So once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a book called Green Lantern: Secret Origin, which retold Hal Jordan’s origin story.  Since Hal Jordan’s origin story is not long or complicated (test pilot.  got ring from alien.  might as well say ‘a wizard did it’.) and is probably the best known of any Green Lantern origin, it recounted this story for reasons known only to itself, but it was a pleasant enough book, with good art and clear story-telling.

Towards the end of the first issue, it threw in the following scene:

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I’m imprecise when it comes to my comics habit.  I’ve grown out of buying one series all the time to be completist.  At this point I have neither the money nor the patience to do that.  Because of the twists and turns of the comics world, deaths and crossovers, I might have to drop any issue at any time.

I’m also imprecise about keeping up with comics news.  Occasionally, when I’m low on material, bored, or hear about an awesome e-fight, I might stop looking at pictures of cute animals online (or videos – I swear, watching a baby sea otter get bottle fed, a fawn coming in through a cat door, or a boxer puppy getting fed medicine and coughing at the taste will never, ever get old) and sluggishly navigate over to see it.  So it’s usually not until David prompts me that I lumber over to the DC website and figure out what I’m reading for the week.  This week, though, I got bored early and checked out the page. 

For those of you who are dying to hear about the process, my way of picking things out is simple.  I scan down the week’s releases on the comics page, making a note of what I want to read immediately.  Then I re-scan the page, opening up new tabs for so I can read the blurbs for the comics that I’m on the fence about.

Most of the time there are only one or two that I know I’ll buy, and three or four that I might buy but probably won’t.  This week there’s nothing.  Supergirl has been so all over the place, especially with the exasperating New Krypton storyline, that I don’t buy it.  Powergirl has not been a draw for me since it turned to gloom and putting a dead woman’s body on the cover doesn’t increase my interest.  Wally’s my Flash.  Arsenal is usually a good character for me, but that’s because he was a good-natured happy guy who was also a father.  Now he’s none of those things, so he holds no interest for me.  The only thing I might get is Superman/Batman, and unfortunately it’s undergoing baffling timing.  It’s a story about Dick taking on the role of Batman and Superman possibly blocking his way – a year after it happened.  And I’m pretty sure they’ve already had a DickBatman, ClarkSuperman team up in that very book before.  Why would they have a conflict storyline now?  That’s just bizarre.

Maybe I’ll get a trade or something.

Guest article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Well looky here, already we’re having a change of plans. After reading Empowered vol. 6 this week the blurb at the end informed me Adam Warren had written an Elseworlds story. Given that I’d rank Empowered as my book of the week (if not for the solid month), pulling this out of the stack took precedence over the first of the Bland Bat-Batallion of stories.

Titans – Scissors, Paper, Stone
Written by: Adam Warren
Art by: Tom Simmons with Adam Warren
Focuses on: Teen Titans
Self-contained/Multiple books: Self-contained
Published in: 1997
Central premise: Far-future teens taking on the role of the Teen Titans to stop an immenent “gigaclysm”
Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere? No

I’m going to be entirely honest: I’m terrible with the Teen Titans. I don’t know a fucking thing about them, I’ve only read Terror Titans and a couple of issues of the latest series, and that was all for Static, baby. (Consequently, I’m not reading another issue of the damn thing, because two mistakes were enough, and I don’t like being the jilted lover. Fuck you, DC.) I picked up Tiny Titans for a bit but dropped it when my kid sister stopped reading it as well and I needed to slash the budget.

This is very much not the usual Titans story. (Or maybe it is? I’m willing to bet not though.) Rather than run through some massively-plotted concept and try and cram it into 50-60 pages, Warren just gets us into the thick of things pretty quickly and alternates explanation (mostly origins for our motley crew) and action, with small bursts of character building beyond the hero template each mimics.

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A year ago I talked to David Brothers about an idea I had for the site. I had tried writing reviews of weekly releases before, but I never got into it. There were a couple reasons and they’re both about redundancies. I can tell you about how great the latest issue of Captain America is, but so will every other site. There are so many other comic sites that will give better reviews of new stuff that I don’t know why anyone would give a damn what I have to say among all that. Then there’s the fact that comic quality doesn’t change so often within the series’ run. If I tell you that Captain America is great one month, chances are it’s going to be just as good the next. Why waste my breath? If I want to give you my opinions, I want it to at least be interesting and hopefully unique.

I thought back to the first issue of the Agents of Atlas miniseries from several years back. The general response of people who read it and tried to push it was to point out that there’s a scene where a 1950’s robot runs down a hallway while carrying a talking gorilla and that gorilla is firing four uzis with his hands and feet. I figured that maybe that could be the unique way to cover the comics of the week. I’d settle on one panel that really pushes what the comic is about, more than often more than the cover does. It’s no longer so much a review as it is giving you a gist on what we all read. At the same time, I would make sure not to have any major spoilers. If the comic has Wolverine beat up Daken in the climax, then I won’t show it. I will, on the other hand, show them about to fight it out.

If anything, it was also an excuse to keep me from straying from doing anything for the site too long at a time. I’d have a deadline of some point every Sunday and I’ve been pretty good on that. I’ve only delayed two weeks and those were because of a lengthy power outage and the loss of my computer.

I didn’t know if it would work, but David said to go for it. Now it’s been a year and I thought it would be fun to do an extra installment in a retrospective form. The idea was to pick one of my favorite panels from the previous 52 weeks, but with the challenge of not double-dipping from the same title at any point. Here we go!

Adventure Comics #4
Geoff Johns, Sterling Gates and Jerry Ordway

Amazing Spider-Man #617
Joe Kelly, Max Fiumara and Javier Pulido

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With a swift biweekly run, last week saw the ending of the miniseries Marvel Universe vs. the Punisher by writer Jonathan Maberry and veteran Punisher artist Goran Parlov. I was a bit wary on this mini when it came out, since Maberry’s Doomwar just wrapped up and I didn’t enjoy it like I hoped I would. I gave the first issue a try and it certainly paid off. I’ve seen multiple people agree with my sentiment: this comic is surprisingly pretty good!

The comic appears to be based on Mark Millar’s intentions for the original Marvel Zombies miniseries. The idea being that Frank Castle is the last man alive and plays the I Am Legend role by hunting down superhero zombies and trying to survive day-to-day. Robert Kirkman decided to go a similar route, only using Hawkeye, until he realized that it had already been established that Hawkeye was a zombie too. Then he went with the Black Panther/Silver Surfer plotline and the rest is history.

So what is it about this second attempt at this idea that makes it so enjoyable to me? Well, there are four elements. This is ignoring the obvious one of “a Mark Millar idea that isn’t actually written by Mark Millar.”

The series takes three existing Marvel stories with promising concepts, improves them separately and mixes them together. The first one is obvious in Marvel Zombies, where the infected Marvel superheroes and villains go tear apart and feed on the populace. The second is Punisher: The End, where Frank kills what’s left of the post-apocalypse. Then there’s Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe. I’ll get to the former two in the other elements.

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I don’t think that 4thletter is a unique site.  (Apologies to David.)  Sure, it has a bunch of writers who mix excellent taste with class and intelligence, but there are other sites which do that.  (Particularly the ones which hire me.)  At the same time, there are a lot of places more dedicated to comics news and comics commentary, than this site is.  Everyone who reads this post will be reading other sites, and will be commenting on message boards, and if they live in a big enough town, will have people they get together with to discuss comics.  What I’m saying is, add up everyone on this board and you cast a wide net, with a wide variety of tastes and preferences.

For all that comics tend to veer towards sex and violence these days, there is enough variety within them to cater to all these tastes and preferences.  Some comics are darker, some lighter, some for adults, some for kids, and so on.  What I’ve noticed, though, is that some comics will get an overwhelming bad reaction on every single site on which they’re mentioned.  Don’t get me wrong, there are individual defenders of the comics on each site.  But still, there are some which get a collective groan on every site and in every venue.  It’s almost common knowledge that these books suck.

And yet they’re still published.  More than that, they’re often so popular that they’re expanded on.  I don’t know how much of the comics community is represented online, but I can’t help but wonder, “Who buys this stuff?”  If every single forum I go to responds with contempt at the very mention of a certain character, book, or storyline, if the very idea of it is ridiculed in internet memes, if no one likes it; why is it so very, very popular?

Because often this stuff is flying off the shelves even as everyone on the internet denounces it.  I know it’s a cliche that the rage of net nerds is impotent and inflated.  I also know it’s a cliche that people often profess to hate something as soon as it has turned popular.  But I have to wonder how things get to be and continue to be so overwhelmingly popular even as everyone talks about how terrible they are. 

Have you noticed things that fly off the shelves even when those who are most passionate about comics hate them?

Have you seen who buys the stuff that most people don’t like?

Have you ever lied and said that you would never, ever buy that crap – and then gone somewhere incognito and bought that crap?

The solicit for this:

Comics superstar David Finch takes full creative control (both writing and illustrating!) on this brand-new Batman monthly series! Joined by the best of the best – Scott Williams – on inks, this new series is sure to be on everyone’s must-read pile! Delving into the more supernatural and esoteric areas of Gotham City, the 6-part storyline explores the horrific murder of one of Bruce Wayne’s childhood friends…and the terrible ramifications the brutal crime has on Batman’s life!

I have only three reactions to this.

1.  How do they keep finding new iterations of ‘Batman,’ ‘Dark,’ and ‘Knight,’ to use for comic book titles?

2.  PleasenoHush.  Please, oh please, no Hush.  Let this childhood friend stay dead.

3.  Great art, though.

(Gavok note: On the heels of Marvel announcing What If #200, it’s fitting to take on the topic of alternate reality stories. Truth be told, the idea of doing an Elseworlds list much like how I did one with What If has been a looming menace hanging over my head and for years I’ve been afraid of forcing the other shoe to drop. Thankfully, Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett was inspired enough to fight the dragon in my stead and has offered to do a series of guest articles on the subject. You might remember Syrg from his fantastic take on the comic disaster Marville last year. If you don’t, go read it anyway. He’s good people. I plan to throw my hat into his series here at least twice before he’s finished, since there are a couple Elseworlds that I feel the need to talk about. This includes one that I’ve considered to be the worst comic I’ve ever read that I’ve been putting off writing on for years. But enough about me. It’s Syrg’s show. Enjoy.)

Marvel has their What If…?s, and DC has their own brand of “But what happens if we take X and change Y?” tales, called, depending on when you ask, Elseworlds/”Tales of the Multiverse”. (Juuuuust kidding. I don’t think anyone aside from Dan DiDio has ever used that last one seriously.)

The thing is, though, Marvel’s usually (I added the qualifier for a reason, Gavok, I know about that Timequake crap) come from a formula of “take big event/origin of character, change outcome slightly, go from there”. DC runs a little looser with the format, like that one where Bruce Wayne is an amnesiac immortal and Alfred is actually Merlin. Or the time the Justice League had to mount an assault on the Planetary Organization to break their shadowy hold over the planet. Maybe you know the one where Lex Luthor, singer-turned-record executive, sold his media empire to Darkseid?

Elseworlds are almost always entertaining, intentionally or not, because before 2010 and a run of titles like Rise of Arsenal and that other trainwreck I forget the name of*, you never thought you’d be buying a DC book where Superman got turned into a gender-swapped nazi centaur. (We’ll get to that one. Later.) Point is, the fact that so many of these are out of print and forgotten is a damn shame, and so just like Gavok running through all the What If…?s in the world, I’ll hit every damn Elseworld I can get my hands on, and probably a few other eccentric DC projects that didn’t earn that banner, usually because they were written too early or too late.

There’s going to be a lot less order to this than Gavok’s project. For one thing, I don’t think there’s any way to come up with a coherent set of criteria/checklist to hit for all of these, and I’m unsure as to what the “Peter Parker Dies” of Elseworlds is. Probably “Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere”, that dude shows up a lot in the otherwise-grounded stories (and it’s usually to inspire Superman to go use his goddamn powers, that guy takes pacifism way too seriously in these).

Also: no order, no rankings. Some of these are books I haven’t even looked through since I picked them up, and this project is good motivation to finish looking at the beaten-down copies of a couple. There’s no way I’ll be able to come up with a full scale to judge them on and pick a favorite. (Even if I did, people would bitch at me forever because technically, Kingdom Come is an Elseworld, and lord knows the kvetching if I put that below something like Speeding Bullets.) In fact, let’s just say it: I’m skipping a lot of the big ones. Kingdom Come/The Kingdom, Red Son, Destiny (since Gavok covered it a while back), Dark Knight Returns/Strikes Back. (I want to skip True Brit because it’s rather awful, but I suppose I’ll play canary in the coalmine for people who might go “John Cleese? Sold!”) I leave myself wiggle room on this as I go, but rest assured I’ll give you more than those and then some in extras by the time we’re done.

This is getting to be a bit text heavy. Let’s dive into the first book, Elseworlds: Superman’s Metropolis.

Superman’s Metropolis is an interesting book for a variety of reasons. It’s why I started off with it. But first, let’s look at the stats:

Superman’s Metropolis
Focuses on: Superman (for now)
Self-contained/Multiple books: Multiple (trilogy)
Published in: 1996
Central premise: Superman and cast as placed into Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere? No

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Cut for spoilers.

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I won’t pretend that anyone on this blog hasn’t read David’s post on Darwyn Cooke’s remarks about what it would take for him to jump back into mainstream comics.  The first sentence out of his mouth is this:

“I want them to stop catering to the perverted needs of forty-five year old men.”

He elaborates, citing the sex, violence, and general unwholesome behavior seen in mainstream comics continuity.  There are ninety-seven comments on the post, each with their take on how Mister Cooke’s words can be taken.  I think he expressed himself clearly and concisely, but I’m still not sure if I agree with him.

I don’t think I have any problem with people catering to the needs, perverted or not, of forty-five year old men.  In fact, I think some of the problem with comics is the fact that the big companies still cling to the notion that they don’t sell sex.  Through the nineties and the early two thousands we saw Wonder Woman’s costume creep up her butt cheeks until they were hanging out like Christmas ornaments with a ribbon between them, and why?  Because there was mainstream respectability to be maintained.  Evil Mary Marvel was the Woman of a Thousand Strategic Shadows for while, because DC comics doesn’t do porn.  Meanwhile Shield agents at Marvel are wandering around nude and painted blue, because if you have Victoria Hand and Maria Hill and Steve Rogers, you’re not going to waste them, but Marvel characters also don’t appear in porn.

In many ways, this seems like the worst of two worlds.  Mainstream continuity and art are hijacked by the need to make things as violent, suggestive, and sexually explicit as possible.  Meanwhile, those sexually explicit stories are constrained due to a need for the One Established Character not to push certain boundaries.  The result is a comic that seems to be walking an unpleasant line.  They put in as much as they can to serve those with, ah, less than literary needs, without alienating other fans.  Meanwhile they scale down as much of the sex and violence as they can without alienating the loyal pervs who make Rule 34 so well represented in comics.  It’s a stripper with pasties, a nude scene with a bad body double – it seems to satisfy no one.

Sometimes I wish that comics would finally take the plunge that they hint at with so many hardcore alternate universe versions of characters.  If there’s so much money in satisfying the perverted needs of forty-five year old men (and for that matter, forty-five year old women, and eighteen year old boys and teenage girls who would undoubtedly read about a teenage Batman who sparkles) then maybe it’s time to do it.  There isn’t any doubt that it would be lucrative, and taking away the constraints of the continuity and the increasingly nebulous age ratings system might give those artists who want to pursue a more violent, sexual, or obscenity-laden direction the freedom to write really good stories.  Meanwhile regular continuity can stop trying to split the difference between hardcore and all-ages stories. 

I realize that this won’t happen.  Big companies, owned by bigger companies, have images of these icons to maintain, and pornography, extreme violence, and obscenity don’t fit those images.  It may even be wrong-headed.  Movies have ratings for extreme violence, but that doesn’t mean that the violence level that’s considered appropriate for younger kids isn’t being pushed.  And it’s not like the availability of porn has meant that movies and books are more likely to showcase serious artistic endeavors.  At the same time, this system seems to be satisfying nobody.  Maybe it’s time for a change.