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The first year of DC's New 52 has come to an end. It would be very easy for me to focus on what hasn't worked in the past year. There are titles that have been cancelled, and there are many unanswered questions about the New 52 when it comes to characters. However, DC continues to press forward in the evolution and establishment of their new universe. It's not an easy job, and frankly I don't think DC makes it any easier on themselves at times. Still, they appear to be committed to making this new universe work.
One thing that I've noticed is that those titles I've found to have weaker writing and/or confusing stories seem to have pulled themselves together recently. It's as though since the New 52 hit its 10th month things have begun to coalesce. For me, this makes some sense as I still believe that for some reason the New 52 was launched earlier than planned. Having been reading comics since Crisis on Infinite Earths. I've seen DC move into a revised or relaunched universe a few times. They seem to have always moved forward in a fairly smooth fashion. The New 52 did not have that feel. The problem is I think Flashpoint provided an opportune time for the relaunch for some reason. What this translated into though was weaker stories for practically all titles for the first year. It seems that the Batman and Green Lantern corners of the universe survived the best as they received the least impact from the relaunch.
Now that some (not all) of the kinks have been worked out DC is going to fill in some of the blanks. It's doing this with its "Zero Month." While we will again be seeing the start of some new titles during the month, the goal of it is to fill in some of the blanks of characters and the current DC universe. Why wait until now to do this? As I said earlier, I think the New 52 was started earlier than planned and a few revisions to characters and the DC universe were not worked out until after the relaunch. I don't think this is going to fill in ALL the blanks, but I do think it will fill in enough to where some characters, titles and readers won't be in such a free-fall. This is going to be a necessity for what DC has planned after their "Zero Month."
Once the zero issues drop, a number of titles will begin their major "events." Last year the Batman titles had their "Night of the Owls" event. Like it or not, last year was about Batman. This next year we have another evolution to the Green Lantern mythos with the "Rise of the Third Army." That story arc will cross through all of the titles in the Green Lantern corner of the new DC Universe for a few months. Geoff Johns seems committed to keeping the Green Lantern concept a driving force at DC. Is it an "event" that Green Lantern fans (such as myself) will have to deal with, or that we'll get to enjoy? We're going to find out soon, and from that we will get another idea of how well DC is incorporating ideas that were being worked on before the relaunch.
The next major event to come after that will be the "Trinity War." There are all kind of rumors and theories running around the internet as to what this war will focus on. Some people think it will be a war that has Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman as the lead characters with each opposing the others. There are theories that it will be a battle between the Justice League, Justice League Dark and the fast approaching Justice League of America. Then there are theories that the "Trinity War" will connect back to what we saw during this year's Free Comic Book Day and will it will focus on Pandora, The Phantom Stranger, and The Question. Personally, my money is a mix of all three. I believe the event has an opportunity to become the true "starting point" of the new DC Universe as it will come to be known. It will help us know "why" the new DC Universe came into existence, and what that existence will mean.
There will also be the "Rotworld" story arc moving through the Animal Man, Swamp Thing, and (for some reason) Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. titles. I don't think that "Rotworld" will have the impact of the other two bigger "events." However, I don't doubt it's going to be something of quality as Animal Man and Swamp Thing are two of my favorite DC titles right now. Also, we learned at the end of Justice League International Annual, there are still some time travel elements going on with Booster Gold and somewhere out there in the timeline is Rip Hunter. I think those revelations about Booster and Rip will continue to propel the new DC Universe forward and maybe even impact one of the upcoming events (the "Trinity War" most likely).
With all this being said, I feel like I should say something major about the past year of the New 52. Then again, I also feel like I shouldn't. It's felt uneasy from the start for me, but unlike a lot of other readers I don't think it was a "bad launch" as much as it was a "premature launch." Sorry, but DC couldn't just stop producing comics for a year and work everything out, and if they kept things going we'd still be at the same place. We would be starting or finishing an event that moved us into a rebooted universe and people would be bellyaching about the change. We'd just be doing it in 2012-2013 as opposed to 2011-2012. Sure, the transition would have been smoother (I'd hope), but the end result would be the same due to the massive changes to the universe. At least now that we've got the first year under our belt we can focus on what DC is going to sell us next. Zeros, and armies, and wars! Oh my!
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