Future State - Top Ten: #5. Swamp Thing

 

Writer: Ram V

Artist: Mike Perkins

After the first two weeks of Future State I had declared this one the achievement to beat. When all was said and done four other stories beat it, but that hardly diminishes the first issue of Ram V and Mike Perkins’ Swamp Thing, a master class of tone and setting.

I’m not the biggest Swamp Thing fan. Part of that is because I’m also not the biggest Alan Moore fan. His Swamp Thing was Moore’s calling card before he had any other credentials, and remains one of his most celebrated runs. He famously made existentialism cool in comics when he postulated that Swamp Thing wasn’t even Alec Holland but a plant creature who thought he was, a deconstruction of superhero secret origins that still stands as unique in the modern era. 

But I never got around to reading much of it, and what I have suggests much of it is Moore being Moore, which for me isn’t really my thing.

The closest I came to being a fan of Swamp Thing was Charles Soule’s run in the New 52, which rounded out Scott Snyder’s (which has been completely forgotten by the same rabid Snyder fans who proclaimed his Batman to be the only good thing about the New 52). Soule focused heavily on Swamp Thing mythology, which for me is a reliable source of superhero comic entertainment. 

Anyway, so I didn’t come into Future State expecting to love the Swamp Thing entry.

I hadn’t even been overly involved in the career of Ram V. Ram is an emerging talent who was operating below the radar, looking for a breakout work amid consistently excellent material. For me that breakout was this comic. It’s Ram at his most focused, which means a writer who can usually already have an excellent grasp of the potential in arcane characters had found the one character who unlocked his considerable potential.

The first issue is brilliant setup. The second issue is a letdown insofar as the first is so great it’s disappointing that it had to be wrapped up so quickly.

Fortunately DC understood what it had and immediately commissioned a follow-up mini-series from the same team. I have since been reading it, and several issues in Ram and Perkins once again put their magic on full display, which also had the benefit of helping me stick with Ram’s new Boom! series, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, the second issue of which was even better than the first, which I wouldn’t have found out if I had stopped reading either series when it looked like Ram and Perkins were once again coasting on their laurels. 

Won’t make that mistake again.

Future State - Top Ten: #6. Superman/Wonder Woman

 

Writer: Dan Watters

Artist: Leila Del Duca

My favorite thing about these issues is the Lee Weeks art on the covers. Weeks is one of the treasures of modern comics, doesn’t get enough appreciation for that. 

The issues themselves are a welcome reprise of the New 52 team up between Superman and Wonder Woman, with the obvious distinction that there it was a budding romance and here it’s the next generation of Jon Kent and Yara Flor. It’s Jon’s best Future State showing, and another highlight for Yara.

It’s also, very sneaky, evocative of All Star Superman, which for some is kind of the career highlight for Grant Morrison.

That’s how the credit pages appear in both issues, which is the style used in Morrison’s comic. Solaris, the tyrant sun, is also featured. It’s pretty deliberate.

Otherwise, writer Dan Watters and artist Leila Del Duca follow their own fancy. It’s just great to see a comic everyone sees as a classic finally show up as a source of inspiration. Obviously Watchmen shows up like that all the time. This is a welcome way to see Morrison finally reaching that status.

Future State - Top Ten: #7. Aquaman

 

Writer: Brandon Thomas

Artist: Daniel Sampere

To be clear, the casting, and subsequent performance, of Jason Momoa, was the best thing to ever happen to Aquaman.

Aquaman is one of the oldest DC superheroes, and yet his modern reputation in pop culture is as a joke, the dude who “talks to fish.” Peter David’s feverish efforts in the ‘90s to transform him into a more gritty character (sans hand, added hook, beard, long hair) did little outside comic book circles to change this.

Geoff Johns elevated Aquaman as much as he could in the early New 52, writing him simultaneously in the pages of his own comic and Justice League, including the crossover saga “Throne of Atlantis.” Dan Abnett had a much-lauded run in the Rebirth era.

But in the effort to make him look more authentic, DC also pigeonholed him in underwater politics that only further isolated Aquaman.

Momoa’s Aquaman is the most approachable and fun presence of the DCEU. Brandon Thomas’s Future State version (starring a next-generation Aquaman) is the first time a comic book version of the character feels like that.

Simply put, it’s a fun read! Thomas is a new recruit best known for various Image projects, and he has a spectacular debut in these pages. Even if Aquaman still doesn’t command attention, the material is getting there. DC could do a lot worse than give Thomas a permanent assignment, or at least one of those follow-ups, with this version of Aquaman.

Future State - Top Ten: #8. Batman/Superman

 

Writer: Gene Luen Yang

Artist: Ben Oliver

As far as I’m concerned, it seems overly difficult to find a good Batman/Superman comic. The modern gold standard is still the original, Jeph Loeb’s, which achieved its magic by relying heavily on dueling caption narrative. Of course, DC has kept a team-up title going (switching the order of the names, as Batman has once again supplanted Superman in popularity, beginning with with a Loeb comic; I still have no idea how idiot fans managed to convince themselves he’s a bad writer, which of course happened over at Marvel) ever since. No one has seriously challenged Loeb’s work.

Until Gene Luen Yang.

Yang is one of the greats working in superhero comics at the moment. He spent a bunch of time hiding in New Super-Man (the Chinese Superman), and then took over Jeff Lemire’s Terrifics, before getting this Future State assignment.

Yang always knows how to keep things lively. A lot of writers get caught up in tropes, unable to personalize them, so that a superhero comic is just a superhero comic, or try desperately to make it stand out (some succeed, some are just desperate, and only “succeed” because of equally desperate fans). Yang might be able to break off from that because he’s the rare superhero comics writer whose knowledge base isn’t totally superhero comics themselves. Yang made his name writing graphic novels translating his Chinese-American and Chinese heritage. As such he’s aware of the need to adapt rather than simply write. The result, as I’ve encountered it is a style that’s both familiar and distinctive.

His Batman/Superman is a friendship (a friendship) presented in dialogue. They aren’t rivals. It’s not secretly Batman humoring or condescending to Superman, as writers can sometimes slip into. It’s bona fide mutual respect. (Too often in superhero comics, writers will allow the popular status of a character define how they’re presented rather than depict a dynamic, engaging personality.)

With that as a base, Yang also unfolds an actual story involving a father and son caught up in Professor Pyg’s latest scheme, which also ties in with the early days of the Magistrate era that plays out in the Batman titles elsewhere in Future State. Being tangential to that arc, Yang’s story is free to do as it pleases, and also serves as an object lesson in what the other creators might have achieved had they considered their options.

The result is perhaps the Future State comic with the lowest profile but perhaps highest return on investment. Yang has since graduated to the main title, with his innovative approach wowing unsuspecting readers in his first issue, which I skipped (but corrected by the second).