Coming Soon: Supergod

Supergod, to be written by Warren Ellis and published by Avatar Press in November, promises a wealth of content for those of us who like to indulge in the discussion of superhero theology. From Ellis himself on the upcoming miniseries:

Supergod is the story of what an actual superhuman arms race might be like. It’s a simple thing to imagine. Humans have been fashioning their own gods with their own hands since the dawn of our time on Earth. We can’t help ourselves. Fertility figures brazen idols, vast chalk etchings, carvings, myths and legends, science fiction writers generating science fiction religions from whole cloth. It’s not such a great leapt to conceive of the builders of nuclear weapons and particle accelerators turning their attention to the oldest of human pursuits.... And, perhaps, there’s still that little scratchy voice in the middle of the night: I don’t want to be alone. I want there to be something bigger, something that moves in mysterious ways and wants only the best for us. And I will forgive it, the disgusting state of this world, and all the things in it that want to crush and kill me, and have faith that something incredible and invisible and unknowable will make things better. And so (in Supergod), just to make sure, I will build it and keep it by me. I will pretend it’s a weapon, a defensive capability, a computing object or a construction machine — but really it is a Messiah.

So it seems that Ellis plans to take the metaphysical element of our fascination with superheroism and turn it around to comment on our tendency to seek out gods in places where we probably shouldn't. It sounds like a brilliant idea. As much as I like to write about the true spirituality hidden within every hero story, there's no denying how easily real people misplace their hopes and trust in things that have no inherent eternal significance. With mythological underpinnings being brought to the surface in many of today's comics, perhaps it's a good idea for someone like Ellis to tell us to step back and reconsider.

As far as I can tell, there are two major slants on this notion that Supergod could take.

It could be written as a condemnation of idolatry. The chief sin of the Christian faith and also claimed to be so by the other Abrahamic religions, idolatry as an attitude goes beyond the simple worship of statues and carvings. It occurs whenever one takes anything in God's creation, whether tangible or not, and places on it a higher importance than God himself. Through this lens, the admiration of super-powered "messiahs" in Supergod can be said to be foolish because these beings are not God.

More likely than not, however, Supergod will probably turn out to be a reprimand of mankind's search for god in anything, period. Ellis's work in the past, such as Planetary and The Authority, has generally betrayed an atheistic worldview. Ellis's description above of the concept of god as a product of human want also appears to promote this ideology. If this is indeed the perspective from which Supergod was written, then the foolishness of messianism by the characters therein will be likened to the pursuits of any who hold to theistic convictions. Christians, Muslims, and Hindus alike will be skewered for the way in which they chase after imaginary gods of their own creation!

Such a tone, no matter how cleverly executed (and with Ellis at the helm, it no doubt will be very clever), will inevitably result in a weaker story in this reader's eyes.

Blackest Night: The Issue Two Blues

First issues of big event comics deserve to be cut a little bit of slack. They carry the responsibility of explaining the status quo to an influx of readers who may not normally follow the featured characters. Additionally, since events are so massively hyped by their publishers, their first issues regularly tell stories that fans have already "read," if not yet formally in the actual comic. It is commonplace for the main plot conflict not to be revealed until the closing (and sometimes the absolutely last) pages. Think Secret Invasion #1 (ending with massive Skrull reveals and attacks) or Infinite Crisis #1 (pulling the shadows back from the Earth-2 survivors on the final page), recent blockbuster debuts that closely followed this formula.

For these reasons, it is Issue Two that often gives readers their first true look at the quality and character of an event comic. Since the exposition of the first issue is out of the way, you can generally rest assured that the characters and concepts given focus in the second issue are central to the series as a whole. In other words, this is when we generally learn what the event in question is really about. The aforementioned Infinite Crisis was written like this, as was Green Lantern: Rebirth. And given that the writer whose name appears on both of those epics, Geoff Johns, is also responsible Blackest Night, it stands to reason that one could expect a similar pattern to emerge in that series as well.

If that is to be the case, count me as one of the naysayers.

Using the series' #2 as a litmus test, Blackest Night appears to be about the heroes in the DC Universe who have lost loved ones and what happens when those dearly departed return to open up old wounds (as well as heart-sized new ones). Granted, it's not an empty premise, and it's far beyond the "DC Zombies" label it has been unfairly given. But it does pull the rug out from under the two years of buildup for the story that occurred mostly within the pages of Green Lantern comics and thereby strip itself of its own considerable momentum.

The buzz for Blackest Night began with a teaser in the finale of the Sinestro Corps War crossover, instantly transforming that much-beloved story into mere prelude. Just as that tale introduced Sinestro's band of yellow ringed fear mongers, we were told that there would soon come other similar corps, a veritable Roy G. Biv of them. And that a clash between these colorful forces would ultimately lead to the fulfillment of an ancient prophesy known as "the Blackest Night" (like in the oath!), an dark and deadly time of despair. According to many a Johns sound byte, this would be Hal Jordan's Return of the Jedi, the completion of a Green Lantern trilogy begun in GL: Rebirth.

With that, preparations were underway to make Blackest Night the biggest Green Lantern story ever. The Guardians unveiled the first batch of 10 foreboding new laws in the Book of Oa that looked to take the GLs down a darker path. The promised corps of many colors were rolled out one by one, many in clever and interesting ways. Even Hal's origin was tweaked to coincide with the upcoming event, now featuring Atrocitus, who would play a key role in the formation of the Red Lanterns and the delivery of the Blackest Night prophecy itself.

The expectation was that all of these plot points would converge to form some sort of grand culmination of the Green Lantern mythos. A tall order, for sure. But the problem with Blackest Night isn't merely a failure to live up to its hype. Instead, the series so far has underwhelmed by largely divorcing itself from the climbing crescendo that should have given it its punch. I have no doubt that DC believed they were making their 2009 event bigger by yanking it out of the confines of the Green Lantern universe and expanding its scope to the DCU at large, but in reality this move has had the opposite effect. Without the legs of rising action to stand on exclusively, the events of Blackest Night must be judged on their own merits. And frankly, there's really not a whole lot there.

I know I'm supposed to feel the sting of fatherly rejection when Aquaman's reanimated corpse mocks his former Aqualad. And that I should lament the tragedy of Barry Allen and Hal Jordan having to fight an evil undead Martian Manhunter, once embraced by his friends as the "heart of the Justice League." Truth is, all of these scenes ring hollow because they're nothing new. Good guys die and come back as villains all the time, and the emotional weight of these encounters in Blackest Night is diminished because it is obvious that the Black Lanterns are simply perversions of the living men and women they resemble. Plus, haven't we witnessed heroes dealing with the specter of disapproval from beyond the grave just about every time Scarecrow has dosed Batman with fear gas?

In the end, I'm sure Blackest Night will tie up the plot threads from the Green Lantern titles in some fashion. However, if what has been released so far is any indication, this will occur off to the side in tie-ins rather than in the main book. Such climaxes should be at the forefront of a comic series like this, and if they aren't it's a real shame.

Too often event comics are thrust upon readers with little context other than publishers' desire to hear the clinging of a cash register. But just when Blackest Night was poised to become the type of Big Payoff that serial fiction devotees dream about, it gets cookie-cuttered into the type of dime-a-dozen (Or is that $3.99-a-dozen?) event comic you can find any year by the Big Two. No matter how close to the top of their game Johns and artist Ivan Reis happen to be in the technical merits of their craft, they'll be hardpressed to overcome the foolishness of opportunity lost.

Last Word on Wednesday Comics Sales

According to Diamond's July sales estimates as reported on Comic Book Resources, the first month of Wednesday Comics hovered around 50th place among comics that month, selling around 40,000 copies per issue. This puts it in the neighborhood of titles such as Streets of Gotham, Millar and Hitch's Fantastic Four, and the Superman-less Superman and Action Comics.

As far as my predictions go, it's safe to say that they were at least half right. 40,000 copies is far too few to include a significant infusion of any new readers. Of course, this might have more to do with marketing realities than the book's content. It's unlikely that many outside of the comics-reading world really knew about Wednesday Comics, as it wasn't available on grocery store magazine racks or online outlets like iTunes.

I'm also inclined to suggest that the other part of my prediction was at least partially accurate, thought it was admittedly not very bold. I mean, there are certainly greater limbs to go out on than to say "This unconventional comics experiment isn't going to top the charts!" But while these figures for Wednesday Comics aren't bad, they don't exactly qualify the series for smash hit status either. Still, they are better than I thought they would be, and I can understand why. Though I didn't originally intend to become part of Wednesday Comics' readership, the positive buzz online eventually won me over. This is a comic that does have a lot to offer the die hard fanboy, despite its simplicity of story and detachment from continuity.

One can hope that these modest but decent numbers will support the release of a Wednesday Comics II next year. Perhaps one that, under the direction of the newly created DC Entertainment, can find its way to newsstands and computer screens everywhere, entertaining loyalists and casual fans alike.

Wednesday's Wonder Woman...Wow!

As you may have guessed, just a few days after writing this, I went ahead and bought my way up to speed with Wednesday Comics. And I'm really glad I did. I'd been following reviews and commentary of the series very closely, so I felt like I had a pretty good notion of what to expect. For the most part, my reactions the book matched up to what was being said online. Where my views differed from the majority, it was typically because I cast a less critical eye on some of the lower quality strips.

One Wednesday Comics strip, however, that I do think has been denied the proper respect and attention is Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman. With its hyper-compressed layout (67 panels counted in Week 5's issue!) and unique, almost Disney-like rendition of the the character and cast, Wonder Woman is certainly a creative risk. As goes with the territory, there have been the customary "It's weird...I hate it!" reviews (IGN: "...as annoyingly unreadable as ever"). But the prevailing opinion has seemed to be an appreciation of the strip's originality, ultimately tempered with complaints about its choice of visual style.

These reviewers are certainly entitled to their perspectives on Wonder Woman's look (though I happen to like it). Where I take issue is with their insistence to examine the comic solely on its aesthetic elements. It's true that the bulk of Wednesday Comics' value lies in its visual aspect, but Wonder Woman is one of the anthology's few contributions to deserve a serious discussion of the content of its story. Whereas many of DC's other strips are interesting in the way that they're telling a fairly one-dimensional tale, Caldwell gives us something with a few more layers.

Each installment of Wonder Woman has a young Diana in training being transported to a different place in "Mortals' World" during a dream. While there, she must seek out one of the Seven Stars of the Amazons, ancient items of great power that Diana's people left behind when they withdrew from our realm. Judging from what we've seen so far, these Seven Stars, when put together, will make up the fabled armaments of Wonder Woman (she's already found the bracelets and tiara).

What's interesting about this premise is that the settings in which Diana finds herself are all heavily steeped in humanity's religions and mythology. So far, Diana has searched for the Stars in a Shinto temple, the lost city of Shangri-La, and during the pseudo-Catholic Dia de los Muertos. A visit to Caldwell's online annotations to the series reveals that he has taken care to meticulously research and accurately portray these traditions. In each destination, the lost Amazonian relic has taken on special significance in the local folklore. For example, in Japan a famous warrior is said to have gained his power through the use of the famous Wonder Woman bracelets.

By linking the ancient Amazon artifacts to each week's featured mythology, Caldwell suggests a common thread through all of mankind's legends. The older mythology of the Amazons is shown to have informed and influenced the tradition of the societies that rose up later. This is not to say that the story is necessarily an argument for the oneness and equality of all human belief systems. For me, it's simply a reminder that the stories embraced by a culture are rooted somewhat in an innate desire for the timeless truths that preceded it.

The villains of the series utilize myth as well, though in a twisted and perverse manner. Recognizing mythology's strength, they seek to employ it for sinister ends while simultaneously stripping it bare of its true meaning. Take Doctor Poison and her cronies in Weeks 2 and 3, who carelessly ransack the temple to find the Seven Stars, which they hope to use as weapons of war. By reclaiming the Stars for the Amazons, Diana puts the myth back in its proper place as a tool for peace and justice.

For a character writers have had such a hard time to pin down and define, Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman gives us an amusing yet substantive take on the Amazonian princess. It certainly doesn't stand alone in Wednesday Comics as an example of good old-fashioned serialized fun, but its literary value may just trump the rest. If you've skipped over this strip due to an aversion to tiny panels and low-contrast colors, do Mr. Caldwell and yourself a favor and give it a second look.

Wednesday Wavering

Despite the fact that I wrote this just a few weeks ago...

And despite the fact that I'm without a doubt a story driven guy...

Even though the Superman strip in USA Today has been really lousy...

(Seriously, did they really just recap his origin again???)

And that Brian Azzarello, the man behind "Broken City" and "For Tomorrow," is writing Batman...

It was really hard to walk by the numerous available copies of Wednesday Comics at my local comics shop and not buy a big stack of them.

Granted, I stuck to my guns and didn't add anything extra to my pull list this week (it helped that they didn't have issue 1), but it wasn't without some serious fanboy angst. You can bet I was already planning a visit to eBay just to check out prices on the drive home. Something about seeing other people buy the actual product in the store tugged at my heartstrings. And it's impossible to ignore all the positive buzz online. I could envision myself spreading open my own copy in front of me, basking in all its superheroic colorfulness.

I wouldn't really be going back on my word by doing so. It's not like I made any predictions about the quality of Wednesday Comics. I even praised it for its originality. And I still think that it won't entice new readership. In fact, I'm even more convinced of this now that I've seen how uninspired the one strip DC is promoting in the mainstream press has been.

But there could be other fans out there like me who initially decided to save their cash but are now being drawn in by that tempting bundle of folded newsprint on the shelves. And if so, it could translate to bigger numbers for Wednesday Comics than I expected.

July sales figures to be announced shortly...

Comics' Mythologization Trend

If the late 80's were the Grim-and-Gritty Period and the 90's were the Era of the Artist Superstar, then today we are surely living in comics' Age of Mythologization. While superheroes and their parables of good vs. evil have long been a sort of mythology for contemporary society, there has existed in the past 5 or 6 years a concerted effort to introduce expansive metanarratives into the histories of many of our favorite comic characters.

Such mythologization is characterized by casting the hero as a crucial figure in a grand conflict or phenomenon that transcends the mere details of his past adventures. It often involves a spiritual or mystical element that ties into the hero's origin and powers, as well as sometimes a similar opposing force associated with the villains. This can allow for the introduction of multiple versions or variations of the hero, either as a historical lineage or a contemporary fraternity.

Though mythologizing a superhero franchise can involve introducing new elements and characters to the universe in question, often comics come with ready-made ingredients to do so. There is already a plethora of costumed identities that have been shared by multiple comics characters over the years. Adding to this is the fact that the longest standing characters have complex histories throughout which they have been reinterpreted and reimagined numerous times. In many cases, a mythology is simply a way of threading together preexisting characters and eras. The best mythologist writers can make it seem as if the entire decades-long span of a title combines to tell a single gigantic story.

The poster boy for this type of character treatment is undoubtedly Geoff Johns in his recent DC work, but he's far from the only writer to embrace the trend. And though DC with its scores of "legacy" heroes and love of parallel universes seems the most likely candidate for mythologization, Marvel has not shied away from the concept either. The following are some of the best examples of superhero mythology from the last few years:

The Flash

Already discussed in-depth here in an earlier post, Mark Waid spent the bulk of the 90's setting the groundwork for today's superhero mythologization during his run on The Flash. The world of Wally West was already filled with others who had taken up the Flash mantle or bore similar powers under a different moniker. Waid showed us that this was more than mere coincidence. The Speed Force, which gave each of these individuals their powers, stood revealed as the shaper of speedster destiny from the beginning of time, and it remains as the foundation of the Flash mythos today.

Spider-Man

When J. Michael Straczynski signed on with the Marvel bullpen to write Amazing Spider-Man, he set out to do more than tell yet another parable of power and responsibility. From the outset of his tenure on the book, JMS cast Peter Parker as the most prominent of many throughout time who had gained the powers of the spider. The radioactive bite he suffered as a teen had merely been the means by which he became linked to this force. This new take made sense, as nearly all of Spider-Man's foes over the years (Vulture, Scorpion, Dr. Octopus, etc) were associated with some kind of animal symbol. All of these revelations came from the mouth of Ezekiel, himself imbued with spider abilities, and brought Peter into confrontation with Morlun, an evil being who sought to feast upon the might of the spider totem. Straczynski's additions to the Spider-Man universe were met with mixed reactions by longterm fans, and it remains to be seen whether these elements will continue to be referenced in the future.

Green Lantern

GL is probably the first character today's fans think of when considering mythologization. This comes from the fact that the newly introduced mythology has actually taken hold as a marketing device for DC in this year's Big Event, Blackest Night. Since the Silver Age, it has been established that a Green Lantern harness the power of the will. What writer Geoff Johns has brought us in stories like Rebirth and The Sinestro Corps War is that there are other colors of light that all correspond to a certain place on the "emotional spectrum." And each color comes with its own ring-wielding corps, with emotionally-appropriate oaths, powers, and motivations.

Iron Fist

In 2006, Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker took the Marvel mainstay (but second tier) hero Iron Fist and cast the nets of mythology outward in two dimensions. Vertically, martial arts master Danny Rand was now the latest in a long line of men to have harnessed the power of the Iron Fist and serve as champion of the mythical city of K'un L'un. Horizontally, Danny shares his status with six other cities' champions, persons of various kung fu and mystical abilities who have at times acted as both enemy and ally to the bearer of the Iron Fist. Given that Brubaker and Fraction currently seem to be enjoying the status of architects of the Marvel Universe, it's safe to assume that Iron Fist has been permanently mythologized.

Superman (and the entire DC Universe)

In one sense, it seems absurd to think that Superman could be mythologized any further than he already has been. As the standard-bearer and inspiration for basically every other superhero, you could consider Superman's mythology to be all of comics. And that is exactly the perspective Grant Morrison took when he commented on the nature of hero stories in Final Crisis. He explains the DC Multiverse, with its variations-on-a-theme battles of good vs. evil as having spun-off from a single foundational story. And we as readers catch a glimpse of the heart of that story, standing in its center is the unmistakable archetypal image of Superman. It's the type of abstract, high-concept that won't be found on the back of an action figure package, but Final Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in how deep the mythology of comics can go.

Ultimate Marvel

On one hand, the alternate world of the Ultimate Marvel label was a way to bring classic characters into a more grounded, real world setting, much like today's superhero movies. But it was also an attempt to streamline and consolidate Marvel continuity, and with this came mythologization. In the Ultimate U, the experiments that created Captain America during WWII were repeated and revised by many scientists and corporations. Such endeavors indirectly led to the creation of the Hulk, the genetically-altered spider that bit Peter Parker, and the introduction of the mutant X-gene into the population. And it all may prove to be just a testing ground for the "real" Marvel Universe, the "origin" of which is set to be told in Ed Brubaker's upcoming The Marvels Project.

Bible Desecration? It's Not Unthinkable.

I've been enjoying Boom Studios' Unthinkable mini-series, written and created by Mark Sable. With its finger on the pulse of our post-9/11 preoccupation with terrorism as entertainment (coming soon on Fox, 24 Season Eight), the book seems ready-made to be optioned by Hollywood. Yet with its real-world setting and distance from superheroes and their mythology, it didn't seem to be a likely candidate to receive commentary on this blog.

But the subject of terror unavoidably brings about the topic of religion, and this is the direction Sable takes us in Unthinkable #3. Set mostly in Israel, the issue explores what an end-of-world terror scenario looks like within the context of the Arab-Jew conflict. However, as ripe as that may be for discussion, it's actually an unrelated panel that sent me rushing to my keyboard eager to nitpick.

As an American intelligence officer interrogates the main characters about the implementation of terrorist plots they may have designed, Sable subjects each to their own ironic form of torture. The lawyer finds his civil rights violated via waterboarding, the computer geek receives electric shock from an XBox 360 power supply, and so on. The character above is the series representative for evangelical Christianity, a Tim LaHaye analogue who predicts the end times in his Left Behind-type novel series. His torture? Having to watch a soldier carelessly tear apart a copy of the Bible.

Based on the fact that the series' featured evangelical is cast as an annoying hypocrite, I assume that Mark Sable isn't acquainted with Christianity as his personal ideology. And in accordance with this, his choice of "torture" for the token Bible-thumper misses the mark. Likely informed by the news stories of Qur'an desecration at Guantanamo Bay, Sable fails to grasp the differences between Christianity and Islam.

Whereas Muslims venerate original language copies of their foundational text, Protestant Christians hold no such sentiments toward any material object. They worship God "in the Spirit," independently from their physical surroundings. Though the truths revealed in scripture are indeed sacred, the pages they are printed on are fundamentally no more to be honored than any other part of creation. Granted, you probably won't find a Christian treating his own Bible in this manner, but witnessing a stranger doing so is unlikely to elicit the melodramatic response seen in this comic.

This is not to deny that Sable conducted his fair share of research on religious matters in writing this issue. That much is apparent from the way he Brian K. Vaughans us by explaining the affinity many evangelicals have for Zionist goals and how it all relates to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Bible-ripping incident is really a throw-away moment in Unthinkable's grand scheme, but the unreality of it all took me out of the story long enough to make a negative impact on the reading experience.

Wednesday Comics: Nice Try, DC. (Seriously!)

Wednesday Comics hit the shelves last week, and it's not a stretch to suggest that it's likely the most original idea that will come out of the Big Two this year. In an industry seemingly cursed with an endless stream of continuity-glazed crossovers impenetrable to those who weren't baptized into fandom decades ago, such a break from staleness should be welcome. I've recently wondered if my adult self would have ever gotten into comics had I not grown up with Super Powers action figures and the old box of 1960s comics at my grandparents' house. Would the comics of today have been readable enough to do the trick? The truth is that, despite the superhero movie boom, Marvel and DC will have to come up with something fresh to attract new readership before the bubble bursts.

Wednesday Comics is exactly the type of creative thinking that fits the bill. It's an out-of-the-ordinary concept being successfully marketed and gaining attention by the mainstream media. Which is why it pains me to say that it isn't going to work.

Yes, though I applaud the risk that DiDio and company are taking here, I think sales for Wednesday Comics will be relatively low. I don't think it will have broad appeal for non-comics readers, and I also think it lacks the content to make it a smash for those who already pick up the monthlies.

Let's start by looking at the tastes of the public at large when it approaches the fringes of the comics world. Namely, there's the high grosses brought in by superhero movies, but there's also the fact that trade paperbacks and graphic novels do okay among the masses. There's no doubt that people have an interest in superhero fare, but they tend to flock toward the genre when it is presented in a more comprehensive, in-depth format. The most successful movies of late have delved into the origins of their heroes alongside exploring their psychological makeup in a real world context. And trade paperbacks, though they're technically the same things sold in the "floppies," allow for a complete story to be told at once.

The problem with Wednesday Comics, as it pertains to mass appeal, is that it moves in the opposite direction from "regular" comics as do the things above. Each segment of a Wednesday Comics issue gives you (at most) the equivalent of two pages of a standard comic. This means that not only will each individual issue be deficient in story depth, but the series' entire 12-issue run won't be long enough to pack much of a cumulative punch either.

If movies like Iron Man and graphic novels like Watchmen challenge the public's preconceived notions about the simplicity of superheroes, Wednesday Comics reinforces them. By adopting the format and length of a Sunday paper funnies section, the series stands poised to breath new life into the scoffer's argument that comics are still "kids' stuff." The "Biff, Bam, Pow!" jokes I heard outside the IMAX theater where I saw The Dark Knight just a year ago served as a painful reminder that the genre still has a long way to go in some segments of the populace.

For the card-carrying fanboy, I also doubt the ability of Wednesday Comics to attract a significant following. Sure, there will be some who are caught up in the artsiness of it all. But when it comes down to it, clever art experiments are not what fill pull lists on a weekly basis. Even though a star artist can bolster the sales of a popular book, basically there are two elements that can launch a comic to the top of the charts, both story-driven. A top-selling book either promises a significant addition to shared universe continuity (think Secret Invasion) or a standalone tale epic enough to convince readers to step outside the comforts of "canon" (like All Star Superman). Wednesday Comics, unlinked to continuity and not long enough to sustain a robust story, meets neither of these requirements.

Also worth mentioning, though it has been much discussed elsewhere, is the problem posed by Wednesday Comics' price tag. I can't imagine either newbies or lifers happily plopping down $4 for something that looks and feels like a newspaper.

So, it is with a somewhat heavy heart that Infinite Kizes predicts the financial failure of DC's endeavor with Wednesday Comics. Even worse is my fear that it will all amount to a wasted opportunity to bring the joy of comics to the unconverted. I do hope that, if this all plays out as I think it will, DC and Marvel won't shrink back from searching out new, innovative ways to deliver their product.

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For an opposing view, check out last week's When World's Collide, by the much smarter and more articulate Timothy Callahan of Comic Book Resources.

The Superman serial from Wednesday Comics can be read each week online at USA Today.

The Curious Case of the Harveys

Taking a short break at work today to browse comics news, I came across the release of the nominations for this year's Harvey Awards (eligible books were those published in 2008). One nomination on the list stood out to me above the rest, as it hardly sounded like standard award-winning fare, to put it mildly. Yet there it was in the "Best Single Issue or Story" category--something called Nascar Heroes #5.

And an artist on that series, Matt Cassan, was even nominated for "Best New Talent!"

Instantly my intrigue was triggered. A Nascar-sponsored comic nominated for an industry award? Could something that seemed more better suited for a Happy Meal tie-in than serious reading actually be good? It wasn't the craziest notion in the world. After all, the superhero comics I love were once (and still might be) considered kid stuff by the public at large. Maybe some up-and-coming Alan Moore or Grant Morrison was working his way up the industry ladder and had crafted a transcendent tale hiding behind the facade of a licensed property. One that boiled the Nascar Heroes, along with issue 5's Nascar Villians, down to their true essence.

Sadly, a quick Google search for the issue turned up nothing in the way of reviews for this issue. The only relevant hit at the time was John Nacinovich's Twitter entry, wondering the same thing as me. I did, however, come across a scathing critique of issue #1 on the blog Polite Dissent. Not too promising for validating the quality of the series' fifth installment...

Well, it seems that such perplexing Harvey noms are a yearly occurrence. Comments on another blog, The Beat, bore this out, referencing years past when offerings from Crossgen and Disney dominated the noms list. There appears to be quite a history of publishers and creators abusing their Harvey voting privileges to promote their own material. Contrast this to the Eisners, which still decide winners via peer voting but hand out their nominations based on the work of a closed committee. It isn't simply a matter of ballot stuffing, as Johanna Draper Carlson notes on Comics Worth Reading. It's more due to a lack of interest in Harvey participation by the majority of creators, leaving the voting mainly up to those looking to self-hype.

And to a certain extent, the ploy works. I definitely didn't wake up this morning expecting to discuss a Nascar comic book. But when it comes down to it, those in the know don't regard the Harvey Award nominations as a reliable source for finding quality comics. If the Eisner Awards are comics' Oscars, then the Harveys might as well be the MTV Movie Awards.

Coming Soon to Infinite Kizes...

Let's face it. The past month or so this blog has, despite its title, been quite finite. Yours truly apologizes for letting things go this long. In the next couple weeks, however, be on the lookout for several new posts, including:

• A breakdown of comics' mythologization trend
• The secret origin of today's wave of comic book films
• Dynamite beats a dead horse
  
• The worst comics columnist on the web
• Doomsday predictions for Wednesday Comics (the title, not the concept)

See you soon!

My Gaiman Disconnect

Upon putting down the second and final chapter of Neil Gaiman's "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" (Detective Comics #853), I knew it would be considered a classic. That, before the night was over, I'd be able to get online and find a bevy of 5-star and 10-out-of-10 reviews. If comics were the NFL, I'd soon hear the roar of fans spilling into the streets to celebrate a historically thrilling Superbowl victory. This was by all accounts a great comic. Too bad I wasn't able to join in on the fun.

From an objective standpoint, of course, I could explain to someone all the reasons that they should love this issue. Its near poetic dialogue and sincere and reverent nostalgia. The spectacular highlight-of-his-career artwork of Andy Kubert. The comic's pinpoint observations of the core of Batman's character and the fundamental elements that have allowed him to persevere over the decades. The fact that, after Gaiman, no one will ever again be able to write a "final" Batman story without looking like they've committed plagarism.

Subjectively, though, I couldn't lovingly embrace "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" the way I knew I was supposed to. The plot device Gaiman utilized to convey his ideas was a depiction of Batman's spiritual experience of death, a fictionalized theory of what happens to a person as they die. And as a Christian, one who has firmly held convictions about what death entails and the role God has to play in it, Gaiman's portrayal of the event took me immediately out of the story. I just couldn't shake the contradiction between what I saw on the page and what I knew in my heart of hearts to be true.

To the unbeliever, my objections surely sound like the science geek who can't enjoy a summer action blockbuster because of all its technical inaccuracies. Be that as it may, it doesn't change the fact that I was seriously distracted by the New Agey details of Batman's "death" in this issue. A Christian knows death to entail a fearsome judgment by God, not the pleasantries of ancestor sprit guides and cyclical reincarnation. From my perspective, the presence of these elements bring undue attention to men like Gaiman's vain efforts to soften the sting of death. They coat it with sentimental stories and warm thoughts, none of which ultimately hold water. All when I'm supposed to be reflecting on the enduring literary legacy of my all-time favorite character.

Readers of this blog will know of my affinity for spiritual and mythological themes in superhero comics. And under different circumstances, I would surely welcome these concepts in Gaiman's story. But given the concrete specificity with which "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" presents the details of the afterlife, I'll regrettably have to turn my search for such things elsewhere.

Rebirth Rerun

Though I certainly enjoyed the first issue of Flash: Rebirth (and have no reason to suspect that I'll feel differently about the next four), I have recently come to question what the significance of this Geoff Johns series will ultimately be. When all is said and done, what contribution will Rebirth have made to the Flash mythos? From this vantage point, it seems unlikely that it'll actually have much of one to speak of a few years down the line.

Don't get me wrong. It would be obvious to even the most minimally literate toddler why Flash: Rebirth is a big deal to comics fans right now. It marks the reintroduction of Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash who's been dead for more than 20 years here on Earth-Real, to modern DC Universe continuity. But this is only its plot significance. What I'm looking for is something deeper, a paradigm shift in the essence of the Flash story, a restructuring of its very foundations.

To best understand what I mean, one must look back to the first time a "Rebirth" label was slapped onto the cover of a DC miniseries. Back then it was Johns again who was involved, breathing new life into the Green Lantern franchise. Story-wise, GL: Rebirth was similar to its Flash namesake, returning the green power ring to Hal Jordan, who had also been gone a while, at various points corrupted, killed, and Spectreized. But that was not all this milestone series did.
In addition to providing a story vehicle for Hal's return, GL: Rebirth essentially reinvented the entire concept of Green Lantern in the DC Universe. The GLs were no longer simply green superheroes with a weakness to yellow. They became custodians of the power of will itself, symbolized by their green color. And yellow light no longer had just an arbitrary invulnerability to the rings. It was now the manifestation of Parallax, the embodiment of fear that had implanted the impurity in the Oans' central power battery (as well as doubt and moral ambiguity in Hal Jordan's heart)!

Such mythological concepts have shaped the telling of essentially every Green Lantern story in the four years since. And even though these tales have been written mostly by Johns himself, there's enough material there for other writers to mine for years to come. In reading the original Rebirth mini, I felt as if the entire history of Green Lantern comics had been building to the revelations contained therein. In my judgment, this is what elevated the series to mythology status, a talent Johns has demonstrated in various degrees in most of the rest of his comics work.

The problem with Flash, however, is that the character already underwent the Johns treatment back before Geoff was even a spot on the comics creator horizon. Throughout the 90's and early 2000's, Mark Waid crafted one of the finest runs on a title that comicdom has ever known. His legendary Flash tenure cemented Wally West as THE Flash for a generation of readers. Furthermore, Waid's creation of the Speed Force, the semi-spiritual energy that powers Flash and all similar heroes, provided a mythological underpinning for Flash comics before it became trendy to do so.
The "Rebirth" story in this case was called Terminal Velocity, appearing in Flash issues 95-100. Though the plot featured a run-of-the-mill Flashes vs. Kobra terrorists conflict, the story was memorable for its introduction of the Speed Force and its haunting tendency to call the most accomplished speedsters to abandon their physical existence to it. Not only did the Force give Flash characters their powers, but it had been behind the scenes of pivotal Flash moments throughout history. Max Mercury's quest for it propelled him forward in time from the 1800s, and it had been the Speed Force itself that created the famous lightning bolts from the Wally West and Barry Allen origin stories.

As I predicted above would happen in future years for Green Lantern, Waid's mythology already has become the inspiration for his successors on Flash. In fact, it appears to be at the very heart of Geoff Johns' plans for Barry Allen in Rebirth. This doesn't mean that Johns won't find clever and creative ways to utilize the Speed Force to tell a new story, but it does mean that room for him to embark upon wholesale reinvention of the Flash universe will be a bit scarce. In other words, while Flash: Rebirth will no doubt earn its place alongside other classic Flash stories in a longbox, it'll be Mark Waid's work that headlines the collection.

An Unfounded Battle for the Cowl

There are plenty of reasons to be critical of DC's Batman: Battle for the Cowl event. It's an overblown crossover. An event-on-top-of-an-event with unnecessary tie-ins designed more to serve the corporate bottom line than to serve story development. It reeks of editorial interference, the artist-writer revealed (and chosen?) months after the series was announced. It's a retread of past Batman stories like Knightfall. The story is rushed and crammed into too few installments. Need I go on?

But the real fault of Battle for the Cowl lies in none of these things, which could be attributed to any number of other comic storylines at any given moment. No, the ultimate failure of this series is the way in which its basic premises make faulty assumptions about the nature and significance of Batman, thus subjecting us to a gross mischaracterization of the Dark Knight postmortem.

Let's start off with the way in which Battle for the Cowl, and the Batman comics surrounding it, have portrayed the state of affairs in Gotham City since Bruce Wayne disappeared. Almost instantly, the city descends into a chaos of gang wars and crime sprees. The cops and other vigilantes are ill-equipped to combat these threats as the city (at times literally) burns. Ok, we get it. Batman is of utmost importance to Gotham. And I'll admit that these story elements are successful in conveying that fact, albeit in a blunt, knock-you-upside-the-head-with-a-batarang fashion.

The sad state of Gotham in BftC is meant to uplift Batman, but by going so overboard in one direction to do this, it ultimately reduces our hero to a buffoon. After benefiting from years of crime-fighting and justice-seeking by the caped crusader, the city simply falls to pieces the second he's gone? Batman must have really done a crappy job figuring out how to bring about any kind of lasting change. Furthermore, how ineffective were the teaching techniques he used on the Robins? Shouldn't he have passed along to them a few good pointers on how to be the dark avenger of a city?

It's more absurd to suggest that there would even need to be a battle for Batman's cowl anyway. Ever the master of preplanning and foresight, Bruce Wayne would surely have devised a plan for his succession years ago. Especially considering that Gotham City faced the exact same situation not too long ago, following the back-breaking antics of Bane. Bruce had two capable sidekicks in Dick and Tim, and he would have surely prepared one of them to step into the cape and cowl the moment he was gone. This accusation is even more damning when taking into account that the story that necesitated Battle for the Cowl, Batman RIP, had the notion of Batman's preparation for its thesis statement!

A real Battle for the Cowl would have featured Dick or Tim (and probably the former) stepping into the role of Batman immediately, already instructed by Bruce on what to do. The central conflict would eschew Black Mask or any other villian causing havok and instead focus solely on the interpersonal dynamics within the bat family. Perhaps Jason Todd or Damian would have sought to usurp or sabotage Dick's assumption of the mantle, believing themselves to be Bruce's true heir. It also would have been nice to see a departure from another good versus evil romp here and instead to focus on the disparate personalities, philosophies, and methods of the various Gotham heroes in Batman's wake.

I say all this with a glaring eye aimed at DC Comics editorial, but with no ill will wished toward series scripter Tony Daniel. From all indications, he was handed the outline of Battle for the Cowl the moment he was hired as its writer. His pencil work for the series is strong, and his images brought to life the brilliant madcap ideas of Grant Morrison in RIP. Given the likely mandate of stale story ideas by folks like Dan DiDio, it is hard to believe that any writer short of Morrison himself could have set the atomic batteries to power and turbines to speed on this clunker of a tale.

The Gospel and Science Fiction

Last month I took a trip with a group of college students from my church to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY to attend the Give Me an Answer conference. The theme of the conference was the uniqueness of Christ in a post-modern world, seeking to explore how Christians can believe in Jesus as the only savior in a culture that rejects claims of absolute truth.

One of the elective sessions I attended at the conference was entitled "The Gospel and Science Fiction," a talk given by Timothy Jones, a professor at the seminary, on the spiritual and theological themes found in the sci-fi genre, most notably Star Wars. Professor Jones touched upon many of the same things I had been thinking about lately and bringing up on this blog, namely the ways in which many secular science fiction stories tap into humanity's innate spirituality while still falling short in many ways from arriving at real truth. It wasn't too much of a jump to apply his concepts to superhero comics.

An MP3 of the session may be downloaded here, and the powerpoint slides used in the presentation can be obtained here.

Some Watchmen Movie Thoughts

I. The day before the movie came out, I felt a sudden pang of fanboy grief. Sure, by all indications one of comics' masterpieces had been faithfully translated to film, and the nation was about to be exposed to the medium's greatest triumph. Some of them might even wander into a comic book st--Ok, let's be realistic here--wander over to the graphic novel section at Barnes and Noble.

But, at the same time, from that day forward I'd never be able to introduce anyone to Watchmen again. Not in the same way, at least. Pre-Zack Snyder, you could hand a non-comics reader Watchmen, tell them it's really great, then watch as they end up completely blown away by a comic book (of all things!). I saw it happen firsthand twice in college at UVA, where two classes I took assigned the trade as reading material.

Now, however, you'll bring up Watchmen to your friends and they'll go, "Oh yeah, that movie they made with the big naked blue guy?" Regardless of whether they're actually familiar with it, they'll think they are. Even if Watchmen is read and liked, forever gone will be its shock value. Comics blog Doomkopf sums up this feeling better than I could here, lamenting fanboys' loss of their great "secrets."

II. The worries instilled in me by one of the trailers came true when I saw that the heroes in the movie actually refer to themselves as the "Watchmen." As readers of the comic know, the characters weren't exactly all part of some named group, and the sole failed attempt to do so involved an idea for a team called the Crime Busters. Even when dealing with a story as mature as Watchmen, the studio heads just can't get their minds around the idea that the title of a superhero movie need not refer to the name of the main characters (at least, I'd assume this was the studio's doing). Thank The Dark Knight for taking at least a half-step away from this.

Imagine if this logic were used in all forms of media. You know, the old Simpsons joke about Homer thinking that Mel Gibson portrayed characters named "Braveheart" and "Payback" in his movies? Who can forget such memorable roles as Charlton Heston playing the man known as Ten Commandments or Clint Eastwood as Mr. Unforgiven?

III. On a similar note, it really disturbs me to see so many writers out there calling Alan Moore's work as "The Watchmen." It's just plain Watchmen, people! Adding "the" to things is what old people do when they don't understand how to properly refer to modern concepts. And I'm not talking about mainstream journalists, either. I'm talking about writers for comics publications and on comics blogs. Shouldn't such folks know better?

IV. I've had quite a few conversations with friends about the Rorschach "origin" scene in the movie, where he repeatedly meat cleavers the head of the murderous kidnapper. The scene is quite graphic, but when compared to the way Rorschach takes out the killer in the comic it actually seems tamer in an emotional sense (Remember? He cuffs the guy to a pipe, sets the house on fire, and gives him a hacksaw sharp enough to cut through the killer's arm but not the cuffs. And then we see Rorschach simply standing outside the house watching it burn.) . Why would Snyder and co. choose to show such explicit gruesomeness when the source material already laid out for them how to imply something more impactful?

My theory on this is that the original scene in the comic would have seemed like a ripoff of Saw. I haven't seen the movie (too scared to!), but from what I understand, a major plot point involves a victim having to saw through his own leg with a dull hacksaw in order to escape a deathtrap. Of course, you and I know that Watchmen predates the Saw movies by almost 20 years, but the film was released in a post-Saw world, and moviegoers can't be trusted to so easily grant the benefit of the doubt.

DC Animated Wonder Woman's Surprising Take on Gender Roles

Though I was looking forward to the DC Universe animated Wonder Woman movie coming out this week, I fully expected the story to come with a heavy dosage of feminist subtext. After all, the current series of PG-13 DTV movies from DC isn't aimed at kids (at least not really young ones), and (let's be honest here) if you're going for relevance in Wonder Woman, feminism is the obvious road to take. Plus, the "Sneak Peek" video shown on the Gotham Knight DVD uses scenes of Gloria Steinem and the women's lib movement to place the history of Wonder Woman in its social context. See if you can count up the number of times Rosario Dawson uses the word "warriess!"

So, you can imagine my readiness to strap on the old protective worldview helmet as I unwrapped the DVD's cellophane on Tuesday evening. A guy like me gets plenty of practice trying to enjoy the entertainment parts of a story while picking out the philosophical underpinnings that assail my beliefs. I could all but see the hordes of Amazon women on my blank TV screen barking that all men were evil (a sentiment I can actually get behind, so long as we're talking about mankind). To my surprise, however, this is not the direction the movie went.

Truth be told, the feminist viewpoint does make itself known throughout the course of the film. Hippolyta, seemingly soured on men following her tryst with god of war Ares, and Artemis, the Amazons' fiercest warrior, both tout the virtues of a separatist Themyscira. Their world is one in which a woman's value lies in the degree to which she has been masculinized, where even appreciation for the arts takes a second seat to training for battle. Yet, while the comics had both of these women wear the tiara and bracelets for a time, Diana is the titular wondrous woman here, and it is her viewpoint, if any, that will dictate the perspective of the film.

Of course, having lived her entire life on the island, Diana starts off with a sizable helping of I-don't-need-no-man attitude. But by movie's end she has, through her relationship with Steve Trevor, come to see how a man's love for a woman need not be emblematic of misogynistic oppression. More importantly, Diana begins to understand how her own role as a woman can have a unique and proper place alongside that of a man. Granted, it's no Ephesians 5, but it's not the NOW newsletter either.

The movie's thesis on feminism is probably most clear, though, in the words of Persephone, who betrayed Themyscira to Ares after the Amazons' hard line ways drove her to madness.

Hippolyta: "You were given a life of peace and beauty!"

Persephone: "And denied one of families and children. Yes, Hippolyta, the Amazons are warriors. But we are women too."

How Hope Burns Bright

One of the most interesting concepts in Geoff Johns' lead-up to The Blackest Night has been the introduction of the Blue Lantern Corps. Unlike the other new corps shown so far, which have rapidly scoured the universe to amass a force of numbers, the Blue Lanterns are building their ranks slowly and deliberately. Rather than seeking after their own goals, as the Sinestros and Reds have, the Blues' aim seems to be to aid the Green Lanterns in their mission to keep order. Yet, all indications suggest that the blue ring bearers may be the mightiest of the bunch. And the emotion fueling their rings is hope.

The implication of hope as a driving force came to light this week in Green Lantern #38 during the battle between the Blue Lanterns and the Red. Atrocitus, leader of the Reds, denounces the power of the blue ring as "Empty prayers. Disembodied faith." Evidently, the Blue Lanterns have no real abilities of their own, as their rings only work when fighting along side the willpower of a Green Lantern. "Hope is nothing without willpower to enact it."

This portrayal of hope as useless in and of itself is a remarkably accurate one. No one has ever effected change in the world by simply hoping it would happen. Conceived of improperly, hope surely can exist as nothing but a hollow sentiment, a futile wish that things will turn out ok. This is the hope of Disney movies and Oprah episodes, nothing but fluff when stripped to its core.

But Johns falls short of describing exactly what it is that gives hope its power. Regardless of the strength of will on behalf of those who hope, hope is ultimately defined by its object--that in which the hope in question is being placed. Those who place their hope in political leaders may thrive during the optimism of a campaign but may equally suffer when the elected later face the challenges of governing. Likewise, a man who puts hope in himself stands to go only as far as his own limited capabilities will take him.

This is why the hope of a Christian is unsurpassed. His hope lies in Christ and the redemptive victory over sin and death that was won on the cross. It is hope in one who is eternal, unchanging, and all-powerful. And it is the kind of hope that burns brightest of all.

Was Final Crisis Part of a Trilogy?

Early 2008. Dan DiDio goes public with the notion that DC's upcoming Final Crisis mega-event will be the third installment of a "Crisis trilogy," the last chapter to the story told in Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis. The earth beneath the feet of many a fanboy begins to quake.

Does this man realize what he's saying???

To those who take epic storytelling structure seriously (to me, at least), the word trilogy carries with it tremendous weight. Though the term is often carelessly thrown out there by ad execs in the entertainment biz who still seek to cash in on Star Wars, it takes more than just the presence of three parts to make a trilogy. Those three parts must work together to convey a single theme or idea. In a story-driven trilogy, each individual chapter resolves its own sub-conflict, but by the end of a trilogy the plot must come full circle to resolve an overarching super-conflict that is carried through the entire series.

This is why the original Star Wars movies are a trilogy, but the Mission: Impossible movies are not. A good rule of thumb in analyzing whether a series is a trilogy is to think about how a fourth chapter, if such a thing is even possible, would relate to the first three. A "Star Wars: Episode VII" would involve a vastly different status quo than its predecessors, while a fourth M:I could fit right into a continuous telling of Ethan Hunt's (yes, that was Tom Cruise's character's name and I didn't have to look it up) adventures.

The trilogy is actually a natural format for storytellers to use, and my Christian faith leads me to believe that there's a spiritual reason why. In my old blog, I wrote the following:

When looking at human history through a Biblical lens, three divisions of time emerge. The first era, spanning the years chronicled by the Old Testament, involves the fall of man in the Garden of Eden and a period of waiting for Christ to come. Man currently lives in the second time period, where Christ has arrived and his work to redeem us from the clutches of sin is ongoing. The third and final stage of human existence will occur when Christ returns and the relationship between God, man, and creation is restored to its rightful state.

So, if people are living in the midst of a real-life trilogy, it makes sense that they would write their stories according to the same structure. Even non-Christians, like George Lucas or the Wachowski brothers, unknowingly divide their stories into three parts that correspond to the stages of God's salvation of humanity.

So you can see what was at stake for me as I read Final Crisis. Sure, I wanted to discover the "final fate" of Batman and witness the "day evil won" and all that. But what really had me on the edge of my seat was waiting to find out whether the series would live up to its billing as trilogy.

Six issues through the seven-part series I was more than ready to write-off DiDio's rantings as more corporate hype. Despite a first issue that had some monitors in it, Final Crisis appeared to have nothing to do with the subject matter of the first two Crises, which were about the structure of the DC Universe and its multiple parallel realities. Issue 7 was going to need to have quite the clutch performance in order to satisfy trilogy hunters like myself.

Surprisingly, that issue really did an impressive job of thematically tying Final Crisis to the first two. If Crisis on Infinite Earths was the story of the creating of a streamlined and redirected DC Universe and Infinite Crisis was an exploration of the consequences of that redirection, then Final Crisis was the realization that the streamlined universe itself still owed its character to all of the crazy and chaotic worlds that came before. This idea is the heart of the series' climax, where the Supermen of many earths join together with an army of angels and the Zoo Crew to confront Mandrakk. It is taken further when Nix Uotan realizes that he and his fellow Monitors must no longer try to impose their logic and order upon a multiverse that thrives both in its seriousness and sillyness.

All of the above would have made a great DC Crisis: Episode III if it stood alone as a theme to the story. But the reality is that Final Crisis had much more packed into its pages, so much so that its conclusion to the CoIE story could be easily missed if you weren't looking for it. Yes, Final Crisis was a follow up to the other Crisis series. But it was also a sequel to Seven Soldiers and the fulfillment of stories started in New Gods comics back in the 70's. Heck, it even works as a modern retelling of the comics that came with the Super Powers figures I played with as a kid. (I'll never forget the awesome ending to my Super Powers book on tape where Batman saved the day by pulling out a mirror and reflecting the Omega Effect back onto Darkseid himself! Sadly, only the first and second books in this series are available on YouTube...)

The majority of Final Crisis, if not the ending, focuses almost exclusively on these other things. And a story that casts its net so wide just doesn't look like a Part Three when placed alongside its predecessors which were much more closely linked. There's just too much else going on for it to work. I fear that Blackest Night, which has been billed as the third part of Geoff Johns' Green Lantern trilogy, will suffer the same kind of escalation in scope, as DC seems to be setting it up as the company-wide event for 2009.

For the most accurate preview of Final Crisis, fans should have turned not to DC's marketing giants but to the writer himself. As quoted on Wikipedia from this interview before the series was released, Grant Morrison said:

I wanted to do the biggest crossover there’s ever been... it’s got nods to everything, going back to "Flash of Two Worlds" and the first 'Crisis on Earth-1', 'Earth-2', all that stuff. So there’s little elements of all that...

One cannot fault Morrison for failing to live up to the expectations created by his publisher, because by all indications this is not what he set out to do. Rather than limiting his scope to wrapping up the Crisis storyline, Morrison sought to give the last word on a multitude of elements from DC Comics' past, and this is the standard Final Crisis should be judged by. Call it a sequel, a tribute, or even a conclusion. Just don't let DiDio get away with calling it a trilogy.

Reactions to Reactions to Final Crisis

My thoughts on two recent Final Crisis critiques and analyses I ran across online in the past week:

1. Thom Young at Comics Bulletin praises Final Crisis for its postmodern structure and take on the meaning of symbols. He writes (responding in part to another reviewer on the site):

...Language and symbols have the power to transform reality (or our perception of it, actually), which leads us to being able to conceive of ideas and concepts. It’s a significant distinction because it’s the essential difference between a Modern view of language and a Postmodern view of language (and the primacy of language is the foundation of Postmodernism).

The Modern and Aristotelian view is that ideas and concepts come first and are then expressed through language (which is what Dave stated). The Postmodern view is that language (or symbol system) comes first, which then allows us to organize our perceptions of the world around us--leading to concepts or ideas that otherwise could not exist before the introduction of linguistic structure.

Aside from our difference of opinion regarding the emphasis on words, names, and other symbols in Final Crisis, I agree with Dave’s emphasis on the importance of those aspects of the fifth issue. They are the various paraphrases in that chapter that have branched off from Morrison’s initial theme phrase: The magical power of symbols to structure our perceptions of reality.

There's no doubt that Grant Morrison uses postmodern literary techniques in Final Crisis. The series is often meta-textual and self-aware that it is a comic book. But I disagree with the notion that FC's thesis is one of symbolism's dominance over meaning. Sure, symbols are shown to have much power throughout the story, but that power can always ultimately be traced to some theoretical root source. For instance, Metron's circuit did not spontaneously appear and somehow give birth to the concept of freedom. Its power derived from the fact that Metron, a being on a higher plane, expressed his concept of knowledge to Anthro through it.

It may be that Morrison was actually going for a postmodern take on symbolism, intending for Final Crisis to place the medium over the message. If so, I'd say that the absurdity of such an idea ultimately bore itself out in the text, whether intentionally or not. But if I had to place money on it, I'd venture to say that this is not exactly what the writer had in mind.


2. In his "Permanent Damage" column at Comic Book Resources, Steven Grant rakes Final Crisis over the coals for having an immature view of mythology. To quote:

FINAL CRISIS shares the weakness of its inspiration, Jack Kirby's "Fourth World," and of most comics. It fixates on good and evil, where we're all now very aware, even if we don't admit it, that the concepts are basically nonsense.
...
In a world of moral relativity – and, yes, that is our world, and, really, always has been – we need better terms than those.

While I think Mr. Grant is dead on in his interpretation of what Final Crisis was trying to accomplish, I couldn't disagree more with his opinions on it. One has to wonder why a person so jaded to the notion of good and evil would have even a passing interest in superhero comics, much less want to write about them.

One of the things I love most about Grant Morrison's DC superhero work is that, despite his obvious fringe philosophy on a number of subjects, he completely understands and reveres the moral center that has kept the superhero going strong as a genre for the better part of a century. It may be masked behind an avant-garde approach to storytelling, but Morrison sure knows how to tell us a tale where the good guys win.

Comics About Bad Guys

Is it really possible to write a comic about a bad guy? That is to say, one that really engages the reader? That resonates with his or her innermost being and really works at its core as a story?

I don't think that you can.

Stories, and especially those of the superhero variety, are meant to tell us about heroes. We expect them to tell us about heroes, and something isn't quite right when they don't. Hero stories capture our imaginations because they retell to us a story that we're born knowing. This isn't an original concept. You can read all about it in the works of Joseph Campbell or their comic book adaptation, which was given the perplexing title Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D. If you've got the right perspective, you can even read about it in the Bible.

Villain stories--that is, stories genuinely centered around villains and their pursuit of evil--just don't do that. In fact, I'd venture to say that villain stories speak to our souls so poorly that they are virtually impossible to write. Or at least to be written by an author who intends to obtain any semblance of an audience.

What then of comics that are about bad guys? For surely, though they're in the minority, plenty of them get produced. How can you explain their existence? Well, first of all, let's toss out the Venom: Lethal Protectors and Doom 2099's that graced the shelves of many a 1990's comic shop. Though I have no idea what the critical reception to titles like these was back in the day, you're not apt to find either one in a longbox labeled "All-Time Classic Comics." Or even still in print for that matter. The short longevity of such fad comics seems to only reinforce my point that evil doesn't capture the heart of the reader like heroism does. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, comics of this genre usually featured plots where the villain star underwent some kind of reform or found himself fighting on the side of good for the bulk of the run.

There are still plenty of comics starring bad guys that earn critical acclaim. Ed Brubaker has two of them going on for Marvel Icon right now in Criminal and Incognito, and DC has its own success with Gail Simone's Secret Six. I actually have enjoyed all of these books (though I eventually dropped Criminal due to high sex content), and they do stand out in a good way from the masses of comics out there about the good guys. But while these titles contain enough surface details to offer up an edgier and more titilating flavor, they're really just another variation on the hero story.

I say this mainly because the protagonists in comics like these aren't really that bad. Sure, they steal and kill for selfish motive, and they'd most certainly be the villains if they appeared in the regular series of Superman or Batman. But it's not like these are comics about Darkseid running around firing Omega Beams on Apokolips. In each of the examples I've mentioned, the main characters really come across as the good guys when compared to the depths of evil they go up against. The low-level thugs and pickpockets in Criminal feel harmless in contrast to the ruthless kingpins who are often after them, and the C-list "villians" of Secret Six take on relatively righteous missions that put them at odds with the likes of Dr. Psycho and Junior--truly the bad of the bad.

The closest I think a "quality" comic has ever gotten to being truly about villainy was Mark Millar's Wanted. There's no denying the irredeemable moral bankruptcy of its characters, and there's no suggestion that they'll get their comeuppance in the end. But most of the plot is moved forward at a time during which the ultimate moral status of the protagonist, Wesley, is still in question. Only in the final pages do we receive confirmation that Wesley has fully embraced a life of villainy. And these final pages are where Wanted stands its greatest chance of creating a disconnect with its reader. I can hardly believe I'm the only one who felt a bit uncomfortable in my own skin when the main character looked right at me through the panel and made fun of the way I was living my life.

(It's probably also worth mentioning that the Wanted movie tones down the outright wickedness of the comic. Not to say that this was a particularly good artistic choice, but there's at least a shred of relevance in the fact that this was the method by which the filmmakers sought to make the story palpable to a mass audience.)

I have no doubt that comics about bad guys will continue to be published for many years to come. At the very least it's a means of marketing a story as "cool," much like an R rating can be for a movie. However, I'll be surprised if a really great one comes along and honestly lives up to the name.