by SeekerThe shot of Superman with the Legion of Superheroes and The Justice Society of America should have been everything but was only a reminder of what could have been.
Doomsday Clock was supposed to be the culmination of the N52 and Rebirth but was so delayed (who knows why but this smacks of corporate shenanigans) that it undercut any impact it was supposed to have.
Had this been a year or so ago it would hit….but now? Ugh.
Think about what was in this issue….and what wasn’t.
The money shot…..The JSA and Legion returning….the big moment….except the two teams have been back for months in other books.
Remember Rebirth?
(Kid) Flash Wally West didn’t play a role in this?
Tim Drake’s “death”, kidnapping, and return.
Doomsday’s kidnapping.
Flashpoint Batman returns to deal with his “son”.
Mr. Oz aka Jor El kidnaps these heroes and villains, comes back to guide his son.
Pandora.
Flash (Barry Allen)
Let’s just review for a second: Mr. Oz is introduced and immediately starts taking “key players” off the board. He insinuates he knows about Dr. Manhattan without mentioning his name. But now that we are at the end….why were these guys important? Why was it so important to take out Tim Drake? What? So he could eventually take himself (his older self) out AFTER escaping Oz? Now he’s basically in an alternate and not alternate universe (Wonder Comics) and on a team (Young Justice) that is another shining example of how jacked up the roll out and execution of the N52 was.
Doomsday? Why? I don’t know. To protect Superman? Superboy?
Mr. Oz/Jor El….for all the things he did and for as much as he was featured….he was still underwritten and not fleshed out enough…only for him to be killed by being returned to the point where Krypton dies? Without hashing things out with his son? Without really being told everything he had been up to?
AND WITHOUT EVER EXPLAINING WHAT HE HAD TO DO WITH DR. MANHATTAN!!!! All of this in a random issue of Superman…
Flashpoint Batman. Reintroduced in The Button arc with Batman and Flash, an arc that ALSO featured the power of Dr. Manhattan. What did we get out of this? He teams with Bane to forcibly convince Batman to stop being Batman and be happy. Huh? To note this is also what Jor El was kind of trying to get Superman to do. Still, how does this end? Has it? He’s currently in Arkham with a broken back courtesy of Bane as payback for shooting him in the head…..but he’s still in this dimension. On this earth. Even though it’s clear his Earth lives again. Again, no further references to Doomsday Clock. Why?
Flash. Barry and Wally get screwed here. Wally worst of all. Barry gets no explanation. No redemption. No role to play. Wally becomes a murderer then gets an adventure to redeem it? But no explanation for why this all happened to him. Sad.
All these threads and more are either ignored or buried in other books with no reference to Doomsday Clock. Why?
There are theories….check out Retreon Podcast for some good ones…
Because all of this was so delayed and so late there are also threads left lingering in the story itself. What version of Lex Luthor is this? What is the real fallout of The Superman Project? Does it even matter with the existence of the new Leviathan? Black Adam’s place in the world? The Justice Society and how they fit. I mean is this the same team that the Justice League is working with in their book? How do you explain Mr. Terrific and Jakeem Thunder etc…
You can see where it was rewritten to fit into the Justice/Doom War and then gives us hope for crazy crisis in the future. It teases a Time Crisis as well as a potential crossover with Marvel. Side note: I believe this will happen or at least the actual comic book companies want it to. Their corporate overlords? Maybe not but there is money there to be made soooo.
At the end Johns lays out what DC does every decade: reboot to fit the times the books are published in so older comic readers don’t lose their minds when things inevitably change.
That’s fine but this entire thing has been a mess and it has been killing me because it could have been supremely dope….
And if you read it in a vacuum….the last few issues are really good.
If you simply read the last issue, it’s overstuffed but Johns did a decent job trying to explain things while setting things up for the future that leaves room for ANYTHING to happen. This was magnanimous considering it seems Bendis and Snyder have almost opposing visions for the future.
How does any of this fit now? I didn’t think it was possible to mess up continuity even more than the initial botch of N52 but here we are. It actually hurts my head and my heart as a lifelong DC fan. At this point this is now just The Worlds of DC. Separate stories. Separate continuities for almost every book. Maybe it’s just the way they want to go but this couldn’t have been the plan.
