52 was a weekly series published by DC Comics starting in May, 2006. Because I had my 52nd birthday in late 2020, I thought it might be interesting (fun?) to examine this series for its 15th anniversary. I plan to post once a week about each issue. To read previous posts, click the link (52!).

Synopsis

“History Repeats”

Week 19, Day 1

Skeets investigates Daniel Carter’s apartment, but is discovered by Daniel. Daniel then proceeds to tell Skeets how he was a star football player who was injured and later became an insurance salesman. Skeets tell Daniel that it needs to get back into Rip Hunter’s lab and Daniel can help it. In return, Skeets can make Daniel a superhero.

Week 19, Day 2

Starfire, Animal Man, and Adam Strange enjoy a “pitstop on the pilgrim trail” while Lobo performs his duties as Archbishop of the First Celestial Church of the Triple Fish-God. Lobo tells them they are in space sector 3500, where a “hundred complex, thrivin’ systems” are “now a big sky fulla screamin’ headstones”. It turns out the same being who laid waste to sector 3500’s systems is the same being who pit a bounty on Earthbound trio’s heads. And then Lobo reveals he’s in possession of the Emerald Eye of Ekron.

Week 19, Day 3

The Weather Wizard is flooding a Metropolis bank in an effort to kill the manager, when Supernova arrives to help those trapped inside. Wonder Girl captures Weather Wizard. The two heroes talk, and Wonder Girl is surprised that Supernova doesn’t recognize her. As he leaves, she calls him Kon-El.

Week 19, Day 4

Daniel, wearing Booster’s goggles, gains access to Hunter’s lab. Skeets has Daniel examine some writing on a wall, and when Daniel asks Skeets about the message, “It’s all his fault”, Skeets announces, “He knows”, and allows the doors to shut and then initiates the defense systems. Skeets sets the lab to reopen in 1 million A.D., and Daniel is sucked into a timeloop vortex.

Thoughts

Wow. Appearances of the number 52 return. Daniel’s jersey is numbered 52. The cover has a few. It also sports some significant years, such as 1938 (Superman’s debut), 1939 (Batman’s debut), 1941 (Wonder Woman’s debut), 1956 (the Silver Age), and 1985 (Crisis on Infinite Earths). Is 3006 a reference to the 31st century Legion? 4006 and 5252 have some significance relating to angels, according to my Google search, but as far as DC Comics, I don’t know. There are some other numbers as well, but I can’t make them out (is one them 1935, the beginning of what would become DC Comics?). Finally, cover-wise,  I like how Booster Gold is positioned, holding Skeets like a football, as if he’s running for a touchdown. Like ancestor, like descendant, right?

Other bits of trivia: in Daniel’s apartment, we see that he played for the Manchester High Spartans, and there is a magazine with Booster on the cover called Worlds Finest. Later, we see an ad for Skeetles Candy, proving Booster had no shame. Finally, Lobo can speak “17,897 galactic languages” — who knew?

Animal Man’s reaction to being among all the aliens was interesting. After spouting some word gibberish (“sweat that smells of … roses underwater, kettles in blue grass…”), he tells Adam Strange, “I can’t describe this using English…” I appreciate the writer trying to show us the wonder and awe a simple Earth man (albeit a superhuman) might experience in outer space. Later, there’s a nice splash page of the “bad guy” (Lady Styx) responsible for the bounty on the heroes’ heads and for the destruction of sector 3500’s worlds. On the same page we get to see Lobo in possession of the Emerald Eye of Ekron! The Emerald Eye has long been one of my favorite items in DC lore, first in Legion of Super-Heroes and then L.E.G.I.O.N.

I’m not as interested in Wonder Girl’s supposition that Supernova is her dead boyfriend (where did that come from?!) than I am in his reaction to her near caress: “Respect my personal space, please”. It’s rare we see a rejection of the soap-opera trope for such a blunt response between superhero characters.

Finally, there’s definitely something up with Skeets. I mentioned this before, but it’s quite obvious that Skeets isn’t … Skeets. But who is it?!

The Origin of Animal Man

by Waid, Bolland, Hollingsworth, Brosseau, Richards, Wacker

It’s lovely to see Brian Bolland art, even if for just two pages. The way the aliens are discussed makes them seem more sinister than what I recall from reading this brilliant series. In fact, they seemed a bit more bumbling than malevolent, but I could be forgetting something. Regardless, what were the aliens’ intentions for grafting humans to the morphogenetic field?