I’d be genuinely surprised if they make Harley and Ivy villains, when even the original comics have been pushing them increasingly away from there and more towards the anti-hero (or even outright heroic) end of things.

I like the style and overall designs a lot, but the costumes are... kinda bland, really. Certainly not bad, but Supergirl, Jessica, and Batgirl’s costumes are very close to their traditional comic look, and Zatanna’s seems pretty close to her 1980s alternate look (which is better than the fishnets, at least). Wonder…

I always thought that New 52 outfit was such a wasted opportunity. I love the cape, both for it’s more cloak-like cut and for the gold trim. But everything else? Even without the blatant sexualization, the high cut looks ridiculous combined with the long sleeves, and the cut-out knee boots are just... weird.

Honestly, John Constantine had been a mess for some time before his (re)integration to the mainstream DCU. His Vertigo series had been treading water for a long while, and I suspect it would have long since been canceled if not for Constantine’s historical significance to the imprint.

Fairly typical, though. None of Chris Claremont’s later turns with the X-Men ever matched up with his early days. And while Marv Wolfman never really came back to New Teen Titans, he stuck with the book for long enough that the quality difference between his earliest stuff and his post-Titans Hunt material is...…

That’s true: you can’t choose to install specific updates with that tweak and ignore others. But Windows Update will, at least, prompt you when there are updates pending, at least critical, rollup-style ones. In that regard, it’s largely the same workflow as it was from Windows XP through Windows 7. For me,…

The “original” identity was Sean. He took pro-fem to turn into Shvaughn, until the embargo against Earthgov made it too difficult to acquire, and she reverted back to Sean. You probably remember it the way you do because Shvaughn was the original character from a publication standpoint: Sean was created/retconned…

I think the fundamental problem with Laurel is that none of the writers of the era ever figured out exactly what to do with her. She was obviously conceived as a drop-in replacement for Supergirl. The first idea every writer had with her was to write her as such. But the problem there was that Supergirl was never…

The problem is that I don’t actually think the 5YL Legion was intended to show the team transitioning into adulthood. Though it’s not 100% clear from the comics themselves, the Bierbaums did write the RPG sourcebook, where they not only provide details on their run that didn’t make it into print, but also a timeline…

It all feels a bit too dark for Bat-Mite, though. Though the whole “screwing things up despite good intentions” bit works better with him than with Booster, certainly.

Rebirth didn’t do anything to the timeline itself, per se. It foreshadowed a potential future change (presumably in Doomsday Clock, if they ever actually get the whole thing published), but it’s still broadly the same New 52 status quo, just with an increasing number of pre-New 52 concepts sneaking back in.

The problem with Laurel (the adult version of her, at least) is that she never really got established as much beyond a Captain Ersatz version of Supergirl. That’s not the worst thing in the world, I suppose, but it’s a bit disappointing. The SW6 Laurel got treated much better, though, and was one of the better parts…

I still think what happened with Mysa stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of her character. The Bierbaums (I suspect) pegged her as “the sensitive one,” so they parlayed that into what was essentially PTSD at the hands of her abusive husband. That’s certainly not impossible, or even especially implausible, but…

I often wonder what might have been had Mark Waid been able to stay with the book as editor. He edited the first four or five issues of the Giffen/Bierbaum run, but was apparently then forced by DC to choose between continuing as an editor or pursuing his own writing career. It’s hard to say he chose poorly, given…

The Legion really does work best when writers explicitly lean into its inherent weirdness. Attempts to sanitize the team for more supposedly modern sensibilities inherently fall flat for me. I mean, the 5YL era discussed here was an pretty sober take on the franchise, but it still found time to be goofy when it needed…

I actually find the weakest part of 5YL Legion to be the dozen or so issues between Keith Giffen’s departure after the “Terra Mosaic” arc and the destruction of Earth, and the Bierbaum’s departure with issue #50. The Bierbaums were really good with dialogue, but their plotting was, frankly, an awful mess, and the arc…

The Darkstars book was surprisingly good, and while Donna Troy was a somewhat odd match for the concept, it generally worked, IMO. The late 1980s/early 1990s was a really good period for exploring the cosmic side of the DCU, what with both L.E.G.I.O.N. and the Darkstars. They deliberately shifted away from that by the…

At least all of the Legion’s retcons and reboots were properly squared away in story. It’s confusing as all hell, but there is a certain kind of sense to be made of it all. Hawkman, on the other hand.... The whole Hawkworld reboot was treated by most of the DC as an out-of-continuity story until it somehow wasn’t, and…

TMK have generally gotten a bit of a free pass with the Time Trapper/Glorith reboot because the Superman editors forced it on them. But I think that’s probably a bit too lenient.

That sourcebook is a surprisingly fun read. Unfortunately, given how sloppy the editorial control was on the actual comic at the time, it’s also the only source for a lot of key story beats for the team. There were clearly a lot of things the writers envisioned for the series early on that they never actually got…