SmartRemarks

No, I haven’t posted in several weeks, but no, I haven’t abandoned this blog, either. I’ve just been exceedingly preoccupied with other things. More on that at a later date. It’s starting to ease up, though, so for the moment I at least have the opportunity to offer a short new post.

About? Superman: Secret Origin #3, which shipped last week.

As I wrote at the time, I actually kind of enjoyed the first issue of this Geoff Johns-written revamp of Superman’s backstory; it didn’t really seem necessary, but at least it was being done reasonably well. I had some more reservations about the second issue (which elaborated on Lex Luthor’s origins in Smallville in a way that made it completely pointless to have transplanted him there in the first place, and which reinserted the Legion and a kinda-sorta Superboy career into Clark’s youth in a way designed to pluck all the most obvious emotional chords, but which still had some fun elements). The third issue, though? This one was an outright disappointment.

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Tags: continuity, DC Comics, Geoff Johns, super-heroes, Superman

In one sense, everyone knows Superman’s origin. At least the sound bite version: “strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men,” “rocketed to Earth as an infant from the dying planet Krypton,” and so forth.

The thing is, it’s really hard to build actual stories on a sound bite. And in another sense, hard as it may be to believe, Superman as seen in the comics hasn’t had a coherent origin for the better part of a decade now.

Superman’s backstory was fairly consistent for decades, from its first full telling in 1948’s Superman #53 to 1961’s classic Superman #146 all the way through 1986… notwithstanding lots of retroactive detail that got inserted over the years (especially under Mort Weisinger’s editorship in the ’60s) and a few minor tweaks to accommodate the Earth-1/Earth-2 split. The cumulative history was enough to justify a Superman Encyclopedia in the late ’70s compiling it all. Then all that was swept away in 1986, in the aftermath of the continuity-reshaping Crisis on Infinite Earths, with John Byrne’s Man of Steel mini-series and the simultaneous relaunch of all the Superman titles. It was controversial at the time—particularly for the way it retroactively erased Superboy—but it provided a clean slate on which to create new Superman stories in the new DCU continuity.

For a while.

Then in 2000, as part of a change of creative teams, Superman experienced a “time storm” that left his backstory in doubt. In 2003, DC published Mark Waid’s Superman: Birthright mini, which confused things even more, as it contradicted MoS in many respects but was never acknowledged as fully canonical either in-story or by the editorial PTB. In 2006, Infinite Crisis shook up the DCU again, though not as severely, and in the aftermath hints were dropped about a whole new set of changes to Superman’s backstory—nothing comprehensive, though, just various tweaks like another new look for Krypton here and a revised introduction for Mon-El there. The thing is, there was still a relatively unbroken sequence of stories tracing back to MoS in 1986, and characters and events from many of those stories were still being used or referenced regularly. Confusion reigned.

Now, after a seemingly interminable wait (for those of us who care about these things), comes Superman: Secret Origins—issue #1 was released this week—by writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank. It’s the new Definitive Version. And it’s… not bad.

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Tags: continuity, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, Geoff Johns, Legion, Lex Luthor, super-heroes, Superman

The main Blackest Night series got off to a good start, as I’ve written, and I continue to enjoy it. The story slowed its pace a bit in the second issue, but it’s still compelling and suspenseful, shocking and poignant. The best “event” comic in years, frankly. (It’s clearly leading up to the return of Nekron, the villain from the 1981 Tales of the Green Lantern Corps mini-series… but hey, that’s fine by me! That’s a classic story, still a personal favorite.)

Moreover (unlike many comics crossovers), BN is very tightly and carefully interwoven with the crossover issues of related series, namely Green Lantern (also by Geoff Johns) and GL Corps (by Peter Tomasi).

However… the “second-tier” crossovers may be another story. For instance, the first issue (of three) of Blackest Night: Superman leaves me scratching my head a bit.

Herewith, some top-of-my-head reactions to the issue (written by Superman scribe James Robinson, drawn by Eddy Barrows):

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Tags: Blackest Night, DC Comics, super-heroes, Superman

J. Michael Straczynski, the award-winning writer/creator of Babylon 5 (and a whole lot of other television and movie work as well, e.g., Clint Eastwood’s recent film Changeling), author of a critically hailed seven-year run on Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man (and a whole lot of other comics as well, including more recently a revival of Thor that brought the character a resurgence in both sales and popularity), and a darned nice guy to boot… is leaving Thor, effective in September. The news broke this week via the latest solicitations from Diamond Comics Distributors.

He has a couple of creator-owned projects coming up at Image Comics, and he’s already several scripts deep into Brave & Bold and “Red Circle” for DC Comics… but the really exciting possibilities that come with this change in workload concern another character entirely. 

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Tags: Babylon 5, DC Comics, J. Michael Straczynski, Marvel Comics, Superman, Thor, writers

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

Slate reports that psychologists at UC Berkeley have been using Barack Obama’s speeches (among other stimuli) to study the causes and effects of a previously neglected emotional realm, dubbed “elevation.” Jonathan Chaidt of the University of Virginia, who coined the term, describes it thusly:

Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental ‘reset button,’ wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration.

It’s that sense of transport, that lump in the throat, that great oratory can evoke. It is, almost literally, an uplifting feeling.

Done badly, it rings hollow and artificial, and only serves to affirm our cynicism. Done well, however, it appeals to something deep within us.

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Tags: Grant Morrison, humanism, morality, Obama, psychology, Superman

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

The final issue of DCU Decisions was released Wednesday, completing a cliffhanger from #3. As I’ve written, the series started with at least some potential for breaking interesting ground, but then methodically failed to live up to that potential. The second half of the series is even more disappointing and forgettable, leaving one wondering what if anything this book was intended to accomplish.

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Tags: continuity, DC Comics, DCU Decisions, Election 2008, Superman, Wonder Woman