I was out. Out of comics. Done. I don't remember the last one I bought. Sometime in 2007. I didn't leave for lack of interest (I was loving Grant Morrison's beginnings on Batman, frex) but for financial reasons. These little, colourful beasts were getting mighty pricey every month and I had a new fiance and debt to be paid and so many other number-crunching reasons that I had to leave my spandex clad amigos behind.
I am a geek though so I kept in touch. Comics would write and I would smile at their postcard. "Hey Geoff, this Bendis Avengers stuff is actually pretty fun. Wish you were here!" and "A new Fables trade just came out and it is faaantastic. Love to the wife and kid!" Stuff like that. So I heard about the end of the DCU and its rebirth after Flashpoint. I heard about it and I thought maybe this would be a good time to jump back in.
Having been away, I was really looking for some new thrills when I returned. Old stuff revisited and made new as well as twisted in a new way. I got most of the number 1s of the new 52. By month 4 I was down to maybe 10. By month 6, it was 6 (And this was the month I dropped Justice League, which as you may surmise from this blog's title is somewhat of a signature series in my comiclife.) As it stands now I am hovering at 4 new 52 titles. Grant Morrison's sublime Action Comics, Green Lantern, Red Lanterns, and Aquaman.
Really, what it boils down to is that the New 52 isn't really that new. It seems a lot like the old DCU except that...it isn't. The changes seem arbitrary. The characters sometimes are the same in motivation and personality and sometimes aren't. Huge, universe affecting details pop up at random (Really, Tim Drake was never Robin? Really? Really?) and there has been no expectation that there will be any real resolution.
A lot of this may have worked if the old DCU had actually ended. Which it didn't. It just stopped. The New 52 may be a wild ride, but I kinda wish I was back on the other roller coaster. The one where the comic universe is allowed to grow and change and reflect the new and the old.
Kind of like what Marvel is doing in spades.
