Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
They at least gave a reason for the placement of Coast City (near Edwards Air Force Base), but it makes no sense for anyone to name something in that area “Coast City.”
Placing it near Vandenberg AFB and Santa Barbara would make more sense. Or Miramar and San Diego.
Things did get disjointed at the end, with Mandrakk appearing out of nowhere unless you read Superman Beyond, and the two parallel narratives in the last issue, but up to that point it was remarkably straight-forward.
People were already saying they were lost with the first issue, though, and my theory is this: They were lost because they were expecting to need to know more than they actually needed to know. In a lot of cases, knowing the background of an obscure character might enhance your appreciation of a scene, but isn’t actually required to understand it, but readers who are used to recognizing everyone might have been put off by the gaps in their knowledge.
I had a theory at the time that the more knowledge of the DCU you have, the more lost you would get with Final Crisis — and a casual fan would probably have an easier time following it!
The thing is, the New 52 reboot was rushed compared to COIE.
COIE was a 12-issue event created specifically to clean house and combine what they wanted to keep into a new reality.
Flashpoint was a stand-alone “fix the broken timeline” story that grew. Somewhere along the line, DC decided to use it as the springboard to launch the New 52. They added a double-page spread with some mumbo-jumbo about merging timelines, and drew the new costumes on Batman and Barry for the last two pages. (I can’t confirm this, but given the timeline of when Johns and Kubert started Flashpoint, when the reboot got greenlit, the story of Flashpoint itself, and all the stuff Johns talked about putting into his Flash run that didn’t make it, this makes the most sense.)
In my mind, Flashpoint and the New 52 are completely separate entities.
And speaking of things that are completely separate…
“Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato are doing amazing work.”
Yes. Yes they are.
I’ve never heard of a case where a physical comic store closed because of digital comics. Everyone keeps predicting it based on the way things have gone with bookstores, video rental stores, and music stores, but it either isn’t happening or hasn’t happened yet (as far as I can see).
Interesting historical fact: In the 1940s, DC contracted out to a second publisher, All-American comics, to produce more comics under the DC brand. The top three characters at DC proper were Superman, Batman and Robin (starring in World’s Finest). The top three at All-American were Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern (starring in Comic Cavalcade). In the middle of the decade, DC bought All-American outright.
Those six characters are still the most recognizable from DC, but… Robin is always the second half of “Batman and…” Green Lantern and the Flash disappeared for several years before being completely reinvented in the late 1950s, and have never reached the level of mainstream recognition that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman have.
That’s what I think matters here: the “trinity” are the three DC characters best known to the American public at large over the last 7 decades, not those who are most popular among today’s comic book readers: Those would be Batman, Batman, and Batman
I’ve done Amtrak from LA a couple of times, and it’s a nice way to cut down on the driving stress. Driving 2.5-3 hours twice daily is grueling, especially when it overlaps with rush hour. Plus you have time to read your new comics on the way home!
But it does lock down your schedule a bit on the days you take it, and the line to get on the last northbound train of the evening is…actually not too much worse than some other comic-con lines, now that I think about it.
I think one problem we tend to run into as fans is that we often can’t tell the difference between background that’s important for this particular story and background that exists, but maybe isn’t critical to know right now. That carries over into the writing style as fans turn pro and as writers target the fan audience.
“Why should Comic Con be an exclusive comics-only club? What is wrong with welcoming all things geeky? For four days, the spotlight is on the things we love. Isn’t that a good thing?”
EXACTLY.
I do not understand why people who have traditionally been excluded from the cool kids’ hangout are so determined to turn around and exclude someone else.
I was looking at the program grid this weekend. Events are color-coded for comics, movies, TV, gaming, sci-fi/fantasy, and “everything else.” The majority of the events were comics-related. Comics aren’t missing from comic-con. They’re the nucleus around which everything else is built.
I sort of see digital comics in their current form as renting indefinitely, not purchasing outright. But when I think about it, there are an awful lot of comics that I read once and then toss in a box never to be seen again. Under those circumstances, the risk of losing those digital comics to a combination of DRM and company whim and/or business failure doesn’t make much difference.
Sure, there’s no resale value when I’m done with those comics. But let’s face it: there’s very little resale value on most of the physical comics I’ve bought and read once.
I still buy most of my comics on paper, but there are a few series I’ve tried out digitally, and so far aside from the fact that ComiXology could really benefit from a usability expert overhauling their UI, it’s mostly worked out so far.
See, this is why I don’t understand when people claim the premise of Final Crisis is hard to describe. You summed it up in three words.
As others have mentioned, dropping stuff you don’t actually read is a good idea. I’ve got two books that I haven’t read in the last three months, though in one case I’ve been holding off so that I could read a whole arc at once.
I’ll go one farther: If you ever find that you don’t like a book much, and you’re only reading it for completeness’ sake, or because you feel like you have to in order to keep up with the publisher’s shared universe, drop it. I used to get every big DC event comic, but I didn’t actually like a lot of them, and they just took up space. So I made a decision that from now on, I won’t buy events just because they’re universe-spanning. I’ll only buy the events that look interesting to me.
One more thing I’ve found helps is to start with “what if I could only buy one comic?” Pick one. Then “What if I could only buy two?” Pick the second one. Keep going until you reach the number that fits your budget. It’s a ranked list, but taking it one item at a time really forces you to think about the top of the list.
I think there’s something to the big-universe effect.
I’ve read mainly DC since I was a kid, with more indie books mixed in over the last decade, and only the occasional Marvel book. What kept me coming back to DC was the familiar universe. What’s kept me away from Marvel, I think, is the unfamiliar universe.
I’m a lot more willing to pick up an indie book that takes place in its own self-contained world than a book in a big established world that’s likely to pull in the rest of the line. This has been true for Marvel, certainly, but also for WildStorm (when it was its own universe), Top Cow, etc. The books I’ve read from those publishers, Marvel included, tend to be creator-driven or take place in their own little corner of the shared universe.
TLDR: I think Marvel’s fine, but I’ve just never gotten into it.
The web is built on hypertext, and that’s what hypertext is for. And I’ve heard it suggested that hypertext mimics the way people think: Following connections as we think of them, not following some externally-imposed linear progression.
It’s been stated that Flashpoint wasn’t originally going to be a reboot, and it’s been stated that Dan Didio has wanted to do a reboot as far back as Infinite Crisis. (I think that plan ended up morphing into “One Year Later” and 52.)
I have no idea whether Final Crisis was at some point planned to be a reboot or not, though.
I remember when Geoff Johns wrote “Blitz” and “Ignition” in order to make the points that (a) heroes don’t need tragedy to make them great and (b) grim & gritty and decompression have their place, but aren’t the best fit for a character like the Flash.
Then a few years later he gave us Flash: Rebirth, Flashpoint, and the New 52.
The general public does think his name is Shazam. Just like they think the Flash’s name is Gordon.
Heck, sometimes they think the Flash’s name is Shazam.
I wish I were making this up.
“if you’re not breaking the law, you have nothing to fear from SOPA.”
Really?
Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…
And this is under the current law, without the additional tools SOPA provides.
Also, check out CloudFlare’s article about how they already have to deal with people sending bogus DMCA complaints in order to get the data needed to launch DDoS attacks. With SOPA, why bother to launch the DDoS, when you can get the law to do your dirty work for you?
Even the pro-copyright-enforcement Heritage Foundation warns about unintended consequences of the law. It doesn’t matter if the law is only intended to go after rogue sites if it’s written in a way that applies to legit sites as well, and it doesn’t matter who’s targeted if the solutions imposed result in major collateral damage.
Consider also that the “techno-elite” you’re referring to are the people and companies who built and run the Internet, and includes companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Mozilla, PayPal and Wikipedia. Not just their users, but the companies. It seems they might know something about how it works, and how this law would affect it.
“I just don’t see opposing intellectual property protection as doing the right thing.”
Again, you’re falling into that second trap, where “something must be done” implies “this thing must be done.” There are other ways to protect IP than by passing SOPA or Protect IP in its current form.
Maybe we were reading different discussions, but most of the complaints I saw were from people who were fully aware of Starfire’s history, but did not like the switch from “defined character who is also hot and has sex” to “flying sexbot who might get some characterization sometime in the future, but has mainly been introduced as being hot and having sex.” That includes the original article that touched this all off.
And yes, everyone knows it’s a relaunch/reboot. That explains the presence of changes. It does not justify bad ones.
Final Crisis,for all the flack it gets for being impenetrable, is really self-contained. Basically, get the trade or hardcover of Final Crisis, and you’re set. Revelations is a related story that takes place during FC, while Legion of Three Worlds and Rogues’ Revenge are mostly-unrelated stories that take place during FC.
I wouldn’t even say that was the point of Flashpoint. The point seems to have been to tell an alternate universe story centered on the Flash.
It’s pretty clear from interviews that Flashpoint was planned before they decided to do a reboot – it was a big Flash story that became a big DCU event that would have led to the universe returning more-or-less to normal (no doubt with a few changes and some of the new Flashpoint characters retconned into history), but then DC decided to use it as the springboard for the reboot.
As near as I can tell, the only way that Flashpoint #5 transitions into the new 52 is that double-page spread. The final scene would have worked just fine in the old DCU if Kubert had drawn them in the old costumes.