What's with those fasho continuity nietzschecomix? OR Odradek reads New 52

One-Winged Eagle

I'll bring the shovel.

Odradek

So that's Dial H guys!

Next up I'm planning on covering the Rotworld event in DC where I'll rotate between Animal Man, Swamp Thing, and Frankenstein. I'm a fan of all of them, so this should be fun.

Before I do that, any final thoughts on Dial H? Who was your favorite superhero? What was your favorite bit? Do you think we'll ever see Nelson and co again? How any open windows could open window man open if open window man could open windows?

One-Winged Eagle

I liked Manteau ("Woman up.") and Open-Window Man.

My favorite bit is the one with the chalk kid.

Open-Window Man can open all the windows. All of them.

Yarrun XIX

I feel like I'd like Open-Window Man if I saw more of the panels that he was in. I just don't quite get his powers. 

Favorite hero's Rescue Jack. It's just so simplistic.

But yeah, the chalk kid bit was...revolutionary, even.

One-Winged Eagle

Open-Window Man defenestrates you. Constantly.

That's why he's in the comic. Because we made throwing people out of windows such a big and common thing in our media.

Odradek

I realized I could make more of a difference educating people on animal rights than I could by punching out a super villain, you know? It was kind of a natural progression, an evolution.

-Buddy Baker: Superhero/Actor/Activist

So we start out with a page of an in-universe review with Buddy Baker, sometimes known as Animal Man. Buddy is an on-again off-again superhero who recently starred in a movie called Tights playing a washed up former superhero. Buddy is happily married, often uses his position to speak out about causes he believes are just, and has become something of a youth culture symbol. It's not mentioned, but he has the powers to absorb traits of any given animal to use as he sees fit.

We open on the actual comic with Buddy having a minor argument with his wife while he's making dinner. His daughter comes in, and asks if they can have a real dog. Buddy says no, and explains that if they have a pet, he'll start absorbing it's powers regularly. His wife cuts in that he doesn't really use his powers anymore. The art style here is a bit odd and takes some getting used to.

Right on cue, his son comes in and yells that someone took a whole floor of a hospital hostage. Buddy decides this is a good time to get back on the horse, kisses his wife goodbye while apologizing, and heads out.

Animal Man gets to the hospital and finds out the situation from a cop he's friendly with. Turns out the guy holding up the building is in the Children's Wing. He's a minor crook named Lyle Edwin who lost his daughter to cancer three weeks ago, lost it, and is now holding up the building and yelling at the doctors to bring his little girl back. Buddy is horrified by this.

Animal Man gets in the building, and tries to talk to the guy, but the guy won't be reasoned with and he tries to open fire on him.

Animal Man grabs his favorite action hero cocktail of abilities: strength of an elephant, reflexes of a fly, speed of a cheetah, and the bark of a dog to freak people out. He says that he hates violence, and he understands this guy's pain, but he can't let him hurt children, and takes him out with one punch. He turns around to talk to the cops, but realizes that his own eyes have suddenly turned bright red and he's weeping blood.

Cut to a doctor, with Animal Man insisting he's fine and his connection to "the life-web" is stronger than ever. He goes home, thinks about how much he treasures his family, and goes to sleep. Time for a dream sequence.

In the next page, Cliff shows that he's hurt pretty bad, and it's pretty graphic. I'm not gonna show it to you in case anyone's squeamish. I like this comic so far, but it's a bit much.

Buddy's daughter, Maxine shows up with a giant dog who looks like a huge version of her stuffed toy, Mr. Woofers. She's wearing a smaller Animal Man costume, and she says "the bad things that dress as men" are coming.

Buddy wakes up in a cold sweat, and finds his son and wife downstairs, staring at their daughter.

Well I see this comic has taken a horror turn to fit in better with Swamp Thing and Frankenstein.

Also Dan Green does a lot of inking apparently.

One-Winged Eagle

This comic's creature designs are amazing.

Aliroz

THIS PAGE NEEDS NO EXPLANATION BECAUSE IT IS INKED BY DAN GREEN!

Odradek

We start with a slow zoom-in into the Daily Planet while a narration box talks about how the narrator's dad was a florist and he had a machine to cut the stems of flowers off. Clark Kent looks concerned at something.

The narration says that no matter how well-oiled the machine was, it always made a terrible screeching noise. The father uses to joke that this was the flowers screaming, which disturbed the narrator. Meanwhile, Batman, Superman, and Aquaman all look concerned.

So this construction worker, Alec Holland by name talks to a friend about a plant-based cure he prescribed for a knee injury that ended  up working. The friend jokes that Alec must have been a doctor in his past life.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, an unearthed wooly mammoth skeleton gets swept up by a twister.

Back to Alec. Alec says that he used to be a botanist who's life work was to grow a bio-restorative formula that would allow plants to grow anywhere. However, his lab got blown up and he died. Then he woke up six weeks ago, in a swamp, cold wet and alive, but with memories of being a swamp monster.

Then Superman shows up to talk to Alec. Superman says that strange disasters like twisters, dying animals, and Rob Liefeld drawing Hawk and Dove have been sweeping the world, and that they need Swamp Thing's help to sort it out. Alec insists he never was Swamp Thing.

I think this is some continuity time snarl stuff. It's surprising we haven't ran into it yet, really.

Alec and Superman talk for a bit about what Alec should do with his life. Superman thinks he should go back to working on the formula. 

This comic isn't bad yet, but it's very talky-talk. Everything else had some punching by now. Or strippers, but I just wanna forget Voodoo really.

Cut to some archaeologists debating about who stole their mammoth bones. They hear a weird sound, and go investigate.

A fly crawls into one of the archaeologist's ears, makes him twist his own neck, and he becomes an evil zombie. Quickly they all become backwards head zombies.

Well that's some action at least.

Alec has a nightmare about being Swamp Thing, and wakes up to find plants growing all around him.

Alec grabs the bio-restorative formula from his safe, and runs out to throw it away. However, before he can do so, he's confronted by...

SWAMP

THING

DUN DUN DUN!

So this comic was okay, but I didn't like it as much as the first issue of Animal Man or Dial H. Hopefully it builds a little after this.

One-Winged Eagle

Plants are fucking terrifying.

Odradek

Odradek

So we start with an guy fishing with his son. Their dog runs off, and they hear a loud sound. The guy goes off to check, and finds his dog mauled.

We start out learning a little bit about the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive AKA S.H.A.D.E. SHADE is based on a building called the Ant-Farm that only SHADE agents can access using a combination of shrinking and teleporting technology. The Ant-Farm is a three inch sphere hovering over wherever SHADE needs to be. Inside is SHADE city, a bustling metropolis.

Look

We need to talk for a second

You guys are just gonna need to accept everything this comic throws at us, or we're gonna get nowhere

'salright?

Frankenstein goes to meet Father, the apparent leader of SHADE in the hub of SHADE City. Father is currently inhabiting the body of a young girl who wears a mask. He randomly generates a new body every decade it seems. 

Frankenstein quotes Milton to Father, before explaining who John Milton was. He then meets Ray Palmer their resident tech head/guy who reports back to the government. Frankenstein asks where his wife is.

Father uses holodeck technology to explain that a young boy in Bone Lake Washington went to the sheriff's office to tell the cops that his grandfather had been eaten by monsters. They laughed this off, until they found the man's skeleton stripped bare. Shortly thereafter, the town was decimated by an army of monsters.

Frankenstein gets to Bone Lake and meets his new support team.

OHMYGOD GUYS THIS IS A REVIVAL OF AN OLD CONCEPT

Father tells Frankenstein that he needs to change with the times, and that might be why his wife has been his wife in name only for about seven decades.

Low blow, Father

Low blow.

Anyway, the Creature Commandos, with the exception of the vampire, are happy to meet Frankenstein, and they gear up to cut their way into Bone Lake.

So Khalis, the mummy says that he senses survivors. They go in to check, Frankenstein lifts up the alter and they find them

Odradek

This one needed pictures more than ever, I thought, because otherwise you guys might assume I was just wildly improving a story as I went.

Aliroz

Yeah, I would have assumed that without the pictures.

Yarrun XIX

Look

We need to talk for a second

You guys are just gonna need to accept everything this comic throws at us, or we're gonna get nowhere

'salright?

The cover was Frankenstein holding a sword and minigun, a four-armed pistol-wielding green woman, and a Japanese schoolgirl with a mask and a pistol.

I already did that at the beginning of that post.

One-Winged Eagle

Frankenstein was one of the best series in Seven Soldiers. I did read this issue, actually.

Also you forgot to mention that the Creature Commandos are volunteers; that's an important part of their characterization.

Odradek

So Buddy's daughter Maxine is surrounded by undead animals, which she claims she saved. Buddy's son Cliff runs off to get a phone to record this to put on youtube, but Buddy stops him. Maxine says she saved them from "the place" where she heard them calling. Then she points at his chest.

Cut to the kitchen where it turns out this design appears to be part of Buddy's skin now. Maxine is trying to feed a dog skeleton she calls "Mrs Pickles" milk and Cliff is filming a dead chicken fighting a dead pig. Ahhhhh kids.

Cliff runs off to cover up the upturned graves of the animals.

So Maxine tells Buddy that the designs on his skin are a map. They are at a line on his arm, and they need to get to the tree design on his chest before "they" do. Or else everything will die. So you know, no pressure.

Meanwhile, an angry neighbor has caught Cliff in his lawn with a shovel, and starts yelling about letting freaks into the neighborhood.

Maxine turns the guy's hand back to normal with urging from her parents, and the kids run back inside. Buddy and his wife have a conversation about whether Maxine has inherited his powers, what they should do, and whether they might be endangering their daughter. Eventually they decide to send Maxine with Buddy on a wild metaphysical adventure in order to get her powers under control.

Meanwhile at the Zoo, the hippos have all developed massive swolen cancer bellies. 

Goddamn tourists, throwing in food to the animals.

Meanwhile, Buddy monologues about his powers, which he gets from the Morphogenetic Fields of earth, or what he likes to call the Life-Web. They get to their destination by following the voices of the animals.

So Cliff and Maxine get to the tree, note that it's dying, and go inside "The Red". Meanwhile at the Zoo:

Aliroz

Putt Putt, I love those games!

Odradek

We start with a flashback to a man named Calbraith Rodger, flying a plane for the RAF in 1942. According to the narrator "he is me". Rodger is afraid of what awaits him after death, as he gets shot down into a swamp.

Rodger is revealed to be the Swamp Thing talking to Alec. He explains that he protected The Green for a while before taking root with the other Swamp Things in the Parliament of Trees. Basically being Swamp Thing is like being a Green Lantern with a weird retirement plan. Now he's here to deliver a message.

Alec doesn't want to hear it. He says that he's given everything to the Green, and all it got him was his wife and himself dead, followed by a resurrection where he's haunted by memories of a life that never was as Swamp Thing.

Rodger-Swamp Thing asks Alec to just hear him out, and says that if he doesn't care, he will leave and never bother him again. NOW WHO IS READY

FOR SOME EXPOSITION

TALKITY TALK TALK TALK

For anyone who doesn't want to read this here's the short version. A bad thing that causes plagues is coming. Alec is the only one who can stop bad thing because he was destined to become Swamp Thing, but never did, so a facsimile of him that consisted of his memories was made which is what Alan Moore et all's run of Swamp Thing was about haha we tricked you into caring about a second-rate Swamp Thing.

I'm not angry, just bemused.

Anyway the Rodger-Swamp Thing fades away into the underbrush, and warns Alec to stay away from the white-haired woman who haunts his dreams.

Alec heads back to his motel, and gets attacked by the backwards head zombie of the motel owner.

Long story made short, a bunch of backwards head zombies attack him, and he gets away due to being saved by a lady wearing a helmet on a motorcycle. Once they get to safety, the lady takes off her helmet.

Aliroz

This isn't as fun as Dial H.

Odradek

Aliroz said:

This isn't as fun as Dial H.

No it isn't. To be fair, most things aren't.

Swamp Thing is kind of my least favorite comic out of the three we're doing right now. Frankenstein is enjoyably silly and Animal Man has gotten me to actually care about its characters in the space of two issues.

Justice4243

I think Animal Man has had some pretty decent horror chops for a while. It was a Vertigo comic after all, interesting that it doesn't look like a reboot at all. I haven't read much but this seems very much in line with what I have read.

Swamp thing appears to be trying to quickly establish all the significant Alan Moore backstory stuff. This was stuff that was originally done after dozens of issues with Constantine helping to show Swamp Thing what he truly was. The fact that they're jumping both in with both feet makes me wonder why they even bothered to reboot in the first place.

Odradek

Okay so there's some old woman guarding the survivors. She says they are all paid up and they won't let the monsters take another. Frankenstein is angry about innocent lives being used as bargaining chips in a pact, and straight up smacks her.

The wolfman makes a dumb joke about babysitting that Frankenstein does not appreciate, and they head off on helicopters to the lake. They set up a giant electric pentagram around the lake they call "the firewall" and it's revealed that the lake contains a wormhole to a place called "dead space"

Frankenstein and fishwoman head down to the bottom of the lake, while wolfman, vampire, and the mummy fight the monsters. Wolfman is angry he isn't getting a chance to prove himself.

Time for Fishwoman, who I've now decided is important enough to call Nina's backstory.

So horrified by her husband leaving and her baby dying, Nina throws herself into her work. She creates some genetic supersoldiers as surrogate children, but they turned out to be dangerous so they were locked inside a microprison in SHADE headquarters called The Zoo. It was that or a watertower in Hollywood

Next time, she just changed full grown adults who would be able to cope with the change, as well as herself. TIME FOR A HORRIFYING REVEAL.

So Frankenstein and Nina fight some monsters, and grab a brain. Nina plugs it into the Seer Of Mental Brain Image Energy or SOMBIE machine she has. They find out these anyway the monsters are scouts from a dying world sent to find a new planet to conquer, because this is basically Pacific Rim. Lady Frankenstein is on the other side of the portal.

This comic veers wildly back and forth between Silver Age and Neil Gaiman/Alan Moore esque horror.

Anyway they get to the other side, and it doesn't look good.

One-Winged Eagle

What a delightfully weird thing.