Comics! History in the Making!

I wasn't blogging back in the late 1930s when the first "Action Comics #1" made its appearance, so reacting to DC Comics' publication this week of its 'New 52' first issue of what was once its flagship title is all terra incognita to me. That original 1938 issue introduced to an unsuspecting world the character of Superman, a thickset white guy who wore a bright red cape and had superhuman strength and durability. Those original pages, written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster, contained no real hint of the phenomenon that the character would become - in the beginning, the god of comic books was just a really strong guy with a smart mouth: he fought mobsters, intervened in domestic disputes, dismantled minor mob violence ... exactly the kinds of things later held up as examples of stuff Superman doesn't bother with. As difficult as it might be for later generations of fans to believe, the original Superman was a brusque vigilante who took the law into his own hands and wasn't particularly liked for it by the local police. He was Batman, only bullet-proof.

As some of you have been reading here, DC Comics has decided to re-invent all of their core characters for the 21st century, most certainly including venerable old "Action Comics," which begins this week with, would you look at that, #1. "Action Comics #1."

It's written by fan-favorite Grant Morrison and drawn by fan-favorite Rags Morales, and the first thing long-time Superman fans will notice is the homage these creators pay to that original Seigel/Shuster production. When we meet this new Superman for the first time, he's violently breaking up a meeting of corrupt financiers, and he's being hunted by the Metropolis police (and we're told he threw an abusive husband out a window). And the resemblance to that original 1930s conception don't end there: this Superman doesn't work for the Daily Planet yet, hasn't met Lois Lane yet, and most importantly, doesn't have Superman-style powers yet - he can't fly, he's hurt by artillery fire, and he's only a tiny bit more powerful than a locomotive. We're given to believe he's only been in the public eye for six months (and, tellingly, that he's been getting more and more powerful that whole time), and he's already hated by the Army and a snivelling, conniving Lex Luthor (who's given an anti-alien riff that could become a promising nexus of motivation for the character, if Morrison bothers to do anything with it - of all comic book super-villains, Luthor has always had the worst reasons for actually being a super-villain, so virtually anything would be an improvement).

Despite Morales' always-enjoyable artwork, it's a pretty boring first issue, and it neatly serves to underscore a point fans don't often make these days: that original 1938 first issue of "Action Comics" was also pretty boring. This is re-invention as groundwork: this issue doesn't have the "Five Years Ago" opening tag that last week's "Justice League" did, but it badly needs one. This is obviously Morrison's vision of this new Superman's rough introduction to the world, who knows how many years before he becomes the suited and respected hero already starting to crop up elsewhere in the "new 52" universe.

In fact, that inconsistent sloppiness is my main complaint about all of the "new 52" I've seen so far. DC released a dozen first issues this week (after releasing just one last week), and despite the fact that DC moguls have been assuring fans for months that this whole re-boot was carefully and exhaustively planned, the entire thing feels hastily cobbled together. In four of those dozen issues this week, both Superman and the Justice League are referred to as established, respected things (Batman and Guy Gardner chat like old colleagues, and the Martian Manhunter is described as a Justice League member and describes himself that way), in a separate four, no mention is made of any existing superheroes at all, and in the remainder all our iconic DC heroes are just beginning to appear and learn about each other.



So is "Action Comics" going to spend its first story-arc depicting the years-ago public debut of Superman and then abruptly shift years forward to start giving us 'contemporary' adventures? In four issues when Morrison leaves this title, will subsequent writers be allowed to delve back into this early period for more stories (or even re-do Morrison's incredible dramatic blunder and actually show us something of those initial six months)? No idea.

In this issue, Superman wears boots, jeans, and a home-made red cape - all very obviously ideas that struck Morrison on his way to the bathroom one day and stayed in the final version because there only ever was one version. I myself think a re-launch of the greatest superhero of all time deserves a bit more deliberation than that, but I'm willing to wait a few more issues in the hopes that something worthy of the character starts happening. I'll keep you posted.

Great Moments in Comics: Lois & Clark!

As I've mentioned, these last few weeks of DC Comics have managed to be both sad and anticlimactic. Beginning next week, the company effects a complete overhaul of its flagship titles and all its characters, radically changing the origins, powers, relationships, and back-stories of all its best-known (and lesser-known) heroes. DC is pouring all its energies into this "new 52" revamp, and that's had the predictable effect of throwing all of its ongoing monthly titles into the shade. Readers - even loyal fans - have wondered what the point is of buying their favorite titles when everything about those titles is going to change completely in only a few weeks. And there's been a side-effect as well: all the writers of these various ongoing titles at some point realized that they were every bit as big a part of comics history as the new writers and artists who'll be mucking around with greatness in September: each one of these current creators is shutting down some comics, and many of those comics have been around for most of the last century. In its own sad way, that's some epic stuff - take Paul Cornell, for instance. His name is unknown to me, but this week he's the guy who's writing the last issue of "Action Comics" as we know it. That's a weirdly abrupt kind of responsibility.

He wraps up the ongoing storyline in which Superman and his allies defeat a group of marauding Doomsday clones, and then he gives Superman fans a Great Moment very much like what they've been looking for all these last weeks. Lois and Clark are enjoying a quiet dinner together, and Clark is confessing his worry to her that his friends and allies look up to him for all the wrong reasons, that they're willing to sacrifice themselves for him and maybe shouldn't be. And Lois tells him:

People know the most important thing about your identity ... that, whoever they are, you're like them. A human being. Hitler said he'd made "the superman," Stalin was called "the man of steel" ... but no, one look at you, and no, never, you blow that out of the water ... because people know who the real Superman is. It's this decent guy with the silly smile who's sometimes a little old-fashioned, who lives a whole human life. Who fell in love and got married.

Clark, coming from Krypton didn't make you Superman. Martha and Jonathan did. And thanks to your doubts and your fears and your absolute refusal to be above anyone ... you do them proud every day.

No fanfare, no massive action sequence ... nothing to match the bleak grandeur of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" - but still: I can't help but feel a little edge in that "people know who the real Superman is."

 

comics in july!

Five different comics this time around, and the thrilling breath of rejuvenation running through each one of them! And the incredible thing is, four out of five of those comics were published by Marvel, a company whose recent creative decisions have been, shall we say, questionable (fascism rules? check! Spider-Man off in la-la land? check! Captain America effing dead? check!). We here at Stevereads once thought that, given the state of affairs at Marvel, the only way they could field a rejuvenatingly good issue would be to very consciously set it outside the pig's breakfast that is the company's current continuity. Put Spider-Man in some sort of mystical backwater where you can turn back the clock; put the Hulk on an alien world and follow his adventures there; put Thor (and Asgard) out in the American badlands as a declared neutral, etc.



So imagine our surprise to find that two out of these four Marvel titles take place smack-dab in the middle of the current muddled continuity! One of these is Marvel's flagship title, The Fantastic Four, now under the creative control of writer Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch; issue #558 is the start of a new storyline (not, curiously, the one trumpeted on the cover, "Starting This Issue: The Death of the Invisible Woman" - no hint of which is present in the issue itself), one which sees the villainous Doctor Doom falling prey to a group of mercenaries called the New Defenders (who, in the tiresome Millar fashion, are made to seem bad-ass by easily defeating our heroes in the initial set-to), forcing the FF to come to his defense. Hitch's pencils still seem a little rough (Andrew Currie is not his ideal inker), but Millar's got a good grasp of the non-stop action and underlying humanity that are the hallmarks of this particular team. We predict that if Millar stays with the title, this Doctor Doom storyline will turn out to be really, really good, and the eventual Galactus storyline will be epic. We shall see.



The other of these two issues is the latest She-Hulk, written by fanboy-favorite hack Peter David and drawn with interesting linear simplicity by Val Semeiks. The plot is fairly simple stuff - a giant on a rampage in a city, She-Hulk and guest star Hercules teaming up to beat the giant and save the day, etc. The rejuvenation here is something happening in more than one place in the Marvel universe these days: the revived and fantastic use of Hercules as a character. He's got his own comic, and he's appearing everywhere else, and this is a very welcome development - in Marvel comics, Hercules has always stood in the shadow of Thor, but in many ways he's more interesting and logical character to moonlight as a super-hero: after all, he's part human, whereas Thor is not. When you think about it, it's an inherently silly idea that a god of thunder would spend time having adventures alongside the Wasp and Hawkeye. But Hercules has a history of adventuring alongside superpowered mortals, so it's refreshing to see him showing up i so many places lately.

One of which, in this issue of She-Hulk, is her bed! After their adventure together, these two heroes decide to make merry in her RV, and one thing leads to another. Oddly, when it's time for him to write the inevitable morning-after scene, David doesn't screw it up. As she looks at the sleeping Hercules, She-Hulk thinks, "When all is said and done, he was one of the few who stood beside Bruce when it all went down. That meant a lot to me. He meant a lot to me. And well ... he's immortal. For all I've got going for me, that's something I'll never be. Except ... I was, for one brief moment in time, the lover of Hercules. So maybe that's a little bit of immortality for me. There's dumber reasons to have sex with a guy. I should know: I've used them all."


Far more typical is the aforementioned manuever of setting your story outside of the current Marvel continuity, which is what our next two Marvel issues do. Matt Fraction's new issue of his ongoing Thor mini-series is firmly mythological in its setting; here there is no hint of Thor the super-hero, just high epic fantasy - for which Fraction shows a surprisingly adept hand. The dialog of his gods, demons, and monsters bears no similarity to the 'thee's and 'thou's of Stan Lee's era, but it's extremely distinctive just the same.

The issue features two parts, the first drawn by Khari Evans in a competent enough manner reminiscent of Ron Frenz, and the second drawn to bring the walls down by Patrick Zircher. The first segment is entertaining enough - again, a loose adaptation of a story out of Norse mythology - but the second story! Hoo-boy! Here is everything a real Thor story should be (except that Thor, true to Norse mythology if not to Marvel continuity, is still a bit of a jerk): it's sweeping, epic, and full of fantastic stuff. The best part of it happens when the poor mortals of Earth, beset by legions of the undead, create the husk of a "blood colossus" to combat their enemies. They pray and pray to summon Thor, hoping his lightning will bring their blood colossus to life: "Mortals prayed and prepared as best they could. Shattered by the unending cruelty of an unjust punishment, they began to look toward the miraculous. Until finally the miraculous began to look back." Thor shows up, animates the colossus, and saves the day, but this all feels much more like some alternate title Marvel would have published in the mid-'70s.

Our plea here at Stevereads: Marvel should create a new title, call it "Tales of Asgard," and make Patrick Zircher illustrate it until Ragnarok, if not longer.



The other offset Marvel issue this time around takes a much surer path: a retold origin story. In this case, it's an installment in the ongoing, spottily-executed 'Mythos' title aimed at revisiting the origins of Marvel's characters. In this case, touchingly, it's Captain America's turn, here getting a splendid, moving treatment by writer Paul Jenkins and artist/painter Paolo Rivera. This is an origin story that's been told many times - skinny WWII army reject Steve Rogers is chosen to undergo experimental procedures and become America's "super-soldier," Captain America. The one difference in this retelling (inspired, no doubt, by the "Ultimate" version of Captain America featured in "The Ultimates") is that we're specifically told that the experiments give Captain America super-human abilities. But that's beside the point of the story, which is a wonderful story of a man out of time. That, plus the issue having the greatest cover of any Marvel comic published in 2008, makes this issue a large-lunged call to bring back their signature character, for Pete's sake.


And then there's the ongoing rejuvenation of The Legion of Super-Heroes over at DC Comics, all thanks to legendary writer Jim Shooter, who has kept his new run on this, his old stomping-grounds, positively sizzling with activity on many fronts, all the while packing in a disarming amount of characterization. Bit by bit, piece by piece, he's editing out the ridiculousness of the current Legion incarnation and weaving back in his own sure-footed grounding in character and action. His Legion is beset on all sides - physically by monsters continually adapting to their powers, politically from a suspicious United Planets eager to control the Legion. Each issue happens at breakneck speed, which is great (and something not one writer in ten can manage successfully), and we here at Stevereads confidently expect that the upcoming issues will feature some of the Legion basics Shooter hasn't got to yet - a possible Brainiac 5 meltdown, for instance, or the arrival on the scene of a genuine villain or two (the monsters in these issues are a good start, since there's got to be somebody pulling their strings). In the meantime, this is great stuff, especially for Legion fans.

All of the issue this time around were great stuff - something we doubt we'd be saying if we'd allowed the clerk at the Android's Dungeon to talk us into the latest issue of Trinity, or Final Crisis, or some such. A fate narrowly avoided, and as it is, we put aside our batch of comics smiling a contented smile.

Comics! Superman and the Legion!

Just a quick note here to tip our hats to the conclusion of Geoff Johns' epic "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" storyline unfolding in Action Comics.

The storyline - the best Action Comics has hosted in many, many years (and one of the best Superman storylines in recent memory, period), left us all on a great cliffhanger last time around, with a powerless Superman (in the future where the storyline takes place, the nefarious xenophobic Earth-Man has used captive Sun Boy's solar powers to turn Earth's sun red, thus depriving Superman of his powers)(which is silly for two reasons: 1. Sun Boy is the teenaged result of a freak lab accident - he's just not powerful enough to pull off solar transformations, even nefariously augmented, and 2. it wouldn't change everything anyway - Superman is from a world with a much greater specific gravity than Earth - even with a red sun in the sky, he'd still be super-strong and damn near invulnerable ... but we digress ....) fearlessly attacking Earth-Man, who's purloined all the super-powers of every member of the legendary Legion of Super-Heroes.

At the commencement of this issue, that fight is going exactly as you'd expect: Superman's losing badly. But our heroes are active behind the scenes, trying to revive Sun Boy and get him to reverse the spectrum of the sun (the actual means by which he's revived is hilarious and fitting, and it's all the more ironic that the suggestion comes from Brainiac 5).

They succeed, and a restored Superman faces an enraged Earth-Man in full view of the watching crowds, who've been brainwashed into thinking Superman is human and hates all the aliens currently living on Earth. "That's not Superman," says one helmeted police officer. "Superman wouldn't help aliens. He's for human rights. He's for us!"

Gary Frank is not the artist for Superman. His costumes have too many real-life wrinkles, and we've already discussed his penchant for 'rabies faces.' But still, his Superman can occasionally be visually stirring, and this is one of those times. The Man of Steel looks at the crowd and calmly says, "I'm for everyone. And you should know that, officer."

(a moment later, just before he takes the fight to Earth-Man and away from the innocent bystanders, he has an even better, even more quintessentially Superman exchange with that same officer: "Get everyone clear, officer." 'Yes, sir." "And be nice to each other while I'm gone, okay?")

There follows an epic battle in which Superman enlists the aid of the newly cobbled-together (and all grown up) Legion of Super-Heroes to fight Earth-Man. Needless to say, the bad guy loses, interplanetary war is averted, and the Legion is restored to public esteem. For those of us who devoutedly wish for a monthly Legion of Super-Heroes comic in normal continuity (and we're damn near getting it, in Jim Shooter's revamped Legion over in its own book, a title that just keeps getting better and better), this stuff is pure gold: this Legion is just what we remember our Legion being - heroic, quipping, conflicted, but always shining. Johns must have fed on the same back-issues, because his treatment of the Legion is pitch-perfect.

The issue's ending - indeed, it's hard not to think of it as the graphic novel's ending - is so satisfying as to be almost euphoric. The adult Brainiac-5 assures Superman that he'll need a couple of minutes to repair the irrevocably shattered time-sphere that brought our hero to the future, and just like that, we're back the past: not Superman's present, but his past as well. The issue's ending opens on a sunlit scene outside the Kent family farm in Smallville. A time-sphere opens and disgorges a very young Legion - Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad - and one other ... a nerdy little teenager called Clark Kent, who's been brought forward by the trio to share in their 31st century adventures and has come back crowing and laughing with the largeness of his adventures in their world.

It's a touching moment. He plaintively wonders if he'll ever see them again, to which they reply "what are you doing tomorrow?" Lightning Lad scorches an "L" in a nearby tree and says "Meet us here after school."

The issue ends with a grown-up Superman standing by that same tree, safely returned to his own time, looking back at his time with the Legion - young and old - as some of the best times of his life. It's a perfect grace-note on which to end what has been the best 'adult Legion' storyline ever written.

The oddities linger, of course. The new adventures of the Cartoon-Network Legion are being produced by the same parent-company that produces both Bryan Singer's Superman movies, and so the very young, obviously early-teened Super-figure in those adventures is called 'SuperMAN' by his young teammates - almost as though the DC powers that be want to pointed avoid using the term 'Superboy' ... and what about the conclusion to this epic, satisfying as it is? We're supposed to believe that young Clark Kent's hard-working parents could pay for every Kansas sweatshirt burned off him in the 31st century in pitched battle with the Emerald Empress?

No, somebody somewhere in some DC boardroom has said, 'Let's not call anybody 'Superboy' - and that kind of thing is only ever said if somebody's thinking of profit down the line. We'll have to wait and see what that amounts to - a live-action series of movies (or even TV-movies) starring some young teen heart-throb like Zack Efron or Jesse McCartney can't be entirely ruled out - but in the meantime, this present series has been so immensely satisfying that we, for once, can't complain. Long live the Legion, indeed.

Comics!

Just a brief note here on two current issues, since a) they represent polar opposites in terms of conception, b) they possess some exact similarities in terms of conception, and c) somebody's gotta talk about comics around here! Worry not, all you non-comics readers: we'll be brief.

First up is issue #7 of the new J. Michael Straczynski/Olivier Coipel relaunch of Thor - only ooops! Coipel has already decamped for fresher coke-fields! Leaving Straczynski to bravely soldier on alone - for the two or three more issues it takes before he's bored and twitchy too, or until some slightly-larger relaunch paycheck is waved under his nose. We here at Stevereads have bemoaned before this mayfly tendency among comic creators these days, so we won't belabor the point here. We're only glad the book's new artist - Marko Djurdjevic - is almost as good as Coipel; in the bad old days, the art chores would have fallen to George Tuska or Herb Trimpe - Marvel hacks who lacked talent but could at least be relied upon.

And the storyline in this issue had an interesting twist as well. At the end of the previous issue, Thor had expended all his Asgardian power in a gigantic planet-wide effort to revive all his fellow gods (currently slumbering inside mortal hosts) ... all perhaps save one. As he confesses to his own mortal host Don Blake, Thor is hesitant to revive his father Odin, because Odin only knows 'the old ways, the old patterns,' and Thor wants to break free of them. The issue left us unclear whether or not Thor had decided to bring his bat-shit crazy daddy back to life.

(or did it? One of Coipel's final panels on this title he told everybody he'd be with for years was an indistinct shot of somebody looking vaguely Odin-like, materializing in a busy city square)

This issue begins with Thor so exhausted from his efforts that he has to go into the Odinsleep (or, more properly now, the Thorsleep), a kind of mystical coma designed to restore his strength. In this coma, our hero (who, so far in this title, has yet to do anything all that heroic - with the single exception of beating the living snot out of Tony Stark) exists in a state between life and death - and in that state, he sees his father re-fighting the epic battle with the flame-demon Surtur that claimed his life before this re-boot began. Odin is victorious, and he and Thor have a father and son chat - about how Asgardian sons always kill their fathers (heartwarming stuff). Odin relates a time eons past when he had a chance to revive his own father, Bor, and didn't - because, he tells Thor, it's perfectly natural for sons to want to step out of their fathers' shadows:

If you had wished to recall me from the darkness, my son ... you would have made some effort before now. Would have summoned mages. Would have asked questions. Would have tried. You did not. As I would have not, in your place.
Figures - the first time in the title's history where Odin talks straight with his son, and he's DEAD.

The issue ends in mid-flashback (and a record LOW number of pages of artwork) with a hearty 'to be continued...' teaser, and we here at Stevereads have a STUNNING PREDICTION for you all to mull over for the next month: the shadowy figure revived by Thor in the previous issue isn't Odin - it's BOR! Get ready for some grandfather-grandson trash-talking!

The second title we're taking up today is issue #172 of Robin, written by Chuck Dixon and drawn with wonderful low-key detail by David Baldeon. This issue continues the book's ongoing storyline which finds Robin dealing night after night with a new 'mask,' Violet, who steals from the rich and corrupt and gives to .... herself. Our current Robin, Tim Drake (here portrayed by Baldeon as in his late teens, on the verge of no longer being a 'boy' wonder), has had lots of experience in the run of this always-excellent title with young women who wander back and forth over the sharp line of right-and-wrong he learned from Batman, and Violet is no different: he's fascinated by her, but he's also compelled to stop her.

The issue's most interesting wrinkle is that he's being aided in that goal by two Gotham detectives, who want to partner with him openly, as an agent and confidential informant, as sort of a ground-level Jim Gordon sans bat-signal. Tim is suspicious of them, and even though their in-car patter (which we hear and he doesn't) seems innocent enough, the device has lots of potential for future complications.

The end of the issue finds Tim no closer to catching Violet, but the takedown of an illegal casino that is the issue's main action is expertly done and consistently fast-paced.

Which is where the similarities and differences of these two titles come in. The differences are obvious: Thor's the most powerful super-hero either Marvel or DC have to offer (no matter what INSANE happenings might have taken place in the famous Avengers/Justice League team-up from a few years ago), and Robin's the least powerful. Thor's title is now pretty much entirely involved in introspection and house-setting (the actual storylines are obviously being kept back for the second graphic novel), whereas Robin's book is humming merrily along on the strength of plot and character.

But the similarities are greater: both books are really good - among the best their respective companies currently put out. Thor is still in an epic holding pattern, but we here at Stevereads have faith (how can we not, him being our favorite Marvel character and all?). And Robin - through pretty much the entire run of this book - is finally getting the consistently excellent treatment the character has always deserved.

So until other voices should resume talking about comics (ahem ...), we'll let those two stand as our recommendations of the week. Even coming in mid-story in both, you'll find lots to entertain you.

Comics again! Intolerable provocation!

Well, yes, yes, we know: we just five minutes ago officially signed over comics-related matters to our distant colleague Gianni over at The Latest Issue – and we meant it, we meant it. But this week, the provocation has been so extravagant, so pin-pointed to our particular obsessions here at Stevereads that even our worst enemy (that would be Desmond Tutu, for self-evident reasons) would have to forgive us for leaping into the fray one last time. The provocation comes in pure, undiluted form, in the latest issue of Action Comics, issue #858.

Why, the mere cover is provocation enough: Superman, flying over an obviously futuristic city, his right fist thrust forward showing … you guessed it … a Legion flight ring. A legion flight ring, ladies and gentlemen! We are awe-inspiring here at Stevereads, yes, but we are still but flesh and blood. We rose to the bait.

And hoo boy, what bait! In this particular issue, Chapter 1 of “Alien World,” written by Geoff Johns and drawn in an oddly inimitable style by Gary Frank, Clark Kent is being chewed out by Perry White in the offices of the Daily Planet when he super-hears Metropolis citizens in panic at the onslaught of Superman’s old arch-enemy Brainiac, this time suited up in the form of a giant robot. Of course Kent excuses himself and flies off to belt the malefactor.

But there’s a twist this time around – the robot turns out to be not Brainiac but the tool of Brainiac-5, which is the exact point when some brown-nosing intern at Stevereads stopped reading and raced up the spiral staircase to our office, bursting through the doors and interrupting an impromptu meeting we were taking with Jacques Barzun, all to blurt out “the Legion! They’re talking about the Legion!”

We took the issue and read it right through on the spot, after which (as soon as we fired the hapless intern for reading funny books on our time) we apologetically dismissed Jacques (it went hard with him – he’s no doubt rightfully worried about how many meetings he’s got left in him – but some things come first) and sat down to compose our thoughts.

The key moment comes once Superman has disabled the giant robot and learned it’s being piloted by Brainiac-5: Superman asks, “who are you?” and Brainiac-5 answers “I am one of your friends” and zaps him with some kind of energy discharge, which triggers a flashback to the first moment young boy Clark Kent met Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy, who’d traveled back in time to greet the legendary Superman before he became a legend. The energy-discharge sequence clearly indicates Superman had somehow repressed or forgotten this encounter, and many more such encounters. Superman says: “Of course, the Legion used to visit me between school days. We had adventures in the future between classes … then I moved to metropolis, there was the crisis, and I never saw the Legion again.”

All of which is interesting in a ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ sort of way, but it begs the essential question.

Gianni himself might phrase that question thus: What the frak?

A little background for the uninitiated: the ‘crisis’ referred to here is that gigantic disorganized mess of a comics event, Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was an effort on DC Comics’ part to prune the bewildering profusion of backstory it had accumulated in nearly fifty years of comics storytelling. There had cropped up, in the course of those years, a very near infinite number of alternate-earths, alternate dimensions, and the ultimate goal of Crisis was to pair that down to one and one only. And in that single new reality, Superman had revealed himself to the world as a full-grown adult. He’d never put on the costume earlier – there had been no Superboy.

That invalidated the Legion. Its founding members – the aforementioned Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy – had taken as their central inspiration to form their club in the first place the adventures of the most famous super-teen of them all, Superboy. No Superboy, no Legion.

Or maybe not. Legion writers post-Crisis took the natural step: they posited that the Legion had taken its inspiration not from Superboy but from Superman and all the heroes of the second millennium. Fans of the Legion could still have their valiant team of future heroes, they’d just have to do without the whole ‘Superboy and’ prefix. Speaking as one of those fans (and as the proud possessor of about 300 comic books devoted to the adventures of a character DC Comics now said never existed), we took what we could get, and we weren’t disappointed: some of the best Legion runs in the team’s entire history (a very long and very convoluted history about which our old friend Locke is entirely correct: only a very, shall we say, special cadre of comics fans know). No Superboy, true, but we got our Legion and it was still great.

And that’s the way it was, as Uncle Walter used to say, despite various flirtations (the most attractive of which was also the briefest, when the Superboy clone was mysteriously transported to the future and donned the costume to fight alongside the team), until the present moment.

The present moment when, it appears, the powers that be at DC Comics have decided that official DC continuity (and it doesn’t get any more official than Action Comics, the most venerable of all venerable comics titles) now encompasses the fact that young Clark Kent often traveled to the future to have adventures with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The real Legion of Super-Heroes, as Frank’s glorious two-page spread in the middle of the issue demonstrates in heartbreaking magnificence: there they all are – Triplicate Girl, not one of whom is a saucy tart, Princess Projectra, who’s not a great big snake, Timber Wolf, who’s not an enormous bear-like creature … there’s no Blok, no Dawnstar, no Wildfire, no Tyroc; but there’s Star Boy (not insane), there’s Colossal Boy (growing big, not small), there’s Brainiac-5 (organic, not mechanical) and everybody else … Shadow Lass, Mon-el, Chameleon Boy, Invisible Boy, Element Lad, Dream Girl, Phantom Girl, Ultra Boy, Karate Kid … even Bouncing Boy and Matter-Eater Lad.

That two-page spread broke our heart here at Stevereads.

As some of you may know, we consider the current run of the Legion extremely dismaying. The team is a conglomerate of disaffected punks who hate adults on spec and yearn to rule the cosmos. The team-members all hate each other and conspire against each other, and there hasn’t been a single ‘Long Live the Legion’ moment in almost two years. Even in the past, even when Keith Giffens’ legendary run on the series introduced a more dystopian element, there was still ample room for the particular kind of heroism that the Legion has always embodied; not so now, and we sense that the dissatisfaction this engenders is more widespread than the powers that be at DC might at first be willing to acknowledge.

Or perhaps not. After all, more ‘traditional’ incarnations of the Legion have been cropping up all over the line of DC comics in the last two or three years, not the least of which has been the hit Cartoon Network series which so completely foreshadows this current Action Comics development that we can’t help but think they are two prongs of the same prongy-thing. Despite the continued crabgrass-tenacious life of the current incarnation of the Legion, there’s obviously a group, a voice a bloc, who yearn for a return to the real Legion, the one more or less embodied in Frank’s two-page spread (not ‘exactly,’ as some of you might expect of our reactionary selves here at Stevereads – we’re not frozen in time, after all! Dawnstar is a great idea, Blok not so much; Quislet is a disaster, but Gates is a perfect addition; Tyroc screams, so to speak, for redress, but a bold, courageous, black, female Kid Quantum is perfection realized). We here at Stevereads whole-heartedly second such a group, such a movement, such a dream.

The basic scenario is simplicity itself: young Clark Kent, long before he became Superman and moved to Metropolis, traveled through time to the future in order to share adventures with the 31st century’s enormous group of super-teens, the Legion of Super-Heroes. Since he can’t very well have these adventures while wearing a cardigan sweater-vest, perhaps his new teammates give him a uniform to wear while he’s with them – and perhaps, knowing the great future that awaits him, they pattern that uniform after the famous garb of the Man of Steel.

The key to all of this, it goes without saying, is Saturn Girl. Each time young Clark is returned to his own era, the memories of his time in the future must be blocked by Saturn Girl’s telepathic powers, to reveal no trace of the future and no hint of the great destiny awaiting him. And presto – just like that, an ongoing Legion title is possible.

The only obstacle is the current ongoing Legion title, which has done significant damage to the basic continuity of Legion mythology. In its current incarnation, the Legion is not a valiant band of adventurers but a sour, cynical gang of adult-hating little jerkwads – heroism is entirely absent, for the first time in the Legion’s long history. There are other harms (characters are out of character, powers are stupidly skewed, etc), but this is the worst of them. In an interview in the latest Wizard magazine, legendary Legion writer Jim Shooter – who’s returning to the title in a month – makes it as clear as he diplomatically can that he dislikes all of these changes, but he states his intention to be a good team player and not do anything about them. And it’s doubtful how much he could do even if he wanted to – giant (in all senses of the word) though he is, Shooter is two or three decades past the point where he was a ‘hot’ writer, the kind of writer who can move into a title and make wholesale changes. Comic-geeks of today don’t know him from Adam, and comics industry honchos know that, and more’s the pity: in one issue, Shooter could undo all the damage this awful run has wrought (we here at Stevereads suggest the ‘Dynasty’ escape-clause: it was all a dream! Or, rather, a telepathically induced delusionary episode on somebody’s part – preferably an adult, given the anti-adult tone of the whole run … our nominee would be Phantom Girl’s termagant mother), and then he’d be free to forge a new era of Legion greatness, an era that tells the essential Legion story: that into a weary, orderly future world there erupted the bright smiles and dazzling colors of a new age of super-heroes, a thing unseen in over a thousand years.

We’re not picky, and Shooter (New Universe notwithstanding) is a writer we trust – certainly he’s a Legion writer we trust, as amazing an advent as if Paul Levitz himself had been induced to return to the fold – any scenario he comes up with will be fine by us, we yearn so deeply to read great Legion stories again.

The point of all this is that somebody somewhere – multiple somebodies, by the looks of it – wants the Legion, the real Legion, back in a monthly comics forum. We here at Stevereads are most certainly among that yearning group, and if this latest issue of Action Comics is any indication, we’re not alone by a long shot. We want our Legion back, not some variant but the real thing, the thing so handily illustrated in that two-page spread in this current issue of Action Comics.

Our Legion back. We here at Stevereads entirely support that.

Comics! the kingdom of frustration!

Frustration was the key to the last batch of comics young Elmo swiped from my archnemesis Pepito. Not frustration over the SOURCE of said comics - I make sure to shake the Pepito-germs off them before reading - but rather with the CONTENT. Let's take a brief survey, shall we?

Take, for instance, the week's best comic: the first issue of the 'new' Fantastic Four, with wonderful, Whedonesque dialogue by Dwayne McDuffie and very good Alan Davis-esque artwork by Paul Pelletier. For those of you not keeping score, the 'new' part here is this: Reed and Sue Richards have decided to leave the team temporarily, and their spots have been taken by the Black Panther and Storm. So far, so good: always interesting to see Storm outside of the X-Men, and of course the presence of the Black Panther (especially the character as he's been portrayed for the last few years at Marvel - intelligent, capable, regal) is always in this title.

And the issue itself is great - full of shot and incident, with a final panel that alone is worth the price of admission (plus, the cool little detail of having the team adopt black uniforms as a tip of hat to the Panther was neat). So where does the frustration come in, you ask?

It comes from the fact that such a roster-change would never really happen. Not only is it unrealistic to think the ruler of another nation would have the spare time to lead a super-team, but it's impossible to believe the Black Panther would simply put aside the differences between himself and Reed Richards and just move into the spare bedroom. The Panther is opposed to the whole idea of government registration for super-beings; Reed was one of the idea's main architects. The way the whole issue seems to have been swept under the rug all across the Marvel lineup is very frustrating, even in so good a comic as this one.

But the frustration was by no means limited to Marvel Comics, oh no. DC had a strong lineup last week, and the strongest books were also the most frustrating.

Take '52' for instance. Last time around, the title lost its nerve at the last minute when it came to the whole Black Adam plotline. He drove toward Oolong Island, tossing aside every defense the evil scientists gathered there could throw at him. His cause was righteous - avenging his wife - and for once his Superman-level powers weren't being soft-pedalled. But then when he finally reached the men who created the monsters that killed his wife, the DC writers lost their nerve. The bad guys zap him with what looked like a remote control for the VCR, and down he went - something that never would have happened to Captain Marvel or Superman in the same situation. And this current issue was even worse - in it, Black Adam is being tortured OFF PANEL. All we learn about it is that his screams can be heard all over the island. In other words, bad guys win completely. Very annoying, to turn from that travesty to anything else in the issue, although in all fairness it should be pointed out that there's a wonderful sequence centering on Bruce Wayne getting his Batman mojo back.

And speaking of Batman! Over in his own title, frustration reigns supreme. And again, it doesn't have anything to do with how well-executed the issue itself is: Grant Morrison's scripting is just dandy (he writes a convincing Bruce Wayne, which isn't, apparently, as easy as it sounds), and Andy Kubert's pencils are breathtaking (this is the wrong book for him, of course - he does a great job because he ALWAYS does a great job, but a Batman book isn't a good fit). No, the frustration comes from a couple of egregious missteps in the plot-sequence, the kind of missteps you just can't overlook.

Like the part where Batman is examining a squalid potential criminal hideout when he's snuck up on and SURPRISED by a gigantic thug in a Bane getup ... a gigantic, steroid-crazed thug who couldn't realistically sneak up on my 210-year-old mother. And as if that weren't bad enough, during he ensuing fight, the thug gets the upper hand by ... wait for it ... yanking on Batman's cape. Not yanking on it with a special phase-inducer, or yanking on it at super-speed, or anything like that. Nope. Just plain old yanking on it. To say the least, that's pretty frustrating.

But most frustrating of all is last week's issue of venerable old Action Comics, written by Dwayne McDuffie (there's that name again) and drawn by Renato Guedes. It's a story called 'Intermezzo,' in which Pa Kent tells Ma Kent about an adventure he had with their son Clark some years ago. The REASON it's called 'intermezzo' is because it's a little interlude set against the backdrop of the title's main story. And that's the source of the frustration: that main story should be the biggest cross-over event in the DC universe, not the province of any one title, even DC's oldest. Not one nor two but DOZENS of Kryptonian criminals break free of the Phantom Zone and come to Earth intent on conquest? Surely that is the ultimate nightmare scenario, the ultimate reason why groups like the Justice League exist in the first place? And yet here it's presented as just another storyline, locally contained in Action Comics.

The problem with such a storyline, great as it is, is that if it's done realistically it can have only one ending.

Dozens of psychotic Kryptonians intent on conquering Earth. Conjure with that for a moment, those of you who are so inclined (that's you, Kevin ....). Each one with the powers of Superman, so who's up as Earth's first and only line of defense? Wonder Woman and Batman, yes (anybody discounting the latter would be pretty damn dumb), perhaps Captain Marvel and maybe, just maybe the other Marvels. Alan Scott definitely, Hal Jordan possibly. Doctor Fate, if we still had a Doctor Fate. Black Adam, Solomon Grundy, and Lex Luthor (see above) if we include bad guys. And that's it. Conventional human forces would count as nothing, and apart from that, have I missed anybody? Supergirl, perhaps? Certainly Raven would be effective against Kryptonians gone amok. But no more. Nightwing, Robin, Starfire, Metamorpho, Green Arrow, Red Arrow, Black Canary, the Question, Doctor Midnight, Red Tornado, Wildcat, the Martian Manhunter, the Flash, the Atom, Aquaman, Wonder Girl, Steel, Catwoman ... you name it, it's no contest. And that means it's about ten against dozens. It SHOULD be the DC storyline to end all storylines, so it's frustrating to see it being done in such a piecemeal stoner fashion instead.

Better luck next week, I'm certainly hoping.

Comics! 52 and Action!

After waiting patiently for my archnemesis Pepito to fall asleep (which he eventually did, clutching his ragged Ricky Martin plush doll close to his heart, as always), I crept into his lean-to and snatched up a small selection of the latest comics to read and tell you all about.

(the sequel, the somehow getting them back into Pepito's lean-to without arousing suspiciion, is a trickier matter, but we'll manage it somehow)

The item on the top of the pile aroused some considerable misgivings - it was the second issue of 'Fantastic Four - The End,' and the misgivings came from our awareness that our freakish young friend Elmo seemed to LIKE the first issue.

So we read the second issue with more care, attenae attuned for the WORTH of the thing.

The first worth leaps off the page: this is some of Alan Davis' greatest artwork almost impossibly rich in detail and compositional excellence.

Beyond that, well ... there's always been a certain charm in 'imaginary' stories - plots set outside the normal continuity, where readers get to conjure on might-have-beens.

This present story is set in the future, on an Earth that's become a paradise since all the mutie-scum were eliminated (or not all ... you just KNOW how this thing is going to climax ... and if you don't, let me give you a hint: his code-name starts with 'W'), and it's got lots of interesting stuff in it. It doesn't yet exercise our passion here at Stevereads, but there are four issues left. We shall see ...

A 'we shall see' response is also provoked by the third issue of the new Wonder Woman relaunch, which is the first issue of the run that has the distinct feeling of groping.

We won't nickpick that this feeling starts with the cover itself (as you can see from the accompanying picture, the background - Cheetah and her feline servants hunched menacingly - was added after the fact, and lamentably so, since climbing trees is not among the many talents cheetahs possess) - instead, we'll concentrate on the issue itself, which is frantically nonstop in terms of plot and virtually featherweight in terms of sense or momentum.

In the progress towards the extremely un-surprising climax (the sorceress Circe deprives Agent Prince of ... her powers! Why, THAT plot-device hasn't been used since the early 90s, and before that the mid-'80s, and before that the late-'70s, and before that the mid-'60s ... if we do it often enough, the readers will always remember that FEMALE superheroes don't really DESERVE their powers and must constantly have them taken away and re-earned), we learn one thing above all: writer Allan Heinberg hasn't bothered to sit down at his coffee table and actually PLOT OUT what he wants to do with this title. We'll have to see what comes of it all ...

Luckily, no element of 'we shall see' attends the new Geoff Johns/Adam Kubert relaunch of Action Comics! This is epic stuff, despite its colossal flaws. Kubert's artwork is amazing, and Johns' writing walks the fine line between humanity and iconography.

The flaws creep in around the basic premise of the plot - a boy from Krypton, found by Superman and sought by the rest of the world (including a Bizarro-manipulating Lex Luthor), eventually taken in by Lois Lane and Clark Kent as their 'foster son' ... as Lois herself points out, everybody in the whole feckin world is going to NOTICE the coincidence. Somebody needs to tell Johns that pointing out this fact isn't the same thing as CONSIDERING it, as a writer should.

Still, the issue has one great exchange. When Clark and Lois are hanging around the Kent family farm debating what to do with the little super-boy, Johns gives this neat little bit of dialogue to Lois:

"Clark, people like Ma and Pa Kent were put on this earth to be good parents. We weren't. You're here to save it. And I'm here to find the truth in it." Great stuff, even if the issue's sentimental climax turns things around.

But the pearl of the pickings this time around was the latest issue of '52' - starting with the fantastic cover, certainly the best cover '52' will field this year (and it gets my nomination for best DC cover of year period).

The plot - half of it, anyway - revolves around how the trio of DC's oldest super-heroes, the original Green Lantern, the original Flash, and Wildcat, react to the new wave of Lex Luthor-sponsored young super-heroes. The tone is controlledly bittersweet, and the best part of it is, it's offset by the issue's other plotline, featuring a group of mad scientists. This other plotline is openly and joyously feckin hilarious.

My young friend Elmo (you'll know him by the errant Owl-like tufts of hair emanating at random hours and angles from the top of his head) speculated the other day that this new format - a weekly comic actually done well - might be the future of the genre. If so - and if the quality remains this good - that might be a very interesting future. We shall see.