Reading Comics 222 "Nightwing, Halloween ComicFest, Walmart 3-Pack Residuals"

Been lousy keeping up Thought Bubble Comics, I know, I know...

Halloween ComicFest 2018
Here's another free comics event, one I haven't really participated in as enthusiastically as, well, Free Comic Book Day, mostly because, well FCBD is a legit phenomenon and this isn't.  It's just an excuse for some free comics!  Not that there's a problem with that sort of thing, right?  Of course, participating publishers also have a kind of themed mandate with this one where they don't on FCBD.  As such, it was far harder, and conversely far easier, to make selections.  I ended up with just two, DC/Vertigo's John Constantine: Hellblazer special edition and Marvel's Thor: Road to War of the Realms.  I wasn't really interested in anything else (not even anything particularly relevant to snag for my three-year-old niece, alas), though I hemmed and hawed, because free comics, yo. 

Obviously DC was most interested in selling the Vertigo brand itself, and Constantine is as reliable a selling point, as signature an element, as Vertigo ever had, sort of the last crayon in the box by the end, absorbed into DC proper eventually but never really feeling at home there.  I mean, the whole concept was built for the original Vertigo mandate of the creepy fringe elements.  I never really got into the character, mostly because he seemed to be used mostly as an excuse, a vehicle, more than for whatever he specifically brought to the table, or that his fans were not particularly vocal about his selling points.  I mean, the concept, which became a Keanu Reeves movie at one point, and then a short-lived TV series and then featured player in another show.  This issue was written by Neil Gaiman, who does Neil Gaiman at his most vague.  What always made Gaiman's instincts work so well in the pages of Sandman was that it was always grounded in real human pathos.  There's an attempt made in the story, but Constantine is inherently uninterested in what's most interesting in Gaiman's best material.  And I'm not really much of a horror for horror's sake kind of reader.  So anyway, still haven't figured out the guy's appeal, or waiting for a writer like Lemire, in the pages of I, Vampire, to figure out how to draw him out of his shell.  What he needs is other characters to consistently react against. 

The Thor issue was part of Jason Aaron's sprawling run, apparently somewhere near the beginning (third out of twelve volumes helpfully spelled out in the back pages).  What's most annoying about Thor as a character, to me, is that he's so often, certainly in Aaron's hands, entirely limited to Asgardian business.  It's like Aquaman only concerned with Atlantis court intrigue.  You need to remember that this is a character who will thrive best as a fish out of water, not forever thrust in alienating context.

Anyway...

Batman #57
Tom King's latest successful outrage magnet was hobbling Nightwing (more on that in a moment) in the midst of a mini-arc with the KGBeast.  I was perfectly okay with this for any number of reasons.  One is that he previously made a very early career mark with the Beast in the pages of his seminal Grayson: Futures End, which of course featured Nightwing, years before King wrote an issue of Batman.  Another is that this arc instantly further elevates the Beast's credibility by placing him, basically, at the same level as Bane, who in King's hands has finally reached his full "Knightfall" potential.  And as he has so often demonstrated, King used this moment for another excellent character study.

But let's move on to...

Nightwing # 50-51
Between Ben Percy and Scott Lobdell, this is the start of a bold new era for Dick Grayson.  Another bold new era.  This is a character who has defined bold new eras in DC. Fans like to slake their need for nerd outrage by claiming Dan DiDio has long had it ought for Nightwing, but...the results?  They kind of suggest the character has blossomed as never before under DiDio's watch.  Whether it was in the pages of the New 52 Nightwing, where he was consistently presented as relevant to Scott Snyder's Batman, which never happened in the long-running first Nightwing ongoing (which went on for a hundred and fifty issues, no less), or the bold new era of his exposed secret identity, which led to the spy adventures of Grayson, which by the way introduced readers to Tom King, the character has had it good.  For a character almost as old as DC itself, who went from a kid sidekick to growing up and claiming his own identity, who had his own team built around him, these have all been milestone events not just for Nightwing but DC and superhero comics in general.

So quit complaining already.

This time it's "merely" a story where he's temporarily forgotten all about having ever been Nightwing, Robin, any of that.  As if that's going to last.  In the meantime, there are going to be entirely new Dick Grayson stories.  That's always a good thing.  Too often, Nightwing stories are most worried about distinguishing him from Batman.  And just as often, a new creative team becomes obsessed with returning the character to his roots.  Somehow Kyle Higgins was the first one to do so as literally as taking him back to Haly's Circus. 

Which means letting him experience something that's not comparing him to Batman or harking back to some previous era (which is not to say material that's done this hasn't been very good) or setting him up in some new territory...This is, once again, a great time to be a fan of Nightwing.  That's the bottom line here, folks.  And Percy and Lobdell in these issues prove they're capable of making it interesting, and good reading. 

Walmart 3-Packs
Ah!  So I've continued reading the latest DC gifts to Wallyworld, the 100-page giants, and while I wish I'd been talking about the King and Bendis tales now unfolding in them here, it's always fun to revisit the 3-packs that still haven't sold out and were trotted out when the giants' display boxes went up.  So I started buying them again, of course, because someone has to...

Batman #1, 25, 34 - These are all from the New 52, and were fun to read.  I was never the biggest fan of Scott Snyder's much-acclaimed and -read run, but I appreciated what it was doing.  And the funny thing is, I always seem to enjoy reading it, too.  The twenty-fifth was a "Zero Year" issue, while the thirty-fourth was written by Gerry Duggan, who later took his talents to Marvel (where the state of its zombies is such that they have no idea Duggan is a great talent they ought to be appreciating).  It's a great issue.

Batman Eternal #1 - The start, all over again, of the weekly series that sort of allowed Snyder (and a host of collaborators) to play in the established sandbox a little more than he allowed himself in the main series.  I'm still surprised that there's so little appreciation for the results. 

Green Lantern Corps #34 - John Stewart is still trying to deal with the fact that he let a planet die in Cosmic Odyssey.  It's just one of those late-80s things that has a longer shelf life than necessary.  But it also gives Kyle Rayner-era villain Fatality more stories, and weaves into the complicated nature of the expanded spectrum.  Good GL mythology snapshot (for an issue with a "selfie variant cover," ironically or not).

Trinity of Sin: Pandora - Futures End
Pandora is that signature New 52 character who kind of helped lead the charge of disappointment for fans, who ultimately found her underwhelming despite a massive amount of hype.  But the funny thing is, and I'm pretty sure I've now read this issue through the acquisition of several copies enough times for it to finally sink in, that the fate of the New 52 era is spelled out, how it always seemed destined to lead to DC Rebirth.  Because as far as this issue is concerned, apparently that was always the purpose of Pandora.  Never mind how Geoff Johns later had Doctor Manhattan unceremoniously obliterate her, a kind of symbolic gesture on the whole New 52 era.  Or maybe even that was intentional.  Most fans are never going to care.  But Pandora deserves a better fate.

Digitally Speaking...#9 "Final Crisis, Pandora"

Final Crisis #1 (DC)
From 2008. Fans have long had a contentious relationship with Grant Morrison's Final Crisis, the so-called conclusion to DC's Crisis trilogy, begun with the seminal Crisis on Infinite Earths from 1985 and Infinite Crisis from 2005.  Whereas Geoff Johns made considerable efforts to tie his sequel in with the Marv Wolfman original story, featuring direct, obvious consequences, Morrison was, well, Grant Morrison.  The greatest link he includes in his extrapolation of the Monitor concept originally featured in the first story, which like most of what Morrison does is greatly expanded in complexity although following the same basic model as before.

Their unifying element concerns the DC notion of the multiverse, which the first Crisis was meant to end and the second one bring back.  Morrison's task, if anything, was to solidify the functional convenience of having different realities present in the same story framework.  There's a Superman side-story that tackles this directly, but Morrison can be more accurately said to explore this idea by integrating some of the less fanciful elements of the DC universe, if "less fanciful elements" can be said to be found among superheroes.

So he sets about his grand vision of what happens when the bad guys win.  Johns himself has recently been exploring that in the pages of Forever Evil, and Marvel has done it, too.  The key difference here, as with any Morrison effort, is the execution, all the spinning parts, the key of which is the classic concept of Jack Kirby's New Gods.

Other than Kirby himself, who originally sought to create a whole mythology and self-contained epic in his Fourth World, aside from chief villain Darkseid's nearly instantaneous appearances as a foe to Superman and the Justice League, few creators ever seemed to know what to do with the New Gods, much less the fans.  They were never popular.  They were a tricky concept, basically two worlds filled with heroes and villains, diametrically opposed.

Morrison ends these worlds and transfers the battleground to Earth.  This debut issue touches on this, as with a number of other things, such as Anthro, whom the writer links with Kirby's Kamandi as well as the classic DC immortal Vandal Savage, who has been alive since he was a caveman.  The Green Lantern Corps is used as a police force.  Villains unite.  A major hero is killed.  Some of these things have been done before, and would be done again.  But not like this.

That's always the point you have to remember when reading Morrison.  Eventually, fans considered Final Crisis to be too outlandish, too sprawling, too ambitious, too convoluted.  But reading this first issue again, I can't help but see how Morrison's typical ambition seems to have once again reached a high note.  It may almost be worth considering this story outside of continuity, as a standalone epic, something that stabs into the sandbox without limits and sees how tall he can build the sandcastle before it all topples over again.

It definitely makes me want to read the rest of the story again.

DC Comics - The New 52 FCBD Special Edition #1 (DC)
From 2012. This is probably one of the happier things I've collected from comiXology.  Free Comic Book Day is basically a geek's own holiday, one I've enjoyed celebrated over the years, but every so often, that experience is compromised, include mine in 2012, the crucial one as far as the emerging New 52 landscape was concerned.  One of the major new characters introduced by DC for the relaunch was Pandora, who was a mysterious presence lurking around the corners in the early going.  This special was going to be her first spotlight.

As with most of the the big stories from DC these days, this was written by Geoff Johns.  The funny thing, this issue is probably one of his weaker, more simplistic efforts in some respects.  Usually Johns can be counted on for snappy dialogue, but there are moments where this story reads like amateur hour.  I can't really account for that.

Otherwise, it's full of his trademark big concepts and insights into the DC universe.  It's also a tease for the "Trinity War" Justice League crossover event.  Pandora herself, although narrator, receives minimal characterization, which is perhaps why her subsequent ongoing series has really been seen as anything important by fans.  Her fellows in the Trinity of Sin, the Phantom Stranger and the Question, are obscure DC icons themselves, and come off better.  Pandora is basically the character from the Greek myth of Pandora's box.

This is not to say that the character doesn't work at all, but this was, like I said, perhaps not the best example.  The character of Cyborg receives far better work, and he's not even technically in the comic.

Still, I'm glad to have read it finally.  In greater context it probably works better, which sometimes happens in comic books.  FCBD releases are meant to entice readers into return as paying customers.  This would probably have done the trick regardless of the few missteps, and that's all that matters.  It got people engaged with the New 52 concept all over again.  That's not a bad thing at all.