Comics Which I Got on December 12th, 2007 AD

The Engineer #1
Wow...very cool, and very bizarre! There are tons of big ideas mashed into this comic. This is one of the things i love about comics: creators can let their imaginations go wild, and the medium allows it to work. The Engineer has been tasked with recovering the pieces of the Konstrukt, which have been scattered across myriad dimensions. This is the only hope of defeating a malevolent being that is destined to destroy all worlds. That sounds kind of heavy, right? Well parts of the story are heavy, but also wildly inventive, and filled with great action/adventure elements. The imagination and excitement make it fun. I dig the character designs. The "three muses" characters do not look like what i expected. They are strange in a cool way. obviously i liked this one. Recommended!

Green Lantern Corps #19
Clearly the epilogue to "Sinestro Corps War", this issue is filled with strong character moments, as various Lanterns assess where they are after the huge war, and where they're going next. My favorite was the scene of Isamot Kol exulting in the simple joy of being alive. Writer Peter Tomasi knows his craft: he gives us satisfying vignettes of individual characters in single pages. I really thought there were more pages per sequence until i looked at it a second time, paying more attention to structure. I love these characters. No, i haven't read all the other parts of "The Sinestro Corps War". I'm a weird crank. :)

Fables #68
This story really feels epic and fable-ish. It's amazing how Willingham manages to make me believe that a character like Flycatcher can rise to these heights from the lows we'd seen him in for 60-plus issues. Part of it is that Fly hasn't become some kind of badass, he's simply found his particular strength, and gained belief in himself. His accomplishments are very positive, too. He builds a new place for people to flourish. That is awesome. We know there's tragedy coming, but i suspect that there will be long-term, positive gains, rather than that cheap "oh ain't it sad" type of "tragedy".

This was an awesome week for comics!

Final Crisis

This post was prompted by this thread on my LCS's message board.

At this point (and it's still early) i'm not interested in Final Crisis. It's a "boy who cried wolf" thing. Infinite Crisis was going to change things in a big way, and for the better, yet it didn't. OYL was going to set a new, better status quo, but it didn't. 52 was mostly good, but again, didn't set the new tone, or truly refresh/rejuvinate the DCU. I've been waiting for the new DCU for years now, and all i've gotten is this intentionally mishmashed thing that feels very temporary. So, even though Morrison is involved, i have to assume that Final Crisis will continue the well-established trend. I'll buy whatever individual series appeal to me, but convincing me to follow the "big story" at DC will be a hard sell.

Maybe it's a phase i'm going through, maybe it's more, idk, but i'm less and less concerned with long-term continuity. It's fine by me that Batman and Spiderman exist in timeless worlds where they never age and where elements of their histories just fade away after a while. As long as the core of their characters are consistent (i.e., personality, motivation, etc.) and short-term continuity is consistent, it doesn't bother me that, say, this month's fight between Batman and Ras Al Ghul doesn't jive with the fight they had in 1974.

Since Continuity (and other metatextual issues) is what all the "big stories" have been about lately, that makes them an even tougher sell.

What's more, i think that any comics that will have a wide appeal to a non-specialty market will not be concerned with long-term continuity.

Long-term continuity in comics is kind of like the alignment rules in D&D. It's useful in certain special situations, but most of the time can be ignored, and contributes more to arguments between hardcore afficianadoes than to enjoyable stories.

Outsiders #49



I'm continuing this idea from a comment I made on Pretty Fizzy Paradise.

This crossover had been pretty good up to this point. (I should note that I haven't read Outsiders since issue 2 or so, so this story was all about Checkmate for me.) Some significant, serious stuff happened to Sasha. The "Fall of the Wall" story got kick-started. We found out that the Oolong crew is now alligned with North Korea.

Then we get to this last issue, and the whole thing "resolves" in a set-up for the upcoming Batman & the Outsiders. That's anti-climactic, and it follows a trend in DC that has greatly annoyed me of late: that a story, or "event" does not exist for its own sake, but merely to set up the next thing.

Since the mini-series that preceded Infinite Crisis, we've had a chain of these psuedo-stories. None of those minis (Day of Vengeance, Rann/Thanagar War, etc.) ended well; or at all. They just kind of stopped, with the promise that their plots would be resolved in Infinite Crisis. The Rann/Thanagar war was never satisfactorilly resolved. I'm not even sure if it's really over or not. I think it is, but i'm not sure who won or how, or what exactly the new status quo is.

52 is, at least in most of its stories, an exception to this. It did at least take most of its characters through a complete arc. It also set up future stuff, like a Ghost Detectives series with Ralph and Sue (though no word on when that will appear) and the upcoming Infinity Inc. redux. Adam Strange and Starfire were just sort of along for the ride, though. The Black Adam story came to a satisfying closure, but they've ruined that by bringing him back so quickly.

I guess my point is, I'm really bored with "stories" that just serve to set up another "story" which just sets up... You get the idea. I'm not against change. Change is often good. But that change should provide a new space to tell real stories in, not just spin off into further change.

Imagine if, instead of going into Countdown, DC had instead launched new series featuring the stars of 52? They could have done four of them, each coming out during a different week, to sorta-kinda continue the weekly format with these characters. The Question, Infinity Inc., Ghost Detectives, Mystery In Space, Booster Gold, Animal Man -- these are some new titles that could have been launched to build on the momentum of 52. But where has that momentum gone? Where's the Question? Where's Animal Man? Where's Batwoman? We're working on another "lost year" for those characters, because DC editorial can't settle down and just tell stories about the characters we love instead of rushing ahead with some new chaotic, world-altering Event.

A couple weeks back, i read a review of the new Fantastic Four movie, and in it the reviewer started comparing the success of DC properties in movies versus Marvel properties in movies. IMO the reviewer used some pretty lame reasoning, and so I wrote this response. I haven't posted it earlier b/c I forgot that I wrote it. I just found it while cleaning out my inbox.


The answer may lie in the nature of each company's heroes. When Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko created many of Marvel's iconic heroes in the 1960s, their innovation was to give their characters great humanity along with great power.

"They took superheroes and made them more realistic," says Midtown Comics' Gladstone. "They gave their characters real traits, had them living in real cities - most in New York City. They had tremendous flaws and problems that you and I would face every day: getting to work on time, having a cold or flu, having a sick aunt."

This argument always bugs me. For one, it's stuck in the Silver Age. DC long ago added "realistic" problems to its older heroes, and its newer ones have had them from the get-go. Then there's the whole issue of what "realistic" means in regards to characters who routinely disregard the laws of physics. And, how much "realism" readers really want in them.

And what does basing the characters in fictional depictions of real cities vs. fictional cities have to do with it? As a kid in Arkansas reading Marvel & DC, i can assure you that NYC had no more authenticity in my reality than Gotham or Metropolis. Also, i've always liked how the completely make-believe cities can be crafted to reflect their hero(es). It's a good storytelling device, IMO.

"I do believe that what moviegoing audiences respond to is what the comic-book audience and the Marvel audience has responded to for decades. And that's relatable characters," says Kevin Feige, executive producer of "Fantastic Four" and most of the other Marvel movies. "There's a reason these characters have endured for 20, 30, 40 years. There are emotional elements that people connect with. The Marvel characters are infinitely more than their exterior design. They have an emotional core."

And what's so relatable about the Fantastic Four? Aside from the Thing and his "i'm a monster" dilemma, none of the Four are any kind of everyman character. Reed is a super scientist (whose inventions aren't very "realistic"). Johnny is some kind of thrill-seeking playboy. And Sue is...um...well, she's in love with Reed, and she's really pretty. (Yes, i know that the Storm siblings have been more developed in the comics over the years, but i'm talking here about their appeal to a general, mass audience, not comics afficianados.) Again, only the Thing suffers a real downside to his powers. The others are able to go on with their pursuits, with the superhero gig added on.

IMO, these Marvel v. DC comparisons aren't really about company vs. company or universe vs. universe, but Superman vs. Spiderman. Spidey is all the things people attribute to Marvel generally. Supes is (in large) everything people attribute to DC generally. They are not, however, the sum total of everything each publisher puts out.

The FF could fit quite well into the DCU. (Kirby did a book very similar to early FF--Challengers of the Unknown--at DC before co-creating the FF at Marvel.) Wolfman and Perez's New Teen Titans could fit in the MU. Captain America could be DCU. Batman could be MU. Is there anything about Galactus and his heralds that wouldn't work in the DCU? Or about Darkseid and his minions that wouldn't work in the MU?

Call me a defensive DC fan if you want, but IMO these distinctions are over-generalized, out of date, and assume things about the readership that aren't necessarily so.

Caveman Robot

He's a caveman, and a robot. If you don't get what's fun about that, we're probably not going to get along. Look at a free, legal sample story here.

Brainstorming

I had an idea for marketing/branding/structuring DC superhero comics this morning. It consists of three sub-brands. Here they are.

DC Now - The main DCU as it already exists, with all the continuity, crossover, etc. This would be aimed at the specialist/niche market of the more hardcore superhero fan/enthusiast.

DC Timeless - This is where the most iconic versions of the characters would be. Continuity would be light, crossover minimal, and "world changing events" practically non-existant. This would be the Classic version of the DCU, the one "everybody" knows. This line would be for the general audience and the more casual fan. It would be pushed on newstands and bookstores far more than comic shops, and wherever kids are. Personally, i'd place Action Comics and Detective Comics in this line, featuring Supes and Bats, and revive another older title like Adventure Comics or All-Star Comics to feature the iconic Wonder Woman. The page count would be higher, with backups featuring other characters.

DC Boundless - This would be the label for all the non-prime-continuity books. I.e., a new Kamandi book set in its own frame of reference, would go here. Any of the series set on the 52 multiple Earths would go here. Elseworlds, "imaginary stories", whatever, it would go here. This line would probably be mainly a specialty shop thing, but obviously some properties would work well in the general market.

A vigorous, regular trade program--and in some cases, skipping periodical and going straight to long-form/bookshelf--would be a priority. Each sub-brand would have its own, slightly tweaked version of the DC logo and trade dress, so that readers who knew about and cared about the difference could quickly distinquish them.

I imagine ad copy for this set-up going something like this.
DC NOW
DC TIMELESS
DC BOUNDLESS
DC...FOREVER
You could spread that across a one-page ad or multiple pages, and it would work well as a flash-animated ad on websites.