like it, it seems to be in everything. (i notice it's in movies a lot too, but it's not as overly used there from my experience.) It also feels lazy, like we should be interpreting these themes through the actions of the characters and developments in the plot, but it's spelling it out for us right from the jump. It's just one example, but I remember feeling that way throughout the entire story, there were all these little devices I found trite and obnoxious. But I'm getting pretty old now, so maybe it's just that.

On a side note, that's why I like Fiffe's writing in Copra so much -- the dialogue feels natural and so does the story, there's no "deep" themes and lessons I'm supposed to be taking from it, he's just trying to do a cool comic.










And sadly, some of it was the artwork -- Allred's figure work has taken on a more and more "rubbery quality" to me, with faces and bodies looking doll-like to my eyes. The stuff he did on Madman in the 90s and X-Force in the 00s is solid gold in my eyes, but since the launch of his Image series, Madman Atomic Comics, his work has become steadily less appealing to me outside of a random project (like BUG!, where his work looked pitch-perfect to my eyes). I'm guessing most people probably think it all looks similar enough and maybe it's the change in Laura Allred's coloring over the years... I don't know. It doesn't feel like the pop art perfection it used to feel like. That first big run of Madman comics through the Superman Hullabaloo crossover are some of my favorite books ever.

I agree with everything you said about the Superman mini and Allred's current art. Mark Russell always seems to feel smug and above the material he's writing (his Flintstones run was incredibly obnoxious and yet was greeted critically as brilliant satire). His Superman and current Batman book also share this trait.
Allred's art the last few years doesn't appeal to me at all. You mention Laura's coloring, and I think that's part of the problem, she uses shadows to sculpt details and it makes Mike's line art come across as too busy. I think she discovered some aspects of computer coloring that she doesn't show enough restraint with. She likes to "double" Mike's facial feature lines with a darker flesh color than she uses to fill the rest of the face and it just makes it look like everyone's wrinkled. Mike's art works best with bold colors, not gradients.
(In my opinion.)

Ah, so that's what that weird effect is! I dislike it and it always looks like some sort of printing error to me.


Agreed, I think most artists look best with simple flat colors and some "cel shading" at most.

It's not even something DC kept in print all these years. I know there was an Omnibus edition a few years back but it's not one of those things that DC has always kept available like the aforementioned Death and Return of Superman, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Dark Knight, or what have you. So yeah, I just don't know how much nostalgia for it there can be.

That's fair. I more or less enjoy Waller over the years, but no question, Ostrander wrote her the best.

I would be interested in reading it but just haven't gotten around to purchaysing it as of yet. I have to admit, though, as much as I've enjoyed Allred's art on past projects, the images Hanzo posted below with everyone looking like they are having strokes doesn't appeal to me so much.

I did acquire a collection of Batman: Damned by Azzarello and Bermejo at one of my local comic book shops yesterday, so perhaps you should have asked about that instead.

Did you get the Batman: Damned issue with the infamous Bat-penis?

It's a fair question, and I'll try and give an honest and thoughtful answer

One honest response I can give is that I HAVEN'T always kept reading. Since I started reading superhero comics again in college thanks to my best friend there and long-time roommate who was and is a huge X-Men fan (though I've forgiven him for his blasphemy), I've left superhero comics in general and my favorite superhero, Batman, specifically 3 times, most recently from about 2018 until spring of 2022. Other than getting Fantastic Four in monthly issues at that time along with collected editions of Daredevil, I didn't get any superhero comics at all, just crime and horror comics. I was just burned out on them and not connecting with them anymore.

But seeing the Matt Reeves film THE BATMAN in spring of 2022 completely kickstarted my love for both the character as well as the whole DC comics universe again...I mean, that movie, which I had barely any anticipation for when it came out, just completely kicked my ass. I liked it the first time I saw it, I loved it the second time I saw it, and have loved it more every time I've watched it since, to the point where it's almost my favorite Batman movie period. Even my girlfriend, who does NOT like superhero movies, really liked it when I had her watch it last week.

I dived back into Batman and DC comics again, and the main reason is just that Gotham City is my favorite fictional world, period. There are takes on Batman I don't like so much, but Gotham City itself is still my favorite fictional place to visit. For me, there's still a baseline with Batman comics that I'm still far more likely than not going to enjoy it on some level even when the comics aren't great, and when there IS a take on Batman that I love, it sends my love for the character and his world into the stratosphere, like Doug Moench and Kelly Jones in the 90s, Scott Snyder (with and without Greg Capullo) in the early to mid 2010s, or James Tynion IV's Detective Comics run with DC Rebirth in 2016.

I'm still inclined to grumble when I'm not liking something, like many elements of the current Chip Zdarsky run on Batman (which I thought started off exceptionally promising 2 years ago) because unfortunately that's still the nature of a fan to complain more about what you aren't liking than praising what you do. But it is also with hope, because I know Zdarsky is a very good writer and I'm hoping when he finally gets this Zur-En-Arhh nonsense out of his system he will get back to writing something that appeals to me more, or else another writer will come along. Admittedly, a lot of the Batman comics that most excite me these days don't come from the main books, like the Gotham City: Year One mini from last year. But I keep reading, or keep coming back to reading, Batman just because I love Batman. I love Gotham City and its world.

As an addendum to what Jason wrote, I would say that outside of superhero comics, I mostly follow creative teams, or at least writers, over characters, with one or two exceptions. I love crime and horror comics and at present will get just about everything Jeff Lemire, Ed Brubaker, or James Tynion IV (and their artist partners) will put out. But for superhero comics, yeah, I still tend to follow characters, mostly on the DC side these days.

I don't know if that answers your question adequately or not, Hanzo. If not, I'm sorry.

No, this is just a TPB. I think all reprints and collected editions edited that out, right?

No, thanks a lot for taking the time to write all that out. I also mainly follow creators, mostly artists though. The only writers I've ever followed to any extent are Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Brian Bendis, Mark Millar, Ed Brubaker, and Garth Ennis in the 00s -- but I still had to at least like the art, even if it wasn't done by a favorite.

That said, my dance card is full these days. I discovered Dan Mora a year or so ago and started trying to collect his output, but sorta lost interested after the first few books. His art is very cool, but I'm at a point where even an exciting new artist isn't enough. I'm basically just collecting the ones I already like at this point.