Civil War or 52?

Skinfull

I'm neither a fan of DC nor Marvel but I recently picked up a copy of 52 volume one having read the first few episodes of each series...

However...I'm bitterly disappointed as it was actually civil war I enjoyed more! Now I gotta go hunt for the volume one of Civil War.

So which series did you prefer?

the Shades

I've actually only read Civil War but would wager that I'd still prefer it. Most of what DC have published in the last year or so has disappointed me. Likewise 52's sequel Coutdown seemingly taking over the entire DCU at the moment is currently irritatig me more than anything else!

Fysh

Didn't bother reading either, though I did keep up with summaries of both of them via Wikipedia, Scans_Daily, Comic Book Resources and the like. You have to bear in mind that they're very different ideas in both execution and story length.

Civil War was an event built around a core series of 7 issues, and fleshed out by having this event seep into the mainstream series and a couple of "back-up" series like Frontline.

52 was an experiment in weekly comics dedicated to showing the day-to-day goings-on in the DCU, within the larger framework of telling the story of what happened in the year that Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman were missing. It is in fact something like 56 issues in total because there were four issues of World War III put out around the same time, IIRC.

Anyway, my point is that they weren't really comparable events in scope or nature - a better comparison would have been, say, Civil War or Infinite Crisis. But that's just me.

Personally, I don't much care for either of them. But then I'm not a powers & pervsuits fan on the whole, so my opinion's probably a bit biased...

MarkHall

I enjoyed Civil war more than 52 buts that's more because 52 kind lost me half way through. The noval factor had worn off.

Skinfull

But wasnt Infinite Crisis a lead into 52? -I'm sure Im wrong about that but thats what I thought...

I just found 52 very "in-joke" orientated and alot of the art jokes and speech play was based on old DC stories that only DC followers would know. And people like me who peruse the independants more often then DC got lost! Civil was was a better story better told.

Fysh

Infinite Crisis was the big event, 52 was something that spun out of the repercussions of the event after discussing how best to fill in the gaps left by the "one year later" jump that most DCU titles were going to make upon the conclusion of Infinite Crisis.

As for it being more in-jokey and so on, I couldn't comment. But given that it's about second-string heroes who don't have enough popularity to justify their own monthly title, I'm not surprised that it was a bit harder to get into than Civil War. I've often found superhero comics to fall into one of two categories - either they are overly referential to their continuity/wider universe (in such a way that casual readers will be left with an incomplete story because the distinction between "story doesn't make sense without knowing x" and "story is enhanced if you know about x" is either misunderstood or ignored), or they go too far the other way and depict versions of their characters which are irreconcilable with their other depictions.

Examples : in 52, there's a scene where the Question spraypaints a question mark on a lamp, and sets it up to shine at a building or some such. One panel shows the question apparently looking at the reader from behind the lamp, stating "I can see you". If you don't know that Grant Morrison is involved with the comic and that he had previously written the Animal Man series in which the title character became aware of the nature of his fictitious existence, that set up is essentially wasted.

Similarly, in Civil War, we are shown an Iron Man who decides that siding with the government to turn all American superheroes into a private army is the best idea ever. Despite the fact that his own series previously showed him fighting against the registration movement, and the character precedent having been set such that he will do whatever it takes to stop misuse of technology he has created rather than superpowers in general. Civil War essentially decided to make Reed Richards and Tony Stark into despots, but failed to adequately explain why they do this, thus engendering a lot of sturm und drang amongst fans. (Yes, I know, there was that line "Stamford changed everything, yada yada yada" but come on, are we really expected to believe that this is the first time in Marvel continuity that there have ever been sizeable civilian casualties?)

(That being said, it's not like Captain America came out smelling of roses, I've seen references to crap Steve Rogers characterisation along the lines of him deciding that he doesn't understand what America stands for anymore because he doesn't have a fascination with Nascar or Youtube).

...

Jesus. Why do I spend so much of my time on comics that I'm not particularly interested in?

Skinfull

yeah I know what you mean. I usually steer away from superhero comics and my friends were suprised to see me with my head in the 52 comic. I guess I got carried away.

Onwards and upwards and back to FP to rummage through the back issues again.

bombidol

I enjoyed both