After having reviewed what seems to be a teeming amount of the releases from DC Comics under their “The New 52” initiative, I admit that I have come to really enjoy presenting some views to our readers and fellow fans of the hobby. Newcomers might not realize that DC Comics started their relaunch back in September 2011, and so far its been broken up into a number of waves. Some titles from back when this began are already long gone and in some sense even a couple of replacements have been cancelled but the new titles always leave us with 52 different titles a month. That being said, we are now at The Fourth Wave of titles and what is interesting to me is how it has been about ten months since we last saw a wave be introduced. The unaffected family of titles falls to the Superman and Green Lantern ones (each currently have four titles per month) but there will be some more coming later in the year for these. I will discuss those at that time.
Starting in February of this still brand new year 2013, DC Comics will hit us hard with their Fourth Wave of The New 52 titles and while I will get to the new titles in a few sentences, let’s first take a look at the titles that will be going away. On the cancellation block are “Blue Beetle”, “Frankenstein, Agent Of S.H.A.D.E.”, “Grifter”, GI Combat” and “Legion Lost”. Of the batch of them I think I am really only going to miss the “Franksenstein” title since it was a fun read and quirky at times. Maybe we will find him being called upon in the “Justice League Dark” title since he seems to fit the criteria of being one of DC Universe’s “weirdies”. The reasons I will not really miss the rest are simple. I have not enjoyed the integration of the Wildstorm characters into the traditional DC Universe so that means “Grifter” didn’t win me over. It did have some moments but I always felt these characters were out of place. This was so much different an integration from when DC took all the Charlton Comics characters under their wing after the “Crisis On Infinite Earths”. The war titles I have never been sold on and they are a far cry from the original greatness of Kanigher and Kubert and titles like “The Haunted Tank”, “Sgt. Rock” etc. I preferred the original Blue Beetle title (well, the one with Ted Kord at least) and I felt that The Legion Of Super Heroes was best left in the future with the occasional trip to the past. That’s all I have to say about that.
Joining “The New 52” for this Fourth Wave are “Justice League of America”, “Justice League of America’s Vibe”, “Katana”, “Threshold” and “Constantine”. So what do I think for this go round? I’m very open to an additional Justice League title but am not sure what to expect of this particular team. “JLI” was interesting in it’s own right so let’s see what happens. “Vibe” was never a compelling character to me when he was in the way back in the day “JLA” of the 90’s so his getting a title struck me rather strange. “Katana” I always enjoyed from her original appearance as an Outsider and she did fine with the Birds Of Prey so perhaps this one will stick. “Threshold” brings some characters from other titles into a more cosmic playing field and I think we needed that outside of what Green Lantern or Superman often give us. “Constantine” will be the one with the most attention as it finds the Brit now fully entrenched in the conventional DC Universe as opposed to Vertigo where his “Hellblazer” title just finished at issue #300. Constantine is also a member of the Justice League Dark but this new title will likely allow him to interact with other heroes and villains of the DCU. I’m most intrigued about his happenings. So what do you readers think? The comments are open for opinions and of course we shall be striving to review many of these titles going forward.
Official Website: www.dccomics.com
Readers can peruse all of our existing blogs about “The New 52? by using this tag – http://piercingmetal.com/tag/the-new-52/
