what the heck did they do to Raven's costume (and Raven in general) in the new DC 52?

[Mangod]

..I actually like the look of new Raven.

I'll freely admit that the new design isn't bad, but it's not Raven. I'm reminded of JLA: Act of God; the redesign isn't terrible, but it's not what the characters should look like.

-Picture-

Those people in the forefront? From left to right; Red Devil, Justice, The Hand and The Green Man... or as they are more commonly known, The Flash, Supergirl, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter. The new designs aren't bad, but they should have been entirely new characters, not an old character that's been changed for the sake of change.

Well judging from that those characters have changed so much that they've taken on new monikers.

Raven? Honestly it just looks like she's got a new costume. I'm sure her personality has minor tweaks too, but honestly it looks like people are overreacting for something which is basically a new wardrobe.

Well, yeah. It's a new wardrobe, and the new outfit is by no stretch of the word bad looking, but it's so divorced from what original Raven looked like that people feel alienated by it. It's like Superman Blue; too much change too quickly. The biggest problem, I think, is the helmet. If they had skipped that and gone with the good ol' cowl it would have probably looked better to most people, from an aesthetic view.

Of course, people are also upset because of changes to personality. I haven't read enough about the New 52 Raven to get the issues there, but if it's anything like Starfire becoming an emotionally dead slut (I hate having to use that word), then it's probably understandable.

Edit: In case you haven't read JLA; Act of God, all the superheroes get stripped of their powers by "God" (or something; we're never told) for being "arrogant" (saving peoples lives?! How dare you, you arrogant bastards?!). Most of them then completely abandon their original characterization to mope, except for the four mentioned above, who instead turn into Batman's groupies (Batman in this series being the most awesome person ever).

They haven't changed as people; they've just lost their powers, something that happens so often in this kind of series that they should really just man up and get back to saving people however they can; it's what they would normally do anyway.

 

[MLionheart]

Haven#t read it, but gonna guess that they're rebooting her story, so most of what you read before never happened.
Cool mask though.

 

[BarkBarker]

I can hear her now:" shit I can't see a damn thing, wonder how spiderman does it?"

 

[Olas]

As others have noted, the new design isn't entirely bad, just not very Raven like. Her helmet thing reminds me of the Xenomorphs, creepy and somewhat dehumanizing in how it covers her eyes.

I think it is amusing that everyone's love of a character is skin deep. Change the costume and they somehow lose all interest in a character when it shouldn't matter at all.

Why shouldn't it matter? Isn't a character's costume a form of self expression? We're not critical of her body, just how it's being decorated.

I should add though that I don't read comics anymore. However I find the idea of fans just wanting more of the same endlessly to be kind of weird. What is wrong with doing something different? Do you really want to see/read the same thing over and over again until the end of time?

Not liking a particular change doesn't mean you dislike change in general. It's not like this is the only option for changing her appearance. Surely one could redraw her in a manner that's distinctly different from her old form but still true to the spirit of her character.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

people act like the 90s DCAU and Teen Titans was all that. It wasn't, it was a random mish mash of characters with random roles the censors would allow. They watered down everything from Deathstroke's real job to Amanda Waller's real job.

They couldn't show 99% of what DC had in its original form, so they had to get creative to bypass the strict censorship by taking late 80s, early 90s material and putting a kid friendly spin on it.

So? that's not a bad thing and it worked

In fact, before harlequinn came along Joker was accused of being gay because he chased batman everywhere. That, and his romantic interest was named Bruno. A transexual neo-nazi. Can't show that to kids or to censors.

and because they employed competent people it worked out for the best

Instead he is hanging around the Teen Titans like a creepy uncle and working for a demon.
No explanation of anything, he has a skull mask so he must be magic. Even though nothing in his back story points to magic

You've forgotten that he died and was kept alive by Trigon magic. It was explained.
As for the rest of his History most people where glad he didn't sleep with Terra, just sayin'

And the funny thing is, the Teen Titans (the cartoon) isn't even an original story. Its a mish mash of the history of the series from the 1970s-80s. So whenever Teen Titans gets hailed as something original, they are talking about a rehash from decades ago.

... why is that a bad thing? A whole generation are unaware of how the Titan's started up and this was an accessible way to tell the highlights of Wolfman and Perez' work. You just throwing punches in the dark at this point.

and the kicker is the Teen Titans was meant to explore racial tension and other problems like Vietnam and its effects on the young. That didn't make it past the censor either. So most of the story was cut out for kids and replaced with something far more mundane because anything of value was either too edgy for TV or completely out of date.

Opinion not fact, and even if you where right back that up, the value was in the growing character development.

The fact is DC is the same as it ever was. Every single redesign is decried by the last generation just like music is. Just like cars. Just like everything else.

you might be stretching on the cars thing

10 years from now people will be talking about how this raven is the real one and how the one before this is a stereotypical emo from the early 2000s designed by a more insensitive and out of touch DC in an effort to be "cool." It will be just as dated and campy as the old Teen Titans are to us.

The worst costumes and the most stereotypical era was the 90s and the current DC stuff is emulating that (still agreed upon) excessively dumb era.

If TT and the rest of the characters had writing worth a damn those decrying the costume change would be few. I don't like the costume because of it's inelegant but I agree it good for story purposes to bad the story is sh!te.


A lot of what is wrong with the Nu52 design sense can be traced to the nighties, too dark, too busy, overcomplicated, over designed badly coloured. On thing that I really hate in the Superman costume is the lack of yellow, the red belt just melts into the blue and doesn't break the colour at all, it's bland. And for a superhero that's supposed to inspire and be a symbol and all that crap his costume if really dark (but I hear dark colours absorb more sunlight so that's okay I guess).

 

[Norithics]

Whenever this conversation happens about Titans, there's usually two camps: People who watched and loved Teen Titans the show, and people who were into them before the show.

Now, I belong to the former camp, so I can't speak with an unbiased opinion. So I want somebody who genuinely enjoys the not-show versions of these characters to explain to me what's enjoyable about them this way. What's actually compelling about them? What do you like about them?

 

[VoidWanderer]

My first thought on the DC Teen Titans, why does Robin have what looks to be wings?

Given the 'redesign' of the Nearlynude 52, I am glad to prefer a lot of what Marvel has accomplished in terms of exterior media.

I think Marvel should throw DC a bone and let them have Captain Marvel back, I mean its not like DC will have a good movie anytime soon.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

My first thought on the DC Teen Titans, why does Robin have what looks to be wings?

He flies now, that's pretty much it. It's the first second page from the comic. I don't like the design myself.

 

[infinity_turtles]

So they just tossed him with Trigon.

Err, no. You keep repeating that but I think it shows you're misremembering the series. When he was first introduced, he wasn't portrayed as working for anyone but himself. Then at the end of the Terra arc he sank into lava. As a way to bring him back and integrate him into the Trigon arc, they used the excuse that Trigon nabbed his soul and brought him back to life as a minion. They tossed him in with Trigon to reintroduce him, not as an excuse to avoid stating he was an assassin.

 

[Therumancer]

True, that's a stupid costume. But, it doesn't compare to the total insult that is Amanda Waller's re-design.

Yeah, you remember how her middle age, heavy-set figure, and almost agressive unsexualization was groundbreaking in a medium where even trailblazing characters like Wonder Woman needed to have a cleavage shot or two? Remember how, of all the people they could have gotten, 'Smallville' made the PERFECT choice and went with the, not exactly youthful, but still totally badass Pam Greer!

Yeeeeeaaaahhhhh... fuck that, she's thin and sexy now.

And she's got her very own cleavage shots! YAY!!!!!

Actually I think the problem is you kind of don't "get" Amanda Waller. To understand that character you have to understand it's a giant back and forth between Marvel, DC, and the Wildstorm imprint where they were all kind of giving each other nods back and forth. It get complicated and I don't remember all of it (I've mentioned it before though) so some people could probably do the run down better. Basically Waller was designed to be a sort of parody of Marvel's "Nick Fury" in running "Suicide Squad", to which Marvel created the whole Samuel L. Jackson version
Nick Fury in "Ultimate Universe" as a sort of counter-parody of Amanda Waller. In this whole thing you also have a character known as "Lynch" who was the patron of Gen-13 who was also an intentional homage to/satire of Nick Fury. This chilled out a bit allegedly because things got serious when Samuel L. Jackson contacted Marvel over the use of his likeness, and after some dickering agreed not to sue if they agreed that he'd get the option to play Nick Fury if they ever decided to do anything with the character in movies or whatever, which later turned into something of a windfall for him. Simply put ever since the whole Todd Mcfarlane/Tony Twist thing (where he lost a case after using the likeness of a real hockey player for a gangster by the same name) it's been a mess. At any rate things chilled out a bit.

Basically, Amanda Waller was a sort of inside joke (including the way she looked) that kind of outlived it's appeal. Since I'm guessing you didn't follow Wildstorm (which was a DC imprint for a long time), you may or may not know that they are in the process of bringing certain Wildstorm characters into the DC universe, albeit in changed form. One Wildstorm concept they are using is something called "Team 7" which was an old government super agents/black ops group in that universe from which Cole Cash (Grifter) and Lynch (Gen-13) were members, and which played a key role in the background of the whole Gen-13 concept as Gen-13 were the children of old Team-7 members some of whom also show up in the comics. Team-7 being a sort of nod (eventually through Lynch) to the old "Howling Commandoes". Team-7 as a backstory concept was brought into the new DC universe, and used in the origin of some of the characters that came over, Amanda Waller was turned into a more serious character and is now pretty much a combination of Lynch and Ivana, and from what some people have described to me is being drawn similarly to the black girl they had doing Fairchild's schtick in the awful Gen-13 relaunch. "Lynch" is mentioned but as a deceased member of Team-7.

It should also be noted that the whole "Elite" concept was also part of this ongoing back and forth. Back when "The Authority" was big they did this whole thing where they killed off analogies to tons of DC and Marvel characters, Planetary (also done by Ellis) had a weird hybrid version of The Justice League killed by a weird version of a bunch of classic pulp heroes at one point as well. Guys like Manchester Black (more so in the comics than the cartoon) were direct satires on Authority characters, in his case he was the analogy to Jenny Sparks. At one point they had him running around run by Amanda Waller (during "Our Worlds At War" if I remember) as one of her teams as well as a sort of subtle joke since they were both parodies , I believe some of the dialogue there was an intentional double entrande for those who "got it". It should be noted that DC pounding the crap out of The Authority/Wildstorm Characters with it's main universe characters became something of a tradition after what Wildstorm did to versions of the DC ones (Terra Occulta, Dreamwar, the whole Captain Atom incident) before the intergration.


I suppose I can see someone being kind of miffed if they were an Amanda Waller fan, and I mean she was kind of distinctive (in part for having an attitude with super heroes like Nick Fury which didn't happen as often), but she was never really a real character if you catch my meaning, she was there as a sort of weird joke. It's sort of like being a Manchester Black fan (which I guess has happened to), Manchester's big schtick is that it's an evil analogy to Jenny Sparks, that's kind of his purpose. The whole goofy "I must get Superman to kill" thing from the comics in particular is kind of because "The Authority" kills tons of people (ie The Authority doesn't have much of a recurring rogues gallery, they make sure of this), but as a sort of "haha" thing he's intentionally being silly without any of the real, deeper, logic behind it that was present in "The Authority" (much like the cartoon version of "The Elite" storyline). Not to mention that "The Authority" was reacting to a specific set of circumstances in their world. For example in DC/Wildstorm in addition to the pulp vs. weird stuff version, they literally had a "Planetary" storyline where they sort of explained what happened to the DC characters from that world. When Superman's capsule landed it was intercepted by a shadow government, they put a gun to the baby and "Blam!" then took the ship and harvested it for technology. Wonder Woman came out as an ambassador to the world and was immediately targeted by orbital weapons and killed. The alien who crashed and would have given Hal the ring? His ship was picked up by the same dudes who got superman and they did an alien autopsy on the guy and locked the depleted ring and lantern in a vault... The bad guys in Wildstorm were just so much nastier and creepier than DC.


Too much rambling and useless information, but perhaps I explained a few things in the process. A satirical character now lives on by being combined with a few other minor characters from another imprint that were also similar satires. She's basically now a combination of several Nick Fury clones, and if what I heard about the art is correct (not a big DC fan so I haven't checked it out, I was more of a Wildstorm fan at one point) it's been visually re-done to resemble a character from the Gen-13 label (even if Lynch never ran the version of the team that character was a part of, it was still his label).

 

[Skeleon]

When I saw that second picture, I literally started laughing out loud. What, do they think human nipples are on the side of the boobs, under that excuse for a corsage?
As for the character herself and whether this ruins her or not, no comment. Don't know much about superhero comics.

 

[Therumancer]

My previous rant aside I'd like to say that I also do not care for Raven's new costume, I mean it's not bad, but it doesn't fit the character and what she's supposed to be (magic themed, daughter of Trigon). The original look fitted her schtick and personality, the new version looks more like it should be a parallel dimension Hawkgirl.

As far as the comments about Ms. Marvel goes, I confess I don't like the change myself. Really when they are using a totally different girl, with a totally different power set, under that name I don't see the point other than to keep the name going. That it's a teenager is kind of irksome as well, given Caro's role with the government over the years I think it would have made more sense for the government to be the ones to pass the mantle when she started operating under a different code name and taking her name from a higher rank.

As silly as it sounds given that she's 16 and has such a different power set, I think they probably should have made Kamala Khan "Marvel Girl", especially seeing as Jean Gray hasn't used that name in pretty much forever and it could be amusing for that reason especially if a Fangirl of Ms. Marvel started using the name on her own without realizing Jean's old code name and then ran into her at some point. Not that I'm a huge fan of trying to pass totally different characters off under a well known name for attention.

Really, I think both Marvel and DC need to sit down and start working on creating some new chracters, or developing some new alternate universes or whatever. It seems like every time someone has an idea they try and find a way to put it under the name of an existing character as opposed to just creating something new.

Wildstorm was left off on a bad note, if they ever re-visited that universe they had an apocalypse started by the sudden release of scads of superbeings crazy from imprisonment, most of whom were totally undefined (and there were far more than were shown). Head to that universe again and they have plenty of room for development. Or better yet, just start something new... I mean cripes "Well Kamala Khan looks, acts, and has powers nothing like Ms. Marvel but we'll call her Ms. Marvel despite the original only having been out of those shoes for like five minutes and association with her is still high... it will be great". Why not you know... use her as herself and sell the character on it's own, if the universe can't handle it (and honestly I don't see why Marvel can't for whatever reason) then just make a new universe for it and other characters. Who knows, maybe the guy who did that new version of Raven could team up in some kind of joint project and Kamala and Not-Raven (I mean seriously WTF) could be roomates or something.

 

[Ieyke]

Isn't it exactly what comic books do... restart over and over?

No. Only DC.
Marvel has never restarted. Ever.
They've done occasional retconning for maintenance, and they occasionally create alternate universe's to play with new ideas, but the Marvel 616 universe has been going on and on and on forever now.

DC is the only one I know that restarts.

 

[JimB]

Deathstroke was entirely meaningless. He is an assassin with no contract hanging around for no reason. He is just there because they wanted someone "cool" and because he played a major role in the comics. But they couldn't show his actual job so they just made him a devil's minion. A cop out.

I agree with part of this, but I think you're overstating the case. In the cartoon, Slade (who is not called "Deathstroke" because a show marketed at the age demographic the cartoon was could not say words synonymous with "death;" you ever notice how the villains only say things like "destroy" or "annihilate?") is a megalomaniac who wants to take over "the city" for completely unnamed purposes, leaving the viewer to assume he's evil for the sake of evil. That's a bit pointless, because no one is evil for its own sake but rather to achieve a specific goal, but to say the character himself is meaningless? That's unfair. He serves a clear purpose in the narrative as the overarching antagonist of the series. He is very clearly not an assassin in that iteration of the show, so demanding he be one instead of a criminal mastermind isn't entirely fair.

Similarly, I think you have set yourself quite a burden of proof if you assert that the producers only made Slade Trigon's servant because they couldn't make him an assassin. The show's narrative clearly states that he served Trigon only as a means to gain resurrection from his death at the end of season two, which heavily implies his servitude is a deliberate plot device to reintroduce the series's main villain. If you have evidence to the contrary, then I should like to see it.

 

[Mojo]

Snip

Snip

Okay, first off I wanna say, that this is coming from someone who knows nothing about the DC universe. I read the Killing Joke, played some games, watched some movies and saw the Batman Animated series. That's really all I know. I did always like Harley Quinns character ever since I saw the animated series. I also quite enjoyed her in the Arkham games.

Now I picked up the #0 and #1 issue of the new comics. And I didn't even know what "The new 52" meant before I read this thread and then read up the Wikipedia article. I read issue 0 and so far I'm liking it. I'm not a huge fan of the new design, I liked her classic one better, but I can deal with it, its not terrible. I did notice that the writers seem to be somewhat aware of her over sexualisation in the first issue. I didn't get to the part where joker infects her with the substance that infected him, (I'm assuming its the same from the Killing Joke.) but that sounds pretty stupid tbh. (especially since its implied that that story isn't event the real Joker backstory as he has a ton of them, non of which are entirely true, but whatever.)
Ill have to wait and see how this develops, but currently I don't really see any huge problems. My short Wikipedia research for the new 52 did teach me of the existence of the Batman: Mad Love comic, which I will be ordering soon. Perhaps the revamp of the other new 52 comics, such as Teen Titans (which I know nothing about.) is worse.

EDIT: I also just read that apparently Barabra Gordon can now walk again, I guess that's some classic comic book BS. "Oh, some character died or something, naw it was just a trick/we got him from the past/parallel universe/its a different person (but not really), so its cool."

 

[Mr. Q]

You're not alone, my friend. Raven does look like shit and is no longer the character she was prior to the reboot. I'd say Starfire got it worse in the pages of Red Hood and the Outlaws, but that' my opinion. The same can be said for everyone else in the DCU who isn't Batman. For a better understanding of what I'm talking about, here is a link to Linkara's review of that issue.

http://blip.tv/at4w/at4w-red-hood-and-the-outlaws-1-6841656

It's pretty much the same thing with all of the DC Universe characters coming out of New 52. They're no longer characters, they're products. This is what happens when you put the most hopelessly inept people in charge. Everyone in charge of that company, from Dan Didio to Diane Nelson, are the worst fit for a comic book company that has such deep history of great books. And the sad thing is that many of the more talented artists and writers were and are continually being dragged around by a choke chain because of this bullshit.

All DC Comics wants to do these days is to regurgitate a soulless, artistically dead but eye-catching product to wave in front of the eyes of socially retarded white male teens who probably wouldn't know a good comic book unless it had multiple body counts and treated women like sex toys. DC's New 52 is the worst aspects and ideals spawned from the dark age of 90s comics made flesh; a brain dead, attention-seeking, utterly pathetic abomination suffering from ADHD while jerking off simultaneously to torture-porn horror movies and to the undergarments section of the JCPenny winter catalog.

I'm sorry if I come off mean-spirited with my comment. But, as a fan of comics and a once long-time reader of DC Comics, this is a slap to the face of every man, woman, and child who has ever picked up a comic book. You wanna know how bad DC's New 52 has gotten? This is what they recently put out for Free Comic Book Day!

http://comicsalliance.com/dcs-futures-end-0-free-comic-book-day-2014-review/

http://atopfourthwall.tumblr.com/post/84706535138

I know I shouldn't be surprised by any of this crap, but leave it to DC's new hierarchy to defy my already low expectations. -_-