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Nothing will ever top it so just reprint the Zero Hour Legion.
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Oct 19, 2016 01:19
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Oct 19, 2016 01:28
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Roth posted:Is there a Legion of Superheroes run I really need to read? I've never read any of their comics. The Waid/Kitson run is very good, if fairly similar to Waid's other teen hero stuff. The Levitz stuff is well-remembered. And Jim Shooter started his career writing Legion stories for DC when he was like 12, so those are interesting from a historical perspective
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Oct 19, 2016 02:25
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Continuity isn't important to DC? DC doesn't manage continuity well? I think John Ostrander, Geoff Johns, and James Robinson would take issue with that!
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Oct 19, 2016 02:25
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Alucard Nacirema posted:Continuity isn't important to DC? DC doesn't manage continuity well? The first isn't true but the second is. They tried multiple times after COIE to fix continuity issues multiple times with none of them really working out, and the New 52 brought in its own host of continuity issues, from Batman's history to multiple issues with the Teen Titans' history.
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Oct 19, 2016 02:40
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Roth posted:The first isn't true but the second is. Didn't Zero Year (& the #0 issues of various related titles) and Titans Hunt basically clean up any issues with their respective histories?
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Oct 19, 2016 02:42
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Alucard Nacirema posted:Didn't Zero Year (& the #0 issues of various related titles) and Titans Hunt basically clean up any issues with their respective histories? That's the problem though, they mess this poo poo up, and then later have to go back and slap a band-aid in it.
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Oct 19, 2016 02:46
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Alucard Nacirema posted:Didn't Zero Year (& the #0 issues of various related titles) and Titans Hunt basically clean up any issues with their respective histories? Zero Year, although being an absolutely excellent story, made the history of the Bat-Books even more convoluted and stupid, because it did stuff like give Barbara Gordon a five-year timer during which she decides to start crime-fighting, becomes Batgirl, becomes Batman's sidekick, learns his secret identity, falls in love with Dick Grayson, then gets shot/kidnapped/stripped naked/sexually assaulted by the Joker and turned into Oracle all within the three years immediately after Zero Year. These three years encompass every single Babs Batgirl story in history pre-Oracle, all of which are explicitly considered canon. Then, every single Oracle story - again, all of which (with a notable exception to be addressed later on in this post) are explicitly canon - occurred within a single year until Oracle was made aware of a unlicensed and possibly illegal surgery occurring in Africa which might give her back her mobility. She gets the surgery, spends a year in rehabilitation, and at the beginning of the N52 she's more or less back to normal. As a note, Barbara Gordon was the one and only canon Batgirl according to the N52, which means that Stephanie Brown/Cassandra Cain never existed. Which specifically invalidates large sections of Grant Morrison's Batman run, which was stil ongoing and canon by the time the N52 started. That doesn't address Tim Drake, who according to the N52 was never technically a Robin - putting his stories in a weird non-canon limbo - or the fact that one of those five years between ZY and N52 was spent with a Gotham as a post-apocalyptic wasteland (since No Man's Land is explicitly canon within the N52). I could go on, but the N52 turned the Bat-Books and their canon into loving spaghetti. It makes literally zero sense, because the N52 went OUT OF ITS WAY to ensure that every single Batman story ever was not only canon but occurred within a five-year gap of time, unless they involved Tim Drake as Robin, Stephanie Brown in any capacity, or Cassandra Cain in any capacity. And, worse still, had an ongoing comic by a creator who used as main characters people who didn't technically exist any more.
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Oct 19, 2016 02:58
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Zero Year, although being an absolutely excellent story, made the history of the Bat-Books even more convoluted and stupid, because it did stuff like give Barbara Gordon a five-year timer during which she decides to start crime-fighting, becomes Batgirl, becomes Batman's sidekick, learns his secret identity, falls in love with Dick Grayson, then gets shot/kidnapped/stripped naked/sexually assaulted by the Joker and turned into Oracle all within the three years immediately after Zero Year. These three years encompass every single Babs Batgirl story in history pre-Oracle, all of which are explicitly considered canon. Then, every single Oracle story - again, all of which (with a notable exception to be addressed later on in this post) are explicitly canon - occurred within a single year until Oracle was made aware of a unlicensed and possibly illegal surgery occurring in Africa which might give her back her mobility. She gets the surgery, spends a year in rehabilitation, and at the beginning of the N52 she's more or less back to normal. What part about Doctor Manhattan manipulating the timeline did you not understand?
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Oct 19, 2016 03:01
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Didn't they also write out all of the Bane/Azrael stuff? Considering they supposedly met Azrael for the for first time in one of those weekly series (Eternal maybe?)
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Oct 19, 2016 03:02
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Alucard Nacirema posted:What part about Doctor Manhattan manipulating the timeline did you not understand? Why the gently caress are you bringing up a Rebirth development to counter a point made about the N52. You are aware that the N52 ran for five years before Rebirth awkwardly attempted to retcon it, right? X-O posted:Didn't they also write out all of the Bane/Azrael stuff? Considering they supposedly met Azrael for the for first time in one of those weekly series (Eternal maybe?) Oh gently caress you might be right. I seem to remember Batman Eternal re-introducing Azrael, because I think he had a short-lived ongoing off the back of it. NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 03:04
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Roth posted:Is there a Legion of Superheroes run I really need to read? I've never read any of their comics. Depends on what you like. There are a number of runs that are considered great, but many of them are really of their time. If you like Silver Age comics, the original run of stories from Adventure Comics are some of the Silver Age-iest stuff you'll ever see, except that, because the book was set in the future, they didn't have to return to the status quo like most books did. So some stories have consequences, like Lightning Lad getting his arm eating by a space whale, for example. If you can find a cheap used copy of the Showcases, grab 'em if you like Silver Age DC. Alternatively, if you can find a copy of the Death of Ferro Lad HC, that's got stories by Jim Shooter after he took over the book at 14 and strangely invigorates it with ton of crazy teenager ideas. By the '70s, you've got Dave Cockrum on the book, when it was the hottest book on the stands. That's in, like, Showcase Presents LoSH vol 5 or so, which might even still be in print. Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen are considered basically the Claremont/Byrne of LoSh, and their most famous story is The Great Darkness Saga. It might help to have at least a little grounding in the team before reading that one, though. There's a bunch of stuff by Keith Giffen after that including a time jump, none of which is in print, but a lot of which might be on Comixology. I haven't really read this era, but it has its fans, and if you like Giffen, why not, right? The most common answer you're going to get is to pick up the post-Zero Hour Legion, aka the Reboot Legion. The continuity of the book got rebooted to deal with changes to Superman's history post-Crisis. This stuff is really good. It's Abnett and Lanning at the top of their game, with art by Olivier Coipel. If you want to get into an extended run of the book, this is probably the one to do? After that is the Threeboot Legion, which is by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson, and is great, but pretty different from the previous incarnations. If you like Mark Waid, definitely get this, but be aware that he doesn't get to finish what he was doing, and this version will quickly be dropped. If you're like, "Okay, I just want to dip my toe in" and you just want to try one story, I would say make it Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank from their run on Action Comics. It will give you a good idea of the main characters and their whole deal in one six-issue story. It is, in my opinion, probably Johns's best story ever. This represents a return to basically the pre-Crisis Legion following continuity changes following Infinite Crisis. It leads into Legion of Three Worlds, which was part of Final Crisis, and which rules, but might be confusing without at least cursory knowledge of the previous incarnations of the team. Don't read anything after that, basically.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:42
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Why the gently caress are you bringing up a Rebirth development to counter a point made about the N52. You are aware that the N52 ran for five years before Rebirth awkwardly attempted to retcon it, right? The same reason I brought up Zero Year and Titans Hunt (both of which came way after N52 started). My point was they have fixed all the continuity issues at this point. Benito Cereno posted:Depends on what you like. There are a number of runs that are considered great, but many of them are really of their time. How was Jim Shooter's run on the Threeboot legion? Also was Paul Levitz series that spun out of Legion of Three Worlds any good? Alucard Nacirema fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 03:44
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Oh gently caress you might be right. I seem to remember Batman Eternal re-introducing Azrael, because I think he had a short-lived ongoing off the back of it. Batman and Robin Eternal, I believe. He did not get an ongoing, but they have been reprinting his series and Cass' run as Batgirl.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:48
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catlord posted:Batman and Robin Eternal, I believe. He did not get an ongoing, but they have been reprinting his series and Cass' run as Batgirl. Azrael briefly had an ongoing just before new 52 during Morrison's Batman run which is probably what he's thinking of. I don't know much of anything about it but I think people complained that it was a new Azrael and not John Paul Valley?
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Oct 19, 2016 03:50
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Alucard Nacirema posted:How was Jim Shooter's run on the Threeboot legion? If ever there were LOSH books to avoid it's these.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:54
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Alucard Nacirema posted:Azrael briefly had an ongoing just before new 52 during Morrison's Batman run which is probably what he's thinking of. I don't know much of anything about it but I think people complained that it was a new Azrael and not John Paul Valley? Yeah, Michael Lane. All I know is that it isn't fully collected in trades.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:55
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Alucard Nacirema posted:The same reason I brought up Zero Year and Titans Hunt (both of which came way after N52 started). My point was they have fixed all the continuity issues at this point.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:56
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Alucard Nacirema posted:The same reason I brought up Zero Year and Titans Hunt (both of which came way after N52 started). My point was they have fixed all the continuity issues at this point.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:03
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What Manhattan actually did isn't even known at this point. Some people have said it's the Pre-Flashpoint Universe with 10 years removed and some have said it's a whole other continuity. The most likely scenario is that it is the Pre-Flashpoint Universe but that Manhattan has removed 10 years from every character but it's a different and incongruous 10 years for every character. And that's not a fix. It's a "Just shut up and ignore it" directive.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:07
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X-O posted:What Manhattan actually did isn't even known at this point. Some people have said it's the Pre-Flashpoint Universe with 10 years removed and some have said it's a whole other continuity. The most likely scenario is that it is the Pre-Flashpoint Universe but that Manhattan has removed 10 years from every character but it's a different and incongruous 10 years for every character. And that's not a fix. It's a "Just shut up and ignore it" directive. its water under a bridge. DC continuity is air tight now.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:15
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It did not help that DC could not keep Nu52 continuity consistent even within the Nu52. My favorite example is "What the gently caress is Kyle Rayner's backstory?" New Guardians opens with Kyle getting his ring from Ganthet is a similar style to how he received it originally, changes being that the CPB was still intact but Ganthet still pulled himself from the corpses of the guardians. He is still the "Torchbearer" though what that means is unclear. But then, when we're flashing back during the second arc of New Guardians (his quest for the White Lantern stuff) all of a sudden, Kyle's backstory shows him and Ganthet flying through Oa and everyones alive and everythings in one piece. So... did the guardians just throw a massive kegger and Ganthet overestimated how much they were needed? How about his complicated love life. Kyle was still Ion at some point, which means that Jade must have been involved, but not only did Jade not exist, but Alan Scott was in Earth 2 and homosexual. Okay so if Jade wasn't involved then was Donna? Nope because she didn't exist, which meant the only love interest he had who did exist was Alex (Soranik was also conspicuously absent, which also didn't make much sense) But Kyle, for better or worse, is defined by those he was in a relationship with, it would be like someone doing Spiderman and cutting out Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane. You could and you'd still have something, but so much of Peter's adventures are defined by who he loved. What's weirder is Green Lantern was supposed to have continued on from where it had left off Pre-Nu52. And yet nothing the character was doing made sense with that concept in mind. The saddest thing was, the more they tried to explain it, the LESS sense it made. It wasn't that DC had thrown out over 60 years of continuity (I mean it was that to a degree but go with me on this) but They couldn't decided if they were going to throw it all out or just part. You cannot have your cake and eat it to. To be honest Rebirth has the same issues. It's just we're all so happy to be done with the Nu52 (To a degree) that we wont complain
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Oct 19, 2016 04:33
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Benito Cereno posted:Depends on what you like. There are a number of runs that are considered great, but many of them are really of their time. I'll probably try out the Johns story, and if I like that look into Cockrum and Levitz/Giffens' runs on the book. I'll also give Threeboot Legion a shot just because I do like Mark Waid a lot.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:34
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I thought Zero Year was the N52 No Man's Land?
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Oct 19, 2016 04:36
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purple death ray posted:I thought Zero Year was the N52 No Man's Land? Zero Year was both the NML and Year One of N52. And probably a bunch of other storylines as well.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:39
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While it is only in retrospect, stuff like Kyle's backstory and the ridiculous Batman timeline makes sense if you take it as the result of someone loving with reality and no one noticing inconsistencies because they can't..
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Oct 19, 2016 04:55
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The problem is that I sincerely doubt anybody working on the New 52 was told, "And in about five years, we'll reveal that Doctor Manhattan was behind everything so feel free to gently caress with the continuity as much as you want." It doesn't really make anything better in the same way I don't think the EU makes the Star Wars prequels better. The basic claim is: DC are good at managing their continuity. Yet just looking at how often they put out stories just to fix their own continuity shows otherwise.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:58
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Well, yeah, obviously, and Alucard going "uhhh hello they EXPLAINED that" is dumb especially considering it's not even that good of an explanation. But that said, we might as well accept story patches where we can.
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Oct 19, 2016 04:59
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Let's be real here, the idea that all of DC's current continuity problems were caused by a big blue dude loving with the fabric of their universe is a pretty great way to explain away problems. "how can there have been five Rob-" MANHATTAN "So wait, Grifter and Apollo and all of them have always been a part of the-" MANHATTAN
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Oct 19, 2016 05:04
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"People actually like Grif-" MANHATTAN
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Oct 19, 2016 05:06
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Roth posted:"People actually like Grif-" No, that doesn't work there. Even "God" has limits.
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Oct 19, 2016 05:12
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purple death ray posted:I thought Zero Year was the N52 No Man's Land? I couldve sworn someone explicitly namedropped the earthquake that hit Gotham and kicked off NML at some point during the N52 run of Batman. Considering ZY happens due to a flood they coukdnt have been referencing it.
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Oct 19, 2016 05:32
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:I couldve sworn someone explicitly namedropped the earthquake that hit Gotham and kicked off NML at some point during the N52 run of Batman. Considering ZY happens due to a flood they coukdnt have been referencing it. There's always the chance they did, but they edited it out of the trade.
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Oct 19, 2016 06:02
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Speaking of that, didn't the trades edit some of the Joker / Bats flirting in Death of the Family?
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Oct 19, 2016 06:07
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Alucard Nacirema posted:its water under a bridge. DC continuity is air tight now.
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Oct 19, 2016 06:09
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Speaking of that, didn't the trades edit some of the Joker / Bats flirting in Death of the Family? I believe so. I believe there was also a reference to the Titans edited out of one when they decided between the comic and the trade that the Titans weren't a thing yet, among other things.
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Oct 19, 2016 06:16
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X-O posted:Didn't they also write out all of the Bane/Azrael stuff? Considering they supposedly met Azrael for the for first time in one of those weekly series (Eternal maybe?) i am okay with azrael being memory holed except for a fantasy marshal law crossover
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Oct 19, 2016 06:59
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Onmi posted:It did not help that DC could not keep Nu52 continuity consistent even within the Nu52. My favorite example is "What the gently caress is Kyle Rayner's backstory?" This really isn't anything new for DC. I know you young bucks out there like to pick on new 52 because its an easy target but there was also mass confusion and continuity errors after Crisis when they merged not only the worlds of Earth-1 and 2 but also absorbed other comic companies publishing lines (Fawcett, Charlton, Quality, etc.) all into one reality and then on top of that rebooted several characters (Supes, Batman, Wondy, Hawkman, etc.) from scratch. Waves of characters got totally displaced like Donna Troy, Hawkman/Girl, Superboy/Girl, etc. and redundancies like Plastic Man and Doll Man disappeared completely until Morrison revived them a decade and a half later. Most sensible people just rolled with it though and some logical retcons were made such as the JSA were around for WW2 but disbanded during the McCarthy era, The Legion Superboy was not Superman but actually a Superboy from a pocket dimension, the Wonder Woman who fought in WW2 with the JSA was a time traveling Hippoloyta, and Supergirl was an extra dimensional being known as the Matrix that morphed into Supergirl. Then came Zero Hour which also messed with a lot of characters continuities messing up Hawkman even more and changing Batman's history to where he was an urban legend until recently invalidating a ton of stories and the Legion got totally rebooted due to Hal Jordan's (Who was under the influence of the space parasite Parallax) meddling with time. DC just does house cleaning every so many years to keep the line fresh and keep fans talking but eventually they find sensible ways to smooth out continuity. I'll tell you what the real problem with DC is....this constantly replacing beloved characters with focus group approved "socially acceptable" versions. So now Ted Kord who has a rich history in the DCU isn't good enough so he's shown the door for a latino blue beetle and apparently time travel somehow made Ray, Alan Scott, and Natasha Irons gay and Helena Bertenelli black. I'm still waiting for the retcon explanation for that. Alucard Nacirema fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Oct 19, 2016 |
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Oct 19, 2016 07:47
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It's a bit silly to pretend like New 52 wasn't a giant clusterfuck when they literally walked it back and revealed it was an evil plot the entire time.
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Oct 19, 2016 07:49
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Alucard Nacirema posted:This really isn't anything new for DC. I know you young bucks out there like to pick on new 52 because its an easy target but there was also mass confusion and continuity errors after Crisis when they merged not only the worlds of Earth-1 and 2 but also absorbed other comic companies publishing lines (Fawcett, Charlton, Quality, etc.) all into one reality and then on top of that rebooted several characters (Supes, Batman, Wondy, Hawkman, etc.) from scratch. Waves of characters got totally displaced like Donna Troy, Hawkman/Girl, Superboy/Girl, etc. and redundancies like Plastic Man and Doll Man disappeared completely until Morrison revived them a decade and a half later. Most sensible people just rolled with it though and some logical retcons were made such as the JSA were around for WW2 but disbanded during the McCarthy era, The Legion Superboy was not Superman but actually a Superboy from a pocket dimension, the Wonder Woman who fought in WW2 with the JSA was a time traveling Hippoloyta, and Supergirl was an extra dimensional being known as the Matrix that morphed into Supergirl. Nobody mentions those because they are well known and documented "what the flying gently caress is up with X"
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Oct 19, 2016 07:54
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