It’s easier to find a movie, say, or a book, or some music act that most other people seem to be overlooking or undervaluing, than a comic book. I don’t mean a series that doesn’t sell very well, or something from the indies (which by definition is swimming against the current). Most serious comics fans will usually know better than filmgoers seeking out the latest blockbuster or whatever moves them specifically, book buyers seeking out their own familiar commodities, or music lovers grooving on their favorites, just what exactly is available. Sometimes it’s merely a matter of not having enough funds to cover everything that looks interesting in the comics shop, or a lack of general availability, that prevents certain titles from being read. Most comics that sell worse than others usually suffer from a lower profile, or perhaps a lack of a galvanizing creative direction, which again circles back to the fact that there are many comics published on a weekly basis, and very few readers capable of actually buying them all. There are certainly really good books that seem to sell not so much really well for reasons that don’t sound quite that good, but again, that may simply be that they just don’t have the buzz, or that most the buzz is going elsewhere, and whatever remains simply isn’t enough, or that unwarranted bad buzz or an inexplicable lack of buzz swallows perfectly worthy projects whole…
I could probably talk circles around that, so let’s just move on. The point of this introduction is, it can sometimes be a little difficult to understand how a really good comic book can be overlooked, given the kind of community exists around this medium (and inversely, really easy to understand, given the community as we all know it). I mean to talk about Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN book, originally published as a mini-series 1991, and eventually reprinted as CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN MUST DIE!, after the team had become famous for such works as BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN and SUPERMAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Still, I’d wager that very few people know this story even exists, and it’s a darn shame.
Loeb has in recent years distanced himself from comics work, having achieved a great deal of success with such recent efforts as SUPERMAN/BATMAN and HULK, not to mention to epochal collaboration with Jim Lee on the Batman story arc “Hush,” partly as I would assume to the fact that many fans have found it increasingly difficult that he has any real talent, beyond a massive amount of hype. I find this to be a terrific travesty, because to my mind, Jeph Loeb is easily one of the finest writers of modern comics, capable of finding an inner monologue to any given character, whether iconic or obscure, and maybe it’s just because that’s exactly the kind of skill I admire in a writer, but that’s not by far a bad attribute. Those fans claim he’s horribly formulaic and predictable, that his stories always feel less inspired in their conclusions than in their blockbuster setups. I would perhaps counter-argue that any good story ought to have an ending worth talking about, especially if the rest of the story was as compelling as everyone made it seem, but maybe that’s just me being difficult and contrary again. If it seems too “comic booky,” then maybe it’s the creator’s way of making the reader think about the medium in a more serious way. That’s exactly the kind of ending CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN MUST DIE! concludes with, with a villain that only really appears at the climax of a story that had spent all its time examining the individual members of the Challs, as they’re affectionately known, as they perhaps never have been before.
Along with Loeb, of course, for this story, is his most famous collaborator, artist Tim Sale, whose most recent claim to fame was his work on the TV show HEROES, which turned out in later seasons to be more unfortunate than it first seemed. Sale initially provided the finished paintings of a clairvoyant artist in the early episodes, and it was a clever link for a series that otherwise shunned comic book conventions. Then, of course, Sale’s art reappeared in the second season, well after that original character had been killed off, and like the series as a whole, Sale’s continued participation was viewed in terms of stagnation rather than inspiration (or perhaps, continuity!). Aside from what now appears to be an aborted project (CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHITE) begun a few years back, Sale, too, has all but vanished as a regular comics presence.
It does seem appropriate, that Loeb and Sale might have ended in without much ceremony their comics careers, since their Challengers work was equally overlooked. Readers of this blog might recall that I originally discovered, or at least started reading it, thanks to a series of quarter bin raids that forced me to track down the rest of the story. Appropriately, I found a dirt-cheap used copy of the trade collection. I can honestly say that this earliest Loeb-Sale effort is, in my opinion, their finest. I wish I could then properly explain how it was left to and remained in obscurity, except that really good things usually fail to find a really big audience.
This was Loeb’s first comic, even! I confess to still not have all that much experience with his screen work, from before or after, but the remarkable maturity and complexity on display in …MUST DIE! is enviable by any standard, in any medium, clear in some ways that Loeb was not at the time concerned with conventions. He tackled a team of heroes who for decades were viewed as Fantastic Four knockoffs, even as they remained something of a DC underground favorite, as with many Jack Kirby creations, popping up every now and again, rebooted past the conclusions in MUST DIE! for later appearances, though it’s probably been about a decade or more since the last time. In the first issue of the eight-issue mini-series, Loeb and Sale reduce the team of four plus one (members Prof, Rocky, Ace, and Red, along with assistant June) to three, after blowing up Challenger Mountain and most of Challengerville, not to mention Prof and June. For the remainder of the series, Rocky, Ace, and Red, having disbanded, redefine themselves, growing apart, and assume the civilian lives they left behind when they originally “cheated death” and started “living on borrowed time.” (When you think about it, the Challs would have made a picture-perfect 1980s TV show, and then 2000s summer blockbuster.)
CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN MUST DIE! deserves to be remembered as a comic book classic, and ought to be part of the perennial reprint parade, prepped for an Absolute edition, and lauded loudly as the first genius pairing of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, as well as its definitive legacy. What many creators struggle for many years to accomplish with a given franchise they managed in eight issues, and in many ways, it’s almost better that the Challengers belong to obscurity before and after, since there really aren’t any fans to argue with over such a monumental story. If the team must be remembered for something, this more than earns such a distinction. It’s a calling card for potential, proved to be exactly that for Loeb and Sale, for what a comic book could do, and what even C-level characters can accomplish. What more could you ask for?
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Quarter Bin #15 "American Splendor"
I do seem to write most about superhero comics, but that’s not all I’m capable of processing. For instance, let’s swing the other way and spend some time with the one guy who probably did the most to give readers a completely different concept, Harvey Pekar.
Technically springboarding off:
AMERICAN SPLENDOR #1-4 (Vertigo)
From November 2006-February 2007.
Most people will know about Pekar through the movie of the same name, the 2003 AMERICAN SPLENDOR starring Paul Giamatti (the big role that helped ignite his leading man career, after years of standout supporting roles). Noting that it came out in 2003 is kind of big for me, because that’s by no means the year I first saw it. It’s another of those things that’s a little of a mystery to present me, but for some reason, even though I was always a fan of Giamatti, I grew more and more hesitant to see the movie the more critics gushed over it. It was only Giamatti, in fact, who finally convinced me to give it a chance. The truth was, I’d never heard of Harvey Pekar before, and to suddenly have all this praise going to a guy who for all intents had been completely invisible a year earlier just seemed like typical critic bullshit to me, gobbling up the peculiar new item on the block just because it was exotic and seemed to prove some point or other, and otherwise probably wouldn’t have been noticed at all. You might recall that for a while, Pekar became quite the hot commodity, writing pieces for a variety of high profile publications, putting comics storytelling in places it wasn’t typically seen. I found at least that interesting.
Anyway, I finally did get around to seeing it, and while preparing to write this piece, I watched it again, and it strikes me almost as a junior cousin to MAN ON THE MOON, the 1999 Jim Carrey movie about avant garde comedian Andy Kaufman, in which Giamatti happens to costar. You may recall that one of Kaufman’s most infamous public appearances was on David Letterman’s old NBC show back in the 1980s, in which he had a confrontation with professional wrestler Jerry Lawler (there was coffee involved). Pekar was a regular on Letterman’s show, and may have made his biggest pop cultural mark on his last appearance, in which he finally rethought his participation. I assume there was a certain amount of appeal in telling the story of how exactly that happened, just who this Harvey Pekar really was. The Letterman connection interests me, anyway.
In many ways, Pekar really is another Kaufman, a social oddity whose sensibilities don’t easily translate, which is funny, because he tried to make a living (never really happened, though) talking about his everyday problems in comics form, one of the first true independent voices, who got to have his chance at the limelight thanks to the underground movement that grew out of the 1960s scene that also gave us R. Crumb, someone Pekar knew personally (and no doubt facilitated his ambition more than he ever appreciated).
In a lot of ways, Pekar’s comics are a direct predecessor to the Twitter generation, whose ilk includes bloggers like yours truly and the Facebook crowd. (Imagine Harvey with a smartphone!) While he tended to write about only the depressing episodes and thoughts that reflected his general pessimistic outlook on life, Pekar still managed to chronicle his life in a way that had previously been reserved for biographies, all in comics form (since he couldn’t draw his own, Harvey relied on a vast network of illustrators, including Crumb). He originally published his comics out of his own pocket. Obviously by the time of the movie, there was interest in providing him with slightly wider distribution. DC imprint Vertigo handled Pekar’s graphic novel THE QUITTER, and then the new AMERICAN SPLENDOR I eventually got my hands on.
It’s funny about that, too, because a friend of mine gave me those, and I was originally reluctant to read them, because as you can tell, I don’t typically read comics that don’t feature superheroes (I admit it!). Pekar’s writing isn’t the most eloquent, and his episodic storytelling can border on the trivial if handled incorrectly. In many ways, it’s like reading a comic book TV show (which does make you wonder if Pekar wasn’t subconsciously drawing on television for inspiration, or why no one has thought to turn AMERICAN SPLENDOR into a small screen project; HBO released the movie, I might add), a sitcom or one of those dramas that would probably get high critical praise but generally terrible ratings. The film itself is a mix between documentary, some static animation, and typical movie storytelling. You could turn Harvey’s life into a cartoon, or even a comic strip, and still not lose much in translation. One might almost imagine PEARLS BEFORE SWINE’s Stephen Pastis drawing inspiration from Pekar.
As you might imagine, “American Splendor” is a pretty ironic epitaph for this enterprise, but in the end, is pretty reasonable, too. Harvey Pekar was a man who very much trusted his worldview, and despite his own cynicism managed to make a real mark, simply by telling his own story, one mundane anecdote at a time.
Technically springboarding off:
AMERICAN SPLENDOR #1-4 (Vertigo)
From November 2006-February 2007.
Most people will know about Pekar through the movie of the same name, the 2003 AMERICAN SPLENDOR starring Paul Giamatti (the big role that helped ignite his leading man career, after years of standout supporting roles). Noting that it came out in 2003 is kind of big for me, because that’s by no means the year I first saw it. It’s another of those things that’s a little of a mystery to present me, but for some reason, even though I was always a fan of Giamatti, I grew more and more hesitant to see the movie the more critics gushed over it. It was only Giamatti, in fact, who finally convinced me to give it a chance. The truth was, I’d never heard of Harvey Pekar before, and to suddenly have all this praise going to a guy who for all intents had been completely invisible a year earlier just seemed like typical critic bullshit to me, gobbling up the peculiar new item on the block just because it was exotic and seemed to prove some point or other, and otherwise probably wouldn’t have been noticed at all. You might recall that for a while, Pekar became quite the hot commodity, writing pieces for a variety of high profile publications, putting comics storytelling in places it wasn’t typically seen. I found at least that interesting.
Anyway, I finally did get around to seeing it, and while preparing to write this piece, I watched it again, and it strikes me almost as a junior cousin to MAN ON THE MOON, the 1999 Jim Carrey movie about avant garde comedian Andy Kaufman, in which Giamatti happens to costar. You may recall that one of Kaufman’s most infamous public appearances was on David Letterman’s old NBC show back in the 1980s, in which he had a confrontation with professional wrestler Jerry Lawler (there was coffee involved). Pekar was a regular on Letterman’s show, and may have made his biggest pop cultural mark on his last appearance, in which he finally rethought his participation. I assume there was a certain amount of appeal in telling the story of how exactly that happened, just who this Harvey Pekar really was. The Letterman connection interests me, anyway.
In many ways, Pekar really is another Kaufman, a social oddity whose sensibilities don’t easily translate, which is funny, because he tried to make a living (never really happened, though) talking about his everyday problems in comics form, one of the first true independent voices, who got to have his chance at the limelight thanks to the underground movement that grew out of the 1960s scene that also gave us R. Crumb, someone Pekar knew personally (and no doubt facilitated his ambition more than he ever appreciated).
In a lot of ways, Pekar’s comics are a direct predecessor to the Twitter generation, whose ilk includes bloggers like yours truly and the Facebook crowd. (Imagine Harvey with a smartphone!) While he tended to write about only the depressing episodes and thoughts that reflected his general pessimistic outlook on life, Pekar still managed to chronicle his life in a way that had previously been reserved for biographies, all in comics form (since he couldn’t draw his own, Harvey relied on a vast network of illustrators, including Crumb). He originally published his comics out of his own pocket. Obviously by the time of the movie, there was interest in providing him with slightly wider distribution. DC imprint Vertigo handled Pekar’s graphic novel THE QUITTER, and then the new AMERICAN SPLENDOR I eventually got my hands on.
It’s funny about that, too, because a friend of mine gave me those, and I was originally reluctant to read them, because as you can tell, I don’t typically read comics that don’t feature superheroes (I admit it!). Pekar’s writing isn’t the most eloquent, and his episodic storytelling can border on the trivial if handled incorrectly. In many ways, it’s like reading a comic book TV show (which does make you wonder if Pekar wasn’t subconsciously drawing on television for inspiration, or why no one has thought to turn AMERICAN SPLENDOR into a small screen project; HBO released the movie, I might add), a sitcom or one of those dramas that would probably get high critical praise but generally terrible ratings. The film itself is a mix between documentary, some static animation, and typical movie storytelling. You could turn Harvey’s life into a cartoon, or even a comic strip, and still not lose much in translation. One might almost imagine PEARLS BEFORE SWINE’s Stephen Pastis drawing inspiration from Pekar.
As you might imagine, “American Splendor” is a pretty ironic epitaph for this enterprise, but in the end, is pretty reasonable, too. Harvey Pekar was a man who very much trusted his worldview, and despite his own cynicism managed to make a real mark, simply by telling his own story, one mundane anecdote at a time.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Heroes and Dragons and Vampires
Last week I had my first opportunity to visit Heroes and Dragons in probably two years. This particular comics shop used to have two locations in Colorado Springs, both sides of town. I was a regular from practically the moment I moved into town, having quickly determined that it was the most convenient store in town (I had two other options; Bargain Comics, which later became Escape Velocity, was always close second). When the recession forced it to consolidate and basically stay on the other end of town, I sniffed back a few tears, said goodbye to another great era of my comics experience (did I ever mention the horrible irony of three different stores either moving or closing during my original period reading comics? I miss thee, Zimmies and Ray’s 3Cs, and still wish All About Comics and Hobbies had stayed put, and probably not renamed itself The Keep, which was another horrible irony), but was prepared to move on. Not in the way that I “have” moved on this year, “quitting” reading comics for the second time, but onto Escape Velocity and Midtown Comics.com.
I don’t want to sound too flippant, because I really did miss Heroes and Dragons, was sad to see it go, and kept obsessing on a way to visit its new location, no matter how impractical it seemed. (Should I mention here that I am differently-mobile, in that I don’t drive, and rarely take the bus?) I had some personal time to eat up thanks to Borders going out of business, so I took a vacation last week, stayed with my sister, and that happens to be on that end of town. I timed my visit for Wednesday. As if you have to ask why.
I’ve got to say, I don’t think the move was as terrifically beneficial as the owners thought it would be (not that, in some ways, it wasn’t necessary, thanks to draconian and increasingly elitist mall financial practices). It may be actually, that business is actually quite good, but I arrived only a few hours after the store had opened, timed so that the new product should have been put out already. (Okay, so the clerk had lots of boxes clearly sitting out in the open, and seemed to think his time was better spent with aerobics; I’m being literal here.) Still, I wasn’t greeted with great comparisons considering my recent experience with Escape Velocity. I was generally appalled. The store seemed only tangentially interested in new releases. I don’t know if it reorders more furiously than it initially orders, or if “Richard Simmons” was even lazier, relatively speaking, than he seemed, but suffice to say, I was disappointed. The trade collection, meanwhile, was basically exactly the same as it had been two years ago. Yay for consistency! Boo for complacency! That’s a matter of business, too, but come on! Anyway, I did end up with several great back issues, though, which I will write about in a future Quarter Bin, and the new RASL, which brings me to the concluding portion of this latest post. You know the drill.
DC COMICS: THE NEW 52 (DC)
This is the official preview of the September relaunch (next month!), complete with the JUSTICE LEAGUE excerpt from Geoff Johns and Jim Lee that leads me more and more to consider it a de facto ALL STAR JUSTICE LEAGUE, which only makes me feel better about it. Anyway, aside from the fact that the giant stack of these freebies was sitting away from customer reach on the counter, I was very happy to find it available.
GREEN LANTERN #67 (DC)
The concluding chapter to “War of the Green Lanterns.” I know I’ve previously stated that, aside from the other exception I’ve talked about elsewhere, I decided I could wait for the collection to finally read this arc, but c’mon! It was there! In so many ways, stripping Hal of the ring is absolutely the smartest thing Geoff could have done. Next to giving it back to Sinestro. Suffice to say, I’m a happy Emerald Reader.
RASL #11 (Cartoon)
Along with BATMAN, INC. this is the book I’ve deliberately continued to read in 2011, and I’ve been darn lucky to find each new issue of both. This one was particularly serendipitous, since I’d overlooked the particular shelves it was located on, even though I’d tried to be as thorough as possible, trying to find the magic I ultimately decided simply wasn’t there anymore (then again, maybe a store like Escape Velocity can give me that magic on a sporadic basis, and Heroes simply can’t). Jeff Smith’s follow-up to BONE continues to dazzle at least this reader. To October!
SUPREME POWER #1 of 4 (Marvel MAX)
Kyle Higgins, writer of the forthcoming new NIGHTWING series, came to my attention during a recent visit to the Comic Book Resources message board as someone far more worthy of my attention than I’d previously considered. I was able to find this particular example of his recent efforts to confirm this newfound faith.
FLASHPOINT #4 (DC)
I love how the “Captain Thunder” family is used this issue. I’m also glad that I’ve managed to read every issue so far of this event book. One more to go!
MYSTIC #1 (CrossGen/Marvel)
Surprisingly or not, I never got into the original CrossGen experiment. Most attempts to build an entire comics line at the drop of a hat usually tend to create a bunch of comics that are patently ripping off something else, or otherwise trying too hard to duplicate, well, something else, all with the guise of “being something different.” I’ll admit CrossGen had art that was basically the complete opposite of what originally put Image on the map (which has now been converted to Comics Characters Welcomed), but in my experience, when writers try to write new stories with an artificial impetus like “create new comics line,” the results aren’t pretty. Dark Horse (and many other companies) has discovered that the more times you, say, recreate Doctor Solar, the more likely you’ll actually create something perhaps worth looking at. That may be the case here, too. Besides, the real reason I bought this one was AIR writer G. Willow Wilson. Maybe the original MYSTIC actually was awesome, or even comparable to this experience. Maybe my sister has been having me watch too much CHARMED lately (very disappointed Heroes didn’t have that comic, or IDW’s G.I. Joe, which Escape Velocity doesn’t carry, even though the COBRA books are some of the best comics I’ve ever read; which is another irony, because the IDW preview for its acquisition from DDP was among the last comics I bought at the old location; please stop me if I’m referencing far too much to keep up with). Anyway, Wilson does not disappoint. The one thing I will absolutely say positive about Marvel in 2011 is that it is giving G. Willow Wilson money to write comics. Thank you, Marvel.
SUPERMAN #714 (DC)
The final issue before Reboot City concludes “Grounded” and is basically J. Michael Straczynski and/or Chris Roberson’s answer to “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” I thought that was a nice touch.
WAR OF THE GREEN LANTERNS AFTERMATH #1 OF 2 (DC)
Please, as if I was going to pass up this opportunity. Written by Tony Bedard, too, who will have my everlasting gratitude for penning the classic GREAT TEN, hopefully one day to receive its proper appreciation as a masterpiece. Need I go on?
Which brings us to one final note, something I bought at Wal-mart:
GREEN LANTERN SUPER SPECTACULAR
This is a magazine-format collection of several issues from the would-be movie icon’s past, the second edition (I skipped the previous one I’d found at Escape Velocity), including “Nor Fear” from GREEN LANTERN #s 1-3 (the first time I’ve read the whole story, since for some reason back in 2005 I wasn’t prepared to read Geoff Johns doing GL on a monthly basis, something that didn’t last even a year), plus an Alan Moore story from GREEN LANTERN CORPS ANNUAL #2 featuring a previous version of Abin Sur’s grand undoing, and the same (ALL STAR) JUSTICE LEAGUE preview I talked about earlier. I like something like this being available for wide consumption. The comics industry will never recover in my eyes until you can find issues of the books you’ll actually want to read at places like Wal-mart and Toys R Us. I won’t hold Sam’s Club to the kinds of packs they used to have. I will one day blackmail them.
I don’t want to sound too flippant, because I really did miss Heroes and Dragons, was sad to see it go, and kept obsessing on a way to visit its new location, no matter how impractical it seemed. (Should I mention here that I am differently-mobile, in that I don’t drive, and rarely take the bus?) I had some personal time to eat up thanks to Borders going out of business, so I took a vacation last week, stayed with my sister, and that happens to be on that end of town. I timed my visit for Wednesday. As if you have to ask why.
I’ve got to say, I don’t think the move was as terrifically beneficial as the owners thought it would be (not that, in some ways, it wasn’t necessary, thanks to draconian and increasingly elitist mall financial practices). It may be actually, that business is actually quite good, but I arrived only a few hours after the store had opened, timed so that the new product should have been put out already. (Okay, so the clerk had lots of boxes clearly sitting out in the open, and seemed to think his time was better spent with aerobics; I’m being literal here.) Still, I wasn’t greeted with great comparisons considering my recent experience with Escape Velocity. I was generally appalled. The store seemed only tangentially interested in new releases. I don’t know if it reorders more furiously than it initially orders, or if “Richard Simmons” was even lazier, relatively speaking, than he seemed, but suffice to say, I was disappointed. The trade collection, meanwhile, was basically exactly the same as it had been two years ago. Yay for consistency! Boo for complacency! That’s a matter of business, too, but come on! Anyway, I did end up with several great back issues, though, which I will write about in a future Quarter Bin, and the new RASL, which brings me to the concluding portion of this latest post. You know the drill.
DC COMICS: THE NEW 52 (DC)
This is the official preview of the September relaunch (next month!), complete with the JUSTICE LEAGUE excerpt from Geoff Johns and Jim Lee that leads me more and more to consider it a de facto ALL STAR JUSTICE LEAGUE, which only makes me feel better about it. Anyway, aside from the fact that the giant stack of these freebies was sitting away from customer reach on the counter, I was very happy to find it available.
GREEN LANTERN #67 (DC)
The concluding chapter to “War of the Green Lanterns.” I know I’ve previously stated that, aside from the other exception I’ve talked about elsewhere, I decided I could wait for the collection to finally read this arc, but c’mon! It was there! In so many ways, stripping Hal of the ring is absolutely the smartest thing Geoff could have done. Next to giving it back to Sinestro. Suffice to say, I’m a happy Emerald Reader.
RASL #11 (Cartoon)
Along with BATMAN, INC. this is the book I’ve deliberately continued to read in 2011, and I’ve been darn lucky to find each new issue of both. This one was particularly serendipitous, since I’d overlooked the particular shelves it was located on, even though I’d tried to be as thorough as possible, trying to find the magic I ultimately decided simply wasn’t there anymore (then again, maybe a store like Escape Velocity can give me that magic on a sporadic basis, and Heroes simply can’t). Jeff Smith’s follow-up to BONE continues to dazzle at least this reader. To October!
SUPREME POWER #1 of 4 (Marvel MAX)
Kyle Higgins, writer of the forthcoming new NIGHTWING series, came to my attention during a recent visit to the Comic Book Resources message board as someone far more worthy of my attention than I’d previously considered. I was able to find this particular example of his recent efforts to confirm this newfound faith.
FLASHPOINT #4 (DC)
I love how the “Captain Thunder” family is used this issue. I’m also glad that I’ve managed to read every issue so far of this event book. One more to go!
MYSTIC #1 (CrossGen/Marvel)
Surprisingly or not, I never got into the original CrossGen experiment. Most attempts to build an entire comics line at the drop of a hat usually tend to create a bunch of comics that are patently ripping off something else, or otherwise trying too hard to duplicate, well, something else, all with the guise of “being something different.” I’ll admit CrossGen had art that was basically the complete opposite of what originally put Image on the map (which has now been converted to Comics Characters Welcomed), but in my experience, when writers try to write new stories with an artificial impetus like “create new comics line,” the results aren’t pretty. Dark Horse (and many other companies) has discovered that the more times you, say, recreate Doctor Solar, the more likely you’ll actually create something perhaps worth looking at. That may be the case here, too. Besides, the real reason I bought this one was AIR writer G. Willow Wilson. Maybe the original MYSTIC actually was awesome, or even comparable to this experience. Maybe my sister has been having me watch too much CHARMED lately (very disappointed Heroes didn’t have that comic, or IDW’s G.I. Joe, which Escape Velocity doesn’t carry, even though the COBRA books are some of the best comics I’ve ever read; which is another irony, because the IDW preview for its acquisition from DDP was among the last comics I bought at the old location; please stop me if I’m referencing far too much to keep up with). Anyway, Wilson does not disappoint. The one thing I will absolutely say positive about Marvel in 2011 is that it is giving G. Willow Wilson money to write comics. Thank you, Marvel.
SUPERMAN #714 (DC)
The final issue before Reboot City concludes “Grounded” and is basically J. Michael Straczynski and/or Chris Roberson’s answer to “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” I thought that was a nice touch.
WAR OF THE GREEN LANTERNS AFTERMATH #1 OF 2 (DC)
Please, as if I was going to pass up this opportunity. Written by Tony Bedard, too, who will have my everlasting gratitude for penning the classic GREAT TEN, hopefully one day to receive its proper appreciation as a masterpiece. Need I go on?
Which brings us to one final note, something I bought at Wal-mart:
GREEN LANTERN SUPER SPECTACULAR
This is a magazine-format collection of several issues from the would-be movie icon’s past, the second edition (I skipped the previous one I’d found at Escape Velocity), including “Nor Fear” from GREEN LANTERN #s 1-3 (the first time I’ve read the whole story, since for some reason back in 2005 I wasn’t prepared to read Geoff Johns doing GL on a monthly basis, something that didn’t last even a year), plus an Alan Moore story from GREEN LANTERN CORPS ANNUAL #2 featuring a previous version of Abin Sur’s grand undoing, and the same (ALL STAR) JUSTICE LEAGUE preview I talked about earlier. I like something like this being available for wide consumption. The comics industry will never recover in my eyes until you can find issues of the books you’ll actually want to read at places like Wal-mart and Toys R Us. I won’t hold Sam’s Club to the kinds of packs they used to have. I will one day blackmail them.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Quarter Bin #14 "Genesis"
For some reason or another, I can no longer explain, but back in 1997, I originally only read the first and fourth chapters of the GENESIS crossover event. This was back when DC was doing annual crossover events that typically played out weekly in the main title, and spread into the ongoing series then being published during that month. I don’t think there’s a lot of respect going around for those events these days. Readers are more used to sprawling mini-series that play out over half a year and involve not just crossovers but spinoff mini-series, stuff like that, and there’s been plenty of backlash, because since CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS and SECRET WARS, there seems to have been an event, several events, every single year, and it’s always a struggle to keep up with, whether because of the sheer number of books or the basic cost.
Anyway, I’m not really going to talk about crossover events in general, but GENESIS specifically. Or rather:
GENESIS #s 1-4 (DC)
From October 1997.
These event books were typically assigned to some of the big-time creators, the ones who happened to be hot at that time, such as Dan Jurgens with ZERO HOUR (1994), Mark Waid’s UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED (1995) or Grant Morrison’s DC ONE MILLION (1998). John Byrne, who wrote GENESIS, had been a creative force since the 1980s, with THE MAN OF STEEL chief among his DC credentials. During this particular period, he was involved in WONDER WOMAN and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD, both titles being mythology-rich, which was appropriate, given that GENESIS was itself another attempt to bring, well, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World back into relevance.
The whole reason why I’m talking about it today is not that it’s somehow relevant again (even Morrison couldn’t do that with the epic FINAL CRISIS) but because I was always bothered by the fact that I didn’t read the whole thing. Flashforward to a few years ago and a trip to Escape Velocity, then known as Bargain Comics, which at that time had a whole space devoted to displaying bagged collections of original-issue runs for famous story arcs. There it was, the whole set, all four issues, plus the original teaser preview.
Byrne, it should be noted, spares no such thing as subtlety with this one. That’s usually the kind of thing I go for, but big epic tales certainly have their attraction, too, and very few comics properties have that to quite the same degree as Kirby’s Fourth World, the only successful, original mythology to have ever been attempted, and come back to repeatedly, not because the publisher wanted to, but because fans continually demand it. Trouble is, few fans regularly support the Fourth World, which includes Darkseid, Orion, Mister Miracle, and Mother Boxes that “ping.”
You probably have to be familiar with a lot of it to make any sense of GENESIS, and even then the story’s remarkably light, probably one of the thinnest of its kind even from that era (in contrast, Neron juicing old villains with bigger powers really doesn’t seem that cheap an excuse). The short of the short of it is that there’s a “Godwave” that’s supposed to explain superpowers, and its contracting makes said powers all wonky for a little while, and then cause some changes around the DCU (a clever way to doing some spring, or in this case fall, cleaning). It makes sweeping generalizations that really don’t hold to much scrutiny, but then, it’s far more about the Fourth World than about any of the many superheroes it brings together (and even then, the available characters seem to be a thin lot, and they really don’t do all that much except react for four issues).
In that sense, it’s pretty disappointing, but for those who do care about the Fourth World (Highfather dies in the FOURTH WORLD book during the month, an event that is barely mentioned in GENESIS), it remains a pretty entertaining and noteworthy event, one that makes even less sense for modern readers than to those who experienced it upon release, and not just because the New Gods have lain dormant since FINAL CRISIS, but still worth the effort for anyone who might nonetheless be curious, an odd link in a chain that still has great potential.
Given another opportunity (since JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD really was better than GENESIS might suggest), I’d be more than happy if John Byrne were interesting in another visit.
Anyway, I’m not really going to talk about crossover events in general, but GENESIS specifically. Or rather:
GENESIS #s 1-4 (DC)
From October 1997.
These event books were typically assigned to some of the big-time creators, the ones who happened to be hot at that time, such as Dan Jurgens with ZERO HOUR (1994), Mark Waid’s UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED (1995) or Grant Morrison’s DC ONE MILLION (1998). John Byrne, who wrote GENESIS, had been a creative force since the 1980s, with THE MAN OF STEEL chief among his DC credentials. During this particular period, he was involved in WONDER WOMAN and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD, both titles being mythology-rich, which was appropriate, given that GENESIS was itself another attempt to bring, well, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World back into relevance.
The whole reason why I’m talking about it today is not that it’s somehow relevant again (even Morrison couldn’t do that with the epic FINAL CRISIS) but because I was always bothered by the fact that I didn’t read the whole thing. Flashforward to a few years ago and a trip to Escape Velocity, then known as Bargain Comics, which at that time had a whole space devoted to displaying bagged collections of original-issue runs for famous story arcs. There it was, the whole set, all four issues, plus the original teaser preview.
Byrne, it should be noted, spares no such thing as subtlety with this one. That’s usually the kind of thing I go for, but big epic tales certainly have their attraction, too, and very few comics properties have that to quite the same degree as Kirby’s Fourth World, the only successful, original mythology to have ever been attempted, and come back to repeatedly, not because the publisher wanted to, but because fans continually demand it. Trouble is, few fans regularly support the Fourth World, which includes Darkseid, Orion, Mister Miracle, and Mother Boxes that “ping.”
You probably have to be familiar with a lot of it to make any sense of GENESIS, and even then the story’s remarkably light, probably one of the thinnest of its kind even from that era (in contrast, Neron juicing old villains with bigger powers really doesn’t seem that cheap an excuse). The short of the short of it is that there’s a “Godwave” that’s supposed to explain superpowers, and its contracting makes said powers all wonky for a little while, and then cause some changes around the DCU (a clever way to doing some spring, or in this case fall, cleaning). It makes sweeping generalizations that really don’t hold to much scrutiny, but then, it’s far more about the Fourth World than about any of the many superheroes it brings together (and even then, the available characters seem to be a thin lot, and they really don’t do all that much except react for four issues).
In that sense, it’s pretty disappointing, but for those who do care about the Fourth World (Highfather dies in the FOURTH WORLD book during the month, an event that is barely mentioned in GENESIS), it remains a pretty entertaining and noteworthy event, one that makes even less sense for modern readers than to those who experienced it upon release, and not just because the New Gods have lain dormant since FINAL CRISIS, but still worth the effort for anyone who might nonetheless be curious, an odd link in a chain that still has great potential.
Given another opportunity (since JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD really was better than GENESIS might suggest), I’d be more than happy if John Byrne were interesting in another visit.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Gone in a flash...!
The biggest news for me personally in recent weeks was that Borders, the company I’ve worked for over the past five years, has gone into liquidation. In a matter of months, it’ll have passed into history. There’re any number of things I could say about this, but for the purposes of this particular column, I’ll limit myself to comics experience I was able to enjoy during that time. Perhaps most notably, I found myself increasingly in charge of a small corner of the comics retail experience, quite by accident.
I began working for the company in the fall of 2006, opening a new store in Burlington, MA. At first, I as just another employee, and since this was the first time I had ever worked in a bookstore, it took time for me to establish a role for myself, to become comfortable. Some of my earliest contact with the comics in the store were the regular supply of new issues we received in our magazine shipments. I took care to manage these as best I could, but I also enjoyed reading them on breaks, which was a marvelously unique experience (I can’t imagine the wicked temptation working in an actual comics shop might kindle).
At some point, when it became necessary to reorganize certain areas that had gotten wildly out of order, I realized I could take control of the graphic novel collection, too. I became quite interested in this. I started reading a lot of those, too, some like DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN that I was naturally aware of but had never actually experienced before.
Within about a year, I transferred to a different Borders after moving to Colorado Springs. Things were different here. The graphic novels hadn’t been maintained in any serious manner for some time, and I didn’t feel qualified to correct this right away. In time, however, I had enough support, the right moves were made, and I was finally able to bring them back under control. It was a greater revelation. The new order was perhaps a greater order than I’d accomplished in my other store, and I began to take greater pains to keep it so. I became, essentially, a guardian to the graphic novel collection, sometimes zealously so. The comics kept coming in with magazines, and at some point, I became sole guardian, as it were, of the magazines (somewhat more officially, it should be noted), and so was able to maintain the available issues at my leisure.
Retail can be a funny beast, sometimes completely unaware of the difference between supply and demand. Space was a constant issue, with the graphic novels. I had to innovate in order to find space for all of them. I began appropriating more and more display areas, all around the general area where comics were ordinarily be found. I became a fanatic. I didn’t exactly foster readers, but I at least made it easy for anyone to know what I thought might be worth checking out. It was fun. The displays continued to grow, and it became somewhat ridiculous (within reason). I had virtually turned a whole section of the bookstore into a comics shop. (If only I had real power! Or loyal customers!)
Anyway, then Borders went into bankruptcy, and for some reason or another couldn’t avoid liquidation. So there ends that.
Earlier this year, I had a fortuitously-timed employee appreciation discount when THE FLASH OMNIBUS BY GEOFF JOHNS VOLUME ONE was released. You may know this particular ditty comes at a fairly hefty price, oversized hardcover that it is, collecting more than a dozen comics. The period of 2000-2001, as readers of this blog may remember, was notable in my comics experience in that I was not, as such, reading comics, so Geoff’s run came at a time when I couldn’t really appreciate it. I was still high on all the work Mark Waid had done (even though his last story, involving Cobalt Blue in “Chain Lightning,” seemed to fall on deaf ears), and couldn’t imagine anyone else capturing the world of the Scarlet Speedster quite so vividly. I kept track of comics during my time away, though, and heard all these amazing things about what Johns was doing, and in 2004, when I was segueing back in, his FLASH comics were among the first things I read, even though I didn’t make an effort to be very expansive about it. Even by 2005, when I was officially back, I didn’t seem all that interested in following his efforts too closely.
Let me just step aside for a moment and note for the record that Geoff worked on THE FLASH for five years. This is incredibly unusual. Waid had about six years of interrupted time (by Mark Millar and Grant Morrison) on the title, and worked in conjunction with Brian Augustyn for some of that. Unlike his work on JSA, which he spent shared some of the work with James Robinson, Johns wrote THE FLASH on his own. It was his first big assignment after STARS AND S.T.R.I.P.E., the book that ushered Geoff’s comics career.
He’s been writing Green Lantern since 2005, and has so thoroughly revolutionized that character and the franchise around him that Hollywood finally took the gamble that a wide audience might actually be out there for a property even comics fans have only moderately cared about (for the most part). Geoff’s work in this regard is exactly comparable to what Mark Waid did with The Flash.
So what exactly did Johns did with the same character? THE FLASH OMNIBUS is a clear indication that he had no intention of replicating Waid’s work. He de-emphasized the mythology of the Speed Force and Wally West’s considerable family of speedsters (though in Geoff’s own TEEN TITANS reboot Bart Allen receives a remarkable upgrade that no other writer has been able to capitalize on, with the possible exception of Marc Guggenheim), and instead found a way to represent the reality of life for someone whose main attribute is the ability to run really fast. In effect, now that Waid had matured Wally, Geoff was able to push him into his own confident adventures.
In another departure from Waid’s impulses, Johns chose to bring villains squarely back into the fold, new ones, figures who were familiar from stories that predated Waid in the same series, but most notably the Rogues, characters who had been famous foes of Barry Allen, the second Flash, but who had basically remained dormant for decades. Geoff infused Captain Cold, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, and others with a considerable of amount of depth that exploded their possibilities, something clear from the very beginning, though he himself wouldn’t fully realize the potential of all this for a few years. For an outsider, it seemed like he was losing himself in everything but his main character. In reality, Geoff understood better than anyone the potential of what he was writing.
A lot of commentators like to say that he prefers to resurrect old ideas at the expense of newer ones, that he’s guilty of submerging the future of comics in a fanboy’s fantasy that forever chains it to the past, limiting the potential for new readers. He brings back Barry Allen after a few decades, reversing one of comics’ seemingly permanent and perfect deaths, and forgets completely about Wally. Where’s the sense in that? The fact is (the Flash Fact), Geoff understands Barry as a character, and has done more with a few stories than most writers working for years will ever accomplish with other characters, realizing the heart of their potential. He found a narrative, a singular voice, for Barry, that had been overlooked before, wasn’t even possible given the style of storytelling when Barry was last in action. If you’ve got that, why worry about anything else?
As I attempted to do, prematurely, a few months back, I bought some comics from Borders, from the last rounds that will ever be delivered, and so will round out this week with my thoughts on those:
THE FLASH #12 (DC)
Cover date July 2011.
Somewhat appropriately enough, the final issue of the current FLASH series, with Johns at the helm, leading directly into FLASHPOINT, the first time the franchise has carried a major crossover event. With details having emerged about the “New 52,” we now know that Geoff has technically ended his run with The Flash, once again, at least for now, which is something of a disappointment, but it can’t be said that he hasn’t devoted a significant amount of his career with one Scarlet Speedster or another. I spent five years working for Borders, and Geoff spent five years writing Wally West. I know how that time passed for me. I can only imagine what it’s like to write a single series for that length of time.
GREEN LANTERN #66 (DC)
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #60 (DC)
Cover date July 2011.
I made a conscious effort to refrain from reading or collecting any of the “War of the Green Lanterns” comics in recent months, knowing that if I read any of them, I will probably want to read all of them, and since I’m “not” reading comics these days, I wanted to wait until the eventual collection to read this latest epic. Well, this was a good enough excuse to break that rule. As far as I can tell, it’s a more than appropriate arc to finish on (at least to the “New 52” fresh start), and works extremely well with GREEN LANTERN AND PHILOSOPHY, a book that was released in conjunction with the new movie, and which deals at some length with the work Geoff has been doing in developing the core concepts of the franchise.
BATMAN #711 (DC)
Cover date August 2011.
I’ve heard some people refer to Tony Daniel as a hack writer. Those who have been following this blog know that I think otherwise. I’m extremely glad that he’ll have the chance to continuing creating Batman stories in DETECTIVE COMICS come September. He has all the potential to succeed Grant Morrison as the next architect of the Dark Knight.
TEEN TITANS #91 (DC)
Cover date March 2011.
Okay, so I didn’t always notice when a series stopped shipping. Toward the end, we received fewer and fewer new comics. I liked to maintain as full a rack as possible, and so that’s why this book stuck around for so long. Which is just as well, because it becomes my only real experience with J.T. Krul’s Titans, which famously integrated Damian as a member. A fairly decent experience, overall, but not really on par with Geoff’s, or Marv Wolfman’s. There is, however, a nice moment where Bart Allen remembers the death Marc Guggenheim was editorially directed to end his run with, which is a nice touch, given what I’ve written earlier.
SPIDER-GIRL #4 (Marvel)
From April 2011.
Along with “One Moment in Time,” “Grim Hunt” was an excellent representation of a mature Spider-Man, so I kept this particular comic around since it was basically a follow-up I kept hoping customers would snatch up. They never did, obviously, but that just allowed me to, finally.
FANTASTIC FOUR: THE LAST STAND (Marvel)
This one was only shipped a few weeks back, and is a repackaging of #s 574 and 587-588 of the series recently replaced by FF, including the famous conclusion to “Three,” and therefore the infamous death of Johnny Storm. I wrote about that particular issue a few months back, and my opinion of its individual worth remains basically the same (the lack of emphasis on Johnny is baffling, except to say that his death was somehow a completely natural outcome of the story, at least in Jonathan Hickman’s eyes). The difference is that this special edition puts the whole thing into a far better context. The Fantastic Four were always something of a Marvel indulgence, a willingness to believe that it somehow made sense that these four characters really did make sense as superheroes, and not just as a makeshift family. Reed Richards, even in the movies, is portrayed as a little too singularly motivated by his pursuit of science for this to completely jive, so the forging of the Future Foundation and a complete break with its origins is actually something of a genius move on the part of Hickman. If other writers actually maintain and expand on the idea, it might even make sense! So I was glad to have had the opportunity to buy this one, certainly.
The fate of Borders, in the end, simply adds a new wrinkle into the continuing evolution of my comics experience. But things are always changing…
I began working for the company in the fall of 2006, opening a new store in Burlington, MA. At first, I as just another employee, and since this was the first time I had ever worked in a bookstore, it took time for me to establish a role for myself, to become comfortable. Some of my earliest contact with the comics in the store were the regular supply of new issues we received in our magazine shipments. I took care to manage these as best I could, but I also enjoyed reading them on breaks, which was a marvelously unique experience (I can’t imagine the wicked temptation working in an actual comics shop might kindle).
At some point, when it became necessary to reorganize certain areas that had gotten wildly out of order, I realized I could take control of the graphic novel collection, too. I became quite interested in this. I started reading a lot of those, too, some like DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN that I was naturally aware of but had never actually experienced before.
Within about a year, I transferred to a different Borders after moving to Colorado Springs. Things were different here. The graphic novels hadn’t been maintained in any serious manner for some time, and I didn’t feel qualified to correct this right away. In time, however, I had enough support, the right moves were made, and I was finally able to bring them back under control. It was a greater revelation. The new order was perhaps a greater order than I’d accomplished in my other store, and I began to take greater pains to keep it so. I became, essentially, a guardian to the graphic novel collection, sometimes zealously so. The comics kept coming in with magazines, and at some point, I became sole guardian, as it were, of the magazines (somewhat more officially, it should be noted), and so was able to maintain the available issues at my leisure.
Retail can be a funny beast, sometimes completely unaware of the difference between supply and demand. Space was a constant issue, with the graphic novels. I had to innovate in order to find space for all of them. I began appropriating more and more display areas, all around the general area where comics were ordinarily be found. I became a fanatic. I didn’t exactly foster readers, but I at least made it easy for anyone to know what I thought might be worth checking out. It was fun. The displays continued to grow, and it became somewhat ridiculous (within reason). I had virtually turned a whole section of the bookstore into a comics shop. (If only I had real power! Or loyal customers!)
Anyway, then Borders went into bankruptcy, and for some reason or another couldn’t avoid liquidation. So there ends that.
Earlier this year, I had a fortuitously-timed employee appreciation discount when THE FLASH OMNIBUS BY GEOFF JOHNS VOLUME ONE was released. You may know this particular ditty comes at a fairly hefty price, oversized hardcover that it is, collecting more than a dozen comics. The period of 2000-2001, as readers of this blog may remember, was notable in my comics experience in that I was not, as such, reading comics, so Geoff’s run came at a time when I couldn’t really appreciate it. I was still high on all the work Mark Waid had done (even though his last story, involving Cobalt Blue in “Chain Lightning,” seemed to fall on deaf ears), and couldn’t imagine anyone else capturing the world of the Scarlet Speedster quite so vividly. I kept track of comics during my time away, though, and heard all these amazing things about what Johns was doing, and in 2004, when I was segueing back in, his FLASH comics were among the first things I read, even though I didn’t make an effort to be very expansive about it. Even by 2005, when I was officially back, I didn’t seem all that interested in following his efforts too closely.
Let me just step aside for a moment and note for the record that Geoff worked on THE FLASH for five years. This is incredibly unusual. Waid had about six years of interrupted time (by Mark Millar and Grant Morrison) on the title, and worked in conjunction with Brian Augustyn for some of that. Unlike his work on JSA, which he spent shared some of the work with James Robinson, Johns wrote THE FLASH on his own. It was his first big assignment after STARS AND S.T.R.I.P.E., the book that ushered Geoff’s comics career.
He’s been writing Green Lantern since 2005, and has so thoroughly revolutionized that character and the franchise around him that Hollywood finally took the gamble that a wide audience might actually be out there for a property even comics fans have only moderately cared about (for the most part). Geoff’s work in this regard is exactly comparable to what Mark Waid did with The Flash.
So what exactly did Johns did with the same character? THE FLASH OMNIBUS is a clear indication that he had no intention of replicating Waid’s work. He de-emphasized the mythology of the Speed Force and Wally West’s considerable family of speedsters (though in Geoff’s own TEEN TITANS reboot Bart Allen receives a remarkable upgrade that no other writer has been able to capitalize on, with the possible exception of Marc Guggenheim), and instead found a way to represent the reality of life for someone whose main attribute is the ability to run really fast. In effect, now that Waid had matured Wally, Geoff was able to push him into his own confident adventures.
In another departure from Waid’s impulses, Johns chose to bring villains squarely back into the fold, new ones, figures who were familiar from stories that predated Waid in the same series, but most notably the Rogues, characters who had been famous foes of Barry Allen, the second Flash, but who had basically remained dormant for decades. Geoff infused Captain Cold, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, and others with a considerable of amount of depth that exploded their possibilities, something clear from the very beginning, though he himself wouldn’t fully realize the potential of all this for a few years. For an outsider, it seemed like he was losing himself in everything but his main character. In reality, Geoff understood better than anyone the potential of what he was writing.
A lot of commentators like to say that he prefers to resurrect old ideas at the expense of newer ones, that he’s guilty of submerging the future of comics in a fanboy’s fantasy that forever chains it to the past, limiting the potential for new readers. He brings back Barry Allen after a few decades, reversing one of comics’ seemingly permanent and perfect deaths, and forgets completely about Wally. Where’s the sense in that? The fact is (the Flash Fact), Geoff understands Barry as a character, and has done more with a few stories than most writers working for years will ever accomplish with other characters, realizing the heart of their potential. He found a narrative, a singular voice, for Barry, that had been overlooked before, wasn’t even possible given the style of storytelling when Barry was last in action. If you’ve got that, why worry about anything else?
As I attempted to do, prematurely, a few months back, I bought some comics from Borders, from the last rounds that will ever be delivered, and so will round out this week with my thoughts on those:
THE FLASH #12 (DC)
Cover date July 2011.
Somewhat appropriately enough, the final issue of the current FLASH series, with Johns at the helm, leading directly into FLASHPOINT, the first time the franchise has carried a major crossover event. With details having emerged about the “New 52,” we now know that Geoff has technically ended his run with The Flash, once again, at least for now, which is something of a disappointment, but it can’t be said that he hasn’t devoted a significant amount of his career with one Scarlet Speedster or another. I spent five years working for Borders, and Geoff spent five years writing Wally West. I know how that time passed for me. I can only imagine what it’s like to write a single series for that length of time.
GREEN LANTERN #66 (DC)
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #60 (DC)
Cover date July 2011.
I made a conscious effort to refrain from reading or collecting any of the “War of the Green Lanterns” comics in recent months, knowing that if I read any of them, I will probably want to read all of them, and since I’m “not” reading comics these days, I wanted to wait until the eventual collection to read this latest epic. Well, this was a good enough excuse to break that rule. As far as I can tell, it’s a more than appropriate arc to finish on (at least to the “New 52” fresh start), and works extremely well with GREEN LANTERN AND PHILOSOPHY, a book that was released in conjunction with the new movie, and which deals at some length with the work Geoff has been doing in developing the core concepts of the franchise.
BATMAN #711 (DC)
Cover date August 2011.
I’ve heard some people refer to Tony Daniel as a hack writer. Those who have been following this blog know that I think otherwise. I’m extremely glad that he’ll have the chance to continuing creating Batman stories in DETECTIVE COMICS come September. He has all the potential to succeed Grant Morrison as the next architect of the Dark Knight.
TEEN TITANS #91 (DC)
Cover date March 2011.
Okay, so I didn’t always notice when a series stopped shipping. Toward the end, we received fewer and fewer new comics. I liked to maintain as full a rack as possible, and so that’s why this book stuck around for so long. Which is just as well, because it becomes my only real experience with J.T. Krul’s Titans, which famously integrated Damian as a member. A fairly decent experience, overall, but not really on par with Geoff’s, or Marv Wolfman’s. There is, however, a nice moment where Bart Allen remembers the death Marc Guggenheim was editorially directed to end his run with, which is a nice touch, given what I’ve written earlier.
SPIDER-GIRL #4 (Marvel)
From April 2011.
Along with “One Moment in Time,” “Grim Hunt” was an excellent representation of a mature Spider-Man, so I kept this particular comic around since it was basically a follow-up I kept hoping customers would snatch up. They never did, obviously, but that just allowed me to, finally.
FANTASTIC FOUR: THE LAST STAND (Marvel)
This one was only shipped a few weeks back, and is a repackaging of #s 574 and 587-588 of the series recently replaced by FF, including the famous conclusion to “Three,” and therefore the infamous death of Johnny Storm. I wrote about that particular issue a few months back, and my opinion of its individual worth remains basically the same (the lack of emphasis on Johnny is baffling, except to say that his death was somehow a completely natural outcome of the story, at least in Jonathan Hickman’s eyes). The difference is that this special edition puts the whole thing into a far better context. The Fantastic Four were always something of a Marvel indulgence, a willingness to believe that it somehow made sense that these four characters really did make sense as superheroes, and not just as a makeshift family. Reed Richards, even in the movies, is portrayed as a little too singularly motivated by his pursuit of science for this to completely jive, so the forging of the Future Foundation and a complete break with its origins is actually something of a genius move on the part of Hickman. If other writers actually maintain and expand on the idea, it might even make sense! So I was glad to have had the opportunity to buy this one, certainly.
The fate of Borders, in the end, simply adds a new wrinkle into the continuing evolution of my comics experience. But things are always changing…
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Quarter Bin #13 "Grant Morrison's Back Pages"
I’ve been writing about my experiences reading and following comic books throughout the year, and have touched on my devotion to DC and relative aversion to Marvel, and some of the reasons why. I guess this column might explain a little more about that, and why it came to be.
As I’ve noted before, I didn’t actually start out following superheroes by reading comics. I watched them on TV originally, from the Adam West BATMAN to SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS to SUPER FRIENDS to THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO to THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY. Some were cartoons, some were merely cartoonish, some were original concepts, some were interpretations of established material. Sometimes an action figure would come with a comic book, but my experience with superheroes was almost exclusively on the screen rather than the page. One Christmas I got some ACTION FORCE comics (repackaged G.I. JOE, in other words). My sister somehow came into possession of THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL graphic novel, and a very impressionable younger version of myself was completely blown away. Jason Todd made the newspaper when readers were given the chance to kill off Robin, a character I was familiar with, but not as much as I thought.
In other words, I became enamored with and involved in the concept, but not the reality. In many ways, that’s the DC recipe. Every generation of DC readers seems to have its own starting point (which will soon include the “New 52,” come September). It does tend to anger longtime readers (even the second Robin, only a few years into his career, experienced a radical reboot thanks to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, which probably led directly to his infamous destiny), but it creates endless possibilities, comics that carry unexpected depth, creators who constantly have the opportunity to push both themselves and the medium. We would never have had WATCHMEN if DC hadn’t absorbed another company into the fold, and Alan Moore been given the opportunity to play with a few new characters (in a roundabout way).
Marvel doesn’t really have that. Fans are expected to care about the same characters in much the same context for decades, and while that has inarguably created the most loyal fanbase in comics, it’s resulted in homogenous stories that rarely push the envelope, even when that’s the point of the current storyline. (Ironically, DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL may be the only Marvel story to ever fulfill such an ambition.) Readers invariably find superhero adventures in a strictly comic book sense, the stereotype everyone expects, and the movies that result invariably reflect exactly that kind of storytelling, even when they try (the X-Men franchise) not to.
Grant Morrison famously broke the fourth wall during his acclaimed run on ANIMAL MAN, a classic DC character who at that time was published through the Vertigo imprint. Morrison’s most famous Marvel work was with NEW X-MEN, which was basically repudiated the minute he left the company. His mutant work was a kind of extension of the superhero comics he did with JLA, widescreen storytelling that pushed the boundaries of past glory and made way for future greatness (in other words, the DC mandate). For whatever reason, Marvel experimented with it for a few years, and then went back to what it does best. I’m not saying there isn’t real talent, in the past or present, at the House of Ideas. I would suggest that this talent is relentlessly constrained by a creative mandate that routinely shatters potential in favor of what can best be described as the comfort factor.
There are some back issues I’m getting around to talking about, that serve as the crux of this argument. The first of these is by all accounts an almost throwaway experience I stumbled upon by accident, during a random search in Midtown’s online catalogue for Morrison material:
SECRET ORIGINS #50 (DC)
From August 1990.
It’s the final issue of a series that recounted the, well, secret origins of DC characters, a tradition that’s continued throughout the years, in one form or another, most recently in backup features for weekly comics 52 and COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS. The letters page for the issue serves as much as a memoriam for a cancelled book as a testament to the opinion at the time that the series really had run its course, which is incredibly strange to me, because out of the six stories within it, there are two that were timeless enough that I couldn’t believe my luck at having basically rediscovered it twenty years later. The second is the Morrison piece, but the lead is a prose effort from Dennis O’Neil which revisits Dick Grayson’s Haley Circus days.
Marvel partisans like to boast about two things, that the origins of their favored heroes are distinctive, and that those heroes are invariably uniquely identifiably human. What they tend to ignore is that DC started that same trend earlier. They like to try and obscure this fact by proclaiming Superman to be unapproachably alien, even though his Kansas connection has always been stressed more than his Kryptonian, or that Batman is a fortunate son of unobtainable privilege, even though he’s always been portrayed more as a tortured soul than as a trust fund elitist. These “World’s Finest” scraped together their current lives from personal journeys almost more epic than anything they will ever experience as crime fighters. Fans actually hated SPIDER-MAN 3 because it delved too deeply into Peter Parker’s angst, and the complicated nature of his origins. There’s a reason Christopher Nolan crafted BATMAN BEGINS the way he did. Bruce Wayne is more interesting to him than the Dark Knight.
Dick Grayson is a character who’s been around for decades, and the longer he’s been around, the less relatable his origins have become. I suspect fewer kids in the 21st century dream about running away to the circus than those in the 20th. Yet his story remains intriguing, the more writers have had to explain the appeal (even recent TV shows like HEROES and THE CAPE have tried, in their own ways), as they’ve begun grafting a separate narrative, Deadman’s past, onto it (notably in FLASHPOINT, but also Chuck Dixon’s NIGHTWING: YEAR ONE). I’ve got a great ambition of my own, to attempt my own version.
Then Grant Morrison reinterprets the famous “Flash of Two Worlds” story, which is a more direct version of that same archetype, reconnecting a new generation to a seminal yet increasingly distant milestone. At its heart is the meeting between the first two men to assume the identity of The Flash, Jay Garrick (Golden Age) and Barry Allen (Silver Age). Jay was, when this story was originally presented, a fairly generic member of a lost generation, while Barry literally represented a new one, having personally ushered it upon his introduction. Symbolically, the two inhabited twin cities, one of which had mysteriously vanished years ago. Barry crossed the divide, met his inspiration, and basically introduced the multiverse, a version of DC which embraced different eras side-by-side. Heroes that had been well-known during WWII but who had been discarded over time, most of whom were members of the Justice Society, came back, and their absence had to be explained. The more years that passed, the harder this became. Quite notably, the Society is absent from the “New 52.” I wonder if DC isn’t planning a new version of history to explain it all over again.
Anyway, the most clever aspect of Morrison’s version is that he tells it in the form of a child’s experience of this meeting (we find out later that this narrator is in fact Gar Logan, future Beast Boy of the Teen Titans, who operates alongside Wally West, the eventual third Flash). Kurt Busiek chose a reporter in MARVELS, but it’s Morrison, in this comparatively obscure comic, who truly understands the best possible perspective for such a tale (it might be argued that JOE THE BARBARIAN is his recent attempt to tell this story all over again, in a bit more literary style). The boy isn’t really impressed with superheroes until he goes along for the wild ride himself. Morrison himself has represented for me the ideal comic book writer, perhaps because I experienced superheroes first on the screen rather than the page. I understood the basics long before I read comics. I wanted to be dazzled when I finally did. Grant Morrison understands dazzle. That’s what he does. He doesn’t necessarily do superheroes (which is why most of his early work didn’t really feature them, and why his current work does), but stories that expand the possibilities of his craft. Once he caught everyone up on his style, he could do whatever he wanted, and readers would pay attention. Clearly a lot of readers don’t understand it, which is why for every fanatic there’s someone who claims he’s simply overrated. Even those who love him don’t uniformly get him. They recognize that he’s doing something special, but probably couldn’t explain him if they tried.
There’s also:
SEBASTIAN O #s 1-3 (Vertigo)
From May-July 1993.
Morrison has a reputation for being subversive, which you can understand if you’ve at least sampled THE INVISIBLES or THE FILTH. Perhaps his most concentrated effort in this regard is SEBASTIAN O, which is like his version of V FOR VENDETTA, about a cultural deviant who is actually quite deeply culturally immersed, attempting to wake people up, destroy corruption, even if the reaction he invariably finds is at best confusion. It would have made an excellent satire a decade later, when homosexuals finally started to creep into the mainstream, but Morrison is someone who has consistently skirted widespread awareness (which is probably okay by him), been just on the other side of the zeitgeist. I like to think his breakthrough is inevitable, and that his legacy will eventually eclipse Alan Moore’s, even though just at the moment it seems unlikely.
If Sebastian isn’t good enough, there’s:
DC COMICS PRESENTS: MYSTERY IN SPACE (DC)
From September 2004.
Part of a series of tribute books honoring the legacy of then-recently deceased iconic editor Julie Schwartz, Morrison writes Adam Strange, an intergalactic hero and perfect match for Morrison’s gonzo style, for one of several stories in the one-shot. It’s a wonder, or perhaps a gift for those who read this comic, that other than 52, he hasn’t otherwise worked with the character. More than the outsized possibilities of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, Strange is a character uniquely suited to Morrison’s sensibilities, and has rarely been handled so perfectly.
Taken together, these are comics Grant Morrison won’t often by identified with, but are perfect examples of his unerring gift to elevate the medium at every opportunity, comics that also serve to illustrate the potential DC has consistently strived for and in fact accomplished through the years. Most of this blog talks about DC comics, so you know that I read plenty of those, but I don’t always get to write about Grant, even though he has become my favorite comics writer.
The good news is that I’ve got plenty of other Morrison comics to write about.
As I’ve noted before, I didn’t actually start out following superheroes by reading comics. I watched them on TV originally, from the Adam West BATMAN to SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS to SUPER FRIENDS to THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO to THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY. Some were cartoons, some were merely cartoonish, some were original concepts, some were interpretations of established material. Sometimes an action figure would come with a comic book, but my experience with superheroes was almost exclusively on the screen rather than the page. One Christmas I got some ACTION FORCE comics (repackaged G.I. JOE, in other words). My sister somehow came into possession of THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL graphic novel, and a very impressionable younger version of myself was completely blown away. Jason Todd made the newspaper when readers were given the chance to kill off Robin, a character I was familiar with, but not as much as I thought.
In other words, I became enamored with and involved in the concept, but not the reality. In many ways, that’s the DC recipe. Every generation of DC readers seems to have its own starting point (which will soon include the “New 52,” come September). It does tend to anger longtime readers (even the second Robin, only a few years into his career, experienced a radical reboot thanks to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, which probably led directly to his infamous destiny), but it creates endless possibilities, comics that carry unexpected depth, creators who constantly have the opportunity to push both themselves and the medium. We would never have had WATCHMEN if DC hadn’t absorbed another company into the fold, and Alan Moore been given the opportunity to play with a few new characters (in a roundabout way).
Marvel doesn’t really have that. Fans are expected to care about the same characters in much the same context for decades, and while that has inarguably created the most loyal fanbase in comics, it’s resulted in homogenous stories that rarely push the envelope, even when that’s the point of the current storyline. (Ironically, DEATH OF CAPTAIN MARVEL may be the only Marvel story to ever fulfill such an ambition.) Readers invariably find superhero adventures in a strictly comic book sense, the stereotype everyone expects, and the movies that result invariably reflect exactly that kind of storytelling, even when they try (the X-Men franchise) not to.
Grant Morrison famously broke the fourth wall during his acclaimed run on ANIMAL MAN, a classic DC character who at that time was published through the Vertigo imprint. Morrison’s most famous Marvel work was with NEW X-MEN, which was basically repudiated the minute he left the company. His mutant work was a kind of extension of the superhero comics he did with JLA, widescreen storytelling that pushed the boundaries of past glory and made way for future greatness (in other words, the DC mandate). For whatever reason, Marvel experimented with it for a few years, and then went back to what it does best. I’m not saying there isn’t real talent, in the past or present, at the House of Ideas. I would suggest that this talent is relentlessly constrained by a creative mandate that routinely shatters potential in favor of what can best be described as the comfort factor.
There are some back issues I’m getting around to talking about, that serve as the crux of this argument. The first of these is by all accounts an almost throwaway experience I stumbled upon by accident, during a random search in Midtown’s online catalogue for Morrison material:
SECRET ORIGINS #50 (DC)
From August 1990.
It’s the final issue of a series that recounted the, well, secret origins of DC characters, a tradition that’s continued throughout the years, in one form or another, most recently in backup features for weekly comics 52 and COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS. The letters page for the issue serves as much as a memoriam for a cancelled book as a testament to the opinion at the time that the series really had run its course, which is incredibly strange to me, because out of the six stories within it, there are two that were timeless enough that I couldn’t believe my luck at having basically rediscovered it twenty years later. The second is the Morrison piece, but the lead is a prose effort from Dennis O’Neil which revisits Dick Grayson’s Haley Circus days.
Marvel partisans like to boast about two things, that the origins of their favored heroes are distinctive, and that those heroes are invariably uniquely identifiably human. What they tend to ignore is that DC started that same trend earlier. They like to try and obscure this fact by proclaiming Superman to be unapproachably alien, even though his Kansas connection has always been stressed more than his Kryptonian, or that Batman is a fortunate son of unobtainable privilege, even though he’s always been portrayed more as a tortured soul than as a trust fund elitist. These “World’s Finest” scraped together their current lives from personal journeys almost more epic than anything they will ever experience as crime fighters. Fans actually hated SPIDER-MAN 3 because it delved too deeply into Peter Parker’s angst, and the complicated nature of his origins. There’s a reason Christopher Nolan crafted BATMAN BEGINS the way he did. Bruce Wayne is more interesting to him than the Dark Knight.
Dick Grayson is a character who’s been around for decades, and the longer he’s been around, the less relatable his origins have become. I suspect fewer kids in the 21st century dream about running away to the circus than those in the 20th. Yet his story remains intriguing, the more writers have had to explain the appeal (even recent TV shows like HEROES and THE CAPE have tried, in their own ways), as they’ve begun grafting a separate narrative, Deadman’s past, onto it (notably in FLASHPOINT, but also Chuck Dixon’s NIGHTWING: YEAR ONE). I’ve got a great ambition of my own, to attempt my own version.
Then Grant Morrison reinterprets the famous “Flash of Two Worlds” story, which is a more direct version of that same archetype, reconnecting a new generation to a seminal yet increasingly distant milestone. At its heart is the meeting between the first two men to assume the identity of The Flash, Jay Garrick (Golden Age) and Barry Allen (Silver Age). Jay was, when this story was originally presented, a fairly generic member of a lost generation, while Barry literally represented a new one, having personally ushered it upon his introduction. Symbolically, the two inhabited twin cities, one of which had mysteriously vanished years ago. Barry crossed the divide, met his inspiration, and basically introduced the multiverse, a version of DC which embraced different eras side-by-side. Heroes that had been well-known during WWII but who had been discarded over time, most of whom were members of the Justice Society, came back, and their absence had to be explained. The more years that passed, the harder this became. Quite notably, the Society is absent from the “New 52.” I wonder if DC isn’t planning a new version of history to explain it all over again.
Anyway, the most clever aspect of Morrison’s version is that he tells it in the form of a child’s experience of this meeting (we find out later that this narrator is in fact Gar Logan, future Beast Boy of the Teen Titans, who operates alongside Wally West, the eventual third Flash). Kurt Busiek chose a reporter in MARVELS, but it’s Morrison, in this comparatively obscure comic, who truly understands the best possible perspective for such a tale (it might be argued that JOE THE BARBARIAN is his recent attempt to tell this story all over again, in a bit more literary style). The boy isn’t really impressed with superheroes until he goes along for the wild ride himself. Morrison himself has represented for me the ideal comic book writer, perhaps because I experienced superheroes first on the screen rather than the page. I understood the basics long before I read comics. I wanted to be dazzled when I finally did. Grant Morrison understands dazzle. That’s what he does. He doesn’t necessarily do superheroes (which is why most of his early work didn’t really feature them, and why his current work does), but stories that expand the possibilities of his craft. Once he caught everyone up on his style, he could do whatever he wanted, and readers would pay attention. Clearly a lot of readers don’t understand it, which is why for every fanatic there’s someone who claims he’s simply overrated. Even those who love him don’t uniformly get him. They recognize that he’s doing something special, but probably couldn’t explain him if they tried.
There’s also:
SEBASTIAN O #s 1-3 (Vertigo)
From May-July 1993.
Morrison has a reputation for being subversive, which you can understand if you’ve at least sampled THE INVISIBLES or THE FILTH. Perhaps his most concentrated effort in this regard is SEBASTIAN O, which is like his version of V FOR VENDETTA, about a cultural deviant who is actually quite deeply culturally immersed, attempting to wake people up, destroy corruption, even if the reaction he invariably finds is at best confusion. It would have made an excellent satire a decade later, when homosexuals finally started to creep into the mainstream, but Morrison is someone who has consistently skirted widespread awareness (which is probably okay by him), been just on the other side of the zeitgeist. I like to think his breakthrough is inevitable, and that his legacy will eventually eclipse Alan Moore’s, even though just at the moment it seems unlikely.
If Sebastian isn’t good enough, there’s:
DC COMICS PRESENTS: MYSTERY IN SPACE (DC)
From September 2004.
Part of a series of tribute books honoring the legacy of then-recently deceased iconic editor Julie Schwartz, Morrison writes Adam Strange, an intergalactic hero and perfect match for Morrison’s gonzo style, for one of several stories in the one-shot. It’s a wonder, or perhaps a gift for those who read this comic, that other than 52, he hasn’t otherwise worked with the character. More than the outsized possibilities of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, Strange is a character uniquely suited to Morrison’s sensibilities, and has rarely been handled so perfectly.
Taken together, these are comics Grant Morrison won’t often by identified with, but are perfect examples of his unerring gift to elevate the medium at every opportunity, comics that also serve to illustrate the potential DC has consistently strived for and in fact accomplished through the years. Most of this blog talks about DC comics, so you know that I read plenty of those, but I don’t always get to write about Grant, even though he has become my favorite comics writer.
The good news is that I’ve got plenty of other Morrison comics to write about.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Capping The Cape
Maybe I don’t have a lot of right to do this, because I’ve been writing this blog throughout 2011, and THE CAPE had its brief run during this time, but I’d like to take this opportunity for another spirited defense of an overlooked superhero gem.
To understand how THE CAPE failed for NBC this past season, you probably have to understand how HEROES gradually became a failure, after starting with a bang back in 2006. HEROES was the next big genre TV hit after LOST became a sensation a few season earlier. You have to remember that by the 2006 season, LOST had started to grate on some viewers by refusing to give its answers quickly, and this was before the 2007 season, which was famously truncated by the writers’ strike. When HEROES came around, it seemed prepackaged with all the answers needed to retort the genre, big-concept questions LOST had raised, telling a complete arc over the course of its first season, which gained more buzz and acclaim as it went along. Exactly how that momentum was, ahem, lost over the course of the next three seasons is usually explained by a growing complacency and lack of genuine inspiration. Not being a partisan of usual public opinions, I’ve had other ideas. In fact, I grew to love the show more the longer it was on. But the fact remains, viewers became tired of this particular approach to superheroes on TV, and NBC’s thought process, by the time THE CAPE was announced, became a little obvious.
THE CAPE was basically the reverse of HEROES (just as HEROES had kind of been the reverse of LOST). Where the characters on HEROES never wore costumes and the villains were never permanently pegged as such (much to the chagrin of those who became tired of Sylar), THE CAPE had a costume almost from the start, and an archenemy sooner. In many ways, THE CAPE was less an answer to HEROES and more a continuation of the experiment begun by THE FLASH two decades earlier, an expertly conceived and produced superhero adventure, with most of the sensibilities most people think of from this particular genre. Like Dick Tracy and Batman, THE CAPE developed a rich rogues gallery, even within the abbreviated time it had, relying not just on the main heavy, but introducing many more, with varying roles.
How exactly this failed so utterly and swiftly is no real surprise. Like THE FLASH before it, THE CAPE asked a great deal of its audience, to accept tropes most of them had already avoided by not reading comics in the first place, asking for a commitment and to believe and accept certain leaps of faith that usually require something extraordinary, some spark either in casting or concept, that’s not necessarily related to the property itself. And even then, a cult following is needed almost instantaneously, or a convenient connection to the cultural zeitgeist. I could explain all that with examples, or simply say THE CAPE obviously had none of it. All NBC thought it needed was HEROES without the HEROES mindset, which is not exactly what Tim Kring was thinking when he saw the opportunity LOST created, just as SMALLVILLE didn’t come into existence simply because of “No Flights, No Tights.”
Anyway, I keep getting carried away. I like comparative analysis, obviously. The point is, THE CAPE is far better than its failure suggests, more nuanced, far cooler, entertaining almost to a fault. Sometimes it even takes itself a tad too flippantly. And the groundwork is laid in every episode for something greater, a rich tapestry that would have been something truly special, if the opportunity had been there.
I’m taking the liberty to talk about it because THE CAPE was released on DVD last week, and so those who overlooked it originally have a second chance, and this is a show that rewards dedicated viewing. You’ll see how the writers reveal that Orwell is Peter Fleming, a.k.a. Chess’s daughter well before they do (and well before the show ever had the chance to truly cash in on this connection). You’ll even see how Vince Faraday’s boy hangs out with Goggles’ son, without anyone ever calling attention to it. You’ll marvel at how awesome Vinnie Jones is as Scales. If this is the show’s legacy, then it is already a good one. Like THE FLASH before it, you won’t care that practically nobody cared about THE CAPE. Because you will. And it only means TV will have a chance to do it again, because now another fan will have something to work off of, a predecessor, a precedent.
To round out this week’s feature, I’ll discuss the comics I bought at Escape Velocity over the course of two visits. I get to talk about GREEN LANTERN, the movie, because DC has been supporting it a great deal, sometimes in ways that weren’t so obvious. Like THE CAPE, there’s success even in failure, so long as there are those willing to embrace material that rewards those who cared.
BATMAN INCORPORATED #s 6-7 (DC)
First, we visit with the one series I’ve tried to continue following in 2011, Grant Morrison’s continuing Bat-masterpiece. These particular issues continue to reward the long-time reader, with the first one being a kind of status marker for the whole journey, while the second is an exceptional example of the work Grant’s been doing with this series in particular; it’s like SCALPED on crack, or if you haven’t read that Vertigo series but have noted Native American writer Sherman Alexie, like a superhero version of THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FIST-FIGHT IN HEAVEN. (It’s even more awesome than it sounds.)
BATMAN AND ROBIN #25 (DC)
Judd Winick doesn’t get a lot of respect, except from DC, which has not only retained him as a writer despite that, but cherished the groundbreaking work he’s done for the company, notably with the character of Jason Todd, whom he revisits for the conclusion of a three-issue guest stint in this title.
FLASHPOINT #s 2-3 (DC)
Gotta say, I’m really loving FLASHPOINT, Geoff Johns’ continually masterful grasp of character. We all know by now that this event book is basically his goodbye to Barry Allen, but he’s making up for whatever hard feelings that might have to those who wish he could’ve repeated his Hal Jordan magic by giving Barry’s his biggest-ever story. For a character who was killed off almost three decades ago, , was best known for ushering the Silver Age, a rogues gallery, and not even for an innovative trial that was well ahead of its time, this is perhaps more remarkable than anything Johns has done with the Green Lantern franchise. He’s succeeded in making Barry a compelling character with a story that is distinctively his own, whatever the context. And to then spin variations of known characters around this, especially the big revelation of what happened to Superman in this reality, that’s far more than anyone could have expected, no matter the hype.
FLASHPOINT: CITIZEN COLD #1 (DC)
The Rogues were well-established before Geoff Johns broke into comics, but it might be argued that no one has done as much for them as he has for the past decade, and FLASHPOINT seems designed to do even more, especially this book, which finally gives one to an individual member. Scott Kolins further proves his elevation as a creator on this one.
FLASHPOINT: DEADMAN AND THE FLYING GRAYSONS #1 (DC)
Given that Deadman, after starring in BRIGHTEST DAY, and Dick Grayson, after starring in half the Batman titles the past couple of years, are among the “losers” of the DC reboot, this one’s perhaps more important than it would have otherwise been, and maybe specifically intended to be a kind of consolation gifts for their fans.
FLASHPOINT: THE CANTERBURY CRICKET (DC)
I somehow knew from the moment I read about the Flashpoint titles, that I would find this one intriguing. I suspected, unless the character were somehow a variation of a character I hadn’t been thinking about at the time, that Cricket was a new creation for the event, and we know that I love to give new characters their due. “Canterbury Cricket” was beyond unusual. Well, Mike Carlin confirmed my faith, easily. Needless to say, I hope Cricket finds his way into the DC Universe proper.
FLASHPOINT: HAL JORDAN #1 (DC)
FLASHPOINT: ABIN SUR #2 (DC)
GREEN LANTERN MOVIE PREQUEL: HAL JORDAN (DC)
GREEN LANTERN MOVIE PREQUEL: ABIN SUR (DC)
Okay, so the titles are a little repetitive, but obviously these are the books I was talking about earlier. Two of them have a direct connection to the movie, while the others have an unexpected link, and serve as a testament both to the movie and Geoff Johns’ work with the franchise over the last five years. Before it, there’s no doubt Hal’s involvement would have been different, and it’s doubtful that Abin Sur would have been involved at all. You have things like Darwyn Cooke’s NEW FRONTIER that also embraced Hal’s character seriously, but otherwise Hal’s importance, and his backstory, have mostly been downplayed over the years. The movie prequel Hal book is as close to an adaptation as DC and Warner Brothers have apparently considered. That’s both the blessing and curse of the strong SECRET ORIGIN tie-in. I figure the movie’s success, as I’ve suggested, could’ve been greater if fans other than of comics could have seen the scope before walking into the movie theater. But there’s always next time.
SUPERMAN #712 (DC)
The more “Grounded” (and “Odyssey” over in WONDER WOMAN) dragged on, the less interesting it became. So it’s good that there’ve been interludes, even completely unscheduled ones like this issue, which resurrects a lost Kurt Busiek tale involving Krypto (who has a grizzly cameo in FLASHPOINT #3, by the way) and the aftermath of Superboy’s death during INFINITE CRISIS. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Busiek’s run on SUPERMAN from a few years back (though stories like “Third Kryptonian” were enough to convince me his take wasn’t completely alien to my Man of Steel sensibilities), but this is a nice reminder of the many things that’ve been missing from Superman comics recently.
That’s all for this time. I swear (I swear!) that this recovering comics addict hasn’t completely relapsed, that these trips to Escape Velocity really were basically anomalous (I really only want to read the final two issues of FLASHPOINT now, and hope that my finances are better in September so I don’t miss out on all the potential awesomeness).
In conclusion, let us also begin the hype for Frank Miller’s HOLY TERROR!
To understand how THE CAPE failed for NBC this past season, you probably have to understand how HEROES gradually became a failure, after starting with a bang back in 2006. HEROES was the next big genre TV hit after LOST became a sensation a few season earlier. You have to remember that by the 2006 season, LOST had started to grate on some viewers by refusing to give its answers quickly, and this was before the 2007 season, which was famously truncated by the writers’ strike. When HEROES came around, it seemed prepackaged with all the answers needed to retort the genre, big-concept questions LOST had raised, telling a complete arc over the course of its first season, which gained more buzz and acclaim as it went along. Exactly how that momentum was, ahem, lost over the course of the next three seasons is usually explained by a growing complacency and lack of genuine inspiration. Not being a partisan of usual public opinions, I’ve had other ideas. In fact, I grew to love the show more the longer it was on. But the fact remains, viewers became tired of this particular approach to superheroes on TV, and NBC’s thought process, by the time THE CAPE was announced, became a little obvious.
THE CAPE was basically the reverse of HEROES (just as HEROES had kind of been the reverse of LOST). Where the characters on HEROES never wore costumes and the villains were never permanently pegged as such (much to the chagrin of those who became tired of Sylar), THE CAPE had a costume almost from the start, and an archenemy sooner. In many ways, THE CAPE was less an answer to HEROES and more a continuation of the experiment begun by THE FLASH two decades earlier, an expertly conceived and produced superhero adventure, with most of the sensibilities most people think of from this particular genre. Like Dick Tracy and Batman, THE CAPE developed a rich rogues gallery, even within the abbreviated time it had, relying not just on the main heavy, but introducing many more, with varying roles.
How exactly this failed so utterly and swiftly is no real surprise. Like THE FLASH before it, THE CAPE asked a great deal of its audience, to accept tropes most of them had already avoided by not reading comics in the first place, asking for a commitment and to believe and accept certain leaps of faith that usually require something extraordinary, some spark either in casting or concept, that’s not necessarily related to the property itself. And even then, a cult following is needed almost instantaneously, or a convenient connection to the cultural zeitgeist. I could explain all that with examples, or simply say THE CAPE obviously had none of it. All NBC thought it needed was HEROES without the HEROES mindset, which is not exactly what Tim Kring was thinking when he saw the opportunity LOST created, just as SMALLVILLE didn’t come into existence simply because of “No Flights, No Tights.”
Anyway, I keep getting carried away. I like comparative analysis, obviously. The point is, THE CAPE is far better than its failure suggests, more nuanced, far cooler, entertaining almost to a fault. Sometimes it even takes itself a tad too flippantly. And the groundwork is laid in every episode for something greater, a rich tapestry that would have been something truly special, if the opportunity had been there.
I’m taking the liberty to talk about it because THE CAPE was released on DVD last week, and so those who overlooked it originally have a second chance, and this is a show that rewards dedicated viewing. You’ll see how the writers reveal that Orwell is Peter Fleming, a.k.a. Chess’s daughter well before they do (and well before the show ever had the chance to truly cash in on this connection). You’ll even see how Vince Faraday’s boy hangs out with Goggles’ son, without anyone ever calling attention to it. You’ll marvel at how awesome Vinnie Jones is as Scales. If this is the show’s legacy, then it is already a good one. Like THE FLASH before it, you won’t care that practically nobody cared about THE CAPE. Because you will. And it only means TV will have a chance to do it again, because now another fan will have something to work off of, a predecessor, a precedent.
To round out this week’s feature, I’ll discuss the comics I bought at Escape Velocity over the course of two visits. I get to talk about GREEN LANTERN, the movie, because DC has been supporting it a great deal, sometimes in ways that weren’t so obvious. Like THE CAPE, there’s success even in failure, so long as there are those willing to embrace material that rewards those who cared.
BATMAN INCORPORATED #s 6-7 (DC)
First, we visit with the one series I’ve tried to continue following in 2011, Grant Morrison’s continuing Bat-masterpiece. These particular issues continue to reward the long-time reader, with the first one being a kind of status marker for the whole journey, while the second is an exceptional example of the work Grant’s been doing with this series in particular; it’s like SCALPED on crack, or if you haven’t read that Vertigo series but have noted Native American writer Sherman Alexie, like a superhero version of THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FIST-FIGHT IN HEAVEN. (It’s even more awesome than it sounds.)
BATMAN AND ROBIN #25 (DC)
Judd Winick doesn’t get a lot of respect, except from DC, which has not only retained him as a writer despite that, but cherished the groundbreaking work he’s done for the company, notably with the character of Jason Todd, whom he revisits for the conclusion of a three-issue guest stint in this title.
FLASHPOINT #s 2-3 (DC)
Gotta say, I’m really loving FLASHPOINT, Geoff Johns’ continually masterful grasp of character. We all know by now that this event book is basically his goodbye to Barry Allen, but he’s making up for whatever hard feelings that might have to those who wish he could’ve repeated his Hal Jordan magic by giving Barry’s his biggest-ever story. For a character who was killed off almost three decades ago, , was best known for ushering the Silver Age, a rogues gallery, and not even for an innovative trial that was well ahead of its time, this is perhaps more remarkable than anything Johns has done with the Green Lantern franchise. He’s succeeded in making Barry a compelling character with a story that is distinctively his own, whatever the context. And to then spin variations of known characters around this, especially the big revelation of what happened to Superman in this reality, that’s far more than anyone could have expected, no matter the hype.
FLASHPOINT: CITIZEN COLD #1 (DC)
The Rogues were well-established before Geoff Johns broke into comics, but it might be argued that no one has done as much for them as he has for the past decade, and FLASHPOINT seems designed to do even more, especially this book, which finally gives one to an individual member. Scott Kolins further proves his elevation as a creator on this one.
FLASHPOINT: DEADMAN AND THE FLYING GRAYSONS #1 (DC)
Given that Deadman, after starring in BRIGHTEST DAY, and Dick Grayson, after starring in half the Batman titles the past couple of years, are among the “losers” of the DC reboot, this one’s perhaps more important than it would have otherwise been, and maybe specifically intended to be a kind of consolation gifts for their fans.
FLASHPOINT: THE CANTERBURY CRICKET (DC)
I somehow knew from the moment I read about the Flashpoint titles, that I would find this one intriguing. I suspected, unless the character were somehow a variation of a character I hadn’t been thinking about at the time, that Cricket was a new creation for the event, and we know that I love to give new characters their due. “Canterbury Cricket” was beyond unusual. Well, Mike Carlin confirmed my faith, easily. Needless to say, I hope Cricket finds his way into the DC Universe proper.
FLASHPOINT: HAL JORDAN #1 (DC)
FLASHPOINT: ABIN SUR #2 (DC)
GREEN LANTERN MOVIE PREQUEL: HAL JORDAN (DC)
GREEN LANTERN MOVIE PREQUEL: ABIN SUR (DC)
Okay, so the titles are a little repetitive, but obviously these are the books I was talking about earlier. Two of them have a direct connection to the movie, while the others have an unexpected link, and serve as a testament both to the movie and Geoff Johns’ work with the franchise over the last five years. Before it, there’s no doubt Hal’s involvement would have been different, and it’s doubtful that Abin Sur would have been involved at all. You have things like Darwyn Cooke’s NEW FRONTIER that also embraced Hal’s character seriously, but otherwise Hal’s importance, and his backstory, have mostly been downplayed over the years. The movie prequel Hal book is as close to an adaptation as DC and Warner Brothers have apparently considered. That’s both the blessing and curse of the strong SECRET ORIGIN tie-in. I figure the movie’s success, as I’ve suggested, could’ve been greater if fans other than of comics could have seen the scope before walking into the movie theater. But there’s always next time.
SUPERMAN #712 (DC)
The more “Grounded” (and “Odyssey” over in WONDER WOMAN) dragged on, the less interesting it became. So it’s good that there’ve been interludes, even completely unscheduled ones like this issue, which resurrects a lost Kurt Busiek tale involving Krypto (who has a grizzly cameo in FLASHPOINT #3, by the way) and the aftermath of Superboy’s death during INFINITE CRISIS. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Busiek’s run on SUPERMAN from a few years back (though stories like “Third Kryptonian” were enough to convince me his take wasn’t completely alien to my Man of Steel sensibilities), but this is a nice reminder of the many things that’ve been missing from Superman comics recently.
That’s all for this time. I swear (I swear!) that this recovering comics addict hasn’t completely relapsed, that these trips to Escape Velocity really were basically anomalous (I really only want to read the final two issues of FLASHPOINT now, and hope that my finances are better in September so I don’t miss out on all the potential awesomeness).
In conclusion, let us also begin the hype for Frank Miller’s HOLY TERROR!
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