State of the Franchises, Pre vs Post DCnU

**Desaad** · 10-02-2011, 09:38 PM

How has the DCnU relaunch affected the various franchises and/or 'major characters' of the DCU, would you say? Are they improved, more or less the same, or worse off?

Superman franchise

Batman Franchise

Wonder Woman

green Lantern franchise

Flash

Martian Manhunter

Aquaman

Teen Titans

Justice League

Justice Society (heh)

Jonah Hex/Westerns

DC's Magical/Fantasy Characters

DC's Science Fiction characters

Feel free to add any others.

**Skaddix** · 10-02-2011, 09:56 PM

Superman by virtue of Morrison alone much better then before.

Batman about the same maybe slightly better thanks mostly to batgirl and batwoman.

GL pretty much like Batman about the same assuming red lantern sells well then some improvement.

Flash TBD.

Martian TBD.

Teen Titans. I would say better the series has been pretty aimless honestly Lobdell would have to try to worse then recent runs. First step though keeping a consistent roster for more then a year would be an improvement though and a direction.

Aquaman. All star team on the League and has a solo. Plus Mera and Aqualad are hot. SO yeah way better largest improvement by far for any individual character although given how much grounded and odyssey sucked the competition was actually tough.

JL. Obviously better no more second, third, fourth etc tier. Green Lanterns, Supers, Wonders, Bats and Flashes. Or randoms like congorilla the real league is back for the most part plus in all star team.

JSA well hawkman and mr. terrific have books. The are back on Earth 2 Have to wait and see roster should be a good hint though whenever we get that.

Jonah about the same.

DC Magic. It has a whole line now so massive improvement.

DC Science. Well I think they have covered any type of science u would want so again massive improvement.

**sethysquare** · 10-02-2011, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by Skaddix

Superman by virtue of Morrison alone much better then before.

Batman about the same maybe slightly better thanks mostly to batgirl and batwoman.

GL pretty much like Batman about the same assuming red lantern sells well then some improvement.

Flash TBD.

Martian TBD.

Teen Titans. I would say better the series has been pretty aimless honestly Lobdell would have to try to worse then recent runs. First step though keeping a consistent roster for more then a year would be an improvement though and a direction.

Aquaman. All star team on the League and has a solo. Plus Mera and Aqualad are hot. SO yeah way better largest improvement by far for any individual character although given how much grounded and odyssey sucked the competition was actually tough.

JL. Obviously better no more second, third, fourth etc tier. Green Lanterns, Supers, Wonders, Bats and Flashes. Or randoms like congorilla the real league is back for the most part plus in all star team.

JSA well hawkman and mr. terrific have books. The are back on Earth 2 Have to wait and see roster should be a good hint though whenever we get that.

Jonah about the same.

DC Magic. It has a whole line now so massive improvement.

DC Science. Well I think they have covered any type of science u would want so again massive improvement.

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**Mr. Holmes** · 10-02-2011, 10:16 PM

Superman -
Definitely better. The character has a lot more energy than ever recently. I don't really need to say more than Morrison is writing it, but the new edgy take on Superman is great.

And then there's Superboy. I'm pleasantly surprised they're actually going for a creative and smart take on the character instead of just writing generic adventures.

Batman
Still good, but not as good as before. Whether Dick is better off as Nightwing or not, I don't think we'll get as many quality DG solo stories as we did when he was Batman. No Morrison book until December. Brian Miller's Batgirl is gone.

Wonder Woman
Definitely looks better than JMS's run, so better. Love the horror/Vertigo-ish take on Greek mythology.

Flash
Wasn't expecting to care for this book. Normally artists that start writing have really ameturish dialogue and unoriginal plots, but this was actually really good. Really simple and basic, but with (probably) better execution than Johns's run.

So better.

Martian Manhunter
Haven't seen much yet. But I'm glad that Cornell is going back to the more creepy, badass aspect of the character. When I first heard of Martian Manhunter and saw his look, I assumed he would be that kind of character, and was surprised to see he's so cuddly. Of course he still has the cuddly side, but it's something we find later.

Aquaman
It's basically a continuation of Brightest Day, so I can't say.

Teen Titans
Wasn't special either, but it looks promising. Love the characterizations and the tie-in to Superboy. I'm confident this will be better than JT Krul's run, and definitely better to the runs preceding that.

Justice League
Definitely better.

Justice Society (heh)
LOL

DC's Magical/Fantasy Characters
Beyond Justice League Dark and Demon Knights, don't need to say more. The incorporation of Vertigo makes it better.

DC's Science Fiction characters
Stormwatch counts here? I guess that's a plus, but we probably still need a cosmic book for the characters like Adam Strange, Captain Comet etc. And then there's GL, but I don't read GL anymore.

**Desaad** · 10-02-2011, 10:47 PM

Superman franchise: Better, certainly. Action is brilliant and will be dynamic as all heck, Superman is good - not great, but well done in a traditionalist sense. Superboy is, with one issue, already better than Lemire's run, as I see it. Supergirl was pretty nice, but probably about the same at this point as the last few arcs of the previous run (better than gates' vanilla run, though).

Overall improvement, mostly restin' on Morrison's contribution.

Batman Franchise - While technically probably about the same - especially with the upcoming conclusion to Batman INc - I feel a lot of the verve and dynamic quality has left this franchise. Batman is once again Bruce Wayne alone, and he's just doing his normal crime fighting thing and that is fine, but the whole ever shifting status quos and the forward moving attitude that came to characterize the whole line under Morrison's stewardship is gone. We went from having this incredibly dynamic franchise MOVER in Morrison with a bunch of high quality writers carving out their own individual niches, to have a lot of really solid, but ultimately conventional, writers on board.

Snyder's Batman was great, and I'm certainly on board, but it was nice to have that more traditional, noir, horror Batman as one option with the more over the top elements of Batgirl and Batman Inc and Batman and Robin (under Hine and Cornell, especially) still around. Now we've got Snyder, Daniel, Tomasi, Simone, Higgins, etc all telling well done but classic, 'safe' Batman stories.

Wonder Woman : Wow, huge improvement. The best I've liked any single issue of her title, ever, includin the Rucka run.

green Lantern franchise - Blech, same. Maybe slight improvement thanks to Milligan, genius that he is.

Flash : Improvement, I think, but it is slight. I think Johns was tellin essentially empty but fun stories before Flashpoint hijacked the title, and I think the current team is telling similarly 'fun' but easy stories. I will say that they've done a better job of making Barry into a sympathetic character than Johns ever has thus far, which needs to be commended. But the real reason for the improvement is that the art, which was great before, is really taking on a whole new dimension as Manapul steps up his storytelling game to incorporate tricks used by masters like Quitely and Cooke and a few others. It's quite brilliant, now, much moreso even than before.

Martian Manhunter: Well, now he's got a home of some sort at least. Before he had nothing?

Aquaman: Same as before, what with BD.

Teen Titans: I felt the first issue was a bit ho hum, so about the same as before, superior to what came before Krul. I antcipate this getting better, though.

Justice League: Better in that the main title is better and now there actually is a franchise; JLI, JL Dark.

Justice Society (heh): Alas.

Jonah Hex/Westerns : Same

DC's Magical/Fantasy Characters: Well, obviously it's an improvement, with Animal Man, Swamp Thing, JL Dark, Resurrection Man, Demon Knights, etc. Still, whiel JL Dark had a very similar vibe to it, I'm going to miss Rozum's Xombi, and I hope to see him back on some book like this soon -- heck, give him Resurrection Man!

DC's Science Fiction characters : Hmm, OMAC, Stormwatch, Blackhawks, Captain Atom, Flash, Blue Beetle, Mr. Terrific, and the Legion titles.

I reconize that Flash is a bit of a stretch, but it looks like it will be relatively sci fi heavy. Anyway, I suppose it's improved thanks to Stormwatch and OMAC and Blackhawks...Legion remains far below it's potential, but it hasn't decreased (overall) in quality since the relaunch. Captain Atom is just okay, but at least they're makin the attempt to expand the book. Mr. Terrific has some really nice big ideas; I hope the execution improves to match them.

**El Sombrero** · 10-03-2011, 07:32 AM

Superman franchise - better. Action Comics already feels like a classic and is significantly better than what they were doing with Superman beforehand. The core Superman book is dull but Superboy and Supergirl feel more inspired and can go in a lot of directions.

Batman Franchise - slightly worse. Some great supporting books (Catwoman, Batwoman, Batgirl, etc), but the main Batman books have lost any sense of diversity. Three of them suck, only Snyder's book is worth reading. Also losing the Bryan Miller Batgirl book has hurt the diversity of the entire line as well.

Wonder Woman - way better. No brainer.

Green Lantern franchise - worse. Not so much that the line has really gotten that much worse, just that they blew an opportunity to do something here. None of the books are particularly creative or progressive. The only one that's good is Johns' GL, which is admittedly a big step up from the last year of his book pre-relaunch, but what they ended up doing with New Guardians and Red Lanterns was so completely meh that I gotta say worse.

Flash - better. Flash can move on from "event stories" and just tell some good old fashioned Flash stories with a wonderful creative team.

Martian Manhunter - better. MM wouldn't have been able to sustain a solo book, and he can potentially do a lot on Stormwatch.

Aquaman - overwhelmingly better. No book to a book with the hottest selling creative team in comics. Seems poised to be the next big DC star.

Teen Titans - better. I thought the Lobdell / Booth book was actually somewhat good, and maybe they could do something interesting with some of their new characters they're creating.

Justice League - overwhelmingly better. Actually feels like the Justice League now. The book is the big deal it deserves to be.

Justice Society - better. A break from the JSA will be good as fans will actually be excited when they return. James Robinson and Nicola Scott will be a real treat for JSA fans too, I think it'll be worth the wait.

Jonah Hex/Westerns - better. Moritat = better.

DC's Magical/Fantasy Characters - better. Justice League Dark and Demon Knights both feel really unique and are already fan favorites. The sky is the limit for those titles. I wasn't that crazy about Frankenstein but at worst it's still a fairly cool book. If you include the other dark titles here (Animal Man, Swamp Thing) then we upgrade to overwhelmingly better.

DC's Science Fiction characters - worse. Mr Terrific and Captain America are lame books. Firestorm was a disappointment. I liked Blackhawks so if you consider that sci-fi that's something, but I feel like they could have picked better writers to handle their sci-fi properties. Hopefully in wave 2 we'll have more intelligent sci-fi.

**Jim Thompson** · 10-03-2011, 08:10 AM

Superman - 100% better. Of all DC's characters, Superman may have benefitted the most from this revamp. Love him being closer to what he was in 1938.

Superboy and Supergirl show a lot of promise, too.

Batman - No better, but no worse than he was before. I think there may be too many Batman related titles out there now, though (he's pretty much the Wolverine of the DCU these days). Batgirl is a very enjoyable title, and I'm digging Nightwing, even though I miss Dick being the Batman.

Wonder Woman - Better by far! The relaunch is treating Diana as one of the big three again, as opposed to being an afterthought.

Flash - No better or worse.

Martian Manhunter - Worse. Just can't believe he's not a member of the Justice League anymore, and what's being done with him at the moment doesn't intrigue me enough to make me forget I miss him as a member of that team.

Aquaman - Better, though if Johns keeps up this running bit about how the character is thought of as a joke, that could change in a hurry.

Teen Titans - Better. This one issue put the old finale to shame.

Justice League - Hugely better. The League is back!

Justice Society - Well, we'll see, won't we? Hard to be better than what it was over the past decade or so, though.

DC's Magical/Fantasy Characters - Much better.

DC's Science Fiction characters - Even, I think. I liked Captain Atom, Firestorm, and Blackhawks, for example, but wasn't blown away by them. Green Lantern seems so so, too.

DC's Anthology/non-superhero books - Way, way better! I, Vampire, Men of War, and All Star Western are fantastic!

**Mr. Holmes** · 10-03-2011, 08:50 AM

Originally Posted by Jim Thompson

r worse.

Martian Manhunter - Worse. Just can't believe he's not a member of the Justice League anymore, and what's being done with him at the moment doesn't intrigue me enough to make me forget I miss him as a member of that team.

They say in Stormwatch he's a JL member too.

**Jim Thompson** · 10-03-2011, 08:52 AM

Originally Posted by Mr. Holmes

They say in Stormwatch he's a JL member too.

Yeah, I know -- but right now he's not a featured member of that book, and I always think he belongs there -- sort of like the Vision for The Avengers.

**cpattersoniv** · 10-03-2011, 08:59 AM

Superman- Much better. Morrison on Action Comics= WIN. I like the old school-ness of Perez on Superman and if nothing else, that book is pretty.

Batman- Best of the relaunch so far. Snyder on Batman is brilliant. Batgirl and Batwoman are both very good books. Nightwing is a great start as well. Only book I didn't really like was The Dark Knight and at least that book looks good.

Wonder Woman- Way better. It's nice to see Diana treated as one of the Big Three.

**Mr. Holmes** · 10-03-2011, 09:03 AM

Any opinions on Hawkman?

**Jim Thompson** · 10-03-2011, 09:11 AM

Originally Posted by Mr. Holmes

Any opinions on Hawkman?

Personally, I like the older take on the character, so the way he's being played right now is pretty appealing to me.

**theXfactor** · 10-03-2011, 09:18 AM

Superman franchise : Better. It has Morrison now and the new Superboy and Supergirl comics are more interesting

Batman Franchise: Pretty much the same, except for the lack of Batman Inc and the addition of some new titles.

Wonder Woman: Much better, but I do think the franchise needs to get expanded.

Green Lantern franchise: The same, except it has one more title that I don't care about.

Flash: A little better, I liked Johns, but the new writers seem to have a better plan for the book.

Martian Manhunter: Better. At least now he has a place on a team.

Aquaman: Better. Now he has a book for himself.

Teen Titans: Anything is better than Krul's mediocre run.

Justice League: MUCH, MUCH better, no explaining needed.

Justice Society: the franchise was bad before, but now it's just nonexistent.

Jonah Hex/Westerns: same.

DC's Magical/Fantasy Characters: much better. They have an entire line now, DC's best, for that matter.

DC's Science Fiction characters: same, still don't care for LoSH's direction.