Sunday, May 31, 2009

The All-Dark, All-Grim Future of DC Comics

Some "spoilers" if you have not read comics in the past 8 years or so.
Some "soilers" if you have a weak stomach.



To sum up the past couple of years in DC Comics: Sue Dibny gets raped by Dr Light and killed by Jean Loring along with her unborn baby in Identity Crisis.
Blue Beetle gets shot in the head by a supporting character from the most humorous take the Justice League had ever known in Countdown. Bwa-ha.. huh?
Pantha gets her head torn off on panel and Phantom Lady gets a sword poked through her obscene cleavage in Infinite Crisis.
Big Barda dies near her refrigerator while putting away groceries in DonG.
Martian Manhunter, first of the Silver Age heroes, gets murdered by d-listers in Final Crisis. Batman buys it, too, but nobody buys that.
Barry Allen is the new dark detective, fighting crime because his mother was brutally murdered in Flash: Rebirth.
1970s cartoon characters get murdered and otherwise brutalized in Teen Titans.
Jericho goes on a murderous rampage in Titans.
King Kobra kills babies on live TV in Faces of Evil.



And now they tell us in the promotional material for Blackest Night:

The dead rise across the DC Universe, bringing terror and darkness with them.



Wow! Terror and darkness will come to the DC Universe!


Just how will we be able to tell the difference?



Clearly, DC will have to up the ante to keep fans reading. But where do you go once you crossed the "killing babies on live TV" threshold? How can you avoid becoming anticlimactic?



I say go for the big H.


Holocaust on Earth 2 (the last days of the Justice Society - for real... who likes old people?)
Holocaust on Earth 5 (watch Tawny the Tiger go to the gas chambers)
Identity Holocaust (the rapes of Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Ma Hunkel and Lois Lane)
Holocaust on Infinite Earths (all the Flashes die this time)
Infinite Holocaust (Johnny DC is revealed to be a 5th-Dimensional imp and kills every Titan and former JLI member who is still left)
Final Holocaust (nobody will be quite sure what's happening in this one as it's written in a revolutionary new style that features dialogs as haikus that aren't included in the book but can be accessed via Twitter)

I mean, when you got it, flaunt it, Dan DiDio!

3 comments:

James Figueiredo said...

Hi, Chris!

I totally understand where you're coming from, man - The sistematic evisceration of the Giffen-era Lustice League has been particularly disturbing, in my opinion. Amazing artwork notwithstanding, "Indentity Crisis" was a really, really ugly comic.

But, to be fair, Marvel has not been that far away from DC these days, with their Secret Invasions and Civil Wars things.

Hugs,
J.

Michael said...

Your choice of acronyms for "Death of the New Gods" is unfortunate.

Anonymous said...

Oi!
Do you like DC stuff or hate it? I can't really tell between this and your CBR posts. Wait...were you mocking Challengers of the Unknown?!?! I'll be a sunuva bitch...I fell right into that! Unfortunately someone seems to have beaten me to the DONG joke. Though I suppose all of your posts are just one big DONG joke.
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