Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch

With the publication of the one-shot Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson once again put the majority of current comics to shame. In an era where most writers cannot tell one story in one issue, Dorkin delivers THREE short stories full of pathos, humor, characterization, and tragedy, each capable of bringing a tear to the eye of the most jaded reader. Who would've thought that you could make a story about ghosts of sheep into a tear jerker? Where computerized coloring of today's comics means a plethora of filters, gradients and texture fills to overwhelm the pencils and make a book un-readable unless under specific lighting conditions and artwork designed to shock and titillate, Thompson delivers a painted book that is reminiscent of Disney and classic storybooks. The comic is lushly and subtly colored without sacrificing storytelling clarity. There is just enough caricature in the animals to make them expressionistic without sacrificing the relative realism of the world. Creators and publishers should read this comic and see how it's done.

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Got the Namor Visionaries #2 as well. I have the original comics, but for favorite runs, I like getting the trades. Eventually, I'll just get rid of the original comics. Like the first volume, the cover takes a cover from the comics and re-colors it. It's not as garish as the first one. In fact, the red and yellow knockouts for the fire and smoke really punch. Color knockouts are a favorite trick of colorists today and often over-used. The difficulty and added work of them in the past made them more sparingly used and thus often more effective. Today they generally have the opposite effect than intended, instead of standing out, the knock-out tends to be flattened without the black to delineate and offset the color. Here it works. However, the colorist also added darker hues on the areas where Byrne was using zip-tone for the shadows on the figures, making the shadow areas too dark and frankly destroying what made the art work and stand out to begin with. If the line work is full of cross-hatching for shadows and textures, the colorist doesn't need to over-do gradients and fills. The artwork was originally designed for a more traditional color palette and thus works better with a limited one.

It's been awhile since I read the originals and I don't know if the interior pages are recolored or not. They are obviously using the flatter color scheme. Yet, there are two coloring errors that stand out that may have been there the first time. We have a cameo of the original Human Torch's kid partner Toro. However, he is colored as if he's wearing a red body suit like the Torch instead of being half naked with just trunks and boots. Later, a pic with Sersi in the background is colored as if she is wearing an all white outfit that covers shoulders and arms as well as a white one-piece bathing suit on top. Since the comic features a main character who runs around half naked as well as Namorita as supporting cast member who spends most of her time in a bathing suit, it can't be just scared of showing too much skin. Maybe, they exceeded the use of flesh tones allotted for the book? Just kidding. The Sersi pic looks like the colorist wasn't sure how Sersi was supposed to be colored and left it blank to come back to... and then forgot.

Otherwise, Byrne's Namor series is him pretty much at the epitome of his writing and drawing. Namor makes for a flawed hero and it's something that Byrne doesn't shy away from. His taste in women remains mercurial and questionable, and not being the best judge of character around. We have Byrne playing in the Marvel sand-box, using well known and mostly forgotten pieces of Marvel lore and characters. There's the Super-Skrull, Iron Fist, Misty Knight, Ka-zar, and Shanna and Zabu, Spitfire and Union Jack (acknowledging the changes to the character in Knights of Pendragon). A set-up for the redesign of the Plant-man. An appearance by the Punisher. A set-up of the return of the real Iron Fist and bits of an older story when Byrne was first working for Marvel. The zip-tones hearken back to Will Everett's style on the character just as using Iron Fist is also a shout-out to Everett who created Amazing Man, the template for the creation of Iron Fist. If there is a flaw, it's in the cross pollination of Byrne writing Iron Man at the time and using the Marrs twins in both books. While most of their development and ongoing stoy occurs here, some of their business actions in Iron Man's title play a major role in the ongoing subplot here and the motivation behind some of Desmond's actions.

In FF and Alpha Flight, Byrne's stories were more linear with tighter 2 and 3 issue stories that were more self-contained with a little bit of subplots running through and taking prominence later. Here, Byrne is telling a longer and denser story often with multiple subplots going on at the same time. It's somewhere between the style he used in other books or Claremont used in X-Men and today's writers such as Brubaker's Captain America or Geoff Johns' Aquaman, telling one long story thinly disguised as being composed of shorter stories. The balance is stronger here. The ongoing story of Namor in the business world and the machinations of the Desmond twins is a secondary story or plotline that bubbles up and affects what's going on, ever present (much how Doctor Doom always seemed to have his own story going simultaneously with whatever else was going on in FF). But, you also have a variety of plots and subplots that has nothing directly to do with them, giving the shorter stories variety of styles and locales. It's soap-opera-ish in the long form, but with a variety of threats and plotlines for satisfactorily reading in smaller chunks.

As Byrne is working with some Roy Thomas creations in the series, it's appropriate there's also a sense of Thomas in the approach to history and retcons. He uses Namor's vast and schizophrenic history, ironing out a few kinks but playing ever fair with the history and continuity. Union Jack is a guest-star so he's kept in character as he had most recently appeared in a UK title, Knights of the Pendragon, even though that take is substantially different from the character that he first drew in the pages of Captain America. He raises questions about Iron Fist's death, setting up his impending resurrection, but doesn't just re-write or simply invalidate the story that lead to his death. It still happened, it's still very real and a struggle for his old supporting cast members. Just that not everything was exactly as it seemed and it's used to RESTORE a character back to his prime. Thus, it actually makes the universe richer not poorer as most retcons these days seem intent on doing.

It's also interesting to see how he draws Master Man in his coat and Warrior Woman in her skirt is a lot like what Frank Miller was doing with his art in Sin City at about the same time.

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Byrne's new book Trio has ended its first arc and in many ways is a return to those glory days. He doesn't have the larger DC or Marvel sandbox to play in so he plays in his own sandbox. With the penultimate issue, Golgotha, a villain from his Danger Unlimited and Torch of Liberty stories comes to this universe. The last issue has an appearance tying Trio to his Lab Rats series he created for DC and whose rights reverted back to him.

The texture file for Rock was the biggest visual drawback to the series, not really working with the relative style elsewhere in the book. But, Byrne's style is often evolving and experimenting and Rock's look is one of those things that just doesn't work out.

The final product of the writing is somewhere between his Next Men work and his more straight-forward superhero days. Ultimately, it doesn't work as well as the format for the book is really as a mini-series and this feels more like part of several issues of an ongoing, setting up many questions and subplots for future stories but not really delivering much in terms of background and characterization for the main characters. The problem is it's not really an ongoing, but a mini-series. For a mini-series format, there needs to be a tighter focus on the main characters and their story to make us care for them. An interesting plot, interesting villains and world creation, but ultimately a letdown when it comes to the very story aspect.

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From the first issue of Aquaman, it was only a matter of time before the current Geoff Johns, the one who focuses on gore, violence, death and anti-heroes, showed the trident being used as a lethal weapon. This issue fulfills that promise as Aquaman skewers a henchman. It is interesting to note that while the issue has two deaths, it is the death at the hands of the hero that's the most graphic. The death of the hero Vostok doesn't even look like a lethal wound as he's stabbed in the shoulder.

From the start, this Aquaman title has been one of love-hate. Such as all the jokes at Aquaman's expense in the early issues. See, the problem is that the people in the real world that make fun of Aquaman aren't the civilians but comic fans and geeks (although their point of view getting broadcast to mass audiences via Big Bang Theory, Family Guy and Robot Chicken doesn't help). If Aquaman existed in the real world, he wouldn't be considered a joke. Because in the real world, he's the equivalent of a super-Navy Seal, you know, the guys that took out Osama.  In the real world, Olympic swimmers and divers are sex symbols. In the real world, we recognize the power of ocean as a literary symbol and some of the greatest classics are of the people associated with the sea: The Odyssey, Moby Dick, The Old Man and the Sea. Real world heroes and villains like Blackbeard the Pirate, Columbus, the Vikings, Jacques Cousteau. Clive Cussler and his fictional counterpart Dirk Pitt. The people that think he's a joke are the ones that couldn't swim a lap in a pool without heaving, and who have this passive-aggressive self-hate relationship with their reading comics.

Yet, of all the 52 books, this is the only one that comes close to what I wanted out of the reboot. Not a complete resetting, but a clearing away of the barnacles that had accumulated in the past couple of decades as he had been taken to extremes, away from the core concept of the character. His look is tweaked but he doesn't look drastically different than from most of his history, as if he went to the same tailor as the rest of the JLA. We have the restoration of his Silver-Age origin which links him to the surface world. No ancient Atlantean sorcerers or setting him up as a literal king of Atlantis. We have Mera back as beautiful and powerful (although she seems to have gained Namor's personality, at least she's not the sometimes murderous hateful insane woman she had become before). Sadly, I fear when we get around to Aqualad, it won't be Garth but the politically correct one.

The art by Ivan Reis is likewise hard to pin down. No question that he's a talented renderer and a hyper detailed artist. The colors are likewise lush and rich though at times render the art so dense to make it difficult to decipher. Whether it's Reis' style or from Johns' scripts, the layouts often fall on using a wide-screen format where the panels are three times wide as tall whether it makes for the scene or not. This often leads to bad angles and croppings of scenes with tops of people's heads cut off as well as a lot of wasted space in panels where there's no relevant information being conveyed either by art or script. You end up with pages taking twice as much space as needed to convey information.

The worst example came in the 8th issue which was when I finally noticed what was off in the art. Look at the page reproduced here and see where Reis first gives an establishing shot of where the action takes place. Four characters in a cramped room standing close together. Followed by the wide shots with a single head-shot in each panel and little dialogue! Reis doesn't even draw backgrounds in those panels. He couldn't have really as two of the characters are so close together, they should be seen in the same panel. Luckily, the colorist in this case adds a bunch of color textures to add depth to the scene. But, the bottom half of the page could easily have been done in half the space. It's decompression on the artistic scale. So, you get a beautiful looking page but full of bad storytelling basics.

Not sure what I'm going to do when the book crosses over with the JLA. I'm not getting the JLA book and have zero interest in it. In the recent past, I've protested by not buying the comic for those months and have used it as a reason to drop books that I was already on the fence on. The comic is on my pull list, so I am loathe to not buy it as I consider that as being pretty much a contract between me and the store. I may just have to be happy with not getting the JLA issues and hope it doesn't interfere too much in what enjoyment I do get from Aquaman.

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There's a scene in an episode of News Radio where the station owner Jimmy James has written his autobiography. Since at the time translated foreign books sold better, he had it translated to Japanese and then back again, leading to a funny book reading where it has become almost non-sensical.

Dynamite's Peter Cannon comic is a bit like that only not funny. Pete Morisi created Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, cribbing heavily from the origin of Amazing Man. He's a reluctant superhero in that he's enlightened and wishing to live a life of peace but has physical abilities that set him above others. Grudgingly, he accepts that "with great powers comes great responsibilities" even though they are responsibilities he doesn't want to shoulder. Then there's the one-off issue by Pat Boyette where he distributed some abilities he hadn't had before. From there, Alan Moore took the basic idea and then created Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, a completely different character (one based on completely different philosophies).  Dynamite's take is basically taking Moore's Ozymandias character and re-translating that version back to being Peter Cannon, giving Pat Boyette's issue heavy weight. If DC is doing "Before Watchmen", Darnell and Ross are doing "After Watchmen", more or less picking up where that story left off. Only with the actual Charlton hero and Cannon's ruse didn't involve killing half of New York City. On top of all that, he has what could only generously be called a Nu52 designed costume making him actually look generic as opposed to the rather bold look taken from the 1940s Daredevil.

The comic basically sums up the events of The Watchmen in the first few pages: world on brink of nuclear armageddon is driven to cooperation by the mysterious appearance of a creature, in this case a dragon. To drive the point home, we see Peter watching multiple monitors at the same time and he's compared to Alexander the Great (Adrian Veidt's personal hero), the comic plays off the superhero as celebrity, the man using the hero to become a wealthy power player. To further riff on DC and Watchmen, there are several Charlton character allusions. The President is called a "Peacemaker", we have a future foe who is an Asian martial artist in a tiger mask (Tiger was the Asian teen side-kick to Judomaster) and the super powered silver metal "Sons of Adam" (Captain Atom's secret identity being Captain Nathaniel Adam). By the time you get to the last page, it is so telegraphed, it would have been a cheat for it to turn out otherwise. No reference yet to Blue Beetle or Son of Vulcan unless it's in the supposed careers of Cannon: archaeologist and writer. The Dan Garrett Blue Beetle was the former and Son of Vulcan was a reporter.

The biggest problem of the comic is trying to make Peter Cannon serve much the same role as Adrian Veidt, but the two had fundamental differences. Peter Cannon isn't really supposed to be some big picture, genius. He's enlightened, more self aware. While I might be able to buy him opening a dojo or spiritual retreat, it's a Veidt move to do so as some kind of Mc-Franchise the world over. For Cannon to do so, it's a fundamental spiritual hypocrisy. As is using Veidt's solution to bring world peace, imposing peace by lies and subterfuge. That's Veidt, not Peter Cannon. It being what appears to be the driving force of the story is what makes it more of in the vein of being a sequel to The Watchmen than being a story that flows naturally from the character that Morisi created.

The other flaw that as first issues go, it's all set-up. It's establishing back-story, status-quo and setting up three future adversaries. What it doesn't do is really set up or move any one story. The opening pages also pretty much remove any reason for Peter Cannon to appear in costume ever again without jumping through hoops (such as wearing the costume as a uniform when visiting dojos, making public appearances, etc) because it moves the character beyond being a masked superhero. Worse, it's a set-up done as dully as possible, mostly exposition of people talking about their motivations, some flash-backs but no one really doing anything of note.

The highlight of the book is the back-up, a Pete Morisi written and drawn origin story originally slated for DC's "Secret Origins" comic but never published. While Morisi maintained ownership of the character, I do wonder about the rights concerning the pages. They were solicited by DC, making them work for hire. Comes down to whether he was paid for them or not I guess. His drawing of proportions had suffered somewhat by this point and Cannon is colored to have pants, in keeping with his look in his DC comic. But, the artwork is bold and stylish and thankfully colored in old flat coloring system since Morisi's artwork would be ruined by most of modern computerized coloring. Visually, it's dynamic in ways that the rest of the book is generic.
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 I am a masochist sometimes in checking out previews of comics I not only don't plan on buying but know that I would have zero interest in. Such as Before the Watchmen: The Comedian. Just not a character I really want to spend quality time with. But, I have to say, I love this panel of him getting hit with a brick with the word's "Herriman's Bricks" on it. George Herriman was the cartoonist and creator of "Krazy Kat" who was constantly being beaned by a brick thrown by Ignatz the mouse.

20 Most Significant?

I love Steven Grant's column on comicbookresources. At best I agree with about half of any of what he says, but as a longtime professional, his insights to the industry are informative and interesting. At worst, he's what Holmes would credit of Watson, while not a source of light, he reflects it and is often illuminating ie I may ultimately disagree, but what he says does make one think.

His most recent column about the 20 most significant comics fired up the boards as most lists are apt to do. Some of his choices were interesting such as American Flagg and Blackmark. Not really up on the independent scene at the time though I sampled quite a few of the comics from First and Eclipse, it's hard for me to judge how significant those and some of the others actually were.

A few of his other choices I disagreed with. Such as the Showcase debut of the Flash. If any "history" is a myth it's that of the debut of the Flash signifying a great superhero revival and the start of the Silver-Age. In an older post I explored in more detail the various "ages" of comics and the context of the Flash and the other heroes debuts. Ignore the conventional wisdom of when the "ages" were as they are nothing more than convenient constructs and look at the broad picture of superhero comics and the debut of the Flash is just one blip among many before and after, at about a steady rate all told. There is nothing any more significant about that comic than a host of others. The "Flash of Two Worlds" is a far more significant comic in the scope of superhero history.

What's also puzzling is his choice of Amazing Spider-man #1. What little of the logic he applied to Showcase would by default kick out Amazing Spider-man in favor of at least his debut in Amazing Fantasy or the true comic: Fantastic Four #1. But, even when talking about significance, everything that is significant in Spider-man is first found in the FF. When truly looking at a logical start of the Silver-Age, it's the Fantastic Four. It's the first "new" superhero comic. While it is still built upon comics and superheroes of the past, in style, themes and substance, it is new and different from how they've been done before. Spider-man may have been the more popular and the more significant character especially in terms of the Marvel Empire, but it's not the more significant comicbook in the context of comicbook history.

Of course, as talks generally go, it gets one thinking exactly what would be one's own list. Mine is more superhero-bent, it's what I read and enjoy, and it's all American based comics. But, if I had to compose a list:

If I had to list with a slightly more supehero-centric list:

1-3 of Steven's list is correct and would be foolish to try to come up with something better.

#4: Whiz Comics #1: While taken to the courts as infringement, Captain Marvel was significant: it recognized we don't want Robin to identify with, we want to be the hero. The ultimate in wish fulfillment and a modern day fairy tale in superhero form. Might be impossible to gauge whether it was he or #5 that is responsible for all the Captains that would eventually litter the superhero landscape.

#5: Captain America #1: the title that really launched the patriotic superheroes, from Captain America punching Hitler on the nose. No messing around with fictitious dictators and countries. The tail would wag the dog as Irv Novick, the artist on the earlier Shield would change his artwork to match more closely Simon & Kirby's work hyperkinetic artwork. Not the first patriotic hero nor the first of S&K teaming up, but this is where they became a recognizable force and influence on comics for the next couple of decades. Just a Robin may beat out Bucky as a kid sidekick, most of those that followed owed more to Bucky down to using their own names in lieu of code-names.

#6: Whiz Comics #21: The introduction of the Lieutenant Marvels. May not seem like much now, but this was the first attempt at franchising a superhero; not introducing a sidekick, but other characters capable of carrying their own strips based on the popular lead. Soon, Marvels were everywhere at Fawcett: Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, Uncle Marvel, Freckles Marvel, the Aunty Anti-Marvel, the whole Sivana clan and culminating in Black Adam, the evil Marvel. To them we owe Supergirl, Superboy, Superwoman, Bizarro, Batgirl, Batwoman, Bathound, Bat-Mite, Man-Bat, etc

#7: Pep Comics #41: Archie debuted sometime earlier and even appeared on the cover since, but from here on out, he starts out figuring prominently on the cover, slowly edging the Shield out. He goes from being an above-average back-up strip to a cultural phenomenon. The times are changing.

#8: All-Star Western #58: With this, the title that gave the JSA a home for a decade became a Western, superheroes were going dormant. Westerns that had been around for a long time as a minor part of comics would now be a dominant genre for the next two decades.

#9: I'll concede to Crime Does not Pay for the reasonings that it helped fuel the campaign against comics and the formation of the CCA.

#10: FF #1: The first true SA comic book. DC's SA was still being fueled by the late 1940's and early 1950's, Marvel recreates the superheroes into something new. Like the GA, the heroes are rooted in their times, the fears of communism, the space race, science unchecked. The heroes bicker, they are cursed as much as they are blessed and can be motivated by selfish means (in this sense Amazing Fantasy #16 is more significant than the first issue of his ongoing, the theme that with power comes responsibility vs our selfish nature that contributes to unhappiness and undoing).

#11: The Flash #123: "Flash of Two Worlds" the beginning of modern continuity sensibilities at DC and in a sense giving a measure of power to fans.

#12: Fantastic Four #49: issue #48 started the storyline, but Galactus' first appearance is here. There had been cosmic stories and stories featuring gods, but the power and scope of Galactus and the Silver Surfer as done by Kirby, it showed what his creative mind was capable of and unlike anything before. It set a whole new benchmark for what superhero comics could be and what cosmic really meant. The Legion had the Sun-Eater, which is probably a bit more realistic, but his nature doesn't achieve the Greek tragedy heights of the characters of the Watcher, Galactus and Silver Surfer. The best creators today are still trying to catch up to what Lee & Kirby were able to do here.

#13: Mad: Another one I cannot fault his logic for inclusion.

#14: Green Lantern #76: I was torn on this or The Amazing Spider-Man #96 which ran without a comic code seal of approval. But it's with this issue of Green Lantern, that superheroes started rediscovering their relevancy. The true significance of these titles was far more subtle than generally recognized. After all, the more serious and relevance take didn't signify higher sales and it went back to being more straightforward space-opera soon enough. However, Denny O'Neill brought a bit of that sensibility to every comic he wrote and edited. Writers and editors would follow suit in other comics, reflecting more of the culture and society unrest, expanding the types of stories superheroes could be about and the power of the CCA was weakened as not carrying the label didn't bring doom and gloom upon a comic. There's a reason why issues of this run are among the most reprinted comics in one format or another, never staying unavailable for long.

#15: Amazing Spider-man #121: There have been deaths in comics before and Peter Parker had his share of heart-ache and break-ups. But no character's death has ever really served as a watershed moment as did the death of Gwen Stacey. That the hero would not only fail but be partly responsible for the character's death, it's a true landmark comic. If Quesada and company were really daring about rebooting the character, they should have undid this issue along with the wedding. That really would have set things in an uproar and made for some interesting stories.

#16: Swamp Thing #20: Alan Moore takes over the character and redefines the concept of horror and superhero-esque titles written for adults. To be fair, he had done this before this title but it's here where he made his name and where he laid the groundwork that would give rise to the British Invasion of comics writers and make works like Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Morrison's Animal Man and Doom Patrol possible and eventually lead to the creation of a whole imprint, Vertigo. It is doubtful that we'd have seen other revisionist superhero works like Miller's Dark Knight Returns, O'Neil's Question, Grell's Longbow Hunters if Moore hadn't paved the way here first. I say this and recognize this, but I miss the way Swamp Thing was before Moore got his hands on him.

#17: Maus. I've not read it, but I respect and recognize its achievements.

#18: Cerebus. No specific issue and I don't agree with a lot of Sims' point of view. But, it is a testament of a creator forging his own path and creating his own work and unique vision. A lot better example to hold up than Youngblood.

#19: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not every one was significant for being good. I agree with Steven on this one. I think one has to acknowledge the success of this questionable comic parody lead to a boom in independent comics and readers recognizing that b/w is a viable option and at least trying various b/w comics whether it be various output of Dark Horse, The Southern Knights, Cerebus, Zenazoic Tales, or Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters. 90% of what it helped spawn was dreck, but there was some good stuff too. Wish someone would bring back the Southern Knights.

#20: Crisis on Infinite Earths. This is basically a tie between it and Watchmen. Two great and landmark works yet, both have lead to the excesses of the 90's of modern revisionism and strip mining continuity while pretending to be honoring history by recasting heroes as ineffectuals, fascists and closet fetishists, where creators' egos feel their version trumps all that went before... to write continuity driven stories while creating retcons right and left, stories about continuity instead of with continuity.

Somewhere in there I would have liked to include the likes of Camelot 3000. I may be wrong but it is or close to being the first maxi-limited series, not based on superheroes or continuity, had Brian Bolland artwork, printed on high quality paper-stock AND intended for the direct market to boot. One of the first showing DC taking away from Marvel the role as being the innovator and producing comic intelligent comics for adults and not just kids. But, then again, some of that can be credited to Alan Moore's Swamp Thing as well. Then, there's The Death of Captain Marvel, the first original graphic novel that lead to some pretty good original graphic novels out there. And, one of the best death of a superhero stories ever done. Had the graphic novel format been a bigger ongoing success, who knows. Maybe it was just too early, the trade market not really existing like it does now.

Sacrilegious?

In an interview with comicbookresources.com, Keith Champagne talks about the comic COUNTDOWN: ARENA that he's writing. The purpose of the book is that Monarch nee Captain Atom is scouring the multiverse to build his army. In doing so, he realizes he has several versions of different characters to choose from. It's not a matter of picking Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, but which Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman. Nevermind that the smart thing to do would probably be to pick as many Supermen, Green Lanterns, and Flashes as possible and let fly. Anywho, in order to pick the best ones, Monarch is going to pick 3 likely choices of each and let them fight it out. What potentially makes this book is fun, the modern DC multiverse is made up of all the elseworlds and variations that DC has come up with in the past. So, it's the Victorian era Batman of GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT vs Batman of a JSA of the JSA: THE LIBERTY FILES and vampire Batman of RED RAIN. And so on (sadly, some battles like Superman and Green Lantern feature alternates never seen before this series). And for Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, readers get to vote for the winners.

But what gets me in the interview and indeed leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth (other than this being part of COUNTDOWN which I've pretty much avoided) is in the interview Champagne twice invokes the word "sacrilegious" in regards to the fact that he would have liked to use THE WATCHMEN Nite Owl in the Blue Beetle battle and the DARK KNIGHT RETURNS Batman.

Excuse me? What's the difference in using those characters and the ones from GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT, RED RAIN, or RED SON? How is Moore's characters or Miller's version of a character which will have zero impact on their mini-series more sacrilegious than the others? How the heck is it more sacrilegious than DC actually killing off both Ditko's Blue Beetle and Question to make way for lame politically correct versions? More sacrilegious than killing of Kirby's Fourth World characters? For actually having in a book that stars the Justice League characters, the rape of a long-time supporting character by a stock super-villain and then having her killed off by another long-time supporting character? Or how they killed off half of the JSA years back only to now have a book made up of mostly carbon copies and "legacy heroes", making a book that should be about celebrating the original heroes into a book about the generation of heroes. You know just like you can get in the Outsiders, Teen Titans, Justice League... Want to talk sacrilegious, you cannot get mores o than what they've done to the DCU already.

What's really funny is that as they are running roughshod over their heroes and histories, one of the things that made THE WATCHMEN work is the fact that it's not really the Charlton heroes. DC at the time wisely realized to let THE WATCHMEN actually be the Charlton characters it would render them largely unusable in the future, it would take them too far from their starting points. By letting Moore use the characters as templates for his cast instead, it allowed Moore to take his story as far as he wanted to. DC got to have their cake and eat it too. So, DC wants to somehow hold these duplicates sacred now, while they have killed off and ruined the originals, which was something creating THE WATCHMEN was to protect against.

Seems to me, it's a little late to worry about sacrilege of using certain characters. DC has gone far past and done far worse to their classic characters already.

Another thing that bugs me a little is how the multiverse is being used. The multiverse originally had very few duplicates and those were done deliberately. Instead it was to incorporate the various companies' characters. You had Earth-1, 2, and 3 as being the one with the most duplicates due to the way history organically unfolded. Fandom posited an Earth-B for The Brave & the Bold stories and a few others that didn't really fit into continuity because Haney didn't really bother with Earths 1&2, it was all the same Earth as far as he was concerned. But Earth-X didn't have another Superman, Batman, etc. Neither did Earth-S. And up to CRISIS, neither did Earth-Prime. But, right into exploring the new Earths, we now have a Green Lantern on Earth-5 (more or less Earth-S). Why? Why not explore the characters that are already there that can be used such as Ibis or Diamond Jack. We don't need MORE Green Lanterns, there are hundreds to choose from. Each Earth had a pretty clear delineation and purpose to it. And the characters were far more unique. Captain Marvel and family was on Earth-S, nowhere else. Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters didn't have counterparts on S or 1. And so on. Now, the multiverse is almost more like hypertime before it, a fail-safe in case the mainstream-verse gets screwed up too much.

Who's Going to Watch the Watchmen - Watchmen movie confirmations

My brother sent me this blog link at Rorschachs Journal saying the Watchmen movie cast has been confirmed. The only cast member I recognize is Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy) cast as the Comedian - an important role, but not a very extensive one! While we're on the topic of Morgan, I find it interesting that last season both of his characters were both killed off on their shows, but this past season he was able to reprise both roles and yet remain dead in both!

It's interesting that the Watchmen movie may be coming to fruition now, on the heels of DC's Identity Crisis saga. The Watchmen story originally was an exploration of the heroes from Charlton comics that would have left these iconic characters unusable:

• Dr. Manhattan = Captain Atom
• the Comedian = Peacemaker
• Ozymandias = Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt
• the 2nd Nite-Owl = the 2nd Blue Beetle (Ted Kord)
• Rorschach = the Question
• Captain Metropolis = Judomaster
• the 2nd Silk Specter = Nightshade

What Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore (who has a history of mucking about/deconstructing established characters) chose to do instead, was to create characters from scratch that built on the archetypes of the existing characters, so that they could express their story while leaving the originals intact. DC, on the other hand, has recently chosen to take another route to revise old characters by introducing successors after killing off the originals.

I've always had a fondness for both of the Blue Beetle characters and felt that Ted Kord's death in Identity Crisis was pointless, as they could have easily used any number of characters that have lapsed into obscurity, such as one from the Bloodlines story arc, for the same effect. And why not resurrect a youthful Dan Garrett with a new look (Ditko left plenty of room for even a writer of limited ability) in stead of giving the scarab to a new kid? - But I digress!

While they may have a cast lined up it's still way too early to start planning your Watchmen parties as we've seen time and again great comic to movie concepts fall victim to a variety of early deaths and indefinite delays. That being said, Warner Bro's has set up an official site, though there's nothing there but the proposed date of March 6, 2009, and IMDB has a listing for the Watchmen movie. Additionally, according to a Wikipedia listing, this single frame of Rorshach was imbedded in Frank Miller's 300! Again, this is Wikipedia, so this may not necessarily be true, but possibly may be! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.