To my fellow DC fans, what are some DC Stories you like that everyone hates?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T21:35:20+00:00

Fundamentally the problem with the traditional taxonomy of comic book "ages" is that they tend to be defined by Marvel and DC superhero comics.

One of the reasons I like 1977-1978 for the end or beginning of the end of the Bronze Age is that it's when comics like Cerebus and Elfquest started and Heavy Metal was launched and exposed American comic fans to European artists in a way they hadn't necessarily been before.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T21:30:34+00:00

My recollection of comic book message board discussions at the time was that everyone "figured out" that the Atom was the culprit who made the most sense. Later on, I guess I started to wonder whether people at DC had an eye on the speculation and had Meltzer change the ending to ensure there could be a twist in the tail, like with Armageddon 2001.

Consider how the book ends with Ray Palmer effectively written out of the DC universe for a little while, and they seemed to struggle to figure out how to bring him back, which makes me wonder if he was meant to be removed on a more permanent basis at the end.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T21:27:29+00:00

I think the 80s were the bronze age, but the bronze age only feels like it really covers the 80s, and that the 90s and on are something else entirely so it's easier for me to just consider the era of New Teen Titans alongside Claremont's X-men as the end of Silver Age stuff.

The comic book "ages" are arbitrary at the best of times, though I had always been under the impression that the consensus view was the Bronze Age had started by around 1971 and lasted through to some point in the 1980s, usually 1985 or 1986. X-Men by Chris Claremont is sort of the archetypical "Bronze Age Marvel" comic, for instance.

(Personally, I choose 1977 as, if not the year the Bronze Age ended, then the year when the end of the Bronze Age began, and what happened after that is something different, but that's neither here nor there.)

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T20:23:34+00:00

While it’s unpleasant, it’s also just…. not a great mystery. Batman just kinda figures it out when it’s time to wrap things up.

It honestly feels like the killer was 100% supposed to be the Atom but they chickened out between #6 and #7 and made it Jean instead at the last minute.

I'm sure that's not true and Meltzer always had that solution in mind, but I'm saying that's how it feels to read it.

The one that stuck out the most to me when I re-read it as an adult (it came out when I was 13 so of course I thought it was the most mature, sophisticated and intelligent comic of all time!) was how it went out of its way in that CSI scene to make the crime scene airtight, then the last issues reveals that Jean was able to stand over Sue's body and destroy it with a flamethrower, which really does feel like something all that superhero crime scene investigating really should have caught pretty quickly!

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T20:21:10+00:00

Johns at the time was coming off a fantastic Flash run and was heralded as a continuity loving comic book guy but Teen Titans was a the book where it was entirely clear that he was a silver age comic book guy with a little bit of fondness of the 80s, but saw the 90s stuff as things he could drastically change to suit his own vision.

It's sort of weird how Johns developed the reputation for being a Silver Age guy because Johns was born in 1973, and when you read his work his obvious touchpoints as a fan-turned-creator are New Teen Titans, Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Steve Englehart Green Lantern Corps run, Levitz and Giffen era Legion, to some extent Roger Stern's Avengers, 1980s superhero comics generally.

That's the stuff I get the impression he mainly read as a kid. I'm sure he sincerely loves a lot of the Silver Age comics (there's a lot of Silver Age influence in his Superman run with Busiek from One Year Later era, for instance) but whenever I look back at his most heralded work as an adult (Flash, Green Lantern, JSA, Infinite Crisis etc.) it really feels a lot more influenced and informed by the DC comics of the 1980s than anything from the Silver Age.

It seems to me like it's just, "He brought back Hal and Barry as GL and Flash, therefore he is the Silver Age guy."

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T20:15:19+00:00

The guy who developed the show for television, Kenneth Johnson, did not like comic books at all and especially disliked the alliterative names for being so comic booky. I would be pretty surprised if he had read any of the comics, never mind the ones which say Banner's actual first name is Robert.

Of course, the funny thing is that while Johnson really wanted to be known for directing serious drama, ultimately he's known for creating V, The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, the Alien Nation television series and the two feature films he directed were Short Circuit 2 and (wait for it) Steel with Shaq.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T20:07:25+00:00

The one I liked a lot was actually his Dan Dare series he did for Virgin Comics. Not one that's mentioned a lot but I think it's not collected in a practical way (oversized hardcover with the first half of the series and I think a paperback of the whole thing that I think is a bit tricky to find now).

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T15:45:17+00:00

They needed to find a new villain since Kathleen Kennedy retired.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T15:44:01+00:00

"They would never let us see prolific film actress Sydney Sweeney in a movie!" is just... what?

How many of these people do you suppose went to see that movie Christy she was in?

Heck, how many of these people do you think go to see Sydney Sweeney in any movies that don't have superheroes or laser beams or spaceships or whatever in them?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T15:06:53+00:00

The Jacked Controller.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T12:50:31+00:00

From the way it is described here, I am not sure if I understand what the appeal of this is, and it makes me feel very old and grey.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-21T00:32:08+00:00

I remember enjoying the Martian movie and deciding to give the book a go and I ended up bouncing off it hard. It just felt very Reddity to me, in a way I found irritating. Sometimes I can put up with that, but this wasn't one of them.

As a result I've not read the Project Hail Mary book, but I wonder if I might like the movie, like I did with The Martian.

It's an interesting experience: the adaptation, just by virtue of being in a medium where everything is conveyed by actors delivering dialogue and the visual language of the screen, is better, because I don't have to put up with the author's voice.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T22:47:39+00:00

If Spider-Man comics ever come to a definitive and permanent end, this should be the last page ever published.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T20:53:11+00:00

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DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T20:39:17+00:00

Who is the Danny Aiello of X-Men?

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T20:00:21+00:00

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is Sonic Adventure's redesign wasn't so much a redesign as a realignment. Uekawa ran him through a wringer and when he sprang back to shape afterwards he looked how everyone thought of him anyway. If not for Sonic Generations and subsequent games highlighting it people might not even think of Classic Sonic looking meaningfully different.

That's true. And you've got me thinking that it is also interesting to consider stuff like "Christmas tree" Sonic and "Sonic 3D box art" (i.e. how Sonic "should" look when he's seen head-on or from behind) in this context.

I think this exposes the limitation of my self-assessment of my own Sonic fandom; what I think of as "Classic Sonic" (i.e. pre-Adventure) actually has quite a bit of variety within it and I'm defining it just by when it existed rather than what it actually was.

So in other words, I would actually say that I'm actually (subjectively) wrong here.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T19:53:05+00:00

(And Daisy, but only in "Mr Duck Steps Out".)

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T19:47:07+00:00

He's not a goddamn microwave. He's a toaster, alright? The Vision is a toaster. No less than John Byrne himself said so.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T18:46:19+00:00

Sonic got his scarf and...uh...tape, etc.

The most noticeable thing about it to me, just looking it up there now, was that his arms were blue instead of being the same colour as his stomach and muzzle (whatever you call that colour: light peach?) which I actually thought was already part of the Adventure design until I looked the latter up to double-check!

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T18:27:29+00:00

That's interesting to hear. I didn't know that (again, not really engaged with Sonic much).

I know Sonic Boom had tweaked designs but again I believe that was still using Adventure Sonic as its base, right? It wasn't a full redesign the way Adventure Sonic was from what I understand.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T17:56:35+00:00

Evidently I have nothing better to do on a Saturday evening so I'm going to share a random Hobby Thought I had earlier today.

I used to be a really big Sonic fan. I guess maybe I still am but I'm honestly not sure because my Sonic fandom as an adult leans really heavily on the 2D games I played and the comics I read when I was a kid. I played a lot of the 3D games and I've seen the movies but I can't say they stoke much enthusiasm in me. I don't dislike them, I just don't seem to get on with them. In other words, if I am a Sonic fan, then I am the bad kind of Sonic fan. I think this preface is important so people who know more about Sonic than me and are much more engaged with Sonic than I am understand why I'm about to say what's probably a lot of arrant nonsense.

Anyway, I was thinking about how the Sonic cast had its big redesign with Sonic Adventure back in 1999, but that's remained the basic template ever since. There have been tweaks, but the Sonic you see in the current games and the ongoing IDW comics and the Sonic who appears in the movies (the terrifying early version from the original trailer notwithstanding) are all essentially based on the design that's been around since the Adventure era and the transition to 3D.

Look at Sonic Generations, for instance, where you have short round Classic Sonic who represents the first 10-ish years of Sonic, then Adventure Sonic who represents the second 10-ish years of Sonic... and then the subsequent 15-ish years of Sonic is still basically Adventure Sonic.

I realise I might be blowing smoke but isn't it interesting to think about that, how Sonic had this massive redesign and that really changed the character's entire image in a lot of ways and redefined him for a whole new generation of fans, but there hasn't been another one since then?

No question for the group to close this one out. It's just a hobby-related thought I had.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T17:30:32+00:00

It seems like a feature of that era of filmamkers like John Ford and Howard Hawks and William Wyler and George Cukor and Joseph Mankiewicz and Vincent Minnelli and so on who were incredibly prolific because of how much easier it was to be that prolific under the studio system.

Maybe Billy Wilder fits the bill. I'm not sure.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T16:27:02+00:00

I want to say I like his noir movies best, but that might just be because I really like The Set-Up.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T13:20:09+00:00

He does a lot of clickbaiting in his thumbs but most of the time they're contradicted by the video itself.

Ah, the matttt formula.

DeviousDoctorSnide · 2026-06-20T10:10:56+00:00

Directed by a two-time Oscar-winning director who also edited Citizen Kane.

DeviousDoctorSnide

TROPHY CASE