Superman's origin vs. Superman's origin

The first page of 2006's All-Star Superman #1, by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Jamie Grant and Phil Balsman

The first page of 2018's Superman #1, by Brian Michael Bendis, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Alex Sinclair and Josh Reed.

The first page of Bendis' first issue of the newly relaunched Superman title--following his contributions to Action Comics #1,000, DC Nation #0 and his six-issue Man of Steel story, includes a recap of Superman's origin and the relevant events leading up to the current story, and I found it revealing just how different it was from Morrison and Quitely's famously succinct retelling of Superman's origin in their All-Star Superman (which one could probably argue was still eight words more than needed).

Only the first half of the first narration box on this first page covers the exact same ground that Morrison and Quitely did, but it takes about 25 words. And that's followed by four more narration boxes. I wanted to draw the comparison not to suggest that Morrison's strategy was superior to that of Bendis', but simply to compare the two, which couldn't be more different, despite telling the same story about the same character at the same point in their respective runs on a Superman book.

Certainly, both are very emblematic of the creators involved--Morrison doing something weird and leaving a lot up to the imagination of the reader, Bendis using a lot of words, so many that they threaten to overwhelm the artwork--but both are equally valid. What was compelling about Morrison's origin at the time was that it was basically unnecessary; he knew that everyone knew Superman's origin, and thus he didn't even really need to tell it at all. I said it was eight words too long because, if you removed Morrison's captions, I think that page reads just about the same, and a reader gets all the necessary information. But maybe even the art is superfluous, because surely anyone reading a comic book, anyone who has ever heard of Superman, knows those basic points of the character.

What I find interesting about Bendis' strategy is the idea that there is no assumption of a reader's familiarity with the character, even on the most basic level, or that a reader might have been aware of recent Superman history (that Jor-El is alive, that Superman has a son), or the story Bendis just got done telling the previous week in Man of Steel.

DC, and/or Bendis himself, seem to think that Bendis' presence on the book will be drawing all kinds of readers who are completely new to the character, perhaps new to comics, which seems to me to be vastly overestimating Bendis' pull. Bendis is, of course, a pretty big deal in comics, and I'm sure that all sorts of people will be reading this issue of Superman who weren't reading the previous few issues, but it's hard to imagine Bendis' arrival bringing in large numbers of people who weren't already reading mainstream, Big Two super-comics that they purchased on a Wednesdayly basis from their local comic shop.

In other words, the audience Bendis is likely to draw is one that is already in the direct market, they just might have been reading Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men and New Avengers instead of Superman and Action. In that regard, I think the arrival of Gene Luen Yang to the Superman franchise a few years ago was a much, much bigger deal, and one that was much more likely to attract new readers to Superman, to DC and to the direct market that Bendis moving from Big Company A to Big Company B, but Yang's arrival wasn't treated as so much of an occasion, likely because how notoriously difficult it is for DC (and Marvel) to see comics and their place in the medium and industry from the outside.

Regardless, here are two different ways to kick off Superman runs from two of the more popular and more divergent writing talents in the modern direct market.

The triumphant return of Kite Man (and friends)

I remember an interview with Geoff Johns that ran on Newsarama maybe as many as ten years ago at this point, which would have been several editors, site redesigns and owners ago, so I'm not even going to attempt looking for the link. But in the interview, the person asking the questions of Johns noted his impressive ability to take some of the most minor, silliest DC supervillains and make them scary. Apparently seeking to test the limits of his ability, she chose one of the most minor, silliest villains she could, Kite Man, and asked what he would do to turn him into a "serious" villain.

Johns didn't seem to miss a beat, seemingly wondering aloud if maybe Kite Man could be a serial killer who built kites out of the bones and treated and stretched-out skins of his victims.

Good answer, I guess, but it's stuck with me since, because it was such a dramatic shift from who Kite Man was created to be. Bill Finger and Dick Sprang made him a villain who used a variety of kite-related gimmicks to commit crimes and, in a telling detail of just how "serious" a threat he was meant to be, his civilian identity was Charles Brown, which he shared with a comic strip character who famously had a hard time with kites.

Not every supervillain needs to be a grisly serial killer of the Leatherface variety. It's the Crazy Quilts, Killer Moths and Calendar Men in Batman's life that make The Jokers so scary. A large part of what makes Batman such a vital character at this point is the wide variety of his adversaries, which range from organized crime types to monster men to would-be world conquerers to serial killers to terrorists to mad scientists to legitimate supervillains to silly costumed types. In 2016, there are very few Batman stories a writer can't tell, and chancse are, there's already a villain or 17 to drive a conflict in that story.

So it was fun to see the return of Kite Man after some absence (he was killed off, at least twice, between Identity Crisis and Final Crisis) in the pages of Tom King's Batman; he returned in the sixth issue of that series, which was drawn by Ivan Reis and Oclair Albert.

That scene at the top of the post accounts for almost his entire appearance in the book; on the very next page the super-powered Gotham Girl grabs him by his kite and crumples it in her hand, taking him into custody.

Not only was I relieved to see that he wasn't riding a kite made of human skin and bones, but when these sort of old school Silver Age villains are played completely straight in the more serious modern comic book narratives, they become at once both humorsous and also seem a lot more insane. Like, dude just used an extremely expensive home-made kite/hang-gliding rig, risked his life and caused a few thousand dollars worth of damage just to steal a single pearl necklace. It's easy to see that guy ending up in an asylum, whereas you know the president would be ordering drone strikes on the likes of The Joker and Scarecrow at this point.

Now, Scott Snyder and John Romita Jr. have rightly been getting lots of praise–including from me!–for rehabbing and revitalizing a bunch of minor villains in the pages of their All-Star Batman, but it's worth noting that King and company are doing their part with this issue, as well.

In addition to Kite Man, Gotham Girl also takes down Colonel Blimp and Captain Stingaree (that's him on the page above). The former is a 1982 Paul Kupperberg and Don Newton creation who uses blimps to steal (Chris Sims will happily walk you through his first appearance) and the latter is a pirate-themed crazy person created by Bob Rozakis, Michael Uslan and Ernie Chan for a 1976 story in Detective Comics.

Interestingly, King only gives them each a page or two, but with similar stories as those of the villains' original appearances apparently having occurred off-page (Stingaree, it should be noted, was written pre-Flashpoint by Brad Meltzer in the pages of his short-lived–and terrible!–run on Justice League of America, where Meltzer made Stingaree a closeted homosexual in a relationship with his fellow sword-weilding, fancy dress-wearing Batman villain The Cavalier, who Black Lightning blackmails. Not very PC, guys!).

So King managed to reintroduce three minor Batman villains and keep their stories in tact while transplanting them into a current Batman narrative, and he did it in about six pages of a 20-page story, which is actually about Gotham Girl going a little loopy after the events of the previous five issues, and Batman trying to comfort her. But the Kite Man page at the top of this post? It's by far the best of those 20 pages.

Sometimes I wonder about this woman.

Wonder Woman was created in 1941, was one of the very first female superheroes to have her own comic book, was one of the first comic book superheroes to have a television show based on her adventures and is one of only a handful of characters, along with Superman and Batman, whose comic book has been in continuous publication since her debut. Month in, month out, you would find a Wonder Woman comic book at the newsstand, or on the spinner rack, or on the comic book shops shelves almost every month for the last 73 years.

Despite two cycles of sustained popularity as a film genre, however, Wonder Woman has never appeared in a feature film like her peers Batman (nine films and counting), Superman (six films and counting), more recent characters like Spider-Man (five), Iron Man (four), Thor (three) or The Hulk (three). Even footnote comic book characters from the Big Two superhero universes like Blade have made it into theaters—repeatedly. (And this weekend I Marveled at the fact that I saw such relatively recent, minor characters like Bishop and Blink appear in a major motion picture, before which played a trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy, which is filled with characters from among the most obscure corners of the Marvel character catalog).

The reason usually given for this is that doing a Wonder Woman movie would be too hard or too complicated; Warner Bros. apparently turned down a proposal of a Wonder Woman film set during World War II (like Captain America: The First Avenger) by the guy who would go on to make Avengers instead. I don't know that that's necessarily true. As a character most people have already heard of an know a lot about, there's no reason to think a Wonder Woman movie would be any more difficult or complicated to tell than one starring John Constantine, or Green Lantern II or Jonah Hex.

But sometimes when I'm reading a DC comic, I'll come across a scene that portrays Wonder Woman in such a bizarre light, as a shrill, savage, bloodthirsty warrior more akin to Marvel anti-heroes like Wolverine or The Punisher that I'm kind of glad that Warner Bros hasn't attempted a Wonder Woman film yet (I mean, they had Superman break a guy's neck, imagine what their Wonder Woman would do!), and I think I even sort of see why they think the character might be hard to build a film franchise around.

It might have something to do with the fact that they have no idea who Wonder Woman is. I certainly don't recognize the woman in the scene below, written by Geoff Johns, DC's chief creative officer:

From Justice League #30; art by Ivan Reis, Scott Hanna and Rod Reis

That is Wonder Woman beating down the cyborg villain Metallo in an attempt to find Lex Luthor, who, as she says in the first panel of the third page, deserves to have her "sword in his throat." (The context shouldn't really matter that much, but I suppose it's worth noting for those of you who are interested. Why does Wonder Woman want to find and maybe kill Lex Luthor so badly? No idea. When he was last seen, in the pages of Forever Evil #7, he and his associates had defeated the entire Crime Syndicate and saved the world in the process; he then proceeded to perform brain surgery on Wonder Woman's ally and current boyfriend Superman, saving his life).

What's particularly frustrating about this scene isn't just how crazy Wonder Woman seems—and hey, this being comics, maybe she's actually the Crime Syndicate's Superwoman masquerading as Wonder Woman, or a White Martian shape shifter who has replaced Wonder Woman, or any number of other explanations, but this scene sure scans with the violent, semi-psychopathic Wonder Woman we most often see strangling people with her lariat.

No, what's frustrating is that she is trying to get information out of a bad guy by beating it out of him, when she's carrying a magical lasso that compels bad guys to give her information if and when she bothers to use it on them, instead of her fist, foot or blade (She does eventually use it on Metallo, off-panel; apparently she needed to beat the bejeezus out of him and argue about due process with Flash on-panel first). Wonder Woman, unlike Batman or even Superman, doesn't ever really have to intimidate or slap-around a perp in order to interrogate them; she only has to get her hands dirty when she wants to. Which seems to be pretty damn often.

A few thoughts on Batman and Owlman, in light of Batman Vol. 2: City of Owls and Forever Evil

In 1964, the Justice League of America creative team of writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky introduced The Crime Syndicate of America, villainous counterparts to the JLA from the parallel earth of Earth-3, where the events of history were reversed in more-or-less random ways (In Earth-3's version of the Revolutionary War, for example, British colonists declared their independence from America, and so on). Therefore rather than having a team of superheroes, like the League's Earth-1 had, Earth-3 had a supervillains, who were a lot like their Justice League counterparts, but not quite (Ultraman instead of Superman, Superwoman instead of Wonder Woman, and so on).

Batman's opposite number was Owlman, who wore a blue and gray costume somewhat similar to Batman's costume, but instead of a cowl he wore what looked like a toupee made out of an owl's head.

In 1999, writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely reintroduced a new version of the "Crime Syndicate of Amerika," this one hailing from a parallel earth within the Anti-Matter Universe in their original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2. The team roster was the same, but the characters were a little more thoughtfully designed, tweaked to more closely parallel their JLA counterparts, and some of them were given fuller back stories.

One of these was, of course, Owlman, who was now revealed to be Thomas Wayne Jr., older brother to Bruce Wayne. On their world, Bruce and his mother Martha Wayne were killed in that alley, while Thomas and his father, Thomas Wayne Sr., the police commissioner, survived. Blaming his father for the death of his mother, Thomas grew up to become the criminal mastermind of Gotham City, Owlman, and went to war with his father.

Morrison, who always showed a zeal for in-story allusions and/or Easter eggs, was in fact referencing an old, Crisis On Infinite Earths-rendered apocryphal story from a 1974 issue of World's Finest by Bob Haney, Dick Dillin and Vince Colletta.

In "Wipe The Blood Off My Name!", Batman pursues "The Boomerang Killer," only to discover it is actually his older brother Thomas Wayne Jr, who was severely and permanently brain-damaged in a childhood car accident, and confined to an asylum (I guess it was a very specific type of brain damage, which causes those who suffer from it to eventually grow up to become killers?). Bruce's parents had every intention of telling him about his criminally insane older brother they put in an asylum when he was old enough to understand, of course, but then there was that whole murder in an alley thing.

Fast forward to 2011, when Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo take over the relaunched Batman. Their first year's worth of stories is dedicated to The Court of Owls, a sort of semi-legendary Illuminati pulling the strings behind everything going on in Gotham City, a secret organization so secret that even Batman didn't know they were real. In addition to naming themselves after owls, wearing ceremonial owl masks and using a lot of owl themes in their decor, they also command a small army of elite, undead assassins in owl costumes that they refer to as "Talons."

At the climax, it is revealed that among their more prominent members is mayoral candidate Lincoln March, who Capullo draws to look a lot like Bruce Wayne. And with good reason!

March claims to be Thomas Wayne Jr., Bruce Wayne's younger brother, who was still in Martha Wayne's womb when she was in a terrible car accident. Born early and severely brain-damaged, he was put in the "Willowood Home For Children" (In Haney's story, Thomas Wayne Jr. was in the "Willowood Asylum;" like Morrison then, Snyder was heavily referencing the now non-canonical early '70s story). Feeling abandoned by his parents and older brother, Wayne/March was raised by the Court of Owls to inherit the Wayne empire. That didn't quite work out, nor did his run for mayor, so he ultimately makes a play to seize control of the Court of Owls, even going so far as to give himself the Court's undead-making super-secret super-serum, the one reserved for the virtually un-killable Talons. Then he puts on a fancy new Talon suit; "Something tough and modern," he says of it, " Something to rival the Batman."

While he never goes by that name, Snyder and Capullo's March/Wayne dons a fancy owl costume and essentially becomes an owl man. (As to whether or not he actually is Thomas Wayne Jr., Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth are certain that he is not, that Bruce's brother actually died from the wounds sustained in that crash, but Bruce says he can't know with 100% certitude until he gets a DNA sample, and March/Wayne disappears during their climactic battle, in the fashion of many supervillains—presumably killed, but with no body discovered).

Then, in 2013, writer Geoff Johns re-introduced the new, New 52 version of The Crime Syndicate, who are once again from Earth-3, a parallel world where many aspects of the DC Universe is "reversed," including the fact that the heroes are villains and the villains are heroes. This Syndicate also has an Owlman, and as Johns reveals in issues of his Justice League of America, the new Owlman of Earth-3 is still Thomas Wayne Jr., now once again Bruce Wayne's older brother.

In Johns' origin story, the two Wayne children—Thomas and Bruce—conspired to kill their own parents, and, on the night when they were shot to death in the alley, Bruce had last-minute, second thoughts, so Thomas Jr., conspiring with Alfred Pennyworth, kills his mother, father and little brother. He then grows up to be Owlman.

So this is strange.

On the "real" Earth of the DC Universe, which I'll call Earth-New 52, there is a heroic Bruce Wayne defending Gotham City as the superhero Batman, and a villainous "Owlman" who is—or at least claims to be and presents a pretty good case for being—Thomas Wayne Jr.

And on Earth-3, the reversed world where good is evil and evil is good, Bruce Wayne was good (well, he was a spoiled brat who considered killing his parents, but he wasn't as evil as his brother), and a villanous Owlman who is really Thomas Wayne Jr.

In that respect, at least, the worlds aren't opposite at all. Thomas Wayne Jr./Owlman is a bad guy on both worlds, just as Bruce Wayne/Batman is a good guy (or at least not a bad guy) on both worlds.

So exactly how long has DC been working on (and tinkering with) "Trinity War"...?

Here's a badly-scanned image of one of the four double-page splashes in today's Justice League #23, the climactic chapter of the "Trinity War" storyline:

Does the Ivan Reis-penciled image of Superman ramming a column into Green Lantern Simon Baz while Batman scampers about with Pandora's skull-shaped box and various Justice Leaguers all fight one another look familiar to you?

If so, then you've probably read DC's 2012 Free Comic Book Day offering DC Comics—The New 52 FCBD Edition, which included this four-page, gatefold image drawn by Jim Lee as part of Geoff Johns-written story:

(Or maybe you didn't, but remember seeing the image online at places like, oh, Robot 6 or ComicsAlliance, to randomly pick to comic book blogs I contribute to).

I think there's a couple of significant differences worth pointing out, aside from the fact that the Reis image from the mid-2013 JLA #23 is only two pages and includes about ten more heroes than the four-page, early 2012 image from Lee, some of which may hint at things that have changed about the story and the comic books it played out in during the year and a half or so since the two artists drew the two images.

1.) Lee didn't draw the one that appeared in JLA #23; I wonder if, in 2012, DC expected Lee to still be drawing Justice League by the time "Trinity War" reached its climax? Because he only lasted about two story arcs (the initial six-issue origin story and "Teh Villain's Journe"), with some fill-in issues between them.

2.) The sheer number of heroes involved has grown considerably; it looks like the original image reflected a fight between two rather than three Leagues (Deadman is the only member of Justice League Dark in the Lee image), and the Justice League of America line-up might have consisted of different characters at one point (Of the JLoA, Katana, Catwoman, Steve Trevor, Stargirl and Martian Manhunter are all missing).

3.) Mera is in the Lee image, but doesn't appear at all during "Trinity War"...save for about a two-panel cameo, including her appearance in the Reis image. That's not Mera in the Reis image, though; it's Martian Manhunter who apparently decided to take Mera's form to sneak up on and clobber Aquaman rather than just, you know, turning invisible. I assume the scene was written to explain Mera's presence in the Lee image.

When Justice League first launched, it seemed like Mera was one of the characters who were supposed to join the team shortly after the first arc: She appears on the cover of the first issue of the series, along with Deadman, a male version of The Atom that has yet to be introduced into The New 52, Element Woman, Hawkman and a female character identified in interviews as Will Eisner's Lady Luck, whom I don't think has ever appeared yet either.

Of those, only Element Woman actually joined this team. (Mera's the floating female head in the lower right corner; the one that's wearing a vaguely crustacean-looking tiara).

Of course that cover image, which was used on two of the eleven variant covers for Justice League #1, also featured an earlier version of Wonder Woman's redesigned costume that didn't actually make it into any of the comics either.

4.) The Jim Lee image features an obviously male version of The Atom, while The Atom who would join the Justice League and appear in the Reis version was female and had a fairly different costume, which allowed her long hair to flow out the back of the cowl.

5.) Captain Marvel/Shazam's costume in the Lee image—that is Cap and not Black Adam, despite the colors—is wearing a not final version of his redesigned costume. The one in the Lee image has the more traditional collar instead of the hood that he would ultimately end up with.

6.) Superman's looking awfully healthy in that Lee version, rather than as gray as he does in the Reis version. In fact, looked-at completely out of context, the Reis version looks like it could be depicting Bizarro in a backwards Bizarro costume.

7.) Released in May of 2012, the Lee image was the first appearance of both Green Lantern Simon Baz (who debuted in September 2012's Green Lantern #0) and the New 52 version of Vibe (Justice League of America's Vibe #1 launched in February of 2013).

Clearly Johns has been working on this storyline for quite a while, and had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen at the end, at least in so far as a few key elements of the action were written in one form or another quite a long time ago (Batman having the box, everyone fighting regardless of team affiliation, Deadman attempting to possess Shazam, Superman smashing the new Lantern with a column).

And just as clearly a lot has changed since Lee put pencil to paper to draw that gatefold image teasing "Trinity War."

Meanwhile, at ComicsAlliance...

Hey, are you guys reading the big Justice Leagues crossover story, "Trinity War" this summer...?

I am.

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

That's an Ivan Reis penciled image of Aquaman's trident impaling one of Black Manta's henchmen—From behind! It takes a real superhero to literally stab a dude in the back, in a sneak attack!—in this week's Aquaman #12, one of the three comics Geoff Johns wrote that DC released this week, which I covered at Robot 6, if you'd like to go read it. I'll probably cover two of those books at greater length in the next few days in my next installment of "Comic Shop Comics," but in the mean time, please visit that link for all of your Caleb-bitching-about-the-same-old-shit needs. (Or wait, am I the only one with that particular need...?)

Is superhero decadence a chronic condition?

The following panels are from the story "New World Order," the first story arc in Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA run, and they were first published in 1997: Two members of The Hyperclan, a group of alien superheroes who have come to earth and effectively replaced the Justice League, suddenly, violently turn on Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, who muses about how much comic book superheroes have changed over the years. Instead of just robbing banks and suchlike, they threaten to cripple you and attack your loved ones (In his first adventure as Green Lantern, Rayner's girlfriend was brutally murdered by a supervillain, who then stuffed her corpse into their refrigerator, giving birth to the term "women in refrigerators").

Rayner's Morrison-penned observation about how cruel and evil supervillains were getting appeared in a couple of comic books from 15 years ago.

This year, in an issue of Justice League, a series that replaced the series that replaced JLA, its current writer Geoff Johns wrote the following scene, in which a villain tortures Steve Trevor and threatens to murder his family if he doesn't tell him how to break into the Justice League's headquarters:

That same month, the same writer wrote this scene, in which the villain Black Manta threatens to kill a heroine's family, after he finishes murdering her:

I suppose one could say that nothing's changed much in 15 years, but that wouldn't really be true. Fifteen years ago the Justice League writer was commenting on the trend in a dismissive fashion, essentially ridiculing the writers of the time, whereas today the Justice League writer is writing his super-comics in the same fashion that Morrison felt compelled to comment negatively on back then.

Super-comics aren't standing still, they're devolving.

Gross Cover Image of the Day #2:

This is the cover for Earth 2 #2, which should ship in June. It appears to be by Ivan Reis and Joe Prado (the signatures are kinda hard to make out, but that looks like their work, the signatures look like theirs, and they provided the art for a previously released cover for Earth 2 #1).

And the subject of the cover is The Flash Jay Garrick, who used to look...different.
(Above: How The Flash Jay Garrick used to look)

That Ivan Reis image of Garrick stumbling and shreiking through a sewer full of mutant rats is apparently the character's "New 52" redesign, which, in keeping with the theme of "New 52" redesigns, looks completely sarcastic, like a smart-ass artist ironically redesigning a classic comic book superhero costume into something they think an idiot might draw for other idiots to enjoy.

It is especially funny that the first image is supposed to be the updated version of Flash Jay Garrick's costume, since Flash Barry Allen's costume was itself an update of Flash Jay Garrick's costume, and that update is 56-years-old (In updating the update, Jim Lee basically just added a chin strap and some random lines strewn throughout it).

I am really excited to see how terrible Earth 2's Green Lantern Alan Scott and other Golden Age heroes' costumes will look!

Alan Scott's superhero costume was one of the worst of the Golden Age—seemingly thrown together with whatever he could find after he broke into a costume shop long after it closed, rifling through the nearest shelves in the dark—but it was also one of the first to be so bad it was actually kind of cool: Red sweatshirt with iron-on logo, purple cape, domino mask, green pants, gladiator sandals over his red boots...despite having a color in his actual name, he didn't even settle on a color scheme.

During the actual 90s (as opposed to our current era of 90s nostalgia), DC tried revamping the character into something less 1940s and more 1990s, and came up with this: (Yes, that's Jim "Tarot, Witch of Black Rose" drawing Green Lantern Alan Scott!)

Scott wore a variation of that for a while—they later replaced the Green Lantern logo with a green starburst symbol—but DC ultimately reverted to his original costume, thinking an updated, streamlined, "bad-ass" version of the costume was sorta silly, and didn't fit the character as well as his classic duds.

What will he look like on Earth 2...?

And I can't wait to see how they "modernize" (90s-ize?) the others.

In an interview, James Robinson specifically mentioned The Atom Al Pratt, whose Golden Age look was a blue face-mask with no eye-holes and a leather combination girdle/pair of shorts (later updated so he had a mask he could see and breathe in, with a fin on top).

What about Ted "Wildcat" Grant, who dressed like a cat?

Or Johnny Thunder, who dressed like a typical teenager—sportscoat, bow-tie and slacks—and who was always accompanied by a whimsical wish-granting genie shaped like an anthropomorphic bolt of lightning?

I have a good feeling that Earth 2 is going to be an awesome comic book! To look at. From far away.

Ivan Reis' Scarecrow

Last Wednesday's Blackest Night #4 featured a five-panel appearance by one of my favorite comic book characters, The Scarecrow:
Geoff Johns must be rather fond of the character too, as he gave him a similar cameo in his last big ring-related cross-over story, "The Sinestro Corps War" as well. I discussed my affection for the Scarecrow at probably way-too great length at the beginning of 2007's Scarecrow Week, but if you weren't reading back then, I'll simply restate that one of the things I like so much about the character is how visually versatile he is.

Like Batman himself, The Scarecrow can look completely different from artist to artist, and yet still look "right." Because his costume is simply a homemade scarecrow costume, there's virtually no wrong way to draw him, and artists therefore have a pretty free hand when it comes to putting this classic Batman villain down on paper.

Anyway, that's Reis' version above.

What do you guys think? I'm not terribly fond of it, myself. It looks a little too much like a realistic version of the the later Batman: The Animated Series costume...and are those tennis shoes on his feet? That's the least scary type of footwear of all!

I do like seeing Black Lantern Azrael trying to scare him by saying "Rraarrrr!" like a little kid making a dinosaur roar, though. And the "Aiiieee" scream in the last panel. Does anyone ever scream "Aiiieee" outside of a comic book...?

And here I thought all the weird tension between them was because of their political differences.

So what I get from this panel is that Hawkman wants Green Arrow's ass, but he'll settle for Hal Jordan's...?

Oh and also Hawkgirl likes to watch.



(Panel from DC's Blackest Night #3 by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Oclair Albert)

Hey Kids! Com--Aw, nevermind, that joke's not even funny any more, is it?

So this is probably the goriest image I saw this week's new super-books (at least the ones I read).

I know I often complain about how incredibly gory Marvel and DC books can be these days, but I don't necessarily think this panel from Green Lantern #37 is that bad. At least in context.

Sure, it's hard to imagine every parent who found their kid reading a book like this being pleased about it, but not any harder than it is to imagine a kid reading a book like this in the first place (I could be completely wrong about this, since I know so few actual children, but it seems to be that kids regard John Stewart as Green Lantern, whereas only us old people know/like/care about Hal Jordan...those four or five episodes of The Batman notwithstanding).

This is part of the "Rage of the Red Lanterns" story arc, and the Red Lanterns are men, women and weird aliens who wear special magic rings which take over their bodies, forcing them to vomit up all of their own blood, and then replaces it with new blood that the ring itself creates and pumps. The Red Lanterns projectile vomit this magic hate blood, which burns like napalm.

This issue, about the blood-vomiting Red Lanterns, takes place on their home planet, a world covered in oceans of blood. So a panel of a Red Lantern getting blasted open by an energy beam? Not all that out of place. Complaining about it seems a little like complaining about all the stabbings in a slasher flick (Although I suppose a historic argument could be made that perhaps Green Lantern shouldn't have reached a point where it can even be compared to a slasher flick, but I'm not going to make it).

But I do have a bone to pick with this image, which was drawn by Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and our Julio Ferreira, and colored by Nei Ruffino.

As I stated before, the Red Lanterns' rings completely purge their wielders/hosts of their own blood, and replace it with this viscous, red, napalm-y stuff they puke out (See this issue's charming cover, for an example).

So this poor purple lady getting killed in this image, the only blood she should have in her body would be the red stuff, not whatever color purple space lady blood is. (Is that fuchsia? Hot pink? Puce?)

And yet, in this very gory panel, in which we see a veritable geyser of gore gushing from her wound, her blood is very clearly this pinkish-purplish colored stuff, not the same red stuff that is spewing from her mouth.

Did DC decide to color her blood purplish because the panel looked just way too over the top violent with red blood, as everyone knows alien blood isn't as gross as human blood? Does the yellow light of Sinestro's power ring shining on her blood make it look a lighter, brighter color? Or did Sinestro's ring beam, rather than simply exploding through her like a missile, liquefy her purple body as it passed through and HOLY SHIT WHY AM I EVEN THINKING ABOUT THIS STUFF?!

See, this is why I kind of love Geoff Johns:

It takes a special kind of writer to create a Blue Lantern Corps when you've already got Green, Yellow, Red and Violet Lantern Corps running around.

And then, not only to fully commit to such a silly-sounding idea like seven armies representing the colors of the rainbow making war on one another in outer space with magic rings and bad poetry, but to go ahead and just make Hindu deity Ganesh a Blue Lantern as part of your rainbow war storyline in the Green Lantern comic book?

How can you not respect that kind of chutzpah?

The only other Blue Lantern so far is a fish-faced, George Lucas-esque alien who designates himself as a saint, so the Corps consists only of Space-Ganesh and either a space-Catholic or possibly a space-Mormon.

Will the BLC be nothing but alien versions of Earth religious figures and adherents? Ganthet, the Guardian of the Blue Lanterns, tells Hal Jordan he wants him to eventually lead the team, so will Geoff Johns' irrational love of Hal Jordan lead to him making Jordan into the one, true, capital-G god?

I honestly can't wait to find out.