Comics! A Tale of Two Heroes!

This week concludes the initial spread of DC Comics' "New 52" relaunch, and I guess the idea was to finish things off with a bang: the new first issue of "Superman," written and drawn by comics-demigod George Perez. But the issue itself only underscores everything that's wrong with the "New 52" - not only is it a disappointment, it's the single worst  issue of the month. The besetting worry about this whole reboot was fairly straightforward: fans were concerned that the whole thing hadn't really been thought out carefully (this concern wasn't exactly allayed by DC writers telling everybody that the whole reboot came about by chance, while they were at a story conference riffing ideas about a possible love-triangle involving Superman ... "So who should he fall in love with? I don't know (*pauses to chug Red Bull*)... what if we just scrapped everything?"). These are some of the most iconic comics characters in the world, after all - and Superman and Batman are two of the very rare comics characters that have become cultural icons even outside the comics world. Revamping such icons should be the careful work of long preparation, not a quick gimmick done to goose sales for a month. DC editors have been assuring worried fans for months now that they're perfectly aware of the importance of what they're doing, and that they and all the creators involved are completely dedicated to making this relaunch one for the ages. So regarding the first issue of the new "Superman" title, the relaunch of the flagship character not only of the company but of the industry, I have one question:

Why does it stink?

I could handle it being simply different from what I myself would have wanted (in fact, since DC has decided to change Superman's costume, I was resigned to it being different from what I myself would have wanted), but this isn't that. This is a bad comic book, in every detail. Not only are fans handed the mother of all insults the minute they open the thing (George Perez does the scripting and the ... breakdowns? His work is finished and inked by somebody else? So Perez had a more pressing commitment than Superman #1?), but nothing improves from there on out. There's a ridiculous "newsprint is dying" plot, there's an amorphous fireball-villain, there's Justin Bieber (calling himself Jimmy Olsen), and there's the new Superman in his new supervillain costume - he looks exactly like some alternate-universe evil-Superman John Byrne would design in about fifteen minutes after too many jagermeisters. This new Superman spends most of the issue pouting, and when he does try to pull off a fairly simple helicopter rescue, he fails - Superman fails, in the middle of his very first issue.

The whole issue fails. It's cluttered, murky (the whole thing is set at night, for Rao's sake), talky, and completely undramatic. Its Superman is a bragging, ineffectual prick, and it's Clark Kent is even worse - a sanctimonious, unlikeable loser who mopes because he isn't sleeping with Lois Lane (that's another huge twist in continuity - no more married Kents; instead, we're back to the days of Lois saying, "Hey, where was Clark the whole time?" - because those days never got repetitive or, you know, insulting). DC's most conspicuous character is its most conspicuous "new 52" failure - so I have to do without Superman in my diet until this whole idiot mess gets re-revamped a few years down the line.

The failure of "Superman" #1 is only further underscored by the stunning success of "Aquaman" #1, also released this week. The issue is written by fan favorite Geoff Johns and drawn sumptuously by Ivan Reis, and the whole thing is exactly what a relaunch first issue should be (nevermind that it's received way more attention than it deserves - Johns is unhealthily fascinated with this Golden Age gold-and-green version of Aquaman; he masterminded an entire company-wide mini-series solely in order to resurrect the character from the dead and make him iconic again, and now there's this series, the end result of a decade of obsession)(I'm not complaining, mind you - Aquaman's a neat character who's always deserved and almost never received first-class treatment - but I could wish all this energy were being expended on making Wonder Woman the character she should be): it's fast-paced, it introduces us to the main character (something "Superman" #1 is both arrogant enough and stupid enough to think it doesn't need to do), and it sets the first plot in motion. It's all addictively good.

There are changes here too, of course - but they're for the better: this version of Aquaman is physically more powerful than any previous version we've seen, and that's good - and something I've been advocating for years (including many times right here on Stevereads). This Aquaman is super-strong, super-resilient (Reis re-uses a panel sequence from that resurrection mini-series, showing our hero get shot in the head by machine-gun fire and suffer no more than a cut and some irritation), super-fast ... and Johns writes him with a curious mixture of innocence and vulnerability that certainly sets him apart from all the other strutting, posturing "New 52" heroes. This series will be a pleasure to follow, unlike virtually all of the other "New 52" attempts I've seen this month. The two "Legion" titles were merely acceptable; "Justice League" was a pandering mess; "Wonder Woman" suffered yet another complete overhaul; "Superboy" has been ret-conned out of all personality; "Teen Titans" became "X-Men," fully half the first issues felt like completely unsustainable fill-in stuff, and worst of all, my favorite DC character, Superman, has been transformed into a Mattel-costumed Doctor Manhattan rip-off nobody in their right mind would ever cheer as he flew past. Out of the whole misbegotten mess, only a few bright spots: the Batman-family of books fared remarkably well, Green Lantern & co came out without a scratch ... and we have a new Aquaman to follow with interest.

In the meantime, I think I'll post about good ol' Marvel Comics for a while now ...

 

Comics! The Conclusion of "Blackest Night"!

Last week’s big four-color superhero comics event was the conclusion of DC’s “Blackest Night” mini-series, and the fallout of that conclusion was never going to please every single fan completely. The broilsome plot of this thing was an opera buffa of DC’s trademark vagueness – a bad guy ‘dark’ character resurrects a bunch of dead superheroes – including such iconic figures as Aquaman, the Martian Manhunter, and what looked like Batman – and turns them against their still-living comrades. These zombie-superheroes spend the first few issues of the miniseries ripping the beating hearts out of some of those still-living superheroes (including Hawkman, Hawkgirl, and Aqualad), thus instantly recruiting them for evil. Big battles ensue, the Green Lantern Corps is involved, there’s a great deal of cosmic doubletalk, and the whole time, DC fans are wondering just one thing: when the ‘dark’ bad guy is eventually defeated by the forces of light, how many of those zombie-superheroes will be restored to life, and who will the lucky ones be?

The actual plot – involving ‘black lanterns’ and their desire to kill, kill, kill (and the lame-ass Crisis villain Anti-Monitor is mixed in there too, don’t ask me how) – was never viewed as anything but the slightest of McGuffins (except perhaps by those benighted individuals who are actually fans of the whole Green Lantern concept – geez … what’s the color-code for tedious?), just a necessary means to an end, and that end was restoring to life several of the major characters DC’s own gimmick-hungry writers had stupidly killed off over the last few years.

That end has now been achieved, and like I said, not everybody is smiling. Of course the rationale behind who got resurrected and who didn’t was entirely editorial, not narrative – so the choices make very little sense in terms of the wobbly, talky plot of “Blackest Night.” What would make sense would be this: if every character killed off either by the main bad guy or his superhero-zombies to restored to life when the bad guy was beaten. But that doesn’t happen; Hawkman and Hawkgirl come back to life, yes, but poor Aqualad stays dead. Alternately, it might have made sense if the ‘white lantern’ energies released in such a torrent at the conclusion of this final issue (written by Geoff Johns, drawn by Ivan Reis, and fantastically colored by Alex Sinclair) had simply restored everybody to life, regardless of what originally killed them. But that doesn’t happen either; there are still plenty of dead heroes and villains.



Instead, we get a weird mish-mash of resurrectees. There’s Hawkman and Hawkgirl, as mentioned, and Aquaman, which got a little cheer out of me since it’s the ‘classic’ version of the character, sans scraggly beard, sans effing metal Hook for a hand. There’s the Martian Manhunter, and those four make sense. It’s with everybody else that the weird comes in.

Maxwell Lord. The Reverse-Flash. Captain Boomerang. Osiris. Jade. Hawk. Looking at each one of them, I was struck over and over by what great opportunities were here being utterly wasted because some writer at some story-conference swore he had great ideas for how to ‘develop’ such do-nothing go-nowhere characters as most of these are. Jade is brought back to life but not the original Superman, whose final appearance in a DC comic is therefore as a bloodthirsty rotting zombie? That’s the treatment the company gives to its founding icon? Jade? Hawk is resurrected but not Batman (we get some additional doubletalk about how Batman isn’t really dead – and it all gets very neo-Platonic very quickly, since just a year ago readers saw Batman get fried by energy-beams, saw Superman very clearly holding the charred body … again, somebody’s ‘great’ plot-idea notwithstanding, this would have been an ideal moment to simplify things and simply restore the character now, without subjecting readers to eight more months of that ‘great’ idea unraveling)?

There’s of course a second, parallel agenda in operation here, and the more I see of it, the less I like of it. Maxwell Lord died when Wonder Woman snapped his neck (because he told her point-blank it was the only way she could stop him from mind-controlling Superman, and she took him at his word); the Reverse-Flash was killed by the Flash for a similar reason. Osiris died a gruesome death in a moment that for many rang in the era of graphic, gratuitous superhero violence that’s infested the lineups of both DC and Marvel for the last few years (an era that reached its indisputable high – or is it low? – point in Siege #2, which I wrote about earlier) (just follow the ‘comics’ thread to re-live it all!). Hawk metamorphosed into a timeline-destroying bad guy. By restoring these characters to life, DC almost seems to want to pass around some after-the-fact absolution (if this isn’t the motivation behind the resurrection of Maxwell Lord, I’ll print out this entry and eat it). If true, this is the bad kind of slate-wiping, and it bodes poorly for the ‘Brightest Day’ storylines that are promised to follow this issue.

Still, the issue had lots of great moments. Reis’ artwork is astonishingly detailed. Although it’s very unlike the pencils of George Perez, it has this in common: you can go back to his big two-page splash panels and find dozens of carefully thought out details you missed the first time. And Johns, for all his ham-handedness, provides some nice reunions (the one between Aquaman and his long-grieving wife is particularly well done) and one longed-for twist: Hawkgirl now remembers all her past lives – and therefore remembers that she’s always been passionately in love with Hawkman (the device of having her resist that love because she couldn’t access those memories had been played out for years and won’t be missed). And the surprise moment of having the great DC superhero Deadman (a ghost who possesses people’s bodies to fight crime and solve mysteries) get restored to life was boffo – That part of the writer-conference really did pay off (although again, it makes no sense whatsoever in terms of the actual plot of ‘Blackest Night’).



So I don’t get my original Kal-L Superman back, but I do get Aquaman, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, and the Martian Manhunter. And I have to wait for a moronic plot-line to restore Batman. Still, this is mostly a win for Steve – and for comics. Now if we could just pass into law a moratorium on all superhero-killing for the foreseeable future ….

comics!

After an extensive tour of Europe, Scandinavia, and the subcontinent, my nemesis Pepito has at last returned and begun supplying me once again with stacks of comics. Comics of indiscriminate quality, needless to say.

Pepito doesn't only buy crap, although dios mio, he crap he DOES buy! He must be the only person in the world still hanging in there with this wretched Aquaman relaunch, for instance.

The thing that bugs me most about this relaunch (even more than the turgid plotting, the cliche-soaked writing, and the murky, morose artwork) is the same thing that bugs me about the new John Byrne Asian Atom: they aren't really relaunches at all. They're cowardly little trial-balloons.

In both titles, the 'real' title characters are plainly still out there somewhere. The new Aquaman is a normal guy who's given superpowers, instead of being the son of a mermaid and a lighthouse keeper. Right. THAT's gonna stick. The whole time we're following the adventures of this guy in gold chainmail, we all know he's not the REAL Aquaman.

Same thing with the Asian Atom. We're explicitly told that the REAL Atom, Ray Palmer, is still missing after the mega-inexplicable events of Infinite Crisis (still waiting for one of you to tell me what the Hell actually HAPPENED during that storyline ...).

The only reason the REAL versions of both these characters haven't shown up by now, in a final-panel splashpage (with a next issue blurb saying something like 'Seeing double!' or 'Next time: things get interesting!') is because DC wants to see if these new versions will SELL. It's the most cowardly kind of character overhaul out there.

And the added twist is that it's so unnecessary. Look at Wonder Woman, tackling the whole 'year later' gimmick straight-on. Look at Birds of Prey, or the weird, increasingly wonderful stuff going on in OMAC. Look at the towering greatness that is Green Arrow.

(Don't look at Superman, alas - the powers that be at DC missed a golden chance to show some massive creative balls and have all the Superman books feature a completely powerless Clark Kent trying to adjust to his new, normal life ... a HUGE gamble to take with their flagship character, but oh! Just imagine how good it could have been!)

Icon-changes happen, I know. But they never last, and the whole of their merit lies in how well-built they LOOK. And both these relaunches look like they were cooked up during free period by a couple of high school stoners. Anybody remember the blue-leotarded Aquaman? How about the 'Savage Sword of Conan' Atom? Geez.

What kills me is that this moment - the after-crisis sorta-kinda slate-clearing - was the PERFECT moment to re-define both these characters for real, instead of these lame-ass attempts. As it is, we'll have to wait ten years, until DC has another crisis and kills another Flash.

But it wasn't all doom and gloom in Pepito's latest batch! There were good items too.

Like the first issue of 'The Trials of Shazam' (although: gloomy title) - neat, unusual artwork and some very good cliffhangers.

Or the latest issue of the Teen Titans, where this new loser-ass team (a kid who burps fire? And hey, while we're at it, let's let DEATHSTROKE'S DAUGHTER on the team? What's the worst that could happen?) goes to Russia and gets verbally spanked by Red Star. My only real complaint comes in at the end, when we the readers get to see the roster of the team during the 'missing' year. And my gripe with that, you ask?

Some of the characters, although intriguing, aren't POSSIBLE. Or if they are, they represent some of the biggest dropped balls in comics storytelling history. Little Barda? Surely even the offspring of Mister MIracle and Big Barda would need more than a year to develope, um, boom tubes quite that big? Miss Martian, complete with the trademark big red X right across her, um, twin moons? Zatarra? Zatanna has a brother we never knew about? And Osiris, standing next to Black Adam and looking a helluva lot like his son? (my money's on his being Isis' brother)

I mean, it worked - I'll certainly be reading future issues now, if only to see how some of these characters can be explained. Little Barda? The mind boggles ....

(although one thing bears pointing out: the team is set on finding each of these characters because one of them BETRAYED the team. So fine, let's find each of these new characters and learn their stories and in the process build a interesting team with some of them. But traitor? Puh-lease! Scroll back up and re-read those words: DEATHSTROKE'S DAUGHTER)

But by far the best thing in this batch of Pepito's comics - and it pains me to say this - was the latest issue of Green Lantern.

It pains me for this reason: I've never really cottoned to one-note superheroes. Atom can shrink. Flash can run. Green Lantern has his ring. Big woop. Give me no powers (Batman, Adam Strange) or multiple powers (Superman, Wonder Woman) any day.

But there's absolutely no denying what going on in Green Lantern since its conceptual (if not numerical) relaunch: this stuff is brilliant. Geoff Johns' writing is hard and fast, and Ivan Reis' pencilling is huge and gorgeous, very nearly the equal of 1970s John Buscema (he's very nearly there, it kinda sorta grieves me to admit ... the meticulous opulence of his wide-angle views is the equal of anything Buscema could do even at his peak, but his interpersonal action-sequences lack the requisite ooomph)(this isn't a criticism at all - the guy's probably 20, and if he keeps on this way, I have no doubt even the mighty Buscema will be displaced in due time, just the way his sons have all but displaced Joe Kubert)(that process will be complete when the ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INEVITABLE happens and somebody gets one or both of them to do a new version of Tarzan)

The issue starts poorly - with a stupid-ass cover that should never have been approved by any editor - but hoo-boy! Once you get inside, the thing is brilliant. Heady action, great characterization (not, alas, the title character - Hal Jordan is every bit as bland STILL has Barry Allen was, despite HUGE numbers of ways to fix that fact), especially Guy Gardner, who continues to steal both this book and Green Lantern Corps with absolute regularity. What a HUGE mistake it would be, to give him his own book or ever change him from what he was meant to be: the one Green Lantern in the whole galaxy who's playing BAD cop.

I have to tell you, boys and girls, if ALL the re-visionings of DC's biggest guns were being done with this sure touch of epic, we'd be seeing a DC lineup that hasn't been seen since WWII. Imagine if the whole POINT of Infinite Crisis ... that DC's signature big guns returned to BEING big guns with huge fire and a renewed sense of themselves ... were being done across the board.

Well, we'll have to take what we can get.

Next comic-chat we have, I promise: all my thoughts about '52'!