SmartRemarks

Yesterday saw the release of the first issue of this summer’s big “event” from DC Comics, Blackest Night, after approximately 93 years of heavy advance promotion. For ages now writer Geoff Johns has carefully dropped clues and bits of foreshadowing in his other titles, most prominently Green Lantern, while DC grand poobah Dan Didio dropped anvils (as is his wont) at every opportunity.

“The Dead Will Rise!” is the tag line. It evokes a zombie story, obviously (albeit one with a SF slant given the GL angle), which seems problematic both generally (zombies have been done to death in the last few years, no pun intended) and personally (I’ve just never found zombie stories very interesting).

Heaven knows there are plenty of dead characters to work with in the DC Universe, though. In fact it’s become a routine reader complaint in recent years, almost a running joke, that killing familiar characters is the most hackneyed way to goose a subpar storyline (at least, next to bringing them back). Last year’s offing of J’onn J’onzz and Batman (not to mention the return of Barry Allen) in the pages of Final Crisis are the most recent and obvious example, but far from the only one. Thus the premise runs the risk of descending into been-there-done-that cliché, or even worse, self-parody.

So: excessive hype; niche genre; story hook that treads overly familiar ground and risks being exploitative. All the ingredients for a massive disappointment. My expectations going in were not high.

Surprisingly, then, I have to say that the first issue actually of Blackest Night actually got the story off to a great start, with solid character notes, some touching emotional moments, a few surprises, and genuine suspense about what’s to come. (Not to mention terrific art.)

Spoilers below the fold.

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Tags: Barry Allen, Blackest Night, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Geoff Johns, Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, super-heroes

A few months ago, Barry Allen, the original Silver Age Flash, returned from the dead in the pages of Final Crisis. The “how” and “why” of it weren’t really explained. But DC Comics’ editorial poobah Dan DiDio has written that it was his plan since he came to the company to bring Barry back, and seeing as how FC wasn’t really big on explaining the how or why of much of anything, it didn’t stand out much.

Earlier this month the first issue of The Flash: Rebirth finally saw print, attempting to redress those omissions. I didn’t write about it at the time, although I was more than a little disappointed in the book. Whilst awaiting the second issue, though (due next week), I’ve had the opportunity to collect my thoughts.

I’m still disappointed. Dejected, even.

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Tags: Barry Allen, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Geoff Johns, Legion, super-heroes, The Flash

It’s been far longer than I intended since my last post. Sometimes time just runs away from you. So let me just toss off a few ideas that have crossed my mind in recent days, and get caught up…

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First off:  the wrangling in Washington over the new “economic stimulus package” has been interesting to watch. Obama has gone out of his way to be as “post-partisan” as promised, extending an olive branch to Republicans the likes of which Dems never saw under eight years of Bush, wining and dining them, inviting input… and in response they basically gave him the finger. (Although, anxious not to alienate a public who likes him, they tried to shift their ire toward the Democratic leadership.) And the usual suspects in the punditocracy backed them up.

Basically, the GOP’s goal right now seems to be to shrink the stimulus bill down to something so small and weak that it won’t be effective… and then to blame their opponents for its ineffectiveness. All while the country at large continues to suffer, of course.

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Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Congress, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, economy, Final Crisis, House of Representatives, Illinois, Legion, Obama, Republicans, Senate, super-heroes, television, Tom Geoghegan, unemployment

What.

The fuck.

Was that?

Seriously. Final Crisis #7 was every bit as crashingly disappointing as I feared it would be, and more so. Grant Morrison’s reach clearly far, far exceeded his grasp.

It certainly did exemplify a writing style he earlier described (warned? threatened?) as “channel-zapping,” though, and gods willing no one will ever be tempted to try such a style again. Morrison seems not to have considered just why the practice evolved in the first place—i.e.,  when people keep clicking that remote, it’s typically because they’re not interested in the random snippets they zap through along the way, but rather because they’re hoping (usually in vain) that something better will turn up that merits ongoing attention.

Further self-descriptions of his work? Well, there’s this…

I had the idea to develop an approach to comic narrative that would actually benefit from becoming entangled in internet fan speculation, gossip and research… I’ve always liked to leave resonant spaces, gaps and hints in stories, where readers can do their own work and find clues or insert their own wild and often brilliant theories. I’m often trying to create a kind of fuzzy quantum uncertainty or narrative equivalent of a Rorschach Blot Test effect, which invites interpretation.

and this…

Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant ? …

I found myself wondering what it would be like if comics’ storytelling stopped aping film or TV and tried a few tricks from opera, for instance. How about dense, allusive, hermetic comics that read more like poetry than prose? How about comics loaded with multiple, prismatic meanings and possibilities? Comics composed like music? In a marketplace dominated by ‘left brain’ books, I thought it might be refreshing to offer an unashamedly ‘right brain’ alternative.

Never a model of humility, in the same interviews Morrison attempts to compare his writing to TV and film works like Lost and Donnie Darko, and dismisses the critics of his recent work as “lazier readers” and/or “a particularly jaded minority on the internet.” Sorry, but I count myself as part of the large and devoted fan followings of the examples he names, and of many similarly “complex” works—not because they’re stylistically complex, though, but because they tell well-structured, emotionally compelling stories—and FC isn’t even in the same ballpark. “Disjointed” is the word that’s come up more than any other in reviews of Morrison’s writing in recent months, but this issue takes the adjective to a whole new level. Morrison’s effect—indeed, apparently his intent—was to have his story swallowed up by its own lacunae, and that simply doesn’t make for a satisfying reading experience.

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Tags: continuity, Darkseid, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, super-heroes, Superman

My single overwhelming impression of this issue:

Wow, that was crap.

Again.

I kind of enjoyed issue #5, enough to be hoping for an upward trend as this story neared the home stretch. Apparently that was too much to hope for, though. (Which perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise, given the book’s multifarious agenda to be simultaneously a big accessible “event” story, a sequel to Jack Kirby’s New Gods work, a sequel to the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths, a thematic capstone to Grant Morrison’s body of super-hero work, and a thematic capstone to Dan DiDio’s chaotic tenure as DC’s executive editor.)

What did we actually get in this penultimate issue? Well…

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Tags: Batman, continuity, Darkseid, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, Green Lantern, Legion, super-heroes, Superman

Okay, it came out over the holidays, but I’m just getting to writing about it now.

This issue and the previous one have to fill a number of slots:  they make up “What The Butler Saw,” Grant Morrison’s installment of the “Last Rites” short tales closing out the current era of the Bat-titles; they’re Morrison’s coda to his own current run on the character, and a sequel (of sorts) to “Batman R.I.P.”; they’re a summary of the entire career history of the Batman, and an examination of his motivations along the way; and they’re a crossover with Final Crisis, detailing what happens to Batman therein and leading back into issue #6 of said Big Event.

And they work satisfyingly on every one of those levels. I’ve been critical of much of Morrison’s recent work, on Batman and elsewhere, but I very much enjoyed this story.

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Tags: Batman, continuity, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, super-heroes

The first six pages of Final Crisis #5 were the highlight of the series so far for me. They take us to Oa, following up on the status of Green Lantern Hal Jordan (not seen since issue #3 back in August). Unlike the brief, hit-and-run scenes that have characterized so much of this series to date, the sequence stays with its subjects long enough to clarify why and how Hal was framed and arrested, and to clear his name in a dramatic confrontation with Alpha Lantern Kraken (possessed by Granny Goodness), moving the plot markedly forward with some spot-on character moments along the way. It all leads up to a classic line—melodramatic but oh-so-evocative—as a Guardian enjoins him, “You have 24 hours to save the universe, Lantern Jordan.”

This is why I love comics.

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Tags: Darkseid, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, Lex Luthor, super-heroes

Hot on the heels of Grant Morrison’s dramatically anticlimactic ending of “Batman R.I.P.” comes Batman #682, the first of two parts of “Last Rites,” Grant’s coda to his current run on the title.

In a drastic change of pace from what has come before, this issue basically offers a retrospective, a recap of (the first half of) the Batman’s career. Of course, Grant Morrison being who he is, it’s not as simple as that… it’s presented as a stream of consciousness, cryptic and disjointed, impressionistic. From all appearances the memories depicted are those of Bruce Wayne… but just to complicate things, the narration comes courtesy of Alfred the butler, and there’s at least one scene in which Bruce isn’t even present.

(The art, too, is different; Lee Garbett’s work is serviceable, but no better than Tony Daniel’s.)

What the issue doesn’t offer, despite the promises of publisher and editors, is any sort of narrative “bridge” whatsoever explaining how Batman got from the end of “R.I.P.” to the beginning of Grant’s other current opus, Final Crisis, with which this tale crosses over.

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Tags: Batman, continuity, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, super-heroes

Looking in from the outside, it seems like there’s lots of second-guessing and retrenching going on at the number two comics company. With Final Crisis in its home stretch and major goings-on in the Superman and Batman titles, several long-term storylines are up in the air right now, and readers are left wondering whether the DCU will have any coherent creative direction when the dust settles. Omens are not good. As Tom Bondurant puts it in reaction to the solicitations for February’s books,

Cancellations, character shuffling, and general restructuring seem to be the order of business for the first part of 2009.

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Tags: Batman, continuity, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, Legion, super-heroes, Superman, Wonder Woman

Now this is what a really epic-scale super-hero comic book looks like.

(Yeah, I know it came out two weeks ago, but I’m running a little behind. There’s been a lot of politics happening lately. So sue me.)

Notwithstanding the official title and cover dress, this story really bears no meaningful connection to Final Crisis. And that’s just fine. It’s a Legion story through and through, and it’s done in a grand style.

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Tags: continuity, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Geoff Johns, George Perez, Legion, super-heroes, Superman