The New 52 FCBD Special Edition #1

From my Free Comic Book Day haul.

Title: The New 52 FCBD Special Edition
Issue: 1
Date: June 2012
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, China Mieville, James Robinson, Paul Levitz, Howard Mackie, Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, JT Krul
Artist: Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Kenneth Rocafort, Gene Ha, Chris Burnham, Mateus Santolouco, Nicola Scott, Trevor Scott, Kevin Maguire, George Perez, Ian Churchill, Norm Rapmund
Colorist: Rod Reis, Alex Sinclair, Blond, Art Lyon, Dan Panosian, Ariel Olivetti
Letterer: Sal Cipriano
Editor: Kate Stewart, Dan Didio, Eddie Berganza
Cover: Jim Lee, Alex Sinclair, Scott Williams

This was DC's major 2012 Free Comic Book Day edition. This is all teasers, but it's good eye candy for the most part. The giant fold-out center spread is gimmicky but fun.

The story focuses on the origin of Pandora, who was the mystery woman drawn into the backgrounds of all 52 of the reboot issues. She is the same Pandora we know from mythology, but she's part of a trio of ancient sinners who were cursed with eternal torment in one form or another. The other two beings appear to be reboots of the Phantom Stranger and the Question.

And speaking of reboots, welcome back Etta Candy (now black and skinny). Not minding the change there. She was a character who went through an awful lot of reimagining over the years.

There is a lot of back-and-forth with Pandora infiltrating top-secret labs and storage facilities for alien/mystical technology. Steve Trevor is clearly being shoehorned into the Nick Fury role, which comes off a bit generic. Also, he demands "Find me John Constantine!". Be careful what you wish for, Steve. Oh, and Black Orchid gets namedropped.

The second half of the book is just preview pages from new titles. The most intriguing of those was Dial H, featuring the first comic writing by China Mieville. It looked like it had some potential. World's Finest was amusing and engaging. It was nice to see the Unknown Soldier in the GI Combat preview, but the rest didn't interest me much.

Rating: 6/10