DC Comics General

Yup

x2 As I recall people were interested in seeing how a superhero mental health facility would operate in the DCU (especially since Wally West would be one of the patients) but they pissed that away with a character assassination of a murder mystery.

But Lagoon Boy at least has his Happy Ending in Young Justice, I guess.

Edited by Aleistar on May 26th 2022 at 5:08:13 AM

Aquaman and Shazam/Captain Marvel have had no "bring back pre-Flashpoint elements" plots because DC sees them as the properties where the New 52 actually worked. They don't perceive demand for retro takes on the characters. Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Superman, and to a lesser extent Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, and the JSA have had "make them more like pre-Flashpoint" plots because demand was perceived. I don't know if the poor sales on Brandon Thomas' Aquabooks will get the kind of stuff you're wishing for greenlit, but until recently DC thought they had a good thing going with the current version of the Aquaman mythos.

That is a good point. Johns Aquaman is regarded as one of the best overall of the New 52 and even afterwards the only regarded bad run is Cullen Bunn's short tenure.

Its gonna be interesting how they go forward with this. The De Connick run apparently had record time low sales which was the run prior to Brand-Thomas' so thats 2 runs back to back doing badly.

I enjoyed all of the Deconnick run except the amnesia arc it began with. I wonder if that arc's premise put people off enough to tarnish the whole run? Or were people bummed about the "Arthur gets overthrown again and is no longer king" status quo introduced halfway into the Abnett era and maintained by Deconnick?

I haven't read the run but I once again had a discussion with a guy who outlined all his issues with it. He dislikes De Connick's run a lot more than most people which key point is well received for the most part, but he explained all his points in clear good detail that it gives an idea of possibly why De Connick's run didn't sell well.

From what I got it starts out good, amnesia arc aside. De Connick introduces a lot of new elements to expand the Aquaman world like the Sea Gods, which are all conceptually interesting..... only to immediately afterwards fall back on Manta and fight for the throne stuff with Orm. Stuff like creates a giant robot or Orm again trying to take the throne for himself while not doing much with the new stuff she introduced.

The most rote and banal Aquaman plots ever. I feel like De Connick probably cared more about abolishing the monarchy than the majority of the audience. As in they probably don't particularly care about happens to the throne, they just care more about focusing on literally anything else other than another fight for the throne story.

Edited by slimcoder on May 26th 2022 at 8:26:39 AM

pretty sure that everything is canon just means they have their memories of their past adventures and lives even if things arent exactly the same. like arthur jr no longer exists but we have andy. but arthur and mera would remember both.

Deconnick's Manta story is awesome. It has Arthur and Jackson defend Amnesty Bay from a Humongous Mecha piloted by Manta, containing an AI recreation of Manta's dead father, created by Lex Luthor. And the AI is such a good copy of the man that it argues with Manta and voices moral objections to what Manta is doing. I thought the way Arthur baited Orm at the climax of the run was hilarious. I also loved the cute scenes of Andy running off.

On the subject of what happens to the throne, well, ideally I like my Aquaman ruling a country. Deconnick made it so that that won't be happening for the forseeable future, which is not my preference, but it is utterly consistent with the "Arthur is not Atlantean enough to be in touch with what Atlantis wants" themes that the second half of the Abnett era ended up endorsing. The "Mera suddenly creates democracy" scene was weird, but it didn't ruin anything for me.

Edited by StarformDCX on May 27th 2022 at 7:12:26 AM

From the looks of it was a perfectly well written series, it just didn’t impress the readership enough to maintain interest. It’s sad but it happens.

Credit it at least left a decent mark via formally introducing Jackson to the Aquaman Family and the birth of Andy.

If anything the current dissolution of the throne should have been the perfect sign to do other kinds of stories. Cause the absolutely tepid reaction to Brandon-Thomas Atlantean sleeper agents arc which is just another Atlantis hates surface world story shows how utterly uninterested folks are with that story type.

Edited by slimcoder on May 28th 2022 at 12:59:50 PM

This is a good point. I imagine Ram V's Andromeda will sell well. It looks innovative.

Oh yeah the cosmic horror story Andromeda looks to be going with looks awesome especially with Christian Ward's art.

Also the Vixen webcomic is out on Webtoons now, first 3 chapters up free. This is Vixen's first ongoing in..... fuck forever.

Are the webtoons ongoings (i.e. indefinite)? I was under the impression that they weren't.

Well they can go on for a long while.

Some of the most famous ones God of High-School and Tower of God have been going on since 2014 and currently have well over hundreds of chapters, Tower going over 400-500 chapters.

Even a comparatively recent one like Lore Olympus which started in 2018 is almost at 200 chapters in only 4 weeks.

All of which still ongoing. Not sure if it will also apply to licensed titles like Batman Family and Vixen but they have the potential to last a really long time if so.

Heh today's justice league road to dark crisis had dick explaining to Jon how no one stays dead for long in their line of work so try not to get too worked up that the jl died. He then says how it affected him in the past and says how barry coming back hurt wally more than barry dying did.

Got around to reading the Justice League: Road to Dark Crisis one-shot anthology.

Okay, so there is a reason why Pariah has gone bat-guano crazy. He was fine wandering as a bum (occasionally seeing things white out into oblivion), but he gets haunted by something resembling his dead wife and kids. The being tries to nudge Pariah to rebuild his machine, but Pariah is adamant that the multiverse, while not nearly as vast as he remembers it, should still be left to its own devices. However, after Pariah tries to ghost the being (heh), the being just goes ballistic and tries to pour some black stuff coming out of its eyes into Pariah's face. Pariah tries to end it by jumping off a building, but he gets transported to Multiverse-2. Someone speaks to him and he gets the black stuff in his eyes, vowing to save the multiverse.

What does it mean? It means Pariah's just as much a puppet as Darkseid and the other members of the Dark Army are. And it could be that someone else is using the Great Darkness and Pariah's guilt for something much worse. In any case, the black stuff is the key. Maybe it's a metaphor for the ink that writers use to come up with grimdark stories?

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Jun 5th 2022 at 1:43:26 PM

Ouch, poor Pariah.

In the original Swamp Thing arc, the Darkness was essentially being used as a WMD by the true baddie, the Brujeria Grandmaster, an all too human villain.

Interesting that the same might be happening here.

Aquaman was kinda in need of a reboot...

like as in Burning Dumpster Fire

Basically not bringing up Manta's murder of their first child 'and then the ass hole shows up on a sub just to blow up the memorial to him

you don't understand how utterly extra and deranged Manta was in his hateboner for Aquaman

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Jun 6th 2022 at 6:31:32 AM

Love how their just doing that for a guy who's one of the spiteful supervillains in the DCU.

(Only Eobard and Joker can rival him).

You forgot lex "literally give up god powers because he can't not try to kill superman" Luther

It's weird how they also make the emphasis of doubling down on Orm being an evil jackass when his noble demon charactization is very popular.

And arguably you can't have the Manta is more popular reasoning here because Orm was also in the movie and was very well-received same as Manta.

So it makes even less sense.

Edited by slimcoder on Jun 6th 2022 at 8:47:20 AM

In what comic did Manta blow up a memorial to Arthur Jr? I don't remember this.

Dark crisis #1. jon tries to reform the justice league but hal and wally refuse to believe they are dead so they go off to search for the bad guys/league respectively. Jon asks a bunch of people inckuding the new wonder girl and batman to join the new league and show there is hope but only his cousin, damian, harley, killer frost, Dr Light, Jackson aquaman, the blue beetles, and booster say yes. Black Adam calls the team out for being trash full of youngsters, people who will betray him, and redundancies. He flies off. Meanwhike titans academy is attacked by slades army and he shoots beast boy. The issue ends with pariah wanting to bring the darkness to the multiverse

With how petty Black Manta and the Reverse Flash are, I'm reminded that Earth 32 is a universe where DC characters get the Composite Character treatment and one of those is Aquaflash. So they would be the same person in Earth 32 and create the single pettiest being in the entire multiverse

I wonder how that meme of Reverse Flash jerking Barry off at superspeed would play in that one.

Oh my fucking God

They drew the straight flag on Jon's cape during his DC Pride story

I didn't even know there was a straight flag