Professional DC Comics expert Alex Jaffe and I have been rereading the ambitious comic book 52 and podcasting about it. We’ve just reached the halfway point, and even if you haven’t read the series before, we think this is a great place to join us.
1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths is a fantastic book on its own merit, but is also a fascinating look at DC Comics’ “events,” which are a way to both boost sales and resolve tricky editorial problems. Through this, writers and artists try to cohere the DC universe from something sprawling and inconsistent into a logical world with more concrete rules. DC has had dozens of such Crisis events, some more successful than others. 52 is a series that spun off of such an event, but is so, so much better than the circumstances of its creation.
52 was an experiment in American comics that worked exactly once. After the event Infinite Crisis, the DC universe jumped ahead in time by one year as a way to explain the new radical status quo for the characters. To help readers learn what happened in that missing year, four of the most popular DC comics writers–Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison–got together to put out a weekly series exploring the events of the DC universe in real time, week by week.
52 did not do a particularly good job of telling the editorially mandated story of that missing year, but it did something much better: it was a successful weekly comic book that revitalized several smaller DC Comics characters. For manga readers, that may sound like no big deal, but the American comic books industry does not have the infrastructure to support a weekly, full color comic book. As Jaffe and I have explored this comic in depth, we’ve learned how many times this project almost failed. Most recently, I learned that in one week, the line art got lost while in transit to the Brazilian studio that inked the book, and they had to do a rush job working off photocopies that were overnighted. The fact that this comic book was released on time every week was a miracle. The fact that it’s also extremely good almost defies reality.
If you haven’t read 52, feel free to start at the beginning of the podcast and read along with us. If you just want to start listening, the latest, episode 27, is a great place to start. Jaffe and I summarize each of the simultaneously running plotlines in the book. For Aftermath subscribers, we have a ton of bonus episodes for people who want to know more about the projects that spun off of 52, including many aspects of the DC extended universe movies (except the Zach Snyder films, which Jaffe will not watch unless he personally receives three thousand dollars). We’ve also spoken to artists who have worked on 52, including Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Geoff Johns. I have not given up on interviewing Grant Morrison, and if anyone has their contact information please do reach out.
Understanding 52 is the key to unlocking the entirety of DC comics. It is an exercise in its star writers exploring their specific fixations, working with and around an editorial mandate, and following in the tradition of Crisis on Infinite Earths to use fiction to solve other editorial problems. I doubt we’ll ever see a comic book like it ever again, but you may see adaptations of bits and pieces of this book in popular culture as James Gunn takes control of the DC movie universe. I mean, it already began before his tenure—The Rock’s Black Adam movie is directly inspired by the Black Adam storyline in 52. But Gunn in particular has the same fondness for the freaks and losers of the DC universe as the writers of 52, like Peacemaker, Vigilante, the Creature Commandos. His comic book inspiration for the upcoming Superman movie comes from a 52 writer, Grant Morrison. These are the kinds of stories and characters that truly differentiate DC from Marvel, and made a lifelong DC obsessive out of me.
Jaffe and I have already embarked on reading the second half of the series, where the narrative gets even weirder. I hope you’ll join us.
