Part One – 52 (2006)

This is an intimidating book to cover! After Infinite Crisis DC decided to skip the timeline a full year with the Trinity disappeared for that time. During that time skip things happened in some comics, we see what happened to Supergirl and Power Girl in Kandor, but in others not so much.

All the while DC published a series of comics, the above-mentioned 52, fifty-two comics coming out weekly that told what happened over that missing year. And these are full-length comics telling a complete tale, which makes it difficult to cover in this blog, as I could probably give over a good six months to the comic, not all that have Pee Gee content.

So this week I shall cover the issues Pee Gee does appear in, but to start let’s quickly cover all the storylines, except the last one that’s for the epilogue!

  1. The Question, who’s dying of lung cancer, picks a recently outed and retired Renee Montoya to take over the mantle as they take down Intergang. During the investigation, they discover that the brand new Batwoman is Kate Kane a former lover of Renee.
  2. Lex Luthor after using his duplicate, killed by Joker at the end of the Crisis, to make himself look innocent, launches the Everyman project which allows him to give superpowers to everyday people. He names his new team after Infinity, Inc, implying that none of the team are still around, and uses team including Natasha Irons (niece of Steel). When the team is of no use to him he reveals he can shut off the powers, killing most of the team.
  3. After a massive space battle three heroes, Adam Strange, Animal Man, and Starfire get stranded in space. After shenanigans, including getting Lobo’s help they manage to return to Earth.
  4. Ralph, still not recovered from the loss of Sue, gets drawn into an investigation of a resurrection cult around Krypotonians, especially Conner Kent. This leads him to the demon Necron, who he defeats using his love to Sue, ending up together with her as a ghost, ready to carry on with Ghost-related investigations!
  5. Black Adam has two different storylines going around him. The first as leader of Kahndaq arranged an alliance with various “evil” world nations that eventually leads to a massive battle called World War III. He also finds himself his own equivalent of the Marvel Family, his one true love Isis and an adopted son Osiris. But an anthropomorphic crocodile, Sobek, kills them and is revealed to be one of the four horsemen, all of whom he eventually defeats.

My terrible descriptions don’t do it justice, and we’ll probably cover some of it over the week, but it’s a really good well told story, that went so well that not only did DC try this again (it didn’t do so well) they got a massively obsessed with the number fifty-two, something that lasted to only a few years ago.