It has been ten years since DC's One Year Later promotion which ran throughout their titles. Ten years! It is amazing how time flies. This promotion impacted the Threeboot Legion greatly. Heck, it impacted every title.
But I have a couple of questions.
One, what did you think of the One Year Later idea?
Two, did you consider it a 'jumping on' point? Or a 'jumping off' point for your DC pull list?
In 2006, DC released Infinite Crisis, the latest of company-wide crossovers hoping to smooth over some continuity hiccups while cashing in on the Crisis name.
When first announced, I was pretty excited for Infinite Crisis. Geoff Johns was writing. Phil Jimenez was drawing. It clearly was going to lean on the best of company-wide crises, Crisis on Infinite Earths.
But somewhere in the book, everything seemed to fall apart. It was clear that this story wasn't going to destroy rather than build on much of COIE.
The Earth-2 Superman, who appropriately was the hero of Crisis on Infinite Earths and given a hero's paradise, was brought back in Infinite Crisis as a patsy. The Earth Prime Superboy was turned into a lunatic killer. The Earth-3 Alex Luthor turned from savior to megalomaniac. The Earth 2 Lois died. It just didn't jibe with me. There wasn't much of a reason to sully COIE in my mind.
Moreover, the plot never jelled. The book had so many artists that the last issue feels disjointed, every other page seemingly drawn or inked by someone else.
I have reread Crisis on Infinite Earths many times. Same with Legends. I have reread Final Crisis multiple times. I have only reread Infinite Crisis once.
Each title would have the opportunity to look back at the prior year's events. But this One Year Later leap, in essence, was like starting all the books at a new #1.
DC would cover that missing year in the weekly book 52. So the big beats of the continuity's stories would be covered there. But each book was fresh.
I remember enjoying 52 as I was reading it although I haven't reread it.
Looking back at some titles as they picked up 1 year later, I would say things were a mixed bag.
The Up,Up, and Away arc in the Superman bookes was very good. Sure, Superman is depowered initially but there is a nice Supes/Lex ending. And Supergirl has a nice part in it.
The Candor arc in Supergirl was awful.
Birds of Prey seemed to lose its way.
So how did this impact the Threeboot book.
Well, it leapt forward 1001 years. We do skip a year from the end of the last issue.
And things change dramatically. The title changes to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Kara joins the team. The Praetor Lemnos arc is behind us although Lemnos himself remains a background character.
As a Supergirl fan, I applauded the change. She injects some energy into the book. And frankly, Waid wrote the best Supergirl in the DCU at this time. The brat in the main Supergirl book was completely unlikable. This Kara was much more classic.
I thought this leap forward worked. Despite liking each issue, I felt the Threeboot book had been mired a bit in the first mega-arc. With that behind us and with a new lead character, things surely would look up.
And so begins the next stage in my reviews, the 21 issues of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes.
But I'll ask again...
Would you say the One Year Later promotion was a success?
Did it make you try more books? Or did you drop books with the leap forward?
I picked up a few books, although mostly more because of the new creative teams than anything directly related to the year gap.
ReplyDeleteWell, at the time I add Aquaman, Batman, Det. Comics and Birds of Prey. I tried Nightwing and Hawkgirl, but I didn't like what a I read and dropped after the first issue. But I was already buying the Superman titles, Supergirl, Teen Titans and Legion.
ReplyDeleteOf the new books, Aquaman was great, and when Kurt Busiek left it was better. I'd like the Batman and Det. Comics but I didn't like the ending, and Birds of Prey wasn't that good, but I keeped it anyway.
Of the books I was already buying, the Superman titles were incredible good. The Up, up and away story was one of the best stories of Superman I had read. Supergirl was a little meh, but I liked the art. The Teen Titans started to went good (because the issues before this were the worst. I only buyed the title because I'm a huge fan of those characters), and the Legion continued to be good, I don't recall a lot of changes (well, they added Supergirl, but nothing more).
I didn't think the One Year Later event was a success at the time because it made every title into a mystery: what happened? who did what? Instead of rewarding those of us who had been around awhile, we were given story-lines that we weren't, by definition, familiar with.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, most of the stories weren't all that exciting, anyway. Like the Legion, all they did was add Supergirl. They didn't need a "time jump" to do that.
I agree with you, though, I liked that she was now around.
The one year later gimmick was a waste. Nothing very interesting happened that couldn't have been told normally. Although I did like the weekly 52 series.
ReplyDeleteMy reading list had been sharply cut down by this time. Infinite Crisis was pretty bad, but there was a lot to what the Evil Trio were saying about Earth and the DC Universe in general, I.E. it had taken a disasterously wrong turn and I was totally disgusted. I voted with my feet, that is my wallet. The only book I was consistantly buying was Green Lantern, having returned to it now that Hal Jordan was back. (I had dropped it for the entire time he had been screwed over.) As for the 0ne year later the only thing I bought again was Legion because of Supergirl. I had dropped it because I ran out of patience with the Lemnos arc which after 7 issues, I wasn't sure would ever end.
ReplyDeleteOYL Justice Society of America never worked as well as even the worst of the Pre JSA book. The never ending Thy Kingdom Come story line was a long death knell.
ReplyDeleteOthers have commented on the overly long Lemnos arc so OYL "Supergirl and the LSH" felt like a Hail Mary pass after the book didn't resonate with as large an audience as DC might have liked. Felt like a mission statement of "more Superheroics, less movement" Mostly unmemorable for me (well the whole 3-boot was mostly unmemorable for me)
OYL Wonder Woman was a disaster - massive delays, a string of different writers, no consistency (Thank Goddess that Rucka is coming come to WW).
52 itself was entertaining but the terrible weekly book that followed (countdown... ugh!) proved that there could be too much of a good thing.
the first OYL Justice League Arc was terrible. "Hey, let's stare at pictures to vote on who should be in... and put Solomon Grundy in a suit! Genius!"
Thanks for comments!
ReplyDeleteFor me, Superman improved. Supergirl worsened. Birds of Prey worsened. Legion held steady.