2 out of 5

This is sort of everything I hate about the majors.  (Although certainly some indie publishers have gotten in on the shared universe thing as well, it’s just that Marvel and DC have, for years, been in this unexciting habit of continually reinventing themselves.)

For my standards regarding FCBD – represents the book its freebie-ing well; gives the reader some framing of what the issue hopes to accomplish – my rating might be unfair.  There are three full stories in here, by the actual writing / art teams of the ongoing books, and I have to believe they’re written with the same standards / styles as those books.  Which I’m particularly unimpressed by, but that’s somewhat besides the point.  So it passes that criteria.  And “Dan and Jim” give us an intro page to “expect the unexpected,” which frames the pages to follow, so check that off as well.

Except.

These full stories do not serve the “expect the unexpected” pitch as it is written, as it makes it sound like DC wants to be Something For Everyone, mentioning some of its oddball books that sprang from Convergence / Divergence like Bat-Mite, Prez, and Section Eight.  Are those previewed here?  No.  Instead we get blurbs of the money books: Batman, Superman and Justice League.  Which… makes sense popularity-wise, and the argument that it’s not our regular Batman (this is the era where Jim Gordon dons an armored suit to be Bats) or Superman (who’s depowered and incognito at the time) might match the unexpected bill, but these stories do nothing to convince me that comics aren’t still for comic fans.  They’re heavily mired in their individual mythos (especially, of course, Geoff Johns Justice League addition) and generate absolutely zero interest in their respective storylines because of this.  Only if you are already interested in DC continuity will this matter.

So while I should be more fairly assessing this by the qualities I chose, it’s hard for me to get past that discrepancy of apparent intent and the material, as well as choking down the yearly “it’s all new!” nonsense while still just falling back on their go-to titles.  That these other potentially fun titles are mentioned but not even shown – covers, one page write-up, something – seals the negative opinion deal.