I liked the Joker in Dark Knight Detective, and that was after NML.
Well, released after NML at least. Englehart basically wrote it to be a sequel to his old 70s run on Batman, so it may not count.
The annoying thing is Englehart actually wrote a sequel to Dark Knight Detective and it was partially drawn when the artist died, so it was never released.
Englehart claims parts of the script were adapted into the the Dark Knight movie, though.
FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
edited September 2013
Dark Knight Detective was pretty good for the first couple of issues. The early one where Joker announces his candidacy for governor was particularly good, and has a great last gag. But after that the story got kinda weird. Like "Two Face pays to have himself cloned" and "Bruce Wayne boning Silver St. Cloud in front of all his trophies in the batcave" weird.
Didn't the Joker kill a bunch of kids during No Man's Land when he also killed Sarah Essen?
No, he was going to kill a bunch of babies if nobody found them, but Sarah Essen found him. He only killed her, and spared the children.
It's actually one of the more effective Joker moments because when she first finds him he isn't smiling at all, but grins and puts on his shtick while confronting her, and after she's dead the smile disappears again. Before he realizes Sarah Essen is there, he seems to be calmly playing with one of the babies, even softly whispering his life philosophy to it. It was an unguarded moment for the character, and all the creepier because of it.
Come to think of it, it may have been the last great Joker moment to date. There have been some good Joker stories since, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure any of them topped that.
Yeah, no Joker stories have grabbed me since NML. Then again, I have a soft spot for NML. I was tempted to get the expanded NML trades when they re-released them, but I didn't have the cash. I was kind of put off by attempts to explain the Joker backstory and give him a definitive Origin story. The Joker is best when he's a force of chaos that comes from nowhere, and his only purpose in life is to "play" with Batman, or any other hapless heroes that are nearby.
I wish they'd do a Joker story where it shows him planting all these false clues as to his backstory. This would effectively reset his origin to "who knows".
I also preferred it when it was a mystery as to whether or not the Joker knew who Batman was. I pretty much figured he knew for quite a while, but didn't want to spoil his game.
They could have done that with Harley Quinn's rebooted origin. They could have made it so that when Harley was a psychiatrist, she researched the Joker's history trying to find some pattern to all his lies and aliases to see if there are clues to his real identity. She could have consulted with Dr. Hugo Strange, Scarecrow, the Riddler, and even Batman. They could have even made it so that becoming Harley was an attempt to try to get the Joker to open up more and create the implication that she's still trying to figure out who the Joker really is.
There's some element of Harley Quinn being an identity she created to get to know Joker and the other villains better, on a psychological level, but the origin was really rushed and pretty much skipped over the part where she actually became insane. Hopefully a more thoughtful origin appears later down the line.
Yeah, no Joker stories have grabbed me since NML. Then again, I have a soft spot for NML. I was tempted to get the expanded NML trades when they re-released them, but I didn't have the cash.
As somebody who really liked NML you are not missing much. I bought the expanded NML and after reading it realized that the vast majority of the newly included issues were left out of the original trades for a reason. (As opposed to the expanded Knightfall which is vastly superior to the original Knightfall trades).
Okay, this has been bugging me for a little while, so I figure this might be a good place to discuss it: the Green Lanterns have not had any really good villains for a while.
I think the writers have become so engrossed with recurring overpowered cosmic threats that they've essentially missed out on the Green Lanterns as space cops. I can't remember the last time that the Green Lanterns had a really engaging villain that wasn't a Dr. Strange/Silver Surfer-level cosmic-powered asspull that was either a reject from the 70s (Krona, Nekron) or some random guy that poses a universal threat but nobody had ever heard before the foreshadowing two issues ago (First Lantern, Relic). Don't get me wrong, I think there's some good stuff that's come out of the comic in recent years, but villain-wise it's been...lackluster. I don't know how else to put it. It's just a succession of cosmic players targeting the lantern corps and proving how bad-ass they are by worfing the suprisingly-dickish-again Guardians of the Universe or something, only to be stopped once again because Humans Are Special (and Kyle Rayner Is Most Special Of All!)
A large part of the problem is, I think, that the whole Lantern concept has become so reactionary and self-referential. The Green Lanterns were space cops, stopping wars and pirates and flying around being heroes. The Yellow Lanterns formed in response to that, by an ex-Green Lantern with a chip on his shoulder the size of a small planet and designed pretty much directly to fuck with them. Then the Red Lanterns formed with...basically the same schtick. Star Sapphire Corps started out as bearers for the Zamarons and then got kinda-nerfed into being GL taggers-on, Indigo Tribe ditto. The Blue Lanterns were GL taggers-on pretty much from the beginning. Orange Lantern follows them around like a lovesick puppy. Black Lanterns, pretty much the same.
So, pretty much every friend, enemy, ally, supporting character, incidental character, etc. has its origin or purpose in the Secret History of the Green Lantern Corps, and the GLC is too busy dealing with its soap opera lifestyle to really do its job. Which I find sad for many reasons, but none less than: you can do cosmic threats without making each cosmic threat explicitly involve the Lanterns. I might bitch at Marvel for pulling out cosmic threats from its ass, but aside from Vulcan and Phoenix they don't feel the need to personally tie each such threat in with the X-Men, and so should it maybe be with the GLC. Maybe the other corps should be given things to do, or maybe long-term goals, or at least a villain-of-the-week that isn't strictly tied into their particular brand of kryptonite. I'd love to see the Yellow Corps team up with the Red Lanterns and go wage war on Apokalips for a couple of months, or a cabal of Blue Lanterns try to get the Spectre to mellow the fuck out for a bit, or just individual stories of random alien Lanterns dealing with threats, sort of like Alan Moore did. You remember Alan Moore? The F-Sharp Bell? Five Inversions? Stuff they're still stealing from today?
I get that it's not easy. Each individual Lantern is so powerful (now that GLs no longer have to really about yellow and whatnot) that there's a bit of a writing challenge involved with giving them an appropriate challenge - but they managed to it for years before the rise of the Yellow Lanterns, you'd think they could swing it.
(Of course, I would also accept any given Lantern character that had more than half a brain and decided to sit down for a comic or two and sort through what they've learned about the rings and how they work and maybe try to better themselves, but that's just pure fantasy. It's like giving John Constantine a ring and telling him he's got a day to figure out how to use it and then he has to fight the Wizard Shazam; it's either a terrible or brilliant concept but no one will every write it.)
FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
I love the idea of Green Lantern in theory. In practice, it all seems a convoluted mess (even for comic books) that I have no desire to deal with. I'm pretty much just waiting for Geoff Johns to shuffle on, and then see what new writers do with the material. Unfortunately, given the current state of DC, odds are I won't like that either.
UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
Johns is still the Chief Creative Officer at DC, and given the company's tendancy for editorial meddling with storylines, I'd be more surprised to hear that he wasn't "helping" the new writer(s) with their storylines.
Wasn't Josh Fialkov supposed to take over a GL book, only to bail at the last minute because of editorial fuckery?
FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
His influence looms large, at the very least. I'm looking forward to that diminishing, and the possibility of more interesting experimentation on the book.
I agree that I'm tired of the GLs just fighting different colored Lanterns. I miss the old space cop days or the even older GLC backups from the 80s that took the basic idea of a Green Lantern and invented really unique alien worlds to play out different moral or political situations. I'm hopeful that the october mini-event, Lights Out really does reset the Lantern universe and lets it go in a different and more interesting direction.
I want less Power Rangers and more Star Trek with Power Rings
+2
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I'm trying to think of when GL wasn't based around other rings. Right before Blackest Night they had the prison riot in GLC but that was connected to that one guardian being messed up, and it involved a bunch of other lanterns fighting.
Don't get me wrong: I like the different lantern corps too. But we haven't had a lot of individual corps development - the GLC likes to pretend it's got a lot of old traditions and stuff, but remember that they've been decimated and revived a couple of times already, and all the other corps are brand new and more or less based off of the Green Lantern Corps, so I think there's a lot of self-discovery to be done. Is the point of being a Red Lantern just to seek revenge, and a Violet lantern to encourage vigorous boinking? Do the Sinestro Corps guys exist just to screw with their green-colored counterparts? They have their unifying emotions, but no real unifying purpose or goal.
Well, except for Larfeeze, and he basically is his corps. I think the lack of definition of what the others corps do is in large part why so many of the corps are represented by only one or two members. Atrocitus and Sinestro basically are their corps, for most purposes, and anybody that strays too far out of line gets it in the neck.
The problem is they've established that 7,200 Green Lanterns keep peace across the entire universe so each Lantern has to look after between a couple million to a couple hundred million galaxies. If they don't have, at minimum, the power to blow up solar systems at will, then their existence would be kind of pointless.
turns out that it's a superhero setting so the dimensions of space as we know it in our universe mean next to nothing
Clearly the Green Lantern Corps does do that, so either they are able to look after that many galaxies, or there aren't that many galaxies in the DC Universe. Either way is fine with me.
I want less Power Rangers and more Star Trek with Power Rings
Yeah, when you have the power to do anything, the greatest challenges you're going to face are Star Trek-style moral dilemmas that require you to figure out the best way to use your infinite power, knowing that unleashing everything you have will just turn you into Sinestro.
Best "Villian's Month" issues so far (IMO): The Rogues as it's both good and sets up a upcoming story arc. Followed by Black Manta, Ocean Master, and Count Vertigo
The best issues are one's that are another chapter of the comic from a different perspective or interesting one-shots in the current state of events. The worst ones are the tacked on origin stories without any plot threads to follow.
But wasn't the best selling issue the one with Joker, which was a stealth Jackanape origin and had no connection to anything.
And it was terrible.
As for other issues. Ra's al Ghul's was pretty damn fun. Killer Frost's actually made her somewhat sympathetic. Creeper was just another issue of Katana. Dial E was somewhat lackluster and reminded me that the main series was canceled in a painful way.
H'el's was clearly the prelude to the upcoming Super____ Krypton arc.
Oh hey. Doomsday (Batman/Superman) was pretty good too. Though there's an equal focus on the alternate world Zod and it's told though the eyes of young Kara.
Best "Villian's Month" issues so far (IMO): The Rogues as it's both good and sets up a upcoming story arc. Followed by Black Manta, Ocean Master, and Count Vertigo
The best issues are one's that are another chapter of the comic from a different perspective or interesting one-shots in the current state of events. The worst ones are the tacked on origin stories without any plot threads to follow.
But the rogues issue is setting up a new mini that I can't afford! Bah!
I wish DC would tell us who the new Flash team is. We probably have to wait a couple more weeks until NYCC though.
HadjiQuest on
0
chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
Like the art was great, especially the coloring, and it managed to make Croc be an actually sympathetic, compelling villain. For the first time I can really recall.
+1
Garlic Breadi'm a bitch i'm a bitch i'm a bitch i'm aRegistered User, Disagreeableregular
While reading Joker's Daughter
I was really scared she was going to turn out to be Stephanie Brown. It seemed like they were hinting at that with the art way too much
0
ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Killer Croc was okay. I don't know much about what he's been up to in the New52 so I may be missing out on some info. Same with Doomsday. I dunno what he ties into, or what exactly they were trying to do with him in the issue. Is he kind of like a Kryptonian boogieman or legendary beast or something? That would be kind cool if they nixed the scientific origin of a super evolved monster.
Really liked Bane, mostly because he and Scarecrow setting up Arkham War which sounds pretty cool. And I really liked Ocean Master, just like I loved Black Manta.
At the end of the month, I wish it was all better done. Mostly that I wish they titled each book as "Villain Name Here" #1 instead of tacking it onto an existing book giving us stupid numbering like Batman 23.4. Some tied into the book they are from, some tied into Forever Evil, some gave an origin, some were pretty good, and some were just trash... it was all over the place. But that seems to be par for the course for DC.
Practice Round, my blog where I talk (mostly) about comics.
0
Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
ie. They've got 7200 Lanterns patrolling the 3600 mapped sectors, but there is still uncharted territory out there?
I also assumed sectors weren't all the same size (ie. highly populated sectors are probably smaller to make them more manageable).
This is pretty much how they do it:
A fairly regular ovoid with wedge-shaped sectors of similar size.
They've always sort've ignored the whole 'one guy for ten million galaxies is crazy' element of it and said 'Yes, one Green Lantern is enough to protect that much space. Because comics/sci-fantasy, and so forth.'
I've always been fine with it, and this being the actual entire universe. But if they wanna have extra unknown space out there, with that ovoid merely representing known space, that's fine with me too. They introduced that element in the animated series as well, with the universe divided into Guardian Space and Frontier Space.
Re. Green Lantern, the Sinestro issue was pretty good.
Brings everyone up to speed on Sinestro's origins, hints at his return, brings back Lyssa Drak (who is one of the more interesting Sinestro Corpsman) and continues to hint that something bad is happening to the entities - the Book of Parallax that Lyssa carries has been destroyed, which hints at something nasty happening to Parallax, and possible Sinestro too since he was hosting the entity.
Was also interesting in that it revealed Soranik to be half-Korugarian and half-Ungaran - Abin Sur's race - as her mother was Arin Sur, Abin's sister. This makes her Abin Sur's niece as well, a nice bit of legacy. Which is a step up from having her mother just be random Korugarian female X who disappears and is never heard from again.
While I'm powerfully not sold on the Lights Out storyline, this was a good issue focusing on Sinestro's past.
I caught up on all the GL books, including all four villains month issues.
I think the direction after Johns has been fantastic. All four titles are great, the main GL series is especially rad and I really dig the actual diversity of the new lanterns shown in Corps, plus the way that John Stewart has been coming off as actually having a personality. I think we really are going to start moving away from how the books were under Johns; we've already seen a lot more of the hard sci-fi stuff, and Relic brought a sort of Kirby-Cosmic flare to the book that we don't see in the GL stuff too much.
Also, I was surprised by how good all four villains month issues were for GL. None of them were super essential (most of what was in Relic has already been implied in New Guardians), but each one was a fun one-and-done.
Going to hopefully read some more of the villains month books tomorrow, for JL and Superman stuff.
Re. Green Lantern, the Sinestro issue was pretty good.
Brings everyone up to speed on Sinestro's origins, hints at his return, brings back Lyssa Drak (who is one of the more interesting Sinestro Corpsman) and continues to hint that something bad is happening to the entities - the Book of Parallax that Lyssa carries has been destroyed, which hints at something nasty happening to Parallax, and possible Sinestro too since he was hosting the entity.
Was also interesting in that it revealed Soranik to be half-Korugarian and half-Ungaran - Abin Sur's race - as her mother was Arin Sur, Abin's sister. This makes her Abin Sur's niece as well, a nice bit of legacy. Which is a step up from having her mother just be random Korugarian female X who disappears and is never heard from again.
While I'm powerfully not sold on the Lights Out storyline, this was a good issue focusing on Sinestro's past.
About the Soranik stuff:
All the Soranik stuff was covered over the course of Tomasi's GLC run, and parts of it were even handled in the main GL book. It all happened between SCW and Blackest Night. Tony Bedard's Weaponer arc touched on it as well.
So it was pretty much a pure recap, but it still handled things really well and gave us a firm grasp of what was still canon.
It filled in a missing piece that hadn't been covered in recent continuity which was Sinestro's downfall and ouster from the Corps. I wish it was an issue purely set in the past and not a flashback so that you didn't have to read it in the present and could slot it in after Johns' Secret Origin.
Posts
Well, released after NML at least. Englehart basically wrote it to be a sequel to his old 70s run on Batman, so it may not count.
The annoying thing is Englehart actually wrote a sequel to Dark Knight Detective and it was partially drawn when the artist died, so it was never released.
Englehart claims parts of the script were adapted into the the Dark Knight movie, though.
They could have done that with Harley Quinn's rebooted origin. They could have made it so that when Harley was a psychiatrist, she researched the Joker's history trying to find some pattern to all his lies and aliases to see if there are clues to his real identity. She could have consulted with Dr. Hugo Strange, Scarecrow, the Riddler, and even Batman. They could have even made it so that becoming Harley was an attempt to try to get the Joker to open up more and create the implication that she's still trying to figure out who the Joker really is.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
As somebody who really liked NML you are not missing much. I bought the expanded NML and after reading it realized that the vast majority of the newly included issues were left out of the original trades for a reason. (As opposed to the expanded Knightfall which is vastly superior to the original Knightfall trades).
You know, that series that comes out in less than a month.
I think the writers have become so engrossed with recurring overpowered cosmic threats that they've essentially missed out on the Green Lanterns as space cops. I can't remember the last time that the Green Lanterns had a really engaging villain that wasn't a Dr. Strange/Silver Surfer-level cosmic-powered asspull that was either a reject from the 70s (Krona, Nekron) or some random guy that poses a universal threat but nobody had ever heard before the foreshadowing two issues ago (First Lantern, Relic). Don't get me wrong, I think there's some good stuff that's come out of the comic in recent years, but villain-wise it's been...lackluster. I don't know how else to put it. It's just a succession of cosmic players targeting the lantern corps and proving how bad-ass they are by worfing the suprisingly-dickish-again Guardians of the Universe or something, only to be stopped once again because Humans Are Special (and Kyle Rayner Is Most Special Of All!)
A large part of the problem is, I think, that the whole Lantern concept has become so reactionary and self-referential. The Green Lanterns were space cops, stopping wars and pirates and flying around being heroes. The Yellow Lanterns formed in response to that, by an ex-Green Lantern with a chip on his shoulder the size of a small planet and designed pretty much directly to fuck with them. Then the Red Lanterns formed with...basically the same schtick. Star Sapphire Corps started out as bearers for the Zamarons and then got kinda-nerfed into being GL taggers-on, Indigo Tribe ditto. The Blue Lanterns were GL taggers-on pretty much from the beginning. Orange Lantern follows them around like a lovesick puppy. Black Lanterns, pretty much the same.
So, pretty much every friend, enemy, ally, supporting character, incidental character, etc. has its origin or purpose in the Secret History of the Green Lantern Corps, and the GLC is too busy dealing with its soap opera lifestyle to really do its job. Which I find sad for many reasons, but none less than: you can do cosmic threats without making each cosmic threat explicitly involve the Lanterns. I might bitch at Marvel for pulling out cosmic threats from its ass, but aside from Vulcan and Phoenix they don't feel the need to personally tie each such threat in with the X-Men, and so should it maybe be with the GLC. Maybe the other corps should be given things to do, or maybe long-term goals, or at least a villain-of-the-week that isn't strictly tied into their particular brand of kryptonite. I'd love to see the Yellow Corps team up with the Red Lanterns and go wage war on Apokalips for a couple of months, or a cabal of Blue Lanterns try to get the Spectre to mellow the fuck out for a bit, or just individual stories of random alien Lanterns dealing with threats, sort of like Alan Moore did. You remember Alan Moore? The F-Sharp Bell? Five Inversions? Stuff they're still stealing from today?
I get that it's not easy. Each individual Lantern is so powerful (now that GLs no longer have to really about yellow and whatnot) that there's a bit of a writing challenge involved with giving them an appropriate challenge - but they managed to it for years before the rise of the Yellow Lanterns, you'd think they could swing it.
(Of course, I would also accept any given Lantern character that had more than half a brain and decided to sit down for a comic or two and sort through what they've learned about the rings and how they work and maybe try to better themselves, but that's just pure fantasy. It's like giving John Constantine a ring and telling him he's got a day to figure out how to use it and then he has to fight the Wizard Shazam; it's either a terrible or brilliant concept but no one will every write it.)
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Wasn't Josh Fialkov supposed to take over a GL book, only to bail at the last minute because of editorial fuckery?
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Well, except for Larfeeze, and he basically is his corps. I think the lack of definition of what the others corps do is in large part why so many of the corps are represented by only one or two members. Atrocitus and Sinestro basically are their corps, for most purposes, and anybody that strays too far out of line gets it in the neck.
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
Clearly the Green Lantern Corps does do that, so either they are able to look after that many galaxies, or there aren't that many galaxies in the DC Universe. Either way is fine with me.
ie. They've got 7200 Lanterns patrolling the 3600 mapped sectors, but there is still uncharted territory out there?
I also assumed sectors weren't all the same size (ie. highly populated sectors are probably smaller to make them more manageable).
Yeah, when you have the power to do anything, the greatest challenges you're going to face are Star Trek-style moral dilemmas that require you to figure out the best way to use your infinite power, knowing that unleashing everything you have will just turn you into Sinestro.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
The best issues are one's that are another chapter of the comic from a different perspective or interesting one-shots in the current state of events. The worst ones are the tacked on origin stories without any plot threads to follow.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
And it was terrible.
As for other issues. Ra's al Ghul's was pretty damn fun. Killer Frost's actually made her somewhat sympathetic. Creeper was just another issue of Katana. Dial E was somewhat lackluster and reminded me that the main series was canceled in a painful way.
H'el's was clearly the prelude to the upcoming Super____ Krypton arc.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Guys.... I think our favorite Anti-Hero is back.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
And Secret Society is a Owlman/Alfred issue.
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But the rogues issue is setting up a new mini that I can't afford! Bah!
I wish DC would tell us who the new Flash team is. We probably have to wait a couple more weeks until NYCC though.
WILD DOG?
Why I fear the ocean.
it was really good?
Like the art was great, especially the coloring, and it managed to make Croc be an actually sympathetic, compelling villain. For the first time I can really recall.
Apparently, they were considering that at one point, but editorial decided they'd antagonized that character's fans enough this year, or something?
Really liked Bane, mostly because he and Scarecrow setting up Arkham War which sounds pretty cool. And I really liked Ocean Master, just like I loved Black Manta.
At the end of the month, I wish it was all better done. Mostly that I wish they titled each book as "Villain Name Here" #1 instead of tacking it onto an existing book giving us stupid numbering like Batman 23.4. Some tied into the book they are from, some tied into Forever Evil, some gave an origin, some were pretty good, and some were just trash... it was all over the place. But that seems to be par for the course for DC.
This is pretty much how they do it:
A fairly regular ovoid with wedge-shaped sectors of similar size.
They've always sort've ignored the whole 'one guy for ten million galaxies is crazy' element of it and said 'Yes, one Green Lantern is enough to protect that much space. Because comics/sci-fantasy, and so forth.'
I've always been fine with it, and this being the actual entire universe. But if they wanna have extra unknown space out there, with that ovoid merely representing known space, that's fine with me too. They introduced that element in the animated series as well, with the universe divided into Guardian Space and Frontier Space.
Re. Green Lantern, the Sinestro issue was pretty good.
Was also interesting in that it revealed Soranik to be half-Korugarian and half-Ungaran - Abin Sur's race - as her mother was Arin Sur, Abin's sister. This makes her Abin Sur's niece as well, a nice bit of legacy. Which is a step up from having her mother just be random Korugarian female X who disappears and is never heard from again.
While I'm powerfully not sold on the Lights Out storyline, this was a good issue focusing on Sinestro's past.
I think the direction after Johns has been fantastic. All four titles are great, the main GL series is especially rad and I really dig the actual diversity of the new lanterns shown in Corps, plus the way that John Stewart has been coming off as actually having a personality. I think we really are going to start moving away from how the books were under Johns; we've already seen a lot more of the hard sci-fi stuff, and Relic brought a sort of Kirby-Cosmic flare to the book that we don't see in the GL stuff too much.
Also, I was surprised by how good all four villains month issues were for GL. None of them were super essential (most of what was in Relic has already been implied in New Guardians), but each one was a fun one-and-done.
Going to hopefully read some more of the villains month books tomorrow, for JL and Superman stuff.
About the Soranik stuff:
So it was pretty much a pure recap, but it still handled things really well and gave us a firm grasp of what was still canon.