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I'm one of the few people I know that both still follows comic books but was around for Crisis on Infinite Earths (more on that in a later blog.) I loved those days when Marvel and DC wanted to tell great stories.
Sometimes they were multi chapters like The Laughing Fish story that ran in Detective Comics courtesy of Dennis O'Neil and Marshall Rogers. Sometimes they were amazing stories told in 32 pages (less when you take out the ads.)
Then one day my friend Shawn let me check out his copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths number one, where I saw the heroic deaths of some of my favorite super villains, the original Crime Syndicate.
I accepted that DC no longer wanted 17 different earths and 12 Super Man's (although I loved Super Boy Prime.)
Fast forward to today and DC and Marvel both have basically 5 writers between them. They write everything. They all seem to wish they wrote The Watchmen and they seem hell bent on spitting in the face of every great writer that came before them. Problem is these 5 guys bring very little imagination to the table.
And while I am venting. None of them have developed anything interesting by way of new characters. They have created no new super heroes, no interesting regular persons (such as J. Jonah Jameson in Marvel Comics) or no new super villains.
These new writers only claim to fame is to tear down what other great writers have built up.
Now I would like to commend some newer writers who do get it right and understand that people over the age of 30 and under the age of 17 enjoy comics in general because they are fun. There is Dawud Anyabwile who is working on a new Brother Man series which is long over due. There was the late Dwayne Mc Duffie who went from writing for The Justice League Unlimited cartoon series (which may have been the best cartoon series ever) to doing an incredible job on The Justice League DCU book. Then there is the under rated but immensely talented story writer Peter David. And why isn't Chris Claremont and John Byrne offered a book together?
Anyway, DC's New 52 is just another piece of this 21st Century, everything is super instant and twice as disposable syndrome. Although I still find comics in general a lot of fun. In many ways much of what I loved about comics died not long after The Crisis On Infinite Earths.
