any opinions on the DC solicitations for October?

[ratcreature]

Somehow this month I have a hard time deciding which new (mini-)series are worth giving a try. I probably should wait until this stuff is actually published when in doubt, so that I can take a look at the comic or maybe read reviews, but my store doesn't always order a huge surplus number of all these series.

In particular I'm wondering what you think about the Outsiders relaunch as Batman and the Outsiders (written by Tony Bedard), the Gotham Underground mini-series (written by Frank Tieri), and that Simon Dark series by Steve Niles and Scott Hampton.

I'm also waffling about getting this Crime Bible: The Five Lessons of Blood mini-series by Greg Rucka. I mean, I like his writing more often than not, but the blurb kind of confuses me on what this is about, maybe because I'm still lagging so far behind with the current DC events?

Any opinions on these? Predictions or tea leave readings on their likely readability? Any other thoughts on DC's October solicitations? Like, what is it with this bazillion of Countdown tie-in mini-series, anyway?

Comments

[devildoll.livejournal.com]

The current special DC "events" that drag on for years make reading seem just daunting sometimes.

*nods*

I have a deep deep hatred of them, and it used to be each of the Big Two would have maybe one a year, and I'd suffer through and then jump back in. But now they just come one right after another, and DC is so mired in them right now that it's impossible for me to jump back in.

The last time I was reading numerous free-standing DC titles was before War Games, so that's three years ago.

There's always all this talk about how superhero comics should be made more "accessible" to new readers, and then what we get is a continuous parade of convoluted crossover storylines.

It almost seems now like that's all we're going to get for the time being. The crossovers are coming closer together and lasting longer, and there's just no good place for people to jump in.


I don't mean oneshots, but series like Daredevil over at Marvel for example which had very little overlap into the whole Civil War thing, and which I can follow easily without knowing any of the other Marvel stuff, like, I don't need to pick up their Hulk War event or whatever that is, or the current "yet another convoluted mutant species thing" that always seems to be happening, just to get my angsty Matt Murdock soap opera.

Yeah, I miss those days, back when you could read a character's book, and it was about him doing this thing, and once in a while another character would make an appearance, but for the most part, if you were reading Hulk, it was about what Hulk was doing. If you were reading Nightwing, it was about what Nightwing was doing.

I guess I'm just an old fuddy duddy, but I liked it that way.

Now looking at DC's solicits it seems almost everything has been tied up in their universe revamp. :/

Oh, yeah. And at this point, if you don't know the last 20 years of continuity like the back of your hand, a lot of what's happening go right over your head. I gave up.

[ratcreature]

The last time I was reading numerous free-standing DC titles was before War Games, so that's three years ago.


Yeah, that's just about when I stopped reading. And while I didn't really stop because of the crossovers, but mostly because I had a phase of less interest in comics -- I just tend to be somewhat cyclic with what I'm into, it happens with other fandoms too, like a couple of months I'm really into SW, and then I go into a HP or SGA phase and get back to SW later on etc -- this makes it *really* hard to get back into DC even though I'm in the mood for comics again.

That just can't be a sound strategy, that even geeky people motivated and somewhat familiar with their universe have trouble reading. I think it's fine for superhero comics to have a complex continuity in the background and tying into the stories, that's part of their appeal for me after all, and why I switched to reading them rather than European action-adventure and SF/Fantasy comics like I did before getting pimped into superheroes, but not so much that it's the main thing all the time so that you get sick of it.