Comic Book Resources

Wow, so Dick Grayson ended up on DC’s handy-dandy deathlist? They apparently keep one around which just strikes me as lazy, sad, and needlessly sadistic for company that allegedly is in the business of creating stories about heroes.

This would explain why just about everything Nightwing’s been doing lately has felt absolutely bizarre from the standpoint of something Dick Grayson would do, regardless of what happened in the OYL gap. Some of this stuff is downright sensical as far as “things Jason Todd might do”, though it’s not exactly my personal idea of good reading.

It makes me sad to think how awesome his early issues of Hulk were.

Tragic.

Is Jason Todd still alive? Seriously?

I have to say, I also really liked his early issues of Hulk, back when it had that fresh, stripped-down, man-with-a-secret-on-the-run-from-the-government feel from the TV show. It was the perfect direction to go in after years of trying (unsuccessfully) to imitate Peter David, and I wish he’d kept with that instead of throwing in the X-Files stuff and the Betty Banner zombie weirdness and the “I slept with the Abomination’s wife? Huh?” thing.

As for Nightwing, it really does seem like the biggest problem with the book is that Dan Didio wanted to kill the character off, and then somebody at the eleventh hour figured out, “whoops, that’d be stupid.” So no cool revamp for you, my friend! Everybody else gets the best laid plans of mice and men for better or for worse, and Nightwing gets Bruce Jones scrambling to retool a Jason Todd plot? That’s sad.

WizWorld Philly: Dan DiDio said yes, he wanted to kill Dick Grayson and that was the original plan, then someone came up with a good idea for keeping him around- which, I assume, was Jones’ utterly confounding run. But who knows?

Add me to the list of fans of Jones’ Hulk. I actually liked it up to the last two or three trades. I even liked “Hard Knocks!”

Unless this week’s Flash is a major improvemnt, though, I’m almost willing to say it’s the worst OYL relaunch. I guess Supergirl is also a contender. That’s the real burning question: among Nightwing, Flash, and Supergirl, which has been the worst?

See, I had no qualms. I would’ve killed the crap out of Dick Grayson. Twice.

Why is the Flash so maligned? If it was a Marvel book I’d understand, but for a DC book, I think it’s damn good quality, especially given all the Infinite crisis stuff that’s preceded it.

T.,

I didn’t bother with the fill-in run during the last few issues of Flash vol. 2. I heard it was terrible, but I’m under the impression that it generally wasn’t considered as bad as the new team’s first issue.

I have no idea what you mean by drawing a comparison to Marvel. I’d find it pretty awful no matter who was publishing it. I guess I would consider it typical of, I don’t know, Image c. 1996. But surely DC could have done better. Maybe the second issue will be stronger.

I tend to lower my standards with DC books. I find their books to be much more amateurish and less sophisticated in execution in general. Even when the writer is the same, I usually feel like they do better work at Marvel than DC for some reason, unless it’s a writer I don’t like at all like Waid or Johns. For some reason in their cases, I feel like they do better work at DC.

That’s a silly opinion, T. I can’t say I’ve ever noticed anything like that.

I got the feeling that Jones got the news that they are replacing his lead in the very last minute, which explain why his work has been this weak. At least he tried to do something, which is more than one can say about Judd Winick who pretty much wrote Outsiders like Nighwing was Jason Todd.

I doubt that there were any big pitch that saved Nightwing, most probably, some of the more retro writers at DC (Johns, Waid) convinced Didio at the last minute that killing him was pretty stupid.

From what I understand Wolfman is in for 4 issues that might be extended to a regular run. I guess DC doesn’t want to commit itself to another take on the character that gets bad buzz giving that Nightwing has gotten nothing but bad buzz for years now.

I don’t believe it.

Fans: “The new Nightwing sucks!”
Publisher: “Be happy to get any Nightwing at all”

Yeah right.

If DC were to kill off Dick Grayson….I would not buy another DC book…I am at an age where I grew up with DIck Grayson and the changes he wnet through from Robin to Nightwing…The thing is Dixon knew the character and had hsi voice…none of the others have…

At a panel at San Diego–I think it was “DC Comics: One Year Greater”–Dan DiDio said that it was Paul Levitz who saved Nightwing. So the word came from on high.

That’s good to know.

By the by, I am pleased to hear that Levitz still has THAT much influence at DC.