The Dawn of DC is Over

Absolute Power #4 finishes off the big event that concludes the Dawn of DC. Reflecting back, there are a few things I can appreciate about Absolute Power and the Dawn of DC, and some things that could have been done better. Let's focus on the positives to start.

This whole era felt very intentional. By that, I mean we had each of the events during this time period - Dark Crisis, Lazarus Planet, Knight Terrors, Beast World, and now Absolute Power - and each of these was used to create distrust between the Superhero community and the world. As we learn in Absolute Power, this was Waller's plan all along. Infinite Frontier felt a little less directed - to be fair, I read far more of Dawn of DC.

The quality of these books individually were extremely solid. Some of the highlights were Superboy: Man of Tomorrow, Joshua Williamson and Jamaal Campbell's Superman, and Unstoppable Doom Patrol, and so many more. Poison Ivy and Nightwing were carryover from prior to Dawn of DC but kept their quality up. Overall, there was no shortage of good books to add to your pull list.

Not only were the books good but a wide variety of characters got the chance to shine. Cyborg and Steel each got their own miniseries, Green Arrow got a limited series that extended into an ongoing, and we saw new characters in the We Are Legends line with The Vigil, City Boy, and Spirit World. 

Now for the misses in this era.

The biggest and most glaring issue was the Justice League and Titans. Dark Crisis was set up to disband the Justice League and make the Titans the primary team defending Earth. It certainly disbanded the Justice League, and multiple books told us multiple times that the Titans are the new team in town. But it didn't feel that way. There were constant verbal reminders that the Titans had replaced the Justice League but never once did the team feel to carry that weight. Beast World was the closest we got to the Titans being the premier super team, but even that didn't come close to measuring as one of the best Titans stories, let alone anywhere near the best Justice League stories. So now that the Justice League is back in the final pages of Absolute Power #4, the impact of that is slightly less because we knew it was happening and because the heroes that made up the Justice League did the heavy lifting anyway.

Another larger issue in this era was the Knight Terrors event. The event itself was fun, had some great books to enjoy, and the main story was well written and intriguing. However the huge issue was the line-wide halt of all other books for this event. Where were you when Knight Terrors started? Green Arrow was on issue #3. Superman was on issue #5. Nightwing was between two arcs that had nothing to do with Heartless. The decision to halt a fairly new initiative for this event killed a lot of momentum for those books.

Finally, Absolute Power felt like a good blend of hits and misses. Dan Mora art - Hit. Waller being a big bad not really in character- Miss. Engaging story with high stakes - Hit. Confusing - Miss. Let's talk about that last one. Absolute Power consisted of 4 main issues with several tie-ins. However, I felt that a LOT of stuff happened in the tie-ins to this event, making them less than optional. Full disclosure, I read the 4 main books, one Batman tie-in, and 2 Superman tie-ins. There should have been more discourse from DC explaining which books were essential reading. It seemed like Green Arrow and Task Force VII might have been essential reading because a lot of Absolute Power was about characters stating things that happened (maybe?) in those books. I enjoyed the event but it felt confusing to me, which made it hard to enjoy it to the fullest. A collected edition will read very nicely for this event.

 Dawn of DC and Absolute Power is over. We're now on to DC All-In and the Absolute Universe. This era has been good for DC Comics, especially as something of a springboard into this next era - there's a lot of buzz and excitement around the Absolute Universe and All-In, and I can't wait to see what's next!