The Mess That Is The DC Universe

Lately I've been struck by the thought that many of the current DC titles are behaving very much likes ships without a rudder. That's not an easy revelation for me to accept, having been a big DC booster for most of the nearly 40 years I've been reading comics. And so many of my favourite stories, both of the Alan Moore variety and the rest, came from a DC that employed some of the greatest talent in comics history. I want DC to be great!

But some of the stuff coming out under the DC banner these days... Here are a few of the more odious developments that've really pushed my fannish loyalty to the edge, keeping in mind that I'm only covering titles I've bought (who knows how bad the others are):

1) All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder - This sounded like a comic fan's dream come true when it was first announced: Frank Miller writing, Jim Lee providing the art, and an iconic take on the Caped Crusader. When an issue actually comes out, which isn't very often, we are getting a Miller/Lee extravaganza, alrighty! But the Batman within those pages is more ironic, than iconic. As in, "Wouldn't it be ironic if someone wrote Bruce Wayne as a total nutbar, instead of the man-on-the-edge that we're used to, and portrayed every female as a hooker?" I'm willing to accept a lot of different takes on Batman - after all, he's been re-imagined more times than just about any other fictional character - but this one: blechh!

2) Superman Confidential - Not only did it seem odd to add yet another monthly Super-title to the market, but the first storyline has been ridiculous: turns out Kryptonite is.. what?... intelligent? and has been aware of what's been happening to it since it first arrived on Earth? Where the Hell did that come from?

3) Batman Confidential - Again, a seemingly redundant title, and a stupid opening storyline. This time, we have Lex Luthor running afoul of Bruce Wayne, early in Batman's career. Which would be fine and good, except the most recent issues have Luthor attacking all of the U.S.'s military posts in a very aggressive, open manner. Wasn't the post-Crisis Luthor supposed to be the slimy businessman who manages to keep his public image clean by being smart? And yet we're supposed to believe he did something like that and stayed out of jail? Did that part of DCU history change again? Is there an editor on this title?

4) Hawkgirl - For its first couple of years, this title - or, rather, Hawkman, before the title change - was one of the strongest titles DC had. I'm sure writer Geoff Johns had a lot to do with that, and it's not like DC could force him to stay on it forever. But couldn't the subsequent writers, each of whom has been worse than the one before, have at least tried to keep some of what worked so well during Johns' run? Fortunately, Hawkgirl's been cancelled - or put out of its misery, as I like to say - but what a waste.

5) JLA Classified - It takes a lot to get me to drop a JLA title (it's only happened a handful of times in my life) but after about five or six issues, this flop was gone. I've sampled most of the storylines since then, but usually one issue is enough to put it back on the Discard pile. Its sister title, JSA Classified, while not consistently stellar, has at least managed to have more hits than misses. Is that so hard to achieve on a title with ever-changing creative teams?

6) Flash: The Fastest Man Alive - One of the worst developments of the past couple years has been the unceremonious replacement of Wally West by Bart Allen as the Scarlet Speedster. The story made no sense, including that they aged Bart through a contrived manner just so they could have the demographic they wanted for the lead. As much as I loved Barry Allen, I totally accepted Wally as the Flash. Bart? No. Then they put a couple writers from the old Flash TV show on the relaunch for the character, who, it turns out, couldn't write a good comic to save their lives! Luckily those bozos are gone back to TV land (or unemployment) and the current writer's better, but the damage appears to be done as this one's just messed up. Bart has barely any personality, they're throwing every rogue in the book at him, and they're trying their best to convince us that big things are coming... but is it really worth sticking around to find out?

7) Supergirl - Worst. Version. Ever! (And she's had some stinko series before this!)

8) Wonder Woman - Note for the future: Never do a major relaunch of a title with Allan Heinberg writing, unless you've got all of the scripts in hand already. The first four issues took forever to come out, and then eventually they gave up on ever getting the concluding fifth chapter, promising to deliver it to us someday, in a Wonder Woman Special. Maybe in 2011, for the fifth anniversary of Heinberg's debut issue?

9) Trials of Shazam - Whoever greenlit this series - in which Captain Marvel is reinvented as a hip magic-maker who meets up with modern incarnations of classic figures in a riff on the trials of Hercules - ought to be fired. Seriously fired. Fans of the original character will hate this; and the 21st Century equivalent to beatniks probably aren't reading comics, anyway. I tried two or three issues before I couldn't stand it anymore.

In all of these cases, I hold the editor more responsible than the creative teams. Writers always think they're spinning gold; it's the editor's job to tell the crap from the gold and keep the former from being published. If DC doesn't start cleaning up their act soon, I'm going to be as busy dropping DC titles as I've been reducing my monthly Marvel purchases. And that would be a sad thing.