Review: DC Comics- Generations

Quick Summary

Pros: The book has a lot of great ideas and utilizes them well. The book celebrates many memorable moments from DC history, many of which longtime fans will be happy to see. The artwork matches the storytelling well.

Cons: The book is short which leads to a rushed main storyline and several underdeveloped plot points.

Overall: This is a book that is great when it comes to concepts but lackluster when it comes to execution. The bulk of the book is an interesting time-travel adventure that serves as a great celebration of DC’s past. However, this is ultimately done too quickly, leading to pacing problems and disappointing aspects of the story. In the end, this book will mostly appeal to longtime fans of DC Comics who don’t mind an average story as long as it provides a unique celebration of DC’s history.

Story

DC Comics- Generations, by Dan Jurgens, Andy Schmidt, Robert Venditti, succeeds in a lot of places but falls through in others. The primary positives in this book come from the cool ideas powering it. The comic is about heroes from across DC’s history coming together to face down a pretty cool villain. This leads to a great celebration of DC Comics that will really appeal to older fans. However, this comic tries to do a little too much in a relatively short book. This leads to poor pacing and to several plot points being underdeveloped. Ultimately, this is a book that handles ideas and concepts better than actual storytelling.

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As mentioned above, the main draw in Generations comes from the ideas powering it. The book centers around time-travel but manages to do so in a way that feels different from the plethora of time-travel stories that came before it. Part of this comes from the way DC’s history is utilized, as it pulls in neat concepts like the Vanishing Point, DC’s wild future, and the understanding these characters have for one another. Another part of it comes from the book’s villain, who’s attempt to preserve a “perfect” slice of domestic life makes his character a bit tragic. All of this leads to a better executed story about DC’s past than their last attempt at this, Convergence (Review).

I also really enjoyed the specific way in which Generations brings together the different eras of DC’s history. Each character is taken from specific and memorable moments from DC’s history. For longtime fans, this is just great to see, as it brings back some great memories. The only downside is that this feature is definitely something that will go unappreciated by newer fans, as an understanding of DC’s history is necessary here.

The biggest negative throughout Generations is the fact that the volume is just too short. This book spends a ton of time simply explaining where all of its main characters are coming from and showing their first few interactions with each other. This forces the book to rush a bit when it comes to the conclusion. It also leaves worthwhile plot points, like the otherwise interesting main villain, underdeveloped. I would have loved to see more time spent elaborating on the developing respect between Superboy and Steel, on Sinestro’s feelings as a Green Lantern, or on the main villain’s backstory. Unfortunately, this book was just a little to short to do all of this.

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Art

Generations brings together a lot of artists to produce a book where the visuals really complement the storytelling. Throughout this volume, there are many places where the visuals are a key component in fully realizing the book’s concepts. This can be seen from the very start, where Dan Jurgens and Kevin Nowlan blend the past and present in a way that immediately sets the tone for the rest of the narrative. It can also been seen in many other places, like Yanick Paquette’s take on the Teen Titans, Rags Morales’ unique version of the future, or Mike Perkins’ take on the book’s main villain. Plus, Ivan Reis’ work is simply fantastic every time it pops up. There are still places where the quality of the visuals dips slightly but even these dips still look alright. Overall, the artwork in this collection looks good and makes for a better reading experience. 

Continuity

DC Comics: Generations is a mostly standalone event. It spins out of events that take place in a story from Detective Comics #1027 (Review), which is collected in this volume.

This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:

• A splash page from early in this book shows many characters from the Future State event.
• Steel and Cyborg Superman’s fight is a direct reference to the Superman: Reign of the Supermen storyline.
• Doctor Light mentions recently stopping a Crisis. This is a reference to the Crisis on Infinite Earths event.