52 Week Thirty-Seven

The following are my comments on this issue, as directed towards the readers (and writer) of Douglas Wolk’s excellent site 52-pickup.

The Gauntlet: Kara must have delivered it to Bats after her other self kicked the crap out of Luthor.

Good observation last week that Supernova was in a footballer’s pose.

JLA Storage: I’m sure that every member keeps extra costumes and utilities in the JLA headquarters, wherever that may be — because you’ve GOT to replace torn outfits, and have GOT to have backups for equipment which was damaged or used up in fights. We know Ray made at least two belts. Why not more?

Since Supernova utilizes Phantom Zone technology, which has often been used as a means of teleportation, he must have just teleported into the cave.

Hawkgirl’s N’th metal: He could take it from “JLA storage (or JSA storage)” or just grab a piece of her GIANT wings when she came back from space.

Superstrength: Just because he’s being Supernova doesn’t mean that Booster will have relinquished all his former powers.

Teleportation via the Phantom Zone:
STEP1: Enter the Phantom Zone.
STEP2: Navigate to a point within the Phantom Zone corresponding to the desired destination.
STEP3: Exit the Phantom Zone.
I can’t bring specific citations, but it HAS been used like this before.

I read the Ollie quote as a comment on the fact that part of the greatest part of loving someone is knowing how and when to let them go. Interestingly, remember how Ollie had, at one time, wanted kids, and Dinah nixed that idea (Longbow Hunters #1)? Ollie eventually let her go without a fight, and today it seems that motherhood is Dinah’s raison d’etre. Thus, Ollie let Dinah go in order that she could develop emotionally to the point where she is today. They’re obviously still close. Then again, maybe he was really pondering the fact that Dinah seems to have something of a death wish — jumping to a flagpole without a safety line.

Firestorm: Pretty pointless to feature a character whose introduction is recent. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to explore the origins of the Firestorm elemental force? And no wonder it’s been cancelled: since Dan Jolley left the title, it’s pretty much sucked.

Is anybody besides Calimike actually reading Ion?

The Jurgens Titans title featuring a regressed teenage Atom has been ignored since it was cancelled. The only holdover from that series is Argent. All else is a big “whoops!” a’la Hawkman.

And on the Multiverse still being around? Well that’s just stupid. I mean, I’m happy about it and all, but the fact remains that two massive miniseries with a multitude of crossovers were dedicated to getting rid of it. And none of it succeeded? That’s just ridiculous. Not to mention that even following the first Crisis, various writers found different ways to reintroduce worlds and dimensions that they felt they wanted. One of the most recent was Grant Morrison’s Earth 2 series, whose characters crossed over into the JLA title two years ago. And even today, after IC, we’ve seen many hints in the OYL titles of the multiverse still being around, primary amongst them the existence of scads of Monitors. So I really must ask, what in the world did Infinite Crisis accomplish? Why did Conner die? Why is Pantha’s head a’rollin? Why is Ted Kord dead? These things were supposed to have meaning, but now that Didio has come out and told us that “yes, kiddies, the secret of 52 is that the multiverse still exists”? Pshaw. That’s the big secret? 37 weeks of mediocrity (or worse) for this? Ridiculous. If I actually paid for this title, I’d stop buying it.

ASS