Arm-Fall-Off-Blog

World War III: Dispatch from the Front

2007-04-20T18:03:00.000-04:00

*Sigh*

I'm not sure I even have the heart to rant about this Newsarama interview with 52 editor Michael Siglain:

Let me just pick out one thread from the skein...

NRAMA: Obviously, it's easy to armchair quarterback this fight, but...Adam was killing people on the ground, and the casualty and damage rate was staggering. Why not haul his butt into space from the start?

MS: That would've been ideal, if the heroes worked together enough to formulate a plan that would've launched him into space. Instead, chaos reigned supreme and the fight was more a free-for-all...at least until Captain Marvel and the mystics got involved.

At the risk of repeating myself: Marvels, Martians, Amazons, Green Lanterns, and the entire Justice Society fighting across the globe for an entire week, and in that time (and boy, aside from a few scrapes and costume tears, sure doesn't look like these folks have been in the %$#@ for an entire week) and not a single person in the entire assembly of heroes thought to step back from the fray for 30 seconds to think of, you know, a plan?

And, I mean, we're not so much talking about an original plan here or anything. We're talking about the exact same plan that Superman and Superman, and the Green Lanterns, and every single other DC hero capable of flight had used against Superboy Prime less than a year earlier.

Superboy Prime is rampaging on Earth? Haul his @$$ into space. It worked once, and no one thought to try it again during the entire course of a @#$%ing week-long battle?

Life During Wartime

2007-04-19T21:05:00.000-04:00

And another thing: the whole idea that World War III was necessary to explain all the stuff that happened to Aquaman, and why the Titans were all broken up and dysfunctional at the start of OYL, and what happened to Manhunter, and how Jason Todd came to steal Nightwing's thunder, and whatever seems like a real Fibber McGee's closet construct. Was it really necessary to cram all that half-baked exposition into four issues? Did it really explain anything? Did all that change have to happen in one week?

Seems a poor excuse for good storytelling. Is this the new rug under which the powers that be at DC will sweep all their half-baked pre-One Year Later continuity questions?

"Why did Aquaman..."

"World War Three."

"So, what's up with Martian Manhunter's new look?

"World War Three."

"Okay, and the thing with..."

"World War Three."

"Right. But you know how..."

"World War Three."

As someone who has participated in the exercise in endurance that is 52, I can attest that a year is a hell of a lot of time. A lot can change in a year. Hell, that's the core conceit of works as varied as Babylon 5 and Rent. Change is a process, and throwing all this change into such a short span is nothing more than the manifestation of a broken process.

If the beginning of One Year Later represents Week 53 of the post-Infinite Crisis DCU (and the first OYL appearance of Superman seems to suggest this was the case), then it seems surprising that no one would mention the big global conflagration that had just happened.

It's one thing to realize you need to spackle the cracks in the wall. It's quite another to use an off-color spackle, and then claim the wall has looked that way all along.

War! Huh! Good God y'all! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!

2007-04-19T10:54:00.000-04:00

Friends, duty is a terrible burden. That sense of obligation to something beyond ourselves, that drives us forward -- at times despite our better judgement, or our personal desires, or just the fact that we're so gosh darned bone tired that putting one foot in front of the other seems like a herculean task, to say nothing of stepping up and fighting the good fight -- is a difficult yoke to shoulder. Duty can be imposed either internally or externally, but either way it falls to the individual to answer the call. Regardless of the stakes, regardless of the consequences of not stepping up, we are each and every one of us responsible for how we respond.

It is in that spirit of willing acceptance of the call of duty -- and in weary but fervent anticipation of the fact that our long journey is nearly at its anticlimactic end -- that I turn my attention to Week 50 of the year long train wreck DC Comics calls 52.

Heh; train wreck seems an apt term. A train wreck is what happens when you don't have Superman there to stop the train that is barreling down the tracks, running out of control toward the gap in the bridge, or the fuel tanker stalled across the tracks. Superman is the guy who can use his own body as a makeshift rail to bridge the gap, or reach out with a casual hand to stop the train barrelling toward its fiery destiny. Without him, the train goes off the rails, even when the final station stop is in sight.

I'll also cop to the fact that I went ahead and bought all four issues of the tie-in miniseries WORLD WAR III. I did this with full knowledge and acceptance of the fact that I am a sucker. I knew I was being played for a dupe, and that nothing in the series was worth the investment of my time, my attention, or my money. I rationalized it thusly: to date -- and to my horror -- I have invested $125 in following 52. What's another sawbuck against that investment? You can say many things about this decision, but at least you can't say it's a sign I'm on the road to hell, because good intentions were nowhere around this purchase.

At best, it's a parenthetical train wreck; the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and while this little series magnifies details about the precise pattern and weave of that handbasket, it really exists as an exercise in heroic narcissism. It's not about the war, but about why Martian Manhunter is Sad, and why he feels cut off from humanity. And, yes, along the way they manage to work in little details about how Aquaman got turned into a squid, and how Black Adam ripped off a guy's face, and punched Terra's heart out through her spinal column, but mostly, it's about why Martian Manhunter is sad. Because that story's never been told before.

As for Week 50, the aforementioned World War III plays out across the pages of this single issue.

Before we get to the details of this issue, let's pause for a moment to consider the implications of this idea: Given the real time conceit of 52, this means that a war that spans the globe, that was precipitated by an attack that killed millions of people, begins and ends in the span of one week. A 168-hour war.

Why? Apparently because series writer Greg @#$%ing Rucka thought it would be a spiffy-keen idea. To quote from this week's DC Nation column:

In reviewing all the OYL changes, we realized that most could be tied to one massive event. One that could affect all our heroes on a global level And that's where World War Three was born. You'll have to forgive my memory--I'm always at a loss for the old "who said what"--but I remember Greg Rucka discussing the implications of a World War fought by super-heroes. And while everyone debated how it would be fought, they all agreed on one thing; the war would definitely be fast. One week fast.

To quote Guy Gardner taunting the Flash: "Haw! You're not even half-fast!"

A war that encompasses the entire globe, fought in one week. A war perpetrated and carried out on all levels by superhumans. By that very definition, this is a war in which ordinary humans have no role to play but that of victims, where all human works -- hell, where every drop of rain and blade of grass -- is nothing but collateral damage.

Even if these creators are right -- and aren't just adopting an idea that fits the conceit of the project on which they're working -- a war that lasts seven days, particularly one that leaves millions of victims and billions, arguably trillions, of dollars of damage in its wake, won't end in seven days. Hell, look at history. Israel fought a six day war almost 40 years ago, and it's part of a pattern that has been @#$%ing up that part of the world ever since. You don't put something like this back in the box at the end of a week, because you've used the time to explain why Raven is sad, or why Martian Manhunter is wearing pants, or why Billy @#$%ing Batson now has a streak in his hair.

Unless, of course, putting the whole thing back in the box at the end of the story is what you have in mind. Even if Dan Didio is correct, and this story was needed to explain away all the changes that happenehttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.italic.gifd between the end of Infinite Crisis and the beginning of One Year Later, this is a clumsy, half-assed, hamfisted, and downright incompetent way to do it. How do you get from a global catastrophe to the establishment of a new status quo -- one in which there isn't a massive, global-level humanitarian crisis taking place all over the world? One in which the war among super-heroes doesn't spark other wars once the storm surge of spandex recedes? One in which all the cities that are destroyed get rebuilt, and the millions of dead are buried, and hunger and disease and looting and hopelessness and post-traumatic stress of an incalculable scope doesn't hold sway in tens of millions of hearts and minds?

How is it possible to go from that to a status quo where a repowered Superman spends his time fighting the same old battles, and making the same old speeches to Lex Luthor? Or where a newly-lighthearted Batman can find the time in the wake of watching Harvey Dent embrace Two-Face again to adopt Robin? Or where the Teen Titans get back together, and nobody really talks about the fact that they went through a war mere days before their story picked up? Look, like it or loathe it, but Marvel did have a point with Civil War: at some point, something will happen that's big enough to get people asking the question about how smart it is to allow superheroes to run around unchecked. The execution suffered, but the fundamental question is germane. In Marvel's case, all it took was the destruction of one city in Connecticut. With millions dead, an entire country destroyed, and who knows how many victims around the world, the DC heroes just dust off, wrap up the story, and take their marks on the OYL stage?

There's only one way it's possible. Somebody's gonna have to hit a reset button. Otherwise, the whole enterprise falls apart. Somewhere in the next two weeks, whatever Booster Gold has been working on, or the spirit of Ralph Dibney, or the three spacebound stooges will maguffin the %$#@ out of things, and millions of people will come back to life, and the leaning tower of Pisa will rise again from the rubble, and peace and happiness and puppies will reign again, making the world safe for Superman to punch hell out of the Kryptonite Man with a clean conscience.

And so, I'm forced to ask, what the hell is the point? Why do it if it doesn't matter? Why walk into a place that is both so dark and so filled with story-telling potential? Millions dead. Countless others displaced. What is the role of superheroes in such a world, especially when they are complicit in creating those circumstances? Why shake up the status quo merely to reinforce the notion that the status quo is the only viable state, and that the only change that is truly possible relates to haberdashery? Is it a failure of talent? Of imagination? Is it simple sadism?

And really, even if there is a point I'm simply incapable of seeing, I don't buy the core of the story. So Black Adam is on a rampage. So he is so full of rage and grief that nothing matters to him, and any vestige of conscience or restraint is lost amid the maelstrom of these powerful emotions, making him as powerful and dangerous as he has ever been. Fine, I get that.

Only here's my thing:

Martian Manhunter. Power Girl (who's a kinda sorta maybe never really clear on this but, you know, as close as makes no odds Kryptonian analogue). Two Green Lanterns (Gardner and Stewart); three if you count Alan Scott. Three Marvels. And, oh, yeah, Mister @#$%ing terrific, a character established as the third smartest guy on the planet (presumably coming in right behind Wayne and Luthor). Plus a couple of Amazonian-empowered heroines.

Where does the war come in? How is this thing not essentially over before it starts? Given the talent and power available, we're not talking about a world war. We're talking about an episode of 24. It's only a war because the brane trust decided they wanted a war, decided that after making a personal investment of a year of their lives, and after dragging readers along for the better part of a year, there needed to be some manner of payoff, no matter how devoid of logic.

It's poorly conceived. It's risibly executed, or would be, if there was anything risible about the subject matter. It reflects the same one-note, tone-deaf approach to currency, and relevance, and real-world detail we've seen in this series's depiction of everything from how stock offerings work to how long it takes the police to make an arrest.

More to the point, it perpetrates the ongoing conceit of the series: ain't no hero like a legacy hero. There is nothing of value in the new. Four legs good, two legs bad. It's the stuff my little 52 Zoo Crew has been ranting about for a year now. Take out Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, and you're left with a void (at least that seems to be the gospel according to the creative and editorial teams behind 52). Promote whoever you want, but never forget that they're placeholders.

We see it in everything from Jay Garrick's throwaway "For once Guy's right..." line. Really? Twenty years after the Giffen-DeMatteis Justice League, and his own series, and his death and resurrection and rehabilitation, and we're still stuck with the same tired old "Guy Gardner is a jackass, but even a broken clock is right twice a day" schtick? Why? Do the brane trust not read DC comics? Do the editors? Hell, say what you will about Geoff Johns and his slavish devotion to the past, but he's been one of the prime movers of Gardner's rehabilitation. But we still get lines about why it's usually okay to ignore the guy (er, Guy)?

But that absolutely pales in comparison to the treatment of the Infinity, Inc. characters. I get that the brane trust invested in their unworthiness. I get that the legacy heroes see them as sullying a proud tradition. That's all well and good. But with the fate of the world on the line (however unnecessarily), they decide to make these characters abject cowards? Why?

Good, bad, or indifferent, aware of the true meaning of heroism or not, these characters somehow made it halfway around the globe to answer the call of duty, to answer a call they imposed on themselves, because no one else believed in them enough to impose that call on them. They suited up. They stepped up. They even got validation from the old guard. Alan Scott went so far as to call Nuklon "son." And what happens? They turn tail and run. Because they're not true heroes. Because they don't pass the test. They don't get a baptism of fire, merely a look of utter contempt from Wildcat before the JSA runs into action, because That's What Heroes Do.

Now of course cowardice is the flip side of heroism. Of course for every person who runs headlong into the burning building, there is someone who runs away from it. It's easy to make characters with no history, no real backstory or dimension, embody the other side of the heroic equation. But it's just as easy, and suggests a lot more storytelling potential (unless they're setting these characters up for some sort of redemption arc, but i'm not sure I believe that) to use these characters, and this situation, to tell a baptism of fire story.

And yet, for all that, I will confess that while I hated the conceit behind World War Three/Week 50, I appreciated the outcome. The innovative use of the Marvel power. The (reversible, but for the moment sympathy-inducing) fate of Black Adam. The likelihood that the answer is simple, and obvious, because that's how Billy Batson rolls, but still completely beyond Adam's comprehension: hope, or love, or forgiveness, or something like that.

Two issues left. A lot of territory to cover. To what end? To what import?

Wow.

2007-01-12T15:29:00.000-05:00

I've been YOINKed by Kevin Church. I feel like that kid in the Coke commercial, getting a damp, sweaty old towel chucked at him by a legend.

Thanks, beaucoup!

Infinite Crisis "Novelization"

2007-01-07T13:58:00.000-05:00

Pal Bombasticus threw down the gauntlet, challenging all comers to "novelize" Infinite Crisis. He sweetened the pot by offering up the treasury edition big format 1970s comic of each entrant's choice as an incentive. With such glory on the line, who could possibly resist.

So, without further ado (and with tremendous apologies [and most especially to Mr. Yeats] to all for the liberties taken, and the lines intentionally misinterpreted in the interest of appropriating a good image), I present:

The Infinite Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions,

while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:

a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs,

while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Brief bit on 52, Week 17

2006-08-31T17:10:00.000-04:00

Bombasticus asks:

Wonder what was going through the heads of those Kobra guys that
the luthor-wolverine was slicing. i know what was going through their
torsos, hyuck hyuck.

AFOB replies:

*Sigh* Claws and disemboweling are sooo 1993. Making fun of claws and disemboweling is sooo 1997. Finding complexity and nuance in "claws and disemboweling" characters is sooo 2001. Don't these people realize the new trend is to take claws and dismboweling back to basics and pretend the past 20 years never happened?

Meanwhile, speaking of Lord Naga's l'il buddies, I don't imagine I was supposed to root for the Kobra goon squad during their little set-to with the Luthor Schmuck Brigade. The fact that I did is a measure of the accretion of disappointment that I've built up about this series.

If art imitated life

2006-08-29T16:59:00.000-04:00

This item from NPR got me thinking:

By Philip Reeves, Morning Edition, August 29, 2006 - In India, several states have banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi after a group called The Center for Science and Environment said the soft drinks contain unacceptably high levels of pesticide.

Is there really an acceptable level of pesticide content in soda? Doesn't any amount of, say, Raid greater than, you know, NONE qualify as too @#$%ing much? Can we not take it as read that I'm well and truly boned on the basis of the phenylketonurics I suck down with every Diet Coke without compounding the problem by dosing me with D-CON as well?

The story made me wonder how such news would play in the DC universe...

Gotham - City Police Commissioner James Gordon today ordered the closure of the Gotham City Bottling Plant when it was revealed that recent batches of Jolly Cola that shipped from the facility contained trace amounts of the Joker's trademark laughing gas compound.
Blue Valley - The Blue Valley school board voted to ban the sale of soft drinks in school vending machines. The unanimous vote taken at last night's meeting comes on the heels of revelations that Kryptonite-laced soil in the Smallville, Kansas, fields used to grow the corn-based sweetener used in Soder Cola Company's midwest production facilities was responsible for a recent surge in students exhibiting powers and abilities far beyond those of their classmates.
Pangai, Lifuka, Tonga - Local investigators looking into the riot that claimed the lives of four foreign tourists and led to the injury of eleven other tourists and locals have discovered that toxins from a so-called "Lazarus Pit" leached into the spring that serves the PangaiBrau brewery. According to an anonymous expert, "the substance that fills [the] pit is a chemical blend of unknown composition, seemingly originating from somewhere within the Earth's crust." In some documented cases, exposure to Lazarus Pit chemicals has caused temporary psychosis.

Sick

2006-08-24T09:04:00.000-04:00

Spent the better part of the last week down with the worst bout of the ick I've exprienced in over 20 years. I haven't been this sick since I had mono in the 7'th grade. Just like then, I whiled away the hours* with massive doses of Vitamin C.

Comics that is.

Back then, I went back and forth between an issue of Batman (possibly Detective) - I recall little of the issue except that it had Catwoman on the cover - something that I variously remember as an issue of Action Comics, an issue of Daredevil, and, like, Rom or Micronauts or somesuch thing** and the sheer brain-melting glory of this:

I've never been a huge Iron Man fan. I like the character fine, but the Crimson Avenger never grabbed my imagination the way that, say, the Scarlet Speedster did. Even in my personal ranking of heroes rooted in the Cold War who used cutting-edge - and cool as all @$#% - technology and gadgets, Shellhead comes in a distant second to the S.H.I.E.L.D. ramrod himself, Nick frackin' Fury.

But this issue was different, and I don't believe it was merely a function of Amusing Brain Sickness. This issue featured an Iron Man with malfunctioning (his power cells may have been depleted, the specifics are kind of fuzzy) armor who had to save the day, including rescuing kidnapped members of his supporting cast - one of whom (possibly Jim Rhodes?) was staked out and left as a sidekick buffet for a passel of poisonous spiders - using nothing but his wits and a bunch of random gadgets (which had presumably never been used before because no previous writer had backed themselves into a corner where they needed to be used, and had therefore had no need to retcon them into the armor's configuration) like diamond-tipped microsaws hidden in one of the fingers of his gauntlets. All that plus an acidic purple gas that ate throug the armor making the suit look like the Toxic Armored Avenger, which was cool. But the real point was this was an Iron Man whose non-armored brain was at the core of his heroism; it was the man, not the costume.

This time I dosed myself with the Marvel Essentials Ghost Rider collection.

This is probably no great revelation, but Ghost Rider was an exceedingly bad series. I wanted to like it. I wanted it to be a charming valentine to the goofy 70s. I wanted to find in it the sort of needy potential Charlie Brown found in that darn Christmas tree, or that you might find in an three-legged, one-eyed, mangy, incontinent dog that just wants to be loved, darn it all. But it's just not there - at least not in the first volume.

It's repetitive. You know the annoying pace of the newspaper Spider-Man strip, where a week's worth of strips offers on average two panels of plot development, with the rest given over to recapping? That's pretty much every issue of Ghost Rider: Sun goes down, Johnny Blaze becomes Ghost Rider, and reflects on how he became Ghost Rider - we're talkin' the same @$#%ing origin sequence every damn time! - rides around for a while, kvetches about: a) his girlfriend; b) how doomed he is when Satan finally gets his hands on Johnny's soul, and; c) how lucky he is that his girlfriend's (and let's not overlook the fact she's his stepsister) purity of spirit keeps the devil at bay, gets outsmarted by biker gangs (who would need about 17 rewrites two rise to the level of two-dimensional villainy), fights ridiculous demons, and occasionally gets rescued by Jesus (no, really), just in time for the sun to come up, for Ghost Rider to turn back into Blaze, and for the whole spirit-deadening process to begin anew.

Too be fair,the whole mess shows a marginal improvement when the action moves to Los Angeles so Blaze can become a TV stunt rider (although there isn't a tremendous focus on the job, since writer Tony Isabella seems to recognize that Blaze isn't a terribly interesting character) but it's still baffling the series lasted nearly ten years.

*between the fever-induced hallucinations, expectoration of toxic mucus, desperate longing for the return of such luxuries as my senses of taste and smell, amazement that a body could ache so much without any exertion, and fervent, fevered prayers for either the sweet, sweet release of death or more juice [not sure which, as I'm pretty sure I was speaking in tongues by that point.]

**Look, I was, like, 11 at the time, and my brain was being slowly cooked in its own cerebral-spinal juices by viral invaders from Planet Ten by way of the 8th dimension, so we're not talking about a Proust and his @#$%ing madelines level of nostalgic recall here. Hell, I was so incoherently paranoid at the time that I thought Tina Yothers on Family Ties was the same kid as the one from Poltergeist, and I was convinced she was going to leap out of the TV and drag me into some hell dimension that it's a wonder I remember anything.

With apologies to Robert Frost

2006-08-18T10:44:00.000-04:00

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Farewell to Booster Gold,
Get rich quick schemes so bold.
Lost sponsors by the hour,
Killed with atomic pow’r.
Kent could not bring relief
And Skeets cried out in grief.
His force-field failed that day.
Nothing Gold can stay.

Notes from the 52 Zoo Crew Digest

2006-08-17T15:55:00.000-04:00

Since the release of the first issue of 52, pal Bombasticus and I have led a ragtag, fugitive fleet of comics geeks on a weekly email-based lonely quest for meaning, joy, and simple enjoyment through the series. Since, for all the hype, 52 has been a relatively thin broth to date, these discussions regularly devolve into digression, evisceration, kvetching, and obsessive analysis.

The following (with some minor edits to turn a rambling back-and-forth discussion into a semi-coherent conversation) is a transcript of our exchange around 52 Week 14. [Plain text mine; text in italics is the Voice of Bombasticus...]

Steel's moping seems inconsistent. After all, he was the guy who tried to talk Alan Scott into counseling to deal with his trauma. So why does he simply hide in his workshop instead of dealing with his difficulties?

I think all their "character" work is betraying the limitations of their craft in some ways that really should be alarming. Let Steel be butch. It shouldn't be this difficult to write a good solid guy and a good "dad" unless you either (a) don't know any (b) hate guys like that (c) both.

And really, the good solid guy part is pure Superman. That's the whole thing with the character: he arose out of the whole Doomsday fiasco, inspired by the Man of Steel himself, and acquitted himself well enough that he was accepted.

So extreme self-doubt is a mistake. After all, isn't one of the lessons of the whole Infinite Crisis thing that the 90s and Millennial passive, reactive and self-doubting Superman kinda sucks? So why accept that the lease has run out on that model, only to renew is for this one?

So he's the previous iteration of what they're doing with Booster Gold? Why do we need to break down two Booster Golds at once? Is this some kind of "art" thing of which I am ignorant?

Except Booster Gold wasn't created as intentionally (Louise Simonson-ically?) in Superman's image, the way Steel was. Of the new school, post Doomsday Superman analogues, he was the regular guy who embodied Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and found inspiration in Big Blue's example to kick butt and take names in the grand heroic tradition. Okay, it helped that he was a super-genius who created his own battlesuit, but the point with Steel was “it's the man, not the uniform, that counts.”

Booster has always been a jackass and a self-promoter first, and a hero second. It's the paycheck, then the uniform, then the man. Attempts to make him more heroic (killing off his sister to give him a well of angst, trading in his costume for battle armor to make him more hardcore and 90s) have always been short-lived, followed by an inevitable reversion to comic relief status.

Why do we need to break down two Booster Golds at once? Because that's one of the points about this whole 52 enterprise I don't understand. Each legacy hero has two proxies, and so you have to break both down to build them to the point where they find their inner hero. Of course, the inherent flaw in this seems to be that these characters (except for whichever one dies in the end) rise to whatever occasion they rise to, achieve their heroic potential, and save whatever day needs saving, just in time for the series to end and the Big Three to return to the stage. So we're creating, at best, a series of placeholders to play the "what it means to be a Hero" game until they're not needed anymore.

Seems to me that the whole discarding of heroes when they are no longer useful (especially when the discarding is done in the service of the mentor characters) is what creates disgruntled sidekicks-turned-supervillains.

Okay. Now this is really interesting because I found myself looking up the new Superboy, Clone-El or whatever his name is (and may I say, there are hidden werthamite depths to that character of which I was unaware), today and discovered that his awful buzzcut and leather jacket "look" was supposed to be a deliberate satire of kewl 90s character design.

There's a whole something to be written about the reaction to the kewl 90s. So much of what came out in that era (clubwear Superboy, Kingdom Come's Magog, freakyass alien transformer Guy Gardner, the Azrael battle-armored Batman uniform, etc.) was alleged to be satirical, but I think there's some desperate self-delusion in that. Sure, the creators involved may have disdained the designs, and taken a satirical line against the Image-ification of comics, but however they rationalized the work, there were also trying to find a way to match the taste of their audience. If there was satire, I suspect a lot of it was inner-directed (laughing so as not to weep at the hackwork their career had become), with the imitative output on the page reflecting significant (if reluctant) flattery.

I was surprised at this alleged depth of thought that went into him; I thought he was simply a bona fide ugly character.

But stuff like the death, replacement and resurrection of Superman (like so much of the stuff from that era) was the product of the creative summit model that gained favor somewhere in that era. I don't know the exact evolution (whether it was Carlin and the Superman group that got the summit ball rolling, or whether DC grabbed the idea from Bob Harras at Marvel, where the summit was the birthing cauldron of all those X-Men crossovers), but I know the editorial pages and letter columns of the day always talked about the editorial and creative teams for a particular group (the Batman Group, the Superman Group, the X-Men Group, the Spider-Man group, etc.) getting together to plan storylines for the year.

[Okay, whichever company started summitting, I suspect they appropriated the model from the world of soap operas...]

The summit makes sense, especially when we remember that this was the era of title proliferation. Superman was appearing in five core titles. Batman was in four. Each title had its own creative team with its own stories to tell. At the same time, it was essential that Superman (and his supporting cast) remained as consistent a character as possible across all delivery channels. The summit became the place to determine overall direction for the character, overarching plots, crossover storylines, and eventually EVENT stories.

This is why I suspect the practice began with Marvel. They were a bit ahead of DC with the intraline crossover model, with something like “The Mutant Massacre” as the pebble that presaged the “The Age of Apocalypse” avalache that caused the Spider-Man “Clone Saga” train wreck.

The summit model also made it possible (perhaps even necessary) for a strong editorial hand to take increasing control of the overall direction of the line (possibly in collaboration with the creative teams, possibly in response to their own particular ideas), and to begin planning epic-length stories that would (among other things) require readers to invest in the entire line (even the shitty books) to remain current with the story.

So what's my point? In the case of the Super-Clone, I suspect it wasn't depth of thought as much as spitballing run amok. "Let's kill Superman!" became "Then what?" became "Let's replace him with four new Supermen!" became "Can one of them maybe be Superboy?" became "Or maybe not the real Superboy - a clone!" became "But not an aw-shucks, corn-fed 50s Midwestern clone. Let's make him relevant, contemporary and now! Superman with a modern attitude" became "Like, with buzzed hair, and, maybe a leather jacket." became "And sunglasses!" became "And pointless straps on the costume!" And then Kesel and Grummet and whoever had to run with that.

[The other consequence of this creation model is that characters designed by committee, or designed in some other half-assed way, have the advantage of being utterly malleable, and easily retconnable. Suddenly need your Superboy to carry Luthor DNA? No problem. Just throw in a flashback scene of Luthor fiddling with the cloning matrix, and off you go...]

This got me thinking a little harder about the Death of Superman arc in general and how it plays into OYL and so on.

I think the big consequence of the Death of Superman model (and Knightfall, and Emerald Twilight) is that the creation by committee approach informs these crossover projects in a variety of ways. The benefit of this is you can plan ahead, and start laying the foundations for and clues about big projects, giving engaged readers bread crumbs to follow. The problem with this approach is that the current editors don't seem to have the iron fists of the Carlins and O'Neils of the past, so the vital center that keeps the whole enterprise cohesive is lacking. The creative team is running around on the playground, and there is no one out there with a whistle.

Steel did some cool things over in the "pantheon" era JLA and seems to be pulling some kind of B-/C+ string status. Okay, good. But then ICk comes along and kills Clone-El and now Steel is a crying barechested robot on the floor thanks to the 52 thing.

I'm sure Steel will get better somehow (albeit a robot, which is profoundly problemmatic for his demographic anyway, but I digress – we already HAVE Cyborg, or did before they screwed him up too, and in fact we now HAVE that other black guy who used to be Hornblower but now is half robot, you see my point). Is this a "win" or not?

I think it's a "this town isn't big enough for the two of us" thing. While Steel was tremendously useful in the patheon era JLA, the role of African American genius in the DCU has increasingly been given over to Mister Terrific in the JSA. As that character's star rose, Steel's seems to have dimmed. So it's not a win; it's at best a tie. I hope there wasn't a demograpic consideration involved. I suspect there wasn't, but the appearance is indeed problematic.

I like jackass Booster. He reminds me of comic relief characters in Miyazaki and elsewhere. Actually, he is Han Solo in a world of Luke (compare to marvel where they tend to be more normal guys). Is it his fault that they don't seem to know how to write him? I would think he would be huge, just as a vehicle of wish fulfillment and humorous light adventure if nothing else. Why isn't he huge?

I suppose I'm being unfair to the character when I really ought to blame the writers. I've never much cared for him, and I don't think he has the depth of be a Han. Unlike Superboy, whose center is soft and chewy and suitable for enrobement in any manner of candy shell, I think the character is being written as what he was created to be: a greedy, largely ineffectual, self-promoter who is at best accidentally heroic.

His character doesn't spring from an archetype, but from zeitgeist. As originally conceived, Booster is the Yuppie as superhero, the athlete as capitalist. He's a reflection of 1980s corporate culture, in the same way that Ghost Rider is a product of 70s biker culture, or Dazzler reflects the Disco era. Unlike, say, Lex Luthor in his John Byrne-conceived incarnation of CEO as megalomaniac, Booster's essential core isn't solid enough to change with the times. Aside from the fact that he's been updated to reflect current trends - what are the sponsor logos on his uniform if not a reflection of the NASCARification of the superhero [indeed, I believe DC has partnered with NASCAR in the past]? - he's still essentially the same character he was 20 years ago.

There's potential there. Certainly, the threshold for celebrity, and the barriers to endorsement entry have both been lowered. I suspect that there is more room for selling these days before people are seen to be selling out.

So maybe BG is the Ryan Seacrest of superheroes: a lucky lunkhead who just happens to have caught the right wave, and is savvy enough to cash in while the cashing is good.

Which woefully underused bit of brightly colored IP could step up to become a revenue stream, much like Superboy and Steel both stepped up in the wake of Superman last time, or how god knows who emerged after the last time Batman was out of the picture. Then when the big three come back, you have the big three streams plus a healthier B bench. You've added value, and good for you!

Superboy and Steel did that. They managed to do that with Wally Flash. Kyle GL arguably succeeded at this for a while. It can be done. I'm just wondering about the choices of these particular characters. Why not Metamorpho instead of Elongated Man? Why not Deadman instead of the Question? Was the IP compelling on its merits, or were these the characters the creators were clamoring to write? If it's the latter, then it suggests that the lunatics are indeed running the asylum, and that the editorial reins are being loosely (if at all) gripped.

That's a mixed blessing, I suppose. If the creators are telling stories they want to tell, it suggests that creative considerations are ruling over commercial ones. On the other hand, if the thing fails because they're telling stories no one cares to read, then there will be no place to tell stories anyway.

Who decided that the Metal Men were annoying? Who decided that the responsometer was stupid? Who took away Ralph's stretch and lovely wife?

A committee. And while some parts of the end result are about telling a story, some part also entails throwing out the stuff they find stupid, or unwieldy, or embarrassing.

I would kind of be willing to tolerate the proxies thing more if it could be reduced to purer algebra: Wonder Woman equals Black Adam modulo Elongated Man or whatever.

But what it the "modulo EM" part? How is EM a WW proxy? And if Superman = Steel (self-doubt) + Booster (self-aggrandizement), then where is the heroism, to this point?

This would be an interesting lens into the characters of all three and even a pretty powerful generator of stories -- you could just tune the dial a little one way or the other and see what shakes out of solution, then write how that happens.

But don't we have a few useful phrases for that process? Don't we call that the Multiverse? Or The Silver Age? Or An Imaginary Story?

One of the interesting blowbacks from SSOV is that all seven of them have been seen up and walking around post-SSOV 1. which SOLDIER can DIE? any of them?

this might be why it's been so difficult for Grant to write and/or been so providentially delayed. we get our emotional payoff of ONE SHALL DIE without actually having to sacrifice a perfectly good character. i think that's cool -- and different from the Claremont model of "thunderbird was born to be boring and die."

It's the wink. It's that panel near the end of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?" where Superman turns to the reader, winks, and walks into the Gold Kyrptonite chamber. It's not just the act, but what it represents. It's the shared conspiracy of comics that says "this story may end, but it's okay. This is just one story of what might have been. If you don't like this possibility, try the next one. The story ends, but the character endures."

So a Soldier dies, because the story demands it, but death is a fungible condition.

Holmes didn't die at the Falls. Odysseus has one more stop to make. Dorothy finds a new corner of Oz to explore. Alice returns to Wonderland. The Road Goes Ever On and On. Onward and Upward! Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel!

Wiki-WHAAAAT?

2006-08-16T14:53:00.000-04:00

While reading the comments related to this post [Mike Mignola, The Awesomeness of, as reflected in every damn line of Hellboy] in the always excellent Dave's Long Box, I was reminded* of the fact that Mignola drew the Rocket Raccoon limited series.

Spaceships! Vermin with frickin' lasers! Melodrama! Amusing portrayals of the mentally ill! Clowns! Chimps with swords! Everything a growing boy needs!

The passing reference made me feel nostalgic, so I hopped over to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about the series. The entry offers slim pickings about both the character and the title, but what I was struck by was the Category Headings used to index the entry:

Categories: Furry comic books - Marvel Comics titles - Marvel Comics superheroes - Fictional raccoons - Animal superheroes

Fictional raccoons? The rest of the categories make perfect sense to me, but Fictional @#$%ing raccoons? Seems a bit esoteric to me.

This is why I simultaneously love, and fear, Wikipedia.

*If indeed, I was ever truly aware of it at the time. I mean, I was, like, 14 when the series came out. I didn't start paying serious attention to creator credits until I went through my annoying, insufferable, and pretentious collegiate "Sequential Art is a perfectly valid legitimate art form, and not merely adolescent power fantasy" phase.

Why am I a comics fan?

2006-08-13T16:48:00.000-04:00

Because at the age of six, my dad bought me this:

Is that not primal? Is that not perfect? Is that not a thing of joy, and beauty, and untrammelled awesomeness?

We all know that comics covers lie, or set up a bait and switch, or otherwise reek of red herrings left too long on the dock. But this issue? Pure honesty. Batman did traverse the sewers, and he did get attacked by a swarm of rats, and he escaped from the trap by being, well, Batman.

And since that day in 1976, I've been hooked. As Steinbeck said (in a different context), "I fear the disease is incurable."

I was so enamored of that issue, that my dad went back and got me the first issue in this run, and later completed the set with the final issue (which also featured my first encounter with The Flash) in the "Kill the Batman...In Triplicate!" story.

It's never going to show up in any Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told collection. I doubt Bob Rozakis, Michael Uslan, or Ernie Chua look back at this as the high point of their careers. But for me, this is what I think of when I think of Batman.

This will not end well.

2006-08-13T16:40:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or do these scenes from DC's 52 Week 14 suggest that there is bad robotic mojo on the horizon?

It's hard to say which of them will take the gold in the Crazy Olympics, and which one will have to settle for the silver.

Respectful Disagreement

2006-08-13T16:26:00.000-04:00

Much as I'm enjoying Scipio's occasional "Dibney Parade of Horribles" series, I can't entirely share his sentiment. Sure, there are less than salutary moments in everyone's past, but any sins we can lay at Elongated Man's elastic feet have to be balanced against such awesomeness as this:

On balance, I believe Ralph is ahead of the game.

Teutonic Ninjas?

2006-08-09T10:52:00.000-04:00

Watched the "Home Insecurity" episode of Venture Bros. (a show I have come to love with an unholy passion since pal Bombasticus turned me on to the Season 1 DVDs) last night. In the middle of the episode, I started wondering (in the minutia-crazed manner of all obsessives) about Baron Ünderbheit's ninja henchmen.

Ünderbheit is pretty clearly of Eastern European descent. His first name is Werner. He lives in the requisite lightning-kissed, craggy mountain Mad Scientist Castle. He rules over the country of Ünterland, enforcing his dictates through the application of Ünderlaw. If nothing else, the sheer mass of umlauts surrounding him quite clearly brands him as Germanic. Were that not enough, one of his chief lieutenants (before he got rid of his disloyal ünderlings) was called Girl freakin' Hitler.

Granted, taken together this evidence (language, geography, Nazi sidekick) could be spun to imply Herr Baron is from, like, Paraguay or somewhere, but it's best to stick with the simple eurocentric explanation, since the alternative doesn't change the parameters of the fundamental issue.

Which is this: why does a Germanic super-villain have ninja henchmen? Why does someone from Eastern Europe (or Paraguay; see, it doesn't really matter. In fact Germanic Paraguayan ninjas might even be more @#$%ed up...) rely on footsoldiers who look like Mortal Kombat rejects?

Besides, aren't ninjas supposed to be shadowy killers who kill from the shadows, rather than marginally competent goons? Is the costuming supposed to strike unwarranted fear in the hearts of opponents ("Oh $*@#! Ninjas!") giving the Ünterland nonjas a momentary, but potentially decisive, advantage?

That's better than the result of sending henchmen into the field in traditional Ünterland attire ("Look! They're wearing lederhosen! And adorable Tyrolean hats! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"). While the net result of enemies pissing themselves in laughter is arguably equivalent to pissing themseles with fear, nobody likes to be made fun of, especially not ruthless dictators who are already insecure on account of their disfigurement.

So, if we stipulate there is a strategic advantage to ninja henchmen, we're left to wonder how Ünderbheit came to his interest in the shadow warrior aesthetic. Did he watch a lot of anime in college? Did he make Yakuza contacts through the Guild of Calamitous Intent? Does he just really like sushi? Did the construction of his prosthetic jaw require specialized knowledge of cybernetics that could only be found in Japan? Did he get a good deal on the uniforms?

52-Skidoo: Quarterly report on DC Comics' 52

2006-08-06T14:06:00.000-04:00

Thirteen issues down, 39 issues to go. DC comics is 25% of the way through their yearlong journey through the post-Infinite Crisis DC Universe.

Thirteen issues is more than a year's worth of story at the traditional pace of publication. Spread out over a monthly publication schedule, the first quarter of the series covers more territory than Watchmen, or Secret Wars, or the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. In terms of actual real estate, each of these earlier epics clocks in at a longer page count, what with more issues per page, double-sized issues, and less filler material than 52 contains. When all is said and done, 52 will use four years' worth of comic books to tell a story spanning one-year of (allegedly) real-time DC comics chronology.

It's an ambitious project, and it invites the question of just what DC is using this epic scale to accomplish. The tag line of the series is: A year without Superman; a year without Batman; a year without Wonder Woman...but not a year without heroes. To date, 52 seems to be an attempt to redefine the core heroic principles of the DC comics universe by filtering these principles through a new set of heroic lenses.

The problem with this conceit (which serves as the first crack in a foundation that's already showing signs of needing to be repointed several times during the course of this year) -- for those of us who have been around the four-color block a few times -- is that the disappearance of the Big Three is nothing new. It has happened before. Superman loses his powers at least once every three years. Batman has his occasional stints on the disabled list (complete with the obligatory "Commissioner lights the Bat-Signal every night, but Batman fails to show" scene). And Wonder Woman...does whatever Wonder Woman does to get herself taken out of commission; dies, goes blind, whatever.

Sure, taking all three of these pieces off the board at the same time is a new twist. The problem is that the timing of their self-imposed exile stretches credulity. As 52 opens, the world is still reeling from the events of Infinite Crisis. Recovery efforts are ongoing, various heroes are still missing, and Superboy's corpse has barely had time to grow cold. It's hard to accept that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman would each take a pass at lending a hand to stabilize the situation before going off to find themselves, or settling into a normal life, or getting hooked on sudoku.

Again, consider Superman. He's been powerless before. It's nothing new to him. When it happens, he schleps over to S.T.A.R. Labs, and lets them run tests to determine what's wrong. Or he grabs a suit of powered armor painted in his familiar blue, red, and yellow colors and does the best he can with the tools at hand. Doing the right thing isn't second nature to him; it's his essential nature. Looking ahead to the "One Year Later" storyline, we know his powerlessness is chronic, but at the time 52 opens, it's simply too soon for Superman to have given up.

At minimum, Superman (and not Clark Kent) would have suited up for Superboy's memorial service. Even if he had to take a taxi to get there, he would have walked in, cape billowing, and led the service for his late protege, because, again, it's his essential nature. Maybe Batman lurks in the shadows, because that's what he does. Maybe Wonder Woman skips the whole thing, because there's no sorrow in a warrior falling in battle. But Superman? He would rally the troops before accepting that it was time to make a go out of living as plain old Clark Kent. Anything else is just shoddy storytelling.

Even if we accept the Big Three shaped hole in the heroic landscape, what over the other mainline heroes in the DC Universe? With Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman gone, would other Justice Leaguers of long standing (I'm lookin' at you, Hal Jordan, Mr. Silver Age stalwart, Mr. Most Powerful Weapon in the Universe) truly be relegated to cameo appearances and semi-effectual posturing?

So there's a lot of stuff being swept under an awfully big rug in order to set the stage for the players in this little year-long melodrama. So who are the heroes who have been chosen to teach us what it means to be a hero?

Characters

The principal actors in 52 are:

Booster Gold: Former member of the Justice League, sometime temporal fugitive from the 25th Century, and best friend of the late Blue Beetle (whose murder was one of the precipitating acts of Infinite Crisis). With his l'il robot pal Skeets -- whose databanks contain all the information Booster needs to be at the right place at the right time -- at his side, Booster fights a never-ending battle for self-aggrandizement, product endorsements, and making a quick buck (you know, the American Way)

John Henry Irons/Steel: Armored Justice Leaguer and scientific/engineering genius. Experienced a mutation that transformed his body into stainless steel, and gave him the ability to generate blasts of molten steel (likely as the result of manipulation by Lex Luthor)

Booster Gold and Steel are the Superman proxies for the series, Booster by virtue of, I guess, being based in Metropolis, Steel because he's part of the extended Superman-family on account of coming to prominence in the wake of the whole Doomsday thing.

The Question: Vigilante and conspiracy theorist. As the story opens, he's positioned as the odds-on favorite to win the 2006 Mr. One Banana Short of a Bunch prize, although it's looking like a dark horse candidate may be picking up some ground on him.

Renee Montoya: In no particular order, Montoya is a former Gotham City police detective, a lesbian, and an alcoholic (or at least someone doing a convincing impression of the same)

The Question and Montoya (a.k.a. "Ditko and the Drunk" are the Gotham/Batman proxies for the series. There's something strange afoot in Gotham (which is, you know, like saying the sky is blue, or pie is tasty), or maybe there's something strange afoot elsewhere, and its tentacles have stretched into Gotham. Either way, Intergang is screwing with the city, and that can't be good.

Black Adam: Member of the Shazam family, late of the Justice Society. He has taken control of the fictional North African/Middle Eastern/geographically indeterminate nation of Khandaq, and is using it as a base of operations from which to launch a global campaign of proactive heroism. Because the post-Infinite Crisis Earth is supposed to be a lighter, Silver Age-tinged place, this campaign largely exists of ripping villains in half and spraying passers-by with arterial blood and viscera (you know, like Superman used to do back in the 60s), and also of forming alliances with various rogue or otherwise...difficult states (because edginess and topicality are cool, and comics always do such a good job of addressing real world issues).

Ralph Dibney/The Elongated Man: Powerless (voluntarily?)/inactive since his wife's murder, EM begins the story suicidal, and as the buzzer sounds on the first quarter, he has become actively nuts.

Black Adam and the currently de-powered Elongated Man are Wonder WomanÂs proxies. Black Adam makes a certain amount of sense (ruler/ambassador of a non-U.S. nation, power connected to a pantheon of gods, etc.). I'm still at a loss to understand Elongated Man's ostensible connection to Wonder Woman. As one of the world's greatest detectives, he strikes me as being more in the Batman mold, but whatever it takes to balance the ticket, I suppose.

Supporting characters to date include:

Dr. Will Magnus: creator of The Metal Men. Currently investigating the disappearance of a host of leading scientists

T.O. Morrow: Science criminal and futurist. Currently playing Hannibal Lector to Magnus' Clarice Starling

Adrianna Tomaz/Isis: An orphan presented to Black Adam as tribute by Intergang (I tell you, those dudes are everywhere), she functioned as his conscience, which got annoying, so BA decided it would be smart to give her powers greater than his own.

Lex Luthor: The world's greatest villain. Currently peddling a program to give super powers to ordinary people. Because he's just a swell guy is all. Nope, no ulterior motives here. Move along.

Natasha Irons: Steel's niece. Previously had access to her own suit of powered armor, but Steel took it away when he decided he didn't like her attitude. She initially decided to build her own armor, but decided it would be easier to get powers through Lex Luthor's metahuman development program.

Kathy Kane/Batwoman: Gothamsocialitee and former paramour of Montoya. Not much is know about her backstory, or how she got the moves to wear a bat suit. I'm sure we'll find out in time. The question is, will we care?

Buddy Baker/Animal Man
Starfire
Adam Strange

These three were trapped in space after Infinite Crisis. They crash-landed on a planet that is home to a strange short pants-wearing Kirby-style dude who was ranting about gods and war and stuff. There was also hypnotic/narcotic space fruit. Also, Adam Strange lost his eyes in a bizarre space teleporter accident (although apparently the Golden Age Green Lantern ended up with one of them) . This would appear to be the setup for theinevitablee cosmic turn 52 seems destined to take.

Wonder Girl
Devem

Leaders of the Cult of Conner (Superboy), a mystic/viral resurrection cult that formed in the wake ofInfinitee Crisis. Indeed, it first appeared at the end of the first week/issue of the story, and was a bona fide Movement, with cool robes and rituals and online services and everything within two weeks. I know trends move fast here in the internet age, but thepropagationn of the Superboy cult in such a short time is one of those areas where the timing of the series starts to break down for me.

Themes

In addition to standing in for the missing heroes, each main character reflects one of the facets of heroism the creative team has chosen to explore. So we get mini lessons packaged in new tights:
- Sometimes, doing the right thing means goingoutsidee the law (Ditko and the Drunk)

- Being a hero is about more than serving your own ego/bottom line (Booster)

- An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind (Black Adam)

- Being a hero means accepting losses and moving on, so suit up and play through the pain(Elongated Dibney) [unless it doesn't, and the lesson is be true to what you have lost and you will get it back (which to me, seems like an awful copout)]

- Power without responsibility is villainy (Steel and L'il Steel/Natasha)

At the moment, the various key characters (with the exception of D&D) are providing various negative examples of these lessons. Booster is watching the clock wind down on his fifteen minutes of fame. Black Adam is caught up in how much right he can make with pure might. Steel got his ass handed to him trying to teach his niece to become a responsible hero. And poor Ralph has lost his mind.

So it seems like we're looking at half a year of characters struggling with their lessons, and falling off their pedestals in the process, and then another half a year of climbing back up to that level, and rediscovering What it Means to Be a Hero just in time to face off against the evil from space or whatever is ultimately revealed as the Big Bad of the series.

Other key themes include:

Time is out of joint. Infinite Crisis involved the reconstitution and subsequent contraction of the multiverse. When the dust settled, we were left with a New Earth (which supposedly addresses/resolves various continuity goofs left over from every previous attempt to address/resolve various continuity goofs left over from every previous attempt to address/resolve various continuity goofs). However, it appears there is a worm in the apple, or capers in the caccitore, or somethingotherwisee unpleasant where it shouldn't oughta be.

Booster Gold seems to be the center of the problem with time, perhaps as a result of coming back from the future just before the creation of New Earth. He possesses facts about the present (history gleaned from the 25th century) that is proving to be wrong. The implication, of course, is that his information is bad because history changed when New Earth formed, but I suspect it will also tie in to all the cosmic stuff the short pants Kirby guy from space is ranting about.

On the Darkseid, whoa-oh. So we have a short pants Kirby guy from space. We have Intergang. We have Rene Montoya finding strangely Kirbyetic weapons in abandoned warehouses. We have strangeness in time and space. Anyone care to bet me we won't see a big Apokalips reveal at some point?

Storytelling Mechanics

Each issue of 52 represents a week in the year covered by the story. The story clock starts ticking some indeterminate amount of time after the conclusion of Infinite Crisis, as Steel is contributing to the rescue and recovery efforts in the wake of the chaos wrought by IC. As the series has progressed, this fidelity to real-time has started to slip, as various characters' story arcs seem to go into stasis when they are off-panel. Granted, some license needs to be taken, as the structure of the story would start to drag over thelengtht of the series, but it needs to be better managed (and given the talent lined up behind this project, it should be), lest the whole thing devolve (as it is threatening to do) into a series of disconnected fits and starts.

Collateral Materials

DC is supporting the project with a tie-in website. "Supporting" is a charitable term. The refresh rate of the site isappallinglyy low, and the content that is added (premium cards for Big Belly Burger; LIT beer coasters; Senor Gyro recipes) are cute, but they don't add anything ofsubstancee to the experience. The site should be offeringEasterr eggs, and expanded story content (profiles of people who have taken the Luthor treatment, Skeet's entries on the Booster Blog, cryptic messages from T.O. Morrow) and a reason to check the site, and the comic. This should be cross-pollination, not merely an exercise in how clever the web designer thinks they are.

39 issues is a heck of a commitment for readers. It requires a corresponding commitment on the part of the creators, the editors, and the publisher: Don't just give us an ambitious, epic story. Give us good comics wrapped up in an epic package. Make us care about the characters. Make us care about the story. Give us something we care enough about to argue over and speculate about. We're comic fans; we know how to complain. Don't let us get off that easy.