Cast your mind back to November. Reread this post of mine, wherein I posit that a silly pun is actually the basis for the entire set-up of the post-Flushpoint DCU.
Go read it, it's a short one. I'll wait.
Welcome back. Gosh, I love it when I'm right.
So how do I know that my silly theory was actually correct? Well, check out this weeks Demon Knights #4. Merlin is talking to The Shining Knight in a vision, warning
(There's that mysterious "they" again...)
See, they just thought that Merlin was naming the group the Demon Knights, but nope, he was trying to warn Ystina about the Daemonites.The mysterious Ms. Monitor told Flash that "they" had split the timeline into three, in order to weaken us for their coming. Merlin was trying to establish Camelot again and again in hopes of stopping this "they." In Stormwatch, also by Paul Cornell, a mysterious being came to cause great devastation on Earth, in order to toughen us up for "their" coming.
And you may recall back in Superman #1, someone blew that mysterious big-ass horn, summoning "them." And ever since then Kal-El has been fighting mysterious alien menaces. And now there's the solicitation for Superman #7 in March:
The start of an insanely epic arc from the new writing team of Keith Giffen and Dan Jurgens! New love interests, new roommates, and a new foe: the wicked Helspont! What does this monster want with Superman, and how does it all connect to the Daemonites?
Straight outta Wildstorm, it's Helspont and the Daemonite menace.
Folks, "Demon Knights" is a pun that proves that Jim Lee is full on importing his Wildstorm villains, the Daemonites, to be the new Big Bad for the nuDCU.
I predict that by the end of the first Justice League arc, Darkseid himself will name drop the Daemonites, probably one again as the mysterious "they." And we'll see more and more references dropped in the other nu52 books to the Daemonites.
And the first big mega crossover for the nu52 will be the Daemonite invasion of Earth. Yup, I'm calling it right now.
And you'd better believe me--I'm on a streak!! After all, I was right about the Teselecta in Doctor Who...
And my dance of happiness?!? If you could see it, it would look a little like this:
While I commend you on your prophetic powers, I'm rather disappointed. I'm a DC fan, not at all a Wildstorm fan. If the big bad of the NuDC is a Wildstorm thing, I have ceased to care. And I find it especially painful given how few DC villains have appeared in the new books. In fact, I think my greatest complaint about the New DC is that there are very few good villains. It's all henchmen and secret societies, or else lame new villains that hang around in groups because they could never prove a threat alone (like in Green Arrow).
ReplyDeleteSo bringing in the Daemonites is a boring proposition for me and another symptom of DC having signed a deal with the devil, i.e. Jim Lee who seems responsible for all those awful costume designs, bringing in Image expatriates whose art I despise, and integrating his lame properties into the DCU.
I've said for years that DC sold its soul when it bought Wildstorm. nu52 is where the bill comes due.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting in that, while DC has a long and successful history of assimilating other properties, the past decade has seen a reversal of that, without several outright failures, and in the case, the company they bought seemingly assimilating them.
Holy Pastafazool! That...that's actually quite brilliant. I NEVER would have made the connection. That being said, I have to agree with Siskoid. I'm not much of a Wildstorm fan either. I just keep hoping that we'll get Martian Manhunter back somehow, and away from those Stormwatch people.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally following you on this one :P Heck, even if it all turns out wrong, at least it was an heck of a plot/conspiracy, easily better than what they might actually come up with in the end!!
ReplyDeleteOh my...you're so totally right, but I completely wish you weren't. I don't care one way or the other for Wildstorm villains, but I detest the fact that every DC title is going to become a tie-in to the next big all-encompassing crossover deelie a mere few months after a 'making DC more accessible to new readers' reboot initiative. You know what's not accessible to new readers? Mega-crossovers that require you reading the entire nu52 line!
ReplyDeleteApologies, rant over.
Snell...you insane sage of the arcane. You have saved me a substantial amount of cash. That I will fritter on comics I actually care about. I am out. I love the mythology of the DC heroes. But I am packing it in. I have no objection to integrating universes (see: Darkseid, Captain Atom, SHAZAMarvel), but trashing the whole continuity while making the heroes a bunch of tools so that Lee can mash in all the Wildstorm stuff...fail. I should have learned from Final Crisis. I want to enjoy DC...but... I am out. I am fanboy rant guilty as well. I will put in some JLU dvds and weep bitter tears. Or at least grumble.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else remember when pre-DC Wildstorm teamed up with Marvel during the Heroes Reborn arc? Let's hope it goes better than that, but it does show the Daemonites are more than willing and able to play games with the multiverse.
ReplyDeleteNow, Stephen, I'd hate to see you give up any comics because of something I've speculated, especially as I might very well be wrong (at least about the mega-crossover idea).
ReplyDeleteOk, snell, I will step back from the edge. I think I a leaning toward dropping my DC titles because the New 52 stories have just been...dull. It would be easier if it was a massive corporate mega conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteAs 2011 wraps up, I'm sure I'll do a sort of year in review type thing in which I demolish the New52 initiative, but I'll say this: The best of the New52 are almost all books that could have been done without a reboot, and the worst elements are often those that were caused by the reboot.
ReplyDeleteSo while I'm greatly enjoying books like Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Frankenstein, Demon Knights, Batwoman and others, there is really nothing there that couldn't have worked pre-Flushpoint. The one exception might be the Superman books, but I'm really not as enthusiastic about Morrison's Action Comics as others are.
On the flipside, we've got the terrible "mutant hysteria" element of making DCU citizens antagonistic towards superheroes, a collapsed time scale that doesn't really work, godawful costume redesigns, reboots on characters who didn't need them (like Blue Beetle) and Wildstorm properties that do very little for me, and possibly for anyone else.
"...and Wildstorm properties that do very little for me, and possibly for anyone else."
ReplyDeleteI'm sure they do well for Jim Lee's wallet...as creator of Stormwatch, Grifter, Voodoo, daemonites, I'm sure he's getting not too insubstantial royalty benefits for the reboot.
Mate, I've not seen this anywhere else on the web so if you're right you deserve huge amounts of kudos.
ReplyDeleteNot terribly kudos-worthy, Gary...just saying an odd title aloud while something else was on my mind and a flash of intuition...
ReplyDelete