A few words about two new comics I'm probably not going to read anyway

There’s something kind of fascinating about Ultimate Comics X, or, as it appears on the cover of the book, “Ultimate X.” The image above was first revealed in a house ad, and its mainly notable only for the fact that the character being focused on looks to be an original one, albeit an original character with Wolverine’s claws on him.

The Ultimate/Ultimate Comics universe has been rather notorious in its inability to introduce brand-new characters instead of simply Ultimatizing versions of pre-existing Marvel characters.

Brian Michael Bendis’ sole new invention from Ultimate Spider-Man, a mutant high-schooler named Geldoff, immediately became a sort of punchline with which Bendis’ boss Joe Quesada could rib him with.

The Batman and Robin-like characters in Ron Zimmerman and Duncan Fegredo’s 2002 six-parter Ultimate Adventures, Hawk-Owl and Woody, showed some promise (the series wasn’t bad, at any rate). But they never appeared again.

The solicitation for Ultimate Comics X is extremely vague, but it seems to be spinning out of Loeb’s own Ultimatum (Which, sorry guys, I haven’t been able to bring myself to read, even for free from the library), and to deal with new characters in the Ultimate Universe.

Here’s the solicitation in full:

Who—or what—is Ultimate X? The answers and even more secrets arrive in the all new ULTIMATE X ongoing bi-monthly series from the superstar dream team of JEPH LOEB and ART ADAMS. Wolverine is dead. Captain America is a fugitive. The Fantastic Four disbanded. Lives have been destroyed and nothing can ever be the same—is there any hope left? It all begins with a search for a brand new character whose identity will leave jaws on the floor and change the Ultimate Universe forever.

The What the hell is going on here? element of the marketing, along with the promise of something original (well, somewhat original-esque) and the presence of Arthur Adams is sort of intriguing, but pretty much negated by the presence of writer Loeb, a $4 price tag, and the fact that even a bi-monthly schedule is probably way too much wishful thinking from this creative team.

This image really should have smothered any lingering embers of interest in the book though, Adams art or no Adams art:
That’s a scan of a house ad for the book, but it looks like that’s also a variant cover for the first issue (the solicitation mentions four variants, one of which is called a “Spoiler Line-Up Variant” by Adams).

You can’t really get more stereotypically ‘90s in your team make-up than two Bad Boy types (one of which is even badder than the regular strength Bad Boy type), a Sexy Girl and a Big Giant Strong Guy (Here a/the Ultimate Hulk, which may be of some interest maybe?).

I’m sure there’s an audience for ‘90s nostalgia comics, but I wouldn’t have expected Marvel’s Ultimate Comics line to be the place for it (Of course, inter-book crossovers, new numbering, variant covers and “foilogram” covers are similarly antithetical to the Ultimate line’s original reason for being, so perhaps it shouldn’t be all that surprising).

Anyway, that cover dashed whatever small hope the initial image gave me that this might be Marvel trying something rather radically new with the book.

Finally, I know it’s probably not all that fair to complain about superhero character designs being derivative in the year 2010—after almost 80 years of superheroes, just about every one of them is derivative of some other one—but I can’t really look at this guy, the one behind the blond Wolver-teen,

without seeing this guy
He’s Mongrel, a "darkforce-blasting African American-Vietnamese hero" who appeared during DC’s 1993 summer crossover event.

Loeb participated in the event, but he didn’t write Mongrel. Instead, he introduced Loose Cannon, a character who was basically The Hulk with a terrible haircut, but instead of green, he could change colors from blue to purple to red. Hey, wait a minute…!


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As long as we’re discussing comics shipping tomorrow that owe a great debt the comics of the 1990s, it’s probably worth mentioning Milestone Forever #1.

It’s a very strange project, and one I have to assume was dramatically scaled back from what DC and its principal creator, writer Dwayne McDuffie, must have originally had in mind.

Check out what DC has to say about it on dccomics.com:

DC Comics and Milestone Media entered into an unprecedented creative partnership 16 years ago this month by producing 14 interlocking, creator-owned titles including HARDWARE, ICON, and the multimedia hit that would best be known as STATIC SHOCK. Now, nine Parents Choice Awards, four Eisner Award nominations, and one Emmy and Humanitas Award-winning hit TV series later, Milestone is back, its continuity mysteriously merged with the DCU.

While we saw the DC side of the story in JUSTICE LEAGUE: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, the 2-issue MILESTONE FOREVER gathers the original artists from Milestone's launch titles – including John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Chris Cross and Milestone founder Denys Cowan – to complete the tales told in the original runs of STATIC SHOCK, ICON, HARDWARE, SHADOW CABINET and BLOOD SYNDICATE. Milestone editor-in-chief Dwayne McDuffie reveals the final fate of each of Milestone's launch characters in a bittersweet tale that chronicles the literal end of a universe and the birth of something new…with major consequences for the future of the DC Universe.

That sounds awfully ambitious, doesn’t it? Completing the stories of at five different ongoing series, while moving ahead with “the birth of something new”?

And yet all of that is going to be accomplished in the space of just two 48-page comics. That’s—wait, let me double-check on a calculator–only 96 pages. McDuffie introduced the Milestone characters into the DCU over the course of about six or seven issues of his run on Justice League of America—the collection of that story folding the one universe into the other is 176-pages long.

What really brought my attention to how, well, skimpy the Milestone book is going to be, the vast disparity between what it is apparently meant to accomplish and how much space is being allotted to it, was that I noticed this week DC is also shipping The Great Ten #4.

The Great Ten is an ideal example of the “Why is DC publishing this?” class of books in their line. It stars a group of minor characters from a 2006 event series that no one seemed particularly interested in reading much more about, it’s written by Tony Bedard, DC’s ill-used, go-to fill-in writer, and it’s drawn by Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens, DC’s main “These guys work fast, drop this in their laps” art team.

It is ten issues long.

So McDuffie and a half-dozen Milestone creators are given just 96 pages to reveal “the final fate of each of Milestone's launch characters in a bittersweet tale that chronicles the literal end of a universe and the birth of something new…with major consequences for the future of the DC Universe.”

And Bedard, McDaniel and Owens are given 220 pages to…I don’t know…keep an IP of dubious value in the public eye for the better part of a year? And by public eye I mean direct market retailers and maybe a few thousand of their customers According to The Beat, the first issue of The Great Ten moved only about 13,160 units, and sales are almost always all downhill after the first issue of a limited series.

Is this the worst Wednesday in recorded (by me) history?

Yes, yes it is.

Today is Wednesday, generally the very best day of the week, on account of Wednesdays also being New Comic Book Days. This is the day of the week I look forward to the way some people look forward to Fridays.

But today there are—gulp!—no new comic books! Now, that's a situation I've had to deal with before, there being no new comic books on Wednesday. Holidays will account for a comic-less Wednesday, there have a been a few cases where the weather was responsible, once or twice a shipment just plain didn't come in that day for some reason. That sucks when it happens, but it generally just means comic book day is pushed back until Thursday or, at worst, Friday.

But that's not the case this week. There are new comic books this week, quite a lot of them actually, but here's the terrible, terrible thing—none of them are comic books I wanted to buy and read.

I've lamented the fact that I'm buying fewer and fewer comic books and, without even really meaning to or wanting to, transitioning from reading comic book-format comics to reading trade-format comics (due to the advent of $4 comics more than anything else). And I've worried that what that meant was eventually I'd enter into this painful transition period during which there would only be a new book or two per Wednesday until I had quit reading enough comics long enough to start reading trades on Wednesdays, but I guess I had never foreseen a week in which a Wednesday would not bring a single new comic book I wanted to spend money on to read that day in that format.

But that day has come! I've been scouring the Diamond shipping list for the last few days, but just didn't see anything prompting a trip to the shop this week.

On my regular pull-list at the shop, only Secret Six is out, but I'm skipping this arc, as regular artist Nicola Scott—a big part of why I keep reading the title—has been replaced (for at least the time being) by J. Calafiore. Maybe my library will carry the eventual trade collection of this arc and I can see what I missed then.

There are a pair of DC's back-from-the-dead Blackest Night tie-ins, but neither seem at all interesting to me, particularly now that the the Blackest Night tie-in formula has been established in other tie-ins I've read. One is Catwoman, which DC practically announced would be so completely unimportant that the creators themselves are interchangeable (Whichever team ends up doing the book, I like either one okay, but not enough to overcome my lack of interest in the premise or characters, or my desire to have $2.99 to spend on other things).

The other book is Power of Shazam, which isn't by Power of Shazam creator Jerry Ordaway, but by writer Eric Wallace (whose name I can't place) and artists Don Kramer and Michael Babinski. I like Captain Marvel fine, but this one will actually star Black Lantern Osiris, and the "Shazam" franchise remains in disarray. Osiris' family of Black Adam and Isis are currently petrified statues, Billy and Mary Batson have been de-powered and the only Marvel is the post-Whatever Judd Winick Did Captain Marvael Jr., now going by Shazam I think...? (The solicit calls him "the new Captain Marvel" though, so who knows).

The J. Bone-drawn cover of this week's Super Friends looks pretty darling, with the various 'Friends all wearing cute little personalized astronaut suits, but Bone just provides the covers for this series, and I've found what lies beneath them tend to be pretty hit or miss.

Dark Horse has one of their easily-accessible, taste test style done-in-one "one-shot wonders" books out this week, Conan The Cimmerian: Weight of The Crown. It's written and drawn by Darrick Robertson and looks pretty nice, and I'd almost certainly buy it if I were in the shop anyway this week, but there's a same-ness to Conan comics that I generally find enjoyable, but not exactly something I'd make a special trip just to get a single issue's worth of, you know?

The Hero Initiative's Ed Hannigan: Covered book looks like it might be an interesting read (and certainly for a good cause), even if Hannigan's work was before my time, but, again, it's something to pick up while I'm already in the shop, not something that motivates me to drive there.

There are also new issues of Age of Reptiles: The Journey, Adventure Comics (Krypto! A dinosaur!), Black Panther 2 (Doom! Namor!), The Marvels Project, Invincible Iron Man, Spider-Man and the Secret Wars, Marvel Adventures Super Heroes, The Anchor and The Muppet Show Comic Book, but those are all things I've decided to read in trade for one reason or another ($4 price tags, preferring the format as applied to those particular stories, whatever).

Doc Savage: The Silver Pyramid, Calamity Jack, Olympians Vol. 1 and (especially) Torpedo Vol. 1 all look like they'll be worth a read, but those are collections and graphic novels rather than comics, and are thus a whole different sort of financial formulation for me—I tend not to buy such things on the Wednesday of release unless it's something I can't wait for and I happen to be flush with cash that week.

And that, that's the whole week. That's it. That's everything that's coming out. There is nothing for Caleb. No one published any comics specifically for me to buy this week.

Sigh...

Well, at least I just got this in the mail...

It is going to take every ounce of my willpower not to buy Cry For Justice #2 tomorrow

Because apparently this book isn't just going to continue to be bad, but it's going to continue to be spectacularly bad, like in a, "Jeez, I kinda wouldn't mind paying a couple bucks just to soak up all that badness and laugh at it" kind of way.

Here's a page from the second issue, culled from DC's Source blog (click to make it bigger, more readable and thus more laughable): Ah ha ha ha ha! Oh man, the hero worship of Hal Jordan on the part of the writers has gotten to the point where they're talking admirably of his sexual exploits! He had a threesome with half of the Birds of Prey team...?! (Fun fact: Lady Blackhawk is pushing 90). And this accomplishment is so legendary that everyone knows about it, even minor Batman villains!

Comics readers with Internet connections have long joked about how many modern superhero writers are just glorified fan fiction writers, and while I wouldn't classify James Robinson as such based on the body of his work, he's apparently not above literally engaging in fan-fiction of the lamest sort every once in a while.

How can you make fun of a professional comics writer for writing "glorified fan fiction" when they are literally being paid to write straight superhero sexytime right into their scripts? I guess I should be thankful that Robinson merely had his characters talking about the event, rather than including a scene where he demonstrates how virile and sexy that one superhero is by having him bang two superheroines at the same time, but still, ugh.


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Quick question for anyone who reads Hal Jordan and/or Huntress and Lady Blackhawk appearances religiously: Has Hal Jordan ever even met either of them in a comic before? I imagine they were all at Green Arrow and Black Canary's wedding before, and Huntress was one of the many totally random ex-Leaguers painted into the backgrounds of Cry For Justice #1, but I'm hard-pressed to think of an occasion when Jordan interacted with either on-panel. (He was dead at the time both characters started appearing in DCU comics with any great frequency after years out of the spotlight).

No Sale: Ultimatum #3

If you haven't been to the comic shop yet this week, when you do go, be sure to flip through the latest issue of Jeph Loeb and David Finch's miniseries destroying Marvel's Ultimate Universe (by making it so stupid and gross that no one would ever want to read another comic book branded with the word "Ultimate" ever again).

I haven't been reading this thing, on account of it being written by Jeph Loeb, but I'm kind of looking forward to borrowing the eventual trade collection from the library some day, as it looks so stupid and so gross that it looks like it could conceivably be enjoyable in a holy-shit-grown-men-made-this-and-other-grown-men-paid-them-money-to-make-it kind of way.

So, flipping through this particular issue, I saw...

—Hank Pym, now wearing his Marvel Universe Yellowjacket costume (because most of those writers charged with recreating the Marvel Universe for the 21st century for the Ultimate line have decided the best way to do that is to just ape whatever was done in the plain old regular Marvel Universe in the 20th century), grows to giant-size and bites off The Blob's head. The Blob, you may recall, ate the Wasp's intestines in a previous issue. So naturally Pym retalliates by eating (or at least biting off) part of the The Blob. Naturally, the way to retalliate against someone doing something unspeakable to a loved on is to do the exact same unspeakable thing to them.

—The Scarlet Witch, wearing a costume that includes thong panties, arguing with her dad. Given the fact that Loeb wrote about her incestuous relationship with her brother in his Ultimates miniseries (and, through the character Wasp gave the impression that siblings having a sexual relationship wasn't really a big deal), I was afraid to read the dialogue bubbles in that panel.

—The woman I assume is supposed to be Valkyrie has a hole torn in her top, which artist David Finch keeps drawing in different places in each drawing of her, and, although the rip is in a different place upon her breast in each drawing, it never reveals her nipple. Because Valkyrie doesn't have nipples anymore (?). I know the "gore/violence is okay, nipples and genitals are not double-standard" is nothing new in American pop culture, but it's especially striking in a story with this much gore and violence.


—Hank Pym gets skeltonized in some sort of explosion or energy blast.


I can't say for sure, but I think Jeph Loeb is trying his hardest to replace Geoff Johns as the perceived preeminent purveyor of superhero gore.

A quick word about a comic I didn't read today

I gave Faces of Evil: Prometheus a flip-through at the shop today. The Grant Morrison JLA run that spawned him remains one of my favorite comic book reading experiences, and I was kinda curious how DC planned to rehab the character after he was so poorly written in Batman: Gotham Knights and subsequent appearances. Essentially, he went from Morrison's conception as a kind of reverse Batman (criminal parents killed by cops, swears vengeance on the forces of law and justice) with Matrix powers (can download skills directly into his brain) to a run-of-the-mill henchman working under the Jeph Loeb-created evil plastic surgeon Hush.

What I saw was a pretty lame attempt at restoration by writer Sterling Gates—there were two Promethei, the original badass one and a more incompetent imposter—and some decent enough art by Federico Dalbochio. So whatever, a pretty run-of-the-mill, not terribly intersting looking comic book.

And then I noticed Anima was in it. I've mentioned her at least once before on EDILW, but for those of you unfamiliar, she was a teenage runaway character heavily influenced in design, fashion and tastes by the popular "alternative" music of her mid-90's origin. She debuted as part of DC's throw-a-bunch-of-new-heroes-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks "New Blood" event. She was one of the more sucessful characters from the event, earning a solo series that lasted 16 issues (two more than Gunfire, nowhere near as many as Hitman).

It wasn't the greatest book, and swathes of it don't hold up very well today, but I really liked it while it lasted, and, even looking back today from a 30+ year old's eyes, there are still a lot of admirable things about it. It tackled some tough issues—the heroine's best friend was a lesbian with AIDs, for example—in a way that was lightyears more subtle and effective than what you get in your modern Judd Winick comic.

Speaking of Judd Winick, he pulled Anima out of limbo to have her brutally killed alongside a bunch of other minor characters he didn't create in 2007's Titans East Special #1 (Check the comments section at that link for a few word's from one of Anima's creators about her origins).

So I was pretty surprised to see her in this book, being brutaly killed again.

I didn't follow Winick's new Titans series, because it was a Judd Winick Titans series, so I guess maybe Anima and all those other characters weren't actually killed-killed, just really, really, really, really badly hurt. Well, if Winick didn't finish her off, it looks like Gates does so here—as she gets completely cut in half.

So did DC pluck a minor character forgotten by all but a few fans, violently kill her off to show how bad-ass a villain was and motivate some other heroes to ge revenge in one book, forget about her for a year or so, and then bring her back to violently kill her off again to show how bad-ass another villain is...?

If not admirable, its at least endearing the way DC wholeheartedly embraces its decadence, isn't it?

No Sale: Marvel 1985 #1

It takes some real chutzpah for a company to charge $3.99 for a 23-page issue of an out-of-continuity, standalone story while in the midst of a line-wide, you-need-to-read-this-because-75%-of-our-titles-are-involved crossover story that will cost at least $315 to follow completely.

I can’t imagine it makes a whole lot of business sense either. Even if the series is written by the self-proclaimed best-selling comics writer of the 21st century, it will be running concurrent with three other out-of-continuity or continuity light series by the same writer, each of which is being drawn by a bigger name artist (Kick-Ass with World War Hulk’s John Romita Jr., Wolverine with Civil War’s Steve McNiven, and Fantastic Four with The Ultimates’ Bryan Hitch).

Which is a long way of saying I moved 1985 from my store pull-list to my mental wait-for-the-trade (maybe) list when I saw the price tag and page count. I know I’ve said this before, and I doubt anyone who can do anything about it is listening, but I’m going to repeat it because I like the sound of my own voice: A thicker cover stock isn’t worth an extra buck.

If you came to EDILW looking for criticism of the contents of 1985, “Best Shots” team captain Troy Brownfield has a well written—and less than glowing—review of it here.

I do like that cover; it gives off a Star Wars/Indiana Jones movie poster vibe.

No Sale: War Is Hell

Dear Marvel Comics,

Hey guys, how’s it going? I just wanted to drop you a line to say WHAT THE HELL?! When I went to my local comic shop this week to pick up the new releases that looked good, I couldn’t help but notice that you were charging $3.99 for War Is Hell: The First Flight of The Phantom Eagle #1.

Now, as an English major in college and a “creative type,” math has never really been my strong point, but I know enough of it to know that $3.99 is a whole entire dollar more than $2.99, which is what you guys normally charge for 22-page comic books. If I understand fractions right, that’s a one-third increase over the normal price of your normal 22-page comic books.

I picked up War Is Hell, felt its weight in my hand, and flipped through it, and while I suppose it’s possible that it was printed on an ultra-light paper that deceived me, it sure seemed to be your average 22-page page count. It didn’t even have a cardstock cover like Logan #1, that other comic book you jacked the price up to $3.99 for no reason for. At least in that case, I could assume you were spending more on cover-stock, and felt justified in asking readers to shell out a little bit more.

But why did War Is Hell cost so much? Is red ink more expensive than all the other inks, and thus a scene of a dude falling into a biplane propeller is more expensive to create?

Or is it simply because it is a Max imprint book, meaning there’s probably some swear words that appear in English instead of, like, “@#$%” you Iron Man, you @#$%ing @#$%!” and you want to discourage kids from reading it by making it more expensive?

Because if that’s your rationale, don’t worry. Kids don’t read Marvel Comics. And even if they did, I’m fairly certain their first choice isn’t going to be the one about the obscure World War I flying ace that their dad’s never even heard of drawn by that Chaykin guy who makes all the characters look fat and flat. I would assume they might gravitate towards something with Wolverine on the cover. Or Venom. Or Wolverine possessed by Venom.

Me, on the other the other hand, I’m the goddam target audience for this stuff. Garth Ennis? I love that guy. And everyone knows that other than stories featuring Irish vampire drinking buddies, sarcastic hitmen with x-ray eyes and hearts of gold and insane vigilantes killing mobsters with zoo animals, his very best work is that which involves war.

And I love Howard Chaykin’s art. And cover artist John Cassaday’s. Hell, this book even has my favorite letterer on it.

And having recently made my way through Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace and Ennis’ Enemy Ace: War in Heaven, I’m totally pumped about a WWI pilot story.

But why should I pay an extra dollar for it? Anyway, I guess I’ll just wait for the trade. Again.

Make mine $2.99,
Caleb

No Sale: Amazing Spider-Man #546

The devil on my left shoulder made the following arguments for not buying Amazing Spider-Man #546, the first issue of the new post-devil deal rebooted continuity “Brand New Day” initiative:

—Are you really going to be able to read a Spider-Man comic for a few months without hearing EIC Joe Quesada’s weird rationales in the back of your head? Hell, thanks to Howard Stern, you’ve even now got a voice to put to them.

—Are you really going to be able to read a Spider-Man comic for a few months without trying to figure out what the hell is going on continuity-wise now? You know you’re way too anal when it comes to there being actual sequence in your sequential art, consistency in your serial story-telling—wouldn’t reading “Brand New Day” Spider-Man just be like asking for a seizure?

—This thing cost $3.99, a $1 more than your average comic book. Sure, it's oversized, but that’s almost one-fourth a volume of Essential Spider-Man. Or a little less than half of this.

—Steve McNiven is drawing the lead story. Are you going to be able to read a McNiven-drawn story without being reminded of all the irritation you felt at Civil War? Look, your face is turning red with anger just seeing his name on the cover.

—Don’t you get all the Spider-Man you need from Ultimate Spider-Man and the occasional Marvel Adventures Spider-Man issue or digest? Just how many Spider-Man comics do you really need to read a month, man?

—And check that out: One of the back-ups has Mike Deodato doing his photo-referene a la Photoshop thing with an Osborn again...this time plopping the Ditko-designed hair on top of James freaking Franco. Not only is that stupid looking and horrifyingly lazy for a professional comics artist, isn't it also illegal? Franco owns his own likeness, after all...did he give Deodato and Marvel permission to "cast" him in this story, or are they profitting off his likeness without compensating him?


The angel on my right shoulder made the following arguments in favor of buying ASM #546:

—Two words: Dan Slott. Twenty-one more words: The lead story is written by Dan Slott, whom I believe you have a buy on sight rule regarding, don’t you? Remember how well Slott wrote Spidey in that one issue of The Avengers: The Initiative? Or that issue of She-Hulk where he tried to sue J. Jonah Jameson for slander? (Or was it libel? Or both?) Or Spider-Man/Human Torch? Dan Slott was born to write Spider-Man comics; are you really going to miss out on that just because his Editor-in-Chief can’t write his way out of a paper bag?

—You also tend to buy and enjoy everything with John Romita Jr.’s name on it, right? Well, he drew two pages of this.

—You’ve only been regularly reading Amazing Spider-Man since 2001, man; don’t act like you have a personal stake in whether the last 20 years of Spider-Man comics actually happened or not.

—This is the start of the triweekly shipping schedule for Amazing Spider-Man. You loved the structure of the weekly-shipping 52; this is going to be almost like that, only with better art.

—This is also the beginning of Steve Wacker’s tenure as the editor in charge of the Spider-Man franchise. He edited 52, one of the most enjoyable comics-reading experiences of, like, your whole life. Surely this is going to end up being worth checking out, right?



They both made some valid points, and I admit I was more than a little torn.

Then the devil on my left shoulder countered with, “Look, I wasn’t going to say anything at first but come on; this thing has Greg fucking Land art in it. Checkmate.”

To which the angel on my right could only meekly reply, “Dude, he’s right. Greg Land is just awful. Forget it.”

Why I'm not reading Death of the New Gods

I really like Mister Miracle and Big Barda and Orion and, as a glance around the joint will attest, I'm awfully fond of the DC Universe in general. You know what one of my favorite non-Jack Kirby Fourth World stories of all time is? Cosmic Odyssey, written by Jim Starlin. And yet, I just can't bring myself to try an issue of Death of the New Gods, an eight-part series written (and drawn) by Jim Starlin, which promises to close out the saga of Kirby's New Gods characters and give the original Mister Miracle his first extended shot in a spotlight since...when, 1996?

Why is that?

I think a large part of it is that Death Of... is part of the larger, line-wide story DC's been telling lately, mostly through Countdown. That's where New Gods and other Fourth World hangers-on have been seen getting killed for the last six months or so, although a few of the New Gods characters have also played pretty big roles in Amazons Attack!, a book so bad I still can't believe DC published it. And part of it is just how poorly DC's handled the New Gods characters for the last few years. I remember during convention season in '05, reading Dan Didio answering questions about the relative lack of New God-age or Darkseid in Infinite Crisis, and the intimation was that there was a plan. In fact, the characters did seem to be missing altogether for a while in the DCU, conspicuous in their absence, and then all of a sudden they were everywhere again, with little thought to why or wherefore.

The Grant Morrison-penned Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle series was ignored just about everywhere, and it was unclear how it fit into the larger DCU (Were Shiloh Norman and Scott Free both Mister Miracle now, or what?). Jeph Loeb was constantly using Darkseid in Superman/Batman, and it appears he and Orion and others are in the current arc of the now Loeb-less series. Metron and others popped up in Blue Beetle. Lightray was in Kurt Busiek's "Camelot Falls" storyline in Superman. Big Barda joined Oracle's team in Birds of Prey. The Female Furies were in issues of Hawkgirl and Firestorm the same week, looking completely different in each sereis. Countdown is and has been completely lousy with Fourth World characters, including the death of Lightray early on...an event that was pretty much ignored everywhere else.

In short, DC seems to have a plan, but to not be following that plan all that well, which is something I as a reader find extremely frustrating, a worst-of-both-worlds kind of scenario, where you get the sense you're reading about editorially mandated plot points jammed clumsily into stories where they don't really fit, and the creators responsible for trying to make the mandates work are kind of flying by the seat of their pants, serving someone else's plot rather than a story they want to tell.

Beyond that, however, is the fact that death in the DCU has been so devalued, that the idea of a huge chunk of that fictional universe being (clearly temporarily) destroyed couldn't be any less dramatic or appealing to me. I mean, they brought Ice back to life, it's not like they're going to leave Jack frigging Kirby creations dead. They brought Jason Todd back to life, without much of a plan or story to tell with him (Under The Hood, Countdown, a cameo in World War III, that one issue of Teen Titans and that one Nightwing arc don't cratively justify undoing portions of the last 20 years worth of Batman comics, do they?). Why would anyone believe that they're actually going to permanently kill off the New Gods?

My disinterst is further compounded by the fact that DC is being so upfront about how meaningless and unimportant Death of... and the related Countdown books really are. I mean, they're calling the book Countdown to Final Crisis; other titles are called Countdown to Mystery and Countdown to Adventure. How about just some mystery, adventure and a final crisis? Why must we readers shell out time and (a lot) of money just to mark time until Final Crisis?

If the creators of Final Crisis, Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones, were at all involved in Countdown/Death of the New Gods, the investment of time, money and interest might make more sense. But they're not; Morrison's not co-showrunning Countdown, and Death of... isn't "based on concepts and ideas by Grant Morrison" (as the credits for Metal Men, Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters and The All-New Atom read). Starlin, Paul Dini and the small army of people involved with the Countdown story are merely moving pieces around the board, getting ready for Morrison to do whatever he wants in Final Crisis, something that will almost certainly involve a continuity reboot of some kind—at the very least, it will involve resurrecting Barda, Lightray and the other major New Gods, if they're not brought back to life before then.

Didio promises as much in this week's "DC Nation" column: "And while we may be closing the book on the Fourth World, fear not: soon, very soon, I will be able to tell you more about Final Crisis and the coming of the Fifth World."

Which reminded me of this seven-year-old comic, also by Morrison:



Check out Metron's dialogue in the second panel in particular. "When the Fourth World universe of us New Gods is made complete and put away the gods of the Fifth World will arise from this planetary cradle."

The return of the New Gods in Final Crisis (again, if not sooner) is as inevitable as their deaths in a book entitled Death of the New Gods, which makes watching that death not seem all that dramatic, unless you're the sort who wants to know how they die, or what a dark Mister Miracle looks like, or how well-suited Starlin is to draw Kirby characters (not as well-suited as Mignola, from what I've seen).

Of course, knowing the ending before you get there is endemic to superhero comics, isn't it? For the most part, when The Joker breaks out of Arkham, we can be fairly certain he's going to fail to kill Batman, and get sent back to his cell by the time the story's over. When Lex Luthor develops a new device to finish Superman once and for all, we know full well that Superman will survive and triumph over his foe. But we read anyway, interested in how it turns out the way we know it will end up turning out. And, while The Joker won't kill Batman, he did kill Robin that one time, and cripple Batgirl that other time. Luthor was elected President of the United States, something readers didn't see coming. At their best, superhero can still surprise jaded, cynical, adult readers who grew up reading them, which is why the comics industry, as represented by The Big Two, continues to focus almost exclusively on catering to jaded, cynical adult readers who grew up reading them.

The problem with Death of the New Gods, I think, is not just how predicatable its ending is (they all die and, eventually, all come back), but just how prosaic everything leading up to it seems. Maybe Starlin has brougth the cool and cosmic craziness missing in the earlier parts of the story that I've read (In Countdown, Birds of Prey, etc.), but so far we've just seen an unknown killer (who looks like Infinity Man), blowing holes in people's chests (I was struck by the fact that this week's JSoA features an unknown killer stalking and killing minor DC characters. And that the first JSoA arc had the exact same set-up. And that the first JSA arc, when James Robinsin and David Goyer relaunched it in 1999, had the exact same plot as well).

Even worse? Countdown gave an explanation for what lies on the other side of the Source Wall.



In Kirby's mythology, that was a pretty big game-ending mystery, right up there with the exact formula of the Anti-Life Equation. The other side of the Source Wall was some big secret the gods were always trying to discern, but it could never be breached, and those that tried and failed were imprisoned forever in it (Although some, like Ares and Darkseid would escape). Coutndown has come out and told us what it is. Not ultimate knowledge, not God, not a tantalizing never-to-be-revealed Maguffin, but just the multiverse. If Darkseid had ever breached the wall, he simply would have found himself on Earth-15, the place where Jason Todd became Batman. Or Earth-3, the world that's like "Earth-2" in the Anti-Matter Universe or like Earth-3 in the old, pre-Crisis multiverse, only slightly different.

That's it. That's the big mystery. Man, would Metron and Darkseid be pissed if they found away around the wall and ended up meeting Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew for their troubles.

What's lame about this, other than solving a mystery posed by Kirby that was better left unsolved (It's like when we finally found out who killed Laura Palmer; after that, there's nowhere to go but down) is that a) It doesn't make any goddam sense (The Source Wall and the Source obviously existed long before the current iteration of the multiverse, which is about a year old at this poing) and b) Jason Todd, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, Good Monitor, Bad Monintor, Captain Atom, Monarch, Forerunner and apparently Ray Palmer have all been jumping around the Multiverse, somehow crashing the Source Wall without even realizing it, and thus doing something that Darkseid himself has never been able to do, no?

Why is DC turning something as crazy and potent as Kirby's Fourth World saga into such mediocre super-comics? I think I have a clue. In reading Didio's column this week, I was really struck by this part, in which he talks about how he first discovered Kirby's Fourth World comics:



I remember picking up my first MISTER MIRACLE; it had an incredible two-page spread where our hero was about to be crushed in a pair of giant pliers. Certain death, but Scott Free wasn't called the greatest escape artist for no reason. No sooner than the cylinder he placed himself in was crushed, he was found standing and smiling behind his two closest friends (and no, I still have no idea how he made it out of there alive). Okay, as silly as it sounds, I was hooked.



Did you hear that? The "Okay, as silly as it sounds" part? Man, it doesn't sound silly at all, and to kind of confess sheepish embarassment at it is tantamount to confessing not really getting what it was that hooked you (and plenty of others, young and old, in the first place).

It doesn't sound silly; it sounds awesome!

If a pair of giant pliers sounds silly to you, how are you going to take seriously a planet called "Apokalips" With a K, ruled by an evil god named "Darkseid," which has the likes of Vermin Vunderbarr on it? How can you take seriously the Black Racer, or an escape artist named Scott Free? That "silliness"—or gonzo, stream-of-conscious pop mythology made on the fly—is what makes the Fourth World characters, like just about everything else Kirby created, so appealing in the first place. It's not something to feel guilty for liking, and made darker, more adult and more realistic in order to feel less guilty about; it's something to be celebrated, magnified and multiplied.

It's just six words, but, whether he meant it or not, I think Didio let slip one of the main problems with the current state of the DCU. One of its main architects and caretakers, the one behind so many of the other architects and caretakers, too often forgets what he liked most about it himself as a kid, and wants to make the universe he oversees something that would appeal to him now, if he'd never read comics as a kid. He seems to regard DC Comics as they were back in the day as a guilty pleasure. But what's there to feel guilty about? Why can't they just be a pleasure?

No Sale: DCU Infinite Holiday Special

After long moments of reflection, and a very, very thorough flip-through (which included reading the last story in its entirety), I ended up leaving the DCU Infinite Holiday Specia on the shelf this week.

Why, you ask?

I’m glad you asked, let me tell you. At great length.

In general, I love big, fat, giant-sized books like this—annuals, DC’s 80-Page Giants from a few years back, Marvel’s “Giant-Size” specials—and I love Christmas comics. That paired with my enthusiasm for the DCU should have made this purchase a no-brainer for me, but of the seven stories in this anthology, there was a problem with almost every single one of them. I either didn’t care for the character, or I didn’t care for the creators, or I didn’t care for the current take on the character, or, in a couple cases, all three.

Let’s break it down:

Green Lantern by Keith Champagne and John Byrne: Jordan is not my favorite of Earth’s Green Lanterns. In fact, he’s my fifth favorite. Champagne is a fine inker, and, as he proved during his fill-in stories on JSA, a decent writer, too, but I’m already getting stories featuring this Lantern twice a month in Green Lantern and JLoA, so a third dose didn’t exactly excite me. As for the penciller, well, the less said of Byrne’s latest round of DCU work the better, although I will note that the artwork on the story didn’t look like that of John Byrne to me during the flip-through.

Supergirl by Joe Kelly and Alé Garza: No complaints about the creative team here. Kelly is a hell of a writer, and his recent Superman/Batman Annual was cover-to-cover fun. And I do like Garza’s art; he did a fantastic job on Batgirl near the end of the series, although few people seem to have read it (particularly those writing and editing Bat-family books at the moment). But Supergirl? Bleah. I gave the most recent Maid of Might a fair shake, I think. I read the entire six-part “The Girl From Krypton” arc in Superman/Batman, and kept waiting for Jeph Loeb to pull the rug out from under me, as I knew full well her origin couldn’t be as cut-and-dry as he presented it. But he never did. I even read the first five issues of her solo title, which was nothing but a series of fights with other DC heroes, but Loeb still hadn’t pulled the rug out from under me. Then I just gave up, dropping the title and seeking to avoid this vacuous, scantily clad cypher of a character.

Shadowpact by Bill Willingham and Cory Walker: This was one of the more tempting short stories in the book. I never really got Shadowpact, which seemed to be a less clumsy, less necessarry name for the Sentinels of Magic team, and didn’t bother with their monthly series, based on how terrible Day of Vengeance and its Infinite Crisis tie-in special was. I liked the image of Phantom Stranger wearing a Santa hat, and the idea of Santa interacting with Blue Devil, but my aversion to Willingham’s DCU writing outweighed my interest in these images.

Shazam by Tony Bedard and Marcos Martin: Well, I suppose it could be less attractive; it could be a Marvel Family story written by Judd Winick, but, in this case, it’s the direction of the character more than anything else that repels me. I find it ironic that DC has launched this radical new half-assed direction for the Marvel Family, changing Captain Marvel’s name, look, purpose and place in the DCU at the same time that 52 and Justice are making such good use out of the Marvel characters in the classic mold (and Jeff freaking Smith has a high-profile Captain Marvel project waiting in the wings). Cooler heads will eventually prevail I’m sure, and this weird-ass take on the character will soon be undone and forgotten, but, in the meantime, it means ignoring Captain Marvel—er, “Shazam,” until someone smarter than Winick gets a chance to chart his future.

Flash by Ian Boothby and Giuseppe Camuncoli: See above. I was still getting used to the idea of Bart Allen trading his codename and personality in to become the new Kid Flash when DC shunted Wally West off to limbo and rapidly aged Bart into the Flash for absolutely no reason. Unlike the ill-considered new directions thrust upon Captain Marvel and Martian Manhunter, I haven’t even given the Bart Flash a chance, as I expect this direction to be changed even more quickly.

Batwoman by Greg Rucka and Christain Almay: I loved Rucka’s Oni work and much of his Bat-stories, particularly his post-“No Man’s Land” run on Detective Comics, but in the ramp-up to Infinite Crisis, his stories were one let-down after another. Between Superman, Wonder Woman and The OMAC Project, it was increasingly clear that Rucka had very little familiarity with any of the characters he was writing, and next to none with their convoluted histories (what we comic geeks like to call “continuity”). And that would be somewhat excusable if the stories themselves weren’t built on continuity. The surprises, the twists and turns, if you will, of them all was seeing turning points in relationships, betrayals by close friends, and were all precipitated on an understanding of who the characters were and how they related to one another (Max Lord and Blue Beetle’s long relationship in the pages of Justice League comics, Batman and Sasha Bordeaux’s past romance in Batman comics, etc.), which made it all the more infuriating when about 50-percent of that was wrong. For a perfect example, see the last issue of the last volume of Wonder Woman, the whole point of which is an examination of the historic relationship between Wonder Woman and Superman, and which has at least one mistake per page on it. All of these stories were set prior to the Great Continuity Re-Jiggering that reformed Post-Crisis Earth into “New Earth,” and the only explanation for them is that Superboy-Prime’s escape from “The Heaven Dimension” (No, really, that’s what they call it; and sorry, but I can’t type that name without quotes around it) altered the timestream (i.e. continuity), as was half-assedly explained in Infinite Crisis Secret Origins and Files #1. Anyway, long story long, I had resolved to avoid Rucka DCU stories. And that’s what this is.

Superman and Batman by Kelly Puckett and Pete Woods: The “Elseworlds” slug in the hilarious last panel makes over obvious that this Ironic Age take on the Silver Age Superman/Batman team shouldn’t be considered “continuity,” but it’s funny nonetheless. Six more stories like this, and the book would have been a must-buy.

That leaves us with just two more aspects to take into consideration: The cover and the official holiday greeting.

Let’s take that latter one first. The last page featured a splash drawn by...Phil Jimenez?...which shows DC editorial, with Dan Didio front and center with a holiday greeting. Funny stuff, and a very busy image, one that sure beats the hell out of Ralph Machio’s letter in last week’s Marvel Holiday Special (In a DC vs. Marvel sense, this book does seem to be a better value, in terms of story pages to dollar amount ration). Note the female editor embracing the alpaca in the background; I take it that’s Jann Jones, who’s fondness for alpacas is a running joke in Didio’s “DC Nation” columns. (Don’t forget Ms. Jones; I’ve got a sweet proposal for an Alpaca Man comic book!)

Now about that cover. Howard Porter’s new “Shazam style” is an interesting evolution in the artist’s work; it was about the only thing I enjoyed in the Brave New World preview and first issue of Trials of Shazam. This image is in that style, but its composition seems a little off, with the characters sort of randomly situated on it. What really scares the hell out of me is that crazy look on Superman’s face, those rosy cheeks, that glazed look in his eyes. Coupled with the giant sack of presents held above his head. I get the feeling he’s about to hurl the gifts at me, crushing me to death.

Finally, what’s up with the title change? When the project was announced, and discussed with Newsarama, it was called Infinite Christmas Special, which was a play on the name of Infinite Crisis, the logo of which this books logo references. In fact, if you look it up at dccomics.com, you'll find it's still called DCU Infinite Christmas Special. But when it hit the stands this week, it had become the Infinite Holiday Special, which essentially neuters the joke. Not that it was a terribly clever joke, but it was funny in a bad joke sort of way. The new title is simply nonsensical. Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson and maybe even Hawkman would not be amused.