Originally Published December 9, 2011
DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point. Fellow blogger Patrick Ehlers and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles. We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Patrick’s Blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday. This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Animal Man, while Patrick is hosting the discussion of Action Comics.
Drew: I do not envy the writers of the New 52. They’ve been tasked with condensing and summarizing (and in some cases, excising large chunks of) impossibly dense and convoluted superhero history in order to appeal to a new audience. DC has incorporated so many universe-wide crossovers over the years that it’s impossible to fully understand any one character’s history without understanding the entire universe, which many prospective fans rightfully daunting. The degree to which the relaunch has hit the reset button varies from title to title, but all of the New 52 share the fact that the knowledge needed to understand what the heck is going on has been slimmed down considerably. This is great for giving newcomers like me and Patrick an entryway into the universe, but ignoring the history too much risks alienating DCs core fan-base, the loyal readers who have followed these titles for years, and who were invested in the story-lines leading up to the relaunch (these are also largely the people who review and sell comics, so it’s doubly important that DC not forget their needs). It’s a very fine line the writers walk here, hoping to reward long-term readers without losing the newbies, and hoping to familiarize the uninitiated without boring the die-hards. Continue reading →
Patrick: Animal Man 5 and 6 serve absolutely opposite-end-of the-spectrum purposes for Animal Man, so the fact that we’re discussing them together is unfortunate. But hey, schedules get busy, bloggers get lazy and we’re not exactly clairvoyant. So, the fact of the matter is that we are looking at one issue that carries on in the very strict serialization of the four issues that came previously and then one issue that nests a story within a story to deliver keen character insights, but essentially ignores the on-going war against The Rot. As we’ve been writing a lot about Swamp Thing and his travails with The Rot, I’m gonna breeze through issue 5. Drew, if you want to spend more time with it, be my guest. Continue reading 
Retcon Punch 