Forget a Reboot, can we get a Reset?

I was in Target the other day, getting some dental floss and fishing line, but otherwise browsing. Takes me about 30 minutes, my wife 3 hours and then she can go back in a week. Me? I'm good for a month. Anywho, I'm cutting through the aisles from the back of the store and end up going through stuff for school kids where I see a couple of floppy binders for papers based on comics. One is Wonder Woman. The other is the Justice League. Only, it's a Justice League cover by Perez from 1983! It includes some other marketing artwork from about the same time (judging by the appearance of Starfire). The source of the Wonder Woman artwork is not readily apparent, but the design also places it from about the same time period.

It highlights a problem with much of the DC comics. Here's material marketed for kids. But, it's material from almost three decades ago! Makes sense, because that's the last time that most of these characters still looked iconic. Hawkman hadn't been changed to wearing body armor with mechanical wings. Firestorm hadn't gone through his transformation into a fire elemental, much less other changes. Aquaman hadn't had worn his blue costume much less grown long hair, a beard, lose a hand and become the sour underwater character. Hal Jordan hadn't yet gone crazy and been replaced nor taken on the job of the Spectre. Elongated Man hadn't gone through a succession of bad costumes, was still alive and not more or less replaced by Plastic Man. The Atom was still happily married and the second and latest person to make use of the name.

Marketing obviously recognized something that the people writing the comics don't. Building a brand demands a bit of consistency. Not knocking creativity and trying different things, but there's inherent problems when trying to shake things up and write creative stories. If you go too far, change too much, you weaken the brand. Take Aquaman. When fans talk about what they think it will take to make the character successful and what they want out of the character, it's divided. Some people want the pre-Crisis Aquaman. Others want the Peter David version. In an effort to modernize the character and get away from the jibes the character often gets, the David version ultimately proved polarizing. It was good for short-term sales, but now it's an "either-or" proposition. Despite the acclaim of David's series, the Aquaman that's marketable is the one in orange and green. Kyle Raynor as Green Lantern did the same thing for that franchise. You can see the polarizing of fans over Blue Beetle and Firestorm, only with the added fuel of racism charges if you so happen to like the original versions over the newer ones. Or those that like Morrison's Doom Patrol versus the ones that didn't. Truman and Ostrander's Hawkworld proved to be damaging to the whole concept of the DCU as a shared continuity that the character nor company fully recovered from.

I'm not saying that the modern versions were badly done. But, they were badly thought out. When Superman became the electric blue Superman, it wasn't thought to be permanent. Likewise the death of Superman that launched several new characters. They were temporary changes to the status quos that allowed some character exploration. When John Walker took over the identity of Captain America while Steve became the Captain, it was obviously nothing more than a chapter in the ongoing story. Status quos were reset in about a year's time or less.  Peter David claims that he was going to restore Aquaman's status quo when he was done, but there was no sign of that in the actual book. When Morrison was done with the Doom Patrol, every previous member was dead or completely changed into an unrecognizable character and the team hasn't been able to recover.

DC seemed to recognize that a little bit. Hal Jordan was made Green Lantern again. Barry Allen returned as the Flash. Somewhere, Ray Palmer is the Atom. Recently Aquaman was brought back in his green & orange suit. Hawk and Dove returned. But, for each course correction we get Firestorm struggling out a compromise solution between the Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch fans. PC versions of the Question and Blue Beetle. Roy Harper (Speedy/Arsenal) becoming villainous and a cyborg. Green Arrow killing criminals again, still ruining his relationship with Black Canary. Hawkman maiming opponents. Wonder Woman gets a badly designed costume. Superman and Batman both absent from their core books for extended period of time at the same time. Redesigned and "revamped" versions of the Red Circle and pulp heroes to the point they have little to nothing in common with the source material.

So, I was thinking, "What DC needs is a reboot of all characters to about the 1983 continuity."
I was a bit surprised when it was announced that DC was indeed rebooting their line. With talk of making characters a bit younger, stories accessible. Sadly, it also carried buzzwords like "modern". In fact, what makes sense about saying Jim Lee is going to redesign 52 characters so that they are more modern and recognizable? How do you redesign Wonder Woman, the Flash, Superman or Batman to make them MORE recognizable? The very nature of redesigning an iconic look is the EXACT OPPOSITE of their proposed intent. Then, there's the inherent conflict of goals. Making something modern doesn't make something necessarily recognizable. As I started off with, the problem is that DC has some iconic designs, but they and Hollywood seem intent on moving AWAY from them when what they need to do is move back towards them. The designs of the characters have stood the test of time for decades with minimal tweaking. I have no problem with redesigns, if the character truly needs it. But, the goal shouldn't be MODERN. It should be TIMELESSNESS. There's a reason when talking about character designs, people mention words like "iconic" and "classic". Most costumes are iconic because they are timeless. This usually means there's a simplicity and instantly identifiable and reproducible elements to the costume. Don't know who said it, but a comment I liked was a good costume should generally be akin to one that an eight year old can reproduce in his own drawings. The recent Doom Patrol relaunch had new uniforms for the team, with piping and such. Not bad designs per se, but instantly forgettable in they were not only generic but needlessly busy with extraneous details. When redesigning costumes, one should look at a few factors. Has this costume been worn for two decades or more and do you understand the difference between "classic" and "dated"? Was it designed by Gil Kane/Steve Ditko/Jack Kirby/Dave Cockrum? If the answer is "yes" to either of these, then the answer to redesigning the costume should 95% of the time be "Hell no".

The other problem is that they have ONE artist and writer redesigning the line. On the artist end, it's an artist whose last design has met a lot of resistance and who has yet to produce a design that can be said to stand the test of time. Not to say he isn't talented and produces pretty pictures. But, a less than zero track record. On the writer end... the concept of a "planned" shared universe just doesn't work. Every company that has tried to launch a planned universe with a central vision has ultimately failed. EVERY. ONE. Valiant. Dark Horse. Marvel's New Universe. Malibu (with two different universes). Defiant. DC doesn't even have to look any further than last year with their Pulp and Red Circle launches. Yes, I know. Red Circle was within the context of their regular Universe, but it was still formed, linked and sold on mainly one man's name who had nothing to do with it after creating the bible and the first issues. Not saying go in without a plan. But, what made DC and Marvel work was that it was organic. Continuity was built by telling stories, usually trying not to conflict with events elsewhere. It wasn't about continuity in and of itself. However, launches like this ARE about continuity, even when it's trashing old continuity and establishing new ones. (There actually is ONE exception: Marvel's Ultimate line which is still going strong. However, it's a shared universe that is built on the concept of a previous one, not an all new continuity. Even when it's going somewhere different, it cannot help but be a reflection of the main line. I don't read the comics, but I've never seen any advertising for pushing a NEW character in the Ultimate Universe that didn't already exist elsewhere.) Unless you're Kirby, one creator generally doesn't have that much creative variety in him to really fuel a whole universe. And, even Kirby's Fourth World books didn't succeed.

The first descriptions and covers of the relaunched titles further shows that while they seem to recognize that the line has problems, characters too convoluted and written into corners to the point of not being viable, they don't seem to realize the source of the problem. From indicators, Captain Atom has nothing to do with any previous version, visually or story wise. Striving for a compromise with Firestorm, he is now Ronnie Raymond AND Jason Rusch who are high school buddies. The Hawkman description tells us a little about Carter Hall but not anything about Hawkman himself, other than it seems to be an all new take on the character with some nods to original elements. It was messing with the concepts to begin with that lead to he mess we're in. It's partly why Red Circle and the pulp line failed as it sacrificed built in readership and built in character identification. It's why Target has binders with artwork of the characters as they were 30 years ago. Green Arrow and Mr. Terrific sound like they could be all right, but the redesigns are horrible. The latter looks like he stole a costume from the Emo-LSH and reflects none of the character's legacy and history, but otherwise he didn't need a new universe setting to launch a book. It looks more like change for change sake in his case. Green Arrow's costume looks like it came from Hollywood and is overly busy and looks fated for early shredding and return to a more classic look. The fact that Green Arrow has been written into corners twice now by being taken too far from center and requiring a resetting and looking at what's being solicited with other heroes, doesn't bode well that the creators have learned anything from the past.


If anything, the ability to reboot and reset seems to allow writers the freedom to continually move characters in extreme directions as well as the freedom to just ignore or contradict what a previous creator wrote just last month. Every writer that came along felt the need to redefine or rewrite the origin of Powergirl, Donna Troy. Or a new Legion of Superheroes every couple of years after previous writers kill off several characters. We're not seeing anything in the new reboot that DC has learned from that, instead just the opposite. With new and ugly designs, more casual rewriting of some pasts and leaving some in place (such as Blackest Night), it's setting up for more of the same mistakes they've been making and the problems that have plagued DC since post-Crisis on Infinite Earths. The exact opposite from what they need if the goal is to make the characters memorable. Want them to be memorable, don't make long term lasting changes every time the wind blows. Get back to telling compelling action and adventure stories using continuity as a tool and backdrop but not making the stories be about continuity. The one book that looks the most appealing to me is Aquaman. In part because his costume is the least re-designed although now he seems to be incomplete unless he's carrying a trident weapon, much as Bucky now must always be shown with a gun. Ironically, the title will be by the artist I took to task for not knowing how to draw gloves and drawing his gloves inconsistently from one panel to the next.

The Firestorm description makes me wonder if Blue Beetle will be the same. I think we can safely assume it's NOT going to be Ted Kord, the question is will he still be dead, a mentor to Jaimie or just written out of continuity altogether?

One of the things that has bothered me about the recent depictions of Captain America was not the sudden shift in how Captain America's costume was drawn (with the mail armor being on the outside and covering just his chest and shoulders, and pouches on his belt), but the depictions became retroactive. And the costume underwent other changes. The boots, the pouches on the belt, the mask, and the "A" on the mask differed depending on which "realistic" artist was drawing. Since no one seems willing to call the artists to task on keeping the character actually on model, there's no consensus on just what constitutes Cap costume. For decades, artists had no problem with each drawing Captain America in keeping to his actual costume and still being true to their artistic vision. Now as shown in issue #616, the artist on the cover and the artists doing the interiors cannot even agree what Captain America's costume looks like.

Issue 616 is meant to be an artistic tour-de-force, yet the artists all are drawing different costumes. It's not merely artistic license, some of the artists are being more detailed than others, some depict his mask as a cowl another as a helmet, some are drawing plain leather belts vs the belt with pouches. One artist gets a pass in that at least the costume he's drawing is a variation of his first appearance with the triangular shield, but the others should all be the "same" costume and they clearly are not. I'm not saying we should go back to the days of having Neal Adams redrawing Kirby's faces of Superman, an artist should be able to express his style providing it's in keeping with the appropriate tone of the book, but the character should at least look "correct". Can you imagine a similar book starring Superman and each artist drew him with different belts and boots and chest emblems, but with all the stories taking place around the same time in his history (and none of them close to being accurate to how he was depicted during that time period).


Dwayne McDuffie Still a bit stunned by the death of Dwayne McDuffie. As a fan of golden-age comics, I'm not shocked when hearing of creators from the forties passing away. Heck, even many of the greats that came to prominence in the Silver-Age are at least in their late 50s now.

That his death came just as a big project of his was garnering press and about to come out makes it doubly tragic.

I won't say I was a huge fan. He was a name I recognized. And, I looked forward to his taking over the JLA book as his work on the JLU cartoon as writer and story editor showed a man that knew how to tell complete stories while layering in themes and subplots, so each story was enjoyable on its own but regular watchers/readers would be rewarded with more subtext and richness overall. But, otherwise, I cannot say I followed his writing with any great faithfulness.

Sadly, it didn't translate well to his work with the JLA book. A big part of that was that he was hampered first with subplots that the previous writer introduced but had no intention of staying on the book long enough to follow through on. And, when that was not dictating the shape of his stories, editorial fiat of who and who could not be on the team, of doing stories that would be continued in other books, and other crossover tie-ins (something he obviously disagreed with as he wrote a manifesto arguing against that very thing among others). He was sadly dumped from the book unceremoniously after he spoke out against editorial practices. This didn't seem to hurt his relationship with DC too much as he still worked on their animation projects such as the upcoming All-Star Superman animation video.

Reading his views on continuity and how it should probably be used is wonderfully insightful and funny. I have thought a similar thing myself in the last couple of years, but he was apparently arguing about it some time before even I came to that conclusion (though my buying was already reflecting it, as I was bailing on "family" books since it was impossible to get just one without a storyline suddenly arising that required buying the whole family of books).

One of the things I respect him for was his work on bringing more minority characters to comics, especially when he and a couple of other creators created the critically acclaimed Milestone Universe of characters published by DC Comics, being a showcase for various all-new non-cliche minority heroes as well as a place for minority creators to have a voice with characters that weren't mainly white heterosexual males. He and Milestone didn't merely champion minorities of their own cultural background, either, but worked for a better presence of minorities in general. He co-created Shadow Cabinet, a superhero group made up of multiple ethnicities and sexual persuasions. Milestone also published Xombi, created by John Rozum, featured an Asian American, one of the very few in comics, much less one in his own book. McDuffie would later use him in his Justice League book where in an alternate reality the character became Green Lantern, and a cool one at that. It's another one of the sad ironies, when he was doing the Justice League book, DC was talking about bringing the Milestone characters into the DCU continuity and back to prominence. But, other than a crossover with the League title and a mini, it's only now that several of the books are being solicited. Looking forward to Xombi myself. 

An outspoken passion for the medium, always striving to move it forward and expanding the readership. Helping to open the way for creators and minority characters (mostly by creating NEW characters and riding the coat-tails of talent NOT the corpses of previous characters). And reaching out to kids and potential new readers though helping create hours of entertainment with superhero cartoons with solid quality writing. He died young, but what a legacy and challenge he leaves for the rest of us.

Disturbing trends.

It's been awhile. A confluence of events forced a little break: on the road a bit due to some health and family matters and amidst that, trying to avoid the April Fool's computer virus resulted in a week of hell trying to fix what the solution did to the computer.

Twenty years ago and some change, Jim Shooter had an idea of a story and had founding Avenger Hank Pym suffer a breakdown, slap his wife and betray the team. Today, the character still routinely suffers from that storyline, not the betrayal of the team so much as him slapping his wife. Writers were unable to just let it go and move past it and instead kept revisiting it, trying to explain it away or to further mire the character.

Just a year or two back, Black Canary punched Green Arrow during a spat. Barely anyone made a comment. Black Canary is a trained martial artist, one of DC's top fighters. And, she lost her temper enough with Green Arrow to punch him. Not slap him. Balled up fist and punch to the jaw. This month, she does so again, both in JLA AND Green Arrow/Black Canary with even less provocation than before. Neither story gives any solid reason why Black Canary should be angry enough to even slap Ollie much less haul off and punch his lights out. And in the latter we actually see some spittle of blood from the punch. Again, this passes by with little fanfare, little outrage. I'm cancelling both of these titles from my pull list. Not just because of these scenes. They're just indicative of the bad writing that has plagued the books.

I had high hopes with a new writer for Green Arrow as Winnick seemed to just be spinning his wheels, as if he really didn't know what to do with a married Green Arrow. The new writer sets out to create a few new villains. Good. However, he does so by having Black Canary be a loose cannon with her powers, injuring innocent bystanders. He also commits the sin of building up his Mary Sue villain Cupid at the expense of other characters. This character who couldn't even defend herself in an abusive relationship, has the resources and abilities to track down various bad-guys and KILL them and even go toe-to-toe with Black Canary? Lazy and bad writing. And, while Green Arrow doesn't have the most impressive gallery of villains, it's a complete waste of characters to just kill them off panel instead of trying to find ways to make them interesting.

JLA has been suffering for awhile. And, I tried to give McDuffie a chance. After all, he inherited a whole bunch of subplots from a previous writer who had no intention of following up on any of the mess he made and then obviously editorial making the book a vehicle for introducing various characters and storylines to be continued elsewhere. It has gotten so bad, that Hal Jordan (and Green Arrow agreeing) has decided to appear in a different JLA book under a different writer that is at least promising the team will be doing things. This too is probably editorially driven, but WE JUST HAD THE TEAM BREAK UP AND REFORM! It's too soon to just all of a sudden announce another break up, with another reforming of a new team with new team members. Instead of giving us a whiny issue reaffirming what a load of crap the book and the team basically has been since the relaunch, actually write a god-forsaken story where the team is doing something, facing a huge threat. Ultimately, the only reason why the book has been floundering is that the storytelling has been lacking. The two-parter with the Milestone characters made little to no sense, it did a poor job with setting up the characters and explaining who they were and how they fit in. Their inclusion into the JLA may have been an editorial decisision, but it doesn't mean that there couldn't have been a good story to do so. Even the worse JLA-JSA crossovers made more sense and at the very least, told a complete and coherent story (even if you suspected the writer eating some bad mushrooms). Instead of Black Canary whining about the loss of Superman and Wonder Woman, show her be a person of strength. Have her a) be understanding about the concerns and issues that have made a bunch of the team leave or b) basically fire them for being undependable and seeking members to replace. Even with the wholesale slaughter of secondary and tertiary characters of the DCU, there are still bound to be enough characters left to draw upon, especially with MILESTONE and MLJ being folded in. It's not as if the whole team left, she is left with a good core group consisting of Vixen, Dr. Light, John Stewart, Hawkgirl, Zatanna. And, it's only McDuffie's writing that insists on having Red Tornado unavailable. Go to teams past and recruit the original Hourman (who stays out of the picture mostly in the JSA anyway), Lionheart, Maya, Major Disaster (in his old costume please), Fire, Ice, Guy Gardner, Connor Hawke.

Flash: Rebirth. Dead at the starting line. Starting off with a graphic murder scene, Johns delivers a mopey and dark comic. He doesn't tell us why we should be excited that Barry is back. He shows us why the characters in the book are excited for his return but not why we as readers should care. If McDuffie used Hal Jordan as a mouthpiece to express just how lame the JLA book has been, Johns uses Barry Allen to show how depressing comics have gotten as he ruminates about his rogues and the villains and things that have happened since. Len Strazewski did something similar in his JSA series, where various characters had recognized how much darker and dangerous the heroes and villains had become since their day. The difference being that he had the heroes recognize this and choose to be something more, to show a better way. Barry Allen on the other hand chooses to be the wet blanket on everybody's parade. This is supposed to be interesting enough to make me want to come back to a second issue and read about this character? The only hopeful thing about the storyline, if Savatar was able to escape also from the Speed Force (and Bart elsewhere), can we hope that Johnny Quick and Max Mercury nee Quicksilver won't be too far behind?

I will give props to Van Sciver's art. It has dramatically improved. It is still as detailed as ever and a merger of the similar styles Perez, Bolland and Jimenez. His storytelling is better though, his setting the scenes and letting each panel tell its story without the detail obscuring the message. His figures are more dynamic and natural.

Recognize the dapper fellow to the right? That's Deadshot in his first appearance. The Secret Six misses a chance to acknowledge the character's past for the sake of the humor of Floyd Lawton not having enough social skills to even recognize a decent suit (he was going to wear a Johnny Thunder reject of a green plaid jacket). Whatever suaveness the character has had, he is now just a plain sociopath. As much as I like Gail Simone's writing, I realize that comics have gotten to the point (especially with my economy), that I just don't care enough about these characters to really continue. It's a funny and often insane book with creative characters and concepts and wild action. Yet, the characters are for the most part ones I don't really care to spend money and time with each month. It's a sad decision to have to reach for what is one of the best written and best drawn books out there. It's just not my cup of tea.

Similarly, I've decided to draw to a close with Guardians of the Galaxy. In this case though, it's because while I normally would like these characters fine, I just don't identify with any of them, they are all too greatly changed in both looks and demeanors from previous incarnations. I don't care for the structuring of the stories around the de-briefings. Once in a while would be fine, but it is proving to be the rule and not the exception. And, there seems to be an illusion of stories happening. What we've had was events and subplots progressing and unfolding, but the big storylines seem to have been hampered by them and the various little cross-over stories happening. By dropping it, I don't even have to pretend to care what's going on with the War of the Kings crossover-itis.

Interestingly, in Captain Britain and MI:13, the illogic of the vampire base on the lighted side of the moon is actually brought up (don't really recall what their answer was other than "magic"). Think they may read this blog? Nah, probably not. It's an otherwise well-crafted tale, really setting Dracula up as a master planner and threat with logical goals for an undead vampire living on the moon. A pity that Spitfire has to be made just a bit more pathetic of a character.

Looks like the Sci-Fi channel has decided to go the same route with the Phantom as they did Flash Gordon. With probably about as much success. Arbitrary changes to the character (new names for him and his love interest) and a costume that is similar to the original in only that it is purple. You can change everything (such as their Battlestar Galactica) but it's an uphill battle from there. You have to make sure that what you are producing is so good that the changes are accepted (such as hot Asian Grace Park in the role of Boomer instead of an overweight guy). Let's face it, the Batman movies succeeded and failed despite the suit. In fact, once the stories became noticeably bad, the jokes about the suit became more prominent. The recent Batman movies would have been just as good if not better with the more iconic suit. The internet video of Batman vs. the Predator actually shows that the suit DOES work and makes all the efforts of Hollywood second-guessing and showing they know better than the creators of the character just look completely ridiculous. Likewise, the problem with the Billy Zane Phantom movie wasn't the suit. Although the scenes of him with the mask showing that he clearly has black grease paint on underneath that seems to magically appear and disappear when he puts on and removes the mask was annoying for its stupdity. And the movie had a good cast of actors. The problem was a story that erred too much on being campy and over the top with a supernatural menace that came off more ludicrous than threatening. It's possible to treat subject matter in both a fun and respectful manner, that takes itself seriously without being too serious or pretentious. Look at The Rocketeer and The Iron Giant for examples. Or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Dynamite is doing something similar to Buck Rogers. Granted, Buck never really had a costume per se other than being associated with jet packs. And he's been away for awhile, so I can guess some upgrading can be forgiven. However, he also has the problem that now plagues DC's Legion of Superheroes. He's been "updated" several times now. This gets to be a problem when it starts diluting the concept of the character, that readers are never sure how much of the characters they know are actually "true." It's why for 40 years, most characters were invisibly rebooted, there were changes in the backstories but with readership changing and continuity not meaning then what it does now, people were never really aware that the Superman or Batman they were reading was substantially different than before. The Blondie strip today just doesn't make mention of the fact that Dagwood was rich and disinherited and that Blondie herself was a flapper in those pre-WWII days. Invisible reboot as opposed to a story that tells us a whole new backstory, that they no longer have any kids and are now newlyweds, etc. Invisible reboots are generally concerned with what was the status quo last month, and continue on from there as opposed to just chucking everything and starting over. However, in the 80's, thanks to the fallout from Crisis on Infinite Earths, the latter style of reboots became the norm. For every one that worked, there were multiples that didn't. And, once you started that precedence, it became the norm to just do a reboot with little to no provocation. And, because you could just reset things, then it was ok to deviate from the median as much as you wanted, because the odds are that a writer or editor after you wasn't going to like what you did and reset it anyway. However, as I noted, this weakens the characters and concepts. It's difficult to impossible to hold to the semblance that these characters are in any way "real", that they exist outside of their reality (which is ironically the whole point of why you have continuity).

Buck Rogers already has this problem as he's a multi-media property and has been re-translated a couple of times. There was the original pulp story, the comic strip (which had some steady evolution of styles ie invisible reboots over the years), the Gil Gerard series which completely recast the character, and then the selling of the character to TSR which resulted in a novel with a new origin by Martin Caidin alongside an updating of the character for paperbacks, comics and RPG's by TSR themselves. All I can say is that 1) I've been less than impressed with Dynamite overall as a publisher and their heavily decompressed storylines that seem to sap the sense of wonder and fun out of their characters for the sake of "realism" and 2) with all the changes of the character, it might be time to take the character a bit more back to his actual primal roots. Everybody knows the name, present the characters in a manner that befits that iconic nature. I'm not really clamoring for something nostalgic but classic, not something that looks merely like the flavor of the month. A big step, would be not re-inventing the wheel. Don't start from the very beginning; just give a brief synopsis of the character, the history and status quot and introduce the new/old threat (such as bringing back Killer Kane to bedevil him).

Some Comic Reviews

Comics

Been a busy couple of weeks including a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Been some interesting comics, gave a few new ones a try.

Avengers/Invaders #5: A step in the right direction for the art. The cover is gorgeous and dynamic. Finally, the coloring on the interiors has stepped up to the plate, full of subtlety. While there are panels where Bucky and Captain America's blues are still purplish, at least this time out it's clear that those instances are in low lighting. Ross & Krueger's story is a lot more tighter than over in Superpowers, some great moments while Bucky/Cap doesn't pause to muck around with the ramifications of changing time by advising his younger self to not play hero and listen to Captain America in 1945. We also see the missing soldier pulling a scene from Saving Private Ryan and visits the graves of his fallen comrades and wonders about his surviving. We also learn that Dr. Strange has been holding back the ramifications of the Invaders traveling out of the time stream.

Sadly, there's a lot of other problems with the story that don't track. One, if the two teams of the Avengers are after the same thing (getting the Invaders back to the past), why are they fighting? Sure, there's bad blood and all, but it doesn't make any sense. Why launch an attack instead of just calling Stark up, especially since Strange already has a way to send them back. Also, if Strange is holding back the changes of the time if the Invaders don't go back, then how was the soldier able to look his older self up? He didn't die with his comrades because he time travelled.

The story really started going south when it focused on the Human Torch. Read the recap, it says they left the past in 1943. Yet, the Human Torch has memories from 1945! Worse, these memories are to serve as the whole motivation for everything he does and what leads into the next chapter, his comparing how SHIELD uses the LMD's and the Hitlers and the Jews.

Which of course makes no sense. Their very name implies that LMD's are nothing more than fancy CPR dummies crossed with Disney animatronics. AI is not the same as self-awareness. Indeed, if SHIELD could and did create androids with original thought and will, would they be using them as "Decoys" ie targets to fake deaths more often than not? And, the Human Torch of all beings would recognize this difference, that because it appears human does not mean that it is. What Krueger and Ross see and play up that his nature would cause him to see kinship in the LMD's is also what would cause him to see a big difference between himself and what amounts to automated puppets. Of course they confuse the issue further when the LMD's seem to come to life and see him as a leader or sign of the start of their liberation at the end. I don't read a lot of Marvel comics and I maybe missed a bunch over the years that suggested the LMD's had this kind of range of independent thought. Even so, it doesn't track. Until his most recent "death", the Human Torch had been in the present day for quite some time. So, why now for this trigger?

I also don't buy that the LMD's don't have a "specific scent" per Wolverine. Everything has a scent and each would develop its own scent depending on where it has been, who it has had contact with. Just as your car starts off with that general "new car" smell that it eventually loses and is replaced with other smells depending on the individuals that use it, the upkeep and environments it resides in.

B.P.R.D.: The Warning #4: A gorgeous looking book from the moody Mignola cover (isn't that the symbol of Lobster Johnson by the title, what does that signify I wonder) and the Guy Davis art inside. A feeling of the FF's Mole Man crossed with War of the Worlds, I've generally given up on being able to follow the storyline, the logic or reasoning with any of it. As it has tried to go epic in the storyline, it has lost the really creepy and more horrific feel this line used to have.

span style="font-weight: bold;">Flash Gordon #1: I broke down and bought this comic. 'Course I broke down and watched the sci-fi series as well. Sigh. Both fall down in so many ways. Chief among them is this wretched need to re-invent the wheel. The trick is to do the same thing that people writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches have long done, keep what Doyle has written as Canon. Everything else doesn't really matter. You're not going to top what Raymond did. Heck, most cannot even top what the movie serials or even the 80's movie with Queen soundtrack. DC did a mini that managed a decent updating, but it still lacked any kind of staying power because at the end of the day, it's a new character calling himself Flash Gordon, it's not really about the character as invented.

They compound their problems with just bad writing. It starts off well-enough, by cleverly starting with a literal cliff-hanger. But, in addition to being a bit of a dare-devil rock climber we find out he's a carefree history professor at Yale!? Oh, get this, he was also a reckless agent/trainee with the CIA that Dale Arden used to works for. The writer is trying too hard to make Flash a compelling character by turning him into basically 3 different characters! Instead of humanizing him, it just serves to make him unbelievable. It also fails in that since they ARE reinventing the wheel, telling us a story we already basically know, we KNOW that Ming the Merciless is supposed to show up yet the comic never gets that far into the storyline. It's like the rage these days to spend 4 issues to tell an origin story and not have the character appear in costume anywhere in the first issue. Reassess the type of story you're telling here and what you are trying to achieve.

The artwork at first isn't as big a turnoff as you'd expect. It's heavily stylized but it could work to make the characters seem fresh and exciting. However, it sacrifices any kind of honesty in storytelling for all that glitz. Starting off with that cliffhanger scene, the splash page is done well, ably backed up by the colorist. However, on page 3, we discover Flash has somewhere hidden on his skin-tight t-shirt a parachute? Man, even the old movie serials didn't cheat at their cliffhangers that badly. Again, it just gets worse from there. Most artists excel at action or splash pages and suck at quiet moments. Here, we have an artist that is all about character posing and design, thus he fails when he's required to actually illustrate a story, the action scenes are often silhouettes or close ups on the leering faces. Maybe if he had a better story.

Green Arrow and Black Canary #13: As a new writer comes on board with #15, I guess I cannot really blame Winick for spending at least one issue trying to set up the two pet characters, the charming thief Dodger and Mia as Speedy, with a status quo as a happy dating young couple, thus letting the new writer the way he sees the characters. However, it just continues to show just how much Winick has really missed the boat in the last year with this title as the lead characters are barely guest stars in their own title. And, of course, the next issue is about Connor. One gets the feel that Winick wasn't really on board for the marriage of Ollie and Dinah considering how much he has gone out of his way to NOT show them together. Here's hoping that the next writer sends Connor off to a monastery and DC lets Chuck Dixon write a series of minis with his character and Mia and Dodger retire and run off to get married (because a HIV positive superhero is the height of irresponsibility).

Hellboy: The Crooked Man #3: This small mini is what B.P.R.D. has not been, a wonderfully creepy little tale, an old school horror story when horror meant more than strange and graphic ways of dying. I'm not normally a fan of Richard Corben's artwork, but with Hellboy, it works with great effect. While he's the hero of the story, the story is really about the other characters and their plight that brings them to his attention. I love how it touches on the battle over one man's soul who repents from selling it vs those whose sins and crimes were well enough hidden or glossed over to deserve burial in the church graveyard. This is a perfect story to read again over Halloween night.

Justice League of America #25: McDuffie continues to work hard at wrapping up the plotlines left over from his predecessor. He ties up the various threads of the Red Tornado's story and sends him off stage in a way that promises future stories while at the same time absolving McDuffie from having to address the character again. I am tired of Professor Ivo though. Other than his androids killing Vibe and Steel II, he just isn't that definitive of a character, he's a cardboard villain that seems to get more screen time than he ever deserved. Even then, he was played as being somewhat pathetic. Either do a story that really concentrates on his character or kill him off. When it comes to mad scientists, there are so many that are far more interesting, than this one trick pony (and maybe permanently disable Amazo while we're at it).

The Vixen segment is more interesting as her and Animal Man's origins are being re-written and examined. This seems to be a two-fer, both characters have had some strange turns with their powers and this storyline serves to return them both to a more serviceable and logical status quos. We also get some interesting alternate JLA's, which we'll see more of in the next issue.

If anything marred this issue, it's that somehow this comic took a team of artists to finish with changes every so many pages. And this is after Benes makes a conversation between Black Lightning and Hawkgirl take 4 pages with extreme closeups on characters mouths and body parts.


Secret Six #2: Catman and Batman have a heart-to-heart talk while duking it out on the roof-tops of Gotham. Isn't it funny how characters who would normally hardly be in a hero's league seem to get very better at the hand-to-hand stuff when they become a more central character (normal cops and mercs becoming heroes and going after super-villains, villains turning "good" etc)? Then again, Batman was probably hardly really trying to take Catman down this time out, and Catman is only trying to delay Batman while the rest of his team complete their mission at springing the Tarantula from prison. A little more of the mystery of Junior is revealed, the set-up seems to suggest he's an alien and he drafts an army of villains. This seems to be a recurring theme of the Secret Six as well, to find themselves at odds with the whole supervillain community. Yet with all these psychopaths and Deadshot on the Six team, there are always a surprising lack of deaths that you would expect. Wonder how Catman is going to fare against the Cheetah? Like last time, the art is completely perfect and no too darkly colored pages this time out even though certain pages take place under the cover of darkness. The only discordant note this time out is that special effect plaid pattern still evident on the clothes of Junior's henchmen.

Solomon Kane #1: As in the previews, the coloring really falls down on the job on the characters in this, painting everyone in shades of gray and brown, making the characters seem to have skin tones and warmth of dead fish. Otherwise, it's a great start to a story, setting the character and his ability up as well as laying a groundwork of feeling of impending dread and menace. This is no doubt because while the credits list Scott Allie as the writer and Robert E. Howard as the creator of Solomon Kane, this story is actually by Howard and Allie is adapting it. Don't want to dismiss Allie's talent, he may be a fine writer. I've not read anything by him nor the original Howard story for comparison, but fair and accurate credits would be a plus. And what a cool name is "John Silent" though he looks a bit ordinary here.

Superpowers #6: We find out why Bruce Carter's ancestor is a "cursed" ghost. Sort of. Like everything else by Krueger, it's so underwhelming to be pointless and feels forced. If anything it makes Carter seem petty. He was given powers at a time when the country needed them with nary a cost beyond his own choices. Yet somehow, for all the ghost has done, he's resented and painted blackly. We've yet to actually see anything that the ghost did was for malicious or self-serving reasons, that at worst, he's been as much a dupe of whatever the urn was as the Fighting Yank. And, he keeps trying to do the right thing while the American Spirit seems to be the true manipulator, knowing many of the answers but keeps everyone in the dark. I'd say it was a sign of Krueger's great writing skill, but instead it all just seems inconsistant as if each character is in a different story and refusing to adapt to the one they are in.

This colorist seems to have found the purples and magentas that had been switched for blues and reds that were being used for Avengers/Invaders.

We find out that Miss Masque/Masquerade has disguise powers and that they were somehow supposed to be evident earlier.

Think Kruger knows that F-Troop is liable to make people chuckle because of associations to a slapstick comedy series? Kinda takes away any sense of threat and power from the army of Frankenstein monsters.

The plot at least seems to finally being moved forward. We get an origin of the Scarab and plays it off the origins of many superheroes only taking a page from JMS and turns it around to give one that is far more mundane. Dynamic Man reports to a council, possibly the one that was responsible for training Amazing Man and that the Great Question was part of. One of the hooded men may be A-Man himself.

The character sketches in the back, pretty much all characters that have not been in this story at all. Most telling is probably Doc Strange considering the prominence of the other Nedor characters in the story: Fighting Yank, Black Terror, and Pyroman.

Top Ten: Season Two #1: A gorgeous book. Gene Ha has changed art-styles, this one being a more full-colored painted look (for awhile, he was doing some realistic washed out painted work in addition to his more standard comic book work). However, don't know if it takes much longer or if Alan Moore was the one suggesting all of the various easter egg jokes because the suddenly their world looks a whole lot less populated. Even without Moore at the helm of this one though, we still get a book that's a quality piece of work that keeps much of the sensibilities of the what he had set forth. Zander Cannon seems to be able to get at the meat of what makes Moore's stories interesting and why they work and not just the superficialities and excesses that bog so many of the wannabes.

The Twelve #8: As I remarked last time, we get a gorgeous painted cover that is very pulpish or at least evokes 1950's lurid paperback covers. Poor JMS just cannot restrain himself from changing the backstories of the characters, we get a different look at the Black Widow though the most important details are kept. Meanwhile, the Fiery Mask's origin seems to be cast in doubt as well. Whereas he had a pretty interesting origin story and a great unexplored master villain, it looks as if he too is going to have the wonder stripped from his story and we get one more geared to make him tragic and pathetic. The Fiery Mask also gets a power change. While he on occassion exhibited the ability to radiate heat, he had the superstrength and invulnerability needed to commit these crimes which is ignored here. Meanwhile, the Blue Blade does something that isn't geared to make him look merely pathetic though maybe overly enthusiastic, Mastermind Excello posts bail for the Laughing Mask and there seems to be ominous foreboding on the ultimate fate of Rockman. The story finally seems to be progressing towards something. What we don't get to see is how Captain Wonder reacts to the suicide of his sidekick in the last issue or anything with Mr. E. The final page suggests there may even be a turn in the events as to who the suspect behind everything really is as the Blue Blade knows some secrets and takes them to Dynamic Man, something he'd hardly do if what he found out was that Electro was being controlled by him. But, if he found out that Electro was used to set Dynamic Man up for the murders...

Vixen #1: A new mini-series focusing on JLA member and longtime background character of the DCU despite some rather formidible abilities. The cover is gorgeous, full of color and warmth and. And, the interior artwork is lush as well, the coloring carrying a bulk of the weight of providing details and atmosphere while the linework provides mostly just the bare minimum of outlines. Often this doesn't work, but it does here, a perfect blending of talent and skill. The only places it really doesn't work is with Superman. His body and face lack definition as if he's more of an inflated balloon than a person. He doesn't look as if his clothes were painted on as is the case with most superhero art nobut neither does the costume have any realistic touches, wrinkles around the joints and belt and such. There's no substance to him at all. DC's sense of timing strikes again, as this is a Vixen in full control of her powers, kinda robbing the JLA storyline of its power as it broadcasts what happens at least in regards to her and her standing with the League.

Thoughts on Movies and Comic News

Been spending time working on the Heroes side of my Golden-age Encyclopedia pages. Finally finished the M's which took quite a bit longer than anticipated. Between that and last week being a very small comic week, I delayed posting a bit. So a bunch of stuff just sorta creeped up on me.

On the days I've not been working on my sites, I've been actually taking a couple of online courses. One is intermediate web design. I'm self-taught on Dreamweaver and picked up a bit of HTML along the way there and here, fine-tuning the layouts and editing. Decided I needed a bit more formal training to take it to the next level. It means I have to unlearn a few bad habits as well as learning to do things manually with HTML. I'm also taking a class on starting a small business and am hoping to put my plans on opening a small bookstore into action. Even when I'm not doing coursework on the latter, I'm making calls and meeting with people to get a handle on all that I'll need to know and do to make this a reality. It's been fascinating work.

In between all of that, I also have been trying to drum up some freelance imaging work so that I don't burn through my severance pay quite so fast. That looks like it may finally start paying off with some jobs. Even though I am not going to work every day, I at least feel like I'm making progress each day, that I'm not standing still.

MOVIES

I thought the ads for the movie WANTED looked interesting. I leafed through the trade paperback, but was turned off by the character pages in the back as it seemed that all of the character quotes had them use the F*** word. Though I hardly ever cuss, I wouldn't consider myself a prude. Some of my favorite movies were brutal in their language. What struck me was how all the same it made the characters sound in these pages that were supposed to be highlighting them. The repetitiveness of it made it seem even more uncreative, as if the writer really doesn't know how to give characters their own voice and that he's swearing because he can and he thinks it makes the book sound more adult, much like teen-age boys are apt to do when talking with each other.

Went and saw the movie anyways, because from the previews and all, I was expecting it to be considerably different from the comic. Different doesn't mean better though. The storyline and basic premise is interesting, though we saw a bit of it in THE MATRIX: A nobody unhappy with his life learns that there's more to the world than he's aware, and he's unhappy because he is far more than those around him. In this case, he learns that there are people out there that are stronger, faster, and more agile than most, that they can mentally direct a bullet around objects. They work for a brotherhood of assassins. Only one has gone rogue and is killing them off, killing the nobody's absentee father who was one of the best. So, they need to train him in his abilities to go after the rogue, that his abilities will be to a degree that he can match the rogue.

The movie has a good cast who all turn in good performances. There are interesting side characters, some fun shoot-outs and fight scenes. The middle act of the lead undergoing his training is the highlight of the whole movie, as the end is fairly obvious early on.

Where it flounders is in the beginning. The movie goes through great lengths to paint the nobody as a complete loser and whiner. There are some reasons for that, later payoffs, yet it does the job too well. He's not a loser because the world makes him so, it's because of his own doing or lack of doing. Within 10 minutes, I really don't care if someone shoots him or not because I have zero sympathy for the character. His swearing even makes him seem more pathetic and a petulant child in an adult's body. Even when he does show backbone it's because he has these superior abilities, he's basically a bully unable to compete or deal with the real world on even footing. We are supposed to think he had some great character growth at the end, but that growth really isn't there, he's still acting as the person he's created as being and not his own man, the complete opposite of Malcolm Bourne of the BOURNE movies.

THE DARK KNIGHT really took me by surprise. I expected to enjoy it. However, there was far more meat and substance to the movie than I anticipated. Heath Ledger manages to take the role of the Joker and make the character his own.

The movie is dark and intense. In that, I think it's actually keeping in spirit with how Batman and the Joker were originally presented and intended. There is context as well to it as well. Batman struggles with the kind of hero he is, there's a lot of talk about heroism, serving as inspirations to others. This is a character that is aware of the line he's walking and trying to be a good man. It serves as a great counterpoint to the casual and mindless brutality all done in slick stylings of Tim Burton's movie where Batman blows up a factory full of crooks and where he's directly responsible for the Joker falling to his death. Burton's Batman was pop art and shallow, taking a backseat to the outlandish villains that were all painted with one cloth. Here, there's more noir to the story, yet remaining true to the hero of the character.

This movie has an advantage that Burton's does not. When Burton did his movie, the last time Batman was on the screen was the Adam West tv series and crude Filmation cartoons. Batman in the comics was still mainstream, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS nonwithstanding. However, with the current movie, there have been a host of live-action comicbook movies and superhero movies. The comics themselves have been dark for years to boot. The movie's presentation is actually lighter, truer to the basic superhero spirit, and more intelligent than the comics.

There was a lot in the movie that reminded me of how the pulp hero the Spider should be presented. A man passionate about justice, protecting the innocent, and passionate for his friends and the woman he loves. While the Spider is admittedly more violent, a lot of the motivating psychology that supports that character is in this movie as well. Great stuff.

Some of my video picks the last couple of weeks:
Taking a cast consisting of Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta, Claire Forlani, Matthew Lillard and Burt Reynolds, and one should almost by default have an interesting movie. However, IN THE NAME OF THE KING must be one of the biggest wastes of talent to ever stand in front of a camera. Admittedly, these aren't all great actors, but they are all good and should actually excel in the roles they are playing here. Instead, they are saddled with a script that only gives enough to any scene to take the plot from point A to point B, and a director that doesn't seem to know how to set a scene, tell a story, nor how to get the most from his actors. At best, the editing and story progression is disjointed. Expecting something to be kind of dumb fun, and instead, just got dumb.

Then take THE CONDEMNED a movie where the only name actor is a wrestler and end up with something that's actually an enjoyable escapist action movie. Even though there are some scenes and questionable logic extrapolation, the movie knows how to at least tell a story. It even has a little bit of subtext of the un-reality nature of reality television and what it says about humanity that we still are suckers for our bread and circuses as long as it's not us in the arena doing the fighting and the dying.

IN BRUGES sounded interesting on the box, talking about two hit-men hiding out in Bruges after a job, just laying low. But, laying low isn't something that really suits their style and they have problems with a crime boss, leading to a funny and action filled movie. Least that's more or less how the DVD box described it. And with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes in the three principal roles, can't possibly go wrong...

Can't go wrong, but it's not the movie the box would lead you to believe. Farrell and Gleeson play hitmen cooling it in Bruges after a hit, that much is true. Farrell chafes at the slower pace and could care less about the culture while Gleeson takes it all in and enjoys it. Farrell is struggling with the fact he killed a kid and has suicidal thoughts while their boss, played by Fiennes, has ordered Gleeson to kill Farrell. The movie has that whole surreal and bizarre feel that BEING JOHN MALKOVICH aimed for and almost achieved as odd-ball characters and the works of Hieronymous Bosch weave through it. The language is harsh, but it fits in with the brutality of the lives these characters lead and allows the actual depth of the characters take you by surprise. It makes Gleeson's character all the more intriguing as he's full of contrasts and contradictions. A hardened hitman that is moved by culture and history and refinement. Can he kill his friend? Is he a realist or an idealist?

UPCOMING COMICS

The Blue Marvel: Kevin Grevioux talked with CBR News about his upcoming book

It's the story of Marvel's first black superhero. He was the most powerful and the most popular superhero around for a period of three or four years back in the late 1950s early 1960s. Think of how pre-'Civil War' Captain America was lauded in the Marvel Universe or how Superman is hailed in Metropolis or throughout the DC Universe and that was the popular status that the Blue Marvel enjoyed during this time period.
(SNIP)
When a mysterious super-powerful villain comes back from the Blue Marvel's past, one not even the Avengers can stop, there is a quest to find the Blue Marvel as he is the only one who has ever defeated him.

The art looks good and it sounds like an interesting idea for a character. My misgiving is inserting a Superman level character into the history of the Marvel U., especially after we already have the Sentry (and now Dynamic Man, Rockman and Fiery Mask of The Twelve and Namora of Agents of Atlas who at least were already part of the Universe anyway). It does not really make the character sound interesting, but more of like "he's my character and so he's going to be better than the Avengers and all other heroes around." Sounds a lot like the Sentry in fact.

And, the bit of him being secretly an African American, it makes sense as long as you're dealing with history, but it wouldn't make much sense for him to keep his race secret nowadays, at least not in the context of the Marvel Universe where there are already powerful African American superheroes and villains.

Meanwhile DC announces that both the Milestone characters and the MLJ/Archie heroes will be brought into their universe continuity. Similar announcements but I have different thoughts about it.

With Milestone, I had gotten a few of the comics when they had originally come out. I thought there were some good ideas, good coloring and a different feel than the other books. I think bringing them into the DCU would strengthen the DCU overall. It provides them with real minority characters instead of ones taking over the identities and M.O of non-minority ones.

However, with Dwayne McDuffie spearheading it early on in JLA, one has to wonder what this might mean for characters like Black Lightning and Steel when Milestone has conceptually similar characters. There is already a preview to an upcoming issue that suggests a dire fate for Black Lightning. Is Steel to join Technocrat in obscurity?

As far as the MLJ/Archie heroes, J. Michael Straczynski told Newsarama:

I enjoyed the characters a lot as a kid, and had a real fondness for them born of nostalgia and the sense that they were just really off-beat and interesting characters. I wasn't as keen on the later incarnations or reinterpretations of them, because I thought they went a bit afield of what made them compelling, but never lost my fondness for the originals. When it was decided I'd start with B&B at DC, Dan mentioned that they were working on getting some of these characters and that I could, if I wanted, fold them into the DC universe by way of this book...not as later incarnations, or revisions, but as themselves, rebooting their origins from the start. I thought it was a terrific and exciting idea, as I love the idea of rediscovering or redefining heroes, as evinced in The Twelve. So for me, this is a seriously fun thing to do.

I'm glad they seem to be hewing to the classic look of them instead of a total revisioning. HOWEVER...


1) Reading The Twelve, I don't really have much faith in him as a writer or being all that faithful really to them as he felt the need to darken all of the Timely characters he's using in that mini and re-writing the backstories or just ignoring the material and potential already there. And his ego prevents him from seeing the injustice he does to the characters.

2) They aren't the real deal. They are revamps of the original characters. You dump the WWII histories of the characters and frankly you're losing a lot of the context that made them special. ESPECIALLY the Shield who was the first patriotic themed hero. With Captain America MIA, here's a chance to upstage Marvel. Get rid of that, and you make the Shield a copy, a second-rater.

3) Lastly, they AREN'T NEEDED AT DC! Let's face it. DC has crapped on so much history and characters they already own. Their slash and burn approach to characters and the rich tapestry of history that makes up their universe: Ted Kord, the Question, Captain Atom, Judomaster, Sue and Ralph Dibny, the Freedom Fighters, the New Gods, the Marvel Family. They've killed off pretty much all of their Charlton, Quality and Fawcett properties in favor of the new. It's hard to believe they will do any better with these characters. Instead of importing another company's characters, why not actually restore (NOT revamp, revision, retcon, and any other re-term that makes one want to regurgitate) characters they already have to glory: Mr. America instead of the Wizard. Minute Man instead of the Shield. Captain Marvel instead of Red Rube. Bulletman instead of Steel Sterling. Firebrand instead of Black Hood. Ibis instead of Zambini. Mr. Scarlet instead of the Hangman. It's not that I don't like the MLJ characters. I do and they were greats. But, I'd rather see them in their own universe where they'd be allowed to shine instead of being treated as second bananas to DC's "flagship" titles. They don't really give DC something DC doesn't already have and squandered.

As an aside, I also thought MLJ/Archie didn't own the Fly outright anymore, that he went back to his co-creator Joe Simon.

Never give a Dynamic Man an even break

Superpowers #1 (Dynamite): We’ll start with this little press release blurb from Dynamite: This powerful series is overseen by Alex Ross who has designed every hero within these pages; scripted by Jim Krueger with art by Carlos Paul, this is the most powerful comic book event of the year!

Excuse me? Tweaking the Black Terror's costume, does not constitute designing the hero. The basic original design is still there. And frankly, looking at the changes, I cannot say any of them are necessarily an improvement on the originals, they're just different. His Green Lama “design” is basically the Lama's original look on the pulp covers. The rest of the heroes that appear in costume, from the sketches in the back and the Flame and Dare-Devil on the back cover are all the original designs.

Just to work ourselves through the story, the art and coloring work better together this go around. Maybe part of that is that I’m not familiar with the original pencils so I’m not seeing everything that was lost.

Page 1: Dynamic Man and un-named woman. There’s a reason for Dynamic Man’s aloofness and comments here to be revealed later on. His referring to Dr. Moore, the doctor figured prominently in his origin. In the bottom panel among all the gray statues, we see a golden urn, Pandora’s Box.

Pages 2 & 3: Bruce Carter III (Fighting Yank) & the American Spirit. Carter is speaking figuratively in calling his ancestor Benedict Arnold and striking me as being a bit hard on him, the Spirit just a little less so. It seems to me that Carter the First was as mislead as Carter III was.

Page 4: Tsarong was Jethro Dumont’s manservant dating back to the pulp incarnation.

“Jet” Right away we get into the little things that bother me. This is not the character hating the name Jethro but the creators and imparting their will over the context. The very fact that he was introduced to us with the name of Jethro whether it be in the pulps or his various comic incarnations tells us he doesn’t dislike the name. The original writers introducing us to the character under the name is the same as the character telling us what they prefer to be called. It’s why the id’s of the Blue Beetles are DAN Garrett and TED Kord and not Danny or Daniel and Theodore or Teddy. If he preferred to be called Jet or by his middle name, then that’s what we would have been told his name was at that point in the original stories and not 60 years later.

Page 6: The Green Lama works great as a robed hero here, not an easy look for a comicbook artist to pull off really. We have another reference about him only recently being aware of the “Meta-Natural World” or in other words, the supernatural. This might have worked if the Green Lama we saw last issue was the pulp version who was philosophical and meditative but otherwise used science. However, we saw that the Green Lama was fully the Mac Raboy one who gained super-strength, flight, and invulnerability when chanting his Buddhist phrase. I really like how GL plays a major role and his characterization for the most part, but the execution with him is shoe-horning him into a role that he doesn’t fit.

Such as pages 7 & 8 where we see that he’s become a mystic able to travel through space via greenery. While this makes an interesting counterpoint to the Flame who picked up a similar trick studying in Tibet only with flame while Hydroman does it with water (only through science and not mystical abilities). But, this is pretty much changing the very nature of the Green Lama to fit the story instead of letting the story be directed by the characters involved. For a history of who and what the Green Lama is and has been in the past, I’ll direct you to an older post: The Mighty Return of the Green Lama.

Page 10: The Dynamic Family again. The mask that lets the Fighting Yank see evil, that was given to him last issue, not a power he had in the forties. However, if he always had this mask, wouldn’t he have realized that imprisoning the heroes in the urn didn’t work, that it didn’t make any difference in the supernatural realm in ridding the world of evil?

Pages 11 & 12: The Dynamic Family is beginning to show their true colors, but the motivations are unclear

Pages 14 & 15: The Green Lama shows that he still has some of the powers he had before. Dynamic Man is along the lines of the Golden-age Superman himself (Wayne Boring even worked on the character some).

Page 16 & 17 spread: I already talked about my feelings about the Black Terror re-design but here’s another inconsistency of the story. The Black Terror went into the urn in his original costume and been trapped there. Yet he emerges in his Ross-tweaked costume. I guess you could say the art in the last issue was “wrong” and he was in reality wearing this costume, but then the flourishes that Ross gave the gloves and mask would be anachronistic for the 1950’s.

Pages 18 &19: I always thought that the Yank’s cloak was magical because it was imbued with the ghost of his ancestor. No ghost would imply no powers. The Black Terror in the 40’s was one of Nedor/Standard/Better’s generic powered heroes aka super-strong and bulletproof. Except when done by Mort Meskin and Jerry Robinson where he didn’t exhibit any powers . He wasn’t really as bloodthirsty as portrayed here, assuming the time in the urn didn’t help any. But, every revival of the character has portrayed him as being a darker character than he was originally. Tim also known once as Kid Terror in his one solo outing wore an identical costume as the Black Terror and helped him fight crime.

Page 21: Dynamic Man is revealed as a robot. Android really. The Doctor Moore referred to on page one had built him. He and the Timely Dynamic Man appearing in THE TWELVE are basically the same character with just a few minor changes. However, the Chesler Dynamic Man eventually picked up a kid brother with identical costume and powers and no explanation that I know of was ever given. The implication here is that he built his “brother” like he built all of these Dynamic Family members. Now, whether JMS is likewise holding on to reveal THE TWELVE’s Dynamic Man as an android to explain his also odd behavior or will retcon out that origin we’ll have to wait and see. Personally, I’d have revealed that the Chesler Dynamic Man was alive all along only with amnesia induced by Moore’s experiments and only thought he was an android. And let Marvel keep the android origin.

War Journal pages
Dynamic Man and Family: Curt Cowan is Timely’s Dynamic Man. Don’t know if the Chesler version went by that name but by the time he gained a kid brother, he was going by the name Bert McQuade and he’s called Bert elsewhere in the story.


Sketches Pages:
Hydro (Hydroman): 1940, Re’glar Fellers Heroic Comics 1-29 (Eastern Color Printing). One of Bill Everett’s several water based heroes. A friend of Bob Blake’s develops a serum and antidote that allows one to dissolve into liquid, appear from various liquid sources (once materializing out of an ink pen). Bob allows himself to be injected with it, thinking it’d help him fight forces of evil. He must’ve decided he might need a little more of an edge and also made a bulletproof outfit.

Fighting Yank we know.

Silver Streak: 1940, Silver Streak Comics #3 (Lev Gleason). A racing enthusiast swami is suspicious of drivers’ deaths caused by giant insects. After a man he hypnotized to race for him is killed, the swami resurrects him and instructs him to track down the killer. The driver now has the power of super speed.

Captain Future (2): 1940, Startling Comics #1 (Better). Scientist Andrew Bryant experiments with gamma and infrared rays, discovering that "crossing" them gives him superpowers. He decides to fight crime. His girlfriend is Grace Adams, a detective of the Agatha Detective Agency. Future has superstrength and fires lightning-like bolts from his hands. NOTE: The first Captain Future is a pulp sci-fi space hero from the same publisher. That Captain Future made it into comics called Major Mars, while Bryant co-opted the name for his superhero id.

Woman In Red: 1940, Thrilling Comics 2-18, 20-22, 24-30, 34, 35, 38, 46 (Better). Police Detective Peggy Allen, aka the Woman in Red, helped the police solving tough crimes. The police commissioner was aware of her dual identity. As the Woman in Red, Peggy carried and used a gun. I’m guessing she was a fan of Wilkie Collins’ WOMAN IN WHITE. Woman in Red is one of the first of comics’ first female superheroes, depending on your criteria and whether you consider Fantomah a superheroine or require superpowers for the character to be considered such (which would then kick Batman out of the genre).

Target & the Targeteers: 1940-49, Target Comics vol 1 no 10. Niles Reed invents a bullet proof costume and recruits friends Dave Brown and Tom Foster to help clear his brother’s name and avenge his death. They wear identical costumes except where Niles’ I s yellow, theirs are red and blue. There was briefly early on a Female Targeteer. Of interesting note, some of the non-War years adventures were written by Mickey Spillane.

Cat-man: 1940, Crash Comics 4 & 5, Cat-Man Comics 1-32. 1940. David Merryweather was one of the many heroes who got his start when his parents were killed while in the jungle leaving the orphan to be raised by animals, but one of the few to actually adopt a costumed identity. Early in his career, he had all the attributes of the cat: agility, night vision and nine lives. Eventually, he joins the army and gains a ward, Katie Conn, who dresses in an identical outfit and calls herself Kitten (1941, Cat-Man Comics #5). Katie's parents were killed in a trainwreck and was already a trained acrobat. She also worked with other side-kicks as part of the group Little Leaders. By war's end, Kitten is depicted as pretty much a full-grown woman.

The Owl: 1940, Crackajack Funnies #25 (Dell). One of my favorite characters, I like the simplicity of his costume for one. He’s Nick Terry, a special investigator, who takes up the costumed identity when he feels the law is a bit too restricting in dispensing justice. He eventually confides his identity to his newspaper columnist girlfriend Belle Wayne who shortly takes up a similar costume to help him out as Owl Girl.

Strongman: 1940, Crash Comics #1 (Tem Publishing). Playboy Percy van Norton is given a book of “yogi” which he studies until it gives him a body and mind of a superman (putting him on par with Dynamic Man in the strength and stamina department though Strongman cannot fly). As Percy he pretends to be meek and unadventurous, a playboy Clark Kent to his Strongman Superman.

Major Victory: 1941, Dynamic Comics #1 (Harry “A” Chesler). A soldier is killed and is then brought back to life as the superpowered Major Victory by “Father Patriot”.

Dynamic Man and Dynamic Boy: already went into the history some of Dynamic Man. HOWEVER, this is the wrong Dynamic Boy. See, Chesler also recycled that name and in addition to Dynamic Man’s brother and sidekick, they had two Dynamic Boys that were solo acts, Kent Banning is Dynamic Boy in Dynamic Comics 2 & 3, pre-dating Dynamic Man’s partner and then another one in Dynamic Comics #13 (according to the GCD). I guess the argument could be made is they all are constructs by Dynamic Man, his earliest Dynamic Family. Unless the contradiction is addressed in-story though, it’s still an error.

One of the things missing so far is a sense of fun. It is falling into the same tropes that Alan Moore’s Terra Obscura issues of TOM STRONG and the following two mini’s did by Paul Hogan. The same thing doom that looms over THE TWELVE. And the same thing that helped drive me from the mega crossovers from the companies of late. It’s all about heroes vs. heroes. Heroes cannot be noble, there have to be darker sides to them. The villains are bad, but at least they aren’t hypocritical thus they gain a measure of nobility and respect. To their ownselves, they be true.

It’s especially frustrating when I maintain a site that shows just how many colorful and interesting golden-age villains existed. They weren’t all spies and gangsters. Even I was surprised by just how many I have discovered. In Fox Comics alone where we got the likes of the heroes Blue Beetle, Samson, and the Flame, we had villains with their own strips: the monster creating Dr. Mortal, the Gorilla (a gorilla whose brain was swapped out with that of a conniving scientist), the Sorceress of Zoom who ruled a whole magical city.

Instead, we are still getting watered down versions of Alan Moore Watchmen where superheroes aren’t to inspire us to be better but to warn us against becoming monsters ourselves.

Other books this week, real quick.
JLA: CLASSIFIED #53. The penultimate issue to Roger Stern and John Byrne’s arc and it has been a lot of fun, full of superhero action and a truly worthy villain. The comic has been plagued with coloring issues though. This time out, when the JLA get realized as the gods they could be, Black Canary is colored as if she’s Wonder Woman who’s not in this issue. It’s really confusing when on panel she’s called Black Canary and you see someone that looks like Wonder Woman attacking some perps along with some birds. My first thought was that Black Canary had been turned into some birds and then I realized that WW isn’t in the flashback scenes.

STAR TREK: ALIEN SPOTLIGHT: ROMULANS: Another John Byrne comic and a hoot at looking at the Romulan people in the days of the original tv show. There’s a few flaws in that while JB nails the costumes and designs when drawing from the show, but the designs of the buildings and other space vehicles are more his style which really sticks out. The lead character of the honorable Romulan chosen to captain the first Bird of Prey with the cloaking device and charged with starting a war sets up a nice conflict of personal honor vs duty to one’s government and family.

JSA: CLASSIFIED: Wildcat takes the ring in what looks to be an interesting story as he investigates some suspicious goings ons at one of his old gyms. I could do without the guest-star at the end, but it looks to be a great tale. Based on this one issue so far, I’d love to see them handle a Wildcat ongoing.

JSA: Interesting to note that both JLA:Classified and JSA feature powerful supervillains that see themselves as god-killers. Yet, Stern and Byrne’s been good old-fashioned superhero storytelling and non-stop action and will be complete in 5 issues and Geoff Johns’ story has been building for 13 issues and will continue for a few more. This issue does manage to do what Johns does best which is character moments. As much as I loathe Jakeem Thunder, Johns does a good job with him here and the Kingdom Come Superman paying a visit to the Daily Planet is almost as powerful as JMS’ handling of Captain Wonder in THE TWELVE. Makes me wish Johns was on something like the original Secret Six or Challengers of the Unknown.

Some Comic Book Reviews

There are times when I think I focus too much on the negative, what about stuff that I like? Stuff that I think works?

Like many comic fans, I went to the store to pick up the shipment for this week. There are times now when I don’t go every week much less on the Wednesday of the shipment. The excitement isn’t quite at the level it used to be.

It was a light week, comics wise. Luckily for my comic shop, my interest in pulps and the pulp reprints make up for the dramatic drop in the comics I get. I’m spending about the same each month, maybe more on some, but the money doesn’t go to DC or Marvel or even the independent comics. It’s a great time to be a fan of pulp heroes. For the first time in decades, there’s more pulp stuff out each month than one can reasonably read, especially with the Spider, Shadow, and Doc Savage doing two novels per book. Unfortunately, since these come from small independent publishers, they aren’t exactly cheap. So, it pays to be discerning. More discerning than I was as I looked at the Operator 5 novel in my bag and was thinking “Secret Agent ‘X’”. I’ve developed a liking for the “X” novels, but I’ve yet been able to finish and Operator 5 one and would have preferred to save money. Especially as there was the attractive TALES OF MAGIC AND MYSTERY with it’s stark and powerfully minimally rendered and colored cover. I almost passed it up, but the short stories intrigued me as did some of the artwork. I justified it by the fact that I was only getting 3 comics: THE AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL, SHADOWPACT, and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA.

What’s great about the three comics, at least for reviewing and comparing and contrasting purposes is that they all fall well into Good, Mediocre, and Bad.

THE GOOD

AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #16. I should point out, that this is the only book from Marvel that I trust enough to have in my pull list and not pick up off the shelves. Of course, other than THE TWELVE, I hadn’t even seen anything even tempting to pick up apart from the odd reprints. Starting with the cover: As a general rule, I don’t like computerized effects with comic art. It might be because I use Adobe Photoshop in my work, but when I see a blur special effect or lens flare it throws me out of the illusion of the art because the first thing I notice about it is process of the artist and not the art itself. For some reason though, it works for me here to give the illusion of an invisible hand reaching out to Spider-girl’s back. The sense of impending menace comes across well.

Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz deliver as well on the story, juggling various sub-plots and soap opera moments while also delivering a solid main story with a beginning, middle, and end. DeFalco is not the best writer of dialogue or wordsmith, but he knows the craft and his genre. You never feel cheated when reading his books, they don’t feel padded, scenes don’t feel useless. And even though this issue doesn’t actually resolve much other than some tension between May and her parents, you still feel like you got a complete story, as May manages to at least fight off the villain of the month if not outright defeat it.

Frenz is up to the task of illustrating the scenes, even quiet moments. Here you have a discussion between Peter and his daughter, communicated through the art and not dialogue balloons (I do think his style has gotten a bit more of caricature and angular of late). The action scenes are clear and dynamic. He knows how to tell the story through his artwork while paying attention to detail and setting the scenes.

THE MEDIOCRE

SHADOWPACT is an anomaly of a DCU title in that the powers that be seem content to let it reside in its own corner of continuity, free of the vast stuff going on elsewhere. Which is strange in that it actually spun out of crossover madness from two years back. Somewhere along the way Willingham left the book and another writer came on board, seamless enough that I really didn’t notice. Issue 21 is in the middle of a longer story arc that you either find interesting or not.

Tom Derenick lacks some of Frenz’ storytelling/layout skill, but makes up for it with style. His heroes look heroic and dynamic, his women lithe and sexy. And he rarely mis-steps in telling the story in each panel. In a fantasy setting as this one, it’s important to have an artist that can deliver the appropriate level of detail of backgrounds and such when called for, but to also know when it’s the figure work that is to take the center stage.

It’s Matthew Sturges’ writing that really drops the ball. There are just times that you just make you go “huh?” Such as when they mention that the Enchantress cannot figure out which dimension Nightshade, Nightmaster, and Ragman are lost in and then make this big announcement after two days of searching it’s the Nightshade dimension! Ok, they know that the two left with Nightshade who “teleports” via traveling through the Nightshade dimension, and it took two days of peering through a bunch of dimensions to find them in what should be the first place thoroughly checked? You know, I need to go to the store to get some cat litter. I think I’ll first look in the produce section, then the chips and crackers aisle, then the dairy aisle… you get the idea.

And then there’s the whole thing that the story has just revealed that Nightshade’s dimension is the same world that is Nightmaster’s background and not a single character seems really surprised or reacts to that knowledge. It’s like heading for New York, finding London and your reaction is “hey let’s go visit the Queen.”

Then there’s this great scene, where Nightmaster asks the Old man there for exposition purposes what happened. Nice big panel of the old guy who replies, “I will tell you, since you were not here to see for yourself.” Huh? It’s obvious that Sturges had no clue what to have the guy say as the flashback exposition begins on the next page but had to have the guy say something, so he has him re-state the obvious.

And, then there’s Sturges’ preoccupation with sex. Last issue and this we get nice visual innuendos that Nightshade is probably going commando under her mini-skirt and Ragman’s discomfort of constantly finding himself in positions of noticing this. And Detective Chimp’s using the internet to surf for girlfriends. It’s not needed for the story at hand and, frankly, comes off as frat boy level humor and writing. It falls flat and mars what is otherwise a good adventure story, especially through the repetitive nature of the scenes. It places Sturges as being somewhere between Judd Winnick and Chuck Austen as far as writers go without the flashes of above average capability from the former or the excesses of the latter.

And next issue implies the death of a character! Joy.

THE BAD

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #17 is ugly from the get go. Like the monochromatic dark color cover featuring Black Lightning that is all about the special effect of his hand looking like it’s glass filled with lightning? Hope so, because the inside art is very similar in that it’s so dark it’s a chore to read even the action oriented pages. Benes was a decent if somewhat cheese-cake focused artist on Birds of Prey, but here he’s just a mess. It took three inkers to actually ink this, I guess it takes time putting that much black on the pages. Truthfully, it might not be the inkers, it could be the colorist, but whoever’s at fault should not put this book on the resume. It’s not helped that Benes work on the JLA has been one of filling characters up with scratch lines to give the impression of detail so the end result is just a muddied mess. It’s at the point that the when you get to the second non-story of Vixen, the manga-esque artwork by Jon Boy Meyers is a relief. It’s still too dark. She’s supposed to be shooting an arrow at two football fields away and if the coloring would imply that she forgot to turn out the lights. And thankfully the text tells us about the distance because the art at no point sets the stage to let us know that. But other than that, I like Jon Boy Meyers artwork here. It’d be better served to have a decent coloring job and a little more of a plot than just moving a subplot along.

The writing by veteran Dwayne McDuffie isn’t any better. I had high hopes with him taking over the writing chores from Brad Meltzer. But, his writing has been almost just as much a mess. Starting with the Red Tornado. Meltzer started off by writing the Tornado in a way that seemed to contradict 20+ years of continuity without actually explaining anything about the new status quo or nature of what the Red Tornado is (mainly because his whole overlong opening story arc was dependent on the Red Tornado being a substantially different character and instead of making his story fit the characters, he chose to make the characters fit the story). McDuffie’s handling of the Red Tornado is incompatible with both Meltzer’s and previous history as well and still doesn’t do anything to explain as to why this retcon exists (not asking for the “how” necessarily, but there should be a reason at least to why we’re changing history beyond just lazy writing)

Last issue was a crossover with the Tangent universe without actually explaining anything about the Tangent characters or why we should care who they are and the world they are from and then left on a cliffhanger of sorts as that universe’s Flash was in ours (although I had heard she was killed in COUNTDOWN: ARENA). But, then this issue has nothing to do with the main plot from that issue, if it was introducing a subplot, it should at least be touched on. Instead, last issue reads now as an anomaly. I understand that it might be a plot point picked up later on, but one should remember, even when writing for the Trade, you need to write for the month to month as well. Last month’s implied a follow-up and anyone following from issue to issue is going to expect some kind of reference. Otherwise we get what we have of McDuffie’s run so far, stories that just seem very disjointed. To further compound issues, to even remotely understand what’s going on in this book, you have to have knowledge of other DC books, especially SALVATION RUN. You have the Suicide Squad going after various villains but nothing really tells you anything about who the members of the Squad are and since they are mostly villains themselves, you really don’t know which group is which. Even if the motivations of the gang of villains headed by Dr. Polaris (didn’t he die too?) invading the Hall of Justice was a clever reveal on that story’s last page, it doesn’t undo the fact that instead of actually getting a Justice League story, we got what should be part of the plot of SALVATION RUN.

And, then there is the discussion of Roy’s daughter visiting her birth mom, the psychopathic murderess for hire Cheshire. Who in their right mind would actually allow such a thing? Do people not even think about what they are writing? Such a move is about as stupid and wrong headed as the idea of having someone with HIV actually be a superhero and shooting people with pointed objects. Seriously. I know it’s a fantasy setting, but there should still be some logical extrapolation of known facts and rules. The actions and decisions of the characters still have to make sense within the setting.