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.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
If art imitated life
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 @#$%ing much? Can we not take it as read that I'm well and truly boned on the basis of the phenylketonurics I suck down with every Diet Coke without compounding the problem by dosing me with D-CON as well?
The story made me wonder how such news would play in the DC universe...
By Philip Reeves, Morning Edition, August 29, 2006 - In India, several states have banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi after a group called The Center for Science and Environment said the soft drinks contain unacceptably high levels of pesticide.
Is there really an acceptable level of pesticide content in soda? Doesn't any amount of, say, Raid greater than, you know, NONE qualify as too @#$%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.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Sick
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 @#$%ing madelines level of nostalgic recall here. Hell, I was so incoherently paranoid at the time that I thought Tina Yothers on Family Ties was the same kid as the one from Poltergeist, and I was convinced she was going to leap out of the TV and drag me into some hell dimension that it's a wonder I remember anything.
Comics that is.
Back then, I went back and forth between an issue of Batman (possibly Detective) - I recall little of the issue except that it had Catwoman on the cover - something that I variously remember as an issue of Action Comics, an issue of Daredevil, and, like, Rom or Micronauts or somesuch thing** and the sheer brain-melting glory of this:
I've never been a huge Iron Man fan. I like the character fine, but the Crimson Avenger never grabbed my imagination the way that, say, the Scarlet Speedster did. Even in my personal ranking of heroes rooted in the Cold War who used cutting-edge - and cool as all @$#% - 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.
Friday, August 18, 2006
With apologies to Robert Frost
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.
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.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Notes from the 52 Zoo Crew Digest
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!
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!
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Wiki-WHAAAAT?
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 @#$%ing raccoons? Seems a bit esoteric to me.
This is why I simultaneously love, and fear, Wikipedia.
*If indeed, I was ever truly aware of it at the time. I mean, I was, like, 14 when the series came out. I didn't start paying serious attention to creator credits until I went through my annoying, insufferable, and pretentious collegiate "Sequential Art is a perfectly valid legitimate art form, and not merely adolescent power fantasy" phase.
Spaceships! Vermin with frickin' lasers! Melodrama! Amusing portrayals of the mentally ill! Clowns! Chimps with swords! Everything a growing boy needs!
The passing reference made me feel nostalgic, so I hopped over to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about the series. The entry offers slim pickings about both the character and the title, but what I was struck by was the Category Headings used to index the entry:
Categories: Furry comic books - Marvel Comics titles - Marvel Comics superheroes - Fictional raccoons - Animal superheroes
Fictional raccoons? The rest of the categories make perfect sense to me, but Fictional @#$%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.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Why am I a comics fan?
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.
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
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.
On balance, I believe Ralph is ahead of the game.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Teutonic Ninjas?
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 $*@#! Ninjas!") giving the Ünterland nonjas a momentary, but potentially decisive, advantage?
That's better than the result of sending henchmen into the field in traditional Ünterland attire ("Look! They're wearing lederhosen! And adorable Tyrolean hats! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"). While the net result of enemies pissing themselves in laughter is arguably equivalent to pissing themseles with fear, nobody likes to be made fun of, especially not ruthless dictators who are already insecure on account of their disfigurement.
So, if we stipulate there is a strategic advantage to ninja henchmen, we're left to wonder how Ünderbheit came to his interest in the shadow warrior aesthetic. Did he watch a lot of anime in college? Did he make Yakuza contacts through the Guild of Calamitous Intent? Does he just really like sushi? Did the construction of his prosthetic jaw require specialized knowledge of cybernetics that could only be found in Japan? Did he get a good deal on the uniforms?
Ünderbheit is pretty clearly of Eastern European descent. His first name is Werner. He lives in the requisite lightning-kissed, craggy mountain Mad Scientist Castle. He rules over the country of Ünterland, enforcing his dictates through the application of Ünderlaw. If nothing else, the sheer mass of umlauts surrounding him quite clearly brands him as Germanic. Were that not enough, one of his chief lieutenants (before he got rid of his disloyal ünderlings) was called Girl freakin' Hitler.
Granted, taken together this evidence (language, geography, Nazi sidekick) could be spun to imply Herr Baron is from, like, Paraguay or somewhere, but it's best to stick with the simple eurocentric explanation, since the alternative doesn't change the parameters of the fundamental issue.
Which is this: why does a Germanic super-villain have ninja henchmen? Why does someone from Eastern Europe (or Paraguay; see, it doesn't really matter. In fact Germanic Paraguayan ninjas might even be more @#$%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?
Sunday, August 06, 2006
52-Skidoo: Quarterly report on DC Comics' 52
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 WomanÂ’s 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)
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 WomanÂ’s 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.
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