INFINITE FRONTIER #0 - The New Age Begins (Again).

This title was written and drawn by various talents, with a framing story by Joshua Williamson. 

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!   

 

I have pretty much been on a hiatus from DC Comics for the last month and change, as I had grown bored with the Future State line of titles after only a couple of weeks of them being rolled out. Since that moment, I have been eagerly anticipating the moment in which I could once again bring myself to journey back to the land of the Distinguished Competition, reuniting myself with some of the most iconic characters in the history of comic books. Nothing was going to stop me from making my return to this world of retcons and reboots, of Crises both Final and Infinite, a land of Dark Knights and Clown Princes of Crime, and what a welcome return it was.

After everything that has gone on over the past six months or so (probably, time kind of all blends together these days, it could have only been three days for all I know), I wondered what exactly DC’s plans for the future really were, as there was the period of time where this “5G” thing was happening, and then suddenly it wasn’t, before Death Metal happened, confusing the hell out of me from start to finish, while being thoroughly unenjoyable. I feel, then, that it is quite understandable that I would not have high hopes for when the big reboot eventually came, but I have to say that this blew all of my expectations out of the water. This first giant-size issue made for an excellent scene setter for the next four months of story-telling for the company, with my fears that it was just going to be another reboot for the sake of a reboot being put firmly to bed, giving me some hope that we can now return to that excellent story-telling that started five years ago with the beginning of DC Rebirth. There was far too much happening in these sixty pages for someone like me to possibly talk about every single thing, but I will now try my best to take about some of the highlights, but certainly some of the lower moments as well if I can recall them.

I think I will have to start with the one big thing that kind of irked and confused me about this entire thing. So, we just went through two full months of Future State related business, where we introduced some new characters who could possibly take over in some future timelines, providing a new world where everything was completely different and novel for a little while. My question though is this: why do all of that, if you are just going to use the new characters and concepts in the normal timelines straight off the bat anyway? We had Tim Fox here conversing with his dad, we had Yara Flor directly referenced by the Amazons and introduced for her own story, the freaking Magistrate program was already teased, suggesting that none of the Future State things were even that far in the future in the first place. Obviously, considering my opinion on Future State, I cannot be expected to say anything nice about it, but surely it would have just been easier to jut introduce all of these things in the ongoing stories already being published, instead of halting everything for two months, while also pointlessly introducing other things that get nary a reference in this story.

After that little aside, let us now venture into the more positive realm of this book, that is to say most of the goddamn thing. I have made it no secret that I have actually quite been looking forward to seeing what Brian Michael Bendis can do on the Justice League title, as I have said that a team book is more of his strong suit, instead of writing for a character in a solo title, which he did not create, and therefore did not have his usual level of control over. From the miniscule snippet that we were allowed to see here, I thought that it had some potential, although I really do not get what all of that “Shazadam” stuff was about, but I am sure that it will (maybe) be explained within the book itself, although this is Bendis, so it is never a certainty with his books. This little bit of the story did make me question the timelines a little bit, as it is later revealed that Wally has been bestowed the title of Flash by Barry, so I can only assume that the Justice League story took place prior to that happening.

The Batman story was also quite fun to read, as it establishes the new status quo for many of the characters associated with the Bat Family, and seemingly inducting a couple of new ones as well, although I was left confused because there was meant to be a story featuring Amanda Waller, but that just seems to have been replaced by the second half of the Batman tale. For some reason, the little montage of Bat Family members caused me to laugh to myself, as it featured an image of Harley Quinn just seemingly at home baking a cake, which provided a strange contrast to the pretty serious events going on around it. As I mentioned earlier on, this was also the story that introduced the Magistrate to the main DC Universe, which I am not all that happy about to be honest. I just feel that this is going to needlessly complicate life for all of our heroes, and likely distract from being able to tell some decent quality stories, due to a massive brick wall being erected in front of their progress. It was a huge shock that Tynion has seemingly decided to make the decision to kill off Bane, as he was such a huge focus in the previous run on the title, although this would be a pretty definitive way to begin this new era for Batman and his family, by having someone else take down the villain who seemed somewhat unbeatable for so long.

The final stories that I would like to touch upon are the two Wonder Woman-centric ones, as they intrigued me somewhat, although not setting the world alight, considering that we have known some of it was going to happen for a while. First off, Nubia has become the new Queen of the Amazons, as it looks as though Hippolyta is going to be venturing out into Man’s World to take over from her daughter, Diana, who she believes has totally perished, while we know that she has in fact ascended to another plain of existence altogether. This fist initial snippet of the new take on Wonder Woman proved to be a pretty fun read, with a perfect balance of seriousness and humour, while setting up a potential crossover with another of our Future State debutants. The portion of the story featuring Yara Flor really only served as her introduction to the main DC continuity, not being exactly earth-shattering, or even informative, but at least we know she exists, and we have the tiniest pieces of her story to put together for now.

The real talking point of this entire thing, however, was the final page. For most of the book, we waited in bated breath while Diana made her decision as to whether she would be joining the “Quintessence” (spoilers, she did not), which was followed by our group of pseudo-gods journeying to the previously introduced “Earth-Omega”, where they have imprisoned the “darkness” of which Diana was warned about. Suddenly, some black goop stabs them all to death, before revealing that this as Darkseid all along, and he will be the big bad for the next four months, with whatever he is planning to come to a head in Infinite Frontier #1, to be released (hopefully) in July. This was a huge surprise for me, as somebody who managed to avoid all of the spoilers for the last two days, and I feel that this one small appearance is going to trump anything the big guy does in the entirety of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. While the writing here from Joshua Williamson was truly some of his best, expertly building the tension for the reveal, it was a massive same that it just looked so ugly, thanks in no small part to good old John Romita Jr, who never fails to disappoint me these days.

To conclude, the next four months look incredibly bright for DC Comics, with some brilliant stories about to begin. I truly hope that they are able to keep up this momentum beyond this one story, and that once July as come and gone we can continue to enjoy this wonderful period of storytelling. Every single writer simply knocked it out of the park, especially the ones that were not given as much time, while the majority of the artists crafted some visuals that were right up there with them, although I think I would have preferred some different talents from the likes of Howard Porter, just so that we can see something new from the Flash, rather than what has mostly worked for the last five years. 

I WILL BE GIVING “INFINITE FRONTIER” FROM DC COMICS A “B+” GRADE, AS IT WAS SO CLOSE TO BEING PERFECT, ALTHOUGH THERE WERE JUST A COUPLE OF ANNOYANCES.