If you say so.

Look, just one issue of the Dark Knight Returns (45 pages long) tells a great story with plenty of social commentary. DK2 beats you over the head with social commentary and wastes 120 pages on a mediocre story about how Superman is really an impotent pu$$y and Robin is… hell, Robin doesn’t even make sense in this series.

If you want a real satire, I can’t recommend Garth Ennis/Amanda Conner’s The Pro enough. And the best part, at least they are honest about what you are getting when you buy their product.

Not that I want to go into “geek mode”, but the riff about the jellybeans seemed to imply that Ronald Reagan was the President (ala Dark Knight). I’m just saying, ’cause if I remember correctly, the DK2 President was some sort hologram at first; but then some strippers won the election. Or was the stripper supposed to be Black Canary?

Oh, who cares!!!!!!!!!! The last decent comic came out in the 90′s and you know it!!!

If Dark Knight Returns Superman dies in Arena; does that mean that the Dark Knight Strikes Again (DK2)didn’t happen?

Thought #2)If you have a world where the prime divergence is that Batman appeared during the Victorian Era, then killing him off seems like a waste of a good character and counter to the reason for that world’s existence, regardless of what characters you establish.

Thought #2.5) If you have a whole -group- of characters who are the major heroes of said world (i.e. the Thrillkiller Batgirl and Robins), then killing them off REALLY seems to render their origin world pointless.

Thought #3) If you’re going to introduce a whole bunch of random characters from random worlds (variants on the JSA, Teen Titans, L.E.G.I.O.N.) and kill them off, what’s the point? What a waste.

Observation #1) Monarch uses the same energy signature (pink, with an accompanying CHOOM) for blowing stuff up AND teleporting people. He uses almost the same, with KA-CHOOM, to get his point across. And I, for one, don’t see any bodies lying around afterwards.

Conclusion #1) For my own peace of mind, I’m going to assume that he teleported most of those people home again, rather than outright disintegrating them or whatever. Less waste, less impact on the environment.

Conclusion #2) If there’s not some sort of reboot coming in general, I’ll be surprised. Because DC is being awfully wasteful with their Earths -and- characters… 52 is a finite number, afterall. And it seems like a major shame to kill off the major reasons most of these Earths exist.

Arena is, in my opinion, a major trainwreck. Fascinating, but a trainwreck.

P.S. Poor Steve Trevor.
P.P.S. Those alternate JSA’ers reminded me of the Minutemen.
P.P.P.S. Wouldn’t it have made sense to post that list of Earths in THIS week’s DC Nation, or as part of Arena #1?

So they killed gotham by gaslight batman? Awesome, I just read the one shot and thought wow, there’s an awesome character I’d like to read more ab – sigh.

52? Well, we’re already down to 51 thanks to EmoBoy Prime blowing up on the Earths. Yes, I know its 52 Universes and not just 52 planet Earths, but remove the Earth from the equation and the only characters left are weird green aliens with fishheads and hooks for arms or whatever. Yawn.

And this is the worst idea ever – collect the most powerful characters ever then have them kill each other then have the worn out and run down survivors run into battle under the command of Captain Variable Power Levels? Sigh. More sighing.

When they kill DKR Superman, the Goddamn Frank Miller should throw the Goddamn Dan DiDio into the Goddamn Batcave and force him to survive on nothing but good comics and the odd ratburger for 7 issues.

Unfortunately, a whole chunk of the fanbase is getting alienated in the process.

Of course Morrison/JG Jones is the sort of pairing that can bring people back in droves.

On another topic, when I looked at the double page spread of the all the heroes from all the Earths I was struck by the sad fact that even though there are 52 Earths, it seems like they all have heroes that are almost exclusively white. Kind of sad that they didn’t think that they should recreate an Earth-D or something.