The New 52! DC Dark Line Impressions

This is just rad.

So I've had sort of a roller-coaster relationship with DC's "New 52!"  It is safe to say that I was a little bit skeptical at first, especially when you consider that the new 52 contains no less than 11 Batman books.  This type of nonsense sort of sums up my beef with the major publishers and their spandex lines.  I experienced the horror of this first hand during the Superman "New Krypton" storylines which actually were composed of six distinct story arcs: New Krypton, World Without Superman, Codename: Patriot, World Against Superman, Last Stand of New Krypton, and War of the Supermen.  To make matters worse, they split the story up among all the super books so you had to buy Action Comics, Superman, Super Girl, Adventure Comics and a variety of other Super-books to get the whole story.  All in all, the thing ran for like 50 issues, which is a lot to ask of the random dude (like me) who just feels like reading some goddamned Superman stories.

So that was the end of spandex clad superheroes for me, which brings us back to my disinterest in the new 52. Yes, 52 new #1s, but half of them are Bat-books, Super-books and Lantern-books.  September sort of came and went, and I started to hear news through the grapevine that the new 52 were doing very well, and that there were actually some good fresh titles coming out of DC's dark line.  The dark line consists of weird stuff that maybe would (and in the past would have) be more suited to DC's Vertigo line, like Swamp Thing and JLA:Dark (which includes John Constantine and Madame Xanadu) but also houses a variety of other titles including Animal Man, I Vampire,  Resurrection Man, Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. and Demon Knights.   I had been hearing especially good things about Swamp Thing and Frankenstein, so i went down to the local comic shop to pick those up, and this has started a cycle of enjoyment that'll eventually have me just collecting the whole dark line.  What follows are the ones I've read so far.

JLA:Dark 
Here's a book with an interesting premise- why not have a magically oriented version of the JLA to deal with the type of weird crap Superman actually CAN'T deal with by throwing it into the sun. The first issue just collects the characters and presents their first nemesis, Enchantress, but any team that includes John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman and Zatanna is FINE BY ME. Also, the art is very nice.  My only beef is that they took Zatanna out of her amazing magician's costume and put her into some bullshit outfit. SAD.

I Vampire
To be honest, I have no idea what this book is or who the characters are. There's nothing new here, just your usual conflict between vampire A who is all, "we're bad and shouldn't eat people" and vampire B who says, "no, we should inherit the earth and eat EVERYONE!" That said, the art and writing in this book is tops, and if you have managed to dodge the plethora of vampire themed pan-media bullshit that has been sweeping the nation for the past couple of years then you might enjoy this one.  If you're not into comics but still want good vampires, watch this.

Animal Man
I'm still waiting on the reprint of issue #1, but if issue 2 is any indication then this book is going to be rad. Animal man is an interesting character because his superpowers are just BONKERS. The guy can do more or less anything any animal can do.  NUTS! Incredible art, good writing, creepy covers. It seems his daughter is developing powers even stranger than his in this first arc, and it's starting to get a little WEIRD.  Check it out!

Sort of Hellboy-esque

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E.

Here's an unusual book. Frankenstein as the leader of the Creature Commandos in this one.  The book has good this sort of a B.P.R.D. thing going on, but a lot lighter and pulpier.  The first issue finds the team investigating a sudden outbreak of monsters in a small town.  So far my favorite character is the mummy Khalis, who also happens to be the team's medic. What's that about?

Anyway, those are the books I read so far. As it stands, I'm pretty impressed with the quality of work they've put out in the past month and I hope they can keep these teams cranking out #1 quality for the next 6-12 months at least.  Next time I'm down at the shop I think I'm going to just have to go ahead and pick up the rest of the line.  I didn't realize that Dan Abnett was writing Resurrection Man, and I very much enjoyed his work on all those Warhammer 40k novels he did. That just leaves Demon Knights, and I like Etrigan well enough so why the hell not.  Go buy some comics.