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Not So New 52: A Look Back at ‘The Edge’ Titles from September 2011

By | December 27th, 2019
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8, going on 9, years ago, DC did something radical. No, not in the slang 90s way but in the major, seismic shift sort of way. They took their entire line of comics, cancelled every single one of them, and rebooted their entire universe. Not only did they reboot it, they reset it, making a pseudo-Ultimate Universe where heroes were near the start of their careers, without decades of story baggage. The Wildstorm and Vertigo universes were folded back into the main DCU and an overarching threat was teased during the final pages of “Flashpoint,” the event that birthed the New 52. It was a promise of more interconnected titles, a greater coherence within the universe and 52(!) titles to start, with more on the way in subsequent waves.

Gone were the JSA. Gone were all but one of the Robins (not really). Teams that once had hundreds of members and rotating casts were reduced to their core membership. The Teen Titans existed, but didn’t. It was a weird time.

It was a bold move and while, in theory, it could have worked, the practicalities and execution fell flat on its face and gave us nearly a decade of material to shake our collective heads at and ask: what the hell happened?

Well, that’s not what we’re here for! To celebrate the end of the decade, we here at Multiversity thought it’d be a neat idea to go back to the start of the New 52 with fresh eyes to see if things were better, if things were worse, and how well these books have stood the test of time. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be covering every single title of Wave 1 of the New 52, divided up by the “imprints” they spearheaded, an idea I, Elias, genuinely wish they had kept.

These titles were meant to be an entry into a simplified universe — let’s see if these #1s accomplished that goal. So far, we covered ‘Young Justice,’ the ‘Green Lantern’ quartet, ‘The Dark’ and the ‘Superman’ quartet. Today, to close out the week, we bring you the weird, the wild, the titles teetering on ‘The Edge.’

Cover by Moritat

All-Star Western #1
Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray
Illustrated by Moritat
Colored by Gabriel Bautista
Lettered by Rob Leigh
Reviewed by Christa Harader

A good old-fashioned murder mystery set in the seediest locale this side of Hub City: Gotham. Jonah Hex and Dr. Amadeus Arkham need to track down a vicious killer akin to Jack the Ripper and navigate the burgeoning dark politics of the sprawling urban hellscape around them. Sounds simple, right?

Palmiotti and Gray nail Hex and provide an interesting lens into his character through Arkham’s restless, incessant need to psychoanalyze the man. It’s at once humorous, annoying and intriguing, and that kind of narration suits the time period of the story as well as the characters. This is also the story that set up a lot of what made the New 52 Snyder and Capullo Batman so good for a period of time. We’ll get to the Court of Owls eventually, but for now we’re treated to a tight, weird and well-illustrated first issue.

Moritat absolutely nails Hex’s grim, jagged facial features and that pulsing eye is never too far out of frame. Bautista picks a grisly color palette with daytime greys, blacks and browns to help us feel the cold reality of industrialization nipping at our heels. Hex appears a man out of time because of many reasons, not the least of which is the subtler grey of his uniform. Palmiotti and Gray take care to mention it, as it’s part of what makes the character complex and unlikeable, and Bautista colors it very well. Leigh’s lettering is decent, with good narrative boxes and a clear dialogue font that doesn’t crowd out the press of background characters Moritat layers onto the page.

“All Star Western” #1 sets up a long, intricate and ultimately bizarre storyline that spans generations, decades and titles, but it’s valuable as a standalone mystery, too. This is one of the books that made the New 52 worth reading.

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Final Verdict: 8.5 – “All Star Western” #1 sets up a good murder mystery and is the foundation for one of DC’s seminal storylines, to boot.

Cover by Ken Lashley

“Blackhawks” #1
Written by Mike Costa
Layouts by Graham Nolan
Inked by Ken Lashley
Colored by Guy Major
Lettered by Rob Leigh
Reviewed by Mike Mazzacane

Of the first round of New52 books “Blackhawks” feels like a missed opportunity. While a good portion of the newly reconstituted DCU was trying to figure itself out and what had and hadn’t happened in the nebulous 5 year period “Blackhawks” had a fresher start. The core identity of the property, a paramilitary team doing jobs, was intact but in a different context – instead of being mercenaries they are a covert action team organized by the U.N.. It fulfilled the basics of a “reboot” before that term had come into the wider lexicon. Where the series, and this first issue, miss all of this opportunity is in their execution. “Blackhawks” #1 is generic in the unsatisfying bland sense of the word. If you took out the Blackhawk insignia and other DC related branding it would be hard to distinguish it from any of the litany of other military themed team books from the 90s and early 00s. Ken Lashley’s finishes give the book a decidedly 90s vibe without the stylish excess that makes the period interesting.

The first page isn’t so bad as the readers are given access to the Blackhawk Mission File AE-456. The design work between the lettering and satellite view the brings readers into a hostage situation in Kazakhstan is effective setup and naturalized exposition. That cold informational perspective helps the irony from the lettering and tonal shift at the bottom of the page as we suddenly see Kunoichi hanging upside down from something. Which leads into the double page splash of the mission going chaotically according to plan. The issue never manages to go higher than this point, at best maintaining position more often trending downwards.

On the next page there is a clear lettering mix up as Kunoichi proclaims the person she is wrestling with is a biter, while holding him in a rear naked choke his mouth nowhere near exposed skin. It’s two panels later that we see this person actually bite her. The creative team try for some physical comedy as they use handing off a hostage to track our progress through various team members, who lack a sense of character beyond generic G.I. Joe equivalents. None of these characters, including Kunoichi, get a meaningful bit of characterization that pushes them beyond stereotype. A fact that is reflexively stated later on in the issue, that makes the failure of storytelling more apparent.

Introducing a large cast of character is a tough task, you just don’t have a lot of page space. The audiences gateway and the lead character for this issue is Kunoichi who fails to show anything beyond reckless behavior. She recklessly flies a jet and recklessly tries to initiate sex with on-off partner Wildman. Everything in this issue is one, overly familiar, note. There is nothing in this issue that would make me want to read the next one, despite prompting on DC Universe to do so.

Final Verdict: 6.0 – Other than the odd lettering choice, there isn’t anything appreciably wrong with the debut issue of “Blackhawks” it is just utterly generic.

Cover by Simon Bisley

Deathstroke #1
Written by Kyle Higgins
Penciled by Joe Bennett
Inked by Art Thibert
Colored by Jason Wright
Lettered by Travis Lanham
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore

Comparing any previous “Deathstroke” series to Christopher Priest’s recently wrapped epic isn’t fair, so let’s try to approach this for simply what it is: a superpowered mercenary story. Kyle Higgins doesn’t go too crazy on Slade’s power-ups, and so the issue doesn’t read all that differently from any number of merc stories. It spends a lot of time introducing supporting characters, all but one of which will be dead by issue’s end, but it attempts to throw a curveball to the reader, and that’s never a bad thing in a first issue.

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On top of that, there is no reason why a straight up ‘Deathstroke merc’ing folks in mid-air’ can’t be a fun comic. The issue is that Higgins’s script is devoid of almost anything unique or different. This is about as generic a first issue as you can get, and Joe Bennett’s art doesn’t help. It’s a little unfair to knock Bennett too hard, as I’m pretty sure Deathstroke’s ridiculously redesigned costume came from higher up the food chain, but it is basically a cheesy “Extreme Justice” version of his costume 15 years later. There is a little attempt to infuse some further DC mythos into the book with a mention of ‘Clayface DNA,’ but it doesn’t add too much to the story.

Deathstroke is a hard character to build a book around, and though Higgins and Bennett try to find a story here, there really isn’t one to be found. It doesn’t seem likely that DC would’ve approved Priest’s, or anyone else’s, somewhat different version of the book at this point, so it seems like any New 52 Deathstroke book would’ve been dull. Especially in light of the ‘rough and edgy’ mandate here, there just wasn’t enough subversion available to make this a generic big guns comic.

Final Verdict: 5.0 – There is nothing terrible here, but there’s also terribly little to discuss.

Cover by Cafu and Bit

Grifter #1
Written by Nathan Edmonson
Penciled by Cafu
Inked by Jason Gorder
Colored by Andrew Dalhouse
Lettered by Wes Abbot
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore

‘The Edge’ titles are where we began to see an incorporation of the WildStorm characters into the mainline DCU for the first time, and “Grifter” is, essentially, a whole hog WildStorm book, with no real connection to the overall DCU (yet). And so, this is about as pure a #1 as you can get, as it is both a full introduction to the character and a fresh start without responsibility to anything but the issue.

And, in that regard, the issue sort of works. It introduces the main character, the major elements that would make up the title in the short term, and a mystery to add intrigue to keep reading. From a construction standpoint, Edmonson and Cafu do a lot right. Cafu’s work has always been solid from a draftsman’s perspective, and he handles the ‘who is an alien?’ scenes especially well, both giving everyone a similar enough look to not instantly know who the problem is, but also adding subtle visual clues to see which of these people is not like the other.

The problem is that the story really isn’t that interesting. Edmonson’s script gives the reader all the information they may need, but none that really moves the needle. We have no real reasons to root for Cole, or even reason to find him interesting. We see half a scheme, find out he has a partner/girlfriend and a brother, and…that’s sort of it. At three different times, he says or is told that he was out of commission for 17 minutes, 17 hours, or 17 days. It is unclear whether he’s being lied to, he’s unsure of his timeframe, or the New 52 was poorly edited. I’d believe any of the three.

Final Verdict: 4.5 – A slight, but well constructed, introductory issue.

Cover by Viktor Kalvachev

Men of War #1
Written by Ivan Brandon and Jonathan Vankin
Illustrated by Tom Derenick and Phil Winslade
Colored by Matt Wilson and Thomas Chu
Lettered by Rob Leigh
Reviewed by Nicholas Palmieri

War comics have long been a staple of the industry, though their popularity has significantly waned in recent years. “Men of War” represents DC’s attempt to reintroduce these, and I’m not sure how to feel about it.

When creating a war story set in the modern day, there’s an expectation that there will be some commentary on war itself. “Men of War,” however, largely avoids any of those big ideas. The character beats focus on Rock’s challenges with authority when it comes to saving his comrades-in-arms, and the war scenes focus on a superhero attack, making things as apolitical as possible. It looks like next issue might dive into some of the horrors of war, but on the whole, Brandon stays away from exploring that side of war.

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The art in the main story was fascinating, also in a way I don’t know how to feel about. The line art exclusively focuses on thin outlines, with little in terms of shading. Derenick’s line is also a strange mixture of confident and shaky: he knows exactly what lines he wants to use where, yet if you look closely, they’re far from smooth. Pencils are occasionally left inside the figures, too, which adds to the raw feel. Wilson’s coloring, with its heavy use of textures, goes a long way towards helping the art look more like a modern comic. It’s an odd artistic experiment that, for me at least, worked so far as displaying these young men at war.

The backup (remember those?) is totally unmemorable. A group of soldiers use lots of military speak and come across a young girl who is being used by their enemies. It was a little too wordy, and the more straightforward art didn’t do much for me.

Overall, I commend DC for trying something here, yet I also see why it didn’t last very long.

Final Verdict: 6.5 – An attempt to do an apolitical and largely unfeeling war comic, “Men of War” is entertaining enough, and that’s about it.

Cover by Keith Giffen, Scott Koblish, and Hi-Fi

OMAC #1
Written by Dan Didio and Kieth Giffen
Illustrated by Kieth Giffen
Inked by Scott Koblish
Coloured by Hi-Fi
Lettered by Travis Lanham
Reviewed by Rowan Grover

This issue is wild. Giffen and Didio through readers right into the thick of things, at first in an office setting where a woman can’t find her boyfriend Kevin Kho and is harassed by her slimy boss about it. It’s an uncomfortable setup, but it works at giving us character. From here, we’re thrown further into what will make up the rest of the story: Giffen’s hulking blue Omac character smashing down walls and shocking people with their power.

Giffen and Didio are clearly having fun paying homage to Kirby in this sequence. This Omac is directed by a rogue Brother Eye, who has a flair for scheming but comes off as a little stilted with some old school dialogue. It does mean, however, that Omac himself feels like little more than a conduit for Brother Eye, acting out only with the occasional grunt or “I AM O.M.A.C.”. We classic Fourth World denizens, including Cadmus’ Mokkari, who has some delightfully purple/evil-scientist dialogue. When the two clash, Mokkari is immediately cut down from his lording stance, which has some satisfaction for the readers. There’s a follow up attack from a Build-A-Friend, another classic Kirby reference, and it serves as more crunchy cannon fodder for our boy. The rest of the issue is light on narrative, but we get a fun discourse when Omac wakes up again as Kevin Kho. Brother Eye informs him of what has taken place, before adding at the end, “But first, call your girlfriend, she’s worried about you.”.

The real draw here is that sweet sweet Giffen art with Scott Koblish inks. Giffen has always had a strong Kirby influence, but leans hard into it for this issue and for everyone’s benefit. Each character has that classic Kirby scowl and leans somewhat, which works well surprisingly for Kho’s girlfriend Jody. Once we get to Omac himself, he feels perfectly in his element. Giffen and Koblish render him with a brutish bravado, yet with a terrifying quickness and fluidity that has him leaping and bounding from panel to panel. Omac also feel appropriately monstrous, walking around with a constant hunch and tearing apart people and machinery like it’s nothing but paper. Hi-Fi’s colors work pretty well here too. They have the classic four-color palette of the original Kirby era work, but with a modern sheen. There’s some dated looking visual techniques, however, like the fractal-esque visual that floats around Omac’s head whenever Brother Eye talks, and looks visually super out of place. The shiny shading does work in some places, however: when Omac connects with the Cadmus Mainframe, there’s a great shot of Omac drawn out of Kirby circuitry that is highlight well with eye-searing colors.

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“OMAC” #1 was a light but surprisingly super fun issue. Didio and Giffen are clearly having fun paying reference to the King himself, and although the story may be light and occasionally off putting at this stage, it makes up for it with sheer, kinetic energy.

Final Score: 7.0 – An unexpectedly wild ride.

Cover by Miguel Sepulveda & Nathan Eyring

Stormwatch #1
Written by Paul Cornell
Illustrated by Miguel Sepulveda
Colored by Allen Passalaqua
Lettered by Rob Leigh
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore

Of all the ‘New 52’ books, this seemed to be the one with the most potential to really change the DC landscape. The idea of Stormwatch, an old organization that has been monitoring the DCU for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, would be a fun element to introduce. Mixing old favorites like Martian Manhunter with the really fun characters incorporated from the WildStorm universe, this felt like one of the more sustainable, exciting, and easy to explain concepts from the New 52.

This issue, though a bit of an exposition engine, does manage to introduce some of these characters pretty well. Jack Hawksmoor is especially well handled here, and makes for a new type of hero for the DC Universe. Similar is that of the Projectionist, who also represented something that isn’t easily found elsewhere. The connection to “Demon Knights” was also a fun one, and furthered the idea of this shadowy world just below the surface of the New 52. Paul Cornell’s dialogue is occasionally clunky, but in this first issue, the reader fully understands the characters, their motivations, and what is at stake.

Miguel Sepulveda’s art works pretty well here, despite that it isn’t the best fit for this title. He handles the shape shifting of Martian Manhunter well, though some of his characters are inconsistent from page to page, and his storytelling can be a little stilted and posed. From an overall look standpoint, he works quite well, even when his style is a bit at odds with where the story is going.

Ultimately, the issue works in a vacuum, though it would prove to not be as sustainable an idea as it appeared in this initial charge. With the WildStorm universe again siloed off again, the inability to convert this into something special is one of the real shames of the New 52 era.

Final Verdict: 7.6 – A strong concept that was hampered a bit by inconsistent art and clunky dialogue.

Cover by Ryan Benjamin

Suicide Squad #1
Written by Adam Glass
Illustrated by Federico Dallocchio, Random Getty, and Scott Hanna
Colored by Val Staples
Lettered by Jared K Fletcher
Reviewed by Nicholas Palmieri

To me, there is only one Suicide Squad comic that has ever truly worked: the original John Ostrander-written ongoing from the 80s. This New 52 “Suicide Squad” issue, however, marks the first true push for DC to create a new ongoing and establish the Squad as a hot property. As such, it’s ground zero for everything that Suicide Squad is today.

Gone are the strong political themes — the team’s first mission is reduced to “extract a rogue agent” and a cheap twist ending. Gone is the meaning behind the brutality — the entire issue is an extended torture scene which is only there to show how brutal the team’s management can be. Deadshot is still there, the only true holdover aside from Amanda Waller, whose personality nuances are reduced to “she’s crazy and violent!!” And new to the table is Harley Quinn, who is today synonymous with the phrase “Suicide Squad,” for better or for worse.

I don’t blame Glass for not being Ostrander. But did he have to go in such a needlessly dark and brutal direction? Did he have to remove all signs of character depth for the sake of cheap thrills? Did he have to flatten the narrative so much that the twists were all that mattered?

The art can be good in places, though it’s about as inconsistent as you’d expect from a first issue with three different listed artists. Some pages have fun playing with darkness and shadow in the torture chamber, but others unfortunately make use of porn poses and gratuitous butt shots.

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I must admit, I enjoyed the way the three featured characters got their one-page flashbacks. These are the tiny kernels which could have made the new take on the Squad work. But these small scenes mean little in the grand scheme of things, and for proof, one need look no further than the abysmal movie, which took direct inspiration from this take on the team.

Final Verdict: 4.5 – Ground zero for all the unfortunate excesses of the modern-day Suicide Squad, with very few of the positives.

Cover by Sami Basri and Sunny Gho

Voodoo #1
Written by Ron Marz
Illustrated by Sami Basri
Colored by Jessica Kholinme
Lettered by Jared K. Fletcher
Review by Vince Ostrowski

In a relaunch that featured Batman and Catwoman boning on the moonlit rooftops of Gotham City, “Voodoo” #1 was the horniest debut issue out of the ‘New 52’. The opening page features the titular character on all fours, dancing for money and spilling out of her outfit. To be clear, the actual presentation on the page of the dancing profession isn’t problematic to this reader’s eye, but its inclusion and heavy first-issue focus in light of the particular things that the ‘New 52′ was trying to accomplish definitely feels like a publisher trying to be purposefully edgy. Hell, it was part of a sub-imprint that DC flat-out called “The Edge.” That doesn’t mean that aspect is bad in a vacuum, just that DC was very much doubling down on a “comics ain’t for kids anymore” mindset. I was surprised to find how realistic the profession and the background characters were portrayed. The other dancers, seen later in the powder room, seem like real people with concerns outside of their job and themselves. The art is fantastic, since the main goal here is the cheesecake. Voodoo stands out as the main dancer that everyone wants to see, and Basri properly gets that idea across with aplomb, somehow creating a trance-like effect for the dances using a static medium. There are also some really nice narrative tricks here, such as a few times where Voodoo is seen reflected in a pair of someone’s sunglasses – once before and once after the secret of her frightening identity is revealed, creating an unsettling effect.

The other characters are less successful at creating the illusion of depth. Chief among them are: “Smug FBI Guy #1’ (an asshole with a Shawn Hunter haircut) and “No-Nonsense FBI Gal #2”, one (spoiler alert) of whom surely gets fleshed out as this series went on, but neither of whom make any sort of impression in the outset. The ‘New 52’ was riddled with mysterious agency types who were trying to get to the bottom of the fact that supermen, aliens, magic, and sci-fi characters were supposedly revealing themselves for the first time in their reality. Almost none of these characters were likable or memorable, and “Voodoo” #1 is no exception to that. And as eye-grabbing as the art is, that doesn’t extend to these non-descript characters either. At this point, remembering that Priscilla Kitaen was yet another ‘Wildstorm’ character being absorbed into the DCU, it occurs to me that this issue itself is a fantastic introduction to her eerie character, but when thought about in the greater context of the publisher, just doesn’t fit. The unconventionally mature setting for a mainline DC Comic is the most rewarding aspect of “Voodoo”, and its economy of storytelling helps it go down very smoothly, but the ‘Wildstorm’ characters all had versions of themselves in the DCU already. This criticism goes beyond this issue of “Voodoo”, which by itself is pretty decent, but putting the parodies in with the real thing just never made much sense to begin with.

Final Verdict: 7.0 – “Voodoo” #1 intriguingly exhibits both the negative and positive aspects of DC trying to re-establish its fiction through a reboot that brings ‘Wildstorm’ into the fold, but its lean storytelling style left an overall positive impression.


//TAGS | Not So New 52

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