The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 237: 52 #4, May 31, 2006

One of the things that's always struck me as I read 52 is trying to figure out which of the writers wrote each section. I'm sure that it's been broken down somewhere, but I think it's far more fun, and more indicative of one's immersion in the medium, to be able to pick a writer out by considering the situations and dialogues each of the characters takes part in. I'm pretty sure Rucka writes the Question and Renee Montoya stuff, but only because I've read subsequent treatments of these characters (and Batwoman, who'll be debuting in one of these issues eventually) by him. I imagine Waid writing the Steel sections, but he and Morrison have very similar superhero storytelling aesthetics, so it's a bit tricky there. I'm going with Johns for the Booster Gold stuff, mainly because Booster seems to be a character from the era of superheroes that Johns privileges. And, and I hate to say it because I've enjoyed some of his writing, but the Booster stuff is the stuff I enjoy least in this comic. I'm not sure about the Ralph Dibny stuff - perhaps Morrison, by dint of the fact that Ralph is enmeshed, at the moment, with a cult that has grown up around Superboy. Again, though, both Morrison and Waid have treated this idea in their own separate writings. I don't know about the Black Adam stuff. I'm also going to ascribe it to Johns, as he's a far more brutal storyteller than the others, and Black Adam has, so far, been fairly violent.

Let's have a look online, and see what we can find.

Just a sec. Gotta google this stuff.

Apparently, there's no real consensus. Most assume that Morrison wrote the Animal Man stuff that will come later, and that Rucka did the Question stuff. Keith Giffen provided layouts, and there's some conjecture that he contributed to the storytelling, most likely Booster. But it really looks like they may have bounced the characters around, depending on the situations within which each character finds him or herself. Which makes sense, really, given that each writer has a different forte.

That's the first chunk of 52 that I'm going to look at. Tomorrow I'll either return to early-eighties Canada with Alpha Flight, or pick up the AD&D comics again, since I've just procured enough of the issues I was missing to continue with that. We'll find out on the morrow. See you then!