Thursday, May 03, 2007

Time After Time: 52 Week 52

Hats off to DC.

Okay, so I'm scratching my head like crazy. If there's one thing about this massive effort called 52 it's the curve balls that are never easy to predict. Sometimes, to catch. Most of these must be Grant's doing. Mark Waid did say that if ever there was some high concept being pursued, that would be Grant's, specifically the evil Skeets part. No surprise that issue 52 shoulders a heavily unpredictable end...err, beginning...

As temporal adventures go, everything is debatable. But the time-spanning touch down (literally, touch down) is something that fans, at least my sister and I, will be discussing time after time.

If there's one thing that 52 was successful at, it's telling the stories, the sometimes literal, sometimes spiritual, oftentimes moral journeys of Ralph Dibny, Black Adam, The Question, Renee Montoya, the JSA, Cassie (Wonder Girl), Animal Man, Adam Strange, Starfire, Steel, and Booster Gold. And Lobo. Definitely a year of heroes above any other league.

1 comment:

PJC said...

See, I have no particular emotional investment in the fate of the DC multiverse. (I've always preferred Hypertime or Superstring Theory as explanations for divergent realities, but that's neither here nor there.) And historically, i've been mostly a dyed-in-the-wool Marvel kid, besides.

But after reading 52 weeks worth of spoilers, I'm actually convinced that I'll enjoy reading the collected edition, partly as an overview of the different parts DCU (the Secret Origin context-setting stuff). But also as an inter-related collection of stories featuring "B-listers" given their proper due.

I really liked the format and strucutre of Seven Soldiers (even if I was a little under-whelmed by certain individual mini-series). So that's mainly why i'm looking forward to reading 52 in its collected editions, at last.

A lot of people felt that Seven Soliders was, ultimately, fairly inconsequential, no matter how much they enjoyed it. Nobody could argue the same about 52.

Me, i'm all about these "small stories" -- they read well enough, on their own. But when placed into the larger framework of the over-arching storyline, they become exponentially more interesting.

For much the same reason, I'm also hoping to pick up the TPB(s?) for the Helmet of Fate titles, once those get around to being given the collected treatment.