DC Universe Presents #1

Title: DC Universe Presents
Issue: 1
Date: November 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
By: Paul Jenkins, Bernard Chang
Colorist: Blond
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Editor: Wil Moss
Cover: Ryan Sook

This is DC's new anthology title, featuring a rotating cast of characters who don't have their own spotlight elsewhere in the "New 52". Popular supernatural hero Deadman is up first, and it look like the plan is to give each featured character a multi-issue arc, probably aiming for trade-paperback length just in case they have a major hit.

This opening story is primarily a recap of Deadman's origin, with some glimpses of some of the people that he has helped since his return to earth in ghostly form. They set this up a lot like Quantum Leap. Boston Brand experiences life as other people (a wounded war veteran and an aging motorcycle stuntman rather blatantly modeled after Evel Knievel). These people, the "living bricks who will pave your way to enlightenment" according goddess Rama (who looks a lot like a Na'vi in a bellydancing outfit), are in need of exactly the kind of help that getting possessed by an outside entity can give.

Brand has an amusing conversation with a former friend, a carnival psychic who seems surprisingly dubious when confronted with an actual supernatural phenomena. The conversation doesn't really go anywhere, however, and Brand returns to trying to help the wounded soldier without the advice he was seeking, and we end on another confrontation with Rama, possibly with the soldier's life on the line.

The basic idea behind this was solid, and it gave a reasonable sense of purpose to the "New 52" version of Boston Brand. The execution, however, was choppy, and by the end I felt that nothing other than the recap of the origin story (which wasn't too far removed from the version I was familiar with) had actually happened.

Rating: 5.5/10