Reading Comics 240 "Batman #85, Doomsday Clock #12, and more"

Because there were a few comics I had to read at the end of the year, I put in another order at Midtown, and this is what I got:

Batman Annual #2 (DC)

This isn’t the issue I was aiming for, but it was nice to revisit all the same, as it demonstrates Tom King’s lyrical grace, a quality that seemed to have eluded many of his readers, or at least his many critics.  But if something like this escapes them, I suppose it doesn’t matter whether or not they approve.  At the end is a coda for King’s whole conception of Batman, and Catwoman, and it is beautiful.

Batman #85 (DC)

Here’s King’s grand finale, which splits time between defeating Thomas Wayne/Flashpoint Batman, and tying everything up, how the whole thing flowed from Batman’s theory of a “good death” at the start of King’s run, how he finally reconciled the death of his parents and what that meant about the existence of Batman, and his continued existence, and how his relationship with Catwoman confirms all of it.  I think it’s brilliant, but then I think just about everything Tom King does is brilliant.  He has no contemporary equal.  He may in fact be the best superhero comics writer ever.  And he has set the bar very high indeed.

Batman: Last Knight on Earth #3 (DC)

A Batman finale of a different order, this is Scott Snyder and Greg Capulo’s farewell.  As I was reading it, it suddenly occurred to me that if there’s any logic Snyder has followed all these years, it’s probably Dan Jurgens’.  Dan is famously the guy who in the final analysis is responsible for the death of Superman.  He further contributed to DC ‘90s lore with Zero Hour, an event that’s frequently overlooked but is probably one of the greatest event comics ever written, a “Crisis in Time” that expanded on Hal Jordan’s fall from grace to truly epic proportions and offered a plausible reshaping of continuity that hit a very soft reset button.  But Jurgens more often writes his superheroes in broader strokes.  His ideas are seldom as grounded in grace as his best stories (sort of like Mark Waid), and so he’s kind of easy to dismiss as the comics great that he ultimately is, at his best.  Snyder, meanwhile, has so often leaned on the assistance of cowriters it’s probably easy to forget that he has relied so often on them, when his legacy has shrunk to the “one great thing to come out of the New 52.”  He needs someone to temper his crazier instincts.  He’s the kind of writer who looks at the examples other writers have set, and considered only that they look like the most outrageous thing that could’ve been done, and so what he needs to do is the most outrageous thing he can come up with, and the logic will explain itself.  And his ideas are sound, but the execution always beggars the imagination of the reader more than convincingly tells a story.  His big finale, as he seemed to decide after coming up with the Court of Owls in his original Batman comics, centers around Batman’s relationship with the Joker.  As far as the Joker is concerned, everything he has ever done was meant to make Batman the best he could be.  But I don’t think Batman would ever be comfortable with that assessment, even in a scenario where he’s confronted with a version of himself that’s the worst he could be (and even there, Snyder doesn’t adequately account for how Batman could end up wanting to take over the whole world; that’s a story that would contrast Batman with Lex Luthor, not himself, much less Joker) (and while we’re on the subject, Snyder really, really missed a trick with his current projects when he called his upgraded Luthor “Apex Lex,” when, since the rhyme is already there, the logic clearly dictates calling him “Apex Luthor).  As far as Snyder’s own logic goes, I suppose this is as appropriate a finale as he could’ve envisioned.  This isn’t what I thought the original cloning concept he introduced way back in Detective Comics #27 (the New 52 edition), but at least he did something with it.

Doomsday Clock #12 (DC)

The second grand finale I wanted to catch (the above Snyder was merely incidental, not something I had intended to go out of my way to catch), or at least read for myself, since I had allowed the internet to spoil it for me.  Naturally, the internet was most interested in Geoff Johns outlining the theoretical future of DC lore.  I don’t think anyone at DC seriously expects this material to be followed (considering one of the stories referenced is apparently another crossover with Marvel, a situation always fraught with complications, as the long development of JLA/Avengers proved).  The sentiment itself represents the central thesis that DC follows Superman, that wherever he goes, his new continuity is the foundation of DC’s new continuity, even going so far as to suggest that if comics are still being made in 3020, a thousand years from now, the age of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman’s origin will take place then, and continuity will resettle around him once again, even though the Legion took its inspiration from the exploits of Superboy a thousand years earlier.  I think the whole project is justified.  It gives Doctor Manhattan a far more satisfying arc than he got in Watchmen (although I think Zack Snyder corrected that in his movie, too), removing the cynicism of Alan Moore himself and allowing a man who can see everything (except his ultimate fate) to adequately comprehend it, given the opportunity to make a decision, or in this instance, rethink a decision.  Which may also have been the point.

Family Tree #2 (Image)

I wanted to have a look at this latest Jeff Lemire project.  The guy is the most prolific creator in comics!  The art is from Phil Hester, whom I always love to see pop up with new work.  A fine variation on familiar Lemire themes.

Flash Forward #4 (DC)

I had already read what happened in this one, too, but wanted a chance to experience it for myself: Wally West meets Lightspeed, Linda Park!  But, of course, a Linda Park from an alternate reality, and who doesn’t particularly care what a counterpart made of Wally.  But the comic is also toying with Wally reuniting with his kids, which is something I’ve become much more fond of in the years since Mark Waid first introduced them in his return to Wally’s adventures, which were sort of a soft launch of the Tomasi/Gleason Superman, which wasn’t as good as their Batman & Robin, but still well worth existing.  And I think most fans will agree, if Wally is back, his whole family ought to get to join him, too.  Hopefully this comic has a truly happy ending.

Incoming! (Marvel)

Basically a tour of the current Marvel landscape, another visit with the Masked Raider (I don’t know if this guy, that name, and his gunslinging costume, is destined for greatness, but he’s nice to hang these stories on), and the push for the upcoming Kree/Skrull invasion of Earth!  The movies are probably headed somewhere in that direction, too, so it’s nice for the comics to get there first, for a change (a lot of recent comics belatedly obsessed over Thanos, which seemed way too obvious at that point), picking up where a famous, but forgotten-except-by-diehards-because-Marvel-can’t-keep-its-defining-stories-in-print Avengers epic left off way back in the ‘70s (or ‘60s? but I think ‘70s).  And central to all this?  My 2005 inner Marvel nerd is excited that it’s characters from Young Avengers! 

Invisible Kingdom #8 (Dark Horse)

Lately I’ve been feeling kind of bad about not caring that G. Willow Wilson has enjoyed so much success in recent years, since Air was such a favorite of mine from when nobody else cared, so I checked out an issue of this project.  It’s okay. 

Joker: Killer Smile #2 (DC)

Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino once again reunite for a tale of a psychiatrist’s descent into madness when he believes he can figure out the Clown Prince.  A bit obvious, but a sort of welcome companion to Lemire’s brilliant Moon Knight.

Klaus: The Life & Times of Joe Christmas (Boom!)

I haven’t had much luck reading the annual Christmas follow-ups to Grant Morrison and Dan Mora’s original Klaus, so I was pleased to order (because as I’ve come to understand, I just won’t be able to find it in an actual comics shop) the latest.  This one’s sort of in the model of a calendar, which counts up from December 1 and ends on the 25^th.  And there is no dialogue, only a chronicle of the life and adventures of Joe Christmas, who sort of becomes Klaus’s sidekick.  I almost choked up when I realized the cat had died.  Great comic.  Might singlehandedly justify Morrison’s whole concept of making Santa Claus a superhero.  Years from now someone could write a whole series around Joe Christmas based on this one comic, or maybe they could base a movie on it.  (Hint hint.)

The Old Guard: Force Multiplied #1 (Image)

I read the original miniseries in trade paperback at the library, and was immediately smitten, so I was extremely glad to discover this follow-up.  Perhaps moreso than the story itself is value of the Greg Rucka essay at the end detailing his thoughts about the origins and emerging legacy of Old Guard, including an upcoming Netflix movie version.  I’m glad things are working out this way.

The Amazing Spider-Man #36 (Marvel)

I was suckered into buying this issue because the solicitation listed Pat Gleason as the artist.  He was not.  But I subsequently picked up a slightly earlier issue, and he was. 

Superman Smashes the Klan #2 (DC)

Gene Luen Yang writes perhaps his most important Superman and/or DC comic, at last, detailing a group of kids’ experiences with Superman as he, well, battles the Klan, centering around a Chinese perspective, not in the way Hollywood has been catering to the massive Chinese market in recent years, but because Yang has more immediate ties, the kind that stretch across American history.  We tend to forget, except for all that Chinese food that was actually invented in America, how long the Chinese have been here, and how complicated their lives have been here.  Thankfully Yang is here to help fill in the gaps.  Included is an essay detailing Superman history that’s both familiar and also relevant to Yang’s perspective and intentions.

Reading Comics 231 "Midtown Comics"

I had a bad habit of spending money I didn’t have, a decade ago, ordering comics from Midtown.  When I placed my most recent order, it was money I did have, so it was a fine thing to revisit the old habit.  Here’s what I got:

Doomsday Clock #11 (DC)

The penultimate issue, leading to the much-anticipated encounter between Superman and Doctor Manhattan, lays out what exactly Geoff Johns was doing all along, including finally explaining what Saturn Girl has been doing in the Rebirth era (somewhat ironically, for her).  This is probably some of the best stuff Johns has ever written.

The Green Lantern #11 (DC)

Back when I was at my blogging height, I collected a number of blogs I thought would be worth reading on a regular basis, but more often than not I was wrong.  One of them is a comics blog that has continued to review new comics every week, and…I just don’t give a wit about the guy’s opinions.  He seems positively allergic to any real ambition in comics.  So: he doesn’t like Grant Morrison’s Green Lantern.  I think you have to be an idiot not to like a Morrison comic, especially when he’s obviously applying himself and having a great old time.  And he’s clearly doing exactly that in this comic.  And in this issue alone, he does what no one since Geoff Johns has really been able to nail and that’s introduce another forgotten element of Green Lantern lore, and it doesn’t hurt that he deliberately draws on Don Quixote to do it (this has sort of been my Year of Don Quixote).  Anyway, while I don’t love everything Grant Morrison has ever done, this whole run is going to sit very proudly alongside my collection of his works.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #1 (DC)

Wow.  So, Brian Michael Bendis, folks.  The dude has been a tireless creative dynamo since coming to work for DC, not just with the creator-owned material he either brought with him or began, but the stuff he’s been imagining with familiar characters, and everything fans expected him to do, he just keeps coming up with curveballs.  This comic, for instance, actually centers on Rose & Thorn, a concept I came across in ‘90s Superman comics, but which Bendis makes his own, brilliantly.  Now I want to read a comic based on her, forget about the returning Legion!  But I’ll take the Legion, too, because I’m pretty convinced that if anyone can pull off a relevant new Legion, it’s Bendis.  I’ve never enjoyed him as much as I am now.  I haven’t always been a fan, per say, but I’ve enjoyed him in the past.  But he’s operating on an entirely new level now.  It’s, dare I say, amazing…

Section Zero #6 (Image)

Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett are basically reprising their old Superboy comics, which to my mind is a very good thing, with this one.  I bought the Stuart Immonen variant cover, naturally.

Spawn #300 (Image)

I’m pretty sure the creator-owned landmark Spawn is matching this issue and passing with the next one is Cerebus, which was much-celebrated in times past but much-criticized today.  Now, given that there’re 300 issues of Spawn to be accounted for and maybe the first few years that most fans are actually going to remember, someone had the bright idea to reboot back to the continuity, basically, of those early years for this occasion.  It’s only just occurred to me that Spawn as a concept seems to have copy-and-posted almost directly from Venom, as far as being a symbiotic costume thing.  Todd McFarlane explains how he came up with the character in the ‘70s, obviously before Venom or the black Spider-Man costume ever existed, but I wonder how much of what ended up being Spawn was envisioned back in the day and how much when McFarlane went off to help found Image on the back of all the money he and his fellow pirate artists were making at the time.  In fact, reading (or sort of reading) those Demon Etrigan comics from Forbidden Geek sort of put Spawn further in perspective: He’s sort of exactly Venom, but envisioned by DC. 

Star Trek: Discovery – Aftermath #1 (IDW)

I’m a fan of the series itself, so I didn’t mind revisiting it in comics form, and this comic is a good way to do so, and even harkens back to the best of IDW’s Star Trek comics.

Superman: Up in the Sky #3 (DC)

This is the comic book store reprint series of the Walmart Superman Giant material from Tom King and Andy Kubert, which I thought I’d get at least one issue of, calculating (correctly, as it happily turned out), that this one would feature the “controversial” installment featuring the many deaths of Lois Lane.  And rereading this material was as equally pleasurable as the first time, as I hoped, so that was also good to see.

Reading Comics 229 "Tom King, Vertigo, Recent Comics"

Okay!  If I'd written this earlier, I'd be talking about less, but here we are and now there's more...

Apparently it was DC's decision for Tom King to leave Batman itself to finish the story in Batman/Catwoman?  Or maybe there's an explanation that doesn't sound sinister?  But, in news that's only relevant to people who aren't on the internet (yay troglodytes!), King's work is still appearing in the Superman 100-Page Giants found at Wal-Mart.  I confirmed this (but have yet to read it) with the recently released Superman Giant #12. 

Apparently DC has cancelled the Vertigo imprint.  There will be a lot of fans freaking out over this, how DC's killing a part of its soul or whatever, but really...I don't see a real problem here.  Vertigo hasn't really been Vertigo since Scott Snyder backed off of American Vampire, which was the last major series launched under the imprint.  And in that regard, the big send-off for trade-friendly Fables might be considered the real end of the imprint, getting a trade-size (and published in trade format, no less) final issue.  Fans will say it's because Karen Berger was released as managing editor, but Fables and the most recent issue of American Vampire were released in 2015.  That's a long time for the imprint to linger in irrelevance.  Meanwhile, times changed.  The Walking Dead, which in a lot of respects was a Vertigo title published by Image, was a game-changer.  Image itself transitioned into a Vertigo mentality after pushing the superhero format in the '90s.  And there are dozens of smaller publishers now operating that also follow the Vertigo template, which itself began by collecting a number of existing DC titles that were intended for mature readers, which...

And that's the new plan, by the way.  The new DC Black Label will now be the destination of anything that might've once been Vertigo.  There's also Brian Michael Bendis's Jinxworld, which is its own DC imprint, which in earlier times would have been part of Vertigo.  (Bendis was operating more or less this way with Marvel, too, which never made a serious move to expand into other creators producing creator-owned material.)

So again, I say there's nothing to complain about here.  Paul Cornell was able to retrieve the rights to Saucer Country, which for all intents and purposes was a post-Berger Vertigo series, and continue it at IDW as Saucer State.  The Vertigo mystique did nothing to salvage G. Willow Wilson's seminal Air, which sputtered under little critical or fan attention under Berger's watch from 2008 to 2010.  What Fables did was itself signal the end of an era, in which Vertigo was previously known for dark genre instead became home to light genre material, which couldn't sustain the same cult following.

Anyway, here's some comics I read recently:

Batman: Last Knight on Earth #1 (DC)
Here's Snyder and Greg Capullo reuniting for one last grand Batman story.  As suggested previously and as I hoped to see since Snyder's contribution to the 'New 52" era Detective Comics #27, it's finally an extended look at the concept of Batman producing a series of clones to continue the crusade past his original lifetime.  I'm not sure this debut entirely squares with the concept, but I do love that Snyder heavily leans into his concept that Batman and the Joker are essentially an odd couple, having progressed well beyond hero-and-villain status.  The idea of Batman carrying around the disembodied head of the Joker is the best thing I've come across in a Scott Snyder comic, where he's finally and truly gone as wild as he could imagine.

Daredevil #6 (Marvel)
Chip Zdarsky's wonderful run continues.  I hope fans are registering its existence.

Ascender #2 (Image)
Lemire and Nguyen's Descender sequel continues.

Doomsday Clock #10 (DC)
I made sure to buy this issue (I committed to tradewaiting the series after missing too many previous issues, including the first one) after coming back to the Geek Twins, a break that corresponded with the death of my mother and the exploding of what had been a regular blogging habit, and finding that they heartily recommended it as a unique way for DC and/or Geoff Johns to once and for all reconcile the multiverse by redubbing it the metaverse.  This issue sees Doctor Manhattan explaining his journey post-Watchmen by, in part, revisiting all the times DC has rebooted its continuity, starting well before the famous Crisis on Infinite Earths.  And my fears that Doomsday Clock would duplicate what Johns had done previously in Infinite Crisis were alleviated.  Basically the pivotal issue of the series and a landmark in DC lore in general.

Heroes in Crisis #9 (DC)
There ended up being a lively discussion as to what exactly this series accomplished over at Speed Force, and then DC solicited Flash Forward, which will act as a sequel and spotlight for Wally West, and I wonder if any of the fans upset over what Tom King "did to him" will begin reconsidering.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  Me, as I tend to, I thought King's work was brilliant.

The Immortal Hulk #2, 18 (Marvel)
Al Ewing put himself on the map with this one.  Essentially an in-continuity of the classic Hulk TV series, Bruce Banner's back as the Hulk, but he's skulking around the country trying to keep the beast at bay, and stumbling into horror stories along the way.  Anyway, it's good reading, and fans have certainly noticed, and I'm glad I had a look.

Naomi #5 (DC)
The other Bendis imprint at DC these days, Wonder Comics, launched Naomi with the promise that eventually it would seem important.  Well, I finally got to have a look, and with exactly the right issue, in which we learn that she comes from an alternate Earth, which is an idea that surprisingly hasn't really been done before, even though DC has visited dozens and dozens of alternate realities over the years.  The closest is Superman, probably, who in current continuity is actually a survivor of a previous one (which is something you don't need to know to enjoy his latest adventures, but sounds exactly like the insanity that led to Crisis on Infinite Earths to begin with).

Sasquatch Detective 64-Page Special (DC)
Originally a back-up feature in Mark Russell's Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, this is essentially DC allowing itself to have some family-friendly fan with something that isn't based on an existing franchise.  If it were Marvel, there'd already have been an ongoing series and several dozen more concepts exactly like it.  DC restraint!

Superman: Leviathan Rising (DC)
Originally previewed in Year of the Villain, this intro to the Bendis event conveniently called Event Leviathan was most appreciated by me for its preview of Matt Fraction's Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, which was a real treat to read.  And for those wondering, the Bendis Leviathan is the same as the Morrison Leviathan, this time with (seemingly) less Talia.  So yeah, Morrison's Batman is the gift that keeps giving.