Drier Than A Piece Of Toast — Reviewing ‘New History Of The DC Universe’ #3
by Scott Redmond
Overview
Class is in session once more and much like many classes, the most interesting parts are quickly glossed over in order to meet the basic standards. A worthy endeavor that continues to prove that sometimes concept and execution are not always on the same page together.
Overall
8/10Watch the decades fly by as the series deconstructing the historical tapestry of the DC Universe shifts into massive overdrive.
It all goes down in New History Of The DC Universe #3, the latest from chronicler Mark Waid, who is joined by Dan Jurgens, Doug Mahnke, Norm Rapmund, John Kalisz, David Baron, and Todd Klein.
What once seemed like a novel concept is kind of wearing a little thin.
Not that those approaching it aren’t putting in some quality work. Waid is one of those creators who can straddle the line between the old-school and the new-school quite easily in most cases. He’s a well of knowledge unlike many others when it comes to the DC Universe. The decision to let him unleash that as a series, wrapping every potential thread of the long wacky DC Universe is a solid one.
It’s just reading like a very dry illustrated history textbook at this point.
I know it’s meant to be a quick retrospective of the events to really contextualize what has and hasn’t happened in this newly fully opened version of the DC Universe. Yet, there is something so devoid of anything to reduce so many of these massive events to just quick shot “Oh yeah this happened…” style moments. Doesn’t help that the best DC era, the “Legacy” era of the 90s through 2000s, is just jampacked into here while the original eras had more room to breathe in their issues.
All of the artists are doing fine as they bombard with full page spread after full page spread. Characters mostly just stand around in superhero poses or team shots. Some of the pages get a bit more animated as they showcase events that occurred in big comics from the given eras.
Plenty of dramatic tension, emotional beats, and more are captured well, letting the moments kind of slide over and sink against one another. Some of them coming from different moments but being overly connected because of characters involved, things that happened, or creators. There’s a whole page about the stuff Joker did to Batgirl, Robin, and how it affected the Bat-family as a whole spread. Bloody events that are very important, but damn have we overseen them.
I will say, writing the introduction of Huntress and Tim Drake as “balancing of the scales” against the brutality mentioned, sure is a choice.
Plenty of dense detailed work is going down, as the various styles and modifications are relatively similar in scale and scope. Each style works off one another in the best ways. There is no real disjointed feeling. Colors are similar throughout and mesh well together.
Klein makes the captions work as well as one can when they are so devoid of real emotion. Barry Allen just word vomits out the history as the storyteller in universe. That’s felt by the way the captions are just pouring across the pages, controlled and precise but still just a ton of information being thrown our way.
New History Of The DC Universe #3 is now available from DC Comics.
