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Subj: DC takes one step forward and two gigantic steps backward: Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 at 10:00:26 pm EDT (Viewed 612 times) | Reply Subj: DC to fans: We Dun Goofed Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 at 05:49:38 pm EDT (Viewed 13 times) | ||||||
The good news? Day-and-date digital. It's about time one of the Big Two joined us here in the 21st century. This should have happened industry-wide at least a decade ago, but at least DC is making a respectable effort to catch up to the modern market. The bad news? This is going to be a Crisis On Infinite Earths-style half-assed partial reboot that desperately tries to cling to the most popular (or at least the most editorially mandated) aspects of the current continuity, while at the same time regressing the characters into more junior players, even though a great deal of the current DC continuity draws its greatest storytelling strengths from the age and experience that the characters have been allowed to gain (see also: Batman turning his brand into a franchise and the Green Lanterns being joined by an entire rainbow spectrum of equal peer corps). As much as I harbor mixed feelings about many of those new elements, they're topping the sales charts right now, and the simple fact of the matter is that you can't have Bruce Wayne as a biological and adoptive father to an entire Bat-family, or Hal Jordan as a seasoned veteran who's regarded as a god even among Green Lanterns, if you're dragging them back to their rookie status. The REALLY bad news? Jim Lee is an indefensibly shitty artist, and he always has been, so the fact that he's being allowed to redesign all these characters, when his art skills are even worse now than they were in the 1990s, is OBJECTIVELY terrible. Hey, let's give EVERY character the EXACT SAME plunging V-neckline, and stylize Superman's S-symbol with EXTREME ATTITUDE that would have been embarrassing even coming from the old-school Image crew, AND genericize the holy living fuck out of every other feature of their outfits. Jim Lee's costume design skills make even Bryan Hitch's blandly crap ripoffs of The Matrix in The Ultimates seem appealing and unpredictable by comparison. | |||||||
