Annotations to 52 #1

via Comic Book Realm

52 #1 (DC)

From 2006.

writers: Johns, Morrison, Rucka, Waid

artists: Giffen, Joe Bennett

Featured characters: 

• Ralph Dibney
• Renee Montoya
• Steel
• Booster Gold
• Natasha Irons
• Black Adam
• Mister Mind
• Clark Kent
• The Question

The first page of the weekly series that led to the return of the multiverse is in fact a shot of the multiverse.

The third page introduces Ralph Dibney, the erstwhile Elongated Man; Renee Montoya; and Steel: three of the primary protagonists of the series.  Dibney's arc follows the events of Identity Crisis, in which his wife Sue is brutally murdered.  Montoya's follows her partner's death in the pages of Gotham Central.  Steel is engaged in the rebuilding of Metropolis.

Superboy is referenced for the first time on the fourth page.  His death during Infinite Crisis becomes a pivotal element of Dibney's arc.

Booster Gold appears officially on the seventh page, although he's introduced in the classic Superman manner on the previous page, foreshadowing the role he hopes to play, but his publicity-minded grandstanding that is the focus of his early appearances in the series begins immediately.

On the twelfth page, Dibney is about to commit suicide until a phone call alerts him to the desecration of his wife's grave.

Natasha Irons, sporting the armor she'd been sporting to that point, appears on the thirteenth page, and Steel, her uncle John, takes it away on the fourteenth.

On the fifteenth page, Black Adam debuts, introducing his new aggressive political stance for the nation of Kahndaq, which he began ruling in the pages of JSA.

On the seventeenth page, Mister Mind makes a cameo in Sivana's lab.  This is another Easter egg for later developments in the series, aside from Sivana himself being the first "mad scientist" to be kidnapped.

A lot of heroes who don't really feature in the plot begin gathering on the eighteenth page for a memorial to the destruction caused by Infinite Crisis, including Bart Allen, who at the time had become the new Flash

On the twenty-first page, Booster Gold's arc builds shape as his robotic assistant Skeets fails him for the first time.

On the twenty-second page, Clark Kent appears.  The erstwhile Superman is depowered during the "lost year" chronicled in the series, while Batman is off on a spirit quest and Wonder Woman is still looking for ways to rebuild her public image after her murder of Maxwell Lord.

The twenty-third is the start of a three-page sequence that concludes the issue, introducing the Question into the narrative, and alluding to the connection he'll have with Montoya.