This goes out to d00gz and the 52 worlds.

The end of 52 revealed that there are 52 earths in the DCU, each of which ripe with imagination and new ideas and wonder.

(from 52 #52)

Today, DC Comics revealed their list most of the 52 worlds over on Newsarama.

Hang on, can I start over?

Today, DC Comics revealed that most of the new worlds promised in 52 have been replaced with a bunch of crappy Elseworlds that no one read, less people liked, and even less people cared about.

Earth-2: Home of the original Justice Society (first appearance 52 #52 – this earth’s Superman and Power Girl are missing)
Earth-3: The Crime Society’s world (first appearance 52 #52)
Earth-4: Home of the Charlton characters (a.k.a. – the Watchmen-esque world) (first appearance 52 #52)
Earth-5: Home of the Fawcett (Shazam) characters (first appearance 52 #52)
Earth-8: World of Lord Havok and the Extremists – called Angor by its natives (Countdown #29)
Earth-9: Tangent Universe (upcoming in Tangent: Superman’s Reign #1)
Earth-10: Home of the Quality (Freedom Fighters, Uncle Sam, the original Ray, etc) characters (first appearance 52 #52)
Earth-11: World of reversed genders ( Arena #1 and The Search For Ray
Palmer: Superwoman/ Batwoman #1)
Earth-12: The Next Generation, beyond Batman (i.e., Batman Beyond?) (Arena #1)
Earth-13: World of dark and arcane heroes ( Arena #1)
Earth-15: World of heroes realized (Donna Troy as Wonder Woman; Jason Todd as Batman) (Countdown #30 – the earth of this universe was destroyed in Countdown #24)
Earth-16: Home of the Super-Sons ( Arena #1)
Earth-17: A post WWIII, apocalyptic universe (first appearance 52 #52)
Earth-18: World of the Elseworld’s Justice Riders ( Arena #1)
Earth-19: World of Elseworld’s Gotham by Gaslight (The Search For Ray
Palmer: Gotham By Gaslight #1)
Earth-21: World of Elseworld’s New Frontier ( Arena #1)
Earth-22: Elseworld’s Kingdom Come Universe (first appearance 52 #52)
Earth-26: Universe of Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew (Captain Carrot
And The Final Ark #1)
Earth-30: World of Elseworld’s Superman: Red Son (Countdown #32)
Earth-32: World of Elseworld’s Batman: Darkest Knight (Arena #1)
Earth-34: World of Elseworld’s Amazonia ( Arena #1)
Earth-37: World of Elseworld’s Thrillkiller ( Arena #1)
Earth-40: World of Elseworld’s Liberty Files ( Arena #1)
Earth-43: World of Elseworld’s Batman: Red Rain (The Search For Ray Palmer:
Red Rain #1)
Earth-48: Forerunner’s world (Countdown #46)
Earth-50: Wildstorm Universe (first seen 52 #52)

Just in case you’re keeping score at home, here are the genuinely new Earths, ones that we’ve never seen before:
Earth-15: World of heroes realized (Donna Troy as Wonder Woman; Jason Todd as Batman) (Countdown #30 – the earth of this universe was destroyed in Countdown #24)
Earth-17: A post WWIII, apocalyptic universe (first appearance 52 #52)
Earth-48: Forerunner’s world (Countdown #46)

There are three new Earths out of 26 announced now, one of which has already been destroyed and the other I think is barren of life or populated by Forerunner’s race or something stupid like that?

Good going, DC. You have the opportunity to create a gang of new characters, settings, and stories and you go right into Fanboy Masturbation territory.

Fanboy Radio‘s got a live show on right now with Grant Morrison. Your humble correspondent, a true Morrison Whorrison, called in to ask a question and fanboy a bit at Grant Morrison.

News:
Seaguy 2 is on the way and he actually wrote a bit of it today.
Flex Mentallo is Grant Morrison’s Watchmen, in his own words. (In my own words, it is better.)
Wildcats and Authority were victims of 52, that’s why they’re so late. The second issue is written, though.

Give it a listen when the podcast goes up!

I could listen to him talk all day :glomp:

G. To read Alan Moore’s work, it’s so beautiful and architectural and everything about it is great, but for me, that fire of creativity isn’t there in it, and I’m not fooled by it. I read Promethea last night, and I thought, “This is Doom Patrol, I don’t care, there’s nothing new for there for me here, but it’s so beautifully constructed, I wish I could do this kind of thing…
S. …immaculate objects…
G. …yes. It lacks the transcendental, it lacks the soul. And even last night, I was talking to Warren, The Authority’s like Justice League, but to me, what I find in that is this voice coming out, that to me, Warren’s got this voice of this new whatever generation it is that’s coming up where there’s all this violence and black humour, and that’s why I love it, because it is a thing with fire coming out of it. I don’t get that with Moore’s stuff, I just get this brilliance.
–from an interview with Grant Morrison conducted by Spiros Xenos in 1999

My secret shame as a comics fan is that I’m not an Alan Moore fan.

I’ve spent a couple days trying to write this post, actually. It veered a little too close to being a Moore vs Morrison whinefest. I’ll try to hit you with the bullet points.

Let’s discuss.

I’ve read a few Moore books that I liked. Watchmen (I own the Absolute!), V for Vendetta, Top Ten, and LXG are all good stuff. They’re technically impressive and Moore has an incredible grasp on the craft of comics-making. He may be the best technical writer ever, and he’s been gifted to work with some stellar artists at the same time. Dave Gibbons, Kevin O’Neill, JH Williams III, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, all of these guys are ridiculously good.

However, I just can’t get into the majority of Moore’s work. Promethea leaves me flat, Lost Girls turns me off, and the majority of his America’s Best Comics were really sort of boring.

I think my issue with it is, as Morrison kind of describes above, it’s lacking in heart. It feels empty. Top Ten is the best superhero pastiche/homage since Planetary, but it all feels very by the numbers. Here’s the Fantastic Four analogues, here’s the DC characters, and so on. There’s no sense of the “Gee whiz, this is cool!” that I get from other comics writers.

I think that this is because Moore’s work is so perfectly constructed. You can tell the care that goes into his pages. You can tell that he’s thought a lot about it. However, because of that construction, all of his work feels very calculated. It doesn’t feel fun at all. Not to say that he hasn’t done some fun comics, as a handful of issues of Tom Strong were really very fun, along with that issue of Mr. Majestic he did years ago with the Dyson Spheres, I believe. But, my overall impression of Moore’s work is that it is all very serious and important and literary, capital letters optional.

I feel like I can see the man behind the curtain in too much of his work. It’s lacking in spontaneity. It’s too perfect. It’s there to be held up and admired, like art, rather than devoured, like pop culture.

(I’m an English major, honest. I’m not a literiluddite, I swear!)

Have you guys seen the proposal for Alan Moore’s Twilight of the Superheroes? It’s a DKR-style tale of superheroes gone wrong and fascist and their grisly end. Check the internet. It’s hailed as being an incredible tale, full of vim, vigor, and clever plot twists.

I read this proposal and was completely repulsed. Billy Batson as a leather sex midget? J’onn J’onnz as a murderer? John Constantine being so stubborn that he’d doom himself to a life of loneliness out of spite? Again, technically and craft-wise, it’s wonderfully constructed. It’s just lacking that heart and charm that I like from my comics.

Reading Moore is kind of like reading the classics. It’s very, very good, but it isn’t really very fun. I love Albert Camus, Voltaire, and Faulkner. I’m okay with Hemmingway, but you’ll rarely catch me reading them just because. Alan Moore’s work is a lot like that for me.

On the other side is Grant Morrison, relentless optimist and imperfect creator. His work has a snap and just earnestness about it that I don’t get from Moore. Even when he screws up or falls short of his goal, most especially in Batman 663, you just get this sense that he’s trying to give you that same feeling of “Gee whiz!” with his work. All-Star Superman illustrates this really well. He loves the Silver Age Superman and, when combined with a talent on the level of Quitely, you can tell.

His reach can easily exceed his grasp and he sometimes falls victim to scripting anticlimaxes, but he’s really very earnest about it and that comes through in the work. JLA Classified, New X-Men, The Invisibles, Vimanarama, and half a dozen of his other books all show this. They’re cool scenes, one-liners, and dialogue that sit on top of one mad idea after another. Flying jet apes, Barbelith, secondary mutations, Flex Mentallo, and Xorn. Shoot, Fantomex. He isn’t perfect, but he’s going to take you on a wild ride.

Alan Moore is literary comics. He writes comics as if there is a comics canon out there. His comics are smart, technically impressive, and wonderfully crafted. He’s rightfully hailed as one of the greatest ever, but like a lot of literary canon, his books can be boring and not very fun to read.

Grant Morrison is glam comics. It’s focused on fun, but with a point, and isn’t really aspiring to be anything other than fun. It’s shiny without being empty, and stylish without being substanceless.

I kind of prefer Morrison’s approach. I want that cool shot, I want that one-liner, and I don’t mind when my comics fall short of their goal. I want my comics to wow me and be awesome because it’s cool. I like pulpy stories.

Am I making sense or do I need to be put out to pasture? I’m not pitching this as either/or, just as an exploration on how I’m feeling about these two creators.

Welcome to the fifth installment. Took me longer than expected, but a lot of these guys are big names. If you reach the end of the article, Batman will reward you with his greatest quote ever.

CABLE

New Mutants #87 (1990)

Originally, Cable appears in Uncanny X-Men #201 (1986) as a baby, but I figure it would probably make more sense to show his real introduction. The story begins with a terrorist act by a team of Stryfe’s henchmen in some facility. The only one I actually recognize is Four-Arm. After they leave, a new figure enters through a hole in the wall.

Cable tracks Stryfe’s team on their next mission, where they plan to kidnap a couple kids out of a government facility. He takes the battle to the enemies, but their numbers eventually overwhelm him. He’s left to die and the mutants get away. The issue ends with Cable in military captivity, thinking about how he went at this the wrong way. He’s going to need help.

Read the rest of this entry �

Hal Jordan watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s his dream. That’s his nightmare.

Hey, now. Looks like it’s time for another installment of Ruining the Moment! Let’s roll.

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Sorry for being a week late. The holidays drained me faster than a three-way with Rogue and Parasite. …Please pretend I didn’t just say that.

THE BEYONDER

Secret Wars II #1 (1985)

We start out with another iffy entry. The Beyonder was present during the first Secret Wars. That’s obvious. It’s just that at no point did he actually appear. That didn’t happen until the horrifying sequel. We know him for his silly disco outfit, but that wasn’t what he originally showed up in.

I like it. We see him talking with the Molecule Man, who tries to explain things to him in a way that is admirably calm and casual. Molecule Man and Volcana send Beyonder on his way as he takes a more subtle form on his quest for experience. This form is of Molecule Man himself. He proceeds to turn a desk into apples, turns a fat television writer into a super-villain and then turns invisible and follows Captain America around for the hell of it.

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Today I bought the Essential Luke Cage, which has his first 27 issues. Sadly, Mr. Fish shows up in issue #29. DAMN IT!

Anyway, the article.

60) WHAT IF THE KINGPIN OWNED DAREDEVIL?

Issue: Volume 2, #73
Writer: D.G. Chichester
Artist: Tom Grindberg
Spider-Man death: No
Background: The Fixer had Jack Murdock killed for refusing to take a dive during his big fight. Matt Murdock was already training under the martial arts master Stick, and with his drive for justice, one day became Daredevil. Years later, he would become the mortal enemy of Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. Here, Kingpin hears about the Fixer/Murdock incident and how young Matt has been seen with Stick. This interests him and he decides that this boy might be worth looking at.

We see young Matt Murdock on the day after his father’s death, unaware but suspicious of why he hasn’t seen him yet. It’s a day in the life as we see him deal with bullies and briefly talk to Stick. Policemen show up and bring him to the morgue to identify his father. As Matt is leaving, Kingpin’s assistant arrives and gives him a card (then realizing his obvious mistake, since the words are in print) telling him to meet Wilson Fisk at spice warehouse near a pier. Matt recognizes the name and goes even colder.

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Next Monday seemingly marks the end of one of the greatest eras in animation. For fourteen years, we’ve been given what people call the “Diniverse” (named after a guy who barely writes actual episodes anymore). It started back in 1992 with a primetime showing of Batman: the Animated Series and after all these years, it’s going to die out with the finale for the fifty-eighth spin-off, Justice League Unlimited.

Lord knows the Diniverse made its stamp on both the world of animation and the world of comics. Characters like Harley Quinn were introduced… as well as more forgettable folk like Livewire and Lockdown. The comic version of Supergirl started wearing the white t-shirt and tight skirt made popular by Superman: the Animated Series. John Stewart took Kyle Rayner’s place as the token Green Lantern on the Justice League roster. Batman Beyond showed up in the pages of Superman/Batman for no reason whatsoever.

There are obviously changes here and there over how certain characters are portrayed. Many consider the Kevin Conroy-voiced Batman to be the defining version of the character, compared to the close-minded, paranoid caricature he’s become in the comics. Sure, the Joker kills people here and there on the cartoons, but at no point would they ever have him cripple Batgirl and strip her naked in order to drive her father insane on Cartoon Network. In the comics, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl have never been an item, nor has a big chunk of the JLU roster been members of any Justice League roster. Hawk and Dove sucked in both mediums, so there is that. Read the rest of this entry �