"Three"

It seems to me that comic book fans themselves are as much invested in burying their chosen medium as anyone else. Without even realizing it, they treat it as it were just as ephemeral and a waste of time as the people who actively view it as juvenile nonsense.

Before you wonder what the heck I’m smoking, let me explain a little more: Comics fans are the first ones the jump on any hot new thing, and they’ll follow a favorite series or company religiously. They’re also the first (and presumably only ones) to vehemently attack and deride a project or creator. Now, I’ve encountered that same kind of reaction in television opinions and pro wrestling (so presumably I’m talking about a far wider phenomenon, but for argument’s sake I’ll stick only with comics today). What interests me is that those same fans will lionize the most popular and established stories (or, again, demonize them), create and perpetuate the myths that support their current opinions, and every new comic is another opportunity to reiterate what they’ve already said. The result is that new releases and trade and/or hardcover collections get a fair bit of publicity. What falls in between is any talk on something that no longer seems relevant, that is either too old (which can mean that it was released last month) or was never collected.

Most of what I’ve been and will continue to talk about on this blog is exactly that kind of material. I realize you can find people talking about this kind of stuff elsewhere, but mostly it’s either nostalgic or facetious, and is completely irrelevant to the continuing interests of a comics fan, a comics reader, appealing more to the archivist or researcher. Yes, you can find a lot of material on something that’s just come out, or some opinions on something that has been deemed a classic, but how often do you hear about the rest of it? Are comics really that disposable? That’s what you might assume.

I begin this column with such thoughts because I am only now going to write about the death of Johnny Storm, hence the title at the top of the page, from FANTASTIC FOUR #587. For most fans, it’s such old news, they had to release the issue a day early just to try and keep on top of the story, and so old a topic that writing about it now seems completely irrelevant. Most fans already decided the only real reaction was simply to say, “Well, he’s just going to come back anyway, so what’s the point?”

That’s as much my point as anything else, too, but here’s why: Does reading the issue now, does the idea of the story, of the death of Johnny Storm, truly hold up? Some of this would seem to be histrionics on my part, trying to make a point out of thin air, but while some readers are advancing to the next issue, the next development, I’m in the unique position of being that reader who isn’t, who has in fact disconnected himself from the comics stream, and who therefore has the luxury of asking the questions that seem beyond the point, but bring up another point entirely. How to make what even comics fans consider to be an instantly disposable event into something worth talking about, how to write about comics that don’t seem to matter, as if they’re still worth talking about.

For starters, let’s rewind a little. Jonathan Hickman is the writer responsible for all of this. He first came to my attention, as he did with many others, while he was working for Image, when he was doing some of the most innovative and thought-provoking work in comics, a revolutionary at a time when it seemed safer to try and reemphasize the things that had worked in the past. When Marvel hired him, it seemed like a natural for the House of Ideas. He was quickly placed into projects that would capture his perspective in a more traditional context, but as he himself seemed to realize, the Fantastic Four were an inevitability. Most writers seemed to write them only as cosmic adventurers, or as a family unit that ahd become a cornerstone of the company, but rarely with anything truly challenging in mind (heh).

What Hickman represented was a chance to bring the team back to its roots, as an agent of the science games that gave Marvel almost every one of its famous superheroes (something that many writers had been doing with Iron Man over the years, but notably Orson Scott Card and Matt Fraction in the recent past, and Dan Slott recently with Spider-man). Like Fraction, he seemed to embrace the concept on a wide scale, but he was driving, inevitably, toward something much greater, something other writers had attempted before him, driving the story of the comic directly behind the characters themselves, and in the most dramatic way possible, by killing one of them off. You can’t come up with any more immediately iconic name for a Fantastic Four story than “Three.” Everyone knew exactly what he was aiming for the minute he started it.

Those who read Hickman’s run regularly say he teased every one of the team’s members as a possible victim, from Mr. Fantastic (whom I’d pegged, owing to the generation-spanning adventure I’d earlier sampled) to Invisible Woman (Sue Storm, wife of Reed Richards and sister of Johnny) to The Thing (who’d long ago become the most iconic member, even though it didn’t really come off that way in the movies). As Hickman himself explained, however, the only really logical choice was the Human Torch, who in addition to having personal connections with every other member as none of the others did, was also the only one created from the image and likeness of an existing Marvel property. Quite simply, Johnny was a victim of opportunity all the way around.

Of course, this is not to say we won’t see him again, and it seems likely and yes, inevitable, because this is comics we’re talking about. I’m not saying that with the same bitterness many seem to regard the phenomenon. If you’ve got good stories to tell, you shouldn’t let anything stand in your way, because hey, it’s only fiction. Even Sherlock Holmes proved too popular to kill off, and writers throughout the centuries have found it remarkably easy to revisit characters like Hercules and King Arthur, who did, in fact, die at the end of their original adventures.

The question, then, isn’t really whether or not Johnny Storm or any other member should have died, but whether or not it was worth reading for readers who hadn’t, in the common sense, been reading regularly, whether the issue was worth it for them then, or even now. If we were to treat FANTASTIC FOUR #587 as we would a book or a movie anyone could track down with very little effort, how would it fare? This is the back issue treatment, in essence. We’re not even talking about collections, of which there will inevitably be for “Three,” whether or not it stays in print past its original release. (Comics fans have an even more difficult time than Disney fans in keeping things out of some metaphorical vault.)

If fans were to treat individual issues the way they treat favorite storylines, the way trade and/or hardcovers collections are treated (as long as they’re in print), not just as fodder/filler for a box in someone’s home or store, not just in valuing a first appearance or random variant cover, what would be the value of this particular story?

The way I read it, most of the issue is a complete wash, a random adventure that’s impenetrable to anyone who hadn’t read the rest of the storyline, and doesn’t seem to foreshadow in the least bit Johnny’s death. Hickman seems to have borrowed, at least in spirit, Spock’s death from STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, a happenstance that appears to be the only way for the heroes to escape certain doom, with the sacrifice of one of their own. The actual moments of Johnny’s decision, how the issue closes, is absolutely worth the hype, something that would stand up no matter who the character is, whatever the scenario or medium. Hickman handles that like a pro.

The problem is, I don’t end up feeling that Hickman himself really needed to have written it. I don’t see even a trace of the Hickman I knew from Image, in any of his Marvel work. I see a certain logical connection to the titles he’s worked on, but not the material. As a representative work for a particular creator, I wouldn’t much see the point of having this in my portfolio. The way Grant Morrison kept working toward at and with his grand vision of Batman’s fall and return justified every bit of the hype that continues to surround his efforts. Even Ed Brubaker continues to have some kind of logic surrounding his work with Captain America (though I would argue, he writes a far better James Barnes than Steve Rogers). What can you say about Jonathan Hickman and the Fantastic Four? Maybe the regular readers will know, but the only time anyone wrote about Hickman’s run was “Three.”

Maybe the problem is a conceptual one. Maybe the Fantastic Four really don’t work on both levels, both the cosmic and the personal, as many fans and creators, including Hickman, seem to think. Maybe it’s simply a problem on my end. I’ve never, except during Civil War, read FANTASTIC FOUR regularly. I’m not sure any creator after the team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (whose appeal was immediately evident to me when the infamous “lost” issue was finally printed a few years back) has truly understood the appeal and potential in these characters. Except for the wedding between the parent figures, they’ve been hurt more than any of superheroes by the static nature of even Marvel properties, which routinely attempt to demonstrate the worth of a continuing and all-encompassing history (well, when it’s convenient). Hickman did recognize that a change had to happen, and he went for the obvious one, and in the middle of a big cosmic adventure, so he appealed to all the right things.

But it seemed like a last-ditch effort, rather than a concerted one. Unlike Brubaker, who had the benefit of a relaunch to fit all his ideas into a coherent whole, or Morrison, who employed an entire tapestry, as far as I know, Hickman seems content to let everything fall on that one moment, one “Three” and the death of Johnny Storm, and let a relaunch and general ramifications take over.

But I suppose that’s a problem for other readers. It was definitely worth talking about, and that’s exactly my point, when it was published and even now, and should be as relevant now as it was then, not just for what it caused and symbolized, but what the comic itself was and now stands to be forever, a single issue in a flood of single issues, but a notable, noteworthy, newsworthy, item.

I was last inside a comic book store a month ago. It doesn’t seem like such a long time ago, but sobriety is one step at a time, so one month is a long time for me. That’s also the last time I received a shipment from Midtown, which technically the method by which I was reading the majority of my comics in recent years. To have cut those subscription ties and to have stayed away from a comic book store and for only a month to have passed…Sometimes it seems like an eternity has passed by, sometimes like it’s silly to be feeling in the least bit nostalgic. I’ve heard about an issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN that made me want to head down to Escape Velocity, or place an order for it, one of those landmark events that seems like it should be in everyone’s collection. So far, I’ve contented myself with knowing that Slott is doing the kind of material I knew he could. I’ve got the few comics I can read and/or buy at work, at the bookstore, including the first appearance of Flash Thompson as the new Venom, plus the big reveal of Hot Pursuit as some kind of alternate Barry Allen.

…Anyway, the rest of this column represents the last batch of new comics from the era that has now slipped, however tenuously, into history, the shipment that included FANTASTIC FOUR #587. Here’s what else I read:

WONDER WOMAN #606 (DC)
When I heard that Phil Hester had picked up the baton from J. Michael Straczynski on this book, I couldn’t help but think that business was about to pick up. But aside from a new zestiness that reminded me of all the character Greg Rucka brought to Wonder Woman’s world, the story still meanders on the same Straczynski path, which is the only disappointment possible, given that I still expect Hester to rock this book, once he’s free to explore his own ideas. Because there really is a new spark evident.

SHAZAM! #1 (DC)
Eric Wallace, one of the slightly more anonymous regular presences at DC, provides this continuation of the Marvel family saga, which the company only seems halfhearted about, despite some excellent work that’s occurred in recent years, highlighted by THE TRIALS OF SHAZAM! But among the first new letters DC has printed in about a decade, someone does add their voice to this very frustration. Maybe they’re hinting at something?

GREEN ARROW #8 (DC)
J.T. Krul continues a run that apparently isn’t getting a lot of appreciation from the fans, even though, as far as I can tell, if it didn’t start out awesome, has only gotten better with time. This issue spends a lot of time exploring the Galahad character, one of the more intriguing additions to Green Arrow lore, and a terrific piece of the current mythos, in that forest of his.

DETECTIVE COMICS #873 (DC)
Scott Snyder’s third issue wraps up his first arc, and makes a few more haunting suggestions about how he plans to approach Dick Grayson. If he digs much deeper, this will truly be a remarkable run, for both creator and character.

BLOCKBUSTERS OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE (Marvel)
Okay, so maybe it’s just me, but rather than being so encyclopedically thorough with these things, couldn’t Marvel be a little more reader-friendly? I’m not suggesting turning them into fluff, but there has to be a way to make it a little more…fun? Archives don’t make for casual reading, and when you release it in this format…fun should sort of be the mandate. Just saying…

ACTION COMICS #897 (DC)
Due to a shipping snafu, my store got double the number of this issue, which would be amusing if we sold this title half as well as we do BATMAN. In fact, if we sold any copies at all. We sell out of BATMAN, by the way, all two copies, every time. Anyway, Paul Cornell continues his tour with Lex Luthor, this time allowing The Joker to drop in for some fun. I think I would have more thoroughly enjoyed these stories if Cornell hadn’t believed he needed the gimmick of a guest star every issue. Or maybe it was a mandate he had to accept. Still, we do get another Larfleeze comic out of it!

That’s it, then (and pretty literally at that, pretty much). I’ll be moving into some interesting new topics in the coming weeks, so there’s definitely plenty of reasons to keep tuning in. The red phone is always open to calls, too!