Our lord and Savior RAO makes his first appearance.

Cannot wait to see how it all goes down.

PRAISE THE SUN

Nerdgasmic.

Beata

@dernman: It's not a Superman comic.

@darknightspideyfanboy: \o/ praise be to Solaire the true sun god

I'll be picking it up, for sure.

@squalleon:

Okay.... O.o

Who knew it was so easy to defeat Superman.

(Rao) "I'm Rao. Your god. You know me and I know you. Accept me and worship me. Because I'm Rao."

(Superman) "Yes! I'm converted. Batman come on, kneel before Rao. Don't make look bad."

I'll definitely check this out.

I honestly hope there's something reasonable behind this. Kryptonian tech. A kryptonian lost colony or something. That would be cool.

I think it is clear he is an impostor. Like every Utopia story, there is always a sinister motive.

Its not the most original of plots, but I hope for a nice, entertaining execution.

Between this story and Darkseid's dimension-hopping, there's gotta be like, four Supermen still alive in the entire multiverse.

I think the dead Supermen in this story are from a possible future rather than dimension.

And Darkseid must have a hidden stache of Supermen to kill since his Supermen fit don't fit the Multiverse.

As I was finding the scans of Superman's fight with Cynthonna recently, a small part of me hopes Hitch shoves her into this story as well just for the lolz, even though Hitch probably isn't aware of her existence. As for Rao showing up, I hope Hitch has the ability to write a genuinely entertaining story out of Rao coming to Earth, since I'm at my absolute wits end with DC these days.

A lot to this issue, a lot that can be discussed, the themes, the writing but principally my concern, the direction of the story feels very 'new world order' type, benevolent all powerful being comes out of nowhere, seemingly hidden agenda. Honestly i'm hoping it's a little more original than that. Also a part of me doesn't want Rao to suddenly become the big villain hopefully there's more to the story than meets the eye. Though the ending speaks a lot to what we can expect.

I feel the story will take the casual, predictable route Utopia/Savior stories take. But with a nice execution and good art.

I think "Rao" isn't actually Rao. And unfortunately I do believe the execution will be a bit predictable.

Please be decen- Oh wait, I gave up on DC...

I don't have to worry anymore!

@squalleon: Isn't that sounding a little bit familiar to another opening JLA story arc from the 1990s? *cough New World Order cough" Because I'm already noticing the parallels and similarities even if Hitch is doing it unintentionally not realising he's mimicking another writer's better take on this kind of storyline.

Or the Ulysses story. The premise is very basic and every Utopia story follows the same path pretty much. I don't think Hitch is doing it intentionally. Also I don't think you can say Morrison did it better since Hitch hasn't finished his job(although I believe it won't matter). Also there are some basic differences and I wonder where Hitch want's to take the plot. Because there are quite a few sub-plots that make this story very different. GL and Flash on Oa, the god aspect, the Diana sub-plot. I am not ready to write it out as generic yet considering the story hasn't even started.

@squalleon said:

You're probably right, Hitch isn't doing it intentionally. Though I'm surprised you think Hitch has even the possibility of doing a better job than Morrison did with his first JLA story, it's the stuff of comic book gold in terms of storytelling quality. Still, I get what you mean, Hitch isn't done yet and who knows how he might write the story. But I don't particularly like writer/artist storytellers, most of the comics I have/read where the writer is also the artist just aren't as good as comics where the writer and artist have different roles. I don't know why I feel that way when the artist should do a better job telling a story he's written.

Its probably because I wasn't impressed by New World Order, I think Morrison's run while the best of A list JL gained steam after Rock of Ages and Hitch's story will be bigger in length and with better art which gives him an advantage of making it unique. For me the best JL story I have read is Heaven's Ladder by Waid and Hitch is involved in it.

The story officially started in issue 2 for me (issue 1 was more a idea of what we are gonna get in this title in general).

I don't think I agree. I think stories are better when the creators have vision despite who does what, when something is done with passion it is always better. Eisner is a nice example or Kirby. Its that it is difficult to find people with the right talent to do both.

So after Rock of Ages is when you think Morrison hit his stride? Fair enough, that was a strong story in itself. I also really enjoy Heaven's Ladder, both Waid and Hitch were at their prime in constructing this story. Tackling major themes and putting them into an entertaining and compelling story is certainly a benchmark for any creator to be proud of.

Kirby's one such writer/artist who's exempt from my disdain of writer/artists, I don't think I could call myself a comic fan if I didn't like Kirby's work. He did bring together the ideas from his head and put them onto paper in a superb and wonderfully creative fashion. You might be onto something that it's hard to find someone who can juggle both writing and art adeptly. Tony Daniel, Alan Davies et al are certainly not to my tastes when they try their hand at writing a story.

I think with (including) RoA he finally started giving his best and introduced his method of writing super-hero stories, long term storytelling and all.

I personally have a soft spot for Eisner's The Spirit so beautiful and with a good story and I just bought a deluxe version consisting of Contract with God and other stories, were Eisner experimented with the lack of panels. DC will do a 75 years edition consisting of great stories by Alan Moore and Neil Geiman and of course Eisner himself, coming out next week, excited certain buy for me :D

Agreed, the following arcs were thoughtful, creative and mythical in scope.

I don't have much experience with The Spirit but I hear The Spirit's comics and graphic novels are really good.

If it is written by Eisner and it is after 1946 then it is a masterpiece (before that Eisner didn't really hit his stride and for many years the comic was written by others since he was fighting in the war). The art is soooo good. But unfortunately they are difficult to find to read since the archives by DC are expensive and rare.
After that, The New Adventures of the Spirit are great (lasted a few issues) and were written by Alan Moore, Neil Geiman and other good writers.That is difficult to find too. Don't ask me how I read all that....Thank god DC will release the 75 years book to at least collect some of the best.

And lastly Cooke's Spirit is beautiful and clever but quite different that then rest since it doesn't follow the 8-page formula. But again, very good and not hard to find.