Review: Earth 2 Vol. 4: The Dark Age

Probably without even intending to do so, DC Comics pulled something of a bait and switch with their Earth 2 title. It originally launched, under its original writer James Robinson, as a sort of rebooted version of the original Earth 2 concept. This Earth would apparently be where all the Golden Age heroes lived, but rather than their stories starting in the 1940s, they would begin in the present. After an issue spent killing off Earth 2's Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman, the focus for much of Robinson's run was on new versions of other Golden Agers with no analogues on Earth-New 52: Green Lantern Alan Scott, Flash Jay Garrick, The Atom Al Pratt, Hawkgirl, Dr. Fate and so on.

Near the end of Robinson's run, which comprised the first three collections, and with the start of new writer Tom Taylor's run, collected herein, there doesn't seem to be any real logical, organizing principle anymore.

A Red Tornado is introduced, and while she's a she as the original Golden Age Red Tornado was, she's also an android, like the Earth-1 Red Tornado*...and she has Lois Lane's consciousness in her. Jimmy Olsen is introduced, and he's a metahuman on this Earth. Red Arrow Roy Harper (a character from Earth-1/New Earth) is introduced, as is an Aquawoman. Finally—in this issue at least—the dead Earth-2 Superman returns, now a slave of Apokolips (shades of John Francis Moore and Kieron Dwyer's 1998 Superman: The Dark Side), Earth-2 Batman gets a rather unlikely successor (unless you've previously read Flashpoint) and Superman's successor appears but isn't yet properly introduced.

It's basically an Elseworlds series that crisscrosses in and out of New 52 continuity—Power Girl, Huntress and Mr. Terrific have all traveled between the two Earths—but one with no unifying theme...which sort of defeats the purpose of Elseworlds-like stories.

This fourth volume collects four issues of the monthly and the second annual, which accounts for two stories, both by Taylor. The monthly issues chronicle the Evil Superman and his army of Parademons' attack on Earth, with Superman just wrecking the heroes and the forces of the World Army. Meanwhile, in the bowels of of a World Army facility, a mysterious—and mysteriously powerful—new Batman is gathering allies for a showdown with Superman, including the new characters (well, new versions of old characters that are new to this series) mentioned above.

As for the story of the annual, that's the secret origin of Earth 2's Batman II**, presented as a story he's telling his new allies during a momentary lull in the battle against the Apokolyptian Superman.

The artwork is something of a mess, reflecting the disintegrating focus of the series. The original art team of Nicola Scott and Trevor Scott handle the first two issues by themselves. With the third, a second art team joins them. With the fourth, a third art team joins the second art team, and the Scotts are no-shows. The annual is penciled by by Robson Rocha, who was half of the just-mentioned second art team. None of the artists are particularly bad, but they don't mesh together too well, as in it's quite obvious when an art team changes, and it gives the book a rushed, confused visual look. I suppose it doesn't help that the book consists mainly of very unpleasant, alternate versions of the already fairly unpleasant New 52 characters doing extremely unpleasant things to one another.


*I know, I know. But it's so complicated, I'm just going to stick with the fact that in post-Crisis continuity, the android Red Tornado is a native of DC's only Earth, which was Earth 1 with some grafts from a handful of other Earths. Red Tornado spent most of his time on Earth 1, back when there was an Earth 1, anyway. For more on stupid Red Tornado and his dumb origin and stupid continuity, I'll refer you to Wikipedia.


**Of possible interest to some is the fact that, when the annual was originally printed, Batman II tells his new allies that he gets his enhanced strength from a drug called Miralco that lasts about an hour, which he stole from Rex Mason. Rex Mason is the secret identity of Metamorpho, not the Golden Age Hourman, who is Rex Tyler. In the collection, the mistake has been fixed, so that now Batman II says he stole the drug from Rex Tyler. It was apparently a typo all along then, and not an intentional decision to change the inventor of the Miralco drug on New 52 Earth 2.

Review: Earth 2 Vol. 2: The Tower of Fate

The second collection of the James Robinson-written, mostly Nicola Scott-drawn Earth 2 series collects the second half of the first year of the series, containing issues #7-12, plus the September 2012 #0 issue.      It's only at that end of that last issue that the "Justice Society" team starts to really coalesce, with four of the superheroes—Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkgirl and the newly-introduced Doctor Fate—deciding to stick together and set up a sort of headquarters. That makes it pretty clear that Robinson is—or, rather was—playing a rather long game with the plotting of the series, which, it turns out, ends up being to its detriment, as Robinson leaves the title just four issues after that, replaced by new writer Tom Taylor.

Whatever it was that Robinson was trying to accomplish then, he spent a lot of time getting there, without ever actually arriving. It should be noted, too, that this series has been rather confoundingly weird. The expectation was that, given the stars—Green Lantern Alan Scott, Flash Jay Garrick, The Atom Al Pratt, etc—it would be a sort of New 52 JSA title, set in modern times and on an alternate Earth from the one the rest of the DCU was set on.

It sort of is, but the setting varies quite dramatically from the real world. That is, it's not really the real world + superheroes, but a sci-fi, alternate history world + superheroes. The world is organized into a one world government, with a one-world army—the creatively named World Army—employing nasty, soldier versions of familiar DC Golden Agers—the aforementioned Atom, Wesley Dodds and The Sandmen, Terry Sloane—to hunt rebel superheroes like GL, Flash and Hawkgirl. The world was warped, deformed and depopulated by a full-scale invasion from Apokolips, one that killed some heroes and left Steppenwolf stranded on this world.

It's an unlikely fusion of Jack Kirby's Fourth World mythology and the old Golden Age characters of National Comics, as filtered through the now defunct, millennial JSA series that James Robinson helped found (and David Goyer and Geoff Johns continued in various combinations). I originally thought the use of the Apokoplyptian armies in the opening issues was meant merely as a way to compare and contrast Earth 2 with Earth-New 52 (as the new continuity's first comic, Justice League, opened with the League's founders rallying together to stave off an invasion by Darkseid himself), and as a way to kill of this world's Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman to make room for the second-stringers who would eventually star, but Robinson is apparently keeping the plot going indefinitely.

Issue #0 heavily features the Earth/Apokolips war, #8 is entirely devoted to Steppenwolf conquering the fictional country of Dherain, and there is a brief teaser appearance by Mister Miracle and Barda (apparently squeezed into the end of an issue just to give DC something "shocking" to put on the gatefold cover during what was once going to be called "W.T.F. Certified" month). At one point, the spirit of Nabu refers to Hawkgirl as a warrior of Horus, and indeed her helmet does look a little Egyptian in design, and with Fate, Flash and GL all endowed with magical powers here—Flash literally given the speed of Mercury/Hermes by the dying old god—I thought perhaps Earth 2 was setting up its heroes as the "New Gods" who would battle Darkseid and his evil armies, but that doesn't seem to be the case after all, as the conflict following this series seems to involve new, evil versions of the dead trinity (An evil Wonder Woman, Wondy's grown-up daughter Fury, is introduced here as Steppenwolf' thrall, fighting with a glowing red combination whip/noose).

So really, I have no idea what's going on with this book. As of the end of the second volume, it seems like it's still putting a team together, and is almost there, but I also know that the next trade will feature the end of Robinson's run...and maybe two godawful Villains Months one-shots (Earth 2 #15.1, the Desaad issue was, if I'm remembering correctly, one of the most unreadable of those issues).

So this volume opens with the zero issue, which is split between telling two stories narrated by Terry Sloane (The Golden Age Mr. Terrific, who is here some sort of ruthless Lex Luthor type whose superhero identity was Mr. 8, and Mr. Terrific II, who, post-reboot, is now the only Mr. Terrific, and has bounced between Earth 2 and Earth New-52 in a way that confuses me). I honestly couldn't make heads or tails out of the second story, which is especially weird in that a) I read the previous volume of this series and b) it was a #0 issue, and meant to explain things to new readers and serve as a good jumping-on point.

From there we get a check-in-with-our-heroes story and then the introduction of Steppenwolf and Fury, and then the title story actually starts, with Nicola Scott's art finally appearing in this volume. The World Army, Atom and Dodds go after Jay Garrick's mom, and he rescues her with the help of Khaled, a young student who discovered the Helm of Fate on the same mission that gave Hawkgirl her wings, and a young, handsome version of the green-skinned Wotan.

Wotan summons the trio to Nabu's realm, where the Tower of Fate is, and commands that the Khaled and the Flash retrieve the Helm for him. Khaled reluctantly finds and then dons the helm, becoming New 52 Doctor Fate, and then he has to fight Wotan.

The title story in this collection is actually pretty good, and Robinson and Scott reinvent aspects of the Fate story in interesting ways, including rebuilding Fate's Tower into something spectacular (and very different) looking, and putting a guardian monster in it, one with a twisted set of horns of various sizes forming a sort of crown atop its head. The insides of the tower is still Escher-like, but filled with all sorts of classical and ancient architecture, not unlike George Perez's version of Olympus, only drawn-out into a rectangular box, rather than a sphere. Scott's are on one spread of the tower interior—reproduced in the backmatter as pencils only—is so intricately drawn, it seems a shame they bothered coloring it at all, and one wonders what a black-and-white Nicola Scott book might look like.

Their Fate is pretty well conceived (Kent Nelson is involved, even if, like Hawkgirl, he's no longer the person under the mask and using the codename), and seems like a strong enough concept to carry his own title, if they ever start spinning solo books out of Earth 2.

I'm not crazy about the costume design, in which the blue and gold are now black (with a bright blue starfield that seems to come and go) and highly-polished, ornate gold accessories that reflect light and the images of objects and people close to them. In other words, it's a little busy, and far too realistic, but, compared to the way a lot of New 52 redesigns have turned out, it could have been a lot worse (And, in fact, there have been worse Fate designs. It was a reminder, however, how weird it is that DC didn't ask Alex Ross to redesign their line rather than Jim Lee; his Kingdom Come Doctor Fate was one of the man great redesigns in that seminal series, in which most of the Golden Age characters came out looking better than most other attempts to update them. Take it's Mercury's helmet-wearing version of The Flash and compare it to Earth 2's Flash, for example).

While Scott pencils the four-issue origin story of the new Doctor Fate (and Trevor Scott inks it), the earlier chapters of the book are from a variety of fill-in artists of generally inferior skills. Tomas Giorello (whose Wonder Woman's skirt won't stay down and chest-plate just barely stays up) and Tom Derenick split the zero issue, while Yildiray Cinar pencils #7 and #8 (Trevor Scott inking the former, Ryan Winn and Ruy Jose the latter).

I'm kind of curious to see where this title goes in the next trade or two, given the seemingly sudden departure of its writer, but not quite as curious as I would have been to see where it would have gone had Robinson stuck around to finish whatever the hell he was going for with it.

Some notes and thoughts on Earth 2 Vol. 1: The Gathering

•This is a hardcover collecting the first six issues of Earth 2, a "second wave" (i.e. replacement) title in DC's New 52 line. The series is written by James Robinson, and the artwork comes primarily from the team of pencil artist Nicola Scott and inker Trevor Scott, although a second penciller and a second inker are also credited, as are three different colorists. As with other recent DC collections, it's not clear who did what page, but based on the fact that the Eduardo Pansica and Sean Parsons art team produces work similar enough in style to that of Scott and Scott, there aren't any terribly drastic shifts in visuals, and both teams do a fairly great job, particularly by New 52 standards.

•I trade-waited this series, but not because of misgivings about the creative team (I really like Nicola Scott's artwork quite a bit, and while Robinson's written some really quite incredibly terrible comics for DC of late, he has a large body of work full of more good comic book writing than bad comic book writing). Rather, I wasn't really sure what to make of the premise of the series, as suggested in its title.

•Most DC readers know that "Earth-Two" was the name of the parallel Earth where the Golden Age superheroes used to reside, a conceit the publisher used for a whole host of cosmic crossover adventures between Earth-Two's Justice Society of America and Earth-One's Justice League of America, between the time Gardner Fox introduced the concept in 1961 to the 1986-1987Crisis On Infinite Earths, which smooshed the two worlds and their sets of heroes (along with those of several other Earths) into one, single world with one, single history. Post-Crisis, there was no Earth-One and Earth-Two, just the "Earth" of the DC Universe, in which the Golden Age versions of most of the heroes had their adventures between the late 1930s and mid-1950s or so (excluding Superman, Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman, whose Golden Age versions more-or-less ceased to exist), while the other heroes of the DC Universe, including the Silver Age reboots of The Flash and Green Lantern and company, "The Trinity" and original Silver Age characters like Martian Manhunter began their careers on a sliding timeline of about ten years ago.

I liked that solution quite a bit, as it gave the world of the DC Universe a longer, more complicated, more interesting history, and sort of promoted some of the Golden Age characters to, if not co-equal, than at least more equal status to their Silver Age replacements. So while Flash Jay Garrick and Green Lantern Alan Scott might not have been in cartoons or appeared in the toy lines, while they might have looked like they threw their costumes together based only on the contents of a high school drama club's costume trunk, they were now portrayed as trailblazers and pioneers, the founders of a heroic legacy. They were fighting Nazis while Barry Allen and Hal Jordan were just twinkles in Julius Schwartz's eyes. Looked at from the real world, I like the way these characters' place in the fictional DC Universe acknowledged the work of their creators and the guys writing and drawing them in the 1940s; they were kind of like symbols of that era of creators, and their being a part of the DC Universe's story felt like an in-story acknowledgment and hat-tip to those creators as well as that era.

I understand that it never felt quite right to certain folks though, because it implied that Superman, for example, wasn't the father of all DC's superheroes, and it made Batman seem somewhat derivative of, say, Dr. Mid-Nite and The Sandman, rather than vice versa (And, unfortunately, it did de-couple Wonder Woman from the best era of Wonder Woman comics, the war-time efforts of her creator and artist H.G. Peter).

When DC rebooted their universe once again with The New 52, they deliberately did away with the Golden Age of superheroes altogether, and even cut their timeline of ten or so years in half to five or so, so that the heroes of the DC Universe can trace their careers only as far back as the final year of the Bush administration—The George W. Bush administration.

This title re-instated the multiple, parallel Earths concept then, and Earth 2 once more became the home of the Golden Age heroes like Flash Jay Garrick and Green Lantern Alan Scott, only with a twist—it would be presenting new versions of these Golden Age heroes in the present day, so rather than World War II veterans, the heroes of Earth 2 would be millennials and members of Generation Y, same as their counterparts in the regular DC Universe.

I wasn't really sure what to make of this, and given that the series was starting with an alternate take on the conflict from the first story arc of Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and company's New 52 Justice League, which I loathed, I figured this would be a comic I'd want to hold off on.

•To complicate matters more, a few years prior to the New 52 relaunch, DC started using the term "Earth One" to refer to a line of original graphic novels set in their own, distinct and (apparently) unrelated continuities (In easier to understand terms, "Earth One" now translates into DC's version of Marvel's "Ultimate," differing only in their format and the fact that the titles don't seem to interlock). So far there have been two volumes of J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis' Superman: Earth One and one volume of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Batman: Earth ONe, with a long in-the-works Grant Morrison-written Wonder Woman: Earth One expected in the near future.

So the DCU of The New 52, The New 52iverse, isn't ever explicitly referred to as Earth 1, even though there is now an Earth 2.

•Earth 2 differs rather significantly from Earth-New 52. For one thing, it only has 3-5 superheroes: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and, depending on whether you want to classify them as superheroes or sidekicks, Supergirl and Robin (These two young ladies come to Earth-New 52, find themselves terrible costumes, adopt the personalities Power Girl and The Huntress and star in Worlds' Finest, another "second wave" New 52 series).

•Also, they don't call superheroes "superheroes" on Earth 2. They call them "wonders," as in 2003's JLA: Age of Wonder Elseworlds series (republished rather recently as DC Comics Presents—JLA: Age of Wonder)

•Earth 2 opens in more or less the same place that Justice League did: It's five years in the past of the narrator (television producer Alan Scott, providing narration for a documentary he's produced), and an army of alien invaders is threatening to overwhelm the Earth. This Earth having fewer heroes, the aliens—which are, of course, Apokaliptian Parademons, here led by a redesigned Steppenwolf rather than a redesigned Darkseid—are doing a much better job of it, and Earth looks like it's in real trouble. Batman has a plan to stop the Parademon invasion, by infiltrating one of the towers they've erected and downloading a maguffin virus that will knock them all off-line, cutting them off from their home dimension.

•Also as in Justice League, the heroes are all, like, crazy violent.

Superman heat-visions them in their faces, grabs them by their throats and smashes their heads into pieces. Robin (Helena Wayne) guns a parademon down from the Batplane, and Batman even shoots one through the head. Wonder Woman chops off the heads of, let's see...five of 'em, on-panel, and uses the word "kill" repeatedly.

This being an alternate world with alternate versions of the characters, and ones that don't need to survive even one entire issue, Robinson certainly has more leeway in how he depicts their morality, and these alternate versions of the Trinity are depicted as being backed into a corner and fighting for survival. Wonder Woman, for example, is the last surviving Amazon: Steppenwolf and the Parademons have already killed every single one of her sisters.

The violence is also somewhat muted by the fact that these versions of Superman and Wonder Woman know that the Parademons are robots of some kind, or, at the very least, cyborgs, as Batman's plan is to knock out the towers remote controlling them (without which they will "fall from the sky," he says), and Scott goes to some pains to show wires, tubes and oil spurting from their wounds every time Wonder Woman chops a head or limb off, or Superman smashes one to bits.

In Justice League, remember, the heroes (and, presumably, the readers, if the New 52 was doing its job) were seeing Parademons for the first time, and Superman and company were just murdering them left and right, with no line of dialogue dedicated to explaining that they were mechanical monsters made of machinery and corpses or whatever and that, since they were already dead, it was okay to, say, sever their heads. Weirder still, the Parademons were just kidnapping people in that story, which, while certainly a crime and a scary experience for the victims, doesn't exactly merit execution on the spot from the likes of Superman and Aquaman, you know?

•Batman's plan works, downloading the virus is a suicide mission for him, and he doesn't survive the resulting explosion. Superman and Wonder Woman's part of the plan is to buy him some time. Both of them get killed as well. Superman by some kind of bomb the parademons attach to him, while Wonder Woman gets Geoff Johnsed:

•I know hindsight's 20/20 and all, but I think I found one way to improve upon Batman's plan. Rather than Batman himself climbing a tower and downloading the virus, which resulted in an explosion that killed the mortal Dark Knight, maybe he could have had Superman fly to the tower at top super-speed and install the virus for him; not only would the job get done a lot quicker, but chances are Superman might have survived the resulting explosion (Or maybe not; he did get blown up to death by an Apokoliptian bomb).

But in any case, Superman would have had a better chance of surviving. When it comes to suicide missions, enlisting the invincible, indestructible guy on your team is usually your best bet.

•I think opening a new title featuring new-ish characters with an adventure starring three other characters is kind of a weird strategy. It's not until the last five pages or so of the first issue that the stars of Earth 2 really appear. Alan Scott is revealed as the narrator, on private plane to Beijing. And Jay Garrick gets the last four pages; having just been dumped by his girlfriend, he's brooding alone on a hill at night with a six-pack, when the Greek God Hermes—seen earlier in the issue telling Wonder Woman that he and the other Olympians were trying to fight off Apokolips as well, and were getting their divine asses handed to them—appears to him (It works okay here in the trade, but was likely rather frustrating to those reading the monthly, serially-published installments).

•Most of the second issue is devoted to Jay Garrick's origin, which is here sort of like a mash-up of myth and Hal Jordan's origin; the dying Hermes gifts Garrick with his super-speed powers (which would certainly explain Garrick's old hat, but, this being the New 52, he has to have a new costume, which resembles his old one in some ways, but is heavily modified: His Hermes hat, for example, is now just a Hermes-inspired helmet, and looks more 1950s/1960s sci-fi than something truly mythological, like his old hat.

•Mr. Terrific II Michael Holt, who had a quickly-canceled title in the first slate of New 52 books (set on Earth-New 52), appears teleporting onto the Earth 2. He's immediately confronted by Terry Sloan, who introduces himself as the "smartest man on earth." That's the secret identity of the original Mr. Terrific. Sloan appears throughout this volume, and seems to be somewhere between an anti-hero and a villain.

•The same scene features an ad for Tyler-Chem (Hourman Rex Tyler was a chemist) and an add for a boxing match between Grant and Montez (Wildcat's secret ID being heavy-weight boxing champ Ted Grant; his first successor was Yolanda Montez, although the Montez in the ad isn't her, but a big, bearded, bald burly guy).

Later, a character mentions a man named Fate, and there's a "Commander Dodds and His 'Sandmen'" working for the World Army.

•Alan Scott's origin starts in this issue. He's riding a bullet-train with his boyfriend Sam, and pulls out a ring to propose to him, just as the train explodes (This is more-or-less in-keeping with his Golden Age origin, minus the boyfriend part).

•While Garrick received his super-powers from a dying god, Scott gets his from a glowing green fireball, that reminded me of the burning bush of Moses' story. A big deal was made out of Alan Scott being rebooted as gay at the time of this comic's original, serial release, but it is, of course, anything but controversial. It's very much a situation of a hero who happens to be gay, rather than a gay superhero. The gender of either Scott or his boyfriend could have been changed, and nothing about the story itself would have changed.

•Sam is "fridged" within an issue of being introduced...sorta. The main thing accomplished by having Scott in the midst of a proposal when his train explodes and the flame finds him is that it allows a rationale for him to be a hero who fights with a ring: "You must have a token or weapon with which to focus your power," the green fire says, "Something close to your heart." (Later, Scott is briefly tempted to stay in the land of the dead with Sam rather than returning to the land of the living to fight on, I suppose that's a second reason to include the Sam character's death in Scott's origin).

•The only other heroes introduced in this volume are Hawkgirl (Kendra), who has an unusually not-so-bad redesign, complete with a new color scheme and a hawk-helmet with a hint of Egyptian design about it, and The Atom, diminutive World Army Sergeant Al Pratt, who gains both size-changing and nuclear powers after exposure to Apokaliptian energies and a nuclear weapon the World Army was planning to use against the enemy.

Both are part of the government's plans to manufacture their own Wonders, but Kendra escaped and went rogue, while The Atom remains a loyal soldier (and thus is in conflict with the other three heroes of Earth-2).

•The four heroes—Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl and The Atom—are united by the common foe of Grundy, who is here a hulking, zombie-like creature wearing a sort of butcher's apron and commanding tendrils of dead plant-life. He's the champion of The Grey, a death-force in opposition to The Green, of which Green Lantern is the new champion, and his plan is to draw out GL and kill him. Obviously, that doesn't happen, as the four heroes defeat him (after spending some time with The Atom trying to capture Hawkgirl and The Flash).

•All in all, this turned out to be an all-around pretty good New 52 superhero comic, although, ironically, even if I had tried out the first issue when it was initially released serially, I probably would have ended up dropping the book. Scott's art on that issue is nice and all, but the plot of the first issue amounts to little more than "Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all die horribly," and that's not the sort of first issue that makes me wanna read a second issue.

By the end of this trade though, I was eager to see what would happen next, and I find myself looking forward to the next trade.

Naturally, this creative team doesn't last long; Robinson is already departing the book. And DC Comics in general. Not that we should read anything into Robinson being the 27th or so professional with long-standing DC ties to run away from the publisher screaming!

I think I was most surprised by how good this turned out to be because Robinson, like Johns, is a writer whose best work for DC has been fairly grounded in arcane continuity and recycling and reusing the publisher's many pre-fab characters—generally, the more unloved and obscure the better—and doesn't exactly have a reputation for radical reinvention. But he does a pretty good job of recreating some of DC's best-known characters into something completely new here, fusing their Golden Age secret identities with more Silver Age power-levels and concerns and distinguishing his origins of them greatly from pre-existing versions.

•I remember making fun of the cover for the second issue of the series—which shows Jay Garrick running through a sewer, covered in rats—when it was released. The cover of issue #3 shows Alan Scott on fire, the flesh of his left hand literally burning off of the bone. The following issue? A crowd of zombies pulling Hawkgirl out of the sky.

I don't know what the idea of these particular covers were, but Earth 2 really seemed to go out of its way to advertise superheroics as something truly nightmarish (and, in all of the above cases, the cover makes the events inside seem much worse than they are; The Flash handily traps a bunch of vicious mutant rats in a garbage can, rescuing a couple being swarmed by them in an alley, in a two-page sequence of standard superheroics, for instance).

After the first issue, which shows the Trinity killing Parademons, it's not until issues #5 and #6 where the covers depict the heroes doing something heroic (Although, even in these images, being a superhero seems to be more about fighting for your life, rather than, I don't know, being able to run super-fast or to fly.

•Despite my initial revulsion to these designs when I saw some of them released on cover solicitations and so forth, I actually kind of like most of them. The Flash costume certainly lacks the charm of the original, and putting the character in such man-made looking clothing given his divine origins here (The Kingdom Come Flash is probably the best blessed-by-Hermes Flash design), the more time I spent with it the more I liked it.

The Green Lantern costume also lacks the flair, charm and individuality of the original, but rather works here, striking a compromise between the Silver Age costumes and the Kingdom Come green knight loook. This Lantern costume wouldn't work if Scott were still sharing an Earth with a half-dozen or so other Green Lanterns similarly attired, as he'd get lost in the crowd, but here he's his Earth's only GL, so that's not a concern.

I actually like Hawkgirl's look, and how much it differs from the original (specifically in the color scheme). It certainly sets her apart from all the the other Hawks that have preceded her, and offers a strong contrast to the colors of her teammates (although the trio haven't really formed a team of any kind by book's end), whereas if she were in her old green and orange orgold, she'd be sharing a color with each of them.

I even kinda liked The Atom's costume, which looks like a cross between the costume of post-Infinite Crisis Damage and that of G.I. Joe bad guy Firefly.

Grundy looks pretty dumb, but his original look would have seemed out of place here as well, given his function in the story.

As for the Trinity, Superman's costume is a vast improvement over his New 52 duds: He's lost his shorts (but has red "paneling" around his hips, not unlike the weird metal space girdle he wears in the Man of Steel movie), a different cut to his boots, and a much bigger S-shield, but otherwise he still looks like Superman. Much better than Jim Lee's high-collared, darker-colored, heavily-armored Superman on Earth-New 52.

Wondy's costume has quite a bit of tinkering, her tiara becoming a heavy-dut, heavy-metal headband that threatens to eat her face, and instead of a bracelet on her left-hand, most of the arm is covered in armor. She also wears a sort of battle skirt instead of shorts or pants.

I prefer even the New 52 version (which is basically just an over-accessorized, darker version of her standard costume) to this, but not by much, really; a toned-down version of this costume (which exists in the sketch gallery in the back of the trade) could have worked justt fine in The New 52.

Batman's costume is pretty drastically different, looking closer to Damian Wayne's future Batman costume than one Bruce Wayne could conceivably wear in a normal continuity, but it's kinda hard to judge Batman costume's too closely, since we've seen somewhere around 700,000 different Elseworlds Batman costumes.

The book ends with a six-page sequence of Scott's pencils (which are so great it seems a shame they had to be inked and colored at all), and nine pages of character sketches.

According to these, Jim Lee came up with the Solomon Grundy, Teh Atom, The Batman and a Steppenwolf (Although the one used int he story looks nothing like his version). Scott apparently designed The Superman, The Wonder Woman (the final version of which differs greatly from the one shown here, which basically just looks like the sort of Wondy costume that could have been put together in ancient Greece), The Flash (with several different lightning patterns and color schemes apparently run through) and The Sandmen. Joe Prado gets a credit for The Green Lantern.

•Hey, check it out! I finally figured out how to make bullet points!

Nicola Scott appreciation post

I'm a big fan of Nicola Scott, the pencil artist for DC's Secret Six book, and, before that, Birds of Prey. Scott's not the world's greatest cartoonist, and I rarely find myself completely lost in her linework, too busy appreciating the beauty of the individual panel to tear myself away and read the next one. Nor is her style so singular or flashy that I'd be able to pick it out of a line-up of other artists, the way I might other favorite artists, like, say, Kelley Jones or Tom Mandrake or Mike Allred.

But she's a really, really good comic book artist. She knows how to construct a panel, how to construct a page, how to construct 22 consecutive pages. She knows how to design a character. She knows what human beings look like under their costumes and clothing, and how their bodies work. She knows they differ from one another. She knows how to act through her drawings. She knows how to draw backgrounds. She even knows how to meet deadlines, with only one full fill-in required during her nine-issue run on Secret Six.

Team titles are notoriously difficult on some creators, on account of how much work goes into them. A Batman comic, for example, has one superhero for an artist to design and draw, and maybe a sidekick or villain. But drawing Batman in the Justice League, suddenly there are seven times as many heroes. Here Scott has to draw at least six super-villains per issue, and, unlike some artists, she makes them all distinct from one another ways.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone, critic or message board poster, ever say anything bad about Scott's work, but I also never hear anyone call attention to how good it is either. So I thought I'd take tonight's post to do just that: Hooray for Nicola Scott!

Her skill was more apparent than usual to me during this latest issue of Secret Six (which I talked about a bit on Wednesday night when reviewing my new super-comics).

In it, Catman, Bane and Ragdoll run around Gotham City fucking up a kidnapping ring full of what look like characters from one of those Tom Clancy videogames. Let's look at some panels, shall we?

Perhaps it's not really that remarkable that Scott distinguishes her characters so much from each other, given how different they actually are. Bane and Ragdoll, seen above on either side of Catman, are pretty divergent physical types, after all.

Ragdoll is visually a rather exceptional character (This would be Ragdoll II, a new version of the Golden Age Flash villain; I'm not sure who designed him, but J.G. Jones was the first to actually draw him his first appearance in 2005's Villains United). He's a contortionist who has had all manner of different surgeries done to his body to effectively make it so that he's something like quadruple-jointed...in every single joint. He wears a mask with a blank, frozen expression and a wig of doll-like yarn hair attached, but underneath he's bald and scarred, with big expressive eyes and a weird grin.

I assume he must be really fun to draw, and Scott rarely has him standing, sitting or walking like a normal person with a normal skeleton might, as you can see above.

Here he is killing one of his foes, in a manner I'm not sure I quite understand. obviously he's snapping his neck with his right hand, but he's also breaking other parts of him; perhaps he's using each of his limbs as a little python, and crushing his prey?
(Oh, I suppose I should also note that he's not wearing his usual costume; he's wearing a Robin costume over his usual costume, since this story takes place in Gotham City and all).

Here's a whole page, and it's a pretty great one. Click on it to make it bigger.

I love seeing several consecutive panels in which the "camera" is fixed on the same scene, with differences in the characters' positions and/expressions communicating that time is passing, and at what rate, as in the first three panels.

Note Ragdoll throughout those six panels too, and how wild his flailing motions are. In the second panel, he's a gangly cartoon character long, sharp limbs, then Bane is wearing him as if he were a feather boa, and then he's like a crouching insect crawling down the fire escape.

Also of note is the fourth panel, in which there's a nice sight gag allusion to the '60s TV show's Batman and Robin climbing up the side of a wall.

Here's an example of Scott's aptitude for violence and gore, a necessary skill in the modern DCU:
Ooh, that guy's arm is just hanging there. That's not even the goriest panel—the one before it, where Bane breaks the arm, is probably worse, as is a scene later where Bane tosses two severed heads through a window to spook the enemies on the other side of it.

I'm sure you've heard me complain about the violence of DC comics like Green Lantern and Teen Titans and JLoA before, but I don't mind it one bit in Secret Six, as it is a title full of obscure evil, psychopathic villains fighting even more obscure evil, psychopathic villain. Here torn-off heads fit in with the characters, and, let's face it, the Secret Six can't possibly be very high on the list of DC Characters Kids Would Really Want To Read About.

Because Scott draws people so well, the violence visited upon their bodies often seems quite effective, as it is immediately apparent from the way something is drawn what's happened, without her needing to resort to a geyser of blood. For example, on page five there's a panel of Catman driving his elbow into an opponents throat, and it's apaprent from the way Scott draws his spine that everything between the cin and chest has been shattered; she doesn't need to draw the spinal column ripping out the back of the neck to convey the fact that Catman's victim won't be getting up again.

Let's see, what else have got here... Oh, how about this?
Male superhero cheesecake! Or, wait, is that what the term "beefcake" applies to? I don't know for sure since I never see it in superhero comics. That's Nightwing telling the villains that they better be gone before he turns around, or there's going to be trouble. He says. I think he just wanted to show Catman and the others his butt. You know the reason Nightwing doesn't wear a cape anymore is because he wants everyone to see his butt all the time, right?

As much as I dig Scott's work, and liked this issue's art in particular, I didn't love every single panel. For example, i don't like her Catmobile design: I suppose it says "cat" as much as some of Batman's more abstract Batmobiles say "bat," but my favorite Batmobiles are the ones with giant bat heads on them and serrated wing-shapes on them, so I'd prefer a Catmobile with a big-ass cat head on the front, or at least painted on the hood.

And this isn't a bad panel by any means, but it got me thinking:
How come Bane doesn't have any armpit hair? We could assume he shaves or waxes, but look at all the hair on his chest and arms. Of course, it looks kind of stubbly, as if he had shaved his chest and arms at some point, and it just grew out. So maybe he does shave his armpits?

At any rate, Bane is gross; he either needs to embrace his hairiness and let it grow out, or, if he's going to shave and wax, he needs to keep up with maintenance when he goes out in public. Or maybe just wear a shirt with sleeves.

Yes, Bane is gross and Nicola Scott is awesome. And that's the end of my Nicola Scott appreciation post.



UPDATE: Johanna Draper Carlson at comicsworthreading.com also wrote about this issue of Secret Six today, and also has some kind words regarding Scott's skills. Check it out here. Carlson's praise is significant I think because she's pretty picky when it comes to what super-comics she reads, and I think may be even less enamored of gore and violence in her superhero comics than I am.