Barry’s back, Bart’s back, Ice is back, and now, in the Legion of 3 WorldsConner Kent is back.  I am just waiting for Thomas and Martha Wayne to pop back to life.  (Ever notice there seems to be a theme to which of the Wayne’s appears?  Martha always seems to show up in fever dreams and near-death states, and Thomas always seems to appear in flashbacks doing things that influence the physical present.  He’s hung out with Jor-El, joined a Secret Society that, against his wishes, drugged the Gotham water supply, and healed the hell out of tons of mobsters.)  And we haven’t even gotten to Blackest Night with the Black Lanterns yet.

The reaction to all of these resurrections has been mixed, but I am all for it.  Bring them all back, I say.  Why?  Because I like characters to be alive, that’s why.  A dead character makes for some pretty angst from the survivors, and a few Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn!-type moments whenever the survivors meet up with the person who killed off their loved ones.  Other than that, they’ve been neutralized.  All the potential for more stories and unique character moments is lost for one big, dramatic moment, and a few echoes down the line. 

Some people say that bringing all these characters back to life lessens the impact of a character’s death.  Although I can see their point, I disagree.  I think death itself lessens the impact of death.  Recently, every big event had to come complete with a dead character.  Some one’s head was on the block, or it couldn’t really be called an event.  Something had to ‘change forever.’  Not only was death a guarantee in event books, more often than not it was announced.  It was hinted at half-a-year before the issue came out, solicits for the months after were littered with references to some big loss.  We all saw it coming.  Death stopped being a shock, and because one more required dramatic beat. 

Not that most resurrections aren’t hinted at as well.  Perhaps I just welcome these hints because they mean new potential and not grim inevitability.  I like them.  I look forward to them.  Why?  More characters, more stories.  Less deaths, more happy stories.  The combination: a big universe overfilled with happy stories.  That’s my kind of place.

For fun:  Which comic-book character’s death would you reverse?  (For me it has to be The Question.)

Is it me or is Jason Todd acting like the main killer/monster from scary movies? 

Let’s review the narrative of most of the Battle For The Cowl themed issues he’s appeared in.

A character is isolated from the main group.

The character feels fine, and is going through a routine activity when . . . they get tense.

Oh no!  Crisis!  What will happen to this character? 

Wait, wait, no.  We thought that was the main scare, but the crisis is quickly averted.  Things are okay again – until . . .

OMG!  LOOK BEHIND YOU, CHARACTER!

Jason Todd suddenly lurches out of the darkness and kills the hell out of the character!  The other characters obviously are troubled and scared by this, but that doesn’t stop them from breaking off from the main group in their turn.

I’m hoping they change Gotham’s name to Camp Crystal Lake.  Also, get Jason a hockey mask.

I’m looking forward to Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner’s Power Girl. I dig Graymiotti’s work when they get a chance to tear things up in their own corner of things without worrying about whatever greater status quo there is. Their Jonah Hex is one of my top three books coming out of DC/Vertigo, easy. Over at Marvel, they did the sublime Daughters Of The Dragon and the very enjoyable Wolverine/Black Cat: Claws a few years back.

The latter two books are pretty cheesecake, but fun. Gray and Palmiotti give their main characters (Colleen Wing and Misty Knight in one, Wolverine and Black Cat in another) a lot of personality and manage to come up with some pretty funny funnybooks, without veering into outright comedy quip-a-minute Deadpool antics. The art helps a lot, too. The pair have an eye for talent, nine times out of ten, and Khari Evans/Joseph Michael Linsner are pretty great collaborators.

I’m looking forward to Power Girl because adding Amanda Conner into the mix is just icing on the cake. Other than being Palmiotti’s wife, she’s also an amazingly good cartoonist. Her comics look like Janelle Monae’s music sounds— just full of fun and eagerness and personality. They’re like the bit at the end of ’80s teen movies where Ferris Bueller has won, the loser got the girl, and everyone is dancing. They’re happy. And yeah, they’re a little bit sexy, too. Conner draws cute people doing neat things. That’s probably why she’s on the book in the first place.

If you put out a book that’s just Amanda Conner, Philip Bond, and Cameron Stewart trading pages on art, well, you’d have a hit. Doesn’t even matter what it is, I don’t think. I’d read what they draw regardless. Not liking Amanda Conner is like not liking air, only worse.

DC’s blog “The Source” (no benzino) recently posted two new variant covers for Power Girl #3 and #4 by Guillem March, artist of the upcoming Gotham City Sirens. March is a pretty good artist, but not really my thing. These covers, though, are emblematic of my main problem with more than a few books in DC’s line right now.

Some people say that the comics industry runs on legacy characters.  Kyle replaced Hal as Green Lantern, and was re-replaced.  Connor Hawke had a long run as Green Arrow before DC resurrected his father and nudged him out of the title.  Now even Barry is back.

I’m wondering if there is much of a chance for new characters these days, especially new characters in old roles.  They already have to battle fan backlash.  The people most invested in any particular character are going to be the most critical of the guy who pushes their beloved hero aside.  There is also the difficulty of a shrinking industry.  How do we keep comics going at all, let alone make room for more characters?

Mostly, though, I think the structure of comics has changed.  Way back when, comics used to deliver tales that were somewhat predictable.  That’s not to say that the individual stories were lacking in imagination or ingenuity.  It just means that the characters operated in a stable universe.  They were always heroes, they always had a certain code of ethics, and their battles were episodic instead of part of ongoing revelatory stories.

Now thing have changed.  Event books are in.  Big dramatic upsets are what sell.  Whether you think this change is good or bad depends entirely on your tastes, but it means things are less predictable.

The big heroes, and to some extent their first sidekicks, built up a decades-long base of stability.  We had time to get used to them, and to get to know them.  They made their mark on the universe they lived in.  Amid the constant upheaval of the modern comics universe, it’s easy for new characters to get lost in the shuffle.

I was watching Scrubs today (don’t you judge me), and the two main male characters (Turk and JD) each decided to reaffirm their love (not like that) with their respective significant others (see?).  The plotline for the lovers was pretty standard; a mention of a certain hang-up, a big fight that had something to do with said hang-up, one person changes their mind, and bam, happy ending with renewed declarations of love.

The thing is, the two male friends weren’t fighting.  They were doing wacky things and having fun, and then the whole relationship plot kicked in for both of them and made them miserable.  Kind of like it did in the episode before.  And the episode before.  And the season before that.  And the one before that.

Just like it does in most romantic comedies, wherein the two leads start out by hating each other, snipe at each other all the way through, and then declare their love at the end.

Just like it does in comics.  Ollie and Dinah are fighting.  Bruce can’t keep a girl alive, in love with him, and non-evil to, heh, save his life.  I don’t even want to talk about Tim’s relationships.   Even Lois and Clark seem to be cranking the miserometer up these days.

 I realize that this happens in every genre, that story comes from conflict, and that it’s realistic to have couples fight now and again.  But if a couple actually gets married it is important to show that they at least like each other.

I would like, very much, if there were a few couples in fiction who behaved as if they were friends.  You know, enjoying each other’s company, thinking of fun stuff to do, and doing it.  Being nice to each other.  Having the bulk of the drama come from outside circumstances instead of obvious incompatibility.  Anyone know of a few?

I was recently going over David’s post about DKSA, and his point about how it exorcised some of the grimness and misery that DKR introduced into superhero comics.  While I think that he makes a good point, and one echoed by Miller himself, when he described that in DKSA he was comparing superheroes to the pantheon of Greek gods – with their failings, their enthusiasms, and their various eccentricities.

However, I have to disagree with David.  Not because I don’t think he has correctly interpreted the way DKSA changes the tropes set up in DKR, but because my difficulties with Miller’s Batman aren’t really about his grimness.

David concludes his essay with this:

Where we’ve had paranoid and grim Batman for the past fifteen years, Miller gives us one who’s faking grim but skipping like a schoolboy on the inside. Where we’ve had an utterly miserable Batman who figures out ways to trap his friends, Miller delivers a Batman who believes in the strength of others and trusts his fellow warriors.

DKSA is an exorcism. It takes all of the grim and gritty from DKR and the ensuing years and turns it on its head. It’s a push toward day-glo superheroics and away from miserable heroes. The moral of DKSA is “Superheroes are cool!”

My problem with Miller’s legacy isn’t, primarily, the grimness and misery.  That may sound strange, considering I’ve written essay after essay about my love for the lighter side of comics, and my desire for more comics to embrace fun and imagination over dark storylines.  However, it’s not the misery itself I object to, but the balance between light and dark.  I enjoy some angsty melodrama and some brutal violence as much as the next gal, I just feel like modern comics is stuffing me full of pretzels and not offering me any water, if you know what I mean.  I few more light-hearted stories, comics, or comic lines would be refreshing.

However, it’s not Batman being a miserable and paranoid that bothers me when I’m reading DKR.  It’s Batman being, how shall I put this?  A double-barrelled bastard.  Yes.  I believe that’s the technical term.  Read the rest of this entry �

In this interview, Matt Brady asks Dan Didio about, among other things, Jason Todd’s recent killing spree.  Didio responds with this:

Let’s take this one from the very beginning. When a story is going to be told where we feel that a character crosses a moral line, we just don’t put that in arbitrarily. We think through how that affects everyone around him, and what the long-term ramifications of that action will be.

The perfect example of that was when Wonder Woman killed Max Lord. We thought that all the way through – we saw how that affected the relationship between Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. We saw what happens when that relationship breaks down, and how that affected the entire DC Universe, as well as how it was ultimately resolved. We saw those causes and effects all the way through. Or another case – Identity Crisis – we saw those events, the effects of those events, and how they played through the DC Universe. Every time that we try to do a major story where we feel a moral line has been crossed, there are always ramifications because of it. Things that you’re mentioning with Jason – of seeing him kill – are all potential stories for the future. Unless he doesn’t make it out of Battle for the Cowl, these are all story beats that we’d like to see play out throughout the DCU, and they’re all fodder for future storytelling.

Although I can see the point that he is trying to make, and although I recently wrote about this very issue as it pertains to Jason Todd, Didio’s response rings false to me.

In the first place, can’t any development become a set up for future stories?  If Jason Todd were to unexpectedly come into his own and become the hero of Gotham City, wouldn’t that be a good set-up for future stories?  It could be a call-back to the earliest version of Batman, a man who carried a gun and who regularly killed criminals while still being a respected hero.  If Jason Todd were, instead, to be captured, it would also be a set-up for future stories.  The Batfamily would have to band together to get him out.  If Jason Todd were turned into a frog, it would be a set-up for future stories.  (Best.  Zatanna story.  Ever.)  Since this justification can be given for any story at all, it becomes meaningless.  It doesn’t matter that an action can cause interesting events in the future if there is no reason for that action happening now.

Secondly, Gotham has been rather heavy on set-up lately, while being light on story.  Remember War Games?  It was a multi-title, multi-month event that set up Black Mask as the ruler of the city.  Then he didn’t do much.  Then he was killed.  Now he’s back.  And he’ll have, I suppose, a lot of competition for supremacy, since Face The Face was a long story that set up White Shark as the crime boss of Gotham City.  Where has he been lately?  Maybe he was bumped off by whoever it was who came out on top in Gotham Underground.  The name escapes me, since I’m pretty sure there have been no stories told about them, either.  Or maybe he’ll fight the Al Ghul family, headed by Ras, Nissa, Talia, Ras, Talia?  It’s not that DC hasn’t published some great ongoing stories.  It’s just that I’ve been hearing a lot about a set-up for future stories and comparatively little about the stories themselves.

Finally, there is Didio’s line, “Unless he doesn’t make it out of Battle for the Cowl, these are all story beats that we’d like to see play out throughout the DCU.”  Didio has a tongue-in-cheek interview style that doesn’t always come through in writing, so perhaps he’s making a joke.  If he isn’t, the entire paragraph falls down.

I don’t want to descend into angry fanism, but I’m growing a bit tired of hearing that no decision is arbitrary, that there haven’t been any mistakes in characterization, that there will be a justification for a certain character’s actions in a year, another book, an unannounced-and-unplanned-yet-possible storyline.  There should be a reason why a character acts a certain way.  That reason should have something to do with the character’s actions, attitudes, or immediate wants.  “We can write about it later,” is not that reason.

I got back in town today, after a short trip down south, and I picked up my comics, including Green Arrow and Black Canary in which our heroes are having marital trouble (more on that, later), Oracle: The Cure on the cover of which Barbara Gordon legally changes her name to Boobara Gordon (more on that, later), reviewed the posts for the last few days, including David’s entry about Frank Miller and his grim n’ gritty image (more on that, later) and read the latest Newsarama Interview with Dan Didio in which he explains Jason Todd’s latest killing spree (boy, have I got a lot to do), and then I read Superman/Batman.

In Nanopolis,Superman has been shrunk by the Prankster, and Batman shrinks himself to go after him.  As they navigate through a shrunken world, mysteriously able to breath, despite being small enough to not be able to inhale oxygen, both are picked up as the saviors of different groups of beings.  Batman is picked up by a nomadic tribe of micro-organisms who have been enslaved by nanites, which the Prankster scattered around his lab.  Superman is abducted by the nanites themselves, who wish to use his energy to grow larger and take over the world.

Meanwhile Robin and Steel stay in the lab, trying to maintain contact with Batman and Superman, while the Prankster keeps up a running commentary while tied to a chair.

That story is a giant loon, fed on nothing by nuts and crammed into a whack-a-mole machine.  I dare you to read that without feeling better about life in general and comics in particular.

It’s not that I don’t like Ollie and Dinah’s ongoing soapy drama, or the fact that Jason Todd is back and conflicted.  It’s just that this story, and this series, is the distilled essence of comics.  Imaginative, convoluted, ridiculous, and fun, it manages to take its readers to other worlds.  It’s equally generous to its characters dealing out very little death and limited angst while still giving them a wider range of emotions than they’re allowed to display in just about any other comic.

It warms my heart to know that any loonball story I might think up, and I’ve thought up a few, could be matched or topped by whatever the next story of Superman/Batman is.

(Also, two different birthday parties are mentioned in this particular arc.  If this story ends with cake in the next issue, I am seriously going to do a little dance in the comics shop.)

There were a few comics that hooked me when I was getting back into comics in 2003. Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch’s The Authority, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates, Frank Miller’s Daredevil Visionaries Vol. 2, and, probably more than anything else, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. The first three are generally well-regarded. They gave all involved a higher profile, tilted the direction of established characters permanently (when’s the last time you saw a not-depressing Daredevil story?), and left their marks on the comics industry.

And then there’s DKSA.

I came to DKSA backwards. I’d read Sin City, 300, and some of Miller’s miscellaneous Dark Horse work over the years, but I hadn’t touched his Batman work. Year One and Dark Knight Returns were just phrases I’d seen on book jackets, rather than works I’d actually read. I had the benefit of not coming into DKSA with 15 years of expectations for “Dark Knight Returns 2,” and found a book that I enjoyed greatly.

I’m sure you have already heard what DKSA gets wrong ad nauseum. Instead of that, I want to talk about what DKSA gets right. I think that it’s a deeply flawed work, but one which delivers plenty to talk about. It’s fascinating to me how much it gets right, despite being a dervish that’s attempting to hit seven or eight points at once. I don’t think that Frank Miller has gone half as crazy as people think he has, but I do believe that he looks at what bad writers made of the legacy of DKR (and Watchmen) and feels at least partially responsible. DKSA is, at least in part, Miller exorcising those demons and showing another direction things could have gone in.

You can even see it in the surface-level visual look of the book. DKR was fairly subdued and realistic. DKSA is garish, cartoony, and loud. There’s something even in its approach to comics that’s a violent reaction to the past. If you look at the book, it doesn’t look like your average superhero book, either. Frank Miller is playing in the same wheelhouse as Humberto Ramos, with the big foot style and perspective playing a large role in the storytelling. So, what is Miller trying to say or do, besides give older fans narrative whiplash?

For the record, any images or text is from DKSA or the Miller x TCJ interview I transcribed the other day.
Read the rest of this entry �

Yesterday I posted about how some characters zig-zag between their strengths and their flaws, and how that was surprisingly representative of real life.  We all struggle with certain things all our lives, and the way characters have to re-visit the same issues over and over is often quite realistic.

Then someone brought up Cassandra Cain in the comments. 

I haven’t made a secret of my dislike of her recent character change, and I think she represents a good example of the problem with this zig-zag method of character development.  I always felt that they got Cassandra Cain completely wrong since her series ended.  Suddenly she could read, write, and speak several languages instead of being able to barely sound out a few words.  For the entirety of her series she was shown as having a horror of killing anyone, after a traumatic incident in her childhood.  In One Year Later and in her mini-series she seriously considered killing her father.  It was just, in my view, all wrong.  All terribly, terribly wrong.  I considered her a completely new character who happened to have the same name as a previous character.

Continuity, however, doesn’t make the same exceptions I do.  According to comics, Cassandra Cain can be said to have the same back-and-forth relationship with casual murder that Jason Todd does.  Anyone writing her from now on can make a case for any story in which she considers killing someone, based on her time in Robin, Teen Titans, and the Batgirl mini-series.  Sure, if someone who feels the way I do about Cassandra Cain writes her in future, she’ll be a sweet kid with no social skills, the best fighter in the world, and an unbending morality.  But if the next writer goes by her mini-series, she’ll be a cranky teen fighter who is always one outrage away from beating someone to death.  And their work will make this new characterization more ingrained and defensible, and the cycle will continue.

This, I think, is why continuity and character geeks shout ‘out-of-character’ so loudly and so angrily.  Once upon a time Batman was a guy who snapped criminals necks and had a fiancee.  A little later he was an eccentric father figure who fought crime and goofed around with Robin and Superman in roughly equal proportion.  Then he was a detective.  Then an ultra-reclusive obsessive.  It only takes one really out-of-character story to change a character for the forseeable future.

I have no doubt the massive fan rampage begun by Stephanie Brown’s death was the thing that eventually brought her back.  Perhaps if a group of fans had yelled and screamed and written angry letter to DC comics, Cassandra Cain would still be a character I recognize.  Although I’ve grown out of the phase of fanhood in which I blame everything I hate on arrogant and heartless editors who labor all day to enrage and disappoint fans, I can see the use in kicking up a fuss every now and again in defense of a character you love.