Page by page, panel by panel annotations of DC Comics' summer events and crossovers
I keep half an eye on my spam folder her on the site and occasionally pick things out that make me chuckle. Hence the following:
What the hell are you doing accessing any site in Internet Explorer? Sweet Cthulhu, Lucina, get yourself Chrome now!
I know, Maryanne2374 – I too struggle with “codiung” and I’m not sure there’s anyone out there who could help us.
Haha! Seriously, evernote? Someone in your “Myspace group” told you about this place?! What are they – time travellers from 12 years ago!?
I’ve spoken of my love of Strontium Dog before now – the creation of John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra who starred in STAR LORD here in the UK before that title merged with 2000AD.
Those original STAR LORD stories were reprinted in the “Search/Destroy Agency Files” collections a few years ago but were in black and white/grey scale, when the originals were in full colour.
There’s news over the weekend that the STAR LORD stories are finally getting a coloured reprint next year!
And I, for one, will definitely be picking that up.
DC’s December solicitations came out over the last few days and, with little fanfare, they included the write up for the final issue of DOOMSDAY CLOCK, the Geoff Johns and Gary Frank follow up to WATCHMEN which, by and large, has been greeted favourably.
As we probably all know by now, DOOMSDAY CLOCK launched in November 2017 and was meant to take a year to be released. Early promotional interviews revealed it was set a year into the future of the DCU so that, by the time it finished, the rest of the DCU would be at the same point as DOOMSDAY CLOCK‘s finale.
Scheduling problems mean that it’s now two years since the start of the series and, during that time, so many things have come in to play that I can’t help thinking that once finished, DOOMSDAY CLOCK will have next to no impact on the main DCU.
One of the threads running through the story is the Superman Theory – a conspiracy theory that says the American government is responsible for the creation (and thus controls) the superheroes. As a consequence, the public distrust them and superpowered beings are heading to Khandaq, the last refuge for them.
In recent issues, Superman has been blamed for the deaths of dozens of Russian soldiers and Firestorm appears to have exploded in the same confrontation. American citizens are rioting in multiple cities, demanding the fall of Superman and other heroes.
None of the above is being mentioned in any other DCU series – everyone’s either ignoring the deaths of multiple characters in the horrible HEROES IN CRISIS; running around trying to work out who Leviathan is; fighting with characters from the Dark Multiverse; or are too busy dealing with the ramifications of UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED Year of the Villain where Neron Lex Luthor is offering the bad guys new powers.
And speaking of Luthor, he plays a small but important part in DOOMSDAY CLOCK which gives lie to the original idea that the rest of the DCU would connect to it. Here’s how the character appears in DOOMSDAY CLOCK and current issues of JUSTICE LEAGUE:
As the Justice League storyline of Justice/Doom War is only just getting underway and is due to run well in to next year, there’s no way Lex is suddenly going to transform from the “apex predator” version of himself on the right to the standard Lex we all love to hate on the left.
DOOMSDAY CLOCK looked to be set to return the Justice Society of America to the DCU, a team that’s been missing since the New 52 was instigated in 2011; it was also bringing back the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Both teams have now been reintroduced in other titles – the JSA in JUSTICE LEAGUE and the Legion in their own, forthcoming title, making the reveal and tease of them in DOOMSDAY CLOCK now redundant.
I can’t help but wonder if some of the publishing problems the series has had is down to DC editorial saying to Johns and Frank – “You know those plans you had bring back the Legion and the JSA? Bendis and Snyder want to play with them, so can you alter your story?” – forcing them to re-jig some elements. It would sort of explain why Saturn Girl, teased as an important player in the story, is basically taken off the board in an almost throwaway moment:
There’s no way the DCU is going to reflect the DCU shown in the pages of DOOMSDAY CLOCK; there’s been no hint that any other title is going to tie in to this world – it’s basically being ignored.
Sad to say, as good as DOOMSDAY CLOCK is (and it is good) I can see it being consigned to a self-contained story, perhaps shunted off to one of the unknown Earths from Grant Morrison’s MULTIVERSITY, a way of saying “Wasn’t that a great story? Now, on with the rest of the DCU…”
While Geoff Johns was once the golden boy at DC, in the time he was away dealing with film and TV, Brian Michael Bendis has come in and taken over the Superman line; Scott Snyder is running the Justice League; and REBIRTH has been quietly moved to one side, and the DCU has become a lot darker since.
In an interview before the series began, Johns said:
[DOOMSDAY CLOCK] will have an impact on the entire DC Universe. It will affect everything moving forward and everything that has come before.
I really doubt that’s going to come to pass now.
While I have been away over the last couple of weeks, I’ve also had some time at home, catching up on a few things here and there, relaxing and generally enjoying not being in work. One of the things I’ve finally got around to playing with is the new Block Editor in WordPress.
I say “new” – I’ve had the banner at the top of my posts for over six months telling me there’s “an easier way to create posts” and while I’d looked at it in the past, my approach to new software/upgrades is to wait for others to dive in and work out the bugs before I go ahead and try it.
But try it I have and, while I had a few grumbles, I’m sticking with it. Sooner or later, it won’t be optional so I guess I bite the bullet and work out how this damn thing works. I’ve been working through the annotations pages and converting them over to blocks one by one.
There are some definite improvements – my page of homages to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #7, the Death of Supergirl, was a table that I had to create and maintain in raw html. Adding a new image to that page was a pain in the backside as I had to copy the html, chuck it into my text editor of choice (Notepad++ if you’re interested) and then edit that in order to get a new cell in at the right place. I then had to paste the amended html back into the WordPress page.
The new Gallery block has made maintenance of that page a damn sight easier and should make viewing those images a better experience for the users, as well.
Inline images are a little clunky, though – I use them a lot for the annotations pages and while it’s doable using Blocks, it’s not straightforward. I have to create a paragraph block, then insert an image block above the paragraph and then align the image which then drops it inline with the paragraph. Clunky, like I said.
The one thing I don’t understand, though, is why the new editor is so much thinner than the original. Here’s a screen shot of a test page I was playing with in the classic editor – note the red rectangle:
That highlighted area was what I had to play with – it’s the amount of space in which I could type, add new images and so on.
Here’s the block editor page:
The new block editor is about half the width of the original – again, the red rectangle shows the amount of on-screen room I have to create my posts. As my site pages, when published, more realistically match the width of the classic editor, it’s going to be difficult using the blocks to get a sense of what the pages will look like before I publish them.
Still, I shall persevere and hopefully get a handle on this.
I’m hoping there’s a setting to change the editor font to a serif font as well, but that’s just me being picky . . .
Crisis on Earth-Prime 