DC Comics General

The weirder thing about picking Bendix is how much of a Luthor clone he is. Especially since Luthor is actually in the comic and interacts with Bendix, making the latter come off as even more of a knock-off redux.

Strange choice, not helped hy the fact the series has no other villains so the entire comic is about Jon fighting a low-rent Luthor clons.

People on the CBR forums are convinced that Jay and the Revolutionaries are going to kill Bendix. If that happens, I predict it will happen in issue 18, providing the third trade of the series with a cliffhanger ending.

If that happens, can we mine the annals of DC history for a villain named after DiDio next?

Yeah, a lot of the fans really want Jay to become a villain just to justify Ship Sinking. They really don't like his relationship with Jon.

I wouldn't be surprised if all this focus on Jay is setting him and the Revolutionaries up into getting their own spin-off. Taylor has been plugging them a lot into his Superman to the point where its arguably more about Jay and Jon than anything else.

One interesting theory I heard is that Taylor's run may be under its own executive mandates where he can't progress much with Jon until Dark Crisis so thats why its been on this incredibly glacial singular storyline with Bendix and focusing more on the Jay stuff.

Edited by slimcoder on May 21st 2022 at 11:47:12 AM

Man, I know I've been parroting that I'm not Jay's biggest fan, but this still sounds like a bad idea. Were any of the Revolutionaries any good in Tom Taylor's Suicide Squad anyway or were they all the usual "phoned-in new character that's supposed to be the GOAT, but they don't really show it" nonsense?

Man, I need to know where you find these theories, because they make all the sense. From what I've been reading regarding it, Dark Crisis is sounding like it'll be one of several wake-up calls Jon needs on his path to being a superhero. The call that says "no, one does not simply form a new Justice League, it needs to be crafted carefully." Heck, maybe that Future State-like League with Jace and Yara will be like a decoy team and then we'll have the League with Frankenstein, both Blue Beetles, Robin, and others as the proper New Justice League.

Also, I feel I should stress that at this point, I've pretty much given up on Jon ever turning back into a kid. Unless we get teases of Jon getting lectured by Pariah about how the former had a good thing going as a kid, then I'm refusing to even think about the possibility.

But speaking of Kid Jon, he's going to be front and center alongside Damian and other young heroes in a school-themed 80-page anthology called Saved by the Belle Reve!

The anthology will include:

• A new Super-Sons story by their best writer Peter Tomasi
• A new Gotham Academy story from Becky Cloonan, Brendan Fletcher, and Karl Kerschl (possibly picking up from the Maps-centered back-ups we've been seeing in Joshua Williamson's Batman filler run?)
• The return of Art Baltazar and Franco's Tiny Titans!
• And other stories featuring the likes of a young Azrael by Dan Watters and Juan Ferreyra, Task Force X by Tim Seeley and Scott Kolins, Babs and Dick going to prom as told by newcomers Andrew Aydin and Nelson Dániel, Green Arrow and Speedy by Dave Wielgosz and Mike Norton, and Black Lightning by Brandon Thomas and Craig Cermak!

Obviously, the main takeaways for me are Super-Sons, Gotham Academy, and Tiny Titans coming back in the spotlight. Sucks we have to wait until August, though...

Well I was chatting with some folks online about it and one guy mentioned the possibility of editorial mandates being at hand.

Which makes enough sense when you remember over on Action Comics the Warworld Saga is suffering its own mandates into PKJ having to extend the story into being as long as it is now.

It does jive with how weird Infinite Frontier is most likely from the 5G remnants. I think Jeremy Adams Flash and Ram V's Swamp-Thing is among the few series to not actually suffer any of these issues by virtue of not having any previous 5G plans.

Flash is extremally lucky as the 5G/Future State plans would have been the Flash Family's complete annihilation which they thankfully have ignored entirely meaning Jeremy Adams has the freedom to just have fun with the character without any of that baggage.

Edited by slimcoder on May 22nd 2022 at 11:57:29 AM

Do you have a source for Johnson having to make the Warworld Saga longer?

I forget if it was an officially sourced thing, just that it was incredibly obvious DC wants to keep Superman up in space for as long as possible so Jon can be Superman on Earth.

Also on that note here's a thread about PKJ going into how the Warworld Saga draws on his time in an anti-trafficking unit

Edited by slimcoder on May 22nd 2022 at 12:11:35 PM

It's taken years but I've finally read through all of the original run of Hellblazer.

Fuck you Peter Milligan, Constantine died because of your hateboner for his niece you fucking weirdo. And fuck your almost jailbait waifu too.

I feel like there's something that need some 'splaining.

Yeah, I could use some context too.

, Peter Milligan was the final writer on the original Hellblazer run. In it he had John Constantine marry a girl a third his age and inserted a bunch of scenes showing they were meant to be together. Meanwhile he had John's niece, who had been slowly looking like she could be a successor to John, develop an attraction to him, get raped by a demon posing as him, go crazy, and kill him permanently with a magic dart. It was also kind of ripping off the end to The Sandman as well.

Well shit thats just fucked up

Reading Aquamen #4.

Okay yeah, Black Manta is clearly intended to be sympathetic here, to the point Andy a young child wants to play with him

As we all know, a child wanting to play with a character is generally narrative shorthand that they are a good person. Prior in the issue Manta and Jackson even have a genuine father/son moment.

All the while they still portray Orm as a 1-dimensional cartoon villain.

Didn't Manta kill their first kid? When said kid was a baby?

Edited by Aleistar on May 26th 2022 at 9:26:16 AM

I guess that's no longer canon.

Edited by windleopard on May 26th 2022 at 7:21:58 PM

But it technically should be considering the whole everything is canon thing DC has been going on about. So they are basically just ignoring it cause acknowledging it would get in the way of the little redemption thing they are trying with Manta.

Considering how many people are mentioning it, the removal of Manta's infanticide is the equivalent to removing Deathstroke's whole thing with Terra. Which at least in the latter's case even when Priest's Deathstroke retcons that Slade didn't actually sleep with Terra, he still groomed and manipulated her which is unforgivable. Especially when Slade told her that while he is sorry he doesn't regret it because in his own words, "being used by him is the only thing she's good for."

Meanwhile Manta's murder of Arthur Jr. is completely ignored to the point they treat Andy like she's the firstborn.

DC canon is whatever they want it to be.

And by 'they', I mean whichever writer is in charge of the book.

They are very selective with whats canon, its just more noticeable with Aquaman because a lot of his pre-New 52 stuff still hasn't been brought back or recognized.

Especially if you compare to other properties, the entire Batfam is here with even Azrael's time as Batman II referenced like in the House of Gotham back-up to Detective Comics this year, all the Wonder Girls are here, Green Lantern still makes reference to Hal's time as Parallax or John destroying Xanshi, and the entire Flash family has returned including Max Mercury and Jesse Quick.

Meanwhile Aquaman's illegitimate Inuit son Koryak, the second Aquagirl Lorena Marquez, or even Lagoon Boy to my knowledge have not made any return in the current runs.

Lagoon Boy was in Heroes in Crisis, fwiw.

I mean, yes, but did we want him to be?

Did we want anyone to appear in Heroes In Crisis?

Edited by Blueace on May 26th 2022 at 4:22:25 AM

better question, did anyone even want Heroes in Crisis?

Was he one of the casualties for that story?