What’s going on at DC?

Given the political climate and timeline, you would be forgiven if you thought this post might be about the mid-term elections tomorrow. It's not. Instead, once again, I am dumbfounded by the editorial decisions being made at DC. There will probably be spoilers ahead, though not very big ones, but I'm telling you now.

On the one hand there's Batman and all of his titles. After the cock-up that was the "death" of Bruce Wayne, the past year has been filled with hints that he may well be coming back, including Tim Drake discovering "evidence" that he was not really dead but lost in time, and the really solid clue of a mini-series entitled "The Return of Bruce Wayne" which followed the adventures of an amnesiac Bruce Wayne bouncing in time and continually running into a bat motif. The mini-series was kind of interesting, featuring some very fine art and one-off stories about a nameless, memory-less do-gooder bouncing around in time. That kind of changed with issue #5, wherein Grant Morrison brings back his ridiculously confusing cast of characters from his run on Batman before Bruce "died.

There's also the impending threat of Batman's return, slowly being hinted at in another mini-series, Time Masters: Vanishing Point, wherein Time Master Rip Hunter, Superman, Booster Gold, and Hal Jordan go off to thwart Bruce Wayne's return, fearing that he is a trap deployed by Darkseid. Apparently, Bruce's bouncing through time has caused him to accumulate "omega energy" that will cause him to erupt with Earth-shattering energies upon his arrival at the time when he was sent off on his jaunts.

I suspect that the two mini-series were intended to conclude coincidentally, but sadly we are currently at issues #5 and #4. The last issue of The Return of Bruce Wayne is scheduled for 10 November, while the last two issues of Vanishing Point are not due until December. Meanwhile, in the latest issue of Batman and Robin, Bruce Wayne is back, in the Batman costume, surprising Dr. Hurt and his cronies as they plot against the new Batman and latest Robin. And then DC also had a series of one-shot issues dealing with Bruce's return across the Bat-verse, following him as he decides what form his return to the living would take among his peers and "family."

Thus the scorecard: in the mini-series about his return, Bruce Wayne is not back yet. The associated mini-series to stop him from coming back is behind the main one (so they really can't prevent him from coming back?). In continuity, he's back in costume, and in a coincidental series of one-shots, he's back but not in costume (actually in a different costume, as the Insider…but all of the superheroes he deals with recognize him anyway). So, what's the big deal? It's just comics right?

The big deal is that this was supposed to be an Event. DC had fooled the mainstream media into writing stories about the demise of Bruce Wayne, leading to an increase in sales. A bit later, DC is bringing him back with the same expectation. But if regular readers of the comics are totally lost about his status, I can't imagine what the casual reader might feel. I'm not even sure if the casual reader might want all of the dreck associated with the Event. But if they did walk into a comic book store and tell the clerk to give them "the book where Bruce Wayne comes back," what is the appropriate response? "He's not really back yet?"

You'll notice that my explanation of why this has happened does not involve anything about telling a good story. That's how high my cynical meter has gotten—I'm nearly 100% convinced they came up with the idea and figured out how to make money off of it rather than having a good story and marketing that. Or perhaps they figure it's enough of a good story to say "Bruce Wayne was dead and now he's not." But if you wanted some depth to this ridiculous breadth of paper being used to tell the story, it doesn't exist. It's not very good and feels contrived and predictable. Again, someone who is not a comics fan might say "So what?" The sad thing to me is that the stories did matter, to me personally and to the audience at large. And I lay this deficiency at the feet of the editorial decision-makers at DC.

And then there's Superman. At the beginning of the summer, DC brought a new writer to Superman, J. Michael Straczynski, veteran of genre TV and many year at Marvel Comics. A lot of people have a great deal of appreciation for JMS (as he is called in fan circles so that there won't be repeated embarrassed misspellings of his last name), but I've never understood the ardor his name can provoke. Apparently, DC getting him away from Marvel was something of a coup, and his work on Wonder Woman and DC were going to set the world on fire. I've already written about Wonder Woman earlier (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2010/08/amazon-princesss-new-clothes.html), and I had considered writing a similar post about JMS's upcoming work on Superman. But I decided that I was being too much a cynic and to give it a shot. And now it's been four months.

The premise of the year-long Superman story arc "Grounded" is that Superman no longer feels connected to the common man since he spends all his time fighting supervillains and global threats. What about individuals, the sick, the hungry, the helpless? Why didn't Superman do things for them? So Superman decides to walk across America, talking to people he meets and helping out where he can. If there's a major threat somewhere, he'll fly off to take care of it, but then return to the exact spot he left off and continue to walk. On its face, it's an interesting premise, especially since it circles back to what Superman was doing in the earliest issues of his own comics. It also sticks its tongue out at years of continuity but in a thoughtful way—how does anyone not notice Clark Kent is missing? How will his marriage to Lois survive his being gone for (another) year? And the life of this character has consisted of slowly increasing power levels since, metafictionally, each threat had to be more dangerous than the last. What would be the reaction to the equivalent of a god walking among them?

I thought that the idea could lead to some interesting stories, if the audience were given a methodology to box away reminders of Superman's abilities. The idea of the common person interacting with Superman could result in powerful storytelling, but it would become saccharine and repetitive over the length of a year. And in truth, the first couple of stories in the arc were better than I might have hoped. I'm not sure it's an entirely realistic depiction of what would happen—I would expect packed streets and stampedes of people trying to get close enough to him to ask a favor and desperate people weeping as he passes them by. The premise sets up the expectation that he could address anybody but perception is that he can help everybody. And that's just not possible. There's a conflict for you to write about. (DC used to do a letters to Superman issue every year at Christmas-time, where Superman actually did read letters and try to fulfill wishes of people begging for his aid, but they seem to have gone away in the past few years). At any rate, it seemed to me there were a limited number of stories about Superman among the people and that it would take an extraordinary storyteller to get more than a few issues out of it before it got morose and perhaps just boring.

DC fooled me. After three issues, they have already had a fill-in issue. After some months bally-hooing the arrival of JMS and this ground-breaking story, someone has fallen enough behind that the story had to take a break. It's not exactly a sign of good things to come—I've got no faith another one won't be required down the line. And, sadly, the fill-in wasn't a very good story, with puerile characterization and the emotional weight of Garfield the Cat. So what?

I guess part of my rant comes down to being sold a bill of goods. I was told to expect a years' worth of this story and I got three months before it got stuck. If there has been a catastrophe, say the illness of one of the creators, I could understand and forgive. But this doesn't seem to be the case; instead it appears to be crappy planning, again, on the part of DC editorial. And I fell for it, again, expecting something better…expecting what I was told would happen.

The comics industry innately breeds cynicism in its regular readers. We are told that in this issue, some dies or that, laughably, things will never be the same. But with one exception now, they ALWAYS come back, and things ALWAYS go back to being the same. And long-time readers just accept that. This time, twice now (three times if I include the ongoing Wonder Woman and her new clothes storyline), I was told I would get good stories. And I expected things would eventually be the same when those stories were done. But what I got was bureaucratic ineptitude. Let me at least read the stories, in the order they are intended, so I can see if they are good or not….

DC's batting 0 for 2 with these storylines, and Wonder Woman is still at bat.

How do you know you're a book geek? (part the second)

—when the author you are reading leaves autobiographical details in his works, you spend time on Google searching for and eventually finding a picture of him and his wife. And then you try to figure out just how autobiographical the details in his writing actually are.

—when you discover that a book you ordered on Amazon and that got delayed for unstated reasons years ago is really about to come out in less than a month. And then you get a little pissed that you'd've been better off not knowing it was coming out because now you have to WAIT.

And the first volume of the Pogo Archive is finally scheduled too! The first volume has an intro by Jimmy Breslin, but I'm praying future volumes will have some words from the likes of Jeff Smith, Berkeley Breathed, and Bill Watterson. (But perhaps this points more to comics geekdom than book geekdom.)

The Amazon Princess’s New Clothes

People where I work don't know what to do with the fact that I am a comics guy. It's becoming kinda mainstream for speculative fiction fans here, especially since I work at a software development company, but comics still hang out at the border between geek and accepted. Mostly, the topic doesn't come up in conversation except when there's some big blockbuster movie based on comics coming out; at those times, the break room banter revolves around my feelings about the upcoming movie and the comic it is based upon. When Watchmen came out, people wanted my opinion of the comic and the movie as well as clarification about what exactly was going on in some scenes.

But I'm more sought for my opinions when comic companies make the mainstream news. I mentioned earlier that I was queried several times for my opinion of Disney's purchase of Marvel. Recently, the big story that got people's attention and had them seeking my opinion was the press release for Wonder Woman's new costume (http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2010/06/29/unveiling-wonder-woman%E2%80%99s-new-costume-direction/). It was interesting to see people forming such hard opinions about Diana Prince, mostly based on gut feelings in comparing it to her traditional costume. Current writer J. Michael Straczynski claimed that the change, in part, was due to a practical dislike for the costume everyone knows best (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=26929):

I also wanted it functional. As so many female fans have said over the years, "How does she fight in that without all her parts popping out? Where does she keep stuff?" She can keep or shed the jacket, there are pockets, it's tough and serious looking while still attractive. It's a Wonder Woman designed for the 21st century. Not to get all "Project Runway" on this, but what woman wears the same outfit for 60 years without at least accessorizing?

It's a remarkable position to take, at once both feminist and condescending.

There was a moderate internet uproar over the change, in part because conservative bloggers picked up the change and saw it as yet another liberal attempt at changing the status quo. Few people outside the industry and its fans actually read deeply enough to determine that the costume change was due to a story arc that redefined Wonder Woman's origins: Paradise Island has been destroyed and Wonder Woman is an exile in hiding, working the mean streets to find the man responsible for the destruction of her homeland, the death of her mother, and the dispersal of the Amazons. There was some interesting critique from old school Wonder Woman supporter, Gloria Steinem, who pondered why Wonder Woman now had the same origin as Superman (http://blastr.com/2010/07/gloria-steinem-why-did-dc.php).

But to me, it was all a tempest in a teapot, primarily because all the most reported opinions came from people who had pretty much no background in comics—either as readers or insiders—and so missed two really important bits of information, not really discussed explicitly, but implicit in the way the industry works.

First, the change in costume serves as much as promotion as it does plot device. Perhaps when Straczynski was writing the story, he didn't think of it as a way to push sales of the Wonder Woman comic, but as soon as he mentioned it to someone, you can bet the marketing folks grabbed on to it. Even though the news was posted on DC's own Web site in the form of a blog entry, it was also a press release given to many mainstream sources of "news." And Wonder Woman needed promotion—despite the solid writing of fan favorite (and self-proclaimed Wonder Woman fan) Gail Simone, Wonder Woman's sales were languishing. In May of 2010, Wonder Woman was ranked #82 in terms of issues sold and #97 for the dollar value of the quantity sold. In the previous four months, the sales ranks were 78, 71, 85, and 78. To get a feel for how low this is, some of the titles that ranked higher in May included such traditional favorites as Doomwar (#72 in quantity and #66 in dollars), iZombie (#60 in sales), and Sentry (#20 in sales). Given that Wonder Woman is considered one of the DC's Big Three (along with Superman and Batman), and that much of the DC continuity flows through and around her—and especially given that she remains one of the few superheroes instantly recognizable by mainstream audiences)—those numbers are dismal. But in June, given the outpouring of reaction to the costume change, the next issue of Wonder Woman, featuring an eight-page story starting off the new arc, rose to #24 in sales and #7 in dollars (due also in part to the increase in price for the special issue). And in July, the first full issue of Wonder Woman with the new costume was ranked #38 in sales and #55 in dollars. So, in the short term, the publicity angle and the reaction fabricated to it succeeded in pushing up the sales numbers for a low-selling product for DC. Imagine that, a publicity stunt worked.

Secondly, what regular comics readers know and mainstream audiences don't, and have no reason to know, is that no change is permanent for Marvel and DC. The two biggest companies with the longest history of publishing comics have to do a strange little dance with the continuity of their products—readers want new ideas, but they don't want the ongoing continuity of their characters changed to unrecognizability. Bold new directions for characters are generally only short-term changes, with very few permanent upheavals. It is axiomatic in comics that when a main character dies, there was never a body found, leaving the door open for their eventual return. Comics geeks used to be able to count on three fingers the deaths in the biggest two continuities that were irreversible plot elements: Uncle Ben's death in Spiderman, Gwen Stacy's death in Spiderman, and the death of the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen. And yet in the last couple of years, both Gwen Stacy and Barry Allen have been resurrected, supposedly in part because fans wanted it, but also because that kind of gimmick sells comics. The biggest two comic events in the past few years for mainstream audiences was the death of Captain America and the death of Bruce Wayne. And yet in about two years each, both those characters have or will return (DC plans for Bruce Wayne to return this October).

This same axiom is playing out in Wonder Woman too. What commentators on the press release didn't see or understand is that Wonder Woman is now on a different Earth, having travelled their by some sort of magic or intercession by the gods. She is not in the primary continuity any longer, but exploring some issues that may affect the main continuity, and will return. Not eventually return, but is planned to return at the end of this story arc. So all this noise about Wonder Woman changing her origin and costume is based on a single story line that will merge back into the one that everyone knows about.

So, when people asked me my opinion of the "new" Wonder Woman, my best reaction was simply to shrug and point out that it would all get "fixed." To me, the most interesting thing about the temporary change was the reaction that it received from anyone who read the story. Given that strong, solid storytelling clearly doesn't sell comics while gimmicks like this do, why shouldn't the companies continue to rely on the gimmicks? And if they continue to use the gimmicks, how will the comics companies ever escape from the stereotype of their being a medium for kids?

Some random thoughts

At my mainstream job where I have achieved some sort of notoriety as an expert on comics when the company did a small blurb about my interests, I was approached a number of times about the merger of Disney and Marvel. The merger was all over the airwaves and friendly people wanted to know my take on it ("not a very big deal at the moment, but let's see what happens in two or three years if Marvel isn't making as much money as Disney imagined"). I have to say I am not looking forward to the potential appearance of Marvel characters at sporting events that ESPN is covering, or Michael Wilbon going up against Dazzler on Pardon the Interruption. But other than that kind of cross-pollination, I don't expect any big changes.

However, no one is asking anything me about the far more important change at DC, with Warner Brothers exerting control and changing DC Comics to DC Entertainment. This one seems a lot more troublesome to me, especially since it appears (important word choice there) to be a reaction to the Disney/Marvel merger. DC has long been the second-place comic company and some would argue way behind Marvel in the development of their properties for media. Such an argument would have to be based on quantity of movies, because frankly DC has long kicked Marvel's butt in the development of TV shows (Smallville or the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series, anyone?) and in the quality of their movies recently. But since Marvel has announced a schedule for the next two or three years, the perception is that Marvel is leading the race to make a movie buck. And I suppose they are, since four decent movies will generally outdraw just one great one. And of course, creating great movies is not an easily reproducible task.

I doubt that the change is a reaction to Disney/Marvel, since I would think it would take more than a couple of weeks to make such a change—I suspect this has been in talks for some time. Nonetheless, it has already had some serious repercussion with the resignation of Paul Levitz, a guiding hand at DC for some decades. While Levitz will return to writing, whether for good or ill remains to be seen, it is his role as publisher and final decision-maker that is going to be missed. Unlike the Disney/Marvel merger, where Disney was quick to say that nothing will change with the comics, no one is saying similar things about DC and Warner Brothers; in fact, such a move seems designed to force change since DC has been owned by Warner Brothers for years and there was no organizational shake-up.

I've read some interesting analyses of Levitz's tenure as publisher. Most of the industry has only great things to say about him (see, for example, http://busiek.com/site/2009/09/paul_levitz.php), but the fans seem somehow really angry at him. They blame a lot of interesting decisions about censorship on him without taking into account how important he has been on the larger movements of the comics industry. I think that such a view of his work neglects that comics may have no bigger fan than Paul Levitz, and every decision he made has come from the primal love. They may not have been the right decisions but they were grounded in the joy of going to the store on Wednesday and finding out what was new this week.

And if the result is non-comics people injecting themselves into decisions with an immediate goal of boosting the bottom line, I fear a lot of the creative energy at DC will get misplaced. DC has been very good of late giving comics a good run to find their audience, and with some success. I wonder how short the leash will be for new series. And I worry that more effort will be spent in aligning the comics with the other media representations, something that has already happened at DC, with an upcoming origin series for Superman being his third or fourth in a few years. Having a different viewpoint is not a bad thing and, of course, the long-term health of DC Comics has got to be more important than the career paths of my favorite characters. But it all just feels sort of ominous; perhaps I'm not worried about Disney and Marvel because I really don't read their comics and only am concerned with Marvel's health as it is necessary for DC's continued survival. But when someone starts messing with DC, my hackles may be up and I'm not even aware of it.

We certainly do live in interesting times.

*****

Alex Bledsoe has written a nice opinion piece about the latest Star Trek movie. I've already made my feelings known about it, and Bledsoe has put another nail in the coffin for me, adding to my concern about the movie missing out on what distinguishes Star Trek from random space opera. Check it out at http://downinluckytown.blogspot.com/2009/09/core-problem-with-jj-abrams-star-trek.html. It's a really good point and one that I overlooked in my general unease about what the franchise is trying to become.

Interestingly, Mrs. Speculator was lately talking about the same thing in recent fantasy reading we've been doing. The whole "chosen one" meme seems ripped from mainstream high fantasy, and I've been more and more getting into fantasy that breaks away from the clichés. Mrs. Speculator has bravely gone along on the ride (I imagine she would say she had very little choice in the matter) and so we have read Mieville and Lynch and Rothfuss and Mr. Bledsoe himself. When you go back to the clichés after being in the company of such freethinking folks, it can feel a little ham-handed, and she noticed. Sadly, now that she is about to go back to school, I don't see how she is going to have time to read Abercrombie and Gilman.

*****

A woman's college in the city I have spent my life in just changed their mascot from Angels to Avenging Angels. That strikes me as a little odd, since I would not expect young Methodist women to have much to avenge. It also seems to speak to not having a history of success in athletics, thus requiring the school to spend a great deal of time avenging historic ignominious defeat.

And to show what a geek I really am, I'm reminded of a train of thought I've long held, originating with my firmly held belief that DC comics are superior to Marvel. In 1963, Iron Man, Ant-Man, The Wasp, Hulk, and Thor came together to fight Thor's nemesis, Loki, and then stuck together because they felt they worked well as a team. They named themselves the Avengers, and they worked so well together that after the second issue Hulk was gone. But to my point—the event that brought them together. Loki was just being villainous; he didn't attack Thor or any of his friends, nor any of the others or their friends. Loki causes Hulk to rip up a railroad track. So what exactly is it that the Avengers are avenging? And wouldn't you think after more than 45 years, they would have achieved vengeance?

Note that DC's primary hero team seeks only justice, not vengeance….

A Tiny Comic Rant

As a professional writer and editor, I feel the most embarrassment when a stupid mistake makes it through the writing and editing cycles and is given to the readers. While Justice League of America has been growing more and more stale, with Hal Jordan pronouncing what appears to be the death knell of the series in this latest issue, #31. Clearly author Dwayne McDuffie has a direction he wants to go in, and admittedly, DC has left him a pretty gigantic task—a Justice League without Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. Black Canary even invokes the dreaded Justice League Detroit as she considers the power levels of her League, but it is pretty indicting when one of the main characters announces that the current incarnation has "done nothing."

This is all well and good, but while nothing seems to happen in the current issue either, except that a lot of people leave, the first page contains a single error that is just unfathomable. Zatanna is talking to a character who is clearly Wonder Woman (a gold tiara with a centered red star is something of a giveaway) and refers to her as "Dinah" repeatedly. Wonder Woman's name is Diana Prince and no one has referred to her as Diana when she is in costume for quite some time. And the words that Wonder Woman speaks in response clearly belong to Black Canary, Dinah Lance. Granted it's a tiny thing, but it's disconcerting enough that I had to read the first three pages a number of times before deciding it was a mistake. And while I think the editor listed in the credits of the comic do much more than copy-edit the book, such a gaffe makes me wonder if anyone copy-edited at all. They want me to care about the book, the story, and the characters, but once again they make it difficult to do when it's not apparent that they care.

DC, please see this as an official offer to copy-edit your books. Granted, I've reached pre-middle age and thus am crotchety about the silly things in this world I can't control or fix, but I take a great deal of pride in the slightest of words in my writing. Why can't you? I expect an offer in the comments section pretty soon.

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

I was waiting to write this entry until the second half of Neil Gaiman's epitaph for Batman had been delivered, but it's been delayed until mid-April. I won't remember these ideas that long, and I'll be lucky if I have remembered them from when the first part was released until now.

In a recent Permanent Damage, Steven Grant talks about "mad ideas" being a driving force behind DC's recently completed Final Crisis (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=20019). I've read a lot of the comics that Grant uses as his examples of "mad ideas" and really enjoyed most of them; I appreciate Promethea though it really drove me nuts as it seemed to careen wildly off its original course. I'm a huge fan of American Flagg, Planetary, and Authority (well not the current Authority—what has Wildstorm done with their apocalyptic setting? I guess that's fodder for another entry down the road). And Morrison's recent run of Batman seems to come out of the school of mad ideas as well.

As a coda to Morrison's bizarre and infuriating run, Neil Gaiman offers up the two-part "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" perhaps an homage to Alan Moore's brilliant "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" from (can it really be) nearly two decades ago. Right off the top, Andy Kubert's art indicates something is not quite…normal…with Gaiman's story. Using shades of sepia and architecture from the early to mid-20^th century in his panels, and an aura ethereality, Kubert suggests that the story being told is a memory, but it's not quite like any story of Batman we have seen before. And the characters attending the wake for Batman are teasingly familiar—they look right and they have the right names—but they don't quite act right. Alfred greets the foes of Batman as longtime compatriots? I particularly enjoyed the inside joke of the waif offering to watch The Joker's car for him then fearing for his life if he steals the wheels, a winking nod to the origin story of Jason Todd, who does in fact die at the hands of The Joker in normal continuity (never mind punching the walls of reality…).

But the weirdness really starts when the wake's attendees are invited to tell stories about Batman. The first belongs to Catwoman, who talks of the love that she and Batman shared, beginning with her early days as a criminal (complete with the first Catwoman costume) to her latest appearances, when she gave up crime and became a hero for his sake. But it never appears to be enough for Batman, and when he refuses to give up his own crime-fighting for her, she kills him out of spite. The wake takes this in stride, but the reader is taken aback by this revelation; it does not jibe with the still-painful recollection of Morrison's story of the death of Batman, just completed. And two shadows, their figures indistinct discuss Catwoman's story, apparently unheard by the attendees. One of them speaks for the reader, refuting the story, while the other tells the first to be patient.

Alfred then rises to tell an even more offbeat and unexpected story—that he is the mastermind behind the criminals that infest Gotham City, and that in actuality they are really just actors he has hired to appease his dull-witted boss, Bruce Wayne, who cannot see how ineffective his attempts at crime-fighting really are. To Alfred, Wayne is a lovable dullard in a stupid costume, and to protect him from harm, Alfred's actor friends keep Wayne safe away from the real criminals in Gotham City, against whom he would not stand a chance. Again, the first shadow protests and the second shadow demurs.

Gaiman's character's flashbacks do two really interesting things—first they accurately and concisely sum up years' worth of backstory about these characters in twisted and yet accurate ways. Catwoman really does love Batman. Alfred really does work to protect Bruce Wayne. But these stories also treat those characters as if they were real people. Of course a woman spurned for decades would grow so frustrated she would consider murdering her lover. Of course any sane man watching his ward put on a goofy costume and fighting criminals at night would go to extremes to protect him.

The result is an artifact that is in some ways opposite to what Grant Morrison did throughout his "R.I.P" arc. Morrison's story-telling is based on resurrecting obscure bits of Batman trivia and driving the plot with them. Without using editorial notes, he relies on the reader knowing details to move his story along. The mystery is in trying to figure out the plot points and then tie them together to figure out what's going on in the story. The story itself was fairly predictable in its broad strokes if chaotic in its minutiae. Gaiman, on the other hand, bases his mystery on why the characters are doing what they do. By genericizing the stories told at the wake, Gaiman makes his story universally approachable. By not relying on esoterica, Gaiman's story is also more satisfying, even in its incomplete state.

I ranted about "R.I.P." earlier in this blog, and perhaps the point of Morrison's story is the utter insanity of a man running around in a bat-suit. His mad idea is to deconstruct the history by over-reliance on the details, the often conflicting and never really considered in context of a person's life details, and finish off by killing off the character whose life is such a chaotic, paradoxical, unholy mess. Gaiman, on the other hand lifts up those conflicts, pointing out that such idiotic moments are exactly why readers love the characters as we do. By distilling the essence of the stories and characters down, the story allows the reader to appreciate the decades of story-telling without getting bogged down in the minutiae. And then, in what may be an ironic triumph, the one person complaining about the details, the first shadowy figure, is probably Batman himself, finding himself in the place of "reading" his own life story and disturbed because it is not the story he remembers.

There is also an ironic twist when comparing Gaiman's ideas to that of Moore. "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" sets up the framework of telling Superman's story in a way that has the façade of being the story Superman always wanted to hear—a comic version of It's a Wonderful Life—assuming for a moment that Superman is unhappy and makes his wish, only to discover (as George Bailey always does) that his current life is not so bad after all. In Gaiman's story, Batman is forced to see how his life could've played out not if he could change it, but if those around him could've changed it to suit their own issues.

Of course, none of this may have any bearing on enjoying either story arc, but it does explain to me why Gaiman's story appeals more, based as it is in his implicit background as a meta-storyteller (does he think about doing these kinds of things explicitly? I know he's a smart man but that would make him scary smart). I'm really looking forward to the second half of the story and suspect that when it is collected, it will b something to recommend to non-comics fans as another example of the literariness that is potential in comics.

Final Crisis

I was all set to write something about this series, and especially the last issue, when I began reading Stephen Grant's always-delightful Permanent Damage. And in the first two paragraphs of his article, he sums up my feelings completely--including geometry deficiency. I'll quote the first few lines of it here, but you really should go read the whole thing at http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=19863.

So FINAL CRISIS finally gave up the ghost last week, collapsing a
universe of plot threads into a chaotic black hole of crushed data bits, and
triggering a flood of back and forth online excoriations and defenses,
condemnation and praises that all (at least what I read) missed the single
salient, unassailable fact of FINAL CRISIS #7:

It's gibberish.

The good news is that I finally have finished reading my latest book and have been composing in my head for the last 100 pages of the book. Pent up critical juices are trying to escape. It could be interestig.

DC Continuity Blog

I've uncovered this blog by following a whole lot of threading through various web sites. In it, blogger Douglas Wolk attempts to annotate the various goings-on within DC's Final Crisisand its tie-ins. Along the way there is commentary about the state of DC continuity with links to where they are discussed even further. Good stuff.

http://finalcrisisannotations.blogspot.com/

What’s going on in Batman?

Short answer: I have no freaking clue.

Long answer: DC, not content to completely blow their vaunted continuity out of the water with Death of the New Gods (and Countdown to Final Crisis), thereby angering their fans who drank the purple Flavorade and believed that DC was cleaning up their continuity and in fact making it relevant again (read all the books, kiddies—it matters), DC took a year-long teaser and has mangled continuity even further, then tied it to an incomprehensible mess of a story that confounds long-time readers and will drive away the new fans in droves, the new fans this gimmick was trying to pull in.

For a year, DC has promised "Batman R.I.P." a story that would forever change the way that readers looked at Batman. The title implies a death (or perhaps just a rest) for Bruce Wayne, and the consequences of his stepping away from the cowl were to last for at least a year, if not longer. Grant Morrison took over the reins of Batman about a year ago, working his magic to get the comic to the place where Batman could R.I.P. (included in the teaser interviews in the past year has been the possibility that "R.I.P." doesn't mean what it usually means for this storyline). Now I'll lay my cards out on the table right here—I accept that some people think Grant Morrison is brilliant. He did some amazing things with Doom Patrol, but they weren't the kinds of things that interested me, and struck me as being the result of too many psychedelic drugs. His time on Justice League was more interesting, but again, the stories were outré and dense. I don't mind working at reading books and comics, but the payoff for fighting through his writing was not very gratifying. I did not read Invisibles nor did I read We3 (but I have friends that swear by them, enough to make me at least interested in trying them out). I have seen him speak at Comic-Con, and he seems really well read, and he has some interesting ideas about the interconnectedness of people and cultures. I loved All-Star Superman where he seemed to keep his psychedelia in check, restraining it within a more mainstream plot. That said, I think I like my psychedelic writers more along the lines of Ellis and Moore (even though Moore's Promethea drove me nuts despite the gorgeous work by the artist), who do interesting things with the plot and story-telling without twisting the framework completely into an unviable state.

And sadly, that's where I find Batman now. I have a hard enough time figuring out what's going on in the actual pages of the book; there are passages I read three or four times and I can't figure out what is going on. Understand, the art is gorgeous, but it's being used in distracting and sometimes counter-useful ways. The passage where Joker is introduced in Arkham Asylum still makes no sense to me, and I have stood in my local comic book store and asked other people to help explain to me what is going on. No one could come up with a consistent practicable theory of the chain of events in that passage.

That's bad enough, but the plot for the storyline appears to depend on events that happen between issues but are not actually contained in a DC title or explained at the beginning of each new issue. At the beginning of one issue, suddenly Batman is wearing a purple, green and red costume and talking to Bat-mite who may or may not actually be there. And while the content of that issue minimally outlines the series of events that lead to the new appearance, that explanation has to compete with advancing a plot that is apparently denser than anything I have ever read before in comics (short of The Blue Lily). And in that competition, both sides are losing. So I can't connect what's happening now to my tenuous understanding of what has happened in previous issues.

Compounding the difficulty, Morrison appears to be relying on incredibly obscure continuity (or he could just be making it up) without telling the reader what that continuity is. Batman underwent psychological training under the US government? Really? I don't mind retcons, but usually retcons have a marker giving off signals of their changes to the continuity. In Morrison's writing, everything is assumed, meaning nothing is actually stated, removing the framework on which a plot is supposed to hang. The result of all this is that I cannot summarize what has been going on…which sort of defeats the purpose of comics. Even if I am reading a novel with a psychedelic stream of consciousness, I can look back and say "that was a psychedelic stream of consciousness). Even that kind of summary does not work for the last few issues of Batman.

And yet it gets worse (and I'm starting to have trouble coming up with transitions to describe the descent into badness). Batman's companion series, Detective, is one of DC's best titles going right now. Despite it being tied to the lead weight that is "R.I.P.", the story is tremendous, breaking new ground and filling out the history of an important character, without being inchoate and impenetrable. There is passion and drama and fully developed characterization. I firmly believe that Paul Dini's Detective is one of the top interpretations of the character ever. That it conflicts with the supposedly concurrent Batman story is unfortunate, but to be honest, I don't yet see its relationship to the "R.I.P" storyline. It's just ripping good stuff.

And then the final straw—the continuity of other titles related to Batman has already moved past "R.I.P." implying that its events are over. Robin is concerned about the missing Batman in his own title. Nightwing is too. And Batgirl has announced her determination to keep the Outsiders going despite Batman's disappearance. Those titles are being very careful not to let on the secret of what's happened. Or it could be that they've been reading Batman and have no freaking clue either. But the result is a mishmash of supposedly relatively tightly interconnected stories. And readers picking up the other titles for their "R.I.P." tie-ins are being completely misled, since there is only the idea that something has happened without any clarification of what it is.

I spoke to my local store owner about my concerns, and he claims to share them as well. He says he has talked to other store owners about the issues and has been rebuffed with claims that if he truly knew Batman, there would be no questions about what is going on. Considering how long I've been reading Batman and my hunt for old back issues, I think I know the character pretty well. But even if I am just stupid, doesn't it defeat the entire purpose of these colossal events? Aren't these designed to pull in new readers to see seminal events in the lives of the characters or within the universe? But if the event is impenetrable, don't you end up turning those readers away and then turn away regular readers as well?

SDCC Topic 3.5: Save San Diego

This excellent article came up on Newsarama this morning. It has some very good ideas about ways to "fix" Comic-con.

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080812-save-san-diego.html

SDCC Topic 3: The Future of Comic-con

By all accounts it was the biggest year ever for Comic-con, but there were troubling signs mixed in with all the good news. The convention had record attendance, but fewer and fewer of those convention-goers were actually interested in comics. The biggest rooms were generally reserved for media panels, and the lines for those panels began hours before the panel and in one case, I am told actually overnight. The convention floor was bigger than ever, but even more space was taken up by things only tangentially related, or not related at all, to comics. And from the reports I hear, two of the mainstays for such a large comic convention are being priced out—given the cost of the high-demand floor space, comic retailers and artists are unable to afford the space. All of this leads to the general feel that it's not a comic convention any more, and the signs around San Diego would seem to indicate the same: they described it as a "convention for the popular arts."

There are some benefits to this: a lot of people who would otherwise not be exposed to comics had the opportunity to talk to creators or see what they are all about, but there are no real numbers to know how many folks took advantage of the opportunity. It's very easy to stay on one end of the convention floor and never get beyond games and media companies, and I suspect that a lot of people who were there for the Lost panel never made it to the convention floor, let alone to see what the latest offerings from Boom or IDW might be.

I find myself taking an awfully conservative stance on the issues that affect Comic-con; while I was happy to go to some of the media panels when I started going to the convention, they were rare and they were easy to get into—there was always space in those rooms. But they were a momentary alternative for the reason that I was actually there. It appears that in the minds of the organizers and PR folks, the audience for comic books is the same audience for science fiction movies, and even less corresponding TV shows like Prison Break and Bones. But those same organizers would have a difficult time weeding out the least related media events, since the media has been encroaching very slowly into the schedule of the con. If they had started out with a firm stance against such things, they might be able to support such a position now, but the door has been flung open, and while those media things may not meet the original goal of the convention, they bring in tons of money, both in payment for booths and by the convention-goers they bring as well.

An unfortunate effect of this unprecedented growth is the inability to find rooms in San Diego for the week. Fortunately Mrs. Speculator works with hotels and travel agents as part of her regular job, and so knows how to find her way through the labyrinth of obtaining rooms at convention rates at our favorite nearby hotel. But if she did not know how to do this, the timeline for us getting a room would generally work like this:

1. As we are checking out, ask about the availability of a room for the following year. The answer is always either that they can't reserve rooms that far in advance, when the better answer should be that we have to get the rooms through the convention planning service when they are made available for the entire convention.
   
2. Come February, the reservation system is opened up and we find that very few rooms are available because companies coming in from out of town are wealthy enough to not have to pay convention rates and thus have booked rafts of rooms.
   

The problem, as it is with most processes, is in consistent enforcement of the rules. Some hotels do allow early reservations at con rates. Some hotels apparently don't make as many rooms available as they promise to—and who can blame them? Given the choice between renting a room for full rates and convention rates, I would do what I could to maximize my income as well. But a good friend of mine has reservations for next year at the con rate, while if we're not careful, the Speculator household will have to struggle to find a place to stay within easy transportation range, because we're using a hotel that, explicitly at least, is following the rules.

And, lest my devoted reader thinks that I am a lone voice in the wilderness, it's clear I'm not. There are open conversations about the growth of the con and the pressure it is putting on the resources of not only the convention center, but of San Diego itself. And searching through blogs, it's clear there are more than a few people displeased with the influx of media stuff and movement away from the tradition of the con. What to do? I humbly submit some suggestions, in no particular order.

1. Move the convention. There are actually a lot of folks who believe this is going to happen anyway. The convention's contract with the city of San Diego runs out in 2012, and the names you keep hearing are Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Personally, I don't like this solution. San Diego is a gorgeous city, even when 100000 nerds and geeks descend on the city's Gaslamp Quarter and trash it. Part of the beauty of San Diego is the weather—on the last day of the con this year, the high was 69 degrees (F) and the humidity around 20%. Los Angeles would be much warmer, much more humid, and smoggy, and I can't imagine the mass of people who move at the convention now walking their way through downtown LA and its traffic issues. And I want nothing to do with Las Vegas in the last week of July. I just love San Diego and would live there if I could, but neither of the other two cities make me excited about just travelling to them.
   
2. Expand into San Diego proper. I've heard rumors this may be happening, where the convention decides to move panels into local hotels. This will take some thought on the part of the organizers, such as grouping related panels in local hotels, recognizing that the ones that are generally less-well attended will just die if they are not in the convention. While there are a number of hotels within easy walking range of the San Diego Convention Center, it's already a long walk from one end of the building to the other, and not many people would be willing to make the trek to the convention center and then have to wander off into the city. And frankly, the convention center usually runs perilously close to chaos, and they would have to get a much firmer grip on security and organization if they were to have outlying panels.
   
3. Expand the convention center. I've also heard rumors of this being considered as well. There isn't a lot of space to expand however. On one side of the convention center is the bay, and opposite it is Harbor Drive. On one end of the convention center are hotels, while there is a courtyard on the opposite, between the center and the parking for Petco Park, the home of the San Diego Padres. I guess the convention can expand into that courtyard, but it was used as an overflow area for the massive lines for the media panels. So if it is taken away, the organizers are going to have to think carefully about safe places for those overflow lines. But the real problem with this proposal and the one before it is that while it addresses crowding at the convention, it doesn't address crowding in the hotels. In fact, those proposals would potentially increase the attendance at the hotel, making the housing crunch that much worse.
   
4. Start enforcing standards of what is allowed at the convention.
   This is supposed to be a comic convention. Of course, there are things that are tangentially related to comics and its fandom, such as science fiction and fantasy, but there are things at the convention that have nothing to do with any of that. While we are big fans of Bones and The Office, they have no place at a comic convention, and those rooms could likely find other panels more closely related to what the convention is supposed to be about. Outside of role-playing games, think seriously about removing the gaming booths. Why I had to bull my way past a display of a karaoke game at a comic convention escapes me, but it had a huge crowd and really large speakers.
   
5. Along those lines, split the convention up. Take all the media and gaming panels and booths and move them to a sister convention that is being held at the same time, say in Los Angeles. Or just put the non-comics and non-SF things in LA, trying to maintain the tradition of what Comic-con is supposed to be about.
   

Ultimately, the solution to the issues is not going to be an easy one, and I don't envy the decisions facing the organizers. All I want, selfishly, is my comic convention, in San Diego, and the panels I want to see. Without being a sardine on the floor of the convention. Come on Comic-con; make this happen.

SDCC Topic 2: Loyal Opposition?

I've not been around comics enough to know the tradition of the competition between DC and Marvel. From the things I've been able to pick up, the relation between the two major superhero companies was one of genial competition, and perhaps some ribbing. For instance, I recall Clark Kent showing up behind the scenes in an issue of Marvel Team-up. And then there was the annual Halloween festival in some town in New England where folks in costume would show up on the other company's comics. Of course, the Squadron Supreme is a Marvel-ized Justice League and DC eventually followed up with the Extremists, an Avengers knock-off. There was also a period of company crossovers, led by Superman vs Spiderman, and followed up by others, including the unlikely Batman/Hulk. We're lucky that these are available as back issues with a little searching and have been collected in trades.

In the lifetime of my buying comics as they are released (opposed to seeking out back issues), there have been two major moments of cooperation between the two companies: the Amalgam cross-over, resulting in some of what I thought was that time's best story-telling, as creators were allowed to let their imaginations run wild and combine characters from the two companies. I was particularly fond of Dr. Strangefate and Bruce Wayne, Agent of SHIELD, the names of which just evoke all sorts of possibilities in story-telling. After a long period of time, Kurt Busiek and George Perez were allowed to do a JLA/Avengers cross-over that had pretty good sales for its period, but there are indications that we've entered a cold war period and the companies will not cross over again any time soon.

Of course, my readers and those who know me also know my interest in questions of genre. And so I have spent some time pondering the differences between the two companies, especially in light of Steven Grant's excellent recent post on the difference (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17254).

I had reason to think of these issues recently when the Speculative Nephew came to stay with us for six weeks (sadly, Grant's excellent piece had not yet come out while the Nephew was living here). I've been pretty unabashed for my love of DC, and the Nephew is the stereotypical Marvel zombie. And while we don't really clash on it, especially since I read the Ultimate universe from Marvel and pass those comics on to him, and since I spent a good deal of time working in a comic store and so had to learn the Marvel Universe fairly well in order to be an effective service representative. But when he had spare time, he was only able to find mostly DC stuff sitting around the house, and I was pleased to find him poking through The DC Encyclopedia for example. He also found some of Batman: The Animated Series on cable, which piqued his interest enough that he started watching the collections of it and Justice League from our DVD stacks. He's a curious kid, and a smart one, so one day he asked me why the DC animated shows were of such a higher quality than the Marvel ones (actually, it was something like "Why are the Marvel cartoons drawn so bad compared to this?" as he was watching Batman). This led to some interesting conversation about what I could only guess were some of the philosophies behind their editorial and licensing practices. And of course, having talked about it and trying to be even-handed, I had to spend some time thinking about it both during and after the conversation.

And so it was with this background that Mrs. Speculator and I found ourselves sitting in a "Mondo Marvel" panel in San Diego as we waited for a DC Universe panel to begin. While I know that things are kind of cold between the companies at the moment, and Marvel holds a decided upper hand in sales—and until The Dark Knight came out, they were pleasantly surprising reviewers with Iron Man (some calling it the best superhero movie ever made). Mrs. Speculator and I were surprised by the partisan animosity both in the crowd and in the panel. Granted we didn't see the entire panel, but soon after we got in the room, the panel was mocking Green Lantern in a complete non sequitur from the conversation topic. Now I've seen DC make a snide remark about the competition, but there is generally a little laugh and the conversation goes on. But the panel went on riffing on the relatively asinine weakness of the Green Lantern Corps for some time. Now anyone with knowledge of comic book history has to have a little respect for Green Lantern as it brought in some of the great names of science-fiction into the comic writing field. A little joshing would have been fun, but it went on and on, to the point of uncomfortableness. And when they went on to other questions from the floor, a young fellow asked them to name their favorite comic book movie. As they went down the panel, it was fascinating to see the verbal and visual contortions they went through in order not to give credit to the Dark Knight, going so far as to talk about Howard the Duck rather than say the name of a character from the other company.

What happened? I thought that the writers and artists of comics were fans of the medium and would appreciate the efforts of anyone else in the field. And the belittling that was going on had the opposite of the intended effect among some of the audience; instead of joining in the laughter, the audience got quieter and quieter as Marvel spent time calling attention to the successes of DC by refusing to talk about it. It was sad and peculiar all at once, especially as there are more and more eulogies for the comic industry, especially superheroes. It seems to me that for either company to succeed, the industry has to remain relatively vibrant—which requires at the very least minimal cooperation between its two leaders.

It's like the ridiculous siege mentality that has overwhelmed recent American politics has carried over into comics. No longer is politics about the weighing of the benefits and costs of various proposals of the different parties to chart a course to make America excel. Now it's "us" versus "them" and nothing good can be said about the other side, no matter the cost to the process at large as a result. Perhaps DC and Marvel have reached this in part because of their use of exclusive contracts, but there really is no reason to not wish the other side luck in their work to maintain a marketplace where both companies can do well. There's no reason not to appreciate the good work that the other company has performed.

Let's be honest, if this is a battle, Marvel currently holds the position of the Republicans in 2004. The presidency is theirs and they have cleaned up in the midterm elections. Instead of spending their effort belittling and mocking their opposition, they should be doing what they can to expand their market and reach. And folks, it sounds like Brand New Day went over about as well as firing federal prosecutors did for the Republicans. The adamant supporters of Marvel swear it's okay, that Marvel will make it right eventually. But those who are more moderate are asking publicly "What the hell?"

So what I came away from that panel with was an idea that Marvel needs to tends its own needs and let DC take care of itself. DC has managed to shoot itself in the foot a number of times in the last couple of years, and doesn't need Marvel's help in making a mockery of what used to be their strengths. And you know, it's just petty, taking away from the joy that events like Comic-con are supposed to engender in their attendees.

Besides, everyone knows Superman would clean Spiderman's clock if he really wanted to.

SDCC Topic 1: Flash Villains

Mrs. Speculator and I went to a panel in San Diego spotlighting Geoff Johns, who appears to be poised to write every book in the DC stable. Asked if he was planning on announcing his empire at DC soon, he laughed it off, but there really can't be anyone more busy there at the moment. I'm mostly enjoying his work, especially since he seems to have hit on a formula that works well, even if it is predictable (big reveal on the last page!). While the format is repetitive, the content changes, and it is that (and his near-encyclopedic knowledge of the DC universe) that really makes his books fun.

At the panel, Johns described a current mini-series called Rogues's Revenge, where the repercussions of the death of Bart Allen in the lives of the villains who performed the deed are explored. And while he was describing the basis of the mini-series, he said something along the lines that the villains should have been smarter than to kill Bart in his short stint as Flash. And you know, that all seems well and good...until I got to thinking about it.

While the original motivation of the Rogues Gallery was to rob and make money, over time that motivation has had to evolve, unless it is being artificially restrained by the continuity and rules of comics writing. Sure, they each had "superpowered" gimmicks--heat ray, cold ray, mirrors, control of the weather--and so they would appear to be a match for their nemesis. And perhaps there might have been a thrill over time to go up against someone as powerful, or more powerful, than they were. But after a while, it should have been apparent that the result of each clash was going to fall into a limited number of categories:

1. The rogues get captured and sent to prison. Perhaps they could go on a crime spree over some period of time, but if they stayed around Central City, the general result is capture by the Flash--it's the pretty much unbreakable rule for superhero comics: the villain gets caught at some point.

2. They get enough money to give up the life of crime. I can't think of a single instance of a villain just walking away from it all into retirement. I'm sure it must have happened somewhere along the way, but it's rare enough that a decently written story about it would probably be ground-breaking.

3. They capture the hero in some terrible deadly snare. The comics are full of the villains working out extraordinary traps in order to capture the hero, but what happens happen if the traps are successful? Either the hero escapes, which leads us back to #1, or the hero DIES. There's no point in keeping the hero alive after they have been captured, because they will eventually escape and put the villain in jail. Scott Evil's diatribes in the Austin Powers movies makes this point clear--don't talk to the hero, or describe your nefarious scheme; don't give them a chance to escape, just kill them. Because it is the hero's job to capture the villain, and the only thing that is ever going to stop them from doing that is their own death.

So, I'm not sure who is more naive: Johns for hinting that there had to be another way or the rogues for staying in the fight, even if it was against a new version of the Flash. Granted, solely from the standpoint of writing a serial format, the only option that doesn't end the series is #1, which is why it is what we see most often. The joy in comics comes from the deviousness of the villain and the whatever-the-attribute-is of the hero to overcome that trap. The best stories are ones that involve intricate machinations revealed over time, the ones that put the heroes at the worst disadvantage and then show them at their heroic best as they overcome the long odds. This is why Watchmen can only be a mini-series (SPOILER ALERT!): the villain wins! Of course there could be interesting follow-ups regarding the world that Ozymandias has created, but those really aren't stories of superheroes any longer.

Ultimately what Johns describes in his statement--that his villains should know better--is his trying to eat his cake and have it too. Real people in the situation the rogues found themselves in would have known better--they probably would have given up the fight a long time ago. But these guys continue to fight, which by itself masks an implicit escalation of tactics: villain tries a trap, villain fails, villain goes to jail. What happens next? If they stay in the fight, the villain comes back and tries a more dangerous trap, and the cycle goes on and on until it gets broken with the removal of one combatant or the other from the field.

This is why it is supposed to be shocking when a hero dies--not only is it tragic when a figure for good who fights for the general well-being of people he doesn't know is killed by the effects of his selfless decisions, but from a metafictional point-of-view, it imperils the series. Of course the hero almost always comes back, or the serial is generally dead. Barry Allen died, and Wally West took over. Steve Rogers died, and Bucky took over. The serial has to go on, or in comic book hero terms, "his death has to mean something." And the villain is captured and sent to prison, until they are released and escape and then it goes around again with a different pair of combatants.

The things we like best are the things that break this pattern--X-Men follows this pattern but in a soap opera format that is just as much about their personal lives as it is about fighting crime. And of course, the X-Men have the advantage that they themselves are not so much heroes as they are non-humans fighting for their own rights in a world hostile to them. They have villains to fight, but it's not about the redistribution of wealth, but upholding the rights of all sentient creatures.

But, for the vast majority of stories, someone has to win. And when it is the villains, they really have no choice but to kill, due to the implicit rules of their combat.

Where's yer head at, man?

My writing production has gone way down since I started this out, and it is not so much the result of bad writing, as it is poor subject matter.

When it comes to comics, I almost exclusively read DC. I suppose there might be a long posting embedded here about the difference between DC and Marvel when it comes to story-telling, but let's just start with my tastes right now. And about a year ago, DC was going great guns--Infinite Crisis was coming to a fairly satisfying conclusion and 52 was making big promises. And in the regular titles, "One Year Later" was going to do some rebooting. But what have we ended up with a year later? Superman has been uneven, first telling how Superman got his powers back, then the global invasion by a giant snake oil salesman, and finally Arion's predictions of the dire consequences of there being a Superman at all. Only the last arc has any long-lasting repercussions with the possibility of an ongoing conflict with the only character that regularly gives Superman troubles, Superman himself. Action has been a throwback to the 80s and 90s, with its event-based storytelling (look at us have a co-writer who has never written a comic in his life! but you will recognize the name!). I've already remarked on my feelings about the whole 3-D glasses schtick, but even that has been delayed as the creative teams have fallen behind schedule. In fact, the title is being forced to go to unprecedented places by breaking up a five- or six-part story with filler issues while things get caught up. And those schedule problems don't come close to what has plagued Wonder Woman, that got so far behind that the first arc will have to be finished in a special issue while a whole new creative team takes over and plots a company-wide event.

Of the "big three," only Batman has really succeeded creatively. Morrison's inspired storytelling in Batman carries that title to some places we've not seen in a long while. Having Bruce Wayne as a character is a joy, and Morrison is nailing the jet-setter characterization that has been missing for decades. Whatever Bruce did to get rid of his demons in 52 seems to have worked, and other than the regrettable all-prose Joker story, Batman is a joy. Even so, it does not hold a candle to Paul Dini's work on Detective, making Batman a real detective again. Dini is delivering single-issue stories that develop both Batman and his supporting cast, making it quite possibly the best title DC has going right now.

Outside the big three, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and Teen Titans have really come through. Gl and Teen Titans have the advantage of Geoff Johns' guiding hand, and his record as the deliverer of big stories is substantial. However, Johns is not so good at the small stories, which has long been a part of the Titans' history. Perhaps the new writer there can continue to deliver the big thrills while developing the characters. More stories like the solo Kid/Red Devil, please! And while Green Lantern has been fun, it has been fairly predictable. Green Lantern Corps has indeed been a surprise with its strong story-telling, even though the art has been horribly uneven. I would add Uncle Sam, Justice Society, and the Dr. Thirteen back-up story in Tales of the Unexpected as highlights of the past year. But Justice League? What could have been a great story was drawn out by more scheduling issues, and the energy built-up with the promise a new Justice League has petered out in the weeks between the issues.

I could go on, appearig to bash what is going on at DC, but let me just say that I'm buying more comics now than ever before. I look forward to Wednesdays a great deal. My point is this--I've set myself some standards for writing reviews and one of those is that I don't want to review the same titles every month. But spread these titles over the weeks in a month and I'm left with perhaps one good title and a bunch of mediocre ones to talk about here. And I'm just not up for talking about mediocrity yet. So no blogging in those weeks.

So, I'm going to make a deal with you--if I don't blog reviews for a week's comics, I will still write a blog entry on the state of things.

As for books, well, I'm having a real struggle at the moment. When I was in college and grad school, I made a real effort to buy all the Hugo- and Nebula-winning novels. I felt it was a great way to get a sense of the history of the genres I love as well as visiting the canon of great books. And, if you are a book-lover, you know the joy of going to used bookstores and finding that one book you've been looking for. And I've read some wonderful stuff on that quest--Babel-17, for example. Mars Plus still excites me and I read it more often than I read some Heinlein. But grad school got tough and I had to bear down on getting my degree while working five jobs, and whn the pressure got too much, I had to start a career as a tech writer. So I was poor and couldn't do the book-hunt thing so much.

But recently I was inspired to go back and close the gap, catching up on the award-winning novels. And while I recognize that tastes change, especially mine, I'm discovering the best books of the past few decade and a half are generally nowhere near as good as the classics of the 50s and 60s. The book I've been working on for the past month is a fine example. While it purports to be speculative fiction, I'm finding that there is next to no fantastic in it to sustain my interest, acting more as a romantic peroid piece as we follow a young woman in 18th century France. I've finally reached the halfway point of this 450-page novel, and we have been introduced to exactly one fantastic element--a mermaid. And so far, where the novel is going is ruthlessly predictable and I find myself wondering what else was out the year this won a Nebula that had to suck so poorly. But then, I am only halfway through the book, so maybe it'll pick up so that amazing things happen and I'll find myself healthily eating crow, but right now, calling it a struggle is an understatement, as I put in about five to ten pages in bed before going to sleep. And it is no help that the book is helping to put me to sleep. Even less help is the electronic promise from the British arm of Amazon that a book I've been looking forward to for a year is on a tramp steamer crossing the Atlantic on its way to my doorstep.

I feel a big entry coming up about the weakness of recent books, but I don't want to start it based on my opinion of my current reading material, when I've not finished that book. But I wanted to let my readers know I'm still here, struggling with my sources. I'll write more about those struggles if they continue.

Hey, new comics tomorrow! May my pull-list be filled with instant classics!

Random Comic Thoughts

Just a few things that have been bothering me of late as I read my weekly comics:

The last JSA Classified was about one of the most under-used characters that still has tons of potential since his original mini-series, Dr. Midnight. While I applaud his being featured, I'm a little disturbed by the background of the story: a villain is stealing the body parts of living superheroes and selling them on the black market. The villain is revealed in a nice acknowledgement of DC history, but it is the use of the superheroes in this fashion that bothers me.

There was a tremendous hue and cry about the number of deaths in Infinite Crisis and it was pretty clear that every hero is someone's favorite. But most of the complaints also involved the "needless" violence that was read as an end to itself rather than seeing that violence as integral to the story-telling. In a lot of cases, the violence was used to make a point, at least as I read it, but if the point was made with someone's favorite characters, of course that someone complained.

In JSA Classified, the writer, Scott Beatty, used characters lower than C-list in order to avoid offending the readers. Seriously, how many people care about Argus, Loose Cannon, or Lady Godiva? But it is this point that gives me qualms...why not just use brand-new characters instead of dredging up any characters with DC history attached to them? These characters were so unused that a lot of readers probably have no idea what their powers are so saying "He took the eyes of Peripheral Vision Man" has exactly as much impact as "He took the eyes of Argus." I suppose, the hero being Dr. Midnight, he'll put all of them back together again, but it all seems so pointless to me.

If you ever have a daughter, don't name her Supergirl and don't let her grow up in the DC Universe. I can't think of a character who has been more poorly handled. There was a great deal of fondness for the original Kara Zor-El, but she got killed off in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Then she is brought back as protoplasmic slime called Matrix, and she is doing pretty well as a back-up character in the Superman titles. Then, in the highlight of her career, Peter David starts a Supergirl title, with an entirely different origin and little interaction with the mainstream DC universe. The stories were good and the art by Gary Frank was quite fine. But she got tossed aside for this new Supergirl, who was sent to Earth to kill Superman and who is having trouble adapting to life on Earth (once she is dissuaded from her original mission). Her current title is filled with teenage pathos, and I suspect I may not really be its primary audience, since I have trouble sympathizing with the trauma of being a teenage girl. To add insult to injury, she is now being drawn by Ian Churchill, and while it is certainly stylized, it's not that good (to my tin eyes). I rather wish they had never brought her back from her noble death in Crisis if they are going to continue to treat her this way. I certainly hope her new relationship with Apokaliptian badboy, Powerboy, works out. (Why do the cute girls always go for the bad boys?)

Joss Whedon wants to do a Captain America/Jenny Sparks crossover? Be still my fanboy heart.

DC is sponsoring a survey for the best DC comic cover ever. It's a fascinating idea that will require some thought. My first thought was Crisis 7, where Supergirl dies and we have the iconic image of Superman holding her broken body drawn by George Perez. I also like Flash 123, "Flash of Two Worlds", the first Golden Age/Silver Age crossover. But I am left wondering if I like the covers because of the stories behind them or if the covers themselves are really that worthy. At least I can be certain that Eclipso 1, the cover with the plastic Eclipso diamond stuck on it, should be out of the running. I'll have to give this more thought. Any suggestions are welcome (and if you want to see the world's greatest cover gallery, go to www.comics.org).