I came across this “100 Issues Ago” panel in an old JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and thought I’d tidy it up and re-purpose it. If one month = one issue, what was I reading 100 Issues Ago?
Looking back at month seven of the New 52 and, for me at least, this is where the cracks really started to show. The line-wide relaunch was a bold move and some good – like ALL-STAR WESTERN above – came out of it, but now, as most of the series eased into their second arcs, things weren’t looking so hot.
JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL and CAPTAIN ATOM hadn’t really started on a firm footing and were now floundering, though not as much as FURY OF FIRESTORM where Gail Simone had jumped ship. STORMWATCH and BLUE BEETLE were changing course as well, and even MISTER TERRIFIC, with the reintroduction of Karen Starr aka Power Girl and the hints of a forthcoming Earth-2, couldn’t save things.
GREEN LANTERN titles, steered by Geoff Johns, were doing okay, and FRANKENSTEIN: AGENT OF SHADE was still a delight, but the gloss was wearing off six months in to the New 52.
Outside of DC, we had THE BOYS which was coming to the end of the penultimate storyline, and FATALE which was ticking along nicely.
Crisis on Earth-Prime 
From Marvel, there’s still Secret Avengers, and Defenders, which are both “eh”. Daredevil wraps up his Mole Man adventure, which is sadly also the end of Paolo Rivera’s stint on the book as artist (Marcos Martin having left after #7). Villains for Hire concludes, but nobody cares.
Angel & Faith is still going. Atomic Robo Real Science Adventures started, which was kind of an anthology Clevinger could use for small stories involving any characters he wanted. It didn’t end up working up for me. The stories were too short and insubstantial to really care about. There’s also a second Rocketeer Adventures mini-series, so more anthology stuff of variable quality.
At DC, there’s Batman Beyond Unlimited, where Adam Beechen brings back Mad Stan (who we were told was killed by Hush in the Batman Beyond mini-series Beechen and Ryan Benjamin did a couple years earlier). Mitch Shelly ends up in Metropolis fighting a meth dealer with a forcefield.
Most notable is Ann Nocenti takes over writing Green Arrow, which means I actually bought Green Arrow. I know you said you weren’t a fan, but I always find her writing interesting, and don’t care about Ollie otherwise, so I ran with it. For me, the problem is Harvey Tolibao is not a very good artist when it comes to conveying relevant information, or things like panel-to-panel consistency in characters, their proportions, relative positions, stuff like that.
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Yeah, Ann Nocenti’s writing was the thing that made me ditch GREEN ARROW after many years of solidly reading the title. Don’t think I’ve picked up the series since, to be honest.
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