Leaving aside the ethics of stringing along superhero-comics fans with one event after another—including the soon-to-debut weekly series 52, which will fill in the gaps between Infinite Crisis and "One Year Later"—what's most galling is that the latest set of remodels leaves the DC Universe even messier than it was one year ago. There are duplicate Nightwings on the streets, Hawkman has been retitled Hawkgirl, Catwoman has had a baby (and trained a replacement Catwoman), Black Canary has left the Birds Of Prey (and been replaced by a former villain), Supergirl has joined The Legion Of Super-Heroes, Green Arrow is the mayor of his city, and super-teams from The Teen Titans to The Outsiders have been restaffed. And since nearly every "One Year Later" issue ends on a cliffhanger, the stories are bound to get even more complicated. So much for bringing in new readers.
The news isn't all dreary. While the retooled Batman comics (penned by the usually reliable James Robinson) have been flatly dull, the new take on Superman (co-scripted by Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns) is highly entertaining so far, with unexpected twists. Busiek's new version of Aquaman also has potential, though the first issue is a little confusing, and both Catwoman and the New Orleans-set Hawkgirl (the latter co-created by veterans Walt Simonson and Howard Chaykin) have made refreshing new starts. But all these new heroes and concepts are clearly meant to parallel Julius Schwartz's late-'50s Silver Age recreations of The Flash, Green Lantern, et. al., and these "One Year Later" books simply aren't that radical. They have more in common with the bad old days of the late-'80s/early-'90s speculator boom, when everything was touted as an epochal event and characters were killed off willy-nilly, to be replaced by grimmer versions. The faces and the costumes may change, but the guiding principle still seems to be finding ways to separate comics fans from their money.
A.V. Club Ratings:
Action Comics, B+;
Aquaman: Sword Of Atlantis, B;
Batman, C-;
Birds Of Prey, C+;
Blood Of The Demon, D;
Catwoman, B+;
Detective Comics, D+;
Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, D;
Green Arrow, D+;
Green Lantern, A-;
Hawkgirl, B;
JSA, C-;
JSA Classified, B-;
Nightwing, C;
Outsiders, D;
Robin, B-;
Superman, A-