Dressing Up A Pig — Reviewing ‘New History Of The DC Universe’ #4

History can be an intriguing, illuminating, and often infuriating subject to dive through. Full of a discovery and disappointment mixture.

Unfortunately, New History Of The DC Universe #4, and much of the whole of the limited series, lean heavier toward the disappointing side of things. The final piece of this history book turned comic book comes from Mark Waid, Howard Porter, Hayden Sherman, Hi-Fi, Trona Farrell, and Todd Klein.

What began at least intriguing has become something that just is a bit of a slog. While I semi-applaud the attempt, there was nothing that this mini did to actually simplify or condense the history easily. Just this issue alone proves how truly messy DC Comics have been for most of the 21st century so far. There were numerous references to the truly colossal amount of Crisis style events the publisher trotted out to “fix” Flashpoint.

Having been a reader through them all, there’s no making it cleaner or clearer. Especially since this series is just snippets and off-hand references. One would be better off checking out numerous Wiki pages to actually get some gist about DC Comics modern history.

Good on Waid for trying, but things fall flat. Chiefly because Barry Allen is a mostly cardboard character, even as a narrator, and Waid cannot do what Waid does best as a writer- Enliven stories with great character work and punchy writing, since this is essentially a teacher reading the textbook to the class. Only so much you can do to make that even a tad less dry.

Porter and Sherman’s artwork is kind of a class in this issue. So wildly different and on different levels that turning pages is often a wild shift. At the same time, this series of splash page montages also hampers some of their artistic styling. Sherman’s usually really bold and innovative paneling choices and character work are put in a box here. The pages look great more often than not, but still nowhere near what the artist can normally do.

One can say it’s definitely colorful as Hi-Fi and Farrell really pull out all the stops on the color palette journey. Bold and vibrant at times followed by spells of heavier and murkier. All hitting at the right resonance for the given historical moments filling the pages.

As with the last issues, there isn’t a ton for Klein to do in these issues. He’s just filling the pages with Barry Allen’s very wordy and dry narration captions. There’s nothing to really visually punch up matters or to enliven things with emotional or tonally satisfying lettering.

Overall, this miniseries has just been kind of a thing that’s there. Worse, it’s one that already will mean very little in the months to come as it closes out referencing the events (DC K.O.) that have just begun for the publisher. So many of the elements are likely to change or be forgotten very soon, and this slice of time miniseries will end up where all these origin and history style ones go- Back issue bins and in the long boxes of completionist collectors, referenced here or there but not in a definitive style of way.

Which is fine, comics are like that all the time. For one that was meant to streamline and make DC’s history accessible though, it’s a sad all too soon style of fate.

New History Of The DC Universe #4 is now available from DC Comics.