artist: David Finch
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| via Inside Pulse |
Quite frankly, I'm bored with the reaction I've read about DC's latest crossover event. It's really the same fan outrage nonsense that seems to have finally overtaken the general Internet reaction (and has caused a number of sites I follow to also comment on it recently). I've seen this before. It happened to Star Trek at the turn of the century. (The difference is that at the movies, superheroes are still undeniably king, which means regardless of what Internet fans say, comics will be safe for the foreseeable future, which is something Star Trek couldn't say at that time. Other things were popular. Other things got all the positive chatter. So Star Trek went away for a while. And, incidentally, came back in a big way.)
Anyway, the fake controversy of Forever Evil was that it was all about villains. I have no idea what that's about. It's the same logical nonsense as with all these other "controversies." You can't even blame event fatigue anymore. DC hadn't had an event to any major extent since 2011. That's a major gap, folks.
What Forever Evil actually did was allow Geoff Johns to do what he did when he was working on Green Lantern, which was turn his current run into a crossover event. This time it was Justice League's turn. Which is hugely appropriate. I've been calling the series a monthly event book from the start anyway.
Yes, Forever Evil is about villains. But ironically, these villains were working toward a shot at redemption the whole time. Since I haven't to this point read the whole story, I don't know how obvious that was. Probably not to be considered a surprise twist, however.
The best part about it is that Johns had a chance to do something different. (Admittedly, there are certain parallels to a couple of Marvel events, such as Secret Invasion and Siege. Good creative writing doesn't need to quibble over these things, only bad critical reactions.) And he embraced the opportunity. That's apparent in how he ended the story.
Basically, the evil Justice League that has been featured in such stories as Grant Morrison's JLA: Earth 2 took over for a while, and then Lex Luthor figured out how to beat it. It's ironic that Johns has now written two major events outside of regular continuity (Flashpoint was all about an alternate reality, after all), although as the final image suggests, Forever Evil leads to very specific continuity indeed, both the New 52 version and DC's continuity as a whole (for those who don't know, that's Anti-Monitor, the villain of 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths, the seminal crossover event of all DC crossover events).
When Justice League launched, the revamped continuity had the team forming in response to the first appearance of Darkseid. (Earth 2, unrelated to Morrison's comic and in fact a revamped Justice Society of America book, is all about an alternate version of how those events played out.) If Johns is suggesting what I think he's suggesting, it would be his greatest revision since Green Lantern: Rebirth. Darkseid has always been obsessed with the so-called Anti-Life Equation. Repositioning the Anti-Monitor into this context is classic Johns genius, figuring out how to look at something differently, similarly, but in an elevated state.
The issue is about winding down the current story, of course. Alexander Luthor, who happens to be another Crisis creation, turned out to be the big bad of Forever Evil (he was also featured in Johns's first effort at a Crisis sequel, Infinite Crisis). Villains to a certain extent in comics have always been defined as characters who pursued having powers from a a more negative way than superheroes. That's what Alexander was all about. And it was his undoing, because once they were taken away, he was easy to eliminate. His alternate self, "our" Lex Luthor, figured this out.
Forever Evil is a Lex Luthor story. He's since gone on to headline Justice League itself. This won't last. But it's an interesting repositioning all the same. I think Johns has more nuance in his characterization than, say, Marvel had for Norman Osborn. At one point he bellows, "But he was my monster," when Bizarro is killed and someone tried to understand why he's so upset about it. Luthor has classically been portrayed as jealous of Superman. In his current incarnation he may have finally found a way to get over his jealousy. He's transcended the situation. He'd have to revert to what the Internet thought this story was like to fall significantly. I don't see that happening. It's far less interesting.
Besides, Johns has already proven he probably won't do that, with how he's handled Sinestro recently. Who, incidentally, has his own series now.
It's just good storytelling. Johns has taken the opportunity to do a lot of repositioning. Ted Kord is back. Kord was famously killed off in previous continuity in the run-up to Infinite Crisis. Now he's a younger character who may serve as the useful counterpoint to Lex. There's the final fate of Nightwing. There's been outrage concerning that, too. Whatever.
As far as I can tell, this is nothing but Johns doing himself better. That doesn't happen often. He's been at his game, and at the top of the DC game, for years now. One might expect a little apathy. Except the challenge of representing the face of the New 52 has seemed to energize him. New opportunities. Revisiting old stories, seeing new possibilities in them. This is all right up my wheelhouse. His, certainly.
So, don't believe what you've heard. Forever Evil is apparently pretty fantastic.
Technically isn't Future's End the latest crossover event?
ReplyDeleteFutures End is not a crossover event. It's a weekly series. Current speculation is that it, along with the other weekly series DC is/will be doing, leads to the next crossover event.
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