52 Putdown

I just finished reading 52 # 50, along with the four World War III tie-in issues, all of which came out this week. I also read the editorial that was in the back of each (as well as every other DC title this week), in which DC Executive Editor Dan Didio offers up "A confession of sorts" (his words). Basically, what Didio writes about is the fact that, somewhere in the past fifty weeks, the four writers of 52 (Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid) lost their way (my words). What 52 was initially intended to do was to fill in the gaps between the end of last year's Infinite Crisis, and the comics that came out a month later, all of which were set "One Year Later" (OYL). Most titles started off OYL with some sort of mystery, or presenting a significant change that had happened over the missing year, and then 52 was supposed to fill us in on all of those developments, over a year's worth of weekly comics. To provide some continuity within the series, the "Fab Four" writers opted to use some minor DC characters (Renee Montoya, Ralph "Elongated Man" Dibney, Adam Strange, John Henry "Steel" Irons, among others) as the vehicles for telling those tales. However, as Didio writes in his editorial, "As their stories grew, it became clear by the second issue of 52 that the series would be about them and their trials and tribulations."

To which I say, WTF??

I mean, they sold the concept of the weekly comic using one hook - find out how these changes came about - and then basically decided to do something else with it by the second issue? That's either bad writing, or irresponsible behaviour, or both.

In fact, the reason for the four World War III issues, apparently, was to provide a venue for "wrapping up" those OYL storylines. So, in the span of one week, we get a flurry of jarring scenes, or - believe it or not - simply dialogue, most of which come across as being out of left field, as well as totally artificial and forced! Instead of seeing them grow organically over the course of a year, as we'd been lead to believe would happen, they're crammed into a few pages spread over four one-shots!

Now, I've more-or-less enjoyed 52 as it's rolled along, so clearly the four writers have done a good job making these secondary characters interesting. But there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have worked in, over the course of fifty-two comics, a more natural progression of those OYL bits. The only thing I can think of is that they just didn't really want to be bothered doing, well, what they were originally contracted to do!

With a followup weekly comic set to debut in three weeks - Countdown, which DC has yet to reveal what it's counting down to, and which will start with issue # 51, then # 50, and so on down to # 0 - I have to wonder if DC even knows what it's doing in this area. By the time we get to the single digit final issues of Countdown, will its writers and editor have forgotten that it was supposed to be counting down to something, and instead have turned it into a weekly team-up title by then?

At a time when I'm divesting myself of Marvel titles at a staggering rate, I'm starting to worry that maybe DC's heading south, as well.