Customer Reviews

52: The Companion

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a collection of recent, old and positively ancient stories featuring the ten main players of 52 (52, Vol. 1). Unless you are a big DC Comics fan you will not know these D-list characters since some of them (like Rip Hunter) were never really popular. 52 is a phenomenal saga of the forgotten heroes of the DC Universe and these old stories help set up the stage. The material collected here is of variable quality and tone, ranging from golden-age simplicity to contemporary complexity and from high-art to pure pulp. The effect of this variation was very positive, very refreshing to me.

This is an over-short, over-priced volume of short stories and even excerpts of various things relating to the "52" storyline, including comics from the '50s to the '00s, by creators ranging from the masters to the justifiably unknown. The stories are mostly good, fairly important (in fact some have been reprinted a few times before) and the sheer variety of the contents make it an extremely interesting read. The recoloring, etc. is superb and Mark Waid's comments about each selection leave little to be desired. My only complaint is that there should be a lot more stories. We need more things like this. Let's see some B'Wana Beast, the original Hawk and Dove, Kirby's Manhunter, more Eclipso and Dial H for Hero, or that fat kid Herbie.

Almost everyone who reads these collections of off-beat Silver Age gems seems to wish DC would "dip more into this well"; only rarely do we get anything of this kind and it's often recolored badly or something like that. These collections get eaten up quick by hungry collectors anxious to see what inspired the good contemporary stuff (DC's top writers like Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, and Mark Waid make constant references to older, mostly-unknown material) and within a year or two the sleepers can't get ahold of them anymore and we wait for the next "Batman: The Black Casebook" or "Green Lantern: In Brightest Day" to come our way... well, DC, why not put out some more, and with greater frequency? This generation of comics-folk, relatively uneducated but with potentially the best resources of all time, needs as many reprints as possible so it can be our turn to re-evaluate "the classics".

DC's weekly, innovative, real time comic series 52 proved to be a successful endeavor with a cast of lower-tier DC characters at the forefront, and 52: The Companion is here to help novices out in terms of the many characters and their previous adventures. This TPB contains stories of varying quality starring characters like Animal Man, Adam Strange, Booster Gold, Steel, The Metal Men, Rip Hunter, Black Adam, and Gotham City Detective Renee Montoya among others. The stories themselves range from the golden age to the modern era, and are decent enough to give novices some background information on the stars of 52. That being said, 52: The Companion is only really worth picking up for said readers, or for those with a nostalgiac flavor or those needing a quick refresher course. Other than that though, this companion isn't entirely essential.

This book covers adventures of assorted characters later used in the 52 miniseries, though sadly not in chronological order. My opinion of the individual stories is as follows:

1.Bridge the Past and Future. This story does not actually feature Steel enough, and does not do a good job of giving an understandable introduction to the character, and is pretty forgettable. It also clearly is a sort of prelude to some long forgotten gimmicky Y2K story. 2 stars. Bad start to a good book

2. Green Lantern's Blackout. This Silver Age Elongated Man story, though not an origin, is a good introduction to the character. It's lighthearted, and has some fun character moments. I really like Thomas Kalmaku as a supporting character and wish he weren't referred to here by the racist nickname "Pieface". He is not a racist caricature, no one treats him poorly for his race or reference it in any other way, so this otherwise sweet story gets a star off for this distracting, bewildering and nonsensical feature. 4 stars

3. From the Depths. A JLI framing story with Booster Gold's origin in the middle. Pure Gold, pardon the pun. Makes me wish this book had a few more origins in it. 5 stars

4. The Secret of the Ancient Seer. An excellent Silver Age time travel yarn starring Rip Hunter. I knew nothing about the character, this gave me the premise and his old school adventurer type of character. All around good fun. 5 stars

5. Corrigan II. THE defining moment for the character of Renee Montoya, as well as her last prominent appearance before the events of 52. A realistic and sad cop drama that shows the real variety that is sometimes ignored in discussions of American comics. 5 stars

6. What Makes a Hero? Shows the Question as he was under the inimitable Steve Ditko, an Objectivist character who somehow is not an arrogant amoral moron. The story is interesting, if a bit long winded, but one of the stories after our blankfaced hero switched allegiances to Zen Philosophy over Objectivism would have been a better lead in to how he acts in 52. Nonetheless, 4 stars.

7. The Clockwork Crimes of the Time Commander! what (sic). That's the reaction on anyone's first Grant Morrison story, good or bad. Thankfully this Animal Man tale is awesome, well drawn and masterfully written. It also is mind-bending and shows off the character magnificently, makes me want to by all 3 trades of Morrison's Animal Man. 5 stars.

8. The Magic Maker of Rann. This rare Adam Strange tale is actually an illustrated short story and not a comic. It is however a great introduction to the premise and sheer weirdness of Adam Strange. 4 stars

9. Evil is in the Eye of the Beholder. Fantastic. I have had no prior knowledge of the Metal Men besides the fact that they were robot superheroes that showed up in a Crisis here and there. I loved this story so much.
6 out of 5 stars. Yes,it is that good.

10/11. Yesterday's War/ Tears of Ra. Another time travel story. This two-parter features the JSA. The disappointing first half is made up for in the stellar second, an excellent study of Black Adam as a character.
4 stars

All in all I'll give this collection four stars. Half a point of for the crappy Steel story, 1/4 point for wanting more origins in there and 1/4 point for the complete lack of Starfire, I know she has very very few stories not also featuring the titans, but her origin from Tale of the Teen Titans would do.

A good primer before one dives into 52.

I liked the 52 storyline. I thought is was great, so I read this to get some backstory on the main characters of 52. What I found was a lot of stories that left me cold--though to be fair, I'm not much of a fan of the older books. In fact, the only ones I thought were really good was the Animal Man (no surprise there) and Metal Men (which did surprise me how good it was). The rest were mediocre of bad.