Discrepancies: My Continuing Battle With 52

So, I now find myself going through not only World War III, but 52 as well to find where the story pretty much goes round the bend. Which brings us to Nightwing.

Being caught up with the kinetic storytelling of 52, I didn't see the irregularities until I read WWIII and the reasoning behind it. The writers forgot to deal with the changes of One Year Later that 52 was supposed to address. But one of the things you'd think the writers would keep in mind was that at the end of Infinite Crisis, Batman, Robin and Nightwing went on a world tour to get back on track after Batman's meltdown. In Nightwing: OYL, Dick Grayson moves to New York to restart his Nightwing career after a long absence.

Now, I don't have the issue in front of me, because I buried it somewhere. It's godawful. But in continuity. Anyway, Grayson's kind of whiny about not being in the game for awhile and not being in prime shape.

But is a month really that long a time?

Unlike Bruce and Tim (Bruce Timm, weird), Nightwing almost immediately came back to Gotham and was in active duty up until Week Forty-Eight. So besides not having enough downtime as the headliners of the Bat-Family, what the hell could he complain about in Nightwing: OYL? He should have still been at the top of his game.

Hey, What Happened to Crazy Drugs?

Now I'm really confused.

Okay, so Batgirl takes down Shiva before the events of Infinite Crisis. With Shiva out of the way, the League of Assassins have no leader (what with Ra's and his oldest being dead, and Talia raising Damien and running LexCorp (wait, isn't Lex running LexCorp? When did he take it back?)), but that's not when Cassandra takes over because she's still out as Batgirl two weeks before the events in Robin: OYL.

In The Titans East storyline of Teen Titans, Deathstroke reveal(implie)s he has control over Batgirl, thanks to his specialty drugs like the kind he used on Rose and may have taken recreationally with Terra. She was quite the minx, for jailbait that is. Anyway, here's where WWIII screws up everything.

If Batgirl was talked into betraying the Batman Family, why did the Deathstroke drug antidote make her change back to the light side?

If Batgirl was drugged into betraying the Batman Family, why does Deathstroke do the whole devil-on-your-shoulder speech in WWIII?

How does Batgirl have to the time take total control over the League of Assassins and set up Robin in the two weeks before Robin returns to Gotham?

How can no one pick up on how this fucks up this whole character arc?

And wait, when the hell did Kid Devil and Ravager join the Titans when they weren't there two weeks before? Who was on the team when they got there, because this is what drives off Raven and Beast Boy apparently, yet no one else on the team that fought Black Adam stayed?

Damn, DC, now that I think about it, 52 failed miserably.

Hey, DC, You Remember Tad Williams?

I don't know if I can do a whole week of how World War III misfired but I certainly know what I'll be talking about today.

When DC gave the reins of Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis to Tad Williams after Kurt Busiek's sword-&-water run, one of the first things Williams(from now on, I'm calling him Tad, because I don't get to say 'Tad' that often) did was starting reconnecting Aquaman to the rest of the DCU. Busiek kind of did in Action Comics when the aliens were selling our planet on eBay, but Tad had delegates from the most interesting new DC city come to Atlantis. Of course, I'm talking about Sub Diego.

But while reading World War III, I came across how Aquaman became the Dweller in Darkness. He had to barter with Neptune and Poseidon for the power to save a certain city from death. That city was Sub Diego.

So what happened? Did someone resink it during Busiek's run? Was Keith Champagne not the right person for this story? I liked his work on Green Lantern Corps and wish he would take over that series. But I would have preferred if a group of editors wrote this story, anyone who knew what was going on in the other series to not further complicate continuity. Which I will talk about tomorrow.

You Say You Want A War? Well, You Know...

World War III. I'm with Chris Sims on this one, Morrison's version was much better.

To start off, I know Black Adam is a badass, but to have one man against the entire world of superheroes is almost ludicrous. He has the same power as Captain Marvel, the same, and yet no one could stop him? Really? Even with "godlike rage", I still find the whole premise a little hard to believe. I thought when they first announced this story that he would have at least the Great Ten or some other collection of supers on his side.

And the narration by Martian Manhunter? I wanted to weep the writing was so bad. There was all this wild shit going on, but it was anchored with J'Onn's existential crap that made me want to put the book(s) down sometimes. How did Black Adam's mind make him emo?

As far as the Titans tragedy we were promised, Superboy Prime beat them much worse and no one cares about a reanimated corpse dying. Or Young Frankenstein. Though Beast Boy's minimal reaction to the death of a girl he supposed love with all his heart seems to be in line with the callous joking he did when he thought Everyman died.

I enjoyed 52 Week Fifty but, then, it didn't have Martian Monologue. I would have preferred Black Adam actually doing something in five issues besides causing random property damage and killing throwaway characters. Again, Superboy Prime already went there and set the bar pretty high.