DC's New 52 Crossovers - AGAIN?

Talked with an old friend/former comics professional the other day, and we were discussing the upcoming crossovers such as "The Culling" and "Court of Owls", not to mention the recent Justice League Dark/I, Vampire crossover storyline. We both agreed it seemed a little soon to put the readership through something like that already. I mean, none of the new books have even had a full year yet.

Frankly, after chasing down books for "Blackest Night" and "Brightest Day", I'm pretty exhausted at the idea of more crossovers right now. Anyone else dreading/loving this?

I like it that they are taking things slowly with the crossovers. And starting small
It's been eight months now with the New52. The two page ‘editorial’ section at the end of Superman #8 this week, they give a good explanation as to what’s going on. They are calling it ‘world building.’ They seem to have a plan. These little crossovers are a way for them to show that these characters all live in a shared universe. This isn’t really for us long-time readers. It’s for the supposedly new readers who supposedly have started reading these things with the ‘softboot.’ According to DC they have spent the last eight months establishing these characters in their own little part of the world, and now we get to see how these new-ish characters interact with each other. Although some have been connected from the start.

The Bat-books and the GL series have been the most untouched from this reset, and they have interacted throughout the entire time. Animal Man and Swamp thing have been connected pretty much from the start with The Rot, and that story-line is going to come to a head soon as well.

These two little ‘events’ that are happening in May are more akin to what Marvel did with the X-books a while ago with ‘Days of Future Past’ and ‘Mutant Massacre.’ I like that those of us who want to follow the story don’t have to buy much more than we already do, and that the whole thing lasts only a month, instead of six and flows through twenty books a month.


Having read the “Rise of the Vampires’ crossover between Justice League Dark and I Vampire, I think it was pulled off really well. I hope that The Culling and Night of the Owls can be done as well.

Any more, I just wait for story arcs and crossovers to have a collected edition or better yet a novelisation. I find them far more digestible in those forms. To this day I prefer the novelisations of Kingdom Come, Knightfall, and No Man's Land to the comic/graphic novel versions.

i used to collect all the cross overs from dc and marvel...marvel put me off with the civil war story and dc with the 52 that turned into 104 comics when it counted down then counted up
At one point i did say MOOOO0000ooooo as i felt i was being milked by dc
the realization of it really put me off i spent a small fortune getting/hunting those comics

I'm not too concerned about the upcoming Bat-book crossover. Mainly because it's a short run crossover, and not some lengthy 12 book crossover.

I also haven't decided if I will even pick up all the books. I've become increasingly disappointed with the new DC stuff anyways. Each month, I've dropped a title and am down to about 3 titles now.

Samothrake - Don't take this personally. I'm probably a few years older than you and a MAJOR DC Nation fanboy, but I'm going to point out problems I have with your comments and with DC in general.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samothrake I like it that they are taking things slowly with the crossovers. And starting small It's been eight months now with the New52. The two page ‘editorial’ section at the end of Superman #8 this week, they give a good explanation as to what’s going on. They are calling it ‘world building.’ They seem to have a plan. These little crossovers are a way for them to show that these characters all live in a shared universe.

No...that's what they're *telling* you. The reality is that this is when they've calculated ways to get people to buy more copies of certain books. I don't know how they do it, I don't know what criteria was used or if it was just a writing thing, but the "Rise of Vampires" crossover DID dip in to both "JL Dark" and "I, Vampire" enough that I felt it was necessary to get both parts of the crossover. I mean, it's just *one* little extra book, right?

Comic companies exist to make money, which they do by selling books. I get it. I don't begrudge them that...but I think the timing for this is wrong. More on this in a moment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samothrake This isn’t really for us long-time readers. It’s for the supposedly new readers who supposedly have started reading these things with the ‘softboot.’ According to DC they have spent the last eight months establishing these characters in their own little part of the world, and now we get to see how these new-ish characters interact with each other. Although some have been connected from the start.

I've always been of the opinion that comics should be for READERS...old readers, new readers, returning readers. Should it really MATTER what kind of reader they are? When I was first reading comics in the early 70's, noone cared that I was basically a beginning reader...or that I hadn't really read a lot of Superman comics before. I just read them.

Besides, character-to-character interaction has a lot to do with choices the writer and editor have...so while there will be some agreed upon choices, nuances will always shift. True they have to start somewhere, but I have much more patience with Green Arrow showing up in "Justice League" or Deadman in "Hawk and Dove" than I would having to read two issues of two books instead of one.

Pft...I have more but I'm about to fall asleep. Again, this is not commentary against you, but more my hardcore nerd examination on what DC's doing.