Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett looks looks at some surprises in the last DC books before the reboot.

I've got to admit as much as I was looking forward to reading Justice League #1, and I really was, I'm just that eager to see Flashpoint #5, but for very different reasons.  In last week's column I referred to the event as being "unnecessary and pointless" and in the interim I've realized "unnecessary" is wholly subjective and we really won't know whether it's "pointless" or not until the comic actually comes out.  I now realize what I should have said was Flashpoint was the single most gruesome superhero comic book series I've read in a long time.

In recent interviews Dan Didio and Jim Lee have called the series a success and I won't argue with either them or success but personally I found it to be thoroughly repugnant--bloody, brutal and thoroughly nasty.  I'll happily confess this sort of thing just isn't my cup of meat, but even if I was a big fan of superheroes in nightmarish alternative universe dystopias I believe I would have been disappointed in Flashpoint.  You'd think a comic whose sole purpose was to reduce the overwhelmingly wholesome DC Universe into a classic crapsack world would have in it a least a little transgressive tingle somewhere.  But sadly as conducted it's been a joyless, by the numbers production.

I swear I've been faithfully reading all of the Flashpoint spin-off titles as they've come out but I wasn't aware of all of its atrocities and indignities committed in its pages.  That is until I found a piece called "The Flashpoint Death Toll: Remembering the Fallen" over at the Funnybook Babylon website which lists them all.  For instance, I somehow completely missed the part where WWII era Nazi's were in control of Brazil.

I really didn't think the whole DC Retroactive line was a very good idea (though knowing now what DC had planned it does make a certain amount of sense in retrospect), not as "product" let alone as comics.  A publisher honoring it's past is all well and good.  But trying to approximate the look and feel of comics from decades past, even when you can coral their original creators, is an open invitation to disappoint the hard-core fans.  Which presumably is the intended target audience for these comics.

And for the most part that’s just what I've been, disappointed, but just as I was going to write the whole thing off as yet another well intentioned failure I came across three titles that abruptly made me change my mind.  First off there's DC Retroactive: Justice League of America--The 90's by Keither Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire; if anyone wants another story featuring their incarnation of the JLA that's actually quite a bit better than any of the comics in the original run, well, here it is.

Then, most surprisingly, there's DC Retroactive: Superman--The 90's by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove.  I say "most surprisingly" because if I was absolutely forced to name my least favorite period of Superman comics it would have to be the 90's (i.e. The Mullet Years).  But Simonson and Bogdanove have produced a fun, beautifully drawn little story that's full of dynamic shots of Superman doing big, physical things; flying across the page, helping people and lifting things.  But then it's hard not to like a comic that manages to shoehorn in a completely unneeded but most welcome guest appearance by The Newsboy Legion.

But the absolutely best one was DC Retroactive: Wonder Woman--The 90's by William Messner-Loebs and Lee Moder, which is one of the best DC stories of the year.  In a way it's a cheat because as it lacks fights, villains, continuity or even what most people would consider a conventional plot it would never have been published in the 90's.  In "Wonder Girls." Wonder Woman acts as a somewhat reluctant role model to a group of young girls of all shapes, sizes and ethnicity's.  And without hectoring or lecturing she introduces them to a world outside modern consumer culture.  It's beautifully drawn and utterly heartwarming without every being cloying and I'm very much afraid it's going to be lost in the deluge of all those new DC #1's.  Which is a shame seeing as this is a comic that definitely deserves to be read, even if you have to go a little out of your way to do it.  And I hope some of you do just that.

Super-Fly Comics & Games is one of the stores which will be hosting a Midnight Release Party for Justice League #1.  We're also using the occasion to throw a 4th Anniversary Party for the store and I'm looking forward to seeing both our customers and staff in a slightly more relaxed setting, as well as the novelty of doing my comic book shopping at night.  I'll let you know how it went next week.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.