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By Jason Bourgeois
First off, let me take this opportunity to do the dance of joy that after seven years or so, I once again have a semi-local comic store, and will be able to get my comics sooner, cheaper, and be able to flip through books and decide if I *really* want to buy that first issue that might be utter crap. So I share my joy and bad dancing with all my readers. Feel free to picture me doing whatever dance you feels most suits me. And then stop giggling.
With that out of the way, let us return to talking about the comics, and not terrorising the readership.
This month, with the final issue of 52 on May 2nd - 5/2, get it? - I figured what better time than now to look back at the great experiment? Let it never be said that Grey Matters isn't the most timely publication out there!
This won't be so much as a review in the "go buy it!" sense, since we're at the end of a 52 issue series, and more of a look back at what worked, what didn't, and the project overall. That said, if you are a fan of DC, this was a great story, and if you have not read it yet, I do highly reccomend grabbing the trades that are starting to come out. The story was an epic tale, with disparate threads, touching on every corner of the DC universe. Granted, as of this writing I have yet to read the final issue, and can't say if we end up with everything being one complete story, but that wasn't entirely the point of the series. The first 50 issues of the book have wrapped up most everything they started a year ago, so the entire thing works as a group of stories.
52, for those living under a rock, was a book started a year ago to tell what happened when DC Comics made a leap ahead of a year in all their comics, leaving many questions as to what happened in that intervening time. 52 would be a weekly series spread over 52 issues, covering in 'real time' with each issue covering one week, and telling what happened during the skipped year, a time when Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were all gone, and how the DC universe was affected by their lack of activity.
In many ways, this series both succeeded and failed. The book actually came out on time, for it's entire run. 52 issues, one a week, and never shipping late, is a huge accomplishment that drove more than one creator on the project closer to madness, and surely must be applauded. To juggle all the work, the details, and every little thing to make this project happening, especially in this day and age where a deadline and shipping date is much more of a guideline than a rule, is nothing short of miraculous. With the added difficulty of losing the editor midstream and replacing him, I give a huge congratulations to every single person who worked on 52 and made the book happen. On that level alone, this project is worthy of note, since they managed to do what they set out to do.
Fortunately, they also managed to tell some good stories during that time. Quite a few, actually. The series really kicked into high gear in the late 30s when they started tying up some of the plot threads. Issues before then had been a little slow, as is to be expected over such a lengthy tale, but when the conclusions for arcs came, they hit, they hit hard, and they were very well told, and made sense looking back over the run up to that point, and also moved the other stories forward, setting things up for the next stage in the arcs, as a good story should; closing one door and opening up others. The stories have been mostly self-contained, but they have dovetailed into each other here and there as things go along, giving it a seperate, yet cohesive feel overall, and everything especially came to a head in week 50, with World War III, when many events boiled over into Black Adam against damned near everyone.
Which serves as a good segue into the not so good. With the One Year Later gimmick, many changes swept across the DC universe, and were all going to be explained in the pages of 52. However, as the story grew, those explanations were pushed aside, and never dealt with. The OYL events for Nightwing and the Outsiders were dealt with in the recently released annuals, and almost everything else was dealt with in the week-long event, World War III. This occured in 52 Week 50, in the issue itself, and a four issue miniseries that broadened the scope of the war against Black Adam, and answered just what happened to everyone. Many of these events were not really part of the World War III story, and were dealt with in more of a "Oh, by the way..." type of comments and scenes, just so all those pesky questions could be dealt with.
DC originally said that it made more sense to spread these events out over a year, because having them all happen at once would feel contrived and weird. Guess what, they were right. That was exactly how most of these events felt in such a situation, so on using 52 as a way to show what happened during a lost year of time, the book fails.
That being said, trying to cram these into the books we got, and taking away from those stories, I don't think I would have preferred that, if it would have impacted on the quality of what we got. At least this way, the stories are dealt with, and swept away, so everyone can move on, especially since almost none of those sweeping changes have stuck.
The goals of 52 may have changed since we first heard about it, and even since the first issue come out, but judging it as a 52 issue series in it's own right, and not what was once planned so long ago, and for accomplishing such a massive goal of a weekly comic series, this book is a home run. Everything is really coming together, and I hope the final issue is satisfying and doesn't detract from everything I've said here. There are some concerns on that front, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that such a grand, epic experiment doesn't fail at the home stretch.
52 ends up succeeding despite it's flaws, and while the first few issues have some shaky plotting as they try to get a hold on this new type of format, the final package is definitely worth reading, and a most intriguing experiment in it's own right. I'm glad I stayed for the whole ride (So far) and eagerly look forward to the next weekly series starting the week after 52, Countdown. The book will take the lessons learned the first time around, and improve on them, dumping the 'real time' format and just looking to tell good stories in a weekly format, for starters, and tying into current events, more than filling in the blanks.
I wish the new team the best of luck, and would be very pleased to see them top the great story that was 52.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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