New 52 Month 15: With a whimper, not a bang

With some pieces of shit written by Geoff Johns, resulting in a slightly dirty feeling.
Or not. These are parts one and two of the third or fourth simultaneous crossovers going on (Third Army, Black Diamond, Death of the Family) in Throne of Atlantis so it seems unfair to tease with the beginning of something rather than the end. Needless to say, this is Geoff John's take on a Michael Bay film - don't worry about doing something big because you can do it bigger a couple of pages later and then REALLY FUCKING BIG at the end. Basically, everybody on the whole East coast of America is dead, apart from half a dozen people or so. Yeah. Get out of that.
And after those, the last two Johnsiverse books of 2012, I'm done with it. I can't keep on putting myself through it any more. At first it was a laugh, but I'm not sure whether my net appreciation of comics themselves wasn't suffering as a result. Who did DC think these were for and, more tellingly, who was actually buying some of this crap? Some of these were impenetrable to anybody with even the vaguest sense of plot, English or form YET PEOPLE RECEIVED MONEY FOR WRITING, DRAWING AND EDITING THEM. Editing has actually been my bugbear through the whole thing, as you may have gathered - Johnsiverse continuity existed, and didn't exist, in varying books, sometimes even in the same book and in the case of GL:NG THE SAME ISSUE. I know I seem like a continuity obsessive but that was the WHOLE damn point of the New 52. That post-Flashpoint, everything started again. We even got the hooded woman from Flashpoint in every #1 to ram the point home. Except Geoff Johns loved GL so much he couldn't give up any of the stuff he'd written before. Except when he was writing Hal in Justice League, because that was a different Hal to the one in GL. Add to that reboots within the first year, Captain Atom being God (and now isn't), keeping cancelled characters going in new books, the obsession with the Daemonites being the thing that makes the DCU work and ROB FUCKING LIEFELD and it just got too much. I hope I've at least amused over the course of this, because if not then it's been even more of a waste of my brain cells. I'd love to know what somebody like DiDio would think of the opinions of a normal reader instead of the usual Johns cheerleaders that must have been telling him how much everybody liked them, but some things are just beyond our ken. I wish I could say it's been fun, but for the most part it hasn't.
I'm drawing a line under doing Marvel NOW as well - it's a completely different proposition as pretty much all the books are just 20 pages which stand independently and don't have enough of a theme together to make it a thing. Plus, if I'm honest, I never really cared for Marvel. Sorry Stan.

New 52 Month 15: I might not do this next year

Batwoman #15: A completely nothing issue involving a vaguely Christmassy church scene about gun-toting vigilantes worshipping the Mother of All Children. Told as though Batwoman is watching it in a scrying glass, which probably is as much as you need to know.
Birds of Prey #15: Bye bye Katana. As a way of writing someone out of a book, it's 20 pages too long. As a readable comic it's 21 pages too long. The bomb, which the bloke who left never to return in the last issue having betrayed everyone and knocked out Dinah, rescues a bomb from a sewer and doesn't blow anyone up with it because Katana cuts it in half. Because everyone thinks that will make it blow up. Then the bad guys all just give up, and so the good guys let them all go off-panel. Terrible stuff, all told.
Blue Beetle #15: After the ENTIRELY UNCONNECTED COVER (which may well be meant for the next issue instead but ended up here by accident) we get some crappy Star Wars pastiche and some "Mexico is the worst/best place in the world" bollocks. As ever. Then the Mayan bloke turns up but is blown out of the bar by Galactic Talent Agents looking for BB to be be on the next series of Big Brother. The end can't come soon enough.
Catwoman #15: Catwoman's part in the current ONGOING Bat-crossover (which, let's not forget, the last issue was part of) is dispatched in a single line in the hurry to get to a different giant crossover. The rest is just some straight bullshit as Catwoam does 10 pages of just regular robbery shite then 10 pages of OOOH MYSTIC SHE MIGHT BE TOUCHED BY ECLIPSO OOOH stuff which involves her wearing a false nose and pretending to be a SEXEY scientist. In the end she cuddles up with a demon and the severed arm of a black Irishman. Not the best thing I've read.
DCU Presents #15: The final page says "to be concluded". Which is the best thing about this pile of Blue Devil getting-wrong crap. Seriously? Nebiros was ruined by Etrigan which means his favourite thing is to see Dan naked? Ugh.
Green Lantern #15: The Third Army is now a swarm the size of a planet. Baz thinks it was all just some kind of coincidence that the van he stole was FULL OF BOMBS and goes to apologise to the guy who it belonged to but stumbled into a plot that the likes of Baz from Four Lions would come up with. Sinestro and Hal walk about in black and white being the most awesomest Lanterns ever EVARR. It ends with the First Lantern, who it still isn't clear whether he's on the Guardians' side despite him being in a cell of their making. His name is Volthoom, which is the Johnsiest thing I can imagine this close to Christmas.
Green Lantern New Guardians #15: Continuity busted! Issue 1 took place two years before the rest of the DCU (except for the things that took place 5 years beforehand like Justice League and Action) which explains... nothing as it happens. Anyway, Kyle and the Third Army are both racing to see Larfleeze as he (apparently) is the URGENT AND MOST IMPORTANT key to all things Lantern. Presumably also making him the most important and the best. At the end, because Kyle is the best Lantern ever (who isn't Hal, or indeed Larfleeze) he is so much better than the Third Army that only a Guardian can bring him in. I can't remember where we are in power escalation storylines, but that just doesn't feel right.
LoSH #15: A dinosaur in future Barcelona. That's about it.
Nightwing #15: The Joker kills some of Dick's mates from the circus he does/doesn't own/perform in in some quite boring ways. Dull, more than anything else.
Red Hood #15: Jason kills a whole pile fo policemen to prove he's not a murderer. Roy and Starfire nearly have sex then turn up to save the day. Bleh.
Supergirl #15: MAKE IT STOP. The H'El on Earth crossover is interminable. Kara gets sent into the bottle city of Kandor to bring back a crystal that the H'El within Kandor has. Which does make you wonder if he had the power to send her in and out why he just didn't take himself out. Dreadful stuff.
Sword of Sorcery #3: "Death is the only fate I seek!" Death is preferable to the Amethyst part of this book. In the Boewulf backup Marilyn Manson explains how we got from the one state of affairs to the other state of affairs, or how Boewulf came to be. Then she blows shit up, just because. It's the most readable pages thus far this week, and still isn't very good.
Wonder Woman #15: ORION ORION ORION ORION ORION (the WW stuff is a bit Byrne-y) ORION ORION ORION ORION ORION. Then Abominable Snowmen. YAY. SOMETHING WORTH READING.

New 52 Month 15: Will to live is almost gone

Batgirl #15: I know the Bat franchise is all about vengeance, but jeez, Gail Simone ladles it on. Batgirl wants to kill the Joker because he's hurting her mum. No, because of the whole cripple thing. No, her mum. No, the cripple thing. No, because of James. No, because of her mum. How do you live your life as such a seething ball of hate? It's amazing she's able to function, she's so led by her emotions. Anyway, (one of) the Joker's plans is revealed and... it's the plot to Boxing Helena. Which might almost be ironic and/or cute if one of the characters was called Helena, but since there isn't just feels lazy. I'd like to hope it was this "shocking revelation" that got Gail sacked.
Batman #15: Bruce, your skills of denial are fearsome but you're wrong. Of course the Joker's been in the Batcave and of course he knows who everybody is. Even Jason Todd, WHO HE KILLED, knows this is true and him zinging you over it is the highlight of this otherwise overly wordy issue. Not Jurgens Superman wordy, I'll give you, but very full of exposition and explanation. Maybe if a plot's that complex then it's too complicated? Maybe? The backup is far more like it, giving us the Joker's escape from Arkham and bring the (presumbly unreformed in the Johnsiverse) Riddler along for the ride. Poor old Steve though. Being ruined too like that.
Batman & Robim #15: See Gail? Peter Tomasi gets it. Actually, he possibly has more fun with the Joker than any of the other current Bat-writers, having him play with his face and sticking his hands through the mouth - even wearing it upside-down in a pretty disturbing image. I can't help thinking the whole Alfred plot is nothing more than sleight of hand during this crossover, and I stand by my guess that Damian is the one who dies after reading this issue.
Deathstroke #15: Not improved by lack of Liefeld. Now that's a claim.
Demon Knights #15: Some day a real rain will come and wash the magic off the bad guys. Not really how I thought this plot would end, but you can't have everything. It ends with the formalisation of the group as Stormwatch, and we all know if Merlin calls you a name you decide to keep it. This book has, unfortunately, petered out month on month after about the first 9 months and is probably nearing the end of worth. The next issue is set "thirty years later" though, so maybe a new team (presumably?) will revitalise it. Sales figures would suggest it's a lost cause though.
Frankenstein #15: So, now we know the missing link between Frankenstein #14 and Animal Man #15, which is that the magic women who turned up on the final page of last issue all die 2 pages into this issue in order for Frankie to beat the big monster. The rest of the issue is emo nonsense as it turns out F is head over heels with Not Abe Sapien and has made her pregnant. When did she stop wearing her water helmet? I've only just realised she doesn't have it on during this issue. Limping over the line rather than finishing strongly, the scent of failure is all over this title now and it's a chore to finish.
Green Lantern Corps #15: Guy isn't a Lantern any more. John Stewart is with one of the Star Sapphires, who tethers her heart with love to the bit of Mogo that JS has found to help it meet all the other bits of Mogo. Salaak is now the best Lantern in the history of Lanterning ever, as he's just about able to work out what the Guardians are doing (which seems to be proving ridiculously easy, so maybe the Lanterns aren't all that after all). Guy decides he going to bluff it against bad guys and goes out to bust some heads, but only ends up ruining a lengthy police honey trap for an arms dealer. Which, it seems, gets you arrested. There had to be something arresting about this book, I guess. Badum-tish.
Grifter #15: Wow. Marat Michaels goes all-out with his Liefeld worship here. It's much cleaner inked than Rob, but the poses and layouts are just as bad - arguably worse. King Shark, for example, is a noticeably different size in all four panels he's in. There's a plot in here somewhere but it's buried so far below the overwhelming tide of crap that I can't be arsed expending the effort to find it. Something to do with Mormon Daemonites I think. C'mon. I couldn't be making that up, could I? Anyway, this takes place about 6 months ago in continuity, I think, based on the Suicide Squad represented here. Is it so difficult to get basic things right, like WHO'S ALIVE?
Legion Lost #15: Wildfire sacrifices himself to no avail, although apparently they're going to try and rebuild him. I thought this was the last issue, but it turns out the next one is. Or not, as apparently it's merging (of sorts) with the Ravagers. You have to query the editorial mentality at DC, really. EVERY cancelled book - which has been cancelled because of poor sales, remember - has been merged or continued in another title. Here's the thing: people weren't buying it because they didn't like it. They still won't like it if/when you change the name and continue it in secret. Or am I missing something?
Suicide Squad #15: I think this will actually turn out to be a key point in Death of the Family in the end, as we find out a lot about the Joker's general motivation in the Johnsiverse. But that last page. I look forward to how THAT'S explained.
Superboy #15: Oh God, I had forgotten this crossover was still going. Superboy is beaten almost to death, so Supes flies him off to the Fortress of Solitude and tries to put his armour on Superboy to cure him. His logic is that it will recognise Kryptonian bloodline and help him but it doesn't work properly. Supes rationalises this as proof Superboy is a clone of him. Yes. The thing that works by recognising Kryptonians (in his head) doesn't work because he's perfectly identical to Kryptonians. Still, how can you take a man seriously who stops between two panels to put on a cape for no obvious reason? He'l looks like he's winning, which clearly means he'll lose in the next issue of Supergirl.
Team 7 #3: The hiding place of cancelled characters does a fairly basic spy team book as they try and break up whatever it is the singer from Ghost is trying to do. None of it really matters as the point of the whole thing is Deathstroke being turned into Eclipso on the last page. I doubt it'll make this readable next month, but you never know.
Ravagers #7: Fairchild sees a future where the Ravagers destroy the world. Yes, it's them that do it, not the definitely true Rotworld, or the Guardians' Third Army, or the New Krypton, or anything else that is definitely the future which will destroy everything. If you're having continuity, you sort of have to stick with it. (By the same token, where is this in relation to Legion Lost?) Deathstroke's going to be in the next one. Because he improves everything, obviously.

New 52 Month 15: Thinking Karen Berger has the right idea

Action Comics #15: Ummm... GMoz's Action run is all a 5-D illusion? Who else went back and checked the number of worlds before and after the cataclysm to see if there were 52 left? He's slap bang on form here (and even the backup is great) but, as I've said before, this has so little to do with the Johnsiverse I have absolutely no idea why DC are persisting with the idea it's one of the New 52 (see also Batman Inc). Last issue's story took place about a decaxe in the future, and this issue takes place simultaneously in the past, the present and the future. I think the trade of this is going to be a great read, and I look forward to re-reading once done, but to be honest as a monthly floppy I'm finding it kind of infuriating as it feels like you need to be checking other issues all the time or at least not be distracted by reading other things. On that basis, I still have mixed feelings about the book and it doesn't liven up my week's reading.
Animal Man #15: Featuring Frankenstein, which means you'll need to have read Frankenstein #15 to know how that turns out before he gets here. Except it's not published yet. TOP PLANNING. So, they beat all the gorillas in a couple of pages and walk over America some more. The flashback to the 'present' pans out exactly as you thought it would, and in the future Buddy has a nightmare about the past, from before they all got in the camper van. Having finally got to Metropolis, where the secret prison of the guy that can beat Rotworld is, amid much speculation they're going to find Superman they find Green Lantern. Although not a Lantern we've seen before, and obviously they haven't been reading Earth 2 because in there Alan Scott beats Grundy when he turns up as the Earth 2 King of Rot. Rot is kind of how I feel about this book now, if I'm honest. It's clearly not a real future, and is so obviously full of padding it's not that engaging. Swamp Thing is clearly driving this narrative, and actually being good is obviously in its favour. But more on that later. As for this, it's 2 pages of resolution of the last plot then 18 pages of nothing then 2 pages of cliffhanger. Just like the last half dozen issues. Disappointing.
Batwing #15: Western science beats African magic. GOT THAT? A massive electric Bat-net stops the baddie from mind-controlling people and Batwang decides not to throw him off a roof, just to show what a good man he is. Pity he's still a cop accepting bribes, eh?
Detective Comics #15: There's a great story in here about the resolution to the Clayface and Ivy marriage story but it's kind of overshadowed by the Penguin plot in which we get another blonde smoking slightly shifty anti-hero to go with the ones in Justice League Dark and Wonder Woman. Is it any wonder then this feels like it's going over old ground? Especially when it's a core Bat-book during a massive Bat-crossover that it doesn't go near except referring to it in one panel? The backup is really kind of excellent though, with the full story of Clayface and Ivy told with pace and poise. You know what it reminds me of? Concrete. And you can't say that about many books DC are publishing these days.
Dial H #7: Nelson and Roxie continue to look for another dial, slowly picking up clues (mainly in France). The great thing about this is the balancing of comedy and moving the plot forward, even if it's just goofing off with barking mad and useless characters. At the end, Mieville show's he's read The Invisibles and the bad guy is revealed as GMoz's time centipede thing. A trick is missed by not calling him the Human Centipede, I fear.
Earth 2 #7: Alan Scott gets used to the idea of being Green Lantern and Hawkgirl tries to intimidate him into embracing his Lantern-ness. There's an underground base and then NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO who wanted Mister Terrific back in this? We'd only just managed to forget about him! But then... yay yay yay we might be getting Red Tornado soon! Although I don't know why I'm looking forward to it, they'll probably bollocks it up as badly as Blue Devil. It's come to this, that the base expectation for any DC book now is that it'll be crap and if it isn't then we all applaud. That can't be right, can it?
GI Combat #7: How can a comic featuring a giant Nazi war wheel driven by the corpse of Erwin Rommel and destroyed by a ghost, a magic tank and a guy in his 80s be bad? That's right, IT CAN'T. The Unknown Soldier backup is solid enough and closes the story out, but the ending is a bit corny. You know what though? I can't help thinking if the book had started with Haunted Tank rather than giving JT Krul YET ANOTHER chance then it might have built up a slight head of sales and wouldn't be getting cancelled. Maybe a lesson to be learned there, but Johns and DiDio aren't in the game of learning.
Green Arrow #15: Oh God, this is dreadful rubbish. The not-concluded Hawkman stuff from last issue (which appears to have been concluded off-page) has left Oliie with a head injury which may or may not mean this whole issue is being imagined. Anyway, he breaks up a dog fight where the dog (the special favourite of on of the main bad guys) fights the other main bad guy for a diamond ice pick. "Made of real ice - geddit?" says the main bad guy. No, we don't. This needs putting out of its misery.
Stormwatch #15: Is this actually worse? I think it might be. There's a quadruple bluff and the guy from the first couple of issues (who we might have all forgotten about) turns out to be the bad guy behind everything and not shy of killing a roomful of kids to frame Midnighter. There's implanted memories (which in a twist I'm sure Pete Milligan assumes is SHOCKING) which may actually be inverted and the Midnighter might be the only one with the implanted memory, which is that everybody else has implanted memories saying he's bad... and emo Apollo flies into the sun to mope. Presumably his bedroom wasn't far enough away. Confusing rubbish, bordering on unreadable.
Swamp Thing #15: Compared to Animal Man, as you really have to do since they have the same plot, this is a work of genius. On its own merit, it's a pretty competent comic telling of the journey of Swampy and Deadman to Gotham looking for Batman, and finding Batgirl, interspersed with the 'now' of Abby trying to escape from the castle as Rotworld starts. It's just so much of a shame that this whole tie-in exists and that it's supposed to be part of the Johnsiverse - it would probably make a great standalone GN, but DC know better. Of course they do.
Phantom Stranger #3: They know well enough to produce this execrable crap. Written by their head guy. Words really can't describe how awful this is, honestly. It's a number of action poses, linked by some dreadfully stilted dialogue including a section where a character looks like he's going to discover God but goes to Thailand instead. There's a talking dog and the POWER OF PILATES. And wow, another slightly magic, wisecracking, sinister sidekick who smokes. That's 4 now. Who ever said DC had run out of ideads?
World's Finest #7: Damian shows up to help and it turns out Darkseid is KONY 2012. Really? REALLY? Ugh.

New 52 Month 14: Blue, like Duncan From.

Batwoman #14: MUST STOP THINKING ABOUT PROMETHEA. But it's so hard, this is so influenced by it. Every page is a splash to exploit the artwork, and the writing is pretty solid (even if it does put Wonder Woman in a kind of Justice League Dark position). After far too many months Batwoman has found its feet again and is about as good as it's ever been. Those of you that remember the Detective run will know that's fairly high praise.
Birds of Prey #14: This isn't going anywhere. Again. The Condor guy, who isn't maybe such a bad guy after all, but then is, but then isn't, but then is, is merely a sidebar in the plot. Which seems to be about getting a lot of ninjas in a room for a big fight - which the BoP run away from in any case. This isn't awful, by any means, it just isn't actively good and I can't for the life of me work out whu anyone would choose to read it.
Blue Beetle #14: So, Jaime and the other good/bad scarab blow up Scarabworld, like it was suggested last month they would, while the dead Mayan dude continues to chase them. There are an awful lot of hints about secrets to be revealed in the near future, but over a year into publication isn't the time to be introducing them. I suppose the adventures in the Reach just about do enough to make you want to read more, but with cancellation already announced it's difficult to raise the enthusiasm. This may well indicate good things for Threshold when it starts, but migrating a cancelled title character into a new book hasn't exactly worked out for Mister Terrific now, has it?
Catwoman #14: Little more than a series of set pieces designed to show Catwoman in various states of undress (including a contrived scenario to get her in the shower), but it's not dreadful at all despite being written by Ann Nocenti. At the conclusion she offers her NEW REVOLUTIONARY take on The Joker - he's gay for Batman! Wow! I never saw that coming! </snark>

 

DCU Presents #14: STOP GETTING BLUE DEVIL WRONG. 

 

Facepalm indeed. Can I un-read this?
GL:NG #14: The continuing story of Kyle Rayner becoming the bestest Lantern ever sees him meeting the same people he's met before that swanned off at the end of the first plot NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN. But OH NOES Carol Ferris is being conned by the Guardians because they know the whole thing is secretly to help Hal and because they hate him so much they've got a whole secret plot to undermine all the other Lanterns of all colours just in case. That's how ridiculous this book is now, the lead character isn't even what the book is about any more. It's about Hal. Which not even Hal's book is about.
Justice League #14: Superman is still a cheetah, but jungle magic cures him so he takes WW out on a hot date to eat apple pie in Smallville. The ridiculously overpowered Cheetah is captured ridiculously easily (despite her almost killing Barry Allen in the process), which may or may not be part of a secret plot on her part that has to do with the Black Manta. Batman watches Supes and WW having sex in a field on his special Super Sex Scanner. He seems unmoved by the experience, but then again we can only see one of his hands. Geoff Johns' Shazam backup is as Johns-y as you'd expect, take it or leave it.
LoSH #14: SPROING is a sound effect you don't see that much any more. It appears multiple times here, including one panel where it appears three times. That's devotion to a word. A guy with a squid face called M'WIM has lost his sword. This will undoubtedly be a bad thing in future issues.
Nightwing #14: Poor Dick. Not important enough to get a Joker crossover in the first wave. It's really eating him up too, as he can't believe a villain would just turn up randomly and attack him and the Joker must have been behind it. Villains don't turn up randomly? HAVE YOU NEVER READ A COMIC BEFORE, DICK?
Red Hood #14: Superman turns up on the off-chance that what happened in his Annual (which I'm not actually sure I bothered reading), and buggers off in the huff when he finds it didn't. Jason shags an alien girl, only for the Joker to drug her and set him up with the police. See Dick? Even a DEAD Robin gets a better Joker crossover than you. Irrespective of how good this might be, the grammar nazi in me finds this unforgivable in an edited publication:

Your kidding me.
Supergirl #14: In which Supergirl is exposed as a Nationalist bigot. Seriously, she is full of contempt for Superman and the human scientist because they speak Kryptonian with an Earth accent, which she doesn't care for. She even thinks an Irish girl (which, as we all should remember, looks just like Texas) speaks more authentic Kryptonian than them. The rest of the issue is really about whether she and H'El (who has the least Kryptonian Kryptonian name ever) should kill everyone that isn't pure blood Kryptonian. Because we all like a nice final solution in our comics, don't we?
Sword Of Sorcery #2: Re-arrange these words. DUCK LAME. Amethyst and her new friend talk about fabrics. She then gets some of her mother's power through the ability of LOVE. Quite what the power is, who knows. Putting out lights seems to be her main skill. The techno-Beowulf backup is still excellent though and well worth your attention - just don't go near Amethyst to get there.
Wonder Woman #14: This really doesn't belong in the New 52, does it. 1) It's good. 2) It's well plotted, as we get the machinations of Gods, Zeus' bastard children, sleeping giants... 3) It's good. Plus Orion turns up at the end. You can't go wrong with the New Gods now, can you.
All-Star Western #14: So, the cover is unrelated to the plot and the Barbary Ghost's clothing is frankly implausible, but there's lots to love in this as ever. Yes, we've seen Mr Hyde in LoEG and he's been as brutal here as there, but it doesn't mean it isn't great to read. The Tomahawk backup isn't the best this book has seen though, and the final panel with the horses leaving the settlement is REALLY badly drawn. But hey, with pickings as slim as DC's output you ignore things like that in a decent book.
Aquaman #14: The thing about Aquaman is, he's king of the sea. Right? So you think you'd get an artist in that can draw fish. Well OK, Pete Woods can technically draw fish, but he draws STUPID fish. The sort who have to go to a special school and aren't allowed to play with the sharp coral. Black Manta doesn't want to join the Suicide Squad, presumably because it's not written by Geoff Johns, but will tie in with Justice League, because it is. In other news, the Trench baddies from the very first plot are being brought back by somebody (and based on the adverts for the impending Throne Of Atlantis I'd bet it's a way they think can... erm... get the Throne Of Atlantis). Johnsy Johnsiness of the highest order.
Batman Inc #5: Ummm. Thrill-powered, yes, but the whole issue is an alternate future Gotham if Damian became Batman. So, back in the DCU, Bruce tells Damian he can't let that happen. Then all the other members of Batman Inc get blown up. A great read, but I'm not sure why DC are publishing this as a New 52 title.
Batman The Dark Knight #14: Wow. Does Batman really skewer the Scarecrow to the ceiling with a rope he shoots from a rocket gun? He gets pissed off because of this and buys a giant dirigible from the Penguin to infect Gotham with fear gas during the Thanksgiving/Christmas parade. The Penguin probably didn't need it any more after it didn't go so well for him in that Tim Burton film. Good stuff though, even if it feels like there isn't much to it.
I, Vampire #14: The fight from last issue doesn't happen and a guy who can't do bar magic gets turned into a vampire. This second soft reboot doesn't feel like it's going anywhere and if I'm honest it's painfully obvious that this is a dead book walking. After the next round of cancellations it's the second lowest DC seller, so it's inevitable really.
Justice League Dark #14: Better than most of the characters' own books. We get a runaround of the House of Secrets, including the big secret of who's spying on the DCU trying to find out secrets. There's going to be a war, apparently. Yes, another one.
Red Lanterns #14: Atrocitus punches a planet to death. The human Red Lantern, the new one, lives in the Middle Ages (based on the village he takes Bleez to, which definitely isn't the one he left from the first time we saw him). The Red Lanterns easily beat the Third Army in any case, which makes them the best Lantern Corps, presumably. This allows Atrocitus to muse on the colour blue, like some kind of rage-filled Van Gogh.

What next? Larfleeze recites "Daffodils"?
Superman #14: Supergirl's genocidal desires spill over to here, but Superman is largely able to explain it all away in long sentences. H'El gets in a mood because nobody will kill Superboy for him, so he smashes up a car lot. Scott Lobdell has improved the title exponentially, but having to deal with shitty crossovers is affecting his ability to deliver. Get back to Clark & Jimmy in 'One And A Half Men'.
Talon #2: Do we really need this? It's well written and engaging enough, because you can never have too much OWLS, but it really does feel like one BatBook too many, even though it isn't really one. Might be worth taking a 6 month view on, not least because I think it'll read better as a trade anyway.
Teen Titans #14: Cassie takes her armour back, which kills her archaeologist boyfriend. She doesn't seem to cut up about it. Kiran finally realises she's naked and gets all embarrassed in front of someone from the "current" issue of Birds of Prey, by which presumably they mean #15 as I've just read #14 and don't recognise the character I'm obviously supposed to. What are the chances of that, an incorrect editorial boxout?
Flash #14: Grodd back and more powerful than before, with control over the speed force now. I won't spoil the ending, but this is super stuff again and maybe the most consistently good book in the Johnsiverse.
Firestorm #14: Just when you thought this book couldn't get any worse, Captain Atom has turned up. With a really weirdly shaped head. Somebody cancel this, please? It's the actual lowest seller not yet cancelled, and sells less than the already-cancelled Frankenstein. Just put it out of its misery, please?
Hawkman #14: And talking of poor sellers, the third lowest-selling not-cancelled book. Home of the Liefeld retells Deathstroke #14 over two pages, and Green Arrow shoots some arrows into Thanagarians' faces. We get wonders of Liefeld writing like this:

Can we make it stop please? Pretty please?

New 52 Month 14: Even I'm getting tired of this

Batgirl #14: A deranged Joker in full flow is always a great thing to behold, but Gail S just doesn't get it. She's too busy playing with the pseudo-hypnosis of Babs right up to the point where we're supposed to believe THIS Barbara Gordon, the one that had her back healed after the events of the Killing Joke, the one who got out of her wheelchair, the one who stared down one of the guys that did it... is reduced to a pathetic, paralysed weeping child by the memory of it. Still, Babs also doesn't recognise her brother's voice so anything is possible. I'm curious to how all the Death of the Family will work together, but not curious to read any more of these.
Batman #14: THIS is how you do a deranged Joker. Hats off Mr Snyder, you might just well be the best Batman writer since the Silver Age. But it's not just Batman - this is a textbook example of writing comics. Set up the mystery, raise the bar with a fake-out during the plot build and take it to a level where you want to read the next part of it. Hell, it almost makes me want to read Batgirl (even if Gail didn't get the memo about how the Joker's doing things). The backup is great too, with just enough hints about how all this is panning out, while telling a completely different story. Why isn't everything DC put out as good as this?
Batman & Robin #14: The Joker has created cannibals, but I can't take my mind of the way Peter Tomasi is channelling Neal Adams' Batman Odyssey. Or Frank Miller's All Star Batman. And neither of those are good options.

OK, I guess, but very average and I don't think we really need the emo bullshit on the last couple of pages.
Deathstroke #14: And there was me wondering why Deathstroke was involved in all this Hawkman nonsense. It's because his armour is Nth Metal. OH, OF COURSE IT IS ROB. FFS, can you not get one original idea? (By the way, despite all his fun adventures in space and whatnot Deathstroke is now reduced to picking up jobs in bars. Bit of a comedown.)
Demon Knights #14: This has kind of lost its way in the past couple of months. Etrigan and Jason are separate, Morgaine is going to conquer Avalon, everybody is pairing up into couples to have a happy life together. I didn't care for this much and had to check who wrote it as it's well below the standards Paul Cornell has set for the title, but he's put in enough effort in the past to get him a free pass this month. Just make it the only one where I say it, OK?
Frankenstein #14: Why drag your heels like the other Rotworld books? Why not just speed about invincibly across America when everyone else can't go 100 yards without being attacked. I know, why not go to Easter Island, just for the hell of it? Then kill off the rest of the cast and bring in some shiny golden robots? That's bound to help.
Green Lantern Corps #14: So the Guardians are now working against Guy Gardner now, because Guy is the best Lantern of all time now? Is that because Hal is/isn't dead or was Guy always better? And in GL:NG you say that Kyle's the best ever. Is it just that every Lantern is the best Lantern ever because they're all better than all the other heroes because they're Geoff Johns' power fantasy. Except John Stewart. Geoff Johns doesn't seem to like him for some reason. If only I could put my finger on what makes him different to Hal or Guy or Kyle. There must be something... Anyway, Kilowog and Salaak sort of work out what's going on, but don't care enough to do anything about it and the Guardians take away Guy's ring and return him to Earth. Most books would be cancelled at this point, as this one should, but it'll continue on unfortunately.
Grifter #14: Oh shitty Christ, this is awful. Rob has Grifter and Midnighter zapped round the world while they're fighting so he can get some KEWL ideas in. What if they were underwater fighting a shark, wouldn't that be KEWL? Oops, not as good as I thought, but there was a shark so VFFTTT they're in front of a speeding train, but that's a kind of one panel joke so VFFTTT they're in Tokyo. It's like watching a toddler with ADHD playing with action figures. Not being a toddler myself, or a parent with an interest, it's more dereving of sympathy than awe or pride.
Legion Lost #14: Not long remaining, and it definitely shows. This takes place after last month's Superboy, which takes place after next month's Ravagers. Make sense? The writers have given up with this lazy rubbish and so have I.
Suicide Squad #14: Wow, so Floyd's really dead, huh? Not sure I saw that coming, and Harley definitely didn't see the Joker punching her square in the face coming either. The slight change in focus to the Bat tie-in make it less satisfying in previous months as it's more than able to stand alone, but it works well enough I suppose. Compared to nearly everything else this week it's a masterpiece.
Superboy #14: Just so we're clear, Legion Lost 14-16 happen between Superboy 13 and 14. How's that there continuity working out for you, DiDio? This also is taking place at the same time (and is part of) both the Batman and Superman tie in plots. MAKE IT STOP.
Team 7 #2: I think this might genuinely be one of the most pointless books DC has ever published. Team 7's giant flying space doughnut takes them to somewhere that Eclipso might be, which is odd as he was killed during the TINY FOOTPRINTS nonsense, which must still exist because Green Lantern is still from that universe (otherwise Brightest Day can't have happened, which it must have). There's some fighting of sorts, and some standing about. That's all I remember, and I've just finished reading it. That probably tells its own story.
Phantom Stranger #2: Talking of pointless books... actually, the portrayal of football (or soccer, if you must) is one of the most hilariously inept things I've read in a DC book for many years. Really, if you're going to write about a topic you could at least learn SOMETHING about it. Imagine if a Brit was writing about baseball and the guy on the losing team hit four home runs. It would sound kind of stupid, right? Well so does this book. The Stranger is now just a supernatural alter-ego. Like putting on a costume or something. Yes, it's that dumb. Awful stuff.
Ravagers #6: And completing the week of wasted paper comes this, a barely tolerabel team book but I'll take anything I can get at this point. But wait! It takes place before Legion Lost 14, so it takes place before Superboy 14. Good. But they're not done yet - Beast Boy suffers the effects from Rotworld in this issue and a boxout refers to Swamp Thing and Animal Man 14s, so they take place in the Johnsiverse after all and here's the proof. That means it only has a year left before it's all destroyed. Hooray!

New 52 Month 14: An unexpected rift appears

Action #14: Ummm. Yeah. The human terraforming mission to Mars is under threat because other terraformers have dibs on the planet. Then some other terraformers, who are a bit like the bad Angels from Doctor Who, turn up as well as they've been doing this relelntlessly since they tried to do it to Krypton (leaving aside that they've only done 200 planets in the entire time Kal-el has been alive, which isn't exactly startling pace) but luckily the middle terraformers are Mek-Quake from Ro-Busters and so powerful enough to smash the angels, until Superman electrocutes them in the 5th Dimension. Wait, multi-dimensions? After the reveal about Clark's landlady the other month, that can only mean one thing! Yes, it's Vyndktvx, the Johnsiverse version of Mr Mxyzptlk! Only he's a bad, vindictive little multi-dimensional sprite and not the trickster we know and love and he's been behind EVERYTHING! GOSH! Does this sound like fanwank? Thrill-powered as it is, I suspect it might. Still, it all works out all right. We know that because the Sholly Fisch backup takes place the week after it. Way to go, editors.
Animal Man #14: I want to like this. Really I do, but I know it's not real. Rotworld is an Elseworlds book, as in real-time in the Johnsiverse the rot has already started taking over and in the future it has. Enjoying it for what it is then, it's always pleasant to see Grifter get his head ripped off. Beast Boy cares for him as much as I do and you can never be sure it's not just Jeff Lemire channelling directly.

So much of this doesn't make sense though. Gorilla City is now in America? And why try and make explicit AGAIN that this IS the Johnsiverse by having Black Orchid talk about Steve Trevor's black projects? The confused mess this ends up is purely because of the attempts to make the 52 universe a tangible thing. If this was just lurking off as a Vertigo book or something everything would be fine. In what I'm sure is a complete coincidence, amid dialogue about turncoats, the heroes who are shown to have gone over to the other side are Grifter, Deathstroke and Hawk & Dove. I mean, it is just a coincidence Rob Liefeld was working on all of those, right? Otherwise them being the only ones picked on would be a really petty bit of whiny bitching, yeah? It would make you wonder what Jeff Lemire could have against him, were it any more than a coincidence? Or what an editorial hold DiDio and Johns had over him to force him to write them in. Were it not just a coincidence that draws a connection between Rob L and being a traitor. But obviously it's a coincidence. OBVIOUSLY. I can't believe I even noticed it.
Batwing #14: Oh God, I had forgotten about this. Africa is full of magic, yes, and everybody has hanging about a special amulet to protect them from the magic. If they're not ancient magic people then they're mercenaries who sometimes work as vigilantes to make up for it. This really is dreadful racist nonsense at the heart of it, about how DIFFERENT Africa is. Not proper, like America. Everyone lives in shacks or ruins. They're all corrupt. They all believe in magic. You just keep telling your self that and you'll fit right in.
Detective #14: Whut? The carefully built plot from the last issue is thrown away in four pages, Brids of Prey is actively dissed and then the plot of the Ivy story ignored... oh, and she's married to Clayface now. It's Helena I feel sorry for, being deserted like that. Is the Johnsiverse really trying to tear itself apart, based on this month so far?
Dial H #6: THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. What happens when the Dial gives you somebody you couldn't possibly go outside with in this day and age? You in heap big trouble. Nelson and Rox pass the day waiting for the effects to wear off in one of those instances, while discussing other times. Maybe my favourite issue so far, and that's a big claim. I'm just sorry we won't see Wingy again.
Earth 2 #6: GRUNDY NOT SMASH MOON! STUPID MOON! If only Jeff Lemire was as clever as James Robinson, hunh?
GI Combat #6: Haunted Tank is as much fun as Iron Sky. That's enough of an explanation as you need. Unknown Soldier is kind of meh, but not enough to drag the enjoyment of the book overall. See DiDio? This is what happens when you get rid of people like JT Krul. People end up ACTUALLY LIKING what you publish.
Green Arrow #14: Hawkman and GA have a fight with lots of other Hawkmen, while chucking out huge chunks of exposition and talking about COMPLETE BATTLE COLLAPSE and the like. Ann Nocenti proves she's the mastermind behind those things people put on Facebook by claiming "you can't unring a bell" is an Ancient Chinese Proverb, when it actually came from a US court case in the 50s. Oh good. It continues in Deathstoke (who hasn't actually been in it yet) and Hawkman. Deep joy.
Green Lantern #14: The Guardians talk to a guy made of light about how much they love Hal Jordan before discussing how they're going to save and/or destroy the universe and ponder the value of the soul. The Justice League turn up, and in a wonder of Superhero Sadface realise that NOT EVERY ARAB IS A TERRORIST. Well, except Aquaman. He still thinks that. Flash is kind of amazed that an imaginary car doesn't behave like a normal car and actually does what the guy who imagines it wants it to do. The Black Hand tries to save the Guardians locked in the box in the middle of space and Hal and Sinestro, who are still dead, go to the House of Mystery. Probably. I can't tell any more.
Stormwatch #14: Etrigan (who might not be Etrigan, as his rhyming is back and he's significantly de-powered) is fighting Stormwatch, who think he was one of the people the Demon Knights fought. Because, as we all know, Demon Knights were Stormwatch before Stormwatch. Of course. How stupid of me. Also, a superhero fight is a bit like the Olympics. No, it seriously says this. Anyway, Stormwatch is now only about the Shadow Lords, whatever they are. And Midnighter realises beating people up can cure him of being gay. You might think I'm just checking you're still reading, but no, this is what happens on the last page. I'd love to pretend it doesn't, but unfortunately this is where DC have got to. Really quite horrific.
Swamp Thing #14: Despite existing in the same Elseworld as Animal Man, this is a rollicking read as the green heroes left move to the same unavoidable fight as the red heroes - except in a convincing and entertaining way. But it' tiring reading and writing so much bad material. I need a nap before I attempt anything else. Night night.

Month 13: Rounding out that which did not need it

Aquaman #13: How much sad can a sadface get if a Geoff Johns could write sad? NONE MORE SADFACE. This is like the nexus of Sadface and suck. Manta gets the sceptre from Atlantis which makes his craft into a crazy teleporting device which, handily, Mera has a computer that can track. Because Manta has killed the Russian who has always been Arthur's mate (you know, the one who only turned up a month or so ago) Artur wants to kill Manta but doesn't. Manta's sidekick and/or boss, who Arthur and Mera have randomly decided is a good guy really and therefore don't turn into the police, gets to spend the rest of his life going round to soldiers' widows letting them no their husbands loved them really because he can see their ghosts. Instead of the rational reaction which should be OMG GET AWAY FROM ME YOU FREAK! POLICE! POLICE! instead they coat his shoulders with their grateful tears, giving him a lob on, or something. I hate you, Geoff Johns. Really. You're a worse thing for comics than Rob Liefeld, and I'm not even exaggerating.
Action Annual #1: Can it be true? Is Sholly Fisch really a better writer than GMoz? DON'T BE STUPID, OF COURSE HE'S NOT. Imagine the pain in your heart you feel when you have to read one of his backups, then stretch it out to 10 times the length. Kryptonite Man gets invented in a lab during Action Comics #8 (yes, this takes place 6 months ago) and then gets beaten up by Superman and Steel. The experience convinces Stell he should go off instead and form a startup company in Australia to bring buildings to the natives out there (while learning the digeridoo and how to dance round a fire). Luthor learns from this issue that K hurts Supes, which I thought he already knew (and was shown in Action #2 or #3 as a fact), but feels like OOH PLOT POINT in any case. Despite this, there is a completely unexpected Atomic Skull backup which is very nearly worth the price of admission itself.

Steal it and have a look, you won't regret it.
Batgirl Annual #1: MAKE IT STOP. This has the girl Talon that appeared in Batgirl OWLS (although from memory I think the boxout refers to the wrong issue) and it turns out OWLS are still as active as ever, just not in Batman or any of the Batbooks and Batman and the whole Batfamily (including Batgirl) couldn't give a toss about them because it's Catwoman they're after. And despite the fact just ONE OWL was nearly good enough to kill Bats himself, Catwoman is able to take on several and win (presumably, it all happens offscreen). GIRL POWER! Or something. The whole issue is only an excuse to get the girl Talon into Birds of Prey. Deep joy.
Justice League Dark Annual #1: Hooray for sequential storytelling! A book which comes out after #13 actually takes place after #13! But oh no, it takes place before I, Vampire #8! (Although at least it tells you and acknowledges it, which is something at least.) Anyway, nearly every magical hero you can think of ends up at Nanda Parbat. Where the books of magic eventually reveal they're a super alien space computer. Science not magic, you see?

Go Obama 2012 or something! If not, what is the point of this? It's readable enough I suppose, but... meh.
Swamp Thing Annual #1: Umm. Yes. A prequel to #14, but telling a story from before #0. And it's a pretty good one, all told, or at least very diverting. But as with most of the #0s, adding very little to the plot, really. Can I start another sentence with a preposition? No. Yes? But no. Although yes? It might say something that this kind of wordplay is arguably more entertaining.

Month 13: Typically, hope is dashed.

All Star Western #13: You know by now whether you like this by now. I do, so it's great. Jingles (which sounds like it should be a reference I should pick up) is a clown at Haly's Circus. In fact, I'm guessing this is the time when Haly's dettles in the greater Gotham area, allowing the plot of Nu Nightwing to take place. Anyway, Jingles is sort of a proto-Joker, who paints his victims with a clown face despite being a clown and this being a BIT of a clue because he was abused by a priest when he was an altar boy. He says STABBY STABBY STABBY while he stabs people, which is kind of endearing. Plus people get eaten by tigers, which is always cool. The Tomahawk backup is kinda meh (and not helped by me watching Rich Hall's "Inventing The Indian" during the week) but, y'know, it's only the backup to a great book. More people should buy this.
Batman Inc #4: GMoz ploughs his own furrow and great though it is you're left scratching your head as to why it's in the New 52 at all, since it can't be happening for about another year based on what's going on elsewhere and assuming nothing happens in those books that means this can't be happening. Any editor worth his salt would be publishing this under a different imprint and that's the only way to think about it - preserved in isolation, like ASS. Which is what DiDio clearly is for doing it the way he has.
Batman TDK #13: Going from strength to strength since Finch gave up on the writing, this take on the Scarecrow could well end up being one of the definitive ones. Are children's tears really one of the prime components of fear gas? Well worth your time if you have the inclination.
I, Vampire #13: Oh good, the book has undergone ANOTHER reboot. There are no vampires any more, except for the ones that are, and the ones that aren't decide to kill the ones that are because a mugger scared them. They all meet up at the house of the character from the cover, who it turns out is an important character in the good old days of these characters pre-Johnsiverse. You know the only thing that goes on longer than the interminable living forever of the undead? Reading this book. After a brief diversion into comedy this has returned to the unreadable pile.
Justice League Dark #13: For everything this does which is great (recasting minor DC horror heroes in the Johnsiverse, Zatanna's powerlessness) it does something which sucks (Nick's whole motivation is, wait for it, coat jealousy; and houses racing each other, seriously? That just feels like 'TARDIS chasing a taxi' level stupid.) and that's what undermines the book. It can't go on much longer, surely?
Red Lanterns #13: Oh, just fucking give up. It's the usual torture porn, then the Third Army turn up and Atrocitus works out how to kill them (making the whole OH NOES THE THIRD ARMY ARE THE BEST redundant already). And does this happen before or after he's shown as a benevolent tutor in GL:NG? Hmm?
Superman #13: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. Superman is sick of Clark Kent's life and usual human shit (actually this is pretty entertaining if I'm honest) and then A DRAGON TURNS UP. But wait! The dragon knocks him all the way over to Europe, to Ireland specifically. 

Into the middle of a desert oil well. Like what you get in Texas and the like, and the likes of which there is < 1 of in Ireland. 

Oh wait, it's a Kryptonian dragon, and Supergirl is here and there's another Kryptonian lurking in the background. But never mind that. IRELAND? 

 

REALLY?
Talon #1: Wow, this is wordy. It tells the entire plot of all the Johnsiverse batbooks in boxouts on the first page, that's how wordy it is. I'm really not sure what the point of this is. We've got Talon doing Batman's job for him and tracking down the OWLS who are still out there, aided by his Talon Cave, Talon Alfred and his Talon Utility Belt. I'm betting there might be a Talon robin soon. Pointless but by virtue of not being the Phantom Stranger or Amethyst is the best of the new titles this month. Damning with faint praise there.
Teen Titans #13: The origin of Wonder Girl is that a secret ancient cave in Cambodia gave her magic armour, and the boyfriend she had at the time was going to be taken over by it before she 'stole' it. As slight a comic as that makes it sound.
Flash #13: Gorillas! Rogues! Good Rogues! Gorillas! Bad Rogues! Gorillas! A blast, as ever. You like it or you don't, but you do like it. What happens to the Pied Piper is... a surprise, but the final page is pure Kev O'Neill. READ THIS BOOK.
Firestorm #13: DAN JURGENS PLEASE WAKE UP! YOU ARE NOT STILL IN THE EIGHTIES! Everybody knows about Firestorm, Jason and Ronnie's parents are dating, Ronnie's grades are slipping, which cute boy will ask Heather to the Prom? (Scratch that last one, that might be from something else.) I'd say it's impossible to like this, but Dan does and DiDio must as well, because he keeps giving Dan books to write. Can we not just cancel this waste of paper?
Hawkman #13: Liefeld's last stand is pretty much as dreadful as you'd imagine it to be, as the now rebooted Hawkman is simultaneously Thanagarian and a human possessed by Nth Metal, sometimes on the same page. (It finally settles on a complete reboot, with Hawkman being Thanagarian.) I feel like I've wasted a chunk of my life reading this when I could have been doing something far more productive. Like picking a scab.

Month 13: A New Hope

Batwoman #13: JH Williams is determined to leave Batwoman with a bang, clearly. This is basically 9 splash pages and a complete showcase for the artwork, but for the first time in months it feels like there's an actual story behind the issue. Batwoman and Wonder Woman go and visit the "Amazon Arkham Asylum" on a hunch and find out that although they're wrong in the detail their hunch was right. It does seem to be that Batwoman is being completely played though and not in control of what she chooses to do. I'm still not sure how WW's characterisation here, or in Justice League, squares with the Azzarello book but I've enjoyed reading this for the first time in months and maybe that's enough.
Birds of Prey #13: What is this, 'make all our books suddenly better' week? This is suprisingly readable and drawn well enough, ignoring the previous arcs to a large extent and just being a decent enough team-up book. Yes, the torture scenes (although not shown) feel a bit gratuitous but the pay-off of how Starling gets suckered into the trap which is no doubt going to form the next issue makes that fairly easy to forgive. A significant improvement and one hopefully they can keep up.
Blue Beetle #13: Has something happened when I wasn't looking? This is half-decent too, as the plot hurtles towards a conclusion. We end up on Reachworld and meet a similarly-minded Scarab guy (who I have no recollection of from GL:NG despite a box-out telling me I should) and they head off to destroy the Scarab planet. But OH NOES they're being chased by the guy from BB#0! Incredibly, this means one of the books from Zero Month wasn't a waste of time. Remarkable.
Catwoman #13: And just like that, Ann Nocenti gets involved and the week turns to shit. The overall plot isn't too bad (Catwoman playing a giant chess game across the city for unexplained reasons) but as usual the dialogue is dreadful and can't be saved by the art which has retreated to the T&A of the first couple of issues. How many gratuitous bra shots? Yet, curiously, I want to know what comes next. I suspect I won't be interested once I find out.
DCU Presents #13: Oh God, I'd forgotten about this. The Johnsiverse fucks up Blue Devil, as expected. This is a pretty basic "heroes mistake each other for the bad guys" tale - which is odd, because both of them are tracking drug dealers and not supervillains - and with a bit of background. Blue Devil is not Blue Devil yet, he's just a guy in a suit, but we do get a FWOOM and a different speech bubble, so maybe it happens in the last panel. There's a bad guy who is clearly NOT THE KINGPIN. Because Marvel wouldn't be happy if he was. Just like I'm not happy having read it. I'm more angry than disappointed, because I knew it would be like this.
GL:NG #13: So, we left Zero Month not in a zero, but firmly in main GL continuity... we're not really there, but maybe we are and there's just a gap of some description. I mean there must be gaps - in GL:NG #1 we see Ganthet give Kyle his ring and he immediately change into his costume. Yet, in this issue we learn about the girlfriend who designed his costume over a number of weeks (days? months?) after Ganthet gave him the ring. So is this a soft reboot? It can't be, surely, because Atrocitus refers to the events of previous issues (even if he wasn't in them - in fact, I'm not sure he can be in this based on what's happening in Red Lanterns). Anyway, Carol is making sure Kyle can channel the powers of all the other Lantern colours so he can be the best Lantern ever and get Hal back from the dead because he's the best Lantern ever Lantern Lantern Lantern Lantern AAAAARRGH MAKE IT STOP.

Justice League #13: The fallout from Super Horny Snogfest starts here! Or does it? It's the first page, but then never really comes up apart from to say "it was nice" as unemotionally as possible. Instead, we get Sadface about the relationship between WW and the Cheetah, who seems to be powered up in the Johnsiverse. Best of all, Superman seems to randomly hover in the JL Clubhouse. Anyway, Superman gets turned into a cheetah. Not, as all fans of Showcase Presents Superman would have wanted, a lion.

There's a pretty sadface Steve Trevor backup which is essentially Justice League of America #0 and seems to feature the Green Arrow from television's Arrow and not the one from the DC comic Green Arrow. Good. How's that there continuity working out for you?
LoSH #13: As ever, solid enough space opera. Nothing to write home about, then nothing to complain about either I guess. I wish it was better, but it's still fans only.
Nightwing #13: This is rubbish. Moving it back to Gotham has made it pretty redundant as a comic and it has to do a whole scene to remind you this is the one with the circus. It points out that the Joker is back, but then in a boxout says that it's just in Batman so Nightwing doesn't need to help take him down. I really thought beforehand there was a surfeit of Batbooks and this just proves it.
Red Hood #13: Irrespective of what's happening in Batman and Robin, the gang are still in space. But the Joker appears on the last page. Does that mean B&R is taking place after the other Batbooks? If not, then how does Damian encounter Jason in Gotham? Am I the only person that cares about stuff like this? This is a good book, whichever was you look at it, although this issue maybe isn't quite as thrill powered as the last half dozen have been.
Supergirl #13: Kara investigates the Shoe Shop of Solitude, which eats the guy from the first plotline. She then phones up the Byrne Banshee girl to boast about how totes amazeballs it is before the Shoeshop tries to force her into the Superfamily crossover (which, I'm betting, is going to contradict the Superman/Daemonite stuff which the Johnsiverse was founded on). I really don't understand why anybody would willingly read this.
Sword of Sorcery #1: Jesus, after 20 pages this Amethyst strip is interminable. File under "would never have been commissioned if someone hadn't read a one-line review of Game of Thrones in the NYT". The Beowulf backup, on the other hand, chunters along nicely and we get our first view of "iron trolls" i.e. robots. It wouldn't be enough to encourage me to pay for it, but it's pretty moreish.
Wonder Woman #13: Still maintaining a level of excellence that Johns and DiDio don't deserve, Azzarello mines an almost BPRD aspect to the book amid hints from Lennox (not Constantine or Gravel) what she should be doing and alongside a Gods' conference of War. Still well worth your time and effort.

Month 13: Shoot me. Now.

Batgirl #13: Bat Cross over prequel! Except it just does the previous Batgirl plot, a needless cheesecake shot and a conspiracy that revives the plots of the previous year. Doesn't seem very Joker-y or prequel-y to me. But why reist the temptation of putting a banner on the cover in the hope of selling another couple of issues, eh? Because it's all about the money, obviously. And not the integrity that our heroes are supposed to have. YOU MAKE ME SICK.
Batman #13: NOW THAT'S HOW YOU BRING THE JOKER BACK. TENSION TENSION TENSION TENSIO TENSION BAM. This is how you write batbooks. Damn. And the betrayal of Harley backup is great too. BOOM that's boom of the week right there.
Batman & Robin #13: A middling book but the page 13 BAM makes it worth reading. All the same, a very good effort and one which ignores both the Zero Month nonsense and the Joker return in order to tell the story it wants to. Which is zombies in Gotham and so still maybe of marginal interest. Ho hum.
Deathstroke #13: Oh God Rob, I thought you were done. "I'm the best at what I do." You're not mate. Seriously. I'd like to say you were the worst, but JT Krul has stolen that even from you. Must Try Harder. Just not on anything I'm reading.
Demon Knights #13: Cornell sends all the Demon Knights to Hell under the thrall of Lucifer and does a pretty good job of it. Yes, it's Etrigan heavy and yes, he makes him kind of a wuss... but we get Vandal Savage being funny and the other characters being themselves so perfectly good but not up there with the great book this week. But better than everything else, so you pays your money you takes your choice.
Frankenstein #13: Rotworld but not Rotworld but Rotworld without Rot except in the real world. Feels tacked-on. Feels inessential. Is tacked-on. Is inessential.
GLC #13: The Guardians decide Guy Gardner is the best Lantern ever and give him a new name to prove it, but in doing so bring out his worst enemy ever (the chap he fought in GLC #0) from their prison and set him free. Guy is compromised during a trade mission they've set him up on and heads to Earth but OH NOES ambushed on the way and all the OH WHO CARES. Some people are dead, some aren't, some might be next month. I can feel the blood draining from my eyes trying to keep the lights on long enough to get to the end of this.
Grifter #13: Rob says Grifter is still great. Marat Mychaels draws Voodoo boss-eyed. Like, PROPERLY boss-eyed. Pontoon eyes - one twists, one sticks.
 
He then eats her face while still speaking. My favourite bit though is Apollo out of Stormwatch dancing while displaying the world's smallest dinkle.  
You'd think any of this made it worth your time. You'd be wrong.
Legion Lost #13: Even I am tired of Tellus being affected by the "death cry of billions". Bored of it now and no amount of sprockin' sprockin' can make it worth the effort.
Suicide Squad #13: Ignoring the Zero Month bullshit, this picks up where it was beforehand (you remember, betrayal, ambush etc) and is great but I'm not spoiling the end other than to say I never saw Floyd doing that. A great read, again.
Superboy #13: So this crosses over into Ravagers while simultaneously crossing over into Superman and Supergirl. None of these things make it any more fun to read. It's sort of ok but all over the place and so really not worth it but in comparison this week is still very accomplished.
Team Seven #1: Holographic Wolverine is the only readable thing in this twenty pages of bollocks. So DiDio, this is going to rejuvenate your line, huh? "I DON'T THINK SO!" 
 
This pre-dates Justice League #1, yes? WAIT, WHY AM I PRETENDING I CARE?
Ravagers #5: Oh, I'm past fucking caring. Somebody punches somebody else but they're not the X-Men OBVIOUSLY. Not anything worth your time.
Phantom Stranger #1: Our hero kills a kid with a car in order to chat up a girl inside Stonehenge. But it turns out rather than doing what God wants him to he's actually living a secret life with a wife and children without God knowing. SHH IT'S A SECRET but Pandora has opened her box and found out. This really is not a promising start. Or a promising finish to the week. I've had better ones. Oh well.

Month 13: Askit fights the miseries. And the misery is Geoff Johns.

Action #13: Other people have talked about getting off the GMoz bus after the way this book has gone, and after several months of just being unimpressed this drivel has me rapidly agreeing with them. The tale of Krypto has the trappings of We3 in places and although the Phantom Zone is reborn well the whole reason why the bad guy is dressed as a mummy apart from it being Hallowe'en is never explained or even questioned apart from OOH SPOOKY. What next? Jimmy Olsen as a Sexy Pirate? Add to this a Phantom Stranger which is entirely inconsistent with the New52 official version as established during zero month and you just have a mess. Poor old Solly Fisch's backup is even more desperate, the sort of thing a primary school kid would write if given the assignment to tell the story of a ghost dog. Thanks DC for letting me cut one of the books I was still buying. Although I'm not sure that's your intent.
Animal Man #13: I'm going to keep this simple. At least twice, Buddy asks the question we're thinking while reading. "Tell me this is... some alternate dimension or something". And he is reassured that no, this is the real Earth, this is the real Johnsiverse, The Flash, Supergirl, Batwoman, Hawkman (that we actively see) are all dead and consumed by The Rot. I repeat, this is really, asbsolutely definitely what happens to the Johnsiverse in a year's time and is not an alternate Earth or another dimension, or some time wrinkle or anything like that. I'm getting the popcorn, this is the clusterfuck to end them all.
Batwing #13: All Africans can do witch doctor magic. All African police are corrupt. Any Africans that can't do magic are Batwing or have magic swords and are also undercover policemen. Everybody in Africa is related. Oh Winickpaws.
Detective #13: BRUCE WAYNE'S PHILANTHROPY EXPLAINED! He only gives money to charity so that when he beats up thugs the money that gets spent on their medical help doesn't mean that more deserving victims get treatment because he makes sure there's enough cash to treat them all. OF COURSE. We next see him giving money for a Children's Wing. Just who exactly are these "criminals" he's "punishing", eh? FRED WERTHAM WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL. In the actual plot, the bad guys from Nightwing (who are also, it appears, the bad guys in the new Green Arrow TV series) are paid by the Penguin to kill Bruce Wayne as part of a plot to improve Cobblepot's public image. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how that was supposed to work either. Oh, and there are no superheroes in the Johnsiverse Miami, according to the backup. Really? Not Aquaman then?
Dial H #5: More inspired weirdness even if, as Mieville deliberately acknowledges "it's just a bad pun". We get the partial resolution of the plot to date then the tease of more to come. I'm expecting one month to report that he's got it wrong, but it's not this month. I strongly suspect that a year will be the absolute limit it can get stretched out for, in which case it'll make the first truly essential trade of the modern era.
Earth 2 #5: Gays. You can't trust them not to betray you, eh? What do you mean that's not what I was supposed to think? Then what else were the last pages about? Actually, this is a perfectly adequate book even if the constant Golden Age refs do feel a bit "for the fans" rather than actually adding anything and overall it's telling exactly the same Rotworld/Black Hand story from the real Johnsiverse. It's just kind of pointless really.
GI Combat #5: With JT Krul gone and the Haunted Tank installed this book rises to the top level of this week's output. What initially seems like a bad case of Old Man Shouting At The TV turns into a pseudo-mystical romp featuring some of Howard Chaykin's best-looking work in years. Unknown Soldier is merely competent, but I still can't wait for next month. BRINGING BACK THE FUN.
Green Arrow #13: Ann Nocenti proves she's really Frank Miller with some anti-Chinese Dirty Commie bullshit that is otherwise impenetrable. "China's pride and ambition know no bounds." "I'm sorry Suzie Ming. You seem personally hurt by the history of your China." The whole thing is about China trying to cheat their way to technological advancement by stealing it from America and adds to the confusion by assuming all Asians are the same as we have women with swords and ghosts of ancestors talking to people (like our old friend Katana) and that ancient Chinese tradition of karaoke. Do these people really still live in the 80s? Party on duds!
Green Lantern #13: Geoff Johns fucks continuity a big one up the arse again on page one of this bollocks. You know how I described the problems of his carrying things over into GL:NG and how the proliferation of that story affects any number of other titles? Well, in panel 3 he says Kyle Rayner became a Green Lantern two years ago. So, GL:NG took place two years ago. In which case, so did GL #12. WAIT A MINNIT, WHO BROUGHT US ONE YEAR LATER? Only this time it's through an accident... And Obama is president. So, to be clear, Justice League #1 happened when Shrub was Pres. Yes? If I go back and read that again it'll confirm it? Bush set up Team 7 with Waller in charge, yes? Oh, and Baz is from MIAMI. Who are the editors again? The Mosque have banned the family of somone involvd in terrorism and so have his sister's work DO YOU SEE? The Third Army are looking for Mr Baz. Even if that makes him sound like one of Basil Brush's handlers. As are the Justice League. OOOOOOOOOOOH WHO GIVES A FUCK.
Stormwatch #13: Peter Milligan is a fucking idiot. He manages to make the introduction of Etrigan a chore, which is ever so slightly A GIANT FUCKING MISTAKE. I love Etrigan and you're not treating him very well. With JT Krul and Rob gone, I think Pete is the worst writer on the books. Which would worry anybody if it wasn't Geoff Johns writing the cheques. I hate all of this.
Swamp Thing #13: As in Animal Man, the Johnsiverse is destroyed a year in the future. Or is that a year in the past depending on what books you believe? This cannot end well. Is there really a plan behind this? REALLY?
World's Finest #5: At least we're finish with some intentional light relief. No, we're not. In a stroke of genius, DiDio has cancelled the one part of this book that was actually good and so instead we get a ho-hum villain-of-the-week Huntress and power Girl story which improves my life not one jot.
Two readable books out of 12 does not predispose me to continuing this, I have to say.

Johnsiverse Year One: Many things could be improved by the inclusion of Miller or Mazzucchelli

So, DC have got to the end of their first year of rebooted titles. * And, remarkably, I haven't flown to the States and killed any of them yet. But how has the year actually been?

Winners

There have undoubtedly been some success stories. Wonder Woman and Flash have never put a foot wrong and are rightly the jewels in the crown of the DCU. Dial H turned up partway through and, for me, blew everything else away but China Mieville is possibly an acquired taste and it remains to be seen whether his first foray into comics can keep up the blistering pace it has set. Scott Snyder has written some of the best bat-books in recent memory but the multitude of bat-titles can arguably seem like it swamps his efforts. Grant M has restarted the Batman book he was doing before the jump and his run on Action has been mixed to say the least, as it was originally supposed to be a 6 issue run that has inexplicably been extended to 16 without (it sometimes feels) writing much new material to increase the volume. The 'Dark' line has been fairly solid with some real highs (Scott Snyder again, with his reworking of familiar material on Swamp Thing) amid some plodders (Jeff Lemire's Frankenstein has never risen above being a But the biggest winner in my opinion has been All Star Western. Those of us who were reading Jonah Hex beforehand always knew it was a good solid book but the renewed interest has stayed with it and after the first stage drop off it shared with everything else the numbers have solidifed and it looks nowhere near cancellation - which it definitely was before the reboot. 

The other obvious winners are some of the writers and artists, not forgetting the editors, who have taken a working wage under false pretences. The return of Rob L is merely baffling, even if threatening to turn over half the line to him is one of the more bizarre decisions in DC history, but heading this class is JT Krul. He is, simply, the most inept writer I have ever come across. Even more strangely, after being kicked off Green Arrow remarkably quickly he was then given another book as a replacement. Does he have photos of Johns and DiDio doing the unmentionable? 

Seriously, is this the face of a man you could trust?

Losers

The list of dreadful titles is sufficiently long that the biggest loser is the fan. Sticking with this has been an absolute test of endurance, as the unrelenting tide of wasted paper just keeps coming week after week. And beyond the stuff which is outright bad, there's a long, long queue of the mediocre, the underdeveloped and the shoddy. And for all there are idiots like me, the regular guy doesn't have the time, the patience or the money to pick through the bones of it all to try and find the material worth spending time and money on. Thanks to the way Diamond operate these days, and DC's rigid weekly schedule, you can't wait until the reviews are out to decide - or rather your Local Comic Shop can't wait to decide - so there is every chance the titles will get missed. Miss one issue, maybe you can pick it up online. Miss two, maybe you can wait for the trade. Miss three, you won't bother. It's this failure to connect with, or seem like they care about, their core income stream that's DC's biggest sin during this process and it feels like the one which will eventually see the end of their print arm.

The fan also wasn't helped by the sexism controversy in month 1. Red Hood was certainly penalised for a shockingly sexist effort by never really recovering despite becoming DC's closest comparator to Deadpool. Catwoman and Red Lantern featured cheesecake shot after cheesecake shot, although it was inconceivable anyone was buying it for the writing. Although pretty much driven out now, the scandal was either a publicity stunt which backfired or a poor editorial decision which nobody was punished for. 

The more esoteric loser, and the most surprising one given the motivation for the introduction of the Johnsiverse, is continuity. Let me explain:

Once upon a time there were just comics. They all ran along down their own little furrow, sometimes crossing over and sometimes in team books. Eventually, to do away with books getting characters wrong and to revisit previous origins, we ended up with a multiverse. Different Supermen, with their different origins, all existed on different worlds. There was a place where Jay Garrick was still the Flash. Woozy Winks was still being protected by Mother Nature. In the 80s DC decided it was all getting a bit silly and  through the Crisis merged all the Earths into one, with a single history. The history was so complicated it had its own series and the characters were all explained in yet another series just so there was no confusion. It seemed like a lot of work but it was THOUGHT THROUGH and PLANNED. Despite this, it needed Zero Hour ten years later to work through all the timing issues that existed, but at least it was done and everyone could go forward together. Some different universes still existed but these were different publishing arms and might feature (as in Stormwatch) analogues of DCU heroes.

Then in a fit of rape, tiny footprints, mindwiping and a company-wide brainfart Goeff Johns became the most important writer at DC. In order to tell an event story he wanted to the single universe became untenable, ending up with SUPERBOY PUNCHING THE UNIVERSE and restoring the Multiverse. I strongly remember trying to explain the concept to comics-literate friends at the time and it making the veins in his head stand out as he tried to parse it. Johns then upped it and told the Barry Allen story he had him brought back for. Which meant the DC universe had to go back to a single universe rebooted again, where we are now. (Yes, you read that right. Johns wrote a plot that meant the multiverse existed then destroyed it again. In 5 YEARS. It kind of puts RTD's bringing back the Time Lords just to destroy them in perspective, because at least RTD wasn't playing toys with THE ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL.)

It's caused nothing but problems. They want the condensed Bat-history, but it has to have all the Robins within 5 years. Several titles have rebooted already during the year. Books are contradicted by other titles published, sometimes in the same week, or in one example by the Who's Who entry in the back of the very same issue. Something can get written in Teen Titans #1, edited out in the trade, explained away by Scott Lobdell at SDCC, and then contradicted AGAIN by Scott Lobdell in Titans #0. The issues on any given month are supposed to happen concurrently but (to pick one example) the majority of Green Lantern: New Guardians happens between two issues of Red Lanterns, which it then turns out must have taken place before Red Lanterns #2 which it can't have done because of the way Bleez is portrayed. Johns loves his Green Lantern history so much that everything he did before Flashpoint (Blackest Day, Brightest Night, How The Orange Lantern Stole Christmas) were never undone or rebooted so Green Lantern still takes place in the original universe. Green Lantern: New Guardians doesn't, because Kyle Rayner becomes a new GL in #1. Except it is eventually shown to be in the same unverse after all, explicitly in GL:NG #0 when Carol Ferris shows up and it crosses over directly with GL #12 and GL #0. And it did before when Larfleeze turned up. So that must mean Red Lanterns is also in non-New 52 continuity as Bleez is in it. Which means Stormwatch isn't in New 52 continuity because it crossed over with Red Lanterns. Which means Justice League can't be, because Martian Manhunter got asked to join them. And Voodoo, Grifter, Superman can't be because of the Daemonites. That's how quickly it all unravels, which is nearly as quickly as people's enthusiasm for it evaporates.

One of these men is not a good comics writer. CAN YOU GUESS WHICH ONE?

* I am excluding Zero Month from this. It was, frankly, an unmitigated disaster. It pointlessly disrupted some plotlines and cliffhangers, retold some origins adding nothing to the experience - literally in the case of Rob L's work on the Deathstroke origin which was cribbed almost from start to finish from the origin in Titans; art and dialogue alike - except frustration at the waste of everyone's time, ignored the whole sorry mess and just continued the main plot, or published material for cancelled books (presumably to meet contractual obligations). Oh, and ruining Phantom Stranger forever.