Why I Love... 52!
Welcome to another edition of the Why I Love column, where I, Eric Ratcliffe, pick something I've read, played, listened to or watched to discuss with you fair readers. This week we talk about a book that was one of the riskiest and experimental movies that a company has done in a long time. It involved 4 of the biggest writers in the industry and went weekly for a full year. I am talking about none other then 52.
For those that don't know, 52 was a comic series that took place right after Infinite Crisis and was all enclosed as DC had the rest of their books jump a head a year to have the mystery of what happened during that year stay fresh in the fanbases mind. It was also one of the first time that I know of that had the team of Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison and Greg Rucka working together on one big project.
Interestingly enough 52 also had 2 different editors. This is where Stephen Wacker became a name to watch out for as Marvel pulled him away half way through the series to help with the thrice monthly Amazing Spider-Man relaunch and Michal Siglain jumped on to help with the second half of the year of 52.
The Characters:
Something that was strong about 52 is just how many characters we were able to follow and just what their stories entailed.
Booster Gold - After helping save the world and finding the new Blue Beetle, Michael goes back to doing what he does best taking advantage of knowing the future thanks to Skeets. Of course Booster's story would become one of the strongest ones in the book when the mystery started to unravel itself and we found out that he wasn't the jerk we all think he is towards the beginning of book.
Ralph Dibny - Depressed, slightly suicidal and yet still has the urge to solve a really great mystery involving a scam of a church, Ralph goes on one of the most interesting adventures in the book. I honestly think he comes out a stronger character for it and it shows that the Elongated Man isn't a joke.
Supernova - The mystery man who seems to be able to do a lot of things and finds himself going head to head with Booster Gold, connected to the biggest plotline of the series as well as some of the more interesting plot points of the series. Plus his costume is just cool.
The lost space heroes - Starfire, Animal Man and a blind Adam Strange end up away from the earth in one of the most involving moments of our series. From bumping into Lobo to Adam's beard getting crazy long it's a story that you wish you got every week.
The Question and Renee Montoya - Easily a highlight of the whole book is the relationship between these two. Renee is doing her best to deal with her demons by looking inside a bottle of jack when she's hired by The Question to investigate a warehouse. Of course things start to go crazier from their and our two detectives come head to head with Black Adam, go to Nanda Parbat and Renee has to ask herself a very important question.
Black Adam and the Adam Family - Black Adam rules over Khandaq and does his best to send a message to the rest of the world. He's not exactly a hero but not full on villain and has a zero tolerance for super villains. He's only toned down when he meets a young slave woman named Isis who he enchants with part of his own powers. They also find her brother Osiris who Black Adam also gives power to when he loses his legs. Adam's story really feels like the backbone of the series and becomes heavily prevalent towards the end spinning into a 4 issue weekly series between 50 and 51 called World War 3.
Steel and his niece - Steel becomes the adversary of Lex Luthor through this year of stories as Luthor twists his niece away from him. Luthor also manages to gain the ire of the Titans and the JSA with his development of a super hero formula that grants everybody powers. Steel of course sees through this and does his best through the year to save his niece and the world from Lex's scheme.
Will Magnus - The man who created the metal men and takes pills to control his madness. Will gets dragged into a plot on Oolong island which helps show exactly what he is as an inventor and a character.
The Plot:
A question was raised at the beginning of the book, what would happen if the world didn't have Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman for a year? This had our main characters all going through different adventures, some which spun into each other and others which were completely separate from the two big main stories in the book.
The writers and Keith Giffen, who was basically a 5th member of the big creative team, managed to pull everything off pretty well, building each mystery and it's pieces which eventually unraveled like a Sherlock Holmes story.
There is some conversation as to who wrote what and in this writer's opinion, I honestly don't think it's that simple. I think they blocked out each story together, possibly having one writer write certain characters. Like Geoff with Booster, Grant with Animal Man, Greg with Renee and the Question, Mark Waid with Steel.
Keith's layouts would be interesting to look at as each artist took those and added their touches to them. There was an issue or two that felt like they were rushed into production but I'd say the experiment easily worked.
Verdict:
52 issues, 52 weeks and strong storytelling are all here to be easily read and enjoyed. I highly recommend this to any DC fan and I know the whole thing can be picked up in trades. I luckily enough had mine bound by Library Binding and love taking them off the shelf to look through.
We'll see you here next column for another spotlight on something that has caught my attention! See you next time!
Eric Ratcliffe is a young writer/pop culture journalist/interviewer currently working on pitching a project named the Hunter chronicles. When not reading his weekly stack Eric can be found watching DVDs, playing on his 360 (gamertag: Zack Hunter) or just surfing online trying to find a scoop or two. Brand new to the Comic Related family, Eric is a fun new voice. Eric shops at TJ's Collectibles. Visit them on the web at www.tjcollect.com!
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