Justice League Generation Lost and Brightest Day Finales

[samurainoir]

Now that they are wrapped up, what did folks think of DC's latest Biweekly crossover experiments?

Which one did you like better?

Which spinoffs are you most looking forward to?

[The Toyroom]

I liked Brightest Day better just because I stuck with it...dumped Generations Lost very early on....

Brightest Day could have been much more compressed....waaaay too dragged out IMO.

The Aquaman stuff was the best without a shadow of a doubt, so I'm looking forward to the new series.

Firestorm I think I will pick up too and I find Swamp Thing interesting again (it's been a long time since I read any of his Vertigo series).

But everything else was a waste of my time...

Oh, and the Hawks got screwed.....AGAIN

[Earth 2 Chris]

I didn't read them, but I've been following Rob's recaps of Brightest Day on the Aquaman Shrine. The Aquaman parts seemed great. The whole Swamp Thing...er...thing seems confusing. So Alec Holland is now Swamp Thing...for real? And he wasn't before (in continuity), right?

So Hawkgirl is dead-dead, huh? Man, DC hates the JSA. They are always jacking with them! They went to all the trouble to make Hector Hall Dr. Fate, and then killed him off. Earth 2 Superman makes a triumphant return only to get beaten to death.



Chris

[The Toyroom]

The whole Swamp Thing...er...thing seems confusing. So Alec Holland is now Swamp Thing...for real? And he wasn't before (in continuity), right?

Apparently Alan Moore's "Anatomy Lesson" still stands. But The Green and Swamp Thing got corrupted by Nekron during Blackest Night and Swampy had Nekron's "essence" imprinted on him. So they needed something/someone else to bond with Swamp Thing to erase the Nekron influence...and Alec Holland was chosen.

Now Holland doesn't even remember/have knowledge of anything after the explosion that killed him so this should be interesting....

So Hawkgirl is dead-dead, huh? Man, DC hates the JSA. They are always jacking with them! They went to all the trouble to make Hector Hall Dr. Fate, and then killed him off. Earth 2 Superman makes a triumphant return only to get beaten to death.

I would think that if the new rumored James Robinson penned "Hawkman" series is true, then Shiera will get a fix at some point. Although I'm not sure why they'd want to go into the series with everything all f'ed up again.

Kent Nelson is Dr. Fate once again I think...he has an ankh scar burned into his face in "JLA" #50.

(But Alan Scott is still wearing that crappy weird costume as Green Lantern)

[samurainoir]

It's astonishing how quickly a great book like JSA can get off track with a change-up in creative teams. Which is hugely disappointing to me given how much I was looking forwards to Bill Willingham's run since I'm a big fan of Fables, Pantheon and Elementals. Seems like some creators thrive most under creator owned work.

Fans of Booster and Beetle should at least flip through the last issue of Generation Lost. They really get to shine taking out the Big Bad. Between their high profile in the DCU and the Smallville appearance, not to mention Brave and Bold, it seems DC is really invested in this pair.

I have to admit that I'm not quite onboard Swamp Thing and John Constantine's return to the DCU unless they really can do something exciting with the characters that we haven't seen before. And this includes showing up in Zatanna's series, since they did that at Vertigo.

[The Toyroom]

I have to admit that I'm not quite onboard Swamp Thing and John Constantine's return to the DCU unless they really can do something exciting with the characters that we haven't seen before. And this includes showing up in Zatanna's series, since they did that at Vertigo.

Yeah I wasn't too thrilled that Constantine came along for the ride too...

[samurainoir]

I'm actually secretly hoping it's the Kirby-esque version from the Trenchcoat Brigade that showed up in Morrison's Doom Patrol. I think he purposefully sounds like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.





At the very least, the could bring back Mr E, the malleable medium (yet another stupid character that nobody seems to like except me).

[madmarva]

Honestly, I think both series ran out of steam. DC really needs to do some soul searching to determine if weekly and bi-weekly comics done in this fashion is really the best use of its resources, particularly artists. To tie up Ivan Reis for a few pages every other week, where he wasn't able to shine like he did on GL or Blackest Night was a big waste to me. It may be great for the company's bottom line, but storywise and characterwise, these weekly and bi-weekly series are a waste to me.

When Carlin was editor of the Superman titles, he basically had a weekly story-telling format that worked a lot better in telling good stories in my opinion.

I didn't read the Green Arrow book, where I'm guessing the bulk of the Swamp Thing finale for Brightest Day was set up. If that was not the case, then the whole Swamp Thing revival kind of came out of left field. Or maybe I just became uninterested and didn't pick up the clues.

I really think DC would have been better of to revive whichever characters it wanted at the end of Blackest Night and then launched a number of mini series to tell the stories it wanted to tell with the characters. They could have had two launches with 4 titles for 6 issues in length during the same time period of BD and JLI. Then DC could have let sales determine which ones were worthy of an on-going titles. I think I would have enjoyed each of the stories told individually, rather than the way it was done in Brightest Day.

I did like the way Jade was added to the JLA book and had her story play out there. I don't really like the character that much, but I thought Robinson worked it into a decent story in his JLA run.

I'm looking forward to the Aquaman book by Johns and Reis. I will try a Hawkman and Martian Manhunter book depending on the talent. Same with Swamp Thing and Deadman. Never been a big fan of Hawk and Dove or Firestorm, but I would like to see Firestorm in a JLA/I book. He also needs a crack at Deathstroke.

I did like the JLI story better than Brightest Day and will likely pick up the new JLI book to give it a shot. I do hope that it's not given to Giffen/Dematteis. To me their version of the JLI lives better in nostalgia than on the page, to me.

I like having Max as a villain. Would like to see Capt. Marvel, Guy Gardner, Mary Marvel and other appropriate former JL members rotate in as guest stars in the book.

But as for the series, I liked the story OK, but it should have been a 6- or 12-issue series. DC stretched the story too far.

I mean think about a 24-issue story arc. That's huge. The story would have been much more effective told more concisely.

[Riffster]

I liked both, and am looking forward to an Aquaman book, as well as a firestorm and Hawkman books, but JLI will be alot of fun if they do it right

[The Toyroom]

Honestly, I think both series ran out of steam. DC really needs to do some soul searching to determine if weekly and bi-weekly comics done in this fashion is really the best use of its resources, particularly artists.

I didn't read the Green Arrow book, where I'm guessing the bulk of the Swamp Thing finale for Brightest Day was set up. If that was not the case, then the whole Swamp Thing revival kind of came out of left field. Or maybe I just became uninterested and didn't pick up the clues.

I agree, there were no signs pointing to Swamp Thing coming back just from Brightest Day...it's almost like they were making it up as they went along, with no real endgame in sight.

Something that struck me as lame in the way it ended up playing out was the revival of Capt. Boomerang...His "mission" as it were was to "throw the boomerang"...which was esentially supposed to kill Dove in order for there to be a life exchange so Alec Holland could be revived. Because obviously the universe needs to be balanced with the death of a hero, everytime a hero returns form the dead.

Why Capt. Boomerang though? It really could have been just about any villain when you think about it. So the in-story justification for his return just sounds ridiculous and an excuse for bringing back a character that DC probably regretted killing off not so long ago in "Identity Crisis".

I am glad though that Deadman took a bullet, er boomerang, cuz his trenchcoat wearing, cheeseburger eating whiner was horrible, as was his "love affair" with Dove. Bleech!