The New 52 - Not So Good As I'd Hoped...

My file at Forbidden Planet is going to be a little thinner from tomorrow - I'll be dropping a number of titles from my list.

Curiously, they're all from DC's "New 52":

First off the list is Stormwatch - I don't know what I expected from this; perhaps a grittier JLA or something, but after 5 issues they've had to have a leader imposed upon them because they couldn't decide on one themselves. And they were fighting the Moon.

Nope.

Next, Green Arrow - DC's relaunch of the Emerald Archer sees Ollie reunited with his wealth, so in effect he's become Bruce Wayne. One of the things that defined the character for me was that he had lost everything, but rebuilt his life, becoming a hero in the process.

Unless DC's setting Ollie up for a big fall (and they're taking their time about it) then he's not the character I enjoyed reading for so many years.

Animal Man was a title I picked up on recommendation from one of the staff in FP; I don't have it on order but I was intrigued enough to pick it off the shelf each month. I'd like to stick withit, but the artwork's really doing my head in. Maybe I'll give it another look in a few months, but for now, bye-bye Buddy...

I'll probably drop Savage Hawkman as well, but I'm going to give it another month or two and see what develops. I've never read a Hawkman title before so I've nothing to compare it to, but it's not been bad so far.

And the old reliables aren't safe either: Batman, Superman, Detective - I've been reading them for decades and I'm still to be convinced about the relaunched versions. One thing that's annoying me is that there seem to be multiple versions of characters - the Superman appearing in Action Comics is different from the character in the Superman title; The Batman in, well, Batman, is different from the one appearing in Batman & Robin, for example, or in JLA. It's as if they exist in parallel, which is bizarre to say the least.

I feel no attachment to any of these characters - they're not the ones I grew up reading, and it has been no problem putting a book aside when I couldn't get into thestory, something that's happening more and more frequently of late.

I have been reading more titles from other publishers, increasingly IDW and Dynamite - IDW's new Star Trek book, retelling episodes from the original series with the reimagened cast, is pretty good and works well. I've also been reading Dynamite's Flash Gordon:Zeitgeist and The Bionic Man, with which I've been impressed.

So it's not all bad news - just for DC...