DC Rebirth: Week Two

Well, this was the second week of Rebirth. This week we had 5 comics. Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Flash Rebirth, and the first issues of Detective and Action comics. We also had the last issues of a bunch of B-list pre-Rebirth titles, and a couple which don't seem to have finished yet, for some reason.

Aquaman Rebirth
Of all 7 Rebirth titles so far, this is the one with the fewest changes. Aquaman Rebirth essentially happened at the start of New 52, when Geoff Johns was writing. We still have exactly the same setup as then. He's king of Atlantis, relatively popular, but there are terrorists. He's also "misunderstood" and people think he talks to fish, and is married to Mera. It felt like reading Aquaman #1 again, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Don't fix what ain't broken!

Wonder Woman Rebirth
This book was essentially consolidating some of the contradictory origins for Wonder Woman, and setting up the main mystery of the upcoming series, which is that her recent New 52 adventures don't make sense within the WW lore, so it's a conspiracy to find out who's lied to her. This was a pretty good story, and it's gotten me excited to read the upcoming series. This is probably the series of all 7 so far which has done the most to re-invent the character, and that's definitely a good thing.

Flash Rebirth
This is essentially both a recap of Flash's origin, and a continuation of DCU Rebirth. It picks up on the plot thread of the Watchmen badge in Batman's cave, and has Barry and Bruce investigating. They essentially conclude that something weird is going on, but they don't really know what, yet. It was really good to get the next bit of that storyline so quickly. I'm excited for the next 2 years or so of DC comics just to see where that all goes. However, the actual Flash content in this issue was a bit lacking. It didn't do much to set me up for what's next for the character. Maybe another aquaman scenario, where "rebirth" for Barry Allen happened just before New 52, so nothing much has changed in the status quo, beyond the whole Flashpoint/Wally/Watchmen stuff which is at the core of Rebirth?

Action Comics #957
So, this issue has NewOld Superman putting on his costume and picking up the role of Superman again, but mostly because Lex Luthor is in a mech-Superman suit claiming to be picking up Superman's legacy. They have an argument, and Lex's craftiness seems to come out on top. The page after the end of the issue talking about which characters are in which Super-books says that Action comics will feature Lex Luthor, so I suspect he will "win" against Superman somehow, which I'm really not into. I want to read stories about Superman beating bad guys for a while, not yet another storyline of Lex tricking almost everyone into thinking he's good!

Detective Comics #934
This issue was basically a "hey, here's Batman's supporting cast", which is presumably what this book will focus on. Batman and Batwoman discuss a threat to Gotham, because someone's beaten  up Azrael; and Batman enlists Batwoman to train up his supporting cast. This is mostly characters from the recent Batman and Robin Eternal story - Spoiler, Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake, and for some reason, Clayface. Excited to see some more of these characters, but it likely won't be my favourite book of a given week.

We also had the end of Black Canary, Constantine, Green Lanterns Corps: Edge of Oblivion (AKA "the book got cancelled, but please let us finish the story") and Red Hood/Arsenal, but none of them were noteworthy enough to mention beyond that.

Overall, Rebirth is looking very exciting! Next week we get the start of some of the books we got Rebirth for last week