Category Archives: Opinion

Salute to 1990s Comics

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Comics of the 1990s have gotten a bad rap. A lot of people look at them and see only the holofoil cover gimmicks, interminable summer crossovers (which are back), everyone trying to ape the Image style with humongous shoulder pads and spikes, mullets, Spider-Clones, Electric Superman, Emerald Twilight, and “kewl” revamps.

But there were also a lot of very good comics being published at the time, and everyone was trying new things. Sure, some of them didn’t work (like Bloodlines or Fate), but some of them did (like Starman). This list is going to be heavily DC, since that’s what I was reading at the time, but this is the decade that brought us: Continue reading →

Flash Gordon Does Not Have Super-Speed

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Spotted this article on Sony’s planned Flash Gordon movie: ‘Flash Gordon’ pace quickens with scribes. It opens with the tagline, “‘Flash Gordon’ is moving ahead at breakneck speed.” Those are odd comments for an ordinary guy who ends up having adventures in space, but appropriate for a super-speedster…. Yeah. Someone else got the Flash and Flash Gordon confused. It’s a typical example of what TV Tropes calls Cowboy Bebop at his Computer.

It fits with society’s general contempt for both comic books and science-fiction. If you ask whether a football team is playing in the World Series, people will look at you like you’re an idiot. But it’s okay to get Star Wars and Star Trek mixed up to the point where Dr. Spock has a lightsaber and Yoda says, “Live long and prosper.” In fact, many people look down on you if you do understand the difference.

Oddly, our mainstream culture is quite willing to go see science-fiction and comic-book films, as long as they have enough explosions. Take a look at the 30 top-grossing films list, and it’s one sci-fi, fantasy, or super-hero after another. (Exceptions: Titanic, Passion of the Christ, and Forrest Gump. I’m counting movies with talking animals as “fantasy.”) I guess it’s okay to watch the stuff, as long as you don’t remember too much about it afterward.

It also fits with the annoying tendency of headline writers to use the “Holy XYZ!” phrasing from the 1960s Batman TV show as if it’s somehow still relevant to modern-day comics or movies, despite a massive cultural shift away from camp and toward serious (and, in many cases, downright dark) storytelling over the past 20 years. That second link lists almost 50 examples from July alone!

I guess actually paying attention to what they write about would make them less cool or something.

Why Do I Buy Certain Comics?

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The Weekly Crisis recently invited 5 comics bloggers to write about why they buy the comics that they do, then turned it over to ask the readership the same question. This is an extended version of my response to that post.

For most of my comics-reading life, I’ve followed characters. I’d pick up The New Teen Titans and stick with it. I’d follow that to Flash (and that to Justice League Europe), Hawk and Dove, Deathstroke, Nightwing, etc.

Sometimes I would pick up a new book for the concept. I’d take a look at, say, Darkstars in the early 1990s, and think, “Hey, that sounds cool!” Or Planetary back in 1999, or Welcome to Tranquility last fall (yeah, in trades).

I’ve also tended to stick with the universe I know best — DC — and stand-alone titles. The Marvel books I’ve read tend to be either creator-owned (Groo the Wanderer when it was published at Epic), licensed (Transformers when I was younger), or off in their own little corner (Alias, The Twelve). Same with WildStorm — while I eventually tracked down some Stormwatch and Authority trades, mostly I read Planetary, which was off doing its own thing.

For a long time, I read most of the big events at DC. Partly it was because everyone was in them (and I was reading a lot more super-heroes back then), and partly it was because, if Big Changes were afoot, I wanted to see what happened. Though I drew the line at tie-in issues of series I didn’t read, unless they specifically crossed over with a book I was reading. (The one exception: DC One Million. I read almost all of those tie-ins because I wanted to see what DC did with the ideas.) Eventually I got tired of the endless crossovers of the 1990s, and stopped. Until Infinite Crisis, which looked interesting, but annoyed me even more in the end.

These days, I find myself following writers. Astonishing X-Men was far from my first comic, but it was my first X-Men comic — not counting the crossover with New Teen Titans back in the 1980s — and I picked it up because it was Joss Whedon. I’ll check out almost anything mystical written by Bill Willingham. Neil Gaiman’s name got me to pick up his Eternals miniseries, and you can bet I’ll pick up his Batman story next year. And I’m beginning to get to that point with Jay Faerber — Noble Causes, Firebirds and Dynamo 5 are hard to beat, and I resisted picking up Gemini, but finally gave in.

Like some of the respondents, I also have trouble letting go. I kept reading various incarnations of Titans for over a decade (everything from “Titans Hunt” to Infinite Crisis, minus the Jurgens series) even though I no longer really liked the book — just occasional stories. I kept hoping it would get better, but after being bitten over and over, I finally wised up and walked away.

I’ve gotten much better at only reading the stuff I actually like lately (Countdown to Final Crisis excepted; it was research material). I dropped Fell after a few issues because, as good as it was, it just disturbed the heck out of me. I gave Shadowpact and Jack of Fables a shot, but neither really grabbed me the way Fables did. I even came close to dropping Flash with the 2006 relaunch, though I decided to give it a chance. Once I picked it up, I stuck with it because the writers were clearly learning on the job (and you could see that they were learning from issue to issue), and then actually liked the next writer’s arc — not where it went, but how it was presented.

Looking at books I’ve started reading recently: Continue reading →

Final Crisis Theory of Impenetrability

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Three issues into Final Crisis, there’s a large contingent of people who feel that the book is “impenetrable,” and that it requires an encyclopedic knowledge of the DC Universe in order to understand it. I disagree. In fact, I think up to a point, knowledge of DC actually makes it harder to understand it.

From what I’ve read, the biggest complaints seem to be coming from people who know quite a bit about the DC universe and are annoyed that they don’t know the background on, say, Frankenstein (as he fits into the DCU), or Anthro, or Libra, etc. On the other hand, people who aren’t totally immersed in DC history assume they’re not going to recognize everyone, and are more willing to go with the flow.

Certainly, the book is steeped in the DC Universe. But for the most part, the characters’ back-stories don’t seem to be necessary to understand what’s going on in this story.

Example 1: The prologue in the first issue was set in pre-history, in which Metron of the New Gods filled the Prometheus role and gave fire to humans. A cavemen battle featured DC characters Anthro and Vandal Savage. A lot of people complained that if they hadn’t recognized the characters, they’d be lost. Well, no, not really — they’d just see a battle among cavemen, which gets the main idea across quite nicely.

Example 2: Frankenstein and S.H.A.D.E. figure prominently in the opening scenes of issue three. If you haven’t read Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein, you might wonder what the heck Frankenstein’s monster is doing working for an F.B.I.-like agency. On the other hand, the scene would still work if it were a random F.B.I. or S.H.A.D.E. agent. The back-story on the character isn’t necessary to understand his role here.

Oddly, I haven’t seen anyone complaining (yet) that they needed to pick up a Cave Carson showcase in order to understand the scene in which they discover a petroglyph.

I believe it was Bruce Timm who explained that on the Justice League cartoon, they made an effort to use existing characters from DC’s stable whenever possible. In one episode they needed a sniper. They could have just had a random sniper, but they looked through DC’s roster and decided to use Deadshot. Was Deadshot’s background necessary to understand the resulting episode? Not at all.

In a lot of these cases, what readers are missing isn’t a critical piece of the story — it’s bonus material. And again, it’s the people who have a solid but not thorough knowledge of DC who feel left out, because they know, say, JLA backward and forward, but not Kamandi, or they’ve memorized everything Geoff Johns has ever written, but didn’t read Seven Soldiers. So they feel like they should know the back-story.

As an experiment, I handed the first issue to my wife, whose familiarity with the DC Universe mainly comes from the animated Justice League. She had some questions, certainly, but she was able to understand most of what was going on.

Working up the scale, you eventually get to the readers who do recognize almost everything, and then the key issue becomes: what attitude do they take toward the parts they don’t know? Are they frustrating? Or are they puzzles to solve?

As for myself, admittedly I do have a strong grounding in the DCU, having read a lot of their comics over the past two decades. But there were still characters I didn’t recognize, like Dan Turpin and Sonny Sumo. Heck, I missed the fact that the evil caveman in the prologue was Vandal Savage, which enhances a later scene (when Libra mentions that the world has been waiting a long time for Vandal Savage to make good on his threats to conquer it*). Even so, these gaps in my DC knowledge didn’t prevent me from figuring out what was going on, because I thought, oh, these must be new characters. Picking up the details through sites like Final Crisis Annotations certainly enhanced the experience, but I didn’t feel that my initial reading had suffered at all.

So in short, here’s my theory (well, really it’s just a hypothesis) on how readers react to Final Crisis:

  • Minimal DC knowledge: Accepts gaps in knowledge, goes with what they do know and what’s on the page, and follows the book.
  • Medium DC knowledge: Gaps in knowledge are infuriating, feels the book is impenetrable.
  • Extensive DC knowledge: Follows the book, then gets involved in discussions afterward to see what they missed.

*I prefer the take given by some story I can’t remember, in which Vandal Savage says, “From time to time, I have chosen to rule the world.” It makes him more menacing, to think that for the most part he isn’t really trying, and when he has put the effort in, he’s succeeded.

What I want to see after Flash: Rebirth

Okay. Time to lay it all on the line. As much as I’m a Flash fan, I’m more specifically a Wally West fan.

I’ve read Barry’s entire run. I’ve read nearly half of Jay’s (and spent way too much tracking down back issues). I’ve read all of Impulse and the one year of Bart’s run as Flash. But Wally will always be my Flash. So obviously I’m facing Barry’s return and practically-guaranteed retaking of the spotlight with some trepidation. Some of the rumors floating around haven’t helped matters.

But I’m trying to be positive.

So, DC, I know you don’t care about one particular fan’s preferences, but here’s what would make me happy at the end of Flash: Rebirth and the start of the new era in The Flash.

  • Barry and Iris together.
  • Wally and Linda together.
  • Iris II and Jai alive, preferably somewhere between 8 and 17 years old physically & mentally so they can actually be characters. Powers optional. (Yes, I’m one of the weirdos who likes the twins. And yes, I’ve read last month’s issue. I’m still holding out to see how the cliffhanger resolves.)
  • Wally still prominent as the Flash, not shoved off into a corner or renamed “Mr. Zip.”
  • Jay alive.
  • Bart alive, if possible. It’s okay if he’s in the 31st century. And I think he worked better as Impulse (though I think he could have worked as the Flash, if DC had really gotten behind the series and given it a chance instead of bailing at the first sign of audience discontent).

What would make me feel that Wally hasn’t gotten shafted?

  • Nothing that screams “demotion” or “second-rate” or “sidekick.” No “Thanks for filling in, the real Flash is back. Go back to the kids’ table.” (Obviously some of this is inherent in Barry taking over the spotlight and Wally getting the costume change, but let’s minimize it, okay?)
  • Put him in an outfit that doesn’t evoke his old Kid Flash costume.
  • Have him appear in more than just The Titans on a monthly basis. I spent most of a decade picking up various incarnations of that book solely out of hope that it would get better, and finally broke myself of the habit during Infinite Crisis. (Actually, I did like the first year and a half of Geoff Johns’ run, but other than that, I didn’t really care for more than the occasional storyline from Titans Hunt onward). Unless I start hearing that it’s fantastic, I’m not going to pick it up just because it’s the only place I can read new stories with Wally West.
  • Wally in Justice League of America and Barry in Justice League. This is such an obvious win-win solution, especially since Barry’s friends Hal, Ollie and Ray are all supposed to be in the latter book.

Also, assuming Barry takes over the main Flash title, I’d like to see Wally in a parallel title. Some ideas:

  • Pick up Barry’s series as The Flash with #351, and start Wally’s series up again with #248 and a title change.
  • Launch The Flash starring Barry with #1, and launch All-Flash with a rotating cast of Wally, Jay and others, also with #1.

So, there you have it, DC. One of many points you can add to your marketing data.

Final Crisis: Altered Balance

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In responding to Comic Treadmill’s review of Final Crisis #1, I realized that a common thread links many of the criticisms various people have leveled at the series: a change in balance between plot, continuity, and theme. I’ll try to keep this as spoiler-free as I can.

Plot-Driven Events

We’ve gotten used to event books where the most important elements are plot and continuity, almost to extreme. Books like The OMAC Project, Day of Vengeance and Rann-Thanagar War were accused of being bullet-point series, where the writers seemed to be going down a checklist of items that had to happen. Villains United differed by emphasizing characterization, and proved to be the stand-out among the four Infinite Crisis lead-ins.

Looking back at Infinite Crisis: what was the theme? Early on there seemed to be a concept of “Okay, the world’s fundamentally broken. Do you fix it or start over?” — but that went by the wayside as it turned into villain threatens the universe and heroes must stop him. If anything, perhaps the value of perseverance?

Focus on Theme

With Final Crisis, people have complained about the “filler” — the caveman battle in issue #1, the Japanese super-hero team at the night club in issue #2, etc. — and about continuity. Either there’s too much continuity, because it uses obscure characters, or there’s not enough, because it conflicts with Countdown and Death of the New Gods (which didn’t quite line up themselves).

I think what Grant Morrison is doing is writing a story where theme is more important than plot. What happens, or how it happens, isn’t as important as why it happens. And so far, the “why” is all about humanity’s capacity for corruption. From taking the prehistoric gift of fire and turning it into a weapon of war, to taking the modern-day gifts of super-powers and turning them into a tool for popularity, we see how humans can misuse their potential. Similarly, there’s the detail of the community center becoming a strip club. The corrupting influence of Darkseid and his minions fits right in.

Balance

There’s also the “Evil won” concept, where Libra mentions that the balance has shifted between good and evil. Morrison has previously treated the fact that the good guys (almost) always win as part of the nature of the DCU. In JLA #9, the Key took advantage of this to set up a scenario such that the Justice League winning would further his own plans. More prominently, in JLA: Earth 2, the League tried to travel to the Crime Syndicate’s world and correct as many injustices as they could in a limited time period. Because the nature of that universe was opposite — there, evil always won — none of the League’s victories could last. Kurt Busiek later picked up on this for his “Syndicate Rules” arc. The key setup for Final Crisis seems to be that the rules have changed, and until they’re changed back, evil will always have the upper hand. This explains why, as one reviewer put it, heroes are getting taken out like teenagers in a slasher movie.

Clearly, for the story to not be totally depressing and destroy the DCU, part of the story will have to be about redressing that balance.

For the record: I’m not a giant Grant Morrison fan. I enjoyed his run on JLA, DC One Million, his Flash run, and Seven Soldiers. I’ve read the first trade (or perhaps two) of The Invisibles and maybe two issues of Animal Man, and none of Doom Patrol. Seaguy left me utterly confused, but I think I need to re-read it now. I don’t think I’ve read any of his Marvel work, or Image, or anything he did before breaking into the US market.