DC Comics: Hope in Digital

Okay, so maybe I was laying it on a bit thick with the doom and gloom the last time DC came up so take this as the other side of the coin: from what I've sampled their Digital First comics are great.

For those who don't know, spread across the week DC published digital exclusive titles: Adventures of Superman on Monday; Injustice: Gods Among Us on Tuesday; Batman '66 on Wednesday; Legends Of The Dark Knight on Thursday; Smallville Season 11 on Friday; Batman Beyond and Justice League Beyond on Saturday; and Batman: Li'l Gotham every other Sunday.

Of these I read four: Legends of the Dark Knight, Batman Beyond, Justice League Beyond (and previously Superman Beyond) and Batman: Li'l Gotham. So, yes, very Batman-centric but in those four titles I feel I get more variety than in any other four titles I buy from DC.

It helps that Legends of the Dark Knight is an anthology series with a different creative team on every arc so a little variety is guaranteed. True, the early issues were unnaturally obsessed with doing Joker stories but that kink has largely been worked through.

Batman Beyond is a worthy successor to the old cartoon and has just been relaunched as Batman Beyond 2.0, moving time on so future Batman Terry is now in college and Dick Grayson is now his operator. Its sister title Justice League Beyond switches between traditional Justice League large scale threats to he world (but in a more fun way than any of the print Justice League titles) and doing origin stories for the Beyond heroes. We're getting a Batman Beyond Universe spin-off soon and I'm hoping the “Beyond” Flash gets some focus stories (she has Jay, Barry, Wally and Bart living in her head giving her advice).

Finally, Batman: Li'l Gotham is pure fun. Each issue takes a different calendar event (Mother's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Comicon) and tells a fun and frothy little story using chibi versions of the pre-Flashpoint Batman cast. This act of complete insanity is perhaps my favourite thing DC is publishing at the moment.

It's all a lot more varied and fun than the New 52 which is why I'm dropping their print comics at a rate of knots. Justice League: dropped. Goodbye, Action Comics. Farewell, Superman. Teen Titans and Supergirl are skating on thin ice as well, come to think of it. Legion Of Super-Heroes was good but that's being cancelled anyway. Pretty soon I'll be down to Wonder Woman and the Batman books.