I want to put all my cards on the table. I want to be honest with you, dear reader.
The vast majority of DC Comics’ current line does not excite me.
It’s the same on the other side too. The Ultimate Universe is doing wonders, but that’s mostly it. It’s been too long since I’ve been all in on either side’s publishing line as a whole, where I want to keep up with everything.
Which is why the inherent promise of All In, while it sounded cool, doubt still remained in my heart. But then, we found out about the All In creative teams for the books, and then I was really all in on Detective Comics Comics’ new publishing initiative.
But those are just the books themselves. We know that with every new publishing initiative comes the promise of the big event, what a lot of stories – whether directly or through the background – are building up to. That’s a gambit in and out of itself, because you want the readers to be invested, without derailing the actual issue to issue storytelling that’s happening. However, the last time I was truly invested in an event was Death Metal (which was, funnily enough, also penned by Snyder). The era we got out of it – Infinite Frontier -that, to me, was one of the most promising states DC has ever been in. Every story mattered. “Continuity” was a sprawling library from which creatives could pull anything, reinforcing the idea that these long running narratives are mythologies with contradicting histories, thus letting them reference and build off of whatever they wanted to. Creative freedom was in there, and it was so cool to imagine the possibilities.
Unfortunately, (well, technically fortunately for me) the only books that made full use of that idea were the Batman titles – the most obvious of these being stories which jumped back and forth between referencing either “Year One” or “Zero Year” as the origin of the character. It was cool to see the possibilities of Infinite Frontier executed in that way, being able to tell the story that they wanted to tell. But this promise never reached the highs it should have – something that should’ve unlocked the maximum potential of longform superhero storytelling was lost. That was the rope leading to the dynamite that got closer as my investment in the wider story the DC Universe was trying to tell decreased, which only burned brighter with how lackluster Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths was, before exploding on Knight Terrors making me stop following the vast majority of the line as a whole for a while.
Absolute Power held promise early on, but it became uninteresting as it continued, its interesting elements resting solely on tie-in comics than the actual book itself. However, the ending of that book ties directly into this one, and thus: Here we are now.
THE PROMISE OF A BRIGHTER FUTURE
The first half of the All In book, the Justice League half, reads as much a comic book as it does an advertisement. To be fair, that is the point, especially when drawn by superstar artist Daniel Sampere with colours by Alejandro Sánchez.
Yet, there’s an art to it. You can certainly make a compelling narrative that’s also meant to nudge your readers towards the line as a whole without it sounding like the people behind the page are directly telling you, “Here, read this!” The Darkseid half of this book, titled “OMEGA” does this particularly well. It should feel more like a prologue for what’s to come – or even a self contained story. There’s a lot of room here to see the potential of what “JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED” looks like, but it’s so absorbed in setting up the next big thing and trying to get readers to buy the books that it loses its focus on telling a compelling narrative.
Opening 52 Days after the end of Absolute Power, it shows the entire superhero community working together for the launch of something new, something different, centering around Booster Gold.
What’s new? Justice League Unlimited, as we see it in a big page featuring 45 characters. That’s the initial promise this time. Every hero you know, working together, as you’ll see eventually in the pages of the titular book. The whole sequence almost reads like a pitch – that’s what the book is about, and DC Comics wants you to be there for it.
It’s as soon as we meet this new Justice League that everything goes to hell, in an insanely cool sequence where the page burns to show off what’s happening on the other side, and that’s when Darkseid shows up on the scene to set up the big event they’re building up to – which, considering that the 40th anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths is next year, makes things somewhat obvious.
This is what All In seems to be building up to, and I think it’s interesting! Truthfully, this story alone hasn’t made that spark I had for DC Comics’ wider storytelling burn bright yet, and it’d burn even less bright if I wasn’t aware of the great creative teams involved with the All In titles. Part of it is how burnt out I’ve been on their wider storytelling, the other half lies in the fact that it is Darkseid again, a character who’s mostly been relegated to ‘Villain of the Week’ since, frankly, the New 52 (Dan goes far deeper on this). Do I have hope for the future? Certainly, but if I took this story in a vacuum – where I didn’t know the information presented to us by DC Comics outside of this comic book, it doesn’t do all that it should, but to it’s benefit, “OMEGA” does present Darkseid as much more exciting.
THE WARNING OF A DARKER TOMORROW
If you flip this book, the other end kicks off the Darkseid half of the narrative, and that’s where it gets really interesting to me. Wes Craig’s pencils with Mike Spicer’s colours have a Kirby-like sensibility to it—raw, kinetic, primal. We follow the representation of evil as he goes on a journey to find someone who can explain the hunger in him.
It’s during that very story where we see the birth of the universe where the heroes’ odds are against them, where their backs are against the wall. The Absolute Universe, where Wonder Woman was raised in hell, where Batman doesn’t have the rich upbringing, where Superman, where hope is the underdog. Our heroes may not have their former advantages, but their cores still persevere. Wonder Woman is still someone who wants to share her love and compassion with man’s world, Batman is still the chaos raging against the system, Superman’s still trying to inspire hope.
And that’s what excited me more than anything. This new universe, where the table’s been flipped, where nothing is how it was. I was into that, I’m all in on that, I need more of that.
THE ULTIMATE ELEPHANT
Both sides of the story coincide in the middle in a really cool splash illustrated by Dan Mora with colours by Tamra Bonvillain that sets up another component of what is clearly the event next year, where the main universe and the absolute universe will probably collide in some fashion. To express how I feel about that, I need to draw a comparison between the Distinguished Competition’s take on that: the Ultimate Universe.
The Ultimate Universe started from Earth 616, the culmination of something that started from Jonathan Hickman’s first work at Marvel Comics. The Maker crafts his own universe, and thus leaves it disconnected from Earth 616. This is cool on a narrative level, but on a meta level it establishes the idea that Earth 6160 is its own thing. The only countdown it has is to a big event that is presumably a crossover between its own titles.
Conversely, with COIE’s 40th next year, and the splash teasing some sort of universal collision, it leaves me with some uneasiness right out of the gate. Of course, maybe I’m wrong and this is all speculation, but I’m unsure of how to feel about the idea that they will collide eventually. It’s especially interesting to me given how similar the core premise of both universes are and how they’ll play out, so I’m excited to see how that all works out.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Even then, there’s just this buzzing energy there – especially on the primordial forces of good/hope and evil/despair that’s presented as a core part of this book and the marketing of the universes in general. The main universe’s battery runs on Superman, runs on hope, while the Absolute’s runs on Darkseid, runs on despair. I find that dichotomy endlessly fascinating, and I cannot wait to see where that takes us.
I also love the new logo and the corner box. Reminds me of classic post-crisis DC comics that everyone I know reminisces about. That too, is a promise in some ways, a promise of quality, of excitement, that there’s something for everyone, and I hope All In lives up to that.
So, should you pick this up? For the Wes Craig/Mike Spicer Darkseid story alone! But also the rest is a fun ride, you definitely should.
Circle back with us on GateCrashers all throughout this month, where we’ll be covering all the All In titles, telling you how we feel about them and whether they live up to the promise of a good jumping in point! Personally, I’ll be reading quite a few of them, so stay tuned on my thoughts on a lot of them, especially in the Bat-Department.
