Spoilers of course.
From the astonishing Pinderpanda.
What does it mean?
Note: Batman RIP is polysemic, ambiguous, elliptical and all those other things that're great for literature and troublesome for bald 'fact files' like this. The section that follows therefore cannot aim to be as 'definitive' as does the rest of the guide, but can only aim to be plausibly interpretive.
What do the red skies mean?
Red skies appear on a number of occasions throughout Morrison's Batman RIP.
In the opening 'flash forward' sequence to events six months after the main storyline, over the skies of contemporary Gotham as Batman pursues 'The Green Vulture', during the sunset Honor Jackson shares with Bruce, and during Bruce's subsequent transformation into the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh.
Red skies have a particular meaning in DCU-lore. They were first seen during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, most notoriously in what became known as "Red Sky Crossovers" - issues marketed as Crisis tie-ins which had little connection to the storyline other than that particular colouring choice.
They are now a familiar omen of disaster. As DCU#0 puts it, "When the Multiverse is on the verge of destruction, when the skies drip red as the barriers between parallel universes bleed... When Earth's greatest heroes rise up together, willing to sacrifice everything they have in defense of all they hold dear... That war is called a Crisis."
2006's Ion maxiseries eventually revealled that the reason for this is that the weakening of the walls between universes during times of Crisis allows for a glimpse of 'the Bleed', an arterial channel between realities first introduced in Warren Ellis's Stormwatch run which went on to become a major part of the cosmologies of both Wildstorm and Final Crisis.
The association of red skies with Crises raises the question of RIP's association with Final Crisis. Addressing this in an interview Morrison says, "it could be the start of it, because those red skies have been seeping in for a while, but it's certainly not happening at the same time as Final Crisis #1. It could be happening a week before or something, but I haven't exactly specified it." (IGN, August 2008 ). So the red skies should be seen as signs that the Final Crisis was immanent, rather than that it was underway. This fits the sequence of events in the story.
This leaves the red skies in the six-months-later 'flash forward' sequences however...
"That's actually even more in the future than Battle for the Cowl," says Tony Daniel, "[That] would, hypothetically, appear at the very end of it" (Daniel, Newsarama, December 2008).
This places them well after the conclusion of Final Crisis, and would seem to suggest that on that occasion a red sky was simply a red sky.
Red also has a significance (or at least a significant lack of significance) in the red and black pattern the Joker is making throughout the story. The red skies also serve as visual references to this.
How exactly did the Joker talk with his tounge sliced in half?
In Batman #680 the Joker reveals that he knows Doctor Hurt's true identity by mutilating himself to display a serpent's tongue. It has troubled many readers that he appears capable of comprehensible speech after doing so.
It is however entirely possible that the Joker wasn't capable of comprehensible speech before doing so, and the tongue slicing merely serves to make this explicit.
The Joker was shot in the face in Batman #655 and, when he reappeared in #663 had undergone facial reconstruction surgery leaving him incapable of producing any sounds except "a subhuman paste of of slobbery vowels and clicking consonants." The prose story in that issue makes it very clear that, while the Joker thinks he's talking, all that's coming out is "mangled phonetics and toxic intent."
When this version of the Joker reappears in DCU#0, Tony Daniel draws him with retracted lips which would be unable to manufacture any rounded vowels or labial/labio-dental consonants. Daniel is careful never to actually show him speaking.
It seems very likely that the Joker we see in RIP is talking in the same "subhuman paste" and that his speech balloons (coloured green to distinguish them from conventional dialogue) contain the words he's trying to say rather than the actual noises coming out of his mouth.
Careful reading of the arc shows that nobody, from the Arkham psychiatrist, to the Club of Villains to the members of the Black Glove, show any sign of understanding him before or after the tongue-slicing. They respond only to the fact that he has spoken or to actions that he's taken rather than to the content of anything that he has said. There's no evidence that any characters with whom he converses in Batman RIP can makes heads or tails of what he's saying.
There's one exception to this.
The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh has an extended and two-sided conversation with the Joker, and is able to fully understand him both before and after the tongue-slicing.
But then, the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh also has two-sided conversations with gargoyles.
Batman typically works by gathering evidence and consciously interpreting it. In RIP we're shown that as the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh this process is unconscious. Whereas normally he'd read the city and deduce what the clues were telling him, in this state of mind he experiences this as direct linguistic information; "Shh! The city's talking" (Batman #679).
It follows then that he'd also be the only one able to converse with the Joker. Just as he interpreted the city's clues and experienced them as talking gargoyles, he'd be able to read the Joker's body language, intent and phonetics and experience them as actual speech.
It's also worth looking at what the conversation is about. The Joker is insisting that all life is fundamentally meaningless and that all attempts to make sense of it are doomed. And the World's Greatest Detective is making a liar of him...just by the simple act of understanding it.
Who (and why) was the Black Glove?
At San Deigo 2008 Grant Morrison said that the Black Glove's true identity would be someone "everybody in the world knows." Curiously, when the identity was eventually revealed, much of the readership failed to recognise him.
Lets go back to when Morrison first took on the Batman monthly and he mentioned that he'd "rather Batman embodied the best that secular humanism has to offer" (Newsarama, 2006). This take on the character has proved vital to how Morrison has written Batman throughout his career and is crucial to understanding why the Black Glove is who he is.
By 'Humanism' here, we're talking about the whole raft of philosophical ideas that came out of the Enlightenment and told us that it was possible for us to stop thinking of life as one long downhill ride from the Fall or the 'Golden Age' and to start thinking that humans had a chance to improve the world and themselves if they started playing smart and making the effort.
Where Batman comes in is that humanism does this through reason, rationality, science and all that sort of stuff, to the exclusion of all the irrational mumbo-jumbo that's also a part of being human. Arkham Asylum, by a younger and angier Grant Morrison, punishes Batman for his humanism by painting him as a repressed, joyless prig and having him suffer humilation and agony for his failure to integrate into himself myth, ritual, chaos, the Id, and all the other things reason excludes.
By the time of Morrison's JLA run things are very different. Here Batman is routinely defeating gods and ur-gods by holding to these values.
Inbetween we get Batman: Gothic, where reason and rationality are shown to be effective but limited. Batman solves the mystery, but an epilogue reveals that he's been blind to a major player in the events....the Devil himself! Humanism works here, but remains oblivious to the man behind the curtain.
The Devil next reappears in Morrison's Batman mythos during RIP, where he's wearing Mangrove Pierce's body and using the name 'The Black Glove'.
Batman is invested in a project which attempts to improve humanity through reason and rationality. There's no greater threat to that than the possibility that deep down inside humanity is a kind of irrational evil from which it can never escape.
The Devil's the ultimate supernatural bogeyman. There's no greater threat to it than the possibility that people might one day be able to work and think their way free. If that's true then the Devil's days are numbered.
The Joker is well aware of who the Black Glove is, making numerological references to the Devil, quoting the Rolling Stones and illustrating the point by fashioning himself a serpent's tougue. He also claims to know why the Devil hates Batman (#680) and it has to be because of this; the possibilities for humanity that Batman's values and achievements represent scare the Devil (#681).
Batman has to acknowledge though that the Devil is a part of him. Just as humanism tried to exclude from its discourse the irrational side of human experience, Batman tried to fence off the nonsensical aspects of his own life experience inside The Black Casebook; "All the things we'd seen that didn't fit and couldn't be explained went into the Black Casebook" (#665) but when he writes the final entry in the Casebook he faces the posibility that he's reached the limits of reason.
In the various isolation experiments, initiations and Thogal rituals we've seen Batman undertake he's found this 'source of pure evil' deep down inside himself. And as Doctor Hurt breathes, "The Black Glove always wins" it is Batman's own black glove we see smashing through the helicopter window.
Since we're talking about a book set in the shared universe of the DCU we have to mention that this is a world not short of Devils and Devil-analogues... Neron, Satanus, the First of the Fallen, Lucifer and plenty of others could all in different ways be thought of as 'The Devil' in DCU continuity.
I would suggest that it is not helpful in understanding Batman RIP to do so here. What Batman trimuphs against here is the idea of the Devil rather than any specific pre-existing variation on that idea. Although perhaps we should mention Orion's warning from Final Crisis #1 concerning Darkseid and his retinue of evil gods; "They did not die! He is in you all!"
It'd be tempting to give the last word to Damien, who says, "I know the Devil exists, or at least something exists which might as well be the Devil. I've met him." (Batman #666)
The Black Glove is something which might as well be the Devil.
Showing posts with label DC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DC. Show all posts
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Batman R.I.P.
Now, I'm not normally a fan of Batman or Superman, so it feels weird to realize how often I've written about them. But, well, there's been interesting stuff going on with them of late, between Grant Morrison and... uh... actually, really just Grant Morrison.
Still, many readers expressed confusion at the recent Batman R.I.P., its tie-ins, Final Crisis, etc... and I have tried to answer those questions when they have come up. However, while I do enjoy organizing things, this project was too large for me to start, and I (to be honest) didn't care nearly enough.
However, the magic of the Internet is the knowledge that, someone, somewhere, DOES enjoy this sort of thing, and is incapable of admitting that a project might be too large. Even more magical? Sometimes that person offers said project in an intelligent, well thought-out sort of way.
Prepare for some magic, then, from Gaiaonline.com poster Pinderpanda (man, that sucked the dignity right out of the room, huh?).
Batman RIP to Battle for the Cowl
- A Reader's Guide.
Contains spoilers galore.
Updated 08/01/2009
What's Happening?
What's going on in the Bat-books?
A number of Batman-related titles have been cancelled (Robin, Nightwing, Birds of Prey) and a number are going on hiatus (Batman, Detective) before relaunching in some form. This may, or may not, involve the replacement of Bruce Wayne as Batman.
Charitably this this happening because when "one writer is doing such a big thing, then it has to impact other books [...] because this story is too big to ignore" (Fabian Nicieza, IGN, December 2008 ).
Uncharitably this is happening because "the sales on the Batman titles went through the roof with the first issue of RIP. So quite clearly DC took one look at that and said let's put some branding on the other Bat titles" (Morrison, IGN, May 2008 ).
Either way, what we're left with is a curious maze of personal writer-led stories and mandated editor-led 'events'. This is your map.
What is Batman RIP?
In the pages of Batman, 'RIP' is a six issue arc which runs from #676 to #681.It concludes a "25-chapter novel" (Morrison, Newsarama, Feb 2008 ) which has run intermittently in the title since #655.
The title was also used as branding for issues of Detective Comics (#846-850), Nightwing (#147-150), Robin (#175-176), and Batman and the Outsiders (#11-13). These stories have at best a thematic or tangential connection to the main arc. They do not interact with it "in any crucial way" (Dini, CBR, June 2008 ) and were written with no input from the main arc's writer (Morrison, IGN, May 2008 ).
The main storyline involves the attempted ruination of Bruce Wayne's soul by a source of pure evil from beyond the limits of reason, and the subsequent kicking of said evil's ass by the Undamned Batman.
What is Last Rites?
'Last Rites' was a bit of masthead branding applied to issues of Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing, Robin and Batman and the Outsiders published following the conclusion of 'RIP'.
The 'Last Rites' storyline published in Batman ('The Butler Did It/What the Butler Saw') is set during Final Crisis and clarifies Batman's involvement in that series and its relation to RIP.
The 'Last Rites' storylines published in the other titles show various Gotham residents adapting to life without Batman.
What is Final Crisis?
A seven-issue miniseries, plus tie-ins, offered as DC's major event for 2008.
It variously attempts to be, or has been marketed as being...
...a sequel to Jack Kirby's Fourth World, OMAC and Kamadi material.
...the conclusion of the plot threads Grant Morrison has been running through all his DCU work since Animal Man.
...the third part of a 'Crisis' trilogy that began with Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis.
...the 'Third Act' of Didio-era DC which has run through Graduation Day, Identity Crisis, and everything since.
How successful it is in being any of those things is a matter of much debate. As is the level to which the project is interested in being anything other than the first two things. As is the level of comprehensibility the series attains given these various demands.
In Batman terms the series is important since it features "the final fate of Batman" (Morrison, IGN, August 2008 ); A mischievous and ironic phrase since the death of Barry Allen (returned to life by Final Crisis) occurred in an issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths bearing the cover blurb "the final fate of the Flash."
What is Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
A two issue story by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert that will run in Batman #686 and Detective Comics #853.
In both its title and its publication method, it parallels the Alan Moore/Curt Swan story "Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" which ran in Superman #423 and Action Comics #583 and which gave the Earth-1 Superman a 'final story' with which to cap off the continuity erased by Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Gaiman has said of the story, " I think the most important thing Sandman did, and it did create some important things, was that it was the first mainstream comic ever to finish a story. And I think that cannot be underestimated. The idea before that had always been that if you were writing a monthly comic, let's say Superman or whatever, you couldn't finish it. You weren't ever allowed to do the last one, to have the story mean anything. You had to turn back to the soap opera. [...] One of the things that attracted me to [Whatever Happened...] was when they asked if I would be interested in writing the last Batman story, so that's what I'm doing. The last Batman story." (Ain't It Cool, December 2008 ).
It is solicited as a "captivating and mysterious tale the likes of which Batman and friends have never experienced before. Delving into the realms of life, death and the afterlife."
What is Battle for the Cowl?
A three-issue miniseries which will be published during the March to May hiatus taken by Batman and Detective.
The story will deal with the matter of Batman's succesion. "The cape and cowl [is] the focus of the story. Should it be retired or should someone take the mantle? Will it make a difference either way? Batman was much more than just a costume, you know; putting it on doesn’t make you Batman." (Daniel, Newsarama, December 2008 )
It will be suported by a number of tie-in one-shots and miniseries. Those so far announced include Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead? (dealing with Spoiler, Vicki Vale, Harvey Bullock and Leslie Thompkins), Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive!, Oracle and Azrael: Death's Dark Knight.
The core series is to be written by RIP's penciller Tony Daniel, who boldly invited himself to do so...
"I was casually talking to [editor] Mike Marts about the story and my thoughts on how great it could be. I consider myself a storyteller, so in my mind I guess the wheels of the story were naturally spinning. And in this case, you couldn’t shut me up.
I mentioned how this could be something really great and not just a stop gap before Grant’s or my return to the title. [...]
So after spilling my guts for about 10 minutes about the ideas that were pouring out of my head, I jokingly told Mike that I would gladly accept the invitation to write Battle for the Cowl. Only he hadn’t done that and we both laughed. But I emailed him later after thinking about it more and it was too late. I was ramped up on my second cup of Starbucks and there was no turning back. I asked him to consider it." (Daniel, Newsarama, December 2008 )
How do these stories fit together?
This is at times a little unclear.
Many of the peripheral stories involve the Gotham cast reacting to Batman's disappearance, but the problem is that Batman disappears three times during the main storyline. Once during RIP, where he becomes a homeless drug addict for an issue, once following RIP's conclusion, in which he briefly vanishes in a helicopter crash, and once following whatver happens in Final Crisis.
The helicopter crash is the most puzzling of these, as it seems to serve no narative purpose and makes RIP look as if it has a weaker conclusion than it does.
Dan Didio explains that he mandated this extra bonus disapearance "Because we live in the world of collected editions, we needed a conclusion in the Batman series, so that we could collect it properly within Batman, without having to bring in segments of Final Crisis to complete the story" (Didio, Newsarama, December 2008 )
This logic is undermined somewhat by the fact that the collected edition of Batman RIP is including the two Final Crisis tie-in issues which follow it, so those reading it in trade will be confronted by segments of the larger story and will find the helicopter crash as much of a perplexing non-event as did those who followed the monthlies.
Thanks to this editorial masterstroke, we've got a stack of RIP tie-ins and Last Rites comics set "after Bruce's disapperance" and two disappearances this could possibly refer to - the helicopter crash or the events of Final Crisis.
I would argue that the balance of evidence seems to suggest that the "OMG! Batman's gone forever!" stories we've seen so far do not occur after his "final fate" in Final Crisis but rather while he was temporarily missing following the helicopter crash; Last Rites does not appear to be set in a post-Final Crisis world and there are references to the disapearance in clearly pre-Final Crisis books (such as Supergirl #34).
The broad sequence of events would then seem to be...
Batman RIP
(In which Batman defeats a 'source of pure evil' but has a curse placed upon him - his next case shall be his last! He then disappears in a helicopter crash.)
Various RIP tie-ins and Last Rites books
(In which everyone goes mental about Bruce being gone forever. Except in Tomasi's excellent Nightwing, where they sit around eating popcorn and waiting for him to return)
The flashback sequence shown in Batman #683
(In which Bruce returns from the helicopter crash as if it were no big deal. He is then dragged immediately into the events of Final Crisis #1)
Final Crisis #1-4
(In which Batman falls into Darkseid's clutches)
Batman #682-3
(In which Batman escapes Darkseid's clutches)
Final Crisis #5-7
(In which we learn the "final fate of Batman" )
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Battle for the Cowl
A more detailed, issue-by-issue, chronology is offered in the next section.
How do I read it?
How do I read any superhero comics set in a seventy-year-old continuity?
You've two options.
The first is to accept that every story, no matter how self-contained and no matter how good or bad a jumping-on point, has a "Previously..."
We're all of us finding our seats after the movie's started and spilling our popcorn on those around us. Don't stress about this. Just find somewhere, anywhere, that looks like an interesting place to start and jump in.
Be prepared to ask questions. Be prepared to look things up. Be prepared to ignore everyone who says you have to have read "X" before you can read "Y". Be prepared to be confused, and to work through that confusion if you find anything that fires your imagination enough to make that feel like work worth doing.
The other option is to start in 1939 with Detective Comics #27 and plough on through from there.
How do I read Batman RIP?
The six issues of Grant Morrison's Batman RIP printed in Batman #676-681 (and collected in the Batman RIP hardcover) comprise the final chapter of a longer storyline.
Morrison says that, "This is the first story I had planned when Peter Tomasi, the editor at the time, asked me to do Batman [...] the very first story title I noted down was “Batman RIP”. [...] So it came from there…and out of that notion came the idea for the big overarching story I’ve been telling since I first came on the book. Everything…the “Zur-En-Arrh” graffiti, the Joker prose story, the Club of Heroes…every detail that’s been in the book for the last couple of years is significant" (Newsarama, Feburary 2008 )
The complete story is collected across the Batman and Son, The Black Glove and Batman RIP trades.
Morrison also lays groundwork for the storyline in issues #30 and #47 of the 2006-7 weekly series 52. The relevant events from that story are well sumarised in the main Batman title but can be found in the third and fourth trade collection of 52.
The story also relies very heavily on events from two Silver Age stories; The Superman of Planet-X from Batman #113 and Robin Dies at Dawn from Batman #153. Although the relevant events from these stories are eventually recapped in the storyline, this doesn't happen until a point where many readers will have become exasperated. DC have yet to make these stories available to readers, but will remedy this in the Black Casebook trade available from June 2009.
A reader wanting the 'complete RIP experience' could then find it by reading...
The Black Casebook trade.
Weeks 30 and 47 from the third and fourth 52 trade.
The Batman and Son trade.
The Black Glove trade.
The Batman RIP trade.
Since it contains no major Status-Q changes, WHY should I read Batman RIP?
You might enjoy it. Then again, you might really not. The storyline has been fairly polarising and divisive among the readership.
As a rough guide I'd suggest that you'll probably enjoy Batman RIP...
...if you're frustrated with LOST for giving out too many answers.
...if your favoutite TS Eliot poems don't involve cats.
...if your personal 'top ten' films include The Fisher King, Jacobs Ladder, Angel Heart, The Name of the Rose or anything by David Lynch.
Matt Fraction best explains the run's appeal...
"It's a pretty spectacular example of [...] using Batman as frame of reference for Batman. The gag is that everything that's happened in the Batman comic actually happened to Batman, right? And what would that do to a human mind? From the bleak noir stuff to the bam-sock-pow stuff and everything in between. [Morrison]'s using the whole history of the character to comment on the character as the character endures it. And to comment on the comics mainstream, and on heroes, and all that great stuff. I mean, the first fight scene takes place in an art gallery during a Pop Art retrospective where these faux-Lichtenstein paintings of comics are commenting on the comic we're reading as we're reading it, for god's sake. And as the run went on, Morrison really used the entirety of the character's history as a frame of reference and context to comment on the character. Batman-as-Batman-as-Pop-Culture-in-toto. It's a mess, and a glorious one at that, and his reach might have exceeded his grasp for a couple reasons not exactly germane to this discussion, but it's been a pretty amazing piece, all the same. It's the Cremaster of superhero comics." (Fraction, The Comics Reporter, January 2009)
How do I read the Batman RIP tie-ins?
Dini's 'Heart of Hush' storyline in Detective # 846-850 is set shortly before Morrison's RIP issues and has no connection to them except the the idea that Hush is making his move now in order to destroy Batman before someone else beats him to it.
Robin #846-850 is set during the events of RIP, seemingly inbetween Batman #678 and Batman #679.
Batman and the Outsiders #11-13 and Nightwing #147-50 are set following RIP's conclusion.
Since they've no impact on the main plot, WHY should I read the Batman RIP tie-ins?
If you're following the characters in those particular books, or if you're looking for a Paul Dini story about Hush and a Peter Tomasi story about Two-Face.
There's no other strong reason, although events from 'Heart of Hush' may eventually prove important in Battle for the Cowl.
How do I read Final Crisis?
Final Crisis consists of a seven-issue miniseries, four accompanying miniseries (Revelations, Rogues' Revenge, Legion of Three Worlds, Superman Beyond) five accompanying one-shots (Requiem, Rage of the Red Lanterns, Resist, Submit, Secret Files) and two tie-in issues (Batman #682-3).
It was preceeded by a weekly series called Countdown to Final Crisis, published against Grant Morrison's wishes and in contradiction to his storyline (Morrison, Newsarama, June 2008 ). Considered alongside its own spin-offs, but not counting tie-ins in the monthlies, Countdown to Final Crisis comprises at least 102 issues, none of which make any fucking sense. It is best ignored.
Someone approaching Final Crisis to see Batman's story play out can happily confine themselves to Batman #682-3 and the seven-issue core Final Crisis mini.
Final Crisis is however, as discussed in 'What is Final Crisis?' above, the conclusion to a great many long-running stories. Readers may find their experience of its accessibility varies.
For example, when confronted with Turpin, a tough cop with prior history with superheroes, some readers will say "Hey! This is Dan Turpin from New Gods #5." They will get on fine.
Some readers will say, "I don't know who this guy is. But it says here that his name's Turpin, and that he's a tough cop with prior history with superheroes. That's probably enough to be going on with." They too will get on fine.
Some readers will say, "I don't know who this guy is! How am I expected to follow all this continuity?" They will get hopelessly confused.
You probably already know what sort of a reader you are.
Someone looking to read everything that feeds into this story would be faced with reading the complete DCU work of Jack Kirby and Grant Morrison, the complete Wildstorm work of Warren Ellis, Wanted, Sin City, Secret Invasion, every prior Crisis crossover and every DCU book published for the last four years.
Someone looking for a more manageble project of preparatory reading might just want to check out the four Jack Kirby's Fouth World Omnibus volumes and Grant Morrison's JLA and Seven Soldiers runs.
What's the chronology of all this?
What follows is an attempt to place the books considered by this article into an issue-by-issue chronology. Bare in mind that a chronology is not the same as an 'ideal reading order' or a list of 'essential reading' and also that in many places this is based on my own textual sleuthing and subjective judgement, rather than on anything official.
Detective Comics #846-50 (Heart of Hush)
Batman #676-8 (RIP parts 1-3)
Robin #175-6
Batman #679-81 (RIP parts 4-6)
Batman and the Outsiders #11-12 (Outsiders No More).
Nightwing #147-151 (The Great Leap)
Robin #177-182 (Search for a Hero)
Detective Comics #851 & Batman #684 ('The Last Days of Gotham')
Happens concurently with 'Search for a Hero'.
Batman and the Outsiders #13
Bruce returns from the heli-crash, as flashbacked to in Batman #863 .
Final Crisis #1-2
Final Crisis: Requiem
(Concurrent with FC#2. I've just included this because of the awesome scene of Bruce with the Oreo.)
Final Crisis #3-4
Batman #682-3 (The Butler Did It/What the Bulter Saw)
Final Crisis #5-7
Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader?
Battle for the Cowl.
Battle for the Cowl Questions
Is Azrael really coming back?
Published alongside Battle for the Cowl will be Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight, a three part mini-series.
The Azrael it features will neither be Jean-Paul Valley nor directly connected to the Order of St. Dumas. This character will have been appointed by a seedier splinter group called 'The Order of Purity' and will wear the Suit of Sorrows introduced in the Resurrection of R'as al Ghul crossover.
According to Fabian Nicieza "He's known and not really known, but it's a character that spins out of his introduction to the Bat-books in a very interesting way." (IGN, December 2008 )
The description of him in the solicts ("He was a husband and a father. A brother and a friend. A cop and a dark knight. But he had all that taken away." ), the darkly religious tone of the character and comments about him having been "manipulated and abused by many other outside forces" (Nicieza, Newsarama, January 2009) has caused some to speculate that he's the Third Man, the satanic replacement Batman created by Doctor Hurt.
"It could seem to suggest that, couldn't it?" says Nicieza (Newsarama, January 2009).
*
Thanks Pinderpanda! May your name live on in infamy!
Still, many readers expressed confusion at the recent Batman R.I.P., its tie-ins, Final Crisis, etc... and I have tried to answer those questions when they have come up. However, while I do enjoy organizing things, this project was too large for me to start, and I (to be honest) didn't care nearly enough.
However, the magic of the Internet is the knowledge that, someone, somewhere, DOES enjoy this sort of thing, and is incapable of admitting that a project might be too large. Even more magical? Sometimes that person offers said project in an intelligent, well thought-out sort of way.
Prepare for some magic, then, from Gaiaonline.com poster Pinderpanda (man, that sucked the dignity right out of the room, huh?).
Batman RIP to Battle for the Cowl
- A Reader's Guide.
Contains spoilers galore.
Updated 08/01/2009
What's Happening?
What's going on in the Bat-books?
A number of Batman-related titles have been cancelled (Robin, Nightwing, Birds of Prey) and a number are going on hiatus (Batman, Detective) before relaunching in some form. This may, or may not, involve the replacement of Bruce Wayne as Batman.
Charitably this this happening because when "one writer is doing such a big thing, then it has to impact other books [...] because this story is too big to ignore" (Fabian Nicieza, IGN, December 2008 ).
Uncharitably this is happening because "the sales on the Batman titles went through the roof with the first issue of RIP. So quite clearly DC took one look at that and said let's put some branding on the other Bat titles" (Morrison, IGN, May 2008 ).
Either way, what we're left with is a curious maze of personal writer-led stories and mandated editor-led 'events'. This is your map.
What is Batman RIP?
In the pages of Batman, 'RIP' is a six issue arc which runs from #676 to #681.It concludes a "25-chapter novel" (Morrison, Newsarama, Feb 2008 ) which has run intermittently in the title since #655.
The title was also used as branding for issues of Detective Comics (#846-850), Nightwing (#147-150), Robin (#175-176), and Batman and the Outsiders (#11-13). These stories have at best a thematic or tangential connection to the main arc. They do not interact with it "in any crucial way" (Dini, CBR, June 2008 ) and were written with no input from the main arc's writer (Morrison, IGN, May 2008 ).
The main storyline involves the attempted ruination of Bruce Wayne's soul by a source of pure evil from beyond the limits of reason, and the subsequent kicking of said evil's ass by the Undamned Batman.
What is Last Rites?
'Last Rites' was a bit of masthead branding applied to issues of Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing, Robin and Batman and the Outsiders published following the conclusion of 'RIP'.
The 'Last Rites' storyline published in Batman ('The Butler Did It/What the Butler Saw') is set during Final Crisis and clarifies Batman's involvement in that series and its relation to RIP.
The 'Last Rites' storylines published in the other titles show various Gotham residents adapting to life without Batman.
What is Final Crisis?
A seven-issue miniseries, plus tie-ins, offered as DC's major event for 2008.
It variously attempts to be, or has been marketed as being...
...a sequel to Jack Kirby's Fourth World, OMAC and Kamadi material.
...the conclusion of the plot threads Grant Morrison has been running through all his DCU work since Animal Man.
...the third part of a 'Crisis' trilogy that began with Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis.
...the 'Third Act' of Didio-era DC which has run through Graduation Day, Identity Crisis, and everything since.
How successful it is in being any of those things is a matter of much debate. As is the level to which the project is interested in being anything other than the first two things. As is the level of comprehensibility the series attains given these various demands.
In Batman terms the series is important since it features "the final fate of Batman" (Morrison, IGN, August 2008 ); A mischievous and ironic phrase since the death of Barry Allen (returned to life by Final Crisis) occurred in an issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths bearing the cover blurb "the final fate of the Flash."
What is Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
A two issue story by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert that will run in Batman #686 and Detective Comics #853.
In both its title and its publication method, it parallels the Alan Moore/Curt Swan story "Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" which ran in Superman #423 and Action Comics #583 and which gave the Earth-1 Superman a 'final story' with which to cap off the continuity erased by Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Gaiman has said of the story, " I think the most important thing Sandman did, and it did create some important things, was that it was the first mainstream comic ever to finish a story. And I think that cannot be underestimated. The idea before that had always been that if you were writing a monthly comic, let's say Superman or whatever, you couldn't finish it. You weren't ever allowed to do the last one, to have the story mean anything. You had to turn back to the soap opera. [...] One of the things that attracted me to [Whatever Happened...] was when they asked if I would be interested in writing the last Batman story, so that's what I'm doing. The last Batman story." (Ain't It Cool, December 2008 ).
It is solicited as a "captivating and mysterious tale the likes of which Batman and friends have never experienced before. Delving into the realms of life, death and the afterlife."
What is Battle for the Cowl?
A three-issue miniseries which will be published during the March to May hiatus taken by Batman and Detective.
The story will deal with the matter of Batman's succesion. "The cape and cowl [is] the focus of the story. Should it be retired or should someone take the mantle? Will it make a difference either way? Batman was much more than just a costume, you know; putting it on doesn’t make you Batman." (Daniel, Newsarama, December 2008 )
It will be suported by a number of tie-in one-shots and miniseries. Those so far announced include Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead? (dealing with Spoiler, Vicki Vale, Harvey Bullock and Leslie Thompkins), Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive!, Oracle and Azrael: Death's Dark Knight.
The core series is to be written by RIP's penciller Tony Daniel, who boldly invited himself to do so...
"I was casually talking to [editor] Mike Marts about the story and my thoughts on how great it could be. I consider myself a storyteller, so in my mind I guess the wheels of the story were naturally spinning. And in this case, you couldn’t shut me up.
I mentioned how this could be something really great and not just a stop gap before Grant’s or my return to the title. [...]
So after spilling my guts for about 10 minutes about the ideas that were pouring out of my head, I jokingly told Mike that I would gladly accept the invitation to write Battle for the Cowl. Only he hadn’t done that and we both laughed. But I emailed him later after thinking about it more and it was too late. I was ramped up on my second cup of Starbucks and there was no turning back. I asked him to consider it." (Daniel, Newsarama, December 2008 )
How do these stories fit together?
This is at times a little unclear.
Many of the peripheral stories involve the Gotham cast reacting to Batman's disappearance, but the problem is that Batman disappears three times during the main storyline. Once during RIP, where he becomes a homeless drug addict for an issue, once following RIP's conclusion, in which he briefly vanishes in a helicopter crash, and once following whatver happens in Final Crisis.
The helicopter crash is the most puzzling of these, as it seems to serve no narative purpose and makes RIP look as if it has a weaker conclusion than it does.
Dan Didio explains that he mandated this extra bonus disapearance "Because we live in the world of collected editions, we needed a conclusion in the Batman series, so that we could collect it properly within Batman, without having to bring in segments of Final Crisis to complete the story" (Didio, Newsarama, December 2008 )
This logic is undermined somewhat by the fact that the collected edition of Batman RIP is including the two Final Crisis tie-in issues which follow it, so those reading it in trade will be confronted by segments of the larger story and will find the helicopter crash as much of a perplexing non-event as did those who followed the monthlies.
Thanks to this editorial masterstroke, we've got a stack of RIP tie-ins and Last Rites comics set "after Bruce's disapperance" and two disappearances this could possibly refer to - the helicopter crash or the events of Final Crisis.
I would argue that the balance of evidence seems to suggest that the "OMG! Batman's gone forever!" stories we've seen so far do not occur after his "final fate" in Final Crisis but rather while he was temporarily missing following the helicopter crash; Last Rites does not appear to be set in a post-Final Crisis world and there are references to the disapearance in clearly pre-Final Crisis books (such as Supergirl #34).
The broad sequence of events would then seem to be...
Batman RIP
(In which Batman defeats a 'source of pure evil' but has a curse placed upon him - his next case shall be his last! He then disappears in a helicopter crash.)
Various RIP tie-ins and Last Rites books
(In which everyone goes mental about Bruce being gone forever. Except in Tomasi's excellent Nightwing, where they sit around eating popcorn and waiting for him to return)
The flashback sequence shown in Batman #683
(In which Bruce returns from the helicopter crash as if it were no big deal. He is then dragged immediately into the events of Final Crisis #1)
Final Crisis #1-4
(In which Batman falls into Darkseid's clutches)
Batman #682-3
(In which Batman escapes Darkseid's clutches)
Final Crisis #5-7
(In which we learn the "final fate of Batman" )
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Battle for the Cowl
A more detailed, issue-by-issue, chronology is offered in the next section.
How do I read it?
How do I read any superhero comics set in a seventy-year-old continuity?
You've two options.
The first is to accept that every story, no matter how self-contained and no matter how good or bad a jumping-on point, has a "Previously..."
We're all of us finding our seats after the movie's started and spilling our popcorn on those around us. Don't stress about this. Just find somewhere, anywhere, that looks like an interesting place to start and jump in.
Be prepared to ask questions. Be prepared to look things up. Be prepared to ignore everyone who says you have to have read "X" before you can read "Y". Be prepared to be confused, and to work through that confusion if you find anything that fires your imagination enough to make that feel like work worth doing.
The other option is to start in 1939 with Detective Comics #27 and plough on through from there.
How do I read Batman RIP?
The six issues of Grant Morrison's Batman RIP printed in Batman #676-681 (and collected in the Batman RIP hardcover) comprise the final chapter of a longer storyline.
Morrison says that, "This is the first story I had planned when Peter Tomasi, the editor at the time, asked me to do Batman [...] the very first story title I noted down was “Batman RIP”. [...] So it came from there…and out of that notion came the idea for the big overarching story I’ve been telling since I first came on the book. Everything…the “Zur-En-Arrh” graffiti, the Joker prose story, the Club of Heroes…every detail that’s been in the book for the last couple of years is significant" (Newsarama, Feburary 2008 )
The complete story is collected across the Batman and Son, The Black Glove and Batman RIP trades.
Morrison also lays groundwork for the storyline in issues #30 and #47 of the 2006-7 weekly series 52. The relevant events from that story are well sumarised in the main Batman title but can be found in the third and fourth trade collection of 52.
The story also relies very heavily on events from two Silver Age stories; The Superman of Planet-X from Batman #113 and Robin Dies at Dawn from Batman #153. Although the relevant events from these stories are eventually recapped in the storyline, this doesn't happen until a point where many readers will have become exasperated. DC have yet to make these stories available to readers, but will remedy this in the Black Casebook trade available from June 2009.
A reader wanting the 'complete RIP experience' could then find it by reading...
The Black Casebook trade.
Weeks 30 and 47 from the third and fourth 52 trade.
The Batman and Son trade.
The Black Glove trade.
The Batman RIP trade.
Since it contains no major Status-Q changes, WHY should I read Batman RIP?
You might enjoy it. Then again, you might really not. The storyline has been fairly polarising and divisive among the readership.
As a rough guide I'd suggest that you'll probably enjoy Batman RIP...
...if you're frustrated with LOST for giving out too many answers.
...if your favoutite TS Eliot poems don't involve cats.
...if your personal 'top ten' films include The Fisher King, Jacobs Ladder, Angel Heart, The Name of the Rose or anything by David Lynch.
Matt Fraction best explains the run's appeal...
"It's a pretty spectacular example of [...] using Batman as frame of reference for Batman. The gag is that everything that's happened in the Batman comic actually happened to Batman, right? And what would that do to a human mind? From the bleak noir stuff to the bam-sock-pow stuff and everything in between. [Morrison]'s using the whole history of the character to comment on the character as the character endures it. And to comment on the comics mainstream, and on heroes, and all that great stuff. I mean, the first fight scene takes place in an art gallery during a Pop Art retrospective where these faux-Lichtenstein paintings of comics are commenting on the comic we're reading as we're reading it, for god's sake. And as the run went on, Morrison really used the entirety of the character's history as a frame of reference and context to comment on the character. Batman-as-Batman-as-Pop-Culture-in-toto. It's a mess, and a glorious one at that, and his reach might have exceeded his grasp for a couple reasons not exactly germane to this discussion, but it's been a pretty amazing piece, all the same. It's the Cremaster of superhero comics." (Fraction, The Comics Reporter, January 2009)
How do I read the Batman RIP tie-ins?
Dini's 'Heart of Hush' storyline in Detective # 846-850 is set shortly before Morrison's RIP issues and has no connection to them except the the idea that Hush is making his move now in order to destroy Batman before someone else beats him to it.
Robin #846-850 is set during the events of RIP, seemingly inbetween Batman #678 and Batman #679.
Batman and the Outsiders #11-13 and Nightwing #147-50 are set following RIP's conclusion.
Since they've no impact on the main plot, WHY should I read the Batman RIP tie-ins?
If you're following the characters in those particular books, or if you're looking for a Paul Dini story about Hush and a Peter Tomasi story about Two-Face.
There's no other strong reason, although events from 'Heart of Hush' may eventually prove important in Battle for the Cowl.
How do I read Final Crisis?
Final Crisis consists of a seven-issue miniseries, four accompanying miniseries (Revelations, Rogues' Revenge, Legion of Three Worlds, Superman Beyond) five accompanying one-shots (Requiem, Rage of the Red Lanterns, Resist, Submit, Secret Files) and two tie-in issues (Batman #682-3).
It was preceeded by a weekly series called Countdown to Final Crisis, published against Grant Morrison's wishes and in contradiction to his storyline (Morrison, Newsarama, June 2008 ). Considered alongside its own spin-offs, but not counting tie-ins in the monthlies, Countdown to Final Crisis comprises at least 102 issues, none of which make any fucking sense. It is best ignored.
Someone approaching Final Crisis to see Batman's story play out can happily confine themselves to Batman #682-3 and the seven-issue core Final Crisis mini.
Final Crisis is however, as discussed in 'What is Final Crisis?' above, the conclusion to a great many long-running stories. Readers may find their experience of its accessibility varies.
For example, when confronted with Turpin, a tough cop with prior history with superheroes, some readers will say "Hey! This is Dan Turpin from New Gods #5." They will get on fine.
Some readers will say, "I don't know who this guy is. But it says here that his name's Turpin, and that he's a tough cop with prior history with superheroes. That's probably enough to be going on with." They too will get on fine.
Some readers will say, "I don't know who this guy is! How am I expected to follow all this continuity?" They will get hopelessly confused.
You probably already know what sort of a reader you are.
Someone looking to read everything that feeds into this story would be faced with reading the complete DCU work of Jack Kirby and Grant Morrison, the complete Wildstorm work of Warren Ellis, Wanted, Sin City, Secret Invasion, every prior Crisis crossover and every DCU book published for the last four years.
Someone looking for a more manageble project of preparatory reading might just want to check out the four Jack Kirby's Fouth World Omnibus volumes and Grant Morrison's JLA and Seven Soldiers runs.
What's the chronology of all this?
What follows is an attempt to place the books considered by this article into an issue-by-issue chronology. Bare in mind that a chronology is not the same as an 'ideal reading order' or a list of 'essential reading' and also that in many places this is based on my own textual sleuthing and subjective judgement, rather than on anything official.
Detective Comics #846-50 (Heart of Hush)
Batman #676-8 (RIP parts 1-3)
Robin #175-6
Batman #679-81 (RIP parts 4-6)
Batman and the Outsiders #11-12 (Outsiders No More).
Nightwing #147-151 (The Great Leap)
Robin #177-182 (Search for a Hero)
Detective Comics #851 & Batman #684 ('The Last Days of Gotham')
Happens concurently with 'Search for a Hero'.
Batman and the Outsiders #13
Bruce returns from the heli-crash, as flashbacked to in Batman #863 .
Final Crisis #1-2
Final Crisis: Requiem
(Concurrent with FC#2. I've just included this because of the awesome scene of Bruce with the Oreo.)
Final Crisis #3-4
Batman #682-3 (The Butler Did It/What the Bulter Saw)
Final Crisis #5-7
Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader?
Battle for the Cowl.
Battle for the Cowl Questions
Is Azrael really coming back?
Published alongside Battle for the Cowl will be Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight, a three part mini-series.
The Azrael it features will neither be Jean-Paul Valley nor directly connected to the Order of St. Dumas. This character will have been appointed by a seedier splinter group called 'The Order of Purity' and will wear the Suit of Sorrows introduced in the Resurrection of R'as al Ghul crossover.
According to Fabian Nicieza "He's known and not really known, but it's a character that spins out of his introduction to the Bat-books in a very interesting way." (IGN, December 2008 )
The description of him in the solicts ("He was a husband and a father. A brother and a friend. A cop and a dark knight. But he had all that taken away." ), the darkly religious tone of the character and comments about him having been "manipulated and abused by many other outside forces" (Nicieza, Newsarama, January 2009) has caused some to speculate that he's the Third Man, the satanic replacement Batman created by Doctor Hurt.
"It could seem to suggest that, couldn't it?" says Nicieza (Newsarama, January 2009).
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Thanks Pinderpanda! May your name live on in infamy!
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Big Three
No, not the car companies. DC's Big Three. Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman. Each of the three are going through some Big Events right now, because comics companies love Big Events, and for all their whining to the contrary, so do fans. Here's a rundown of what the stars of the DCU are going through right now.
Wonder Woman: Rise of the Olympian
Featuring in part the introduction of Genocide, a dark monster created by an alliance of Wonder Woman's enemies, Simone's Wonder Woman story deals with the gods of Olympus, fearing that their champion has failed and abandoned them, sending a new champion - the Olympian. Simone's greatest strengths are often in character moments, moreso than in action, and the same could be said of Lopresti, but if I have high hopes for this book despite the occasionally schizophrenic tone of the series, it's because it hasn't been hyped to oblivion and turned into a 17 part 4 book event. The first issue was solid-but-not-spectacular, and we'll see how it turns out in the end.
Batman: R.I.P., Last Rites and Battle for the Cowl
Batman: R.I.P. was a competent, enjoyable non-event that DC blew way out of proportion. As a capstone to Morrison's run on Batman, it was really quite good. A metatextual mystery playing on the expectations of fanboys and the conventions of the industry? Lots of fun. As a line-wide event, it sucked. The tie-ins were unimpressive and didn't actually 'tie in' to anything, and the upcoming Battle for the Cowl - an editorially mandate with a novice writer at the helm - doesn't look promising at all. That said, Batman & Son -> The Black Glove -> R.I.P. was an enjoyable run on Batman, and the current Last Rites storyline that follows it up features superstars like Grant Morrison, Denny O'Neil, and Neil Gaiman, so it should be pretty quality.
Superman: 100,000 Kryptonians
No, that art is not official and has nothing to do with the story. According to the board I found it on - You'll All Be Sorry @ CBR - it's some graffiti from Dusseldorf. I just think it's cool.
Anyway, 100K Kryptonians features the return of... can you guess?... 100,000 Kryptonians to Earth, and the subsequent shenanigans. Fan favorite writer Geoff Johns is helming the event from Action Comics, while a personal favorite of mine, James Robinson, is running things on Superman, and relative newcomer Sterling Gates is taking control of Supergirl. Those three books form the core of the title, but a few one-shots have already been released featuring such stars as Jimmy Olson and the Manhattan Guardian. Response hasn't been ridiculously positive to the series, but I've heard few complaints from those reading the arc.
*
And that's that. But, I'd hate to leave our Marvel fans with no good news, so I shall point out that X-Men Noir #1 came out last week to impressive reviews and surprisingly good sales (we're sold out and back-ordered, curse the souls of everyone alive), and Spider-Man Noir #1 hits next week, with Incognito coming up soon as well, making this month an awesome month for Marvel, in my book.
Finally, my first semester of grad school is finished, and I have resolved the issues with my 'net provider, so I return you to your regularly scheduled programming!
Wonder Woman: Rise of the Olympian
Featuring in part the introduction of Genocide, a dark monster created by an alliance of Wonder Woman's enemies, Simone's Wonder Woman story deals with the gods of Olympus, fearing that their champion has failed and abandoned them, sending a new champion - the Olympian. Simone's greatest strengths are often in character moments, moreso than in action, and the same could be said of Lopresti, but if I have high hopes for this book despite the occasionally schizophrenic tone of the series, it's because it hasn't been hyped to oblivion and turned into a 17 part 4 book event. The first issue was solid-but-not-spectacular, and we'll see how it turns out in the end.
Batman: R.I.P., Last Rites and Battle for the Cowl
Batman: R.I.P. was a competent, enjoyable non-event that DC blew way out of proportion. As a capstone to Morrison's run on Batman, it was really quite good. A metatextual mystery playing on the expectations of fanboys and the conventions of the industry? Lots of fun. As a line-wide event, it sucked. The tie-ins were unimpressive and didn't actually 'tie in' to anything, and the upcoming Battle for the Cowl - an editorially mandate with a novice writer at the helm - doesn't look promising at all. That said, Batman & Son -> The Black Glove -> R.I.P. was an enjoyable run on Batman, and the current Last Rites storyline that follows it up features superstars like Grant Morrison, Denny O'Neil, and Neil Gaiman, so it should be pretty quality.
Superman: 100,000 Kryptonians
No, that art is not official and has nothing to do with the story. According to the board I found it on - You'll All Be Sorry @ CBR - it's some graffiti from Dusseldorf. I just think it's cool.
Anyway, 100K Kryptonians features the return of... can you guess?... 100,000 Kryptonians to Earth, and the subsequent shenanigans. Fan favorite writer Geoff Johns is helming the event from Action Comics, while a personal favorite of mine, James Robinson, is running things on Superman, and relative newcomer Sterling Gates is taking control of Supergirl. Those three books form the core of the title, but a few one-shots have already been released featuring such stars as Jimmy Olson and the Manhattan Guardian. Response hasn't been ridiculously positive to the series, but I've heard few complaints from those reading the arc.
*
And that's that. But, I'd hate to leave our Marvel fans with no good news, so I shall point out that X-Men Noir #1 came out last week to impressive reviews and surprisingly good sales (we're sold out and back-ordered, curse the souls of everyone alive), and Spider-Man Noir #1 hits next week, with Incognito coming up soon as well, making this month an awesome month for Marvel, in my book.
Finally, my first semester of grad school is finished, and I have resolved the issues with my 'net provider, so I return you to your regularly scheduled programming!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Apologies, Apologies
Ah, see, just as I was getting into the habit of an update every other day, I am forced to break it. I must apologize to my loyal reader, and explain, briefly.
I have only recently started grad school, studying for my Master's in Library and Information Sciences. I've moved to a new city - where no one seems to play VS (yet), curse the souls of all around me - and have been looking for a job. More than that, though, is the mad-crazy amount of work expected of a graduate student that, to be frank, leaves me with far less free time than I might have otherwise hoped.
Still, fret not. I shan't abandon the you for long. While I don't think that I can keep up my recent update rate when I can't even find people to play the damn game with (yet), I shall definitely try and update regularly - if not every other day, then at least twice a week, thrice a week on a good week. And of course, as I settle in, find a job, get a schedule, and learn not to wait to the last moment to do the massive projects expected of me, I shall surely find more time to update.
In other news, All-Star Superman came to a heart-breaking ending yesterday with #12. It's a great series, and I once again implore any comic fan reading this to urge a local library to pick it up. Here are a few covers from the series...
And, finally, while Ed Brubaker is not working on the Marvel Noir project, as I had hoped he would be, he is starting up a new project. Described, apparently, as a meld between Sleeper (a book you will get a post on sooner or later) and Criminal, Incognito looks like a promising new book, well worth checking out. Brubaker is an extremely competent writer, and one of the relatively few who seems more interested in telling good stories than getting you to like his pet characters.
I have only recently started grad school, studying for my Master's in Library and Information Sciences. I've moved to a new city - where no one seems to play VS (yet), curse the souls of all around me - and have been looking for a job. More than that, though, is the mad-crazy amount of work expected of a graduate student that, to be frank, leaves me with far less free time than I might have otherwise hoped.
Still, fret not. I shan't abandon the you for long. While I don't think that I can keep up my recent update rate when I can't even find people to play the damn game with (yet), I shall definitely try and update regularly - if not every other day, then at least twice a week, thrice a week on a good week. And of course, as I settle in, find a job, get a schedule, and learn not to wait to the last moment to do the massive projects expected of me, I shall surely find more time to update.
In other news, All-Star Superman came to a heart-breaking ending yesterday with #12. It's a great series, and I once again implore any comic fan reading this to urge a local library to pick it up. Here are a few covers from the series...
And, finally, while Ed Brubaker is not working on the Marvel Noir project, as I had hoped he would be, he is starting up a new project. Described, apparently, as a meld between Sleeper (a book you will get a post on sooner or later) and Criminal, Incognito looks like a promising new book, well worth checking out. Brubaker is an extremely competent writer, and one of the relatively few who seems more interested in telling good stories than getting you to like his pet characters.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Superman
So, has there ever been a character you just really didn't like? I know that, for a lot of people, Superman is targeted as a cookie-cutter character, a cardboard cut-out, and numerous other unflattering titles, many of which begin with 'c'. It's a fair commentary - a character that's been around as long as he has, in this day in age, absolutely HAS to be 'safe' in every way possible. There's a certain amount of leeway with him, but he's just not allowed to change beyond a certain degree. Same goes for his cast. So, just how do you give personality to a 70 year old character, the icon of the stagnation of comic books? More importantly, how do you boil down 70 years worth of stories to a readable amount? And there's a lot of garbage in there - how do you know what you can safely skip?
All-Star Superman
A single recommendation. Rare for me, I know. Still, pay attention.
All-Star Superman takes place outside of the standard DC Continuity, meaning it can set its own rules, pick and choose what baggage it wants to deal with - and it doesn't have to leave the toys intact for the next writer. Saving the astronauts aboard a space shuttle attempting to 'map the sun' from a death engineered by Lex Luthor, Superman is fatally wounded. Slowly dying, Superman begins to tie up the loose ends of his life, everything from revealing his secret identity to Lois Lane to trying everything he can to finally save the Kryptonians trapped in the Bottle City of Kandor.
All-Star Superman is a love letter to the Silver Age of comics, a time of rampant insanity and bizarre ideas. It's also a wonderfully imaginative series with just a hint of sadness running throughout. Watching Superman confront his own mortality allows for some interesting facets of his personality to come to the forefront, and the series as a whole gets better and better at building Superman's cast and character. It also just happens to be a good book in general.
There's not much detail here. This isn't meant to be a long post, and it isn't meant to tell you everything about the book. It's to say, if you're interested in comics, if you've always hated Superman and are willing to be proven wrong, if you just want a good sci-fi adventure story, you owe it to yourself to read some All-Star Superman. If you don't enjoy it by "Funeral in Smallville" or even "The Gospel According to Lex Luthor", you probably won't enjoy it at all, but it's a cold-hearted bastard what can't appreciate this book.
Enjoy your weekends!
All-Star Superman
A single recommendation. Rare for me, I know. Still, pay attention.
All-Star Superman takes place outside of the standard DC Continuity, meaning it can set its own rules, pick and choose what baggage it wants to deal with - and it doesn't have to leave the toys intact for the next writer. Saving the astronauts aboard a space shuttle attempting to 'map the sun' from a death engineered by Lex Luthor, Superman is fatally wounded. Slowly dying, Superman begins to tie up the loose ends of his life, everything from revealing his secret identity to Lois Lane to trying everything he can to finally save the Kryptonians trapped in the Bottle City of Kandor.
All-Star Superman is a love letter to the Silver Age of comics, a time of rampant insanity and bizarre ideas. It's also a wonderfully imaginative series with just a hint of sadness running throughout. Watching Superman confront his own mortality allows for some interesting facets of his personality to come to the forefront, and the series as a whole gets better and better at building Superman's cast and character. It also just happens to be a good book in general.
There's not much detail here. This isn't meant to be a long post, and it isn't meant to tell you everything about the book. It's to say, if you're interested in comics, if you've always hated Superman and are willing to be proven wrong, if you just want a good sci-fi adventure story, you owe it to yourself to read some All-Star Superman. If you don't enjoy it by "Funeral in Smallville" or even "The Gospel According to Lex Luthor", you probably won't enjoy it at all, but it's a cold-hearted bastard what can't appreciate this book.
Enjoy your weekends!
Monday, July 14, 2008
The Best Books You Aren't Reading: Manhunter
A few years back, Marc Andreyko, a rookie writer for DC, launched a book called Manhunter. It isn't the first book to bear that name - it's the third, in fact. But, while Andreyko made nods to the previous series', and indeed used many of the previous casts in his supporting cast, he and artist Jesus Saiz worked together to create a new person to wear the Manhunter mantle: Kate Spencer.
Kate Spencer smokes. Kate Spencer is a divorced, single mother. Kate Spencer is violent. Kate Spencer is fully-clad. In other words, Kate Spencer is everything you never expect to see in comics today. Hell, Marvel recently jumped through hoops vast, flaming, and cheesy to avoid having Spider-Man get a divorce, and most comics don't tend to deal with divorced single mothers. She's a lawyer on the West Coast, a famous prosecutor who loves to shut down the sociopaths and sickos of the DC Universe. But when Copperhead, a vicious cannibalistic murderer, gets off on a technicality, Kate takes justice into her own hand. She steals some equipment, blackmails a tech guy into helping her - does whatever is needed to get the job done. And what the job is, that first time, is putting a hole bigger than a fist through Copperhead's skull.
Kate may not be like the average DC character, but the tone and style of the book are pure DC. There's a deep sense of interconnectedness that Kate has with the past - one slow-burning side-plot throughout the series has to deal with her unknown father, and his past in the DCU. She's got connections to a number of bigger heroes, but she doesn't really care, in the end. All she wants is to stop these madmen from running loose.
The book has a solid, well-rounded supporting cast, ranging from her young son Ramsey to her co-worker's boyfriend, JSA's Obsidian. Mark Shaw and Cameron Chase are two old-school names that some fans might recognize, and they're both given a second life in the book, as is Director Bones.
Manhunter is a good book. It's not great, but it'll never let you down. It's violent, but fun, with more than a touch of criticism on the society that lets these people run free. But it never has that sense of "I MUST BE BAD-ASS" that pervades and often destroys the similarly themed Punisher books.
Manhunter just restarted. The entire first 'season', in a way, is collected in a series of four trades, and there are two issues out now in the second season, a perfectly fine jumping-on point, from the looks of it. Manhunter had a very near run-in with death a year or two back, as the book was on the verge of cancellation. An inordinately strong fan-campaign saved it, but good will and great fans only takes you so far, and the book deserves at least a shot.
Remember the deal? You buy an issue of one of The Best Books You Aren't Reading (just click on the tag below for a full list of 'em) and you don't enjoy it, I'll send you an MVL/DCL/MUN/promo EA or rare and I'll ask you to find some sort of contest to give the copy you didn't like away.
Sorry I don't have a plethora of images for you to enjoy on this one - I'll add 'em as I find 'em. As is, take it on my word: the art is good, the writing is good, the book is good.
Edit: Also, as a note, this was apparently my 75th post. Go me!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Final Crisis Analysis, pt 1
I said earlier that Final Crisis is turning out to be an issue that is pretty heavy on subtext. You can read FC#2 easily as a complete newcomer to the DC Universe and still find an enjoyable issue. However, if you don't mind digging a little deeper, Final Crisis #2 opens up into a number of crazy interpretations, a rich discussion of DC's past, present, and future. It becomes a brutal examination of the struggle between Good and Evil.
So, to spark a little interest in 'deep readings' - which I'm sure you all remember from school as a massive pain in the ass, but which are actually quite rewarding when you're doing them on something you care about - I thought I'd post this. It's from a great poster on a message board on gaiaonline.com.. It's an amazing breakdown of the first half of Final Crisis #2. I hope it sparks a little interest in the series - or, at the very least, sparks a little interest in sharing your own interpretations of the events of the series. It really is a fascinating rundown, so I hope you enjoy!
--
What follows is in no way analytical, being just some random thoughts I had while reading Final Crisis #2. Some of which aren't even about Final Crisis. Nevertheless, it demanded to be called...
FINAL ANALYSIS
"Stop! You must be supercool to proceed! Your life depends on it!"
I've talked here before about how the real Joss Whedon (as opposed to his evil clone that writes comics) considered the title of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to operate like a nightclubber bouncer; Screening those seeking admittance to the fiction. If you were cool enough to get past the title, you were cool enough to engage with what lay beyond.
Morrison previously used this sort of challenge to the reader at the start of Seven Soldiers' penultimate issue, asking "Can you imagine...Frankenstien in Fairyland?" because if you couldn't then you didn't stand any chance of keeping up with what followed. But this is the most literal use of the 'Page One Bouncer' technique imaginable, and it's a bit of a pity about the context really. Seven Soldiers had 28 slices of fried gold preceeding its direct challenge to the reader. Final Crisis had one hugely disapointing first issue.
"You must be supercool to proceed!" in this context makes even the most enthusiastic reader think ,"Grant, love. You're the one with something to prove over the next thrity-nine pages, not me."
Of course, he does prove it because the issue turns out to be screamingly brilliant, so that's alright then. OR IS IT?
Have a look at this spot-on review from CBR...
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=201
"Timothy Callahan"
-
"Final Crisis" is not a tour through the DC Universe. It's not a fun, light-hearted summer event. It's a deeply disturbing look at heroes under siege. And it's very good.
-
And have a look at this wonderfully sneaky 'praise' from Bendis...
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080627-WWCBendisJohns.html
"Bendis"
-
But I've also been thinking about Final Crisis too, and remembering I had a similar reaction to the first two issues of The Filth too. I was like, what's going on here? There were giant hands! But at the end of it, I was like, 'Oh, that's the best comic I've read all year!' And I'm not even sure I got it all. And I'll read it again. And I've bought it every time it came out.
I don't know that you'll have that feeling [with Final Crisis] but you may have that feeling at the end. Not everything has to be spoon-fed. And I love to spoon feed. But that doesn't mean everything has to be the same flavor. Look, it may be the biggest 'what the fuck?' ever. But there's a track record with him that it might end up being like The Filth. Which would be awesome."
-
It's now obvious that Final Crisis isn't going to read much like a summer event book, but rather more like a seven issue Grant Morrison story. And Bendis' backhanded compliment there allows him to suggest that the best it could possibly turn out like is The Filth - a book which only an 'elite' of readers can understand, and which only a handful of those can stomach.
"Here's me giving the kids Independance Day," Bendis is implying, "And here's you trying to screen Bruno Dumont's L'Humanite in the same multiplex."
You don't, as has been discussed, have to have a strong background in DC continuity to follow Final Crisis. But it might turn out that you do have to be supercool to proceed. Does that really make much sense for DC's summer event? Because, and I hate to say this, an awful lot of the target audience really isn't.
"When will he realise that being fantastic is a superpower in itself?"
I wonder what we're supposed to do with the Super Young Team?
If this were Invisibles, Morrison would be directing us to love them, and if this were Seaguy he'd be directing us to hate them. We seem free to make up our own mind here. I like 'em.
Not as much as I love seeing Shilo as the man with the plan though.The DCU must see him like we see Tom Cruise, mustn't they? Big celeb who thinks we're beset by fallen-alien-god-spirit thingies.
"These super-people who built the machine made of parallel universes"
Interesting choice of words. If the Orrery we saw in the first issue isn't a way of perceiving the multiverse or a device for sustaining and regulating it, but rather a machine that's just been built out of it then there're some big questions to ask.
What would a machine built out of universes be for? What would it do? What would it produce?
If I were doing a proper critique of this issue then I'd link this with all the stuff about fire in the first issue and talk about 'the use of tools' as a major theme of the story so far, but I'm eager to get on to the next scene because it's incredible...
"Who knew the sound of breath whistling through smashed cartilage could be such a turn-on?"
Who wants to bet that is was round about here Bendis started thinking about The Filth?
Because obviously a scene of a once-decent cop brutally beating a pedophile while threatening to smash his brains open with a toilet seat doesn't belong in a superhero summer event. The superheroes haven't realised it yet - they're on the moon, almost anticiapating J'onn's ressurection because they know how the DCU's rules work - but they don't live in the DCU anymore. Evil has won the day. They're living in Sin City.
In the first issue Turpin was capable of horrible things, like mocking Vic's death, but of then immediately recognising that he'd done wrong. This Turpin keeps on with the horrible, because he belives his actions are justified, which is a huge bit of the Kirby Mythology. Look at the posters around Granny's school in the flashbacks to Scott's youth or to Godfrey's first sermon in Forever People. Darkseid doesn't work so much by inculcating evil in others, so much as by allowing them to justify thier evil to themselves and take it further.
"You're not a beast -- if you kill for Darkseid"
"You're not a liar -- if you lie for Darkseid"
You're not a thug, if you beat someone to death trying to find missing children.
But of course, there are no missing children. And if this were a film then Godfrey's simple and creepy, "But you already met the children, back in New York" would be the equivalent to "You're eating worms" in The Lost Boys. It's possible there's a metafictional joke going on here, in that Turpin's first scene strongly appears to break the continuity of the previous issue, until we get that little bit more information.
Too much going on to dwell on that though, as watching Turpin's progress lets us know how the Fallen Gods work. They're in everyone (evil was in Turpin when he made his cruel joke) but sometimes they're really in someone (Turpin's now being so fully riden by the God of Evil that Godfrey can talk to him as if he was that God).
I love the lack of any glamour attached to evil in this series. It's just brutal and ugly and nasty. The various series that've lifted Darkseid out of the Fourth World context and used him as an all-purpose Generic Evil Space Tyrant have generally tried to make him cool and majestic and awesome and stuff. But that's not really very much what evil's like. Darth Vader's cloak swishing about and the Imperial March booming away are one thing, but evil looks a lot more like the decaying body of the three year old on the news yesterday who was locked in a room full of flies and dog shit and starved to death while her mother went to the pub.
The best line in Millar's Wanted, which seems more relevant to Final Crisis by the page, is "People love facists, man. You ever met a woman who fantasised about being tied up and raped by a liberal?"
Kirby's mythos has always offered us facism without the erotic fantasy. There's a pretty obvious biographical reason for that.
His Fourth World asks a very strange question. Only that could only have arisen via the culture-fuck of one of the War generation trying to tell his most personal story while simultaneously trying to get down with the kids of the Woodstock generation; what if fascism wasn't a political ideology but was a cosmological principle? All those hideous ideas, which compelled artists to become soldiers in order to slap them down, what if they weren't just Something That Happened In Our History but were hardwired into the very mathematics of the universe?
If the logic of facism, of anti-life, were something as fundamental as that, could we still fight it? Should we still fight it?
(One of the reasons The Fourth World never feels concluded is because nobody's ever understood that and finished the saga with the "HELL YES!" it demands)
So here's how evil is in Final Crisis then. All shit and tears and smashed cartilage. It's getting Turpin hard, but hopefully we're all feeling a little ill. People might fantasise about being raped by some idealised facist, but nobody fantasises about being raped by Josef Fritzl. The Dark Side is less sexy than the one they've been selling.
"Warn the Justice League! Warn everyone!"
This doesn't just mean, "Get a big team of like, loads and loads of superheroes together!"
This means that everyone is fighting this war. On every level. You and your mum and your dad and your gran and a bucket of vindaloo.
One of the most fun things about the series so far is how it's eliminating the distinction between a 'cosmic' book and a 'street level' book. The distinction's entirely false anyway - Daredevil's struggles are all concerned with huge abstract concepts just as much a Doctor Strange's adventures are. The only difference is that in Doctor Strange's adventures the huge abstract concepts get externalised into big nasty Demon Princes and stuff, and in Daredevil's adventures then the huge abstract concepts stay internalised as Guilt and Anger and Shame and so forth.
This can be a huge problem for storytelling at the Huge Summer Event level because you've got characters who normally fight their Big Eternal Struggles inside thier heads side-by-side with characters who normally fight thier Big Eternal Struggles against the Demon Prince of Guilt, the Elder God of Anger and the Spooky Ghost of Shame. You get Spider-Man trying to fight Thanos.
But what we've got here is something that's been set up so cleverly that the conflict happening on every level is explictly the same one. This is nothing new to comics, try and argue whether Sandman, Hellblazer or Lucifer are 'street level' or 'cosmic level' books and watch the grown-ups laugh at you. But it's very unusual for a big crossover thingy to mange to set up a story in which the actions of the Question and the actions of the Spectre carry equal importance.
If you've got conciousness, you're a cosmic entity.
I wanted to write about much more of the comic than this, but I've frazzled myself out for tonigt concentrating on a single two-page scene of Turpin beating up the Mad Hatter. Sorry.
So, to spark a little interest in 'deep readings' - which I'm sure you all remember from school as a massive pain in the ass, but which are actually quite rewarding when you're doing them on something you care about - I thought I'd post this. It's from a great poster on a message board on gaiaonline.com.. It's an amazing breakdown of the first half of Final Crisis #2. I hope it sparks a little interest in the series - or, at the very least, sparks a little interest in sharing your own interpretations of the events of the series. It really is a fascinating rundown, so I hope you enjoy!
--
What follows is in no way analytical, being just some random thoughts I had while reading Final Crisis #2. Some of which aren't even about Final Crisis. Nevertheless, it demanded to be called...
FINAL ANALYSIS
"Stop! You must be supercool to proceed! Your life depends on it!"
I've talked here before about how the real Joss Whedon (as opposed to his evil clone that writes comics) considered the title of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to operate like a nightclubber bouncer; Screening those seeking admittance to the fiction. If you were cool enough to get past the title, you were cool enough to engage with what lay beyond.
Morrison previously used this sort of challenge to the reader at the start of Seven Soldiers' penultimate issue, asking "Can you imagine...Frankenstien in Fairyland?" because if you couldn't then you didn't stand any chance of keeping up with what followed. But this is the most literal use of the 'Page One Bouncer' technique imaginable, and it's a bit of a pity about the context really. Seven Soldiers had 28 slices of fried gold preceeding its direct challenge to the reader. Final Crisis had one hugely disapointing first issue.
"You must be supercool to proceed!" in this context makes even the most enthusiastic reader think ,"Grant, love. You're the one with something to prove over the next thrity-nine pages, not me."
Of course, he does prove it because the issue turns out to be screamingly brilliant, so that's alright then. OR IS IT?
Have a look at this spot-on review from CBR...
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=201
"Timothy Callahan"
-
"Final Crisis" is not a tour through the DC Universe. It's not a fun, light-hearted summer event. It's a deeply disturbing look at heroes under siege. And it's very good.
-
And have a look at this wonderfully sneaky 'praise' from Bendis...
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080627-WWCBendisJohns.html
"Bendis"
-
But I've also been thinking about Final Crisis too, and remembering I had a similar reaction to the first two issues of The Filth too. I was like, what's going on here? There were giant hands! But at the end of it, I was like, 'Oh, that's the best comic I've read all year!' And I'm not even sure I got it all. And I'll read it again. And I've bought it every time it came out.
I don't know that you'll have that feeling [with Final Crisis] but you may have that feeling at the end. Not everything has to be spoon-fed. And I love to spoon feed. But that doesn't mean everything has to be the same flavor. Look, it may be the biggest 'what the fuck?' ever. But there's a track record with him that it might end up being like The Filth. Which would be awesome."
-
It's now obvious that Final Crisis isn't going to read much like a summer event book, but rather more like a seven issue Grant Morrison story. And Bendis' backhanded compliment there allows him to suggest that the best it could possibly turn out like is The Filth - a book which only an 'elite' of readers can understand, and which only a handful of those can stomach.
"Here's me giving the kids Independance Day," Bendis is implying, "And here's you trying to screen Bruno Dumont's L'Humanite in the same multiplex."
You don't, as has been discussed, have to have a strong background in DC continuity to follow Final Crisis. But it might turn out that you do have to be supercool to proceed. Does that really make much sense for DC's summer event? Because, and I hate to say this, an awful lot of the target audience really isn't.
"When will he realise that being fantastic is a superpower in itself?"
I wonder what we're supposed to do with the Super Young Team?
If this were Invisibles, Morrison would be directing us to love them, and if this were Seaguy he'd be directing us to hate them. We seem free to make up our own mind here. I like 'em.
Not as much as I love seeing Shilo as the man with the plan though.The DCU must see him like we see Tom Cruise, mustn't they? Big celeb who thinks we're beset by fallen-alien-god-spirit thingies.
"These super-people who built the machine made of parallel universes"
Interesting choice of words. If the Orrery we saw in the first issue isn't a way of perceiving the multiverse or a device for sustaining and regulating it, but rather a machine that's just been built out of it then there're some big questions to ask.
What would a machine built out of universes be for? What would it do? What would it produce?
If I were doing a proper critique of this issue then I'd link this with all the stuff about fire in the first issue and talk about 'the use of tools' as a major theme of the story so far, but I'm eager to get on to the next scene because it's incredible...
"Who knew the sound of breath whistling through smashed cartilage could be such a turn-on?"
Who wants to bet that is was round about here Bendis started thinking about The Filth?
Because obviously a scene of a once-decent cop brutally beating a pedophile while threatening to smash his brains open with a toilet seat doesn't belong in a superhero summer event. The superheroes haven't realised it yet - they're on the moon, almost anticiapating J'onn's ressurection because they know how the DCU's rules work - but they don't live in the DCU anymore. Evil has won the day. They're living in Sin City.
In the first issue Turpin was capable of horrible things, like mocking Vic's death, but of then immediately recognising that he'd done wrong. This Turpin keeps on with the horrible, because he belives his actions are justified, which is a huge bit of the Kirby Mythology. Look at the posters around Granny's school in the flashbacks to Scott's youth or to Godfrey's first sermon in Forever People. Darkseid doesn't work so much by inculcating evil in others, so much as by allowing them to justify thier evil to themselves and take it further.
"You're not a beast -- if you kill for Darkseid"
"You're not a liar -- if you lie for Darkseid"
You're not a thug, if you beat someone to death trying to find missing children.
But of course, there are no missing children. And if this were a film then Godfrey's simple and creepy, "But you already met the children, back in New York" would be the equivalent to "You're eating worms" in The Lost Boys. It's possible there's a metafictional joke going on here, in that Turpin's first scene strongly appears to break the continuity of the previous issue, until we get that little bit more information.
Too much going on to dwell on that though, as watching Turpin's progress lets us know how the Fallen Gods work. They're in everyone (evil was in Turpin when he made his cruel joke) but sometimes they're really in someone (Turpin's now being so fully riden by the God of Evil that Godfrey can talk to him as if he was that God).
I love the lack of any glamour attached to evil in this series. It's just brutal and ugly and nasty. The various series that've lifted Darkseid out of the Fourth World context and used him as an all-purpose Generic Evil Space Tyrant have generally tried to make him cool and majestic and awesome and stuff. But that's not really very much what evil's like. Darth Vader's cloak swishing about and the Imperial March booming away are one thing, but evil looks a lot more like the decaying body of the three year old on the news yesterday who was locked in a room full of flies and dog shit and starved to death while her mother went to the pub.
The best line in Millar's Wanted, which seems more relevant to Final Crisis by the page, is "People love facists, man. You ever met a woman who fantasised about being tied up and raped by a liberal?"
Kirby's mythos has always offered us facism without the erotic fantasy. There's a pretty obvious biographical reason for that.
His Fourth World asks a very strange question. Only that could only have arisen via the culture-fuck of one of the War generation trying to tell his most personal story while simultaneously trying to get down with the kids of the Woodstock generation; what if fascism wasn't a political ideology but was a cosmological principle? All those hideous ideas, which compelled artists to become soldiers in order to slap them down, what if they weren't just Something That Happened In Our History but were hardwired into the very mathematics of the universe?
If the logic of facism, of anti-life, were something as fundamental as that, could we still fight it? Should we still fight it?
(One of the reasons The Fourth World never feels concluded is because nobody's ever understood that and finished the saga with the "HELL YES!" it demands)
So here's how evil is in Final Crisis then. All shit and tears and smashed cartilage. It's getting Turpin hard, but hopefully we're all feeling a little ill. People might fantasise about being raped by some idealised facist, but nobody fantasises about being raped by Josef Fritzl. The Dark Side is less sexy than the one they've been selling.
"Warn the Justice League! Warn everyone!"
This doesn't just mean, "Get a big team of like, loads and loads of superheroes together!"
This means that everyone is fighting this war. On every level. You and your mum and your dad and your gran and a bucket of vindaloo.
One of the most fun things about the series so far is how it's eliminating the distinction between a 'cosmic' book and a 'street level' book. The distinction's entirely false anyway - Daredevil's struggles are all concerned with huge abstract concepts just as much a Doctor Strange's adventures are. The only difference is that in Doctor Strange's adventures the huge abstract concepts get externalised into big nasty Demon Princes and stuff, and in Daredevil's adventures then the huge abstract concepts stay internalised as Guilt and Anger and Shame and so forth.
This can be a huge problem for storytelling at the Huge Summer Event level because you've got characters who normally fight their Big Eternal Struggles inside thier heads side-by-side with characters who normally fight thier Big Eternal Struggles against the Demon Prince of Guilt, the Elder God of Anger and the Spooky Ghost of Shame. You get Spider-Man trying to fight Thanos.
But what we've got here is something that's been set up so cleverly that the conflict happening on every level is explictly the same one. This is nothing new to comics, try and argue whether Sandman, Hellblazer or Lucifer are 'street level' or 'cosmic level' books and watch the grown-ups laugh at you. But it's very unusual for a big crossover thingy to mange to set up a story in which the actions of the Question and the actions of the Spectre carry equal importance.
If you've got conciousness, you're a cosmic entity.
I wanted to write about much more of the comic than this, but I've frazzled myself out for tonigt concentrating on a single two-page scene of Turpin beating up the Mad Hatter. Sorry.
Big Events
So, we've got the Big 2, Marvel and DC, throwing down for their summer events. Secret Invasion vs. Final Crisis. One, a full-scale alien invasion of earth, as the shapeshifting Skrulls have infiltrated many important positions. The other, Earth's final hour as the God of Evil finally takes notice of earth.
The two stories are interesting in how they've morphed in the public perception, in the eyes of comic book fans. A few months back, when we knew next to nothing about the events, each had a certain image.
Secret Invasion was the clever one. It was all infiltration, secrets. "Who do you trust?" it asked. "No one," it told you. "Trust no one." Reading comics, you slowly began to pick out traitors, and Secret Invasion geared up to be one hell of an event, all shadows and subtlety.
Meanwhile, DC's behemoth, Final Crisis, was coming, and the only thing people knew about it, the only thing that was expected, was that it would be huge. While SI was acting like a spy drama, people expected Final Crisis to be the action movie super blockbuster of the decade.
It's interesting how things change, isn't it?
A few issues into Secret Invasion, that perception has been turned inside out. After a pretty solid first issue, the series nose-dived into mediocrity. Fans of the series admitted that more important reveals were happening in Mighty and New Avengers, and the main book had degenerated into a slower-than-average beat-'em-up. It's not bad - Bendis does great dialogue, and he's good at giving the fans what they want to see. And the brilliant main plot twist of the series, the arrival of a ship full of 70's era heroes, is still paying dividends. But House of M comparisons are already starting, and Bendis has always had trouble with the crowd-pleasing bravado of Mark Millar. Still, Bendis is clearly trying to make SI into THE summer blockbuster, and with his gift for a twisty plot, his use of all of Marvel's biggest guns, and his numerous spin-offs and tie-ins and 3-4 alternate collectors covers per issue, he looks to be succeeding.
Meanwhile, we're two issues into DC's Final Crisis, and expectations have been turned on their head. The first issue, even to hardcore supporters of DC and Morrison, was lackluster. A great deal was set-up, but nothing happened, and for what was supposed to be a SFX blockbuster, there was precious little action. Instead, there was a strong focus on little-known characters, a move that pissed off a lot of fans, and a slow build of dread that had been undermined more than a little by the Countdown fiasco. The second issue, however, gave a far clearer picture of what is to be expected. Final Crisis #2 was filled with larger-than-life concepts, a clear and concise continuation and/or ending of Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Final Crisis #2 was filled with disgust and betrayal - but again, little action. Instead, Morrison is positioning Final Crisis to take the mantle of the intellectual event, writing a book that lends itself to dissection and frequent re-readings. And while Final Crisis may still be talking about in 5 or 10 years as a masterpiece (or it very well may not), right now there's the very immediate issue that people generally prefer the blockbuster to the slow boil. We shall see.
This write-up exists as an examination of the series, but more-so, as a recommendation to any VS fans reading this. I don't know your tastes, so I can't say what you are looking for in your comics. If you want a blockbuster, a twisty action thriller, you want Secret Invasion. If you want a brutal examination of Good vs Evil in man's struggle against something much greater than itself, you want Final Crisis. Whichever way you go, though, it's a damn good time to be a comics fan.
The two stories are interesting in how they've morphed in the public perception, in the eyes of comic book fans. A few months back, when we knew next to nothing about the events, each had a certain image.
Secret Invasion was the clever one. It was all infiltration, secrets. "Who do you trust?" it asked. "No one," it told you. "Trust no one." Reading comics, you slowly began to pick out traitors, and Secret Invasion geared up to be one hell of an event, all shadows and subtlety.
Meanwhile, DC's behemoth, Final Crisis, was coming, and the only thing people knew about it, the only thing that was expected, was that it would be huge. While SI was acting like a spy drama, people expected Final Crisis to be the action movie super blockbuster of the decade.
It's interesting how things change, isn't it?
A few issues into Secret Invasion, that perception has been turned inside out. After a pretty solid first issue, the series nose-dived into mediocrity. Fans of the series admitted that more important reveals were happening in Mighty and New Avengers, and the main book had degenerated into a slower-than-average beat-'em-up. It's not bad - Bendis does great dialogue, and he's good at giving the fans what they want to see. And the brilliant main plot twist of the series, the arrival of a ship full of 70's era heroes, is still paying dividends. But House of M comparisons are already starting, and Bendis has always had trouble with the crowd-pleasing bravado of Mark Millar. Still, Bendis is clearly trying to make SI into THE summer blockbuster, and with his gift for a twisty plot, his use of all of Marvel's biggest guns, and his numerous spin-offs and tie-ins and 3-4 alternate collectors covers per issue, he looks to be succeeding.
Meanwhile, we're two issues into DC's Final Crisis, and expectations have been turned on their head. The first issue, even to hardcore supporters of DC and Morrison, was lackluster. A great deal was set-up, but nothing happened, and for what was supposed to be a SFX blockbuster, there was precious little action. Instead, there was a strong focus on little-known characters, a move that pissed off a lot of fans, and a slow build of dread that had been undermined more than a little by the Countdown fiasco. The second issue, however, gave a far clearer picture of what is to be expected. Final Crisis #2 was filled with larger-than-life concepts, a clear and concise continuation and/or ending of Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Final Crisis #2 was filled with disgust and betrayal - but again, little action. Instead, Morrison is positioning Final Crisis to take the mantle of the intellectual event, writing a book that lends itself to dissection and frequent re-readings. And while Final Crisis may still be talking about in 5 or 10 years as a masterpiece (or it very well may not), right now there's the very immediate issue that people generally prefer the blockbuster to the slow boil. We shall see.
This write-up exists as an examination of the series, but more-so, as a recommendation to any VS fans reading this. I don't know your tastes, so I can't say what you are looking for in your comics. If you want a blockbuster, a twisty action thriller, you want Secret Invasion. If you want a brutal examination of Good vs Evil in man's struggle against something much greater than itself, you want Final Crisis. Whichever way you go, though, it's a damn good time to be a comics fan.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
House of Mystery
Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges are good writers. They do their best work outside of the superhero sphere, so many of you may never have heard of them, but they're both quite good, most famous for their work on Fables and Jack of Fables.
Recently - as in, this past Wednesday - the two of them together revived the House of Mystery, an old DC horror comic. The two of them have infused the now-Vertigo title with some bizarre Vertigo sensibilities. They tied it in with Sandman, Vertigo's biggest triumph, and set it up as a Worlds' End style storytelling device.
Within the House, a number of people are trapped. Occasionally, one gets to leave, though the residents don't know why. The rest...are trapped. They are bored. They have nothing to do, nothing to pay with, except stories. And so the residents tell stories, some biographical, some fantastical, many both.
The main story of #1 is mostly set-up, and it's interesting set-up, but where the book really shines is the short story told by Hungry Sally. It's one of the most visually horrific comics I've ever seen, but the art is still definitely compelling. If you don't mind being creeped out, definitely check this book out.
Oh, and as a bonus? Check out this absolutely stunning cover.
Recently - as in, this past Wednesday - the two of them together revived the House of Mystery, an old DC horror comic. The two of them have infused the now-Vertigo title with some bizarre Vertigo sensibilities. They tied it in with Sandman, Vertigo's biggest triumph, and set it up as a Worlds' End style storytelling device.
Within the House, a number of people are trapped. Occasionally, one gets to leave, though the residents don't know why. The rest...are trapped. They are bored. They have nothing to do, nothing to pay with, except stories. And so the residents tell stories, some biographical, some fantastical, many both.
The main story of #1 is mostly set-up, and it's interesting set-up, but where the book really shines is the short story told by Hungry Sally. It's one of the most visually horrific comics I've ever seen, but the art is still definitely compelling. If you don't mind being creeped out, definitely check this book out.
Oh, and as a bonus? Check out this absolutely stunning cover.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
I Want To Write Comics: Supergirl
So, in case you haven't guessed - which would mean, I think, that you haven't been reading any of my posts - I love comics. I think comics is one of the best mediums we have today, and for all that I complain of the multitude of flaws I see in it, I nevertheless love comics. And while I am planning on getting a real-peoples job, going to graduate school to become a librarian, I still want to write comics. I really, really want to write comics.
Some people want to write their favorite characters. I'm a little weird. I would write anything, but given my preference, I'd want to write books I DIDN'T think were going very well. So, I'm occasionally going to put pitches up here. I suppose you could steal them, though I doubt you'll get very far with them as they'll all be rough & ugly first drafts, so...eh.
Supergirl. The Maid of Might. She was a fan-favorite Pre-Crisis. She was revamped into a madcap cult favorite by Peter David in the 90s. Recently, Loeb brought her back, and while her series began well, selling over 100k per issue, it's dropped rapidly, and so two years later, it's down to about 30k and falling fast. I don't like the current book. I haven't read it faithfully, but occasionally, I'll read an issue in the store, and I'm horrified. Supergirl often acts like kind of a ditz. She NEVER seems to win fights - she's always saved by other heroes. And she whines. Constantly.
So. Here's an idea for a Supergirl story - a pretty long one, and it's only the intro, but feel free to critique it as you will, or just completely ignore this post.
Okay, my idea for a Supergirl arc. All the characters mentioned save Crucible are pre-existing.
Supergirl is trying to figure her life out when Devastation, a woman with all the abilities of Wonder Woman, shows up and brutally assaults her. Supergirl manages to fight her off, however, fighting to a draw and then forcing Devastation to retreat as the authorities arrive.
Supergirl doesn’t spend much time reflecting on what happened, though – she takes it as merely another supervillain fight. Meanwhile, she gets into a conflict with Kate Spencer over how to deal with a random supervillain – Supergirl manages to talk Kate out of killing the villain, saying she’ll take responsibility for his actions* and make sure that he stays in jail.
This is how she meets Director Bones, but on her introduction to him, things get…strange. Supergirl manages to get Kate’s mask out of her suitcase and on due to her super-speed, sparing herself the worst of the mind-affecting illusions, but she is forced to fight her way free of the hallucinating, but deadly, DEO officers. Using her super senses, she discovers that a series of enchanted items have been disguised and left near DEO HQ. She destroys them, freeing the DEO from the effects.
They think the attack was against them, and ask Supergirl to team up with Manhunter to discover what’s going on. Manhunter and Supergirl begin to investigate current renegade sorcerers, but in the course of their investigation, the two of them are attacked again – this time, by General Wade Eiling. A fight ensues, which Supergirl and Manhunter win together, even managing to capture and confine Eiling for arrest.
Manhunter returns to the DEO, to deal with the legal side of Eiling’s capture, leaving Supergirl with a message – something strange is approaching the Earth, fast. The Justice League is away, and the DEO believes that Supergirl can be trusted with this. Before she leaves, she’s challenged to spar with Lady Shiva under terms she can’t resist. She accepts, thinking she'll win quickly, but despite her massive speed and power, she finds that she can’t use it in the same way when fighting someone who would break so easily to a full-powered blow, and ends up losing the fight rather than losing control of herself.
Humiliated, she rushes into space, where she discovers a member of the Sinestro Corps chasing a young-looking girl flying extraordinarily fast. She defends the child, and together, the two of them take out the Sinestro Corp member.
Supergirl learns that the girl, named Ariella, is lost in time and space and lacks a family. She genuinely feels for the girl, and so takes her on as her own. She learns that Ariella was a terror of the spaceways in the 853rd century and that she was being pursued because she had destroyed a yellow power ring that had tried to give itself to her…and that she’s still a little bit of a terror. Supergirl has to try and teach Ariella how to control her powers, when to and when not to use them.
Meanwhile, Devastation returns to wreak havok on Supergirl’s town, this time with back-up. Supergirl nearly dies preventing Devastation from killing a group of high school students, and as she lies there, she sees Devastation flee, also severely wounded. Supergirl passes out.
When she wakes up, she is severely weakened and being held underground in a laboratory. As she attempts to escape, she must use stealth, as her powers are being somehow surpressed, so she uses the skills she learned from Batman and Wonder Woman to sneak her way through the facility and get the jump on the man running the show – Abra Kadabra, confronting and subduing him without her powers, but almost accidentally killing him in the process.
She gets free of the facility and calls Kate for a pick-up, Abra in tow. We learn that Abra was doing this at the behest of another, though they cannot get him to admit who. Kara retires to her house to recuperate, only to find Lady Shiva waiting there. The two fight again, but Kara has her powers better under control, and she manages to hold her own without going all-out and risking seriously harming Shiva.
As a reward, Shiva tells her where Devastation is hiding out, and then makes her promise that they will fight one more time. Supergirl goes to where Devastation is and tries to find out why Devastation has attacked her so often – however, Devastation seems unnaturally violent. At first, she almost doesn’t seem to recognize Supergirl, but then she suddenly strikes. This time, barely, Supergirl manages to defeat and capture her, and turns her over to the DEO.
Arriving at the DEO, she learns that the DEO’s prison has been broken into and assaulted in an effort to get some prisoners free, and Supergirl is confronted with Eiling, Abra, the villain she kept imprisoning, and someone she doesn’t recognize, a villain named Crucible, who she learned broke them out. He also releases Devastation from her restraints.
Supergirl tries to fight them all, but she ends up getting extremely hurt. However, she does manage to keep them contained to the area, throwing herself without concern at whoever tries to escape the area. As Supergirl is worn down and fighting sloppily, Ariella shows up, as does Lady Shiva.
Shiva berates Supergirl for fighting so sloppily, and then she and Ariella enter the fray. Supergirl stands, brushes herself off, and proceeds to kick ass. Together with those two, Manhunter, Director Bones, and the rest of the DEO, all of the villains that escaped are captured.
We see Crucible in his cell, speaking to nothing about how after all these trials, all this power, he was supposed to kill Supergirl and his group of villains were to take over the world. He begs an invisible figure, who he calls Lord Conquest, to explain himself. Lord Conquest manifests and explains that this was not to forge the villains, but instead to forge Supergirl into his perfect tool. Crucible swears revenge on Supergirl.
Meanwhile, Lady Shiva shows up for their final fight, and Supergirl cleanly and quickly defeats her without risking killing her. Shiva tells Supergirl that she’s ready, and that Shiva has been told to offer her a powerful magical weapon. She reveals a sword belonging to one of the sons of Ares, saying that she feels that Supergirl is not in danger of being overwhelmed by it.
Supergirl stares at the weapon. She picks it up – then hands it back to Shiva, saying that she doesn’t need help from anyone, not even a god. Shiva smiles, and as Supergirl flies away, Shiva leaves the sword on Supergirl’s table, saying that Supergirl may need to take it up for what is to come.
*Supergirl’s promise would come up a couple more times over the course of the series. Once when the villain (I don’t yet know who) escapes and hurts people, and Manhunter confronts her about her responsibilities to the people, and a few more times as we see Supergirl begin to take more and more responsibility – the villain escapes one or two more times, and each time Supergirl catches and beats him quicker and quicker.
The story would probably be about 12 issues - my 1-year plan to revamp Supergirl. It could use A LOT of work - this is merely a very rough first draft. It's a little too concerned with making Supergirl grow up a little, but it could be a lot of fun. But, ah well. i don't know why I posted this here, other than out of a kind of boredom.
Have a great day!
Some people want to write their favorite characters. I'm a little weird. I would write anything, but given my preference, I'd want to write books I DIDN'T think were going very well. So, I'm occasionally going to put pitches up here. I suppose you could steal them, though I doubt you'll get very far with them as they'll all be rough & ugly first drafts, so...eh.
Supergirl. The Maid of Might. She was a fan-favorite Pre-Crisis. She was revamped into a madcap cult favorite by Peter David in the 90s. Recently, Loeb brought her back, and while her series began well, selling over 100k per issue, it's dropped rapidly, and so two years later, it's down to about 30k and falling fast. I don't like the current book. I haven't read it faithfully, but occasionally, I'll read an issue in the store, and I'm horrified. Supergirl often acts like kind of a ditz. She NEVER seems to win fights - she's always saved by other heroes. And she whines. Constantly.
So. Here's an idea for a Supergirl story - a pretty long one, and it's only the intro, but feel free to critique it as you will, or just completely ignore this post.
Okay, my idea for a Supergirl arc. All the characters mentioned save Crucible are pre-existing.
Supergirl is trying to figure her life out when Devastation, a woman with all the abilities of Wonder Woman, shows up and brutally assaults her. Supergirl manages to fight her off, however, fighting to a draw and then forcing Devastation to retreat as the authorities arrive.
Supergirl doesn’t spend much time reflecting on what happened, though – she takes it as merely another supervillain fight. Meanwhile, she gets into a conflict with Kate Spencer over how to deal with a random supervillain – Supergirl manages to talk Kate out of killing the villain, saying she’ll take responsibility for his actions* and make sure that he stays in jail.
This is how she meets Director Bones, but on her introduction to him, things get…strange. Supergirl manages to get Kate’s mask out of her suitcase and on due to her super-speed, sparing herself the worst of the mind-affecting illusions, but she is forced to fight her way free of the hallucinating, but deadly, DEO officers. Using her super senses, she discovers that a series of enchanted items have been disguised and left near DEO HQ. She destroys them, freeing the DEO from the effects.
They think the attack was against them, and ask Supergirl to team up with Manhunter to discover what’s going on. Manhunter and Supergirl begin to investigate current renegade sorcerers, but in the course of their investigation, the two of them are attacked again – this time, by General Wade Eiling. A fight ensues, which Supergirl and Manhunter win together, even managing to capture and confine Eiling for arrest.
Manhunter returns to the DEO, to deal with the legal side of Eiling’s capture, leaving Supergirl with a message – something strange is approaching the Earth, fast. The Justice League is away, and the DEO believes that Supergirl can be trusted with this. Before she leaves, she’s challenged to spar with Lady Shiva under terms she can’t resist. She accepts, thinking she'll win quickly, but despite her massive speed and power, she finds that she can’t use it in the same way when fighting someone who would break so easily to a full-powered blow, and ends up losing the fight rather than losing control of herself.
Humiliated, she rushes into space, where she discovers a member of the Sinestro Corps chasing a young-looking girl flying extraordinarily fast. She defends the child, and together, the two of them take out the Sinestro Corp member.
Supergirl learns that the girl, named Ariella, is lost in time and space and lacks a family. She genuinely feels for the girl, and so takes her on as her own. She learns that Ariella was a terror of the spaceways in the 853rd century and that she was being pursued because she had destroyed a yellow power ring that had tried to give itself to her…and that she’s still a little bit of a terror. Supergirl has to try and teach Ariella how to control her powers, when to and when not to use them.
Meanwhile, Devastation returns to wreak havok on Supergirl’s town, this time with back-up. Supergirl nearly dies preventing Devastation from killing a group of high school students, and as she lies there, she sees Devastation flee, also severely wounded. Supergirl passes out.
When she wakes up, she is severely weakened and being held underground in a laboratory. As she attempts to escape, she must use stealth, as her powers are being somehow surpressed, so she uses the skills she learned from Batman and Wonder Woman to sneak her way through the facility and get the jump on the man running the show – Abra Kadabra, confronting and subduing him without her powers, but almost accidentally killing him in the process.
She gets free of the facility and calls Kate for a pick-up, Abra in tow. We learn that Abra was doing this at the behest of another, though they cannot get him to admit who. Kara retires to her house to recuperate, only to find Lady Shiva waiting there. The two fight again, but Kara has her powers better under control, and she manages to hold her own without going all-out and risking seriously harming Shiva.
As a reward, Shiva tells her where Devastation is hiding out, and then makes her promise that they will fight one more time. Supergirl goes to where Devastation is and tries to find out why Devastation has attacked her so often – however, Devastation seems unnaturally violent. At first, she almost doesn’t seem to recognize Supergirl, but then she suddenly strikes. This time, barely, Supergirl manages to defeat and capture her, and turns her over to the DEO.
Arriving at the DEO, she learns that the DEO’s prison has been broken into and assaulted in an effort to get some prisoners free, and Supergirl is confronted with Eiling, Abra, the villain she kept imprisoning, and someone she doesn’t recognize, a villain named Crucible, who she learned broke them out. He also releases Devastation from her restraints.
Supergirl tries to fight them all, but she ends up getting extremely hurt. However, she does manage to keep them contained to the area, throwing herself without concern at whoever tries to escape the area. As Supergirl is worn down and fighting sloppily, Ariella shows up, as does Lady Shiva.
Shiva berates Supergirl for fighting so sloppily, and then she and Ariella enter the fray. Supergirl stands, brushes herself off, and proceeds to kick ass. Together with those two, Manhunter, Director Bones, and the rest of the DEO, all of the villains that escaped are captured.
We see Crucible in his cell, speaking to nothing about how after all these trials, all this power, he was supposed to kill Supergirl and his group of villains were to take over the world. He begs an invisible figure, who he calls Lord Conquest, to explain himself. Lord Conquest manifests and explains that this was not to forge the villains, but instead to forge Supergirl into his perfect tool. Crucible swears revenge on Supergirl.
Meanwhile, Lady Shiva shows up for their final fight, and Supergirl cleanly and quickly defeats her without risking killing her. Shiva tells Supergirl that she’s ready, and that Shiva has been told to offer her a powerful magical weapon. She reveals a sword belonging to one of the sons of Ares, saying that she feels that Supergirl is not in danger of being overwhelmed by it.
Supergirl stares at the weapon. She picks it up – then hands it back to Shiva, saying that she doesn’t need help from anyone, not even a god. Shiva smiles, and as Supergirl flies away, Shiva leaves the sword on Supergirl’s table, saying that Supergirl may need to take it up for what is to come.
*Supergirl’s promise would come up a couple more times over the course of the series. Once when the villain (I don’t yet know who) escapes and hurts people, and Manhunter confronts her about her responsibilities to the people, and a few more times as we see Supergirl begin to take more and more responsibility – the villain escapes one or two more times, and each time Supergirl catches and beats him quicker and quicker.
The story would probably be about 12 issues - my 1-year plan to revamp Supergirl. It could use A LOT of work - this is merely a very rough first draft. It's a little too concerned with making Supergirl grow up a little, but it could be a lot of fun. But, ah well. i don't know why I posted this here, other than out of a kind of boredom.
Have a great day!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
DC in VS: Rallying Cry!
Rallying Cry! It's more than a VS card - it's more, even, than Rian Fike's excellent series of articles on Vssystem.com.
Recently, UDE announced that they were still in negotiations with DC Comics over licensing. UDE is doing the smart thing and going on making sets regardless of what DC is doing, but that means two Marvel sets this year, and no DC sets, and that's pretty undeniably a bad thing.
Why is that a bad thing, you ask? Because if there are no more DC sets, I'll never get my printed Seven Soldiers team affiliation - and that would be terrible.
Anyway, on Vsrealms.com, we've all been talking. General consensus is that, if we want DC to know that we WANT them back in the game, we have to let them know! Now, we could e-mail them, but e-mails are reliably unreliable. They're better than nothing, but they aren't the best option. It's old-fashioned, but letter-writing campaigns still work best. And who better to go to than the President of DC Comics himself?
Paul Levitz
c/o DC Comics
1700 Broadway, 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10019-5905
Now, a few things. Don't be mean. Don't be angry. Be informative. Be passionate. Be literate. And, just to show that this is a united movement, if you can, throw in a copy of RALLYING CRY, that old DJL common that I'm sure most of you have about 20 of somewhere in your boxes. If you want to throw in a copy of your favorite character, to let them know WHY you care, I fully encourage it - but throwing in a Rallying Cry or 4 makes it a movement.
Hopefully, we'll get a fair number of letters going out. But it's up to YOU to get the word out. If you want DC back, then you'd best get a letter in the mail.
That's all I've gotta say on the matter right now. I got some letter writing to do!
Recently, UDE announced that they were still in negotiations with DC Comics over licensing. UDE is doing the smart thing and going on making sets regardless of what DC is doing, but that means two Marvel sets this year, and no DC sets, and that's pretty undeniably a bad thing.
Why is that a bad thing, you ask? Because if there are no more DC sets, I'll never get my printed Seven Soldiers team affiliation - and that would be terrible.
Anyway, on Vsrealms.com, we've all been talking. General consensus is that, if we want DC to know that we WANT them back in the game, we have to let them know! Now, we could e-mail them, but e-mails are reliably unreliable. They're better than nothing, but they aren't the best option. It's old-fashioned, but letter-writing campaigns still work best. And who better to go to than the President of DC Comics himself?
Paul Levitz
c/o DC Comics
1700 Broadway, 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10019-5905
Now, a few things. Don't be mean. Don't be angry. Be informative. Be passionate. Be literate. And, just to show that this is a united movement, if you can, throw in a copy of RALLYING CRY, that old DJL common that I'm sure most of you have about 20 of somewhere in your boxes. If you want to throw in a copy of your favorite character, to let them know WHY you care, I fully encourage it - but throwing in a Rallying Cry or 4 makes it a movement.
Hopefully, we'll get a fair number of letters going out. But it's up to YOU to get the word out. If you want DC back, then you'd best get a letter in the mail.
That's all I've gotta say on the matter right now. I got some letter writing to do!
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Best Books You Aren't Reading: Blue Beetle
Another one of the best books that you probably aren’t reading is here for you: Blue Beetle. John Rogers has no history in the comics industry, aside from an obvious love of the industry. Together, he worked with comics-legend Keith Giffen to start a new Blue Beetle series honoring the legacy of recently-deceased Ted Kord. The series got off to a rocky start with a perfectly average first arc, but Jaime Reyes, the hispanic teenager they created to fill the Blue Beetle identity, has become a cult favorite, with a small but extremely loyal fanbase and a great deal of critical acclaim.
So…why all the praise? I mean, if a book isn’t selling well, how good can it be? Well, first off, ‘selling well’ is hard to figure out in comics these days. Blue Beetle is selling horribly in single issues…but, Marvel and DC are realizing, slowly, that 15,000-25,000 readers is becoming the average for the industry on books that don’t feature heroes like Batman or Spider-Man, or Events. The industry has changed, become more fearful of new characters, and they’ve started to realize it. They’ve also realized the importance of trades, and Blue Beetle trades sell extremely well on places like Amazon.com. So, it’s selling alright.
Now, here’s a brief rundown of why Blue Beetle is one of the best books that you aren’t reading.
1) The characters. John Rogers has a strange habit – everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame in the series. The perfectly normal supporting cast all have moments of bad-assery that will make you grin and cheer. Besides that, though, they’re all quite realistic, and deal with real issues. Blue Beetle features, in fact, one of the most realistic and dynamic supporting casts in all of current comicdom.
2) The story. Blue Beetle took a little while to start going – the first arc is fairly slow and purely average, and the second arc, while good, doesn’t feel extraordinarily important. However, many seemingly unconnected events tie together nicely by the end of Rogers’ run. It takes awhile for things to come together, but it’s immensely satisfying when it does.
3) The humor. It’s one of the few genuinely funny books on the shelves that’s funny in a way that feels completely natural. Banter is age-appropriate to the characters, and gives a sense of their lives outside of Jaime’s superhero world.
4) Finally, Blue Beetle has some of the best allusions to the rest of the DC Universe out there. Batman finds him to be a responsible kid struggling with something bigger than himself, and you start to see tiny, interesting little things pop up to make superheroing a little easier for him, like insurance covering the destruction of his house…
Blue Beetle isn’t the best book out there by any means. But if you’re looking for a good, fun read, you should check it out. It’s one of the most realistic books I’ve ever read when it comes to simple human relationships, and it’s a joy to read because of it. It’s not grim, it’s not gritty, and there’s not much angst, so if you’re looking for a break from all that normal fare, go pick it up.
So…why all the praise? I mean, if a book isn’t selling well, how good can it be? Well, first off, ‘selling well’ is hard to figure out in comics these days. Blue Beetle is selling horribly in single issues…but, Marvel and DC are realizing, slowly, that 15,000-25,000 readers is becoming the average for the industry on books that don’t feature heroes like Batman or Spider-Man, or Events. The industry has changed, become more fearful of new characters, and they’ve started to realize it. They’ve also realized the importance of trades, and Blue Beetle trades sell extremely well on places like Amazon.com. So, it’s selling alright.
Now, here’s a brief rundown of why Blue Beetle is one of the best books that you aren’t reading.
1) The characters. John Rogers has a strange habit – everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame in the series. The perfectly normal supporting cast all have moments of bad-assery that will make you grin and cheer. Besides that, though, they’re all quite realistic, and deal with real issues. Blue Beetle features, in fact, one of the most realistic and dynamic supporting casts in all of current comicdom.
2) The story. Blue Beetle took a little while to start going – the first arc is fairly slow and purely average, and the second arc, while good, doesn’t feel extraordinarily important. However, many seemingly unconnected events tie together nicely by the end of Rogers’ run. It takes awhile for things to come together, but it’s immensely satisfying when it does.
3) The humor. It’s one of the few genuinely funny books on the shelves that’s funny in a way that feels completely natural. Banter is age-appropriate to the characters, and gives a sense of their lives outside of Jaime’s superhero world.
4) Finally, Blue Beetle has some of the best allusions to the rest of the DC Universe out there. Batman finds him to be a responsible kid struggling with something bigger than himself, and you start to see tiny, interesting little things pop up to make superheroing a little easier for him, like insurance covering the destruction of his house…
Blue Beetle isn’t the best book out there by any means. But if you’re looking for a good, fun read, you should check it out. It’s one of the most realistic books I’ve ever read when it comes to simple human relationships, and it’s a joy to read because of it. It’s not grim, it’s not gritty, and there’s not much angst, so if you’re looking for a break from all that normal fare, go pick it up.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Final Crisis
I thought this ad was really, really cool. Why? Because it strongly hints that Morrison is going to be using a lot of the ideas and stories he began in Seven Soldiers. And, if you look up just a smidge, you may note that I'm a bit of a fan of Seven Soldiers. This is great news for me!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Recommended Reading: DC Legends
Many apologies for the long delay between posts. As the quarter winds down, I find that I am running out of time to get all my graduate school preparations in order, so I have been rushing about. The weather has screwed me at least once on this, but I persevere - and, eventually, return.
This list won't be quite as extensive. The JLA is comprised of some of the most well-known superheroes the world over. The Injustice Gang is comprised of some of the greatest villains the world has ever known. Great villains, however, rarely have solo-books. Still, I'm going to give you this brief intro the the Injustice Gang Legends - The Joker, and Lex Luthor.
The Joker
The Joker has been the core of many interesting stories. Done right, he's an absolute terror. Like Batman, he doesn't necessarily react well with the DC Universe as a whole, but in Gotham City, the Joker is one of the most terrifying faces evil wears.
Batman: The Killing Joke is alternately one of the most well-loved Batman stories around, and one of the most loathed. Written by comic legend Alan Moore, it is nonetheless a great look into the mind of a madman.
Batman: The Man Who Laughs is a retelling of Batman's first encounters with the Joker, as told by extremely respected author Ed Brubaker. Here are some 'Year One' style stories about the scariest guy around town.
Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor is Superman's most famous enemy, and he's played every role humanly possible. He's been the hero, he's been the mad scientist, the politician, the man of the people. He's been everyone, which can make it...difficult to get a handle on just who the hell he is. Still, here are a few books to check out.
Lex Luthor: Man of Steel is an examination of the rivalry between Lex and Superman. It shows a Lex Luthor enraged at what he believes Superman is doing to our society. It's a little darker than the normal superhero story - obviously, with Lex at the center - and a little slicker thanks to some nice art, and it's a great book to check out to see about the character.
In 52, we saw an absolutely monstrous side of Lex. There's a lot of other stuff going on, but 52 also has some of Lex at his most cold and calculating.
All-Star Superman has been talked about once before, but All-Star Superman #5, titled "The Gospel According To Luthor", is a crazy examination of both Superman AND Lex Luthor. While many A-SS issues have great Luthor moments, this one shines.
So, only two legends. Oh well, I'll be back by the end of the week with another post. Hope you all have an awesome day!
This list won't be quite as extensive. The JLA is comprised of some of the most well-known superheroes the world over. The Injustice Gang is comprised of some of the greatest villains the world has ever known. Great villains, however, rarely have solo-books. Still, I'm going to give you this brief intro the the Injustice Gang Legends - The Joker, and Lex Luthor.
The Joker
The Joker has been the core of many interesting stories. Done right, he's an absolute terror. Like Batman, he doesn't necessarily react well with the DC Universe as a whole, but in Gotham City, the Joker is one of the most terrifying faces evil wears.
Batman: The Killing Joke is alternately one of the most well-loved Batman stories around, and one of the most loathed. Written by comic legend Alan Moore, it is nonetheless a great look into the mind of a madman.
Batman: The Man Who Laughs is a retelling of Batman's first encounters with the Joker, as told by extremely respected author Ed Brubaker. Here are some 'Year One' style stories about the scariest guy around town.
Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor is Superman's most famous enemy, and he's played every role humanly possible. He's been the hero, he's been the mad scientist, the politician, the man of the people. He's been everyone, which can make it...difficult to get a handle on just who the hell he is. Still, here are a few books to check out.
Lex Luthor: Man of Steel is an examination of the rivalry between Lex and Superman. It shows a Lex Luthor enraged at what he believes Superman is doing to our society. It's a little darker than the normal superhero story - obviously, with Lex at the center - and a little slicker thanks to some nice art, and it's a great book to check out to see about the character.
In 52, we saw an absolutely monstrous side of Lex. There's a lot of other stuff going on, but 52 also has some of Lex at his most cold and calculating.
All-Star Superman has been talked about once before, but All-Star Superman #5, titled "The Gospel According To Luthor", is a crazy examination of both Superman AND Lex Luthor. While many A-SS issues have great Luthor moments, this one shines.
So, only two legends. Oh well, I'll be back by the end of the week with another post. Hope you all have an awesome day!
Monday, March 3, 2008
Recommended Reading: DC Legends
I know, I know. Vssystem.com generally has a required reading list up before a new set. A...uhh...comprehensive one, though I don't always understand their choices. Still, I've gotta give it to 'em, they've got pretty good taste. But, I figure, a second opinion never hurts, right? So, I'm going to try and go set-by-set to pick out one or two good bits of reading for you, so you can become more familiar with those particular characters.
This first segment will be for the JLA Legendary characters of DC Legends.
Aquaman
I'm going to give you a few options for Aquaman. Three, in fact. First off, we have the recent reboot. It's not the Aquaman you grew up with, true, but it's certainly an interesting story, and it may well be worth giving a shot.
Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis: Once and Future
Alternatively, you could start with some really old school examples.
Showcase Presents: Aquaman volume 1
Finally, Peter David is a talented writer, and his take on Aquaman was pretty popular for a long time.
Aquaman: Time and Tide
Barry Allen
Barry Allen is old-school popular, and he died one of the most famous deaths in comicdom. He's still got an enormous fanbase, and people are constantly begging for his return. Here's a few adventures central to his mythos.
The Life of the Flash by Iris Allen is a good place to start, as it's basically a 'biography' of Barry Allen, written by his wife Iris after his death.
The Life of the Flash by Iris Allen
Just like Aquaman, the Flash has his own Showcase collection.
Showcase Presents: The Flash volume 1
Finally, the moment that rocketed Barry into legend.... It's dense reading, but if you want to see how Barry Allen died, this is where you go.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Batman
You all know who he is. Batman is one of the most famous superheroes of all time, and his story has been told over and over again. Here are a few places you might like to begin.
Widely considered to be among the best tellings of Batman's Origin, this is the story of one of Batman's first adventures.
Batman: Year One
That was Batman at his peak. If you want to see him gone way off the deep-end in the story that turned the Dark Knight into what he is today...
The Dark Knight Returns
Jeph Loeb is a controversial figure for some comic fans. Some of his work is despised. Most people, however, fully admit that his Batman stories with artist Tim Sale are some of the best around. For another early Batman adventure...
Batman: Long Halloween
Hal Jordan
Hal Jordan is a pilot famous for his lack of fear. He's also famous as a member of the Green Lantern Corps, and one of DC's enduring Silver Age fan-favorites.
With all the reboots going around, how can someone know where to look for a good origin? Well, it's tough, but a friend pointed me towards this collection for a modern retelling of Hal Jordan's origin.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn
Most comic fans know, Hal went a little off the deep end for awhile. In another famous story, here we see a hero driven to the edge, and pushed over, and what just a little bit of willpower can do in the wrong hands.
Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight & A New Dawn
Of course, nothing is forever in the world of comics. Hal was both unkilled and un-evilled, and the only shock there is that the story is actually supposed to be very good.
Green Lantern: Rebirth
Martian Manhunter
Martian Manhunter is a funny character. Never quite popular enough to hold his own title for long, he is nonetheless widely considered to be the single most crucial character in the dynamics of the Justice League. Here are a few places to look for him, though to be entirely frank, Grant Morrison's JLA is probably the best for him.
Another Showcase, for his older adventures.
Showcase Presents: Martian Manhunter volume 1
Martian Manhunter was one of many characters who, in recent years, has taken on a brand new direction.
Martian Manhunter: Others Among Us
Superman
Another of comics' most popular and enduring icons, the Man of Steel has an enormous tally of stories to his name. Here are a few.
Superman has a ton of origin stories. Seems like his origin gets retold every 5-10 years. This is the most recent retelling, so it's the one they'll be going with for the next few years.
Superman: Birthright
Remember what I said about Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale? Well, they also did some work on Superman on this popular book.
Superman for All Seasons
Finally, if you just want an awesome, absolutely epic set of Superman stories, this is a must read. One of two Superman stories that even people who dislike Superman (like myself) love.
All-Star Superman
Finally, and I'm only doing this because I think this is a book you'll like, Superman gets a 4th book. It isn't in continuity, and it isn't the Superman you recognize, but it's a wonderfully good comic.
Superman: Secret Identity
Wonder Woman
The last of the JLA Legends on one of DC's Trinity, Wonder Woman is perhaps the most important female character in comic book history. Not necessarily the best, though - she's had something of a spotted run, with some highs and some extreme lows. Here are a few good places to start with her.
This is from the Perez-reboot, a fan-favorite take on the Wonder Woman character.
Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals
This is the beginning of Greg Rucka's run on Wonder Woman, which managed to consistently be one of the best titles DC was putting out for awhile. Rucka goes to great lengths to get into her character.
Wonder Woman: Down to Earth
Finally, Gail Simone has just recently begun writing Wonder Woman. She's the first female ongoing Wonder Woman writer, and her first arc just concluded. Here's DC's Wonder Woman solicits.
Wonder Woman
Okay, there's plenty of stuff there to help you get familiar with these iconic characters. I haven't read everything on this list yet, but I'm scouring libraries trying to find the ones I don't already own. Coming soon, I'll work on some of the bad guys of the set. Hope you enjoyed!
This first segment will be for the JLA Legendary characters of DC Legends.
Aquaman
I'm going to give you a few options for Aquaman. Three, in fact. First off, we have the recent reboot. It's not the Aquaman you grew up with, true, but it's certainly an interesting story, and it may well be worth giving a shot.
Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis: Once and Future
Alternatively, you could start with some really old school examples.
Showcase Presents: Aquaman volume 1
Finally, Peter David is a talented writer, and his take on Aquaman was pretty popular for a long time.
Aquaman: Time and Tide
Barry Allen
Barry Allen is old-school popular, and he died one of the most famous deaths in comicdom. He's still got an enormous fanbase, and people are constantly begging for his return. Here's a few adventures central to his mythos.
The Life of the Flash by Iris Allen is a good place to start, as it's basically a 'biography' of Barry Allen, written by his wife Iris after his death.
The Life of the Flash by Iris Allen
Just like Aquaman, the Flash has his own Showcase collection.
Showcase Presents: The Flash volume 1
Finally, the moment that rocketed Barry into legend.... It's dense reading, but if you want to see how Barry Allen died, this is where you go.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Batman
You all know who he is. Batman is one of the most famous superheroes of all time, and his story has been told over and over again. Here are a few places you might like to begin.
Widely considered to be among the best tellings of Batman's Origin, this is the story of one of Batman's first adventures.
Batman: Year One
That was Batman at his peak. If you want to see him gone way off the deep-end in the story that turned the Dark Knight into what he is today...
The Dark Knight Returns
Jeph Loeb is a controversial figure for some comic fans. Some of his work is despised. Most people, however, fully admit that his Batman stories with artist Tim Sale are some of the best around. For another early Batman adventure...
Batman: Long Halloween
Hal Jordan
Hal Jordan is a pilot famous for his lack of fear. He's also famous as a member of the Green Lantern Corps, and one of DC's enduring Silver Age fan-favorites.
With all the reboots going around, how can someone know where to look for a good origin? Well, it's tough, but a friend pointed me towards this collection for a modern retelling of Hal Jordan's origin.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn
Most comic fans know, Hal went a little off the deep end for awhile. In another famous story, here we see a hero driven to the edge, and pushed over, and what just a little bit of willpower can do in the wrong hands.
Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight & A New Dawn
Of course, nothing is forever in the world of comics. Hal was both unkilled and un-evilled, and the only shock there is that the story is actually supposed to be very good.
Green Lantern: Rebirth
Martian Manhunter
Martian Manhunter is a funny character. Never quite popular enough to hold his own title for long, he is nonetheless widely considered to be the single most crucial character in the dynamics of the Justice League. Here are a few places to look for him, though to be entirely frank, Grant Morrison's JLA is probably the best for him.
Another Showcase, for his older adventures.
Showcase Presents: Martian Manhunter volume 1
Martian Manhunter was one of many characters who, in recent years, has taken on a brand new direction.
Martian Manhunter: Others Among Us
Superman
Another of comics' most popular and enduring icons, the Man of Steel has an enormous tally of stories to his name. Here are a few.
Superman has a ton of origin stories. Seems like his origin gets retold every 5-10 years. This is the most recent retelling, so it's the one they'll be going with for the next few years.
Superman: Birthright
Remember what I said about Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale? Well, they also did some work on Superman on this popular book.
Superman for All Seasons
Finally, if you just want an awesome, absolutely epic set of Superman stories, this is a must read. One of two Superman stories that even people who dislike Superman (like myself) love.
All-Star Superman
Finally, and I'm only doing this because I think this is a book you'll like, Superman gets a 4th book. It isn't in continuity, and it isn't the Superman you recognize, but it's a wonderfully good comic.
Superman: Secret Identity
Wonder Woman
The last of the JLA Legends on one of DC's Trinity, Wonder Woman is perhaps the most important female character in comic book history. Not necessarily the best, though - she's had something of a spotted run, with some highs and some extreme lows. Here are a few good places to start with her.
This is from the Perez-reboot, a fan-favorite take on the Wonder Woman character.
Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals
This is the beginning of Greg Rucka's run on Wonder Woman, which managed to consistently be one of the best titles DC was putting out for awhile. Rucka goes to great lengths to get into her character.
Wonder Woman: Down to Earth
Finally, Gail Simone has just recently begun writing Wonder Woman. She's the first female ongoing Wonder Woman writer, and her first arc just concluded. Here's DC's Wonder Woman solicits.
Wonder Woman
Okay, there's plenty of stuff there to help you get familiar with these iconic characters. I haven't read everything on this list yet, but I'm scouring libraries trying to find the ones I don't already own. Coming soon, I'll work on some of the bad guys of the set. Hope you enjoyed!
Monday, January 14, 2008
In the Know
Because I like to keep you all 'in the know', as it were, when it comes to comic books, here's something that people are getting up in a bunch about.
http://ruckawriter.livejournal.com/31761.html
If you're curious about that journal, it belongs to Greg Rucka, an extremely well-respected comic book writer. I heard about it through scans_daily, which is THE place to go if you're curious about any sort of comic books. It's a good place to be.
Anyway, chime in with your opinion if you want. I think that it was a remarkably short-sighted move on DC's part, though I don't think it was a calculated one by playboy. DC really does need to get on top of the ball with Wonder Woman and figure out what the hell they want to do with her. Because half the time, they bitch and whine about not having enough 'positive female role-models' and how they 'can't seem to hold onto female readers'. And half the time they treat Wonder Woman as a fetish model and think that if they just porn her up enough, she'll be popular.
You might guess which I think Wonder Woman should be.
http://ruckawriter.livejournal.com/31761.html
If you're curious about that journal, it belongs to Greg Rucka, an extremely well-respected comic book writer. I heard about it through scans_daily, which is THE place to go if you're curious about any sort of comic books. It's a good place to be.
Anyway, chime in with your opinion if you want. I think that it was a remarkably short-sighted move on DC's part, though I don't think it was a calculated one by playboy. DC really does need to get on top of the ball with Wonder Woman and figure out what the hell they want to do with her. Because half the time, they bitch and whine about not having enough 'positive female role-models' and how they 'can't seem to hold onto female readers'. And half the time they treat Wonder Woman as a fetish model and think that if they just porn her up enough, she'll be popular.
You might guess which I think Wonder Woman should be.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
New School: Wonder Woman
When people talk about comic books, there are a few characters that are always mentioned. Spider-Man is the Marvel stand-out: everyone knows who he is, and most people geeked out to him at some point in their lives. He's the big guy for Marvel - yeah, a lot of people know who Captain America, the Hulk, and Wolverine are, and a few others, but none of them have the power over your average American that Spidey does.
DC is fortunate in that they have three such individuals: Batman (and, by extension, Robin), Superman, and finally, Wonder Woman.
Now, Spidey, Superman, and Batman all have had some good runs on their books, created memorable stories. People know what they're about.
Wonder Woman, on the other hand? ...Amazons Attack. ...Love and Murder. It's stories like those that have given Wonder Woman a bad name recently. More than that, it's that no one knows who she is. I've really only read one Wonder Woman run that I really liked: Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman, for me, nailed a lot of things about the character that I thought had been missing. But, in the end, Rucka had to leave, and she was back to the status quo of terrible-bordering-on-nonsensical writing...
So, when fan-favorite writer Gail Simone decided to take on Wonder Woman, a lot of people were pretty happy to hear the news.
Her first issue, Wonder Woman #14, was okay. Not spectacular, not amazing, and not what the character needed, it was still a step up from the average Wonder Woman story. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep buying it, but Gail Simone is on a very short list of writers who gets 4 issues on anything they do. If I don't like it after that, I'll occasionally check scans to see if it's picked up, but she always gets 4 issues.
Wonder Woman #15 came out on December 12th, and it's in the run for my favorite single issue of the month. Gail Simone was telling three different stories in the issue, and shockingly, they were ALL good. She made me care about characters in four pages that I had never cared about before; I learned things about Amazon culture. Oh, yeah - Amazons have a culture now! There were super-intelligent gorillas, a whole crockpot of gods, Wonder Woman has a new patron deity, and Hippolyta is fighting a guerilla war against super-powered Nazis who have come to take over Paradise Isle. Think about that: Wonder Woman's mom killing super-Nazis...
It's important, however, to pay attention to what Hippolyta is saying, because it looks like it's going to be an important part of Wonder Woman in Gail Simone's run: Amazons are NOT afraid of bloodshed. They are NOT afraid to kill. BUT: they don't want to. They want to forgive you, if you'll just let them. They want to help you. If you won't let them, if you want a fight, they'll jump in without hesitation, without shedding a tear. But they want what's best. Even for their worst enemies. The issue is worth buying alone for Wonder Woman's scene with Captain Nazi, in which she explains the Amazon philosophy for such matters.
I think that's what sets her apart, to me. At her best, Wonder Woman is more dedicated to truth than Batman or Superman ever will be. She may not be as smart as Batman, or have the senses of Superman to allow her to discern truth...but when it comes down to it, it will be Wonder Woman who discovers the Truth. The motive. She'll understand. She'll fight with the best of them, but where Batman would despise you and Superman wouldn't get why you were doing it...Wonder Woman would understand why you were doing it, and if you wanted, she would help you undo it, too. You would still be punished, because punishment is important to learning, but she would help you make things right.
Anyway, what this all boils down to is this: give Wonder Woman a shot. She's got a good writer, finally, and the arc is literally just now starting. It's a great place to jump on, even if you have no familiarity with the character, and Gail Simone is one of the classiest writers working today.
And if you need just a little more convincing...
Yes, Wonder Woman is currently living with a group of super-intelligent apes. Go buy it.
Reading List
Greg Rucka has written some wonderful Wonder Woman stuff. This is the first arc in his respected run.
Alternatively, DC publishes archives of some of the older stories. I can't speak for their quality, but it's certainly a place to start.
Finally, Gail Simone is currently writing a fantastic Wonder Woman title.
DC is fortunate in that they have three such individuals: Batman (and, by extension, Robin), Superman, and finally, Wonder Woman.
Now, Spidey, Superman, and Batman all have had some good runs on their books, created memorable stories. People know what they're about.
Wonder Woman, on the other hand? ...Amazons Attack. ...Love and Murder. It's stories like those that have given Wonder Woman a bad name recently. More than that, it's that no one knows who she is. I've really only read one Wonder Woman run that I really liked: Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman, for me, nailed a lot of things about the character that I thought had been missing. But, in the end, Rucka had to leave, and she was back to the status quo of terrible-bordering-on-nonsensical writing...
So, when fan-favorite writer Gail Simone decided to take on Wonder Woman, a lot of people were pretty happy to hear the news.
Her first issue, Wonder Woman #14, was okay. Not spectacular, not amazing, and not what the character needed, it was still a step up from the average Wonder Woman story. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep buying it, but Gail Simone is on a very short list of writers who gets 4 issues on anything they do. If I don't like it after that, I'll occasionally check scans to see if it's picked up, but she always gets 4 issues.
Wonder Woman #15 came out on December 12th, and it's in the run for my favorite single issue of the month. Gail Simone was telling three different stories in the issue, and shockingly, they were ALL good. She made me care about characters in four pages that I had never cared about before; I learned things about Amazon culture. Oh, yeah - Amazons have a culture now! There were super-intelligent gorillas, a whole crockpot of gods, Wonder Woman has a new patron deity, and Hippolyta is fighting a guerilla war against super-powered Nazis who have come to take over Paradise Isle. Think about that: Wonder Woman's mom killing super-Nazis...
It's important, however, to pay attention to what Hippolyta is saying, because it looks like it's going to be an important part of Wonder Woman in Gail Simone's run: Amazons are NOT afraid of bloodshed. They are NOT afraid to kill. BUT: they don't want to. They want to forgive you, if you'll just let them. They want to help you. If you won't let them, if you want a fight, they'll jump in without hesitation, without shedding a tear. But they want what's best. Even for their worst enemies. The issue is worth buying alone for Wonder Woman's scene with Captain Nazi, in which she explains the Amazon philosophy for such matters.
I think that's what sets her apart, to me. At her best, Wonder Woman is more dedicated to truth than Batman or Superman ever will be. She may not be as smart as Batman, or have the senses of Superman to allow her to discern truth...but when it comes down to it, it will be Wonder Woman who discovers the Truth. The motive. She'll understand. She'll fight with the best of them, but where Batman would despise you and Superman wouldn't get why you were doing it...Wonder Woman would understand why you were doing it, and if you wanted, she would help you undo it, too. You would still be punished, because punishment is important to learning, but she would help you make things right.
Anyway, what this all boils down to is this: give Wonder Woman a shot. She's got a good writer, finally, and the arc is literally just now starting. It's a great place to jump on, even if you have no familiarity with the character, and Gail Simone is one of the classiest writers working today.
And if you need just a little more convincing...
Yes, Wonder Woman is currently living with a group of super-intelligent apes. Go buy it.
Reading List
Greg Rucka has written some wonderful Wonder Woman stuff. This is the first arc in his respected run.
Alternatively, DC publishes archives of some of the older stories. I can't speak for their quality, but it's certainly a place to start.
Finally, Gail Simone is currently writing a fantastic Wonder Woman title.
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