The Final 52 Shake-Up!

This is it: The New 52 is finally over! DC Rebirth #1 comes out today, which means DC's Five Years of Nonsense is officially at a close. Missing characters have returned, missing relationships have returned, missing teams have returned, and all of the characters look and feel like themselves again. I haven't decided yet whether I should replace the "52 Shake Up" tag with a "Reborn" one (although there's already one character - Jackson Hyde - that I could use it on), but that'll work itself out in time.

The point of this post is to close out the New 52 with a bookend of sorts. Two years ago, I created the first 52 Shake Up post to highlight all the canon immigrants that were kept around during the reboot. I've made several more posts since then, and in some cases the definition has expanded to include already existing characters that the New 52 changed radically enough to match adaptations that they basically became canon immigrants. But there are several more I missed, so I'll close out this era with an article dedicated to them.

The Riddler maintains his suit and bowler from the 60s show. Batman #23.2 (September 2013) is one example:

Killer Croc maintains his true reptilian-ness, instead of just having a skin condition. Batman and Robin #23.4 (September 2013) is one example:

Alfred continues to have raised Bruce after the Waynes died. This example is taken from Batman #49 (February 2016):

The Hall of Justice appeared in Justice League International #1 (September 2011).

The Global Guardians were mentioned in Justice League International Annual #1 (August 2012). I'm not aware of their formation ever coming to pass.

Adrianna Tomaz appears in Justice League of America #7.4 (September 2013), which sets her up to become Isis. As far as I know, this never came to pass, either.

John Stewart still has a military background, as evidenced by this cover to Green Lantern Corps #25 (November 2013):

Costume Spotlight: The Flash's TV Look (With Bonus Reverse-Flash!)

Just in time for the season two finale, I present the time DC changed the Flash's costume to be more in line with the tv show...only to have the tv show make the change irrelevant only a few months later! Of course, this isn't the first time the Flash's outfit has reflected the small screen, as I've covered before.

When The New 52 happened, every character got a design overhaul. Some were major, some were minor, but all of them involved a bunch of extraneous lines. Fortunately, The Flash came off looking pretty good since extra lines means more places for lightning to flow from. Here's how he looked beginning in 2011:

Not bad!

Come 2014, The Flash gets his own series on The CW, with a pretty accurate costume...with some exceptions. The main one being that instead of a white circle behind the lightning bolt, it was red. I've never been able to figure out why this is, since the pilot shows a picture of a future Flash that has the white circle, but that's the choice they made. (The other one being that he doesn't have yellow boots, which has never occurred to me before but now that I've noticed it, it's going to bug me big time).

So in The Flash #41 (June 2015), the Flash in the comics gets a new costume that looks very similar. Even the extraneous lines have been moved to more accurately reflect the extraneous lines on his tv costume. And this was definitely to tie into the show, because this storyline also introduces the Reverse Flash to the New 52, and he was the primary antagonist of The Flash season 1.

So yay, he looks more like the tv show! ...except that season two of The Flash changed the circle to white only three months later. Of course, now that DC Rebirth is happening, I have no idea how the two costumes will compare.

But hey, speaking of Reverse Flash! Here's what he looked like prior to the New 52:

Simple, clean, efficient. I dig it. Here he is in The Flash season one (2014-2015):

Pretty good. A little too much black for my taste, but it gets the job done. So, of course, when he's introduced in the New 52 an issue before Barry's new costume (May 2015)...

...there's the black! Arguably not as much as the tv version, and they changed the shape of his symbol to a diamond for some reason, but it's still clearly based on the tv version.

Spotlight/52 Shake-Up: Miracle Monday

Sometimes other sites get to things before me. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I don't feel comfortable repeating that information on this site as if I didn't just learn it. So instead, I link to it.

Today's link is about Miracle Monday, which was originally featured in a Superman novel of the same name (1981).

Now, I honestly don't know how this escaped me. I'm familiar with the story, because I've previously featured a character from it on this blog - Kristin Wells. But somehow I either never thought to look if the holiday made the transition as well, or I did and just forgot to ever post about it.

Either way, the great people at ComicsAlliance made an in-depth post about it yesterday, so you can read all about it there. Enjoy: A Celebration Of Freedom: Miracle Monday Through The Years

Character Spotlight: Grant Ward

It took some time, but Marvel has finally been getting around to introducing its MCU SHIELD characters. It started with Coulson back in 2012, before Agents of SHIELD existed. Then, after a couple years, we got a team including Coulson, May, FitzSimmons, and Quake, Daisy's nickname "Skye", Mockingbird and Lance Hunter's relationship, Quake's mother Jiaying, Coulson's car Lola, and Raina, all in fairly quick succession. But there's one major character missing from that list.

Grant Ward.

(The reason why is spoilers, so if you haven't yet watched past the first half-season of Agents of SHIELD but plan to, come back later.)

For those of you who don't know, Grant Ward was an operative on Coulson's special team in the first season of Agents of SHIELD, but after the events of Captain America: Winter Soldier (March 2014), he was revealed to be a HYDRA mole. So by the time they started introducing the characters into the comics, he was no longer part of the team.

This is reflected in his sort-of-first appearance in Secret Wars Hail HYDRA #1 (July 2015):

It's also reflected in his first ACTUAL appearance, in Agents of SHIELD #5 (May 2016).

I can't explain the Iron Man armor, even though that's totally something the show's Ward would do if they had the budget. But there you have it - the set is finally complete! Well...not counting Mike Peterson or Joey Guttierez or a few others. (For what it's worth, Mike Peterson is represented by a Deathlok in the Agents of SHIELD book, but that Deathlok's name is Henry Hayes.)