Designated Sidekick

I’ve been very silent lately for one reason (plus I could have sworn I posted a version of this a few months back).  I was a DC fan.  My pull list consisted of Blue Beetle,  Robin, Nightwing and Birds of Prey, a few bits of Batman and Booster Gold.

With the insufferably bad Crisis on Finite Batman storyline, which, back in <a href=http://www.girl-wonder.org/designatedsidekick/2008/06/28/comics-round-up-the-ds-reading-list-for-june/>June 28 2008</a> I called the Jezebel Jade storyline. (She had the double – a villain and copped a ManBat fridging), I quit the BatFranchise.  Then the rest of the BatFranchise quit me.  The complete waste of death of Batman actually depressed me at the technical story writer level.  The Death of Batman should have been a central story arc for the entire DCU, and not some complex footnote in the story arc of Crisis 2009.

Like I said back then, DC needs to hire writers. Teams that could make the death of Batman something that fundamentally shook the core of the DCU, made every non-metahuman character reconsider their role if Batman, the best of the human, could be beaten, how could they deal? Plus, since Batman was so universally influential, his death by a team of supervillians would elevate those villains threat profiles astronomically.  Also, consider the competitive rivalry amongst the DCU villians now these clowns were responsible for the take down of the greates Detective ever… could Lex Luthor stand the humiliation? Would the Arkham Asylum inmates feel cheated of their revenge and seek new targets? How many Batverse villians would find their motivation waning now they weren’t challenging Batman? Would victory drive Joker sane?  All these and more could have been the dawn of an awesome era of story telling.

Instead we have Dick versus Tim versus Jason versus Randy Orton  in “Battle for the Cowl”. Oh, and Steph Brown being sacked as Spoiler. Again. Because that worked out as a clever story arc last time.

Right.

Wake me when Bruce comes back from the dead in 12 months, and somebody learns how to make BatBrat Damien interesting.

Since  now with all bar one of my regular comics stopped at the publisher side, and there’s a sequence of fearfully dull crossover arcs infecting the DCU,  I’m fishing around for a new franchise.  I’m not too keen on the Marvel Universe and I have routinely had problems following the internal logics of their universe

Anyone have anything positive/negative to say about the Wildstorm franchise? Specifically Gen 13, Stormwatch: PHD, Authority, and Wildcats?

Anything good in the IDW franchises?