52 Spoilers & Commentary

[Gay Titan]

Who plans on getting the WW III issues and Countdown?

[Elliot Kane]

Thinking about both, Rodney. I'm still really enjoying 52, but the stellar creative cast will be moving to other projects. I am somewhat interested in Countdown, though, depending on what else I hear about it.

WW3... Still not sure. One teaser image doesn't really give me enough to go on. I want to know who the writer is, first and foremost.

[hector]

Keith Champagne and John Ostrander.

[Gray Lensman]

World War 3 gets my interest. Partly from the tie-in to JSA, partly because of Ostrander. I'm more dubious about Champagne, but I guess we'll see there.

As for Countdown... I'm unsure just yet. 52 is a very hard act to follow. Still... Dini can write, I like Mary Marvel and the New God connection intrigues me. I'll think about it.

[Elliot Kane]

Wow! Ralph Dibney dead... Sobek the not so good croc after all! Some great twists, IMO

[Elliot Kane]

Poor Isis... She was really cool, and I'll miss her. Adam's reaction seems a little disproportionate so far - but entirely understandable.

Can't wait for Adam vrs the mad scientists

[Gray Lensman]

I miss the Black Marvels, honestly. Especially Isis, who I really liked. I understand what the writers were trying to do with Isis and Osiris. But it came at the cost of a lot of story potential they could have had by keeping them alive. It really is a shame, but I can understand Adam going ballistic, especially given how rage-driven he's always been.

Adam vs. Sivana should be cool, I think. Those two have some history.

[Elliot Kane]

I'll be getting WW3. Not Countdown, though. Still haven't heatrd much about it, which is not a good sign.

I think I love Will Magnus, though. He's a great character. Same with Renee Montoya. I want to know what they get up to next

[Gray Lensman]

So... has anyone else read World War 3 yet?

I generally liked the main WW3 story in 52, overall. The strength of the whole war is the portrayal of Black Adam. And I think there's no question he's been established as one of the nastiest players in the DCU now. It also shows how badly things have gone wrong without Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to turn the tide.

I feel bad for Black Adam, though, even knowing what he's become. He's lost quite literally everything, and he's quite the tragic figure in many ways. It genuinely is not his fault he lost his family and his country. He has genuine cause to seek war and revenge against Intergang, Oolong Island, and against China. However, Black Adam falls prey to his rage, kills a lot of innocent people in fury, and ends up bringing his final fate upon himself in that respect.

I'm not sure about the tie-in books, which seem in some ways like a tacked-together sequence of events to establish all the OYL changes. Some of them are rushed because there's too little space. Deathstroke taking in Batgirl needed more than what we got, for instance. Still, I think some of this is down to the pacing issue... one week of 52 is not sufficient to show the ramifications of an entire world war. I'd have liked to really see the war closer to Adam's perspective, as that might have felt somewhat less disjointed.

All in all, the ending of the war works for me, and leaves me curious about what happens to Black Adam next. I still find it a real shame that the Black Marvels (who I liked a lot) were killed off to make this event happen. On the other hand, Adam is now a more effective and far more tragic villain for it. I expect when Adam comes back, as he eventually will, it will have a lot of impact on the DCU.

It's an interesting experiment, on a whole, and while the basic events work, I question the execution somewhat. Not too bad, though, all in all.

[philster]

I think WW3 seemed rushed to be honest. Was Black Adam really that powerful that he held down the fort against the entire DCverse of superheroes, too? Whew!

I liked the concept of changing Black Adam's magic word, too. Makes for good speculations

Although I loved 52 overall, I still didn't really like how it ended all that much. Seemed like a private tug-of-war that in the end, while it might have saved the universe, seemed a bit too underwhelming. Maybe I just couldn't see the Mind Worm as a danger. I mean, he sure looked dangerous enough, but somehow I wish it had remained Skeets as the main baddie xD Can't really explain it.

I liked the series very much, though.

[Gray Lensman]

I think that the villain with Skeets gave you this cool conflict with Booster, inherently. How does this guy who's lost so much deal with his robot friend turning bad and destroying the multiverse? It's a workable conflict.

As for the glitches with the ending, I think all of them arise because evil Skeets was a midstream improvisation. If he was evil, he needed a reason for being evil, for lying to Booster in the first dozen weeks, and then later on, a scheme in mind for the multiverse. Mr. Mind worked fine for me there, although you lose the personal conflict by saying that Skeets was really controlled by an alien worm. So I can see your point there, but I also see why it had to work this way.

Mr. Mind is a Captain Marvel-class villain, though, so he's got the power and the status to be the big bad in this situation. Actually, now I think on it, 52 did a great job of revamping the Shazam mythos entirely. It rebuilt Black Adam, made Dr. Sivana a serious nasty, and turned Mr. Mind into a multiverse-level threat.

All in all, I enjoyed 52 quite a lot. I miss it already, truth be told.

[Elliot Kane]

I think the biggest problem with Mr Mind was the whole 'show don't tell' thing. There had been no real build up or foreshadowing - we went straight from 'Evil Skeets' to 'Multiversal Threat' in one blink of an eye. That's a bit too much of a gear shift to really work in the space they gave it.

Plus there's always the 'no plot against the multiverse can ever succeed' problem, which makes those kinds of stories hard to pull off in the first place.

I felt that it was a satisfying ending to the series as a whole, and even a good ending - but it wasn't a great ending.

Funnily enough, WW3 had the reverse problem: one comic's worth of content spread out over four. It felt incoherent, too, with parts of it making no real sense (Adam hitting Italy - why?) and references to 'Adam & his allies' when he didn't have any.

I found it a bit of a stretch that Adam powered through the likes of Martian Manhunter and Supergirl THAT easily, too. Sure, he's supposed to have Supes level powers, but even Supes has some limits. Adam didn't really seem to have any. Overall, I don't think it really added anything to the tale that had already been told in 52.

What I did like about the ending of 52 was the '52 worlds' thing, which neatly explained why the odd character here & there was talking about '52' throughout. That was a neat touch