SmartRemarks

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

The other day, veteran comics writer Bill Willingham (also co-author of the recent and justly berated DCU: Decisions, and one of the relatively few outspoken conservatives in the industry) wrote an online essay about the current state of super-hero comics. He complained of some recent trends… but also took things a step further, equating his complaints with political allegiances, and setting off a bit of a tempest in a teapot.

From his original essay:

…DC’s greatest icon, Superman, one of the handful of fictional characters known throughout the world, no longer seems to be too proud of America. He still finds occasion to mention he fights for truth and justice, but no longer finishes that famous line with, “…and the American way.” …

Marvel’s legendary patriot Captain America, in a comic book story published shortly after 9/11 spent a good part of the issue apologizing to the super terrorist he was battling about all of the terrible things America did in its pursuit of the cold war against the Soviets. “(But) we’ve changed. We’ve learned,” he whines. “My people never knew!” Then again, at least ol’ Cap was fighting the bad guy, so maybe there’s still hope.

Except that In another later appearance, in a different title (same company) Captain America willingly goes along with a government cover-up of a incident that resulted in massive civilian casualties. He not only goes along with it, he doesn’t even bat an eye when asked to do so. …

Those are but two examples of the slow but steady degradation of the American superhero over the years. The ’super’ is still there, more so than ever, but there seems to be a slow leak in the ‘hero’ part. … Old fashioned ideals of courage and patriotism, backed by a deep virtue and unshakable code, seem to be… well, old fashioned.

Full disclosure time. I’m at least partially to blame for this steady chipping away of the goodness of our comic book heroes. In my very first comic series Elementals, first published close to thirty years ago, I was eager to update old superhero tropes, making my characters more real, edgier, darker — less heroic and a good deal more vulgar than the (then) current standard. Elementals was one of the first of what was later dubbed the ‘grim and gritty’ movement in comic books. And to complicate my confession, I’m still proud of much of that early work. At least my crass and corrupted Elemental heroes still fought, albeit imperfectly, for the clear good, against the clear evil.

What can I say? When I was young and foolish I was young and foolish. In hindsight I should have realized then what is so obvious today. In any industry, especially one as inbred and insular as the comics world, one excess feeds another. Of course we didn’t think of it as excess. We called it stretching the boundaries. Pushing the envelope. Doing a bigger and better car chase in this one than they did in that one. And every other cliche we could summon to our defense. “If they got away with having their hero accidentally kill his opponent in that book, then we’re going to outdo them by having our guy purposely kill someone in ours!” And so on, until today an onscreen (and quite graphic) disemboweling of a superhero’s opponent is not only allowed, it’s no big thing.

Don’t get me wrong. All is not completely dire in the comic book industry. For the most part superhero stories still involve the good guys battling the bad guys for identifiably good causes. And even in that story mentioned above where Captain America participates in the sinister cover-up, under the pen of the same writer, a few issues later he resurrects a shade of his former self (summons his inner John Wayne if you will) and tells an evil alien invader he’s fighting, “Surrender? Surrender??? You think this letter on my forehead stands for France?” (The letter is an ‘A’ for America, of course.) Good one, Cap.

Along with many others, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve gone too far, but not irreversibly so.

So, finally to the point of this note. … It’s time to make public a decision I’ve already made in private. I’m going to shamelessly steal a line from Rush Limbaugh, who said, concerning a different matter, “Go ahead and have your recession if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I choose not to participate.” And from now on that’s my position on superhero comics. Go ahead and have your Age of Superhero Decadence, if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I no longer choose to participate.

No more superhero decadence for me. Period. From now on, when I write within the superhero genre I intend to do it right. And if I am ever again privileged to be allowed to write Superman, you can bet your sweet bootie that he’ll find the opportunity to bring back “and the American way,” to his famous credo.

For now, I invite others in my business to follow suit, as their own consciences dictate. We’ll talk more about this later.

As I said above, not all comic stories are about superheroes. Comics are a medium, not a genre. There’s still plenty of room for gray areas, stories of moral ambiguity, and the eternal struggle of imperfect people trying to find their way in a bleak and indifferent world. I plan to continue all of that and more in my Fables series. But for me at least the superhero genre should be different, better, with higher standards, loftier ideals and a more virtuous — more American — point of view.

As you might expect, this definitely got people talking.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bill Willingham, Captain America, conservatism, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, 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

What, another top ten list? Sure, why not. It’s that time of year. Everybody’s doing it.

These are selected only from among films released in Chicago in calendar 2008, and (far narrower than that) from films I’ve actually seen—which is far from all of them, since no one’s paying me to be a critic (more’s the pity). Spoiler Warning: plot points may be revealed below.

Caveats:  this is an entirely personal and subjective list (of course).  2008 was a bit of a mixed bag, cinema-wise; there were a handful of great films, but not very many good ones, so assembling this list took a bit of effort. No guarantee of entertainment value for any third party is intended or should be inferred, and the author specifically disclaims responsibility for any time or money readers may consider to have been wasted on any of these movies. In other words, you’ll probably disagree with me about something. Tough! That’s what the comments section is for.

1) Milk

It begins with death, ends with death, and has death in-between, along with significant portions of prejudice and injustice. The one thing it doesn’t have is despair:  this is one of the most life-affirming movies I’ve seen in ages. Gus Van Sant captures 1970s San Francisco with what feels like easy naturalism, and Sean Penn turns in a brilliant, affecting performance way outside his usual type in the title role.

2) Wall-E

Pixar scores again. In many ways this film, especially the near-silent first half, evokes the terrific silent-era work of Charlie Chaplin, with the good-hearted but hapless hero contending with outrageous circumstances increasingly beyond his control. That the hero happens to be a trash compactor seems almost incidental. It’s irrestistably funny, moving, suspenseful, and (of course) beautiful to look at. Along the way, it also offers gentle lessons for kids and adults both about the undesirable consequences of rampant consumerism.

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Tags: Dark Knight, Iron Man, movies, super-heroes, Top 10 lists

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

The final issue of Grant Morrison’s much-hyped “Batman: R.I.P.” storyline hit the shelves last week (after delays. what a surprise)… and the best thing I can say about the story, now that it’s complete, is that it had some lovely painted covers by Alex Ross.

Fair warning: spoilers ahead. A decent summary of the entire story arc (from Batman #676-681)—and its precursors, pretty much the entirety of Morrison’s two-year run—can be found here.

This wasn’t a case (as it seems to be with Final Crisis) of DC promoting the story as something other than what the author intended. Morrison himself pushed this tale as “the definitive story of Batman,” promising to put the character through “a fate worse than death. Things that no one would expect to happen,” and warning readers that in the final issue, “when we find out the identity of the villain, it’s possibly the most shocking Batman reveal in 70 years.” He utterly failed to deliver—not only on his grandiose claims, but even on the basic expectations of a coherent, satisfying narrative.

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Tags: Batman, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, 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

How could I resist passing this along?

Matt Yglesias: It seems that Barack Obama, like Rachel Maddow and all decent progressives, is a comic book fan. Excellent news for America.

That’s based on the very first item (among many other interesting ones) in the Telegraph piece he links, reporting:

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

We already knew (or suspected) at least the first part of this, of course. Natural choices for someone his age, who probably first noticed comics in the early ’70s. (Perhaps he ought to take a look at Ex Machina, too, an award-winning comic about a professional politician who happens to be a former super-hero.)

At any rate, clearly Barack understands the cardinal life lesson we learn from Peter Parker:  With great power comes great responsibility.

Among other interesting factoids from the Telegraph, we also learn that Obama won a Grammy award, he speaks Spanish, he bench presses 200 pounds, his home-cooking specialty is chili, he uses a Mac (naturally!), and one of his favorite films (I really do love this guy’s taste) is Casablanca.

(I wasn’t previously aware that Maddow read comics, either, but apparently it’s true, which just makes her even cooler than she already obviously was.)

Tags: Mac, Obama, Rachel Maddow, super-heroes