Batman: Rebirth #1 (DC)

It's the dawn of the Tom King era in Batman comics.  Although, basically, it's King and artist Mikel Janin reprising their Grayson act.  (It'll be the same for Tomasi and Gleason in Superman, and thank goodness!)  If this is what Rebirth will be like, I can see that DC has indeed learned where its best talent has been. 

Scott Snyder is ostensibly along for the ride.  As with Geoff Johns in Green Lanterns: Rebirth, I think it's a purely ceremonial act, meant to assure wary fans that the old guard was there to make sure the new one knew what came before them.  Because this doesn't read like Snyder.  Snyder was all about diving into what King avoids in this issue, which is the chaos of Gotham around Batman's adventures.  King's Calendar Man, in fact, reads almost exactly like Snyder's Mr. Bloom, unleashing spores that cause chaos.  There's even Duke Thomas (assuming a new, as-yet unnamed heroic persona) along for the ride.

King's an emerging force for psychologically strong superhero storytelling.  His Batman is prone to pushing his limits in the classic sense (one of Snyder's best Batman comics involves a scenario very similar to what is presented in these pages, in Batman: Futures End as he sets about the clone agenda Snyder had previously explored in Detective Comics #27).  Otherwise, King's vision of Batman's strength of character remembers that Bruce Wayne still exists, too, and that his business acumen, and persistence, amount for something, too, the allies he made there, and what they have to say about where all of this came from.

The best lines in the issue come from Lucius Fox, who remembers this about the late Thomas Wayne:

"I once tried to talk your father into coming into the business.  Told him being a doctor drives you crazy.  Whatever you do, people just get sick again.  You make no progress.  He looked at me for a bit, got real quiet, stern almost.  It's a look I've only ever seen once again.  And it was in the face of a masked man [Batman].  Finally, in a dark voice, he said, 'You're right, Lucius, I am crazy.  But the sick need someone crazy enough to believe they can be better.  So what else could I be?'"

Now, recently, in the pages of a Marvel comic, Nick Spencer decided that Steve Rogers needed a neglectful father, that it would somehow help make his origin better.  (This is to say nothing about Hydra.)  That's the difference between Marvel and DC right there.  Steve's dad has been a nonentity all this time.  You can do whatever you want with him.  Thomas Wayne has never had that luxury.  Rarely seen, but every time he's brought it, it counts for something.  Is it a shortcut to make Batman's dad a good guy, too? 

Absolutely not.  Welcome aboard, Tom King.

Superman: American Alien #6 (DC)

With the exception of Tom De Haven's It's Superman!, which was a novel, few writers have been able to explore Superman in as thoroughly human a way as Max Landis has within the pages of Superman: American Alien.  Part of its charm is that each issue features a specific period, a moment of identity crisis, in the formative development of Superman.  Each issue has an artist to fit that moment.

This issue has Jonathan Case.  I've been following his work in various exceptional graphic novels (Dear Creature, The New Deal), so I've been looking forward to the issue since the start of the mini-series.  What he brings to this particular moment is a feel for all those comic books geared toward people who don't particularly care for superheroes, the graphic novels frequently trotted out so that the public will take this medium seriously.  Since Case, to this point, has literally made that his home (although, especially with Dear Creature, in as imaginative fashion as he could), he's ideally suited to Clark Kent arguing with his old Smallville friends that becoming Superman wasn't a horrible mistake.

So often, we take Clark Kent's transformation into Superman for granted.  Once you get the origin out of the way, once he becomes Superman, the idea of Clark Kent becomes entirely subject to the Superman identity.  Clark fades into the background, fodder for the Lois Lane romance and little more.  He essentially ceases to be. 

Landis doesn't allow that to happen.  The Smallville TV series made a big point of keeping Superman entirely out of the picture, for as long as possible, and so it helped pave the way for storytelling like this.  Landis, however, takes it to an entirely new level.  It helps, I think, because this is literally his first regular comic book work.  He made his name with Chronicle, the movie that recast the superhero genre into the teenage angst genre (which director Josh Trank then attempted to translate back with the Fantastic Four reboot, to critical and popular derision).  It was all about creating a fresh perspective, and that's exactly what he brought to Superman: American Alien, too.

It may just be the best Superman origin ever.  The story continues in each issue, and every now and again, you're reminded of that fact, but the decision to base each issue on a given moment in Superman's young life is a true creative triumph, that has seen rewards each issue.  Loeb and Sale's Superman: For All Seasons did much the same thing, as did John Byrne's Man of Steel, but in Landis' hands, it feels different.  He never shies away from exploring the full impact of these moments.  They're not just impressions, or Landis attempting to hit all the familiar marks.  He's blazing new territory each issue, which for a character three quarters of a century old, is truly remarkable.

Superman #52 (DC)

I haven't been following the complete "Final Days of Superman," the Peter J. Tomasi epic that rounds out, as much as any other story, the New 52 era.  The conclusion speaks for itself, however, so I'm not too worried.

In it, Superman is confronted by a doppelganger it takes everything he has to defeat.  Quite literally.  This issue counts as the official second death of Superman.

This is as clear a metaphor of the New 52 era as there could possibly be.  Grant Morrison helped launch it with the second Action Comics #1, presenting a new vision of Superman.  A series of writers within the pages of Superman itself attempted to keep up, and none of them, and indeed including Morrison himself, proved to produce that definitive New 52 Superman in quite the manner fans found with Scott Snyder's Batman. 

So it's only fitting that, out of Convergence emerged a third Superman to contend with in this issue.  Technically, he's been running around the pages of Lois & Clark, but for all intents and purposes (because, I believe, he'll be the star of Tomasi and Patrick Gleason's Rebirth-era Superman), this is his debut, in this epic clash of Supermen.

The solar flare power Geoff Johns introduced, and which has been driving Superman comics ever since, becomes a crucial element in how Tomasi concludes his epic.  The would-be Superman, Denny Swan (a name that combines Denny O'Neil and Curt Swan, two iconic DC creators), has now superseded Ulysses, another would-be Superman Johns introduced and previously featured in "Final Days of Superman," can only be defeated by this new power.  Which, because of circumstances, will prove deadly, should Superman use it again.

Of course he does.  And the Convergence Superman chooses this opportunity to finally reveal himself to the world.  It's kind of perfect.

Helping pull all this off is Mikel Janin, whose work was fascinating within the pages of Grayson, and so it's great to see him given such an opportunity to truly let his work shine.  He absolutely nails it.  This is some of the best Superman art in ages.  He'll next be seen in the pages of Tom King's Batman.  Couldn't be happier for him.

With that, in a way, Tomasi closes the book on the New 52.

Omega Men #12 (DC)

The series DC saved from cancellation at least reaches its final issue.  It was worth it.

Tom King's unique perspective was instantly evident in the sneak preview that saw Kyle Rayner seemingly executed.  Anyone who read further knew that Kyle survived, and that King had done that deliberately, and evoked what he evoked just as deliberately. 

Yeah, this was always a story about the Iraq War.  This conclusion makes that, if it wasn't before, completely obvious.  King is also writing the Vertigo series Sheriff of Baghdad, which addresses the war far more directly (drawing from King's own experiences), by the way.  One way or another, everyone has a strong opinion about the Iraq War.  I don't know if that alone will help people finally discover Omega Men, but maybe it should, because as a commentary, it's probably worth reading for that alone.

This issue is the story of what happened after the war ended.  King's Viceroy was Saddam Hussein, all along, the strongman uniquely capable of containing the madness of a Middle Eastern kingdom that stood apart, but somehow represented, the madness of the terrorism age.  That Hussein was originally put into power by the very people who later eliminated him isn't lost on King, and isn't dismissed as a conclusion in and of itself, as so many detractors of the war liked to make it.  No, this is a story of nuance.  It always was.

Kyle is forced to face the fact that all of the allies, the Omega Men, he aligned himself with during the course of the series, don't have happy endings.  Each of them become embroiled in the chaos caused by the elimination of the Viceroy who created his own kind of order in the Vega System, which the Guardians of the Universe had sealed off from its Green Lantern Corps ages ago, preciously because of this kind of scenario.

Kyle is left to try and make sense of it all.  He's asked, by an anonymous military figure, where he views his allegiances now.  I mean, that was the whole series right there, Kyle struggling with his conscience. 

King concludes that there are no easy answers.  All the William James quotes he ended issues with support this, that as humans, we're bound to find ourselves in traps of our own making, that to be human is to be faced with situations that are bigger than us, and that we're morally bound to confront them, that being human means we must.

It's superhero storytelling on a completely different scale.  Thirty years ago, Alan Moore produced the parable of the Nuclear Age we call Watchmen.  Now, we have King's parable of the War on Terror, and called it The Omega Men. 

It's that simple.

His partner in crime, Barnaby Bagenda, is as uniquely suited to bring this vision to life as Dave Gibbons was for Moore.  The style of Watchmen has been as commented on as its story.  With Omega Men, Bagenda's mastery of the grid ends up speaking directly to Kyle's conclusions.  Moore wrote an indictment of the superhero genre.  King, and Bagenda, leave the conclusion up to the reader.  Life isn't never that easy to interpret anyway.

Martian Manhunter #12 (DC)

The latest exceptional Martian Manhunter story ends, well, exceptionally.  DC uses the guy sparingly, but when it does, increasingly so, the results are among the best in superhero comics.

Rob Williams creates the logical conclusion to the story he began with his first issue, J'onn J'onzz once again at war with the remnant of his home planet, Mars.  From the beginning, Martian Manhunter was always a variant of Superman, last survivor of a doomed population, and a stranger in a strange land on Earth as a result.  Because he's green, J'onn has always had the ability to present what being alien really means to this particular superhero archetype, and writers have frequently been drawn to that popular aspect of his backstory: life on Mars.

At least as far back as Grant Morrison's JLA and the spinoff Martian Manhunter series from John Ostrander, other Martians make a constant hell for this guy.  Williams produced a whole host of aliases for him as he combatted the latest threat, at first keeping the fact that they were J'onn a secret, and therefore creating some unique new characters and versions of him, including the instantly iconic Mr. Biscuits, who sadly didn't make it to the final issue.

No, in this finale, Williams reveals that the whole thing was literally in Martian Manhunter's head.  He suggests that the superhero actually went mad.  Unlike Superman, he didn't spring forth from his home planet an innocent little baby.  No, Martian Manhunter was an adult.  He's lived with what happened to his people ever since. 

I think this is as plausible a conclusion to reach about him as any, and it's the perfect ending to Williams' story, which rightfully takes its place alongside the best of Martian Manhunter's stories, arguably at or near the top.  Maybe that sounds like faint praise, because this has never been one of the most popular of DC's characters, and therefore he remains somewhat obscure.  But with storytelling like this, who cares?

Justice League #50 (DC)

The conclusion to Geoff Johns' tenure on Justice League (there are two final issues to follow from other creators) finishes the epic "Darkseid War" in grand fashion. 

The mythology Johns created for "Darkseid War" alone is impressive.  Myrina and her daughter Grail, for instance, add not only to Amazon lore, but the New Gods as well.  It's only fitting, because Johns has literally been using Justice League as his Wonder Woman series all along, with few readers apparently realizing it.  Embroiled in this conflict is also, of course, Steve Trevor, who has been embroiled in a troubled relationship with Wonder Woman since the start of the series.

Grail turns out to be the real villain.  By now, the New Gods mythology is well-established, so someone new had to step into the role usually reserved for Orion: how to resolve what comes after Darkseid.  In Jack Kirby's original vision, Orion was the son of Darkseid while Mister Miracle was the son of Highfather.  In order to secure a truce between New Genesis (home of the good guys) and Apokolips (home of the bad guys), the offspring were raised by their (presumably) former enemies.  Mister Miracle, as ever, escaped unscathed.  It was Orion who emerged the troubled scion.  Famously, Kirby never got the chance to conclude his New Gods vision (the graphic novel Hunger Dogs didn't quite do the job).  So writers have been trying to do it for him ever since, including John Byrne (Jack Kirby's Fourth World) and Grant Morrison (Final Crisis).

Johns takes a unique approach by expanding the concept with significant new characters.  When he killed off Darkseid (these New Gods are always dying), he set about yet another new wrinkle.  His first had been introducing the concept that Crisis on Infinite Earths' Anti-Monitor was Mobius, whose chair Metron had been squatting in for as long as anyone could remember.  Darkseid's death unleashed all his powers, which went into various members of the Justice League. 

The ramifications prove to be profound, in this conclusion.  Batman sat in the chair, and learned the secret of the Joker's identity.  Turns out there are three of them.  Lex Luthor gained a killer new set of battle armor.  (He'll be wearing it in the Rebirth era's Action Comics.)  And Grail stole the offspring of Superwoman, from the Crime Syndicate, and made him the reincarnation of Darkseid.

The good news is, Johns also finally made Jessica Cruz an official member of the Green Lantern Corps, fulfilling the promise of a different teaser, from Green Lantern #20.

The only thing that doesn't really ring well is the art of Jason Fabok.  This is weird, because every other issue of Justice League with his work hasn't been a problem for me.  He has distinctive work, but I guess he's incapable of going truly wide screen which has been a staple of JLA comics since Howard Porter.  It's a shame.  Doesn't get in the way of the storytelling, but it produces an incomplete effect. 

Still, this was exactly what fans of this run could have hoped to see.  We even see, like in the beginning, Batman and Green Lantern working together, at one time a pair that seemed hopelessly incongruous.  Johns solved that by letting Batman use the ring.  As with Green Arrow before him (Green Lantern: Rebirth), it provides him with newfound respect for Hal Jordan.  Classic.

Grayson #20 (DC)

I made a point not to read issues of Robin: Son of Batman that weren't created by Patrick Gleason.  Although I've gained a healthy respect for Ray Fawkes, I just didn't see the point.

Fortunately, I didn't make the same choice with the final issue of Grayson.

Tim Seeley and Tom King launched this series in the wake of Nightwing's cancellation, and a lot of angry fans thought it was a horrible mistake, including the decision to give them Nightwing's final issue to help launch Grayson.  I knew Seeley and King weren't writing Grayson's final issues, and so initially thought they were fully worth skipping, like the Fawkes issues of Robin: Son of Batman.  I mean, what would have been the point?  Some other jokers would be given the crucial conclusion to Dick Grayson's war against Otto Netz?  No thanks!

Well, now I can say otherwise.  The "jokers" in question are Jackson Lanzing and Colin Kelly, who have previously collaborated on Archaia!'s Hacktivist (which, seemingly improbably, sprung from the mind of actress Alyssa Milano).  These guys don't miss a beat.  They literally step right in where Seeley and King left off.  In terms of unlikelihood, this ranks up there with Landry Walker successfully concluding Charles Soule's Red Lanterns as a comic book miracle.

Dick's relationship with Helena Bertinelli is the other fruitful focus of this series, and its conclusion, as Netz unwittingly reboots the comic book hooey that made it possible to begin with: the world knowing Nightwing's secret identity.  It's a fun end, fits in with the character of its lead character (which is what you would expect from any good comic book), everything Seeley and King sought to accomplish, and also finishes a Grant Morrison plot left over from the first run of Batman Incorporated.

Not bad at all.