52-Skidoo: Quarterly report on DC Comics' 52

Thirteen issues down, 39 issues to go. DC comics is 25% of the way through their yearlong journey through the post-Infinite Crisis DC Universe.

Thirteen issues is more than a year's worth of story at the traditional pace of publication. Spread out over a monthly publication schedule, the first quarter of the series covers more territory than Watchmen, or Secret Wars, or the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. In terms of actual real estate, each of these earlier epics clocks in at a longer page count, what with more issues per page, double-sized issues, and less filler material than 52 contains. When all is said and done, 52 will use four years' worth of comic books to tell a story spanning one-year of (allegedly) real-time DC comics chronology.

It's an ambitious project, and it invites the question of just what DC is using this epic scale to accomplish. The tag line of the series is: A year without Superman; a year without Batman; a year without Wonder Woman...but not a year without heroes. To date, 52 seems to be an attempt to redefine the core heroic principles of the DC comics universe by filtering these principles through a new set of heroic lenses.

The problem with this conceit (which serves as the first crack in a foundation that's already showing signs of needing to be repointed several times during the course of this year) -- for those of us who have been around the four-color block a few times -- is that the disappearance of the Big Three is nothing new. It has happened before. Superman loses his powers at least once every three years. Batman has his occasional stints on the disabled list (complete with the obligatory "Commissioner lights the Bat-Signal every night, but Batman fails to show" scene). And Wonder Woman...does whatever Wonder Woman does to get herself taken out of commission; dies, goes blind, whatever.

Sure, taking all three of these pieces off the board at the same time is a new twist. The problem is that the timing of their self-imposed exile stretches credulity. As 52 opens, the world is still reeling from the events of Infinite Crisis. Recovery efforts are ongoing, various heroes are still missing, and Superboy's corpse has barely had time to grow cold. It's hard to accept that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman would each take a pass at lending a hand to stabilize the situation before going off to find themselves, or settling into a normal life, or getting hooked on sudoku.

Again, consider Superman. He's been powerless before. It's nothing new to him. When it happens, he schleps over to S.T.A.R. Labs, and lets them run tests to determine what's wrong. Or he grabs a suit of powered armor painted in his familiar blue, red, and yellow colors and does the best he can with the tools at hand. Doing the right thing isn't second nature to him; it's his essential nature. Looking ahead to the "One Year Later" storyline, we know his powerlessness is chronic, but at the time 52 opens, it's simply too soon for Superman to have given up.

At minimum, Superman (and not Clark Kent) would have suited up for Superboy's memorial service. Even if he had to take a taxi to get there, he would have walked in, cape billowing, and led the service for his late protege, because, again, it's his essential nature. Maybe Batman lurks in the shadows, because that's what he does. Maybe Wonder Woman skips the whole thing, because there's no sorrow in a warrior falling in battle. But Superman? He would rally the troops before accepting that it was time to make a go out of living as plain old Clark Kent. Anything else is just shoddy storytelling.

Even if we accept the Big Three shaped hole in the heroic landscape, what over the other mainline heroes in the DC Universe? With Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman gone, would other Justice Leaguers of long standing (I'm lookin' at you, Hal Jordan, Mr. Silver Age stalwart, Mr. Most Powerful Weapon in the Universe) truly be relegated to cameo appearances and semi-effectual posturing?

So there's a lot of stuff being swept under an awfully big rug in order to set the stage for the players in this little year-long melodrama. So who are the heroes who have been chosen to teach us what it means to be a hero?

Characters

The principal actors in 52 are:

Booster Gold: Former member of the Justice League, sometime temporal fugitive from the 25th Century, and best friend of the late Blue Beetle (whose murder was one of the precipitating acts of Infinite Crisis). With his l'il robot pal Skeets -- whose databanks contain all the information Booster needs to be at the right place at the right time -- at his side, Booster fights a never-ending battle for self-aggrandizement, product endorsements, and making a quick buck (you know, the American Way)

John Henry Irons/Steel: Armored Justice Leaguer and scientific/engineering genius. Experienced a mutation that transformed his body into stainless steel, and gave him the ability to generate blasts of molten steel (likely as the result of manipulation by Lex Luthor)

Booster Gold and Steel are the Superman proxies for the series, Booster by virtue of, I guess, being based in Metropolis, Steel because he's part of the extended Superman-family on account of coming to prominence in the wake of the whole Doomsday thing.

The Question: Vigilante and conspiracy theorist. As the story opens, he's positioned as the odds-on favorite to win the 2006 Mr. One Banana Short of a Bunch prize, although it's looking like a dark horse candidate may be picking up some ground on him.

Renee Montoya: In no particular order, Montoya is a former Gotham City police detective, a lesbian, and an alcoholic (or at least someone doing a convincing impression of the same)

The Question and Montoya (a.k.a. "Ditko and the Drunk" are the Gotham/Batman proxies for the series. There's something strange afoot in Gotham (which is, you know, like saying the sky is blue, or pie is tasty), or maybe there's something strange afoot elsewhere, and its tentacles have stretched into Gotham. Either way, Intergang is screwing with the city, and that can't be good.

Black Adam: Member of the Shazam family, late of the Justice Society. He has taken control of the fictional North African/Middle Eastern/geographically indeterminate nation of Khandaq, and is using it as a base of operations from which to launch a global campaign of proactive heroism. Because the post-Infinite Crisis Earth is supposed to be a lighter, Silver Age-tinged place, this campaign largely exists of ripping villains in half and spraying passers-by with arterial blood and viscera (you know, like Superman used to do back in the 60s), and also of forming alliances with various rogue or otherwise...difficult states (because edginess and topicality are cool, and comics always do such a good job of addressing real world issues).

Ralph Dibney/The Elongated Man: Powerless (voluntarily?)/inactive since his wife's murder, EM begins the story suicidal, and as the buzzer sounds on the first quarter, he has become actively nuts.

Black Adam and the currently de-powered Elongated Man are Wonder WomanÂ’s proxies. Black Adam makes a certain amount of sense (ruler/ambassador of a non-U.S. nation, power connected to a pantheon of gods, etc.). I'm still at a loss to understand Elongated Man's ostensible connection to Wonder Woman. As one of the world's greatest detectives, he strikes me as being more in the Batman mold, but whatever it takes to balance the ticket, I suppose.

Supporting characters to date include:

Dr. Will Magnus: creator of The Metal Men. Currently investigating the disappearance of a host of leading scientists

T.O. Morrow: Science criminal and futurist. Currently playing Hannibal Lector to Magnus' Clarice Starling

Adrianna Tomaz/Isis: An orphan presented to Black Adam as tribute by Intergang (I tell you, those dudes are everywhere), she functioned as his conscience, which got annoying, so BA decided it would be smart to give her powers greater than his own.

Lex Luthor: The world's greatest villain. Currently peddling a program to give super powers to ordinary people. Because he's just a swell guy is all. Nope, no ulterior motives here. Move along.

Natasha Irons: Steel's niece. Previously had access to her own suit of powered armor, but Steel took it away when he decided he didn't like her attitude. She initially decided to build her own armor, but decided it would be easier to get powers through Lex Luthor's metahuman development program.

Kathy Kane/Batwoman: Gothamsocialitee and former paramour of Montoya. Not much is know about her backstory, or how she got the moves to wear a bat suit. I'm sure we'll find out in time. The question is, will we care?

Buddy Baker/Animal Man
Starfire
Adam Strange

These three were trapped in space after Infinite Crisis. They crash-landed on a planet that is home to a strange short pants-wearing Kirby-style dude who was ranting about gods and war and stuff. There was also hypnotic/narcotic space fruit. Also, Adam Strange lost his eyes in a bizarre space teleporter accident (although apparently the Golden Age Green Lantern ended up with one of them) . This would appear to be the setup for theinevitablee cosmic turn 52 seems destined to take.

Wonder Girl
Devem

Leaders of the Cult of Conner (Superboy), a mystic/viral resurrection cult that formed in the wake ofInfinitee Crisis. Indeed, it first appeared at the end of the first week/issue of the story, and was a bona fide Movement, with cool robes and rituals and online services and everything within two weeks. I know trends move fast here in the internet age, but thepropagationn of the Superboy cult in such a short time is one of those areas where the timing of the series starts to break down for me.

Themes

In addition to standing in for the missing heroes, each main character reflects one of the facets of heroism the creative team has chosen to explore. So we get mini lessons packaged in new tights:
- Sometimes, doing the right thing means goingoutsidee the law (Ditko and the Drunk)

- Being a hero is about more than serving your own ego/bottom line (Booster)

- An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind (Black Adam)

- Being a hero means accepting losses and moving on, so suit up and play through the pain(Elongated Dibney) [unless it doesn't, and the lesson is be true to what you have lost and you will get it back (which to me, seems like an awful copout)]

- Power without responsibility is villainy (Steel and L'il Steel/Natasha)

At the moment, the various key characters (with the exception of D&D) are providing various negative examples of these lessons. Booster is watching the clock wind down on his fifteen minutes of fame. Black Adam is caught up in how much right he can make with pure might. Steel got his ass handed to him trying to teach his niece to become a responsible hero. And poor Ralph has lost his mind.

So it seems like we're looking at half a year of characters struggling with their lessons, and falling off their pedestals in the process, and then another half a year of climbing back up to that level, and rediscovering What it Means to Be a Hero just in time to face off against the evil from space or whatever is ultimately revealed as the Big Bad of the series.

Other key themes include:

Time is out of joint. Infinite Crisis involved the reconstitution and subsequent contraction of the multiverse. When the dust settled, we were left with a New Earth (which supposedly addresses/resolves various continuity goofs left over from every previous attempt to address/resolve various continuity goofs left over from every previous attempt to address/resolve various continuity goofs). However, it appears there is a worm in the apple, or capers in the caccitore, or somethingotherwisee unpleasant where it shouldn't oughta be.

Booster Gold seems to be the center of the problem with time, perhaps as a result of coming back from the future just before the creation of New Earth. He possesses facts about the present (history gleaned from the 25th century) that is proving to be wrong. The implication, of course, is that his information is bad because history changed when New Earth formed, but I suspect it will also tie in to all the cosmic stuff the short pants Kirby guy from space is ranting about.

On the Darkseid, whoa-oh. So we have a short pants Kirby guy from space. We have Intergang. We have Rene Montoya finding strangely Kirbyetic weapons in abandoned warehouses. We have strangeness in time and space. Anyone care to bet me we won't see a big Apokalips reveal at some point?

Storytelling Mechanics

Each issue of 52 represents a week in the year covered by the story. The story clock starts ticking some indeterminate amount of time after the conclusion of Infinite Crisis, as Steel is contributing to the rescue and recovery efforts in the wake of the chaos wrought by IC. As the series has progressed, this fidelity to real-time has started to slip, as various characters' story arcs seem to go into stasis when they are off-panel. Granted, some license needs to be taken, as the structure of the story would start to drag over thelengtht of the series, but it needs to be better managed (and given the talent lined up behind this project, it should be), lest the whole thing devolve (as it is threatening to do) into a series of disconnected fits and starts.

Collateral Materials

DC is supporting the project with a tie-in website. "Supporting" is a charitable term. The refresh rate of the site isappallinglyy low, and the content that is added (premium cards for Big Belly Burger; LIT beer coasters; Senor Gyro recipes) are cute, but they don't add anything ofsubstancee to the experience. The site should be offeringEasterr eggs, and expanded story content (profiles of people who have taken the Luthor treatment, Skeet's entries on the Booster Blog, cryptic messages from T.O. Morrow) and a reason to check the site, and the comic. This should be cross-pollination, not merely an exercise in how clever the web designer thinks they are.

39 issues is a heck of a commitment for readers. It requires a corresponding commitment on the part of the creators, the editors, and the publisher: Don't just give us an ambitious, epic story. Give us good comics wrapped up in an epic package. Make us care about the characters. Make us care about the story. Give us something we care enough about to argue over and speculate about. We're comic fans; we know how to complain. Don't let us get off that easy.