After the under-delivering Infinity Crisis, DC started a new series called 52. The catchy name came into being because this book was to come out once a week, for a year. In that year, the main heroes of the DC universe (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etc) would be missing for various reasons and so second-stringers would be showcased. Heroes like Booster Gold, Elongated Man, Steel, Adam Strange, Lobo, Black Adam, and Lex Luthor. I think they included Lex just to bring some credibility to the book.

I can see why DC would want to release 52, since it gives them a convenient opportunity to showcase their B-list with their A-list temporary out of the loop. Maybe people will get interested in them and buy their respective titles. However, what I don’t like about 52 is that while there are 5 or 6 stories happening all at once, each comic only continues 3 or 4 of them. So one store would conveniently end in a cliff hanger before continuing several issues later; forcing you to buy all the ones in between.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem if the story was good, but the quality of this series is sometimes sketchy. Also, you know it’s going to be 52 weeks long, and the good stuff will probably happen in the last 10 or 15 issues. The one redeeming factor is that they do come out every week so waiting for a cliff hanger to resolve itself is really like waiting for the next “monthly” issue.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: comics