DC's Second Wave Rankings: The Two-Third Mark

DC just released four of its six its "Second Wave" of Nu52 books. I'll be ranking these four books using the following key:


All In - I'm hooked indefinitely. Or at least until they change the creative team.

Probation - This book's good enough to buy through the first story arc, based on this issue, but not good enough to give it an "All In". Yet.

Double Secret Probation - This book didn't do it for me overall, but there's just enough going for it (i.e. strong art or a writer with a great past history) to give it one or maybe two more issues before dumping it.

Drop It Like It's Hot - This book is now dead to me. You couldn't get me to buy this at gunpoint.

Look Closer - I may not have given this book a fair shot. I'll check it out again next week. Maybe.


The two remaining unreleased "Second Wave" books are Batman Inc. by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham and The Ravagers by Howard Mackie(!) and Ian Churchill, and I'm about 99.99999% sure how I'm going to rank each of them. So let me present my feedback on the rest:


*****MAJOR SPOILER WARNINGS*****


Dial H - Writer China Mieville and artist Mateus Santolouco give this Silver Age concept a creepy new spin. And unlike some of DC's superhero books, here that's actually a good thing. These are the weird powers that "New 52" Resurrection Man should be getting instead of receiving energy/electrical powers for the umpteenth time.
All In.


Earth 2 - While we knew the art would be good, the big speculation on this book was which James Robinson was going to show up to write it. Unfortunately, we have our answer: It's James Robinson the lazy, shock-death-obsessed hack of "Cry For Justice" and "War Of The Supermen" infamy. What a colossal failure of imagination this book is. Let's examine this issue's death count, shall we? Not only did Robinson start the book off with Earth 2 Lois, Hippolyta and most of Metropolis dead, he also managed to kill off the Trinity, most of the Greek Roman pantheon (did I mention Robinson being lazy?), and even Al Pratt. Not content to stop there, Robinson also de-aged and OMD'd the Garricks, turning Jay into a slacker and Joan into Silver Age Lucy Lane. And screw the Speed Force, why not just have Jay's power come from the Greek Roman god Hermes Mercury instead? Except for the fact that this story led to the creation of the World's Finest book (see below), it was just a damn waste.
Double Secret Probation....and it's even that high only because of the beautiful Nicola Scott artwork.


GI Combat - Yeah, this comic didn't do anything for me when it was called Men Of War, either. Sorry.
Drop It Like It's Hot.


World's Finest - Forget the awfulness of Earth 2 or the strangeness of debuting the spin-off mag the same week as the debut of the comic it was spun off from. This comic was damn good. Paul Levitz gave us everything a first issue is supposed to have: intriguing premise, strong characters, setup, plot progression, and, of course, action. Having George Perez and Kevin Maguire as artists didn't hurt either.
All In.