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.