adventures of superman (2013) #3

by Justin Jordan & Riley Rossmo

DC's digital-first books tend to fly under the radar, at least where the Every Wednesday Crowd is concerned.  (I actually understand these books are doing quite well for DC, but they may not be reaching the same people that the in-continuity books do.)  I'm not really into the video game or TV show tie-ins but the Legends of the Dark Knight series is very good a lot of the time, and so far Adventures of Superman seems to be a hit as well.

We're up to #3 of AoS now, and each issue has featured a standalone story largely divorced from continuity.  Superman's in his pre-New 52 trunks etc.  Each story has been better than its predecessor so far, and keep in mind we started with a one-off by Jeff Parker & Chris Samnee.

This most recent issue is a Bizarro story, wherein Bizarro is being all.. uh... bizarre, and Superman steps in.  Not exactly a novel setup, of course, but the twist here is the way Superman approaches the problem.  [SPOILER ALERT]  Instead of fisticuffs, Superman designs an ingenious task for Bizarro to perform off-Earth, a task which will keep him busy for several years and thus prevent him from causing any harm on Earth.  

Beyond being an elegant and charming short story, Jordan shows here that he "gets" Superman in a way the modern books rarely do.  There has been a tendency, really since the Byrne Era, to pit Superman against baddies who are more and more physically powerful, all the better to show tremendous fight scenes with great visuals.  And that's fine, I guess, but there's a level on which it misses the point of the character.  Those silly Silver Age Superman stories?  The ones we all love ironically now?  Go back and look at them and marvel at how rarely Superman actually punches anything.  It happens, every so often, but it's far more common in those stories for Superman to use his powers in other ways.  He's not a pacifist but he's not especially quick to violence, either.  And really, isn't that the only way the character really has much appeal?  We already know Superman hits harder than anyone else.  We already know he's physically stronger than anyone else.  Showing him punching out bigger and bigger bad guys is boring, isn't it?  But having him use his wits to solve a problem in a novel way - that's cool.

There's much talk out there about how Superman isn't "relatable" because he's so powerful, which I always find weird because I don't really need Superman or anyone else to be a reader identification figure in order to enjoy his exploits.  Superman's power set isn't a hindrance to him, though - it's what makes him so cool.  He's hardly the only character you can use in a "solve the problem"-type story - heck, most DC Comics published in the 50's and 60's did this kind of thing.  But Superman's toolbox is bigger than anyone else's.  He has more powers, and thus more creative ways to use those powers, and *that's* what makes him awesome.  If you reduce him to a run, jump, and punch superhero, he becomes one of many.  As a problem-solver, he's one of a kind.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the wonderful job Riley Rossmo did with the art here.  His linework is just incredible, even where his backgrounds are sparse.  Here it looks like he's adapted his style a bit - it's less scratchy than Bedlam or Green Wake, which seems appropriate given the subject matter.  By the way, the three artists so far on Adventures of Superman?  Chris Samnee, Jeff Lemire, Riley Rossmo.  Just saying...

If you're a fan of Superman but not necessarily loving the modern incarnation, give the digital book a look.  So far it's stellar, and #3 was the best one yet.

on the activity

Reading list: The Activity (2012) # 1-6

There aren't a ton of straight-up modern war comics, and fewer still that are in the mold of The Activity, an ongoing Image series by Nathan Edmonson & Mitch Gerads.  This series is in some ways a throwback while in others completely modern.  It's not something that will be for everyone but I found it interesting and wanted to share a few thoughts about it.

Post 9/11 fiction tends to do one of two things with military stories.  Either it over-romanticizes soldiers out of a sense of patriotism, or it portrays them as overly corrupt and morally tainted out of a sense of... whatever instinct drives people.  Ideas about what makes for good drama or compelling characterization, I guess.  That first type of story isn't really something I find appealing in fiction.  Yeah, I've read a Brad Thor novel.  It wasn't great.  

The second type of story is more interesting to me, but it becomes tedious when that's all that's out there.  It's like how religious figures in most stories end up being corrupt - the idea is it's playing counter to the reader's expectations "OMG I can't believe the dude who seemed to be upstanding and respectable turned out to be the bad guy!", except that after the fiftieth time you see the trope, it's just a trope.  

The one long-running comics property that straddles this line is, believe it or not, G.I. Joe.  Even with Joes and Cobras switching back and forth all the time, the Joes generally are portrayed as morally upstanding, patriotic types. The individual characters may lack depth, but they make up for it with spectacle, and with all the Cobra in-fighting and internal politics.  But - and look - I love G.I. Joe - but look - it's ridiculous.  Always has been.  I've said before that it's a superhero book disguised as a war comic.  There are Joe stories that work as war stories but it's not where one would look for military authenticity most of the time.

The Activity fills a niche, in that context, that is otherwise untouched by most modern comics.  The premise of the series is that The Activity is a special-ops US military force that undertakes a variety of missions around the globe, some of which are politically problematic.  The first volume, containing the first five issues, introduces us to the main team and their support personnel, and even has some of the political behind-the-scenes action as well, but reads less like a long-form narrative than a series of vignettes and short stories.  It's very episodic in a way that most modern comics - and especially most Image comics - are not.

The series eschews most of the gritty trappings of classic war comics as well, heading in exactly the opposite direction.  Gerads' art is very sleek.  The book is colored in bright, bold hues.  Modern tech is very much on display and in use.  The warfare isn't cleaned up, but you won't confuse it with an old movie on AMC by any stretch.  

Edmonson only hints at deeper backstories and/or personalities for the seminal characters.  We see a bit of it here and there, either through flashback or in short scenes.  There are no mystical ninjas or anything like that here, though - these are highly-trained men and women who are professionals in their field, and they act like it.  There's no narcissism, no romantic entanglements on the team - this is their job and they do it to the best of their ability (but not always flawlessly).

Each story makes a point about warfare and/or the art of soldiering, but those points are all over the map.  One story may be about a field leader's decisions being influenced by failure earlier in his career.  The next could be about the nature of teamwork itself, and the necessity of forgiveness when someone screws up in the field.  Sometimes, the point is that you can do everything right and still fail due to factors completely beyond your control.  Each story HAS a point, though, and each issue gives the reader a complete experience.

The result is something that doesn't fit squarely into either of the two categories noted above.  It's not a flag-waving piece of propaganda, but it doesn't feel the need to load its characters down with unlikeable qualities in the name of realism either.  I can't really speak to its degree of authenticity as I'm simply not knowledgeable enough to do so, but it sets up interesting conflicts and setpieces and delivers generous doses of both action and drama.

nick fury: agent of shield classic vol. 1

by Bob Harras, D.G. Chichester, Keith Pollard & more

collects Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD # 1-11

the premise:  Former superspy Nick Fury is pulled from retirement when his long-time allies come under attack from.. well, that would be telling.  With SHIELD defunct, Fury and his remaining allies must... do stuff.

the lowdown:  It's been awhile since I did a straight-up TPB review around these parts.  This one has been sitting around unread since I picked it up last summer, and I finally got to it recently.  Presumably it was released to catch the coattails, just barely, of the Avengers movie.  Marvel doesn't have a huge backlist of Nick Fury material, at least not modern material.  Not sure this really counts as "modern" either given that it was released in 1989 but other than the various Garth Ennis books, they haven't got much else.

So anyway, this book is an oddity in many ways.  First is that it is a relatively rare example of a Marvel series that was in-continuity when it was published, but which has since been deemed non-canon.  This book opens with [SPOILER ALERT] the death of both Dum Dum Dugan and his wife.  This is the fridging moment that spurs retired Nick Fury back into action.

Second, despite the big honking "Volume 1" on the indicia, this isn't the beginning of the story.  It picks up events that, I'm told, occurred in the Nick Fury vs. SHIELD maxiseries that preceded it.  I have never read that series - I remember a reference to it during the Mantlo/ Buscema Incredible Hulk but have never sought it out.  The events of that series aren't absolutely crucial to an understanding of this book but I can't help but think they'd help.  Picking this one up is sort of like starting a play with the third act.  Put another way, it's like starting with Return of the Jedi - right down to having a character that could double as an Ewok.  (More on that later.)

Third, and this may have been hinted by the previous paragraph - this is a really f***ing weird book.

OK so, Nick Fury - he goes back and forth between being a soldier, a spy, and a superhero, right?  He's got a foot in all three of those worlds, which is a mean feat considering he's only got two, uh, feet.  (FEET!  FEAT!  FEET!  Sorry.)  This book can't seem to decide which of those things it wants him to be, and so attempts to have him be all of them at once.  Fury and the various other SHIELD characters of the time - minus poor Dum Dum - are being attacked and killed by adversaries that clearly are not normal human beings.  They end up tracking down the bad guys only to learn that the whole thing is tied to one of Fury's Howling Commando missions from WWII.  Except that there are aliens involved, one of whom has been raised to be an Ewok I think, but the aliens are being corrupted by the evil thoughts of the bad guys Fury fought in WWII.  Then for good measure, they start time-traveling, or at least experiencing the sensations of time travel, and reliving the event from 1944 (which involved the systematic slaughter and execution of an entire town).  For these bits, Fury changes appearance so that he is a soldier and his eye is back.  The other members of his group are mostly unchanged in appearance, and actually at one point it's suggested that they're not time traveling at all and are actually in a cell - except that they split up and go all over the place while they're "in the past".  So they're trying to defeat the aliens or rescue the aliens from the real bad guys.

Look - it's possible I didn't completely understand this story.  That may be down to my lack of reading comprehension abilities.  It's also possible that the reason I didn't understand it is because it doesn't make any goddam sense!  If you squint, you can kind of see what they were going for here.  It's a Steranko spyperhero book with a dash of Kirby circa early 70's.  Suffice it to say that Bob Harras, who I'm pretty sure was being paid by the word for these issues, isn't quite the equal of Steranko or Kirby where the whole "making comic books" thing is concerned.  It doesn't help that the series loses its artist, Bob Hall, after one issue.  Hall at least had a quasi-Steranko/ Neal Adams thing going on.  Throw in some psychedelic coloring and it works a little, at least.  But he's replaced by Keith Pollard who, and I mean no disrespect to Pollard as he is a capable artist - but c'mon, if he was ice cream he'd be vanilla vanilla.  With extra vanilla.  He's just not the guy to illustrate your weird and possibly incoherent story about alien Ewoks who can make people think they're time traveling.

So I dunno what happened after issue #6, but Harras left the book at that point.  Pollard stayed on and D.G. Chichester, who is well-known as the guy who thought it'd be cool to have Daredevil wear armor, took over the scripting.  I kid about Chichester but his issues are a noticeable improvement.  The weirdness is gone in favor of a much more straightforward spy story, complete with a terrorist known as Leviathan (who probably was working for Talia).  Pollard's art is much better suited to this type of story, and what follows is a halfway readable if still kind of generic superspy yarn.  The final issue collected here is a fill-in by Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy, neither of whom I was aware had ever worked for Marvel.  So that was strange.  Apparently it happened though.

It's certainly a strange experience reading this alongside, say, Fury MAX (which is brilliant).  This book is, well, not.  Why Marvel wasn't emulating G.I. Joe in its approach to SHIELD around that time, I will never know.  Maybe they didn't want to compete with their own book since they were publishing G.I. Joe as well.  There's so much overlap between the properties, though - and heck, DC was having a good run at the time with espionage books like Suicide Squad and Checkmate.  It's just hard to imagine the boat being missed any more completely than it was.  I think they tried to fix it after Chichester came aboard, but by then it was far too late.

the verdict:  I read this one, so you don't have to, okay?  I appreciate a good car crash or an interesting failure as much as the next guy, but this really isn't even that.  It's just a rather woefully inept attempt at a spy/ superhero comic.  You really have to go pretty far afield in a Marvel comic to get retconned away. Usually Marvel just ignores its embarrassing shit until it wants to use it in an ironic way.  That this series got out-and-out retconned away should tell you something.

Incidentally, Marvel will never again fool me by putting the "classic" moniker on its books.  The last time I fell for that I ended up with the War Machine book where he fought Deathtoll.  That was at least fun in a goofy way.  This one had alien Ewoks and fake time travel.

on the manhattan projects

Reading list: The Manhattan Projects # 1-10 (Jonathan Hickman/ Nick Pitarra)

Bonus reading item: Los Alamos (prose novel by Joseph Kanon)

Jonathan Hickman has played with alternate history narratives before.  The excellent Pax Romana featured time travel being used to alter world history and ensure the continuing dominance of the Roman Empire.  His latest entry into that area, The Manhattan Projects, takes a bit different approach but delivers a thoroughly entertaining and immersive alternate world.

Right off the bat, Manhattan Projects deviates from the usual formula for these types of stories, and removes itself from the sub-genre.  The premise of the series, for those who don't already know, is that instead of the Manhattan Project being the one with which we're all familiar, the atom bomb was only the tip of the iceberg.  What if, the story asks us, the true project was much larger in scope?  What if it wasn't one project at all, but rather a whole pile of projects that pushed the boundaries of science beyond anything to which we are accustomed?

But that's not where Hickman stops.  This series is populated with a variety of historical figures, but all of them are dramatically reimagined and recast.  [SPOILER ALERT]  Oppenheimer himself, the key figure in issue #1, is actually his psychotic brother who has consumed the "real" mccoy and assumed his identity.  Harry S. Truman is a crazed Freemason.  FDR is... well... an artificial intelligence.  (It's complicated.)  And so on.  So even though these people have recognizable names, they're entirely fictional characters, which leaves us reading about an alternate version of the Manhattan Project populated by completely made-up people - in other words, bringing it back around to straight fiction rather than historical fiction.

(Contrast this with the novel Los Alamos, which was published over a decade ago but which coincidentally I read recently.  Oppenheimer is a character in that book as well, and is a relatively key figure in the story, which features a murder mystery set in Los Alamos.  Now, for all I know Kanon's portrayal of Oppenheimer is completely fictional as well - without having known Oppenheimer it's pretty difficult to judge - but even if Kanon did take liberties with real people's personalities, there's enough attention paid to historical detail that the reader can accept this as a fictional story that "happened" in a real place.  Whereas Manhattan Projects is a fictional story that occurs in a fictional place.)

None of that is intended as a criticism of Manhattan Projects, by the way - just a cautionary note.  This series does not feature the measured attempts at historical... accuracy.. is the wrong word, but something along those lines - a feeling that the story is happening in our world as it might have been with one additional twist, such as in Pax Romana.  Manhattan Projects' use of historical figures is fun, but only the sense that it adds to the madcap batshit nature of the story being told.

And madcap and batshit it certainly is, in both presentation and scope.  The first issue features Oppenheimer being eaten by his psychotic brother, and we go from there.  Only a few issues later, aliens get involved.  This is a world where anything can and does happen, but most of it occurs to advance the theme of Science Gone Bad.  The danger with a world full of craziness is that it loses its verisimilitude, just becomes so ridiculous as to seem random.  But this is a Hickman comic, so rest assured not only is *nothing* random, but quite the opposite - the world has been thought out in intricate detail.  Never is this more apparent than in issue #10, the only issue to date not illustrated by Pitarra.  (Ryan Browne does the honors.)  #10 focuses entirely on Oppenheimer - the real one - the one who got eaten - after he got eaten and "woke up" in his brother's brain.  An entire issue is spent setting up the landscape and inner workings of Crazy Oppie's brain, and it's glorious.  Gloriously insane, to be sure, but glorious nonetheless.

Pitarra's work is very reminiscent of Geoff Darrow's, in my mind.  His figures appear largely two-dimensional, almost as if they don't cast shadows.  The work contains an exquisite amount of detail, including no shortage of gore where the script calls for it.  Large portions of the story utilize a limited color palette, with red and blue used as opposite poles.  The continued use of the unique color scheme minimizes the disconnect felt when Browne steps in on #10.  Though it could be called cartoony in places, Pitarra's work is wonderfully expressive, his characters possessed of a cynical intelligence and an unreserved glee in their behavior, even when said behavior is abominable.

At ten issues and counting, Manhattan Projects is Hickman's longest creator-owned work to date, and in terms of structure it has more in common with Fantastic Four or Secret Warriors than it does with the rest of his Image work.  Here he demonstrates the same.. shall we say.. leisurely approach to pacing that's on display in his long-form Marvel work, and that can be frustrating at times.  Pitarra's strength in particular lies with action, so slower issues can be a strain to get through.  With that said, and even leaving aside #10's interlude and #9's extended flashback, those first eight issues are pretty dense plot-wise.  A lot has happened in those issues, even if it happened at (at times) a leisurely pace.  And yet - it feels like the story's only just begun - issues # 8-9 feature a pretty dramatic and significant turning point that takes things in a whole new direction.  The scope of the story is large enough that it literally could run for 100 issues and not run out of gas.  

A history lesson, The Manhattan Projects is not.  It's a crazy story about crazy people and the ways that their science changes the world.  It's got crazy art and kind of crazy pacing and just everything about it is crazy.  And all that's a good thing.  This is batshit done really well.

(And as an aside, Los Alamos is a good read, too.  Very different in tone from Manhattan Projects, but still a cool read.)

fatale, the enchantress & the deconstruction of mind control

Fatale is not a superhero comic.  It appears, in fact, to be the thing that Ed Brubaker is doing to get away from superhero comics.  Fatale is a bit of noir with a dash of Lovecraft, a horror story disguised (thinly) as a love story.  But it's also a thorough examination of the femme fatale archetype, filtered through decades of superhero comics.

The Golden and Silver Ages of superhero comics were, to be charitable, not known for particularly enlightened portrayals of women.  Different times and all that.  They did occasionally feature female heroes or, more often, female villains.  But one of the recurring motifs for those characters was that, rather often, their super power was to make the hapless hero fall in love with them.  The best examples of this motif were the Enchantress at Marvel, and Poison Ivy at DC.  Both are 1960's creations, and while they are not the original examples of this idea, they are probably the most enduring.  Both have been, from their inception, depicted as beautiful women who possessed the power to enthrall men.  Both have been depicted as having the power to enslave men with a kiss.

This was a quaint, somewhat sexist trope.  It had some strange subtext - namely the idea that sexual relations with women are a threat to be avoided - but as presented in most of those Silver Age comics, it was harmless enough.  The stories themselves were relatively chaste, and mind control appeared in any number of other contexts, so the villainess' powers were more a plot device than anything else.  

As superhero comics have evolved, though, they've become far more overtly sexual.  Where Ivy and the Enchantress were once just pretty girls in leotards and hot pants, they are now impossibly-built porn stars with painted-on costumes, spending much of their time posing like pin-up models.  Wonder Man may be mind-controlled on that cover up there, but he really doesn't look like he's having the worst day ever.  The villainess' threat has become far more blatantly sexual, and both have been depicted over the years as having had sex with men who were under their respective spells.  It's one thing for Poison Ivy to hypnotize someone and force him to take her on a shopping spree, quite another for her to hypnotize someone and force him to take her to bed.  The latter is very obviously rape.

But no one ever thinks about it that way, because Poison Ivy usually is portrayed as this gorgeous woman who most men would be happy to take to bed anyway.  Her pheromone power is almost irrelevant.  I've always thought that for some Kingdom Come-esque story set in the future, they should depict Ivy as old, fat, unhygenic, but still possessed of her powers, and see how people react to that.  The audience kind of winks and nods at Ivy or the Enchantress - both of them are even treated as protagonists or anti-heroes on occasion, even though both are unrepentant rapists.

Contrast that with The Purple Man at Marvel, who has basically the same powers as Poison Ivy and uses them in much the same way, but who is (rightly) considered a despicable rapist. So clear is the double standard that the Purple Man has a daughter, in continuity, who has the same powers he does, and she was considered a superhero.

So yeah, double standards aren't exactly breaking news.  But this one rather puts the lie to the idea that characters like Ivy or the Enchantress are about female enpowerment.  They're demonstrably not.  What they are, instead, are male fantasy objects - the gorgeous seductresses whose ultimate goal is to get the male characters into bed, and who absolve their prey of any guilt associated with the act by mind controlling them.  We've still got the same weird subtext we had back in the Silver Age, but now it's dressed up with an extra layer of rape.  What was once silly, maybe a bit sexist becomes something altogether more creepy.

Fatale deconstructs this archetype very effectively.  For those unfamiliar with the series, the lead character is a woman named Josephine ("Jo") who has, for reasons that so far are vague and shrouded in mystery, the ability to control men.  Essentially any man in her orbit comes under her influence to some degree, and anyone who has any sort of sexual experience with her falls completely under her spell, forgets all other women, and becomes completely obsessed with her.  "Sexual experience" can be defined very broadly.  When she forgets to close her curtains and the gardener sees her step out of the shower, for example, he falls under her spell.  Unlike the Enchantress, who has been depicted as being able to have a relationship with Thor without controlling him, Jo can't turn her power off.  And eventually it becomes a curse, as every man she's close to ends up destroying himself for her.

Jo as depicted by Sean Phillips is beautiful, ageless, obviously very attractive even without her powers.  But because she doesn't want to be a total monster, she becomes a virtual recluse by the beginning of the second arc.  Avoiding men is the only way to keep from wreaking havoc on them.  But she is (mostly?) still a human being, with human needs and desires.  So when she wants sexual companionship, she rationalizes seducing the guy closest to her, on the theory that he's already tainted or corrupted or ruined from having spent time with her previously.  This is of course a horrible train of thought but it's where her powers and her experiences take her.  That her victims are at least marginally aware of what is happening to them (enough so that they can confront her about it) adds to the horror.

Brubaker and Phillips have created their own Poison Ivy, their own Enchantress, but their honest depiction of her exposes the ugly underbelly of those types of characters.  Jo can be a protagonist, and in fact usually is in Fatale, but in no way is she a hero or even a good person.  Removing agency and free will from a sexual relationship is an ugly ugly thing, in any context - it doesn't become okay just because the person doing the controlling happens to be hot.  Perhaps the most intriguing element of Fatale is the honesty with which it examines this trope.  Jo isn't a female empowerment figure, nor is there any pretense, from her or the creators, that she is.  She's a walking honey trap, and going through the decades knowing what she is eats away at her soul.  She's both a tragic figure and a horrible one, equal parts victim and victimizer.  Her story is a sad and mostly lonely one, not a teenager's wet dream. 

on sweet tooth & jeff lemire in general

Reading list: Sweet Tooth # 1-40 (Jeff Lemire)

It's the eyes that really get you.

Jeff Lemire's superhero work is okay.  Some of it is better than okay.  He's a good writer.  Green Arrow is really good.  Justice League Dark is pretty good.

But his superhero work doesn't pop the way his creator-owned and "indie" works do.  That stuff is a cut above.

And it's all about the eyes.

The recently-concluded Sweet Tooth is Lemire's more expansive work to date.  At forty issues, the story clocks in at over 800 pages, the overwhelming majority of which were illustrated by Lemire.  (There was one three-issue story drawn by Matt Kindt.)  Unless I've missed something, Essex County is his second-longest work, and it's way shorter than Sweet Tooth.  It's also less a story than a series of interconnected stories.  Sweet Tooth is Lemire's first long-form narrative.  It's also, IMO, his best work to date, by a good patch.*

* I say this with the caveat that I have not read The Nobody yet.  I need to.  I have read, for comparison purposes, Underwater Welder, Essex County, Lost Dogs, and a good bit of his DC superhero work.  I read all of his Superboy, most of JL Dark, all of his Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE, and about nine issues of Animal Man.

Sweet Tooth, in case you don't know already, is a post-apocalyptic story starring a kid named Gus who has antlers and appears to be a human/ animal hybrid.  Gus has spent his formative years, during which some sort of great sickness ravaged civilization, living in a remote cabin, way out in the woods, having contact with no one other than his father.  As the story opens, Gus' father succumbs to the sickness as well, leaving Gus alone in the world.  Leaving his home for the first time, he encounters a mysterious stranger named Jepperd, and the two embark on.. well.. that would be telling.

The next forty issues introduce a large cast of characters and set forth a fairly detailed mythology of this post-apocalyptic world.  Not every question you might have is answered, but most are.  This is a story that is played to its natural conclusion without feeling like it was cut off abruptly.  It alternates between action sets and more quiet character pieces.  It is occasionally violent, sometimes profane, sometimes absurdly funny, sometimes bittersweet and sad.

In short, it's a well-done post-apocalyptic story.  But that, standing alone, doesn't make it special.  It doesn't even make it all that rare.  There are lots of post-apocalyptic stories floating around out there.  Some of them even get made into TV shows on AMC.  But this one stands out.  It's better than most of the others.  It's on par with Y - The Last Man, in my estimation.

Why?  Spoiler alert: EYES.

Jeff Lemire's superhero books are pretty good, for the most part.  He clearly *likes* superheroes - there's an entire issue of Sweet Tooth that features a "Monitor Tapes" sequence that's a callback to Crisis on Infinite Earths #10.  So it's not the case of an indie guy who is holding his nose with one hand and writing with the other because paycheck.  He's one of us.

And yet - there's nothing he's written about superheroes that has the power of Sweet Tooth.  The best of his superhero work is fun to read.  It's exciting, well-paced, has crisp dialog, and is generally enjoyable - but none of it really makes you feel anything.  Because he didn't draw any of it.  He works with some talented artists, but none of them have Lemire's capacity for infusing his characters with life.

And it starts with... you get it by now...

It takes all of about one panel to make you care what happens to Gus.  His eyes betray a complete lack of guile and, if we're being entirely honest, a likely lack of intelligence.  They betray him as someone who is completely at the mercy of an unforgiving world - who has no capacity to do harm to others but no capacity to prevent himself from being done harm.  He is a thing to be cared for, a burden to be assumed - there are several times in the story where people intentionally or unintentionally treat Gus like a pet, and having him be a hybrid only reinforces that.  Gus is hard for the reader to adopt as a POV character, because we're smarter and more sophisticated than he is.  At the same time, he's pretty easy to like, and even easier to empathize with.

Sweet Tooth can be said to be about a lot of things - the thing that really stood out to me was the commentary on the relationships of fathers and sons, particularly given Lemire's visiting of those same themes in Underwater Welder.  One of the things it's about, though, is Gus' gradual, and eventually total, loss of innocence once he's exposed to the world.  And over the course of the series, his eyes change.  They grow more aware, more savvy, a little harder.  The final issue is a coda set after Gus grows to adulthood, and the naiveté is completely gone.  He's a kid who was forced to grow up too fast, but who did so and prospered anyway, who triumphed over his circumstances.  And Lemire doesn't have to tell us that, because he can show it to us in something as simple as a headshot.

You don't have to have that kind of empathy for the characters in order to have a good action sequence, but you need it for a work that's genuinely moving.  The best scene in Y is the one that's the most heartfelt - Yorick putting down Ampersand.  That one "hit" because BKV writes great dialog and because Pia Guerra, though not an especially dynamic artist, did a wonderful job of drawing Ampersand and infusing him with life.  Lemire does not have BKV's ear for dialog - few do - but he has the same ability to convey feeling - it's just through his art instead of his scripting.  You need the whole package from him, and that's why his superhero work isn't as good as his other stuff.  

Sweet Tooth belongs, in my opinion, in the pantheon of great Vertigo books.  In fact, one day we may look back on it as the Last Great Vertigo book.  It never attained the notoriety of Y, or Fables, or Preacher but IMO it belongs in the discussion with the best of those series.  Even in a sea of post-apocalyptic stories, Lemire gave us something relatively novel, and a work dripping with feeling.  

how to end the new 52

A little something different today - a creative writing exercise made public.  Just something that's been rattling around in my head lately.

Let's just say - totally hypothetically - that you were handed creative control over DC Comics.  Whoever hands you the keys tell you that TPTB have come to the conclusion that the New 52 has outstayed its welcome.  You're tasked with coming up with The Next Thing.  TPTB believe the time has come to re-embrace DC's lengthy publication history - after all, there are lots of old TPBs we want to sell.  You have a relatively free hand to make that happen, with two stipulations:

1.  The New 52 must "count" - no one wakes up in the shower and the whole thing was a dream.  After all, we've got lots of New 52 TPBs we want to keep selling, too.  It cannot simply be whitewashed away.

2.  The notion of cross-media synergy must remain.  The company wants its portrayals of characters across media to be relatively consistent, though not always identical.  So you can't just turn the Batman line over to Kate Beaton or something - without enforcing a house style, there is a certain mainstream (or perceived mainstream) aesthetic that must be met.

I'm not inquiring about management styles and stuff like that.  That way lies rampant speculation about things we just do not know.  I'm talking creatively - how can it be done?  Can it be done in a way that is satisfying creatively but doesn't render the continuity even more byzantine than it already is?

My own attempt goes something like this:

The Flash becomes increasingly disturbed by persistent dreams of another reality.  Of particular concern is that this alternate world is presented to him in dreams as the "correct" world, and his familiar world as the anomaly.  After an encounter with Pandora, Flash becomes convinced of the truth of his dreams, as his pre-Flashpoint memories return to him in full force.  Faced with the enormity of the changes he brought upon the universe, Flash turns to his fellow Justice Leaguers, who are split as to whether reality can be "wrong" or whether or how the League should intervene.

The League is then drawn into a series of apparent temporal anomalies and comes to understand that reality itself is under assault.  Pandora enlists the aid of the League, alongside Stormwatch and an army of DC's magic-users in battling a massive extradimensional threat (the "arrival" she spoke of at the end of Flashpoint).  Despite their internal conflicts, the League attempts to save reality from destruction, only to encounter resistance from a series of time-lost heroes from the pre-Flashpoint DCU trying to restore their world.  Though Wally West, Connor Hawke, Donna (ugh) Troy, Jade, and.. wait for it... Stephanie Brown as Batgirl think their time-lost Justice League (led of course by Booster Gold, who is the same guy in both realities) is benign, their attempts to restore their own world are perceived (rightly) by the denizens of the New 52 Earth as a threat.

This leads to lots of shit blowing up.  Eventually there is a cataclysmic battle over the nature of reality.  Donna Troy dies heroically (and also kind of lamely because you know).  

The Flash once again restarts the universe by running really fast, but this time without Pandora's influence/ meddling.  The pre-Flashpoint DC Universe is (finally) restored - but, not without complications.  The change to the universe is not retroactive - in other words, the shift to the New 52 Earth still happened, and the events told since September 2011 still occurred.  

For the most part, the characters remember everything that happened during the New 52.  Batman still met and fought the Court of Owls, for example.  New characters introduced during the New 52, such as Solstice, Bunker and Simon Baz, remain part of the DC Universe.  Presumably they were always around; we just hadn't met them before.  When we pick back up with the regular series, it is as if some unspecified amount of time has passed, during which the New 52 stories happened, and during which any necessary and/or desired adjustments to the characters have been made.  Most of the books can continue on as is with subtle changes.  Characters' memories of their altered personalities remain in their psyche, subtly influencing changes in their behavior going forward.  Jason Todd continues to seek redemption.  Wonder Girl remains more aggressive than her whiny pre-Flashpoint self.

The Wildstorm characters remain part of the DCU, with their New 52 histories mostly intact.  The Justice Society is returned to "our" Earth after a period of non-existence, but with most of its elder members choosing to retire.  Barbara Gordon remains as Batgirl, her spine injury healed.  Renee Montoya resumes her adventures as The Question after a period of inactivity.  Steve Trevor and ARGUS remain in play.  Many of the new costume designs remain, but are streamlined.  Superman's trunks are still gone, for example, but his costume no longer resembles armor.

To the extent the details of characters' New 52 lives conflict with their "real" histories, they fade from mention - kind of like Spider-Man's memories of the House of M world.  They're never retconned away - all those stories still happened - but they're not mentioned or referenced any longer.  Tim Drake's memories of his New 52 parents eventually fade from view, for example.

Except.

Barry Allen and Iris West are no longer married, and have no memory of ever having been married.  Barry continues his relationship with Patty Spivot, with Iris remaining in the book as a foil/ friend.  Think Brand New Day, except with more running really fast.

Likewise, Superman and Lois' marriage is gone.  They still have a close relationship and she is aware of his double identity, but they are not (at least right now) romantically involved.  Superman's early days as an anti-establishment figure (complete with t-shirt and jeans) remain canon.  I'm inclined to leave Ma Kent dead, but someone could talk me out of that perhaps.

Green Arrow is old again but not like he was pre-Flashpoint.  He's played younger and we all just kind of ignore that he has a grown son.  Aren't Dagwood's kids older than him now?  This is kind of like that.  (Actually this is true of lots of the books.  The notion of not playing the heroes as 40 year-old men was a good one and should be preserved - only without some insistence that they're "officially" this age or that age or that their careers have been X years long.  If you want to play them younger, play them younger.)  This one's a little tricky because of the TV show and the fact that I really like the new Lemire/ Sorrentino run.  I'd want it to continue pretty much as is, but just avoid specific age references.

Firestorm's New 52 situation is completely wiped away, protocols, the whole bit, and the character's post-Brightest Day status quo is restored.  Trust me, no one will miss the New 52 version.

The Justice League's New 52 origin remains canon.  Their history is altered such that their various breakups and membership changes over the years are reflected, but "Origin" remains their definitive origin, and the present-day team is still the New 52 version.  Maybe they've been off and on the whole time.  (Keep in mind there was no in-continuity JL origin pre-Flashpoint.  I've long believed the Johns/ Lee run was originally intended to be "JLA: Secret Origin" and was repackaged to fit the reboot.)  Cyborg's history with the Titans is also restored, but he remains a founding JL member as well.  The Martian Manhunter... well, he was no longer a founding member of the League, but the full story of his involvement with the team over the years is yet to be told...

Not all of these changes can be explained.  Not all of them need explanation.  The continuity isn't seamless, but then again it never was.  DC's rich history is re-incorporated, with the best of the New 52 preserved as well.  The books continue their present numbering, with the same to be re-assessed once Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman approach their 800th, 800th, and 700th issues, respectively.

As for Wally West and his crew of forgotten characters, they return to the restored Earth as heroes but (aside from Booster and Jade) mostly retire from superheroing.  One thing the New 52 was good about was getting rid of many of the alternates and multiples that had cropped up over the years.  This gives those characters an optimistic sendoff and a happy ending, leaves them available for future cameos or return appearances, but gets them off the deck as ongoing concerns.  Connor Hawke might have to be killed off to address the Green Arrow situation - so be it if that's the case, but if there's a way to just push him off-panel, we do that instead.

I don't know what to do with The Huntress.  Maybe she goes back to Earth-2.

Oh yeah.  Earth-2.  It's still out there.

Anyway.

Admittedly that's rough around the edges.  I am not a creative writer by trade.

But here's the thing.  From the time the New 52 was announced, I'd say I've been generally supportive of it.  I felt like most of DC's books were pretty moribund pre-Flashpoint and needed to be shaken up in a big way.  But nothing is forever in comics.  DC's history over the last thirty years is that it goes back and forth between being embarrassed by its history and wallowing in it.  It never quite seems to find that happy medium.  The New 52 is probably the most extreme correction in one direction that we've seen - to the point that DC absurdly now claims that Batman first appeared in 2011.  You know how a pendulum works, though, yes?  The correction to the correction is coming.  I don't know WHEN it's coming - maybe it won't be for 10 more years.  But it is coming.

And just for me?  Personally?  I think I'm about ready.  So - whenever you want, DC.  

who put peanut butter in my chocolate?

Reading list:
Avengers (2012) # 1- whatever
Django Unchained # 1-2
Thief of Thieves # 1-11

If the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Modern Age, the Rape-y Age, or whichever other Ages we've been through have come to a conclusion, surely now must be the IP Age.  Where comics were once the predominant, and often exclusive, home for superheroes, the genre has moved into the movies, video games, TV, and basically every other strata of popular culture in a big way.  We've had superhero movies and TV shows for decades, of course, but only in the last ten years of so have they been this.. awesome.  Even something like Batman '89, which was a mega-hit back in the day, looks dated and lame compared to the Nolan movies.  And where in the past, only the cream of the crop superheroes made the big (or even the small) screen, they're now all over the place.  There's a Thor movie.  Soon there will be another one.  

As superheroes have become more ingrained than ever in our popular culture, the folks who own the rights to most of the popular ones have, increasingly, stopped looking at them as comic book characters and started looking at them as intellectual property.  We see this in the increasing editorial scrutiny over the DC and Marvel lines - where once these little pamphlets with piss-poor circulation might have been beneath the notice of their corporate overlords, now they're being subjected to things like "synergy" and whatnot.  After all, we can't have a Nick Fury comic that might offend George Clooney, because if that happens how we will get a Nick Fury movie made?

Marvel NOW! represents a fairly obvious attempt by Marvel/ Disney to line its comics up with its hugely successful "movie universe", maybe not in every book but certainly in a large percentage.  And from a business standpoint it makes a certain amount of sense.  A jazillion people saw the Avengers movie, and most of that jazillion think the Avengers is Cap, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Thor, and the Hulk.  Never mind that, to my knowledge, this has never been the roster of the Avengers in the comics - this is what people know, so it's what people should get if they stroll into a comic store and buy an Avengers comic.  This type of thinking gets lampooned a good bit, and it's not really how *I* think - but I'll tell you, my youngest daughter LOVED the Avengers movie.  She thinks it is absolutely the greatest thing ever - AND she kind of likes comics - but she wouldn't touch the Avengers comics I handed her.  (These were Bendis issues from around the time of the movie.)  Why not?  Well she told me - specifically - that she wanted the movie lineup.  She wasn't interested in a comic about Wolverine or Vision or whoever.  Anecdotal, of course.  But there you go - and while Hickman's Avengers clearly will have an expanded cast - they're making it very clear that the Movie Six are front and center.

For a long-time fan such as myself, there's something about this that feels... cheap?  Wrong, somehow?  I dunno... probably because I view these characters primarily as comic book characters, I feel like the comics should drive the other media, rather than the reverse.  So when I see that the Hulk is in the Avengers now, even though that doesn't make any sense, it feels like selling out.  Like riding the coattails of something else's success.  But there's a part of me that thinks I'm the bad guy in that story.  The Avengers roster changes literally every few minutes.  I accepted Spider-Man and Wolverine on the team.  Luke Cage.  Daredevil.  Sentry.  Why not the Hulk?  I suppose there's the lingering sense that my entertainment is now being crafted by bean-counters in suits who are making decisions based on graphs and income projections - but bottom line, is it good or isn't it?  If it is, then.. well.. it is.  If we look at 2009 as the flashpoint of all this - Levitz resigns at DC, Disney buys Marvel, people say "synergy" and "iconic" a lot - well okay, it's now 4 years later.  Are either DC or Marvel's output appreciably better or worse than they were in 2009?  I don't think so - in either direction.  They're not identical in either case, but significantly better or worse?  Nah.  Things have trucked along, just with lots more noise and relaunches and outrage.

Into this same headspace comes Thief of Thieves, a series on which I originally passed.  If we're talking about other media adapting comic books, we'd be remiss in ignoring that it's not just a superhero thing, and that one of the big runaway hits is a non-superhero, creator-owned series about zombies.  Thief of Thieves was derided, from the start, as a blatant TV pitch disguised as a comic.  I've lamented that sort of thing here before - I don't really mind stories being adapted for one medium or another, but there's something icky about being expected to PAY to finance someone's movie pitch.  ToT is in development at AMC and my first thought was "geez, if it sounds good I'll just watch the TV show".  Through the magic of comixology, though, Image offered the first issue for free, so I checked it out and discovered that I enjoy it.  For anyone unfamiliar, the pitch is that the lead character, "Redmond", is a professional thief who wants to retire but who has a number of different entanglements that are complicating his attempt to cash in his proverbial 401(k) and leave town.  Each arc is by a different writer with Kirkman acting as a "showrunner".  Could.  Not.  Be.  A more blatant TV pitch.  But it's clever, and well-written, and well-drawn (by Sean Martinbrough, and having one artist keeps the "actors" looking constant much like a.. wait for it... TV show), and you never feel like the creators are slumming by doing a comic so they can pitch the thing they really want to do later.  The series has made its way onto my list, and for whatever reason I doubt I'll watch the TV show.  I like TV, but I like comics better.  

And into THAT headspace comes Django Unchained which, depending on one's perspective, is either a big budget movie or a six-issue Vertigo miniseries.  As a rule I do not like comics that are adaptations of other media.  I tried the preview of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo graphic novel and about fell asleep.  Loved the novels.  LOVED them.  Could tell from six pages of the graphic novel that it was completely lacking most of the depth of the novels.  (I didn't see the movies.)  Thing about Django, though, is that it isn't exactly an adaptation.  I mean, it IS - but it's based on Tarantino's original script rather than the edited movie.  It's like a first draft, and so there's stuff in there that's not in the movie, or is presented differently.  Don't ask me *what*, because I haven't seen the movie (and maybe I'd feel differently about Dragon Tattoo if I hadn't read the books).  But it feels like a comic book rather than a static movie with no sound.  R.M. Guera being the primary artist is surely partially responsible for its "authenticity" because geez that guy can draw purty.  

I wasn't sure what I'd make of Django.  I never touch any of those movie tie-in comics Marvel or DC put out, even when it's original material.  But I dig Django - it's a gritty story about a freed slave and the guy who frees him, and visually it reminds me a lot of Scalped because they share an artist.  Again, maybe it's because I haven't seen the movie (and probably won't).  I feel like I was given a choice of formats - a legitimate choice, as opposed to a lopsided one where the comic is some slapdash BS - and where that choice is legitimate I'm cool with the fact that the material was conceived with another medium in mind.

What it comes down to for me - I *love* comics.  I like other stuff too - a lot in some cases, but I *love* comics.  Lots of self-professed comics fans are actually superhero fans - they gravitate to comics because that's where the superheroes are, but if they can get superheroes in another medium, they'll head there instead.  Which is fine - people like what they like. I'm fully aware I'm in the minority, and I'm not laying any of this out as some weird attempt as self-congratulation - but I *love* comics.  The Avengers movie was terrific, but given a choice I'd rather read a good Avengers comic any day.  Give me a choice between going to see Django in theaters or reading it in a well-produced comic - I'll take the comic, thanks.  An unfortunate by-product of that is that I can be a comics snob from time to time and get proprietary about what is legitimately a comic and what isn't.  Such is hubris.

My daughter is adamant that Spider-Woman isn't really in the Avengers though.  On the other hand, she's convinced that Robin Sparkles IS an Avenger.  Come to think of it, Maria Hill screaming irrationally at Patrice would be pretty cool.

coldest city, liar's kiss & the art of the twist

Reading list:     
The Coldest City (Antony Johnston/ Sam Hart)
Liar's Kiss (Erick Skillman/ Jhomar Soriano)

Viewing list:     

Homeland Season 2

The Game

The Game is an old movie - it came out sometime in the mid-1990's and featured Michael Douglas as a bored rich man who is given the gift of a "game" sponsored by this mysterious company.  The premise is that this company comes in and completely screws up someone's life - destroys their credit, ruins their relationships, steals all their money - and the experience of dealing with it all causes the person to remember what it's like to really be alive.  It's all for pretend, of course - except what if it's not?  What if the company actually DOES steal all your money and leave you for dead?  How would you ever call them on it?  So Douglas rambles through this plot, with neither he nor the viewer knowing until the very end whether it's really a game or whether it's for real.

[SPOILER ALERT]  Turns out it's a game - he was never really in danger after all.  Except - if you watch the whole movie, that doesn't make any sense.  Douglas is placed in too many situations in which no one could possibly be assured of his safety or predict his reactions.  At one point he's left for dead in Mexico with no ID.  These situations convince the viewer that Douglas' plight can't possibly be a game, because no one could ever conceivably plan something like that.  Except they did.  Because they say so at the end.

The Game is an okay flick if you don't think about it too much.  The point of the movie is to enjoy the journey, regardless of the destination.  If you go back and re-watch the movie knowing the ending, you see all the flaws.  Ultimately the movie betrays its own premise, or at least one of its premises - the idea that this is a logical, coherent narrative - in favor of a twist ending.  It convinces you with everything short of charts and graphs that the Game is real, then handwaves it all away.

The Twist can be one of the more rewarding staples of popular fiction, but it is also among the hardest to pull off.  The most recent season of Homeland fell in love with The Twist, to its detriment.  Every few episodes they'd pull the rug out from under the viewer - [AGAIN, SPOILER ALERT] Brody's been outed as a terrorist - oh no wait, the CIA has turned him and made him a double agent - oh no wait, Abu Nazir has his hooks in him again.  And while skillful scripters can keep the narrative coherent through all those twists, eventually the characters have been turned around so many times that they've lost their identities.  They're reduced to plot devices spinning in whatever direction the story needs them to go, rather than being the vehicles driving the story.

The problems with Homeland are compounded by the fact that it's an ongoing show.  Carrie and Brody and Saul and Brody's super-hot wife will all be back next season, and we need to buy into them as characters on a continuing basis.  Michael Douglas' character's story is over at the end of The Game, so to some extent the narrative can get away with betraying his character as the curtain falls.  On the other hand, a finite story invites a different type of scrutiny and analysis than does an episodic TV show.  The disappointments of Homeland Season 2 don't change the fact that Homeland Season 1 was superb.  You can't really analyze The Game, though, without analyzing the ending.

This does circle around to comics eventually.  Recently I happened to read two original graphic novels that struck me as being very similar, not so much in substance but very much so as regards plot structure.  The Coldest City is a spy thriller from Oni Press, published in 2012 and set amidst the final days before the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It features a British agent dispatched to determine whether a NOC list exists and/or represents a security threat.  It's very much from the John LeCarre school of spy thrillers, which is to say it's slower paced, less action-packed and more cerebral than, say, a Bond movie.  Liar's Kiss is a bit older - it's a Top Shelf book that I picked up during one of their Comixology sales and just got around to reading.  Liar's Kiss stars PI NAME, who is supposed to be surveilling his client's wife to test her fidelity, but who is in fact sleeping with her instead.  His client then turns up dead and the widow is the prime suspect.  Both books fall pretty squarely into the noir category.

And perhaps more germane to this missive, the two books have the same plot twist at the end.  [SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS!  ARE YOU NOT PAYING ATTENTION?]  The POV/ lead character is secretly the bad guy all along.  It's the old Keyser Sose twist writ large - the bad guy hides in plain sight.  The two books treat the Twist a bit differently.  Liar's Kiss drops a few hints along the way - it's actually pretty clever.  There are these lines of dialog throughout the book that just don't make a lot of sense when you read them, but you (or at least I) write them off as the creators flubbing a scene.  Turns out they're not - but at the same time, it's still not really a narrative that plays fair with the reader.  At the end, once the Twist is revealed, they give us the rest of the backstory, the context that lends credibility to the reveal.  But most of it is backstory no one could ever have figured out - the reader had essentially no chance of "playing along" with the story.  You can explain away ANY twist if you have unlimited license to add backstory of which the reader is unaware.  I can recall a message board discussion of Identity Crisis wherein one poster had concluded that Jason Todd was the killer (and keep in mind this was when JT was still dead).  The theory involved JT being the secret child of Ralph & Sue Dibny and being a ghost who possessed Alfred and all this other stuff that was nowhere near the actual comics - but if you accepted this massive amount of imaginary backstory you could draw a line to him being the killer.  Liar's Kiss does this on a smaller scale - no bastard ghosts floating around this story but it's a conclusion that relies very much on an after-the-fact justification (and.. well.. a Watchmen homage).

Coldest City, on the other hand, makes virtually no attempt at self-justification.  It springs the reveal and then ends.  It's much more akin to The Game, inasmuch as it ends rather abruptly, before the reader really has much time to work through the implications of The Twist.  It's almost as if the creators wanted to get off stage quickly, before the reader has a chance to go back, re-read, and see if The Twist really works plot-wise.  Of course the reader can do that at any time, but somehow it's different once you've finished the book.  The reading of the book is an experience, and it ends once the reading is complete.  You can go back and re-analyze the work and/or the experience but you can't take back the punch to the gut that you felt when the reveal hit you.  It's pretty effective, even if it is a cheat.

Both books are flawed in that both of them set up mysteries that are not entirely internally sound.  Coldest City feels like the more polished of the two - maybe *because* it takes so few pains to explain the twist.  Liar's Kiss was a little more satisfying a read for me, though, because even though the backstory was delivered in a less-than-ideal way, it's there.  It's been said that detectives have a deep-seated loathing of mysteries, and I'd posit that many admirers of mystery fiction see themselves as (amateur) detectives, such that explanation usually will trump ambiguity.  Not to say that everything needs to be tied with a bow or spelled out - both books have a fair degree of ambiguity in their endings but Liar's Kiss lays out the bad guy's motivation in a way that Coldest City does not.

Anyway, they're both pretty good books and are both on Comixology way below cover price, even with the Top Shelf sale long over.  

Incidentally, Abu Nazir is both the best and the worst terrorist in the history of the world.  Clearly as shown on the S2 finale he pulled off a terrible but impressive coup.  He also managed, Clark Kent-style, to slip into the USA undetected by shaving, which is pretty impressive as well.  On the other hand he has a sleeper agent who is a US Congressman, and who is on the short list to become the next Vice President of the United States, and he has him shuttling tailors around like a gofer. Probably not the best use of an asset like that.  

contemplating before watchmen

Reading list: 
Before Watchmen: Minutemen # 1-6 (Darwyn Cooke)
Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre # 1-4 (Darwyn Cooke/ Amanda Conner)
Before Watchmen: Comedian # 1-3 (yea, I know..) (Brian Azzarello/ J.G. Jones
Before Watchmen: Rorschach # 1-3 (Brian Azzarello/ Lee Bermejo - #4's out next month)
Before Watchmen: Moloch # 1-2 (JMS/ Eduardo Risso)

So after all the outrage and the people making spectacular asses of themselves (and note I'm not specifying a side of the argument), Before Watchmen is now drawing to a close.  The project hit some delays midway through, and they've kept adding stuff to it, but the event (or at least my participation in it) appears to be winding down.  I've no idea how it did commercially - OK, I suspect - and I really have no interest in revisiting the creators' "rights" issues that go along with it.  By now surely everyone's said their piece one way or another.

I am interested in looking back at the actual comics themselves, though, or at least the ones I read.  A little context: I love Watchmen.  I think it's great but I do not have the near-total recall of it that some folks seem to have.  I've read it multiple times but have not gone back to it in about five years.  So I remember most of the characters and the bigger points of the plot - my takeaway from it was less about the characters themselves and more about the larger points it was making, about both superheroes and comics in general.  To me Watchmen is a complete story, and there was never a single time between when I originally read it and 2012 that I clamored for more Watchmen material or wondered about the characters outside of that specific story.  To me there are no questions left unanswered by Watchmen and thus no *need* to revisit those characters.

With that said, there were several of the Before Watchmen books that seemed interesting to me, entirely based on who the creative teams were.  I have no particular interest in Silk Spectre, but a new Darwyn Cooke/ Amanda Connor comic?  Yes, sign me up please.  Likewise, I did not even remember who Moloch was - but I know very well who Eduardo Risso is.  So I ended up trying out five of the miniseries, and sticking with four of them until the end.  I dropped Comedian after #3 because I just didn't like it all that much.  I didn't *dislike* it necessarily but it wasn't grabbing me.  Maybe if there's a 99 cent sale sometime down the road....   anyway, I enjoyed the other four I read, to varying degrees.

Additional context: none of the Before Watchmen books, to me, are "part" of Watchmen.  DC's branding of the series implies, I'm sure intentionally, that this stuff is all one story.  These books are "prequels", supposedly meant to add something to the original work.  I reject this entirely.  These are different stories using characters introduced in Watchmen, and set in the Watchmen Universe.  Yes, I know Watchmen wasn't conceived as a "universe", but that doesn't mean it cannot be one.  Characters move outside the context of the works in which they were introduced all the time, sometimes with the author's blessing and/or participation, and sometimes not.  That they do so, though, does not add to the original work, any more than "Batman: War Games" is somehow part of "Batman: Year One" simply because they share characters and/or continuity.

And in this particular case, there's really nothing about these books that emulates or adds to Watchmen, from a story or a craft perspective.  For the most part, the books eschew the now-famous 9-panel grid of Watchmen.  None of the art styles look anything like Dave Gibbons', and none of the writers write with anything that sounds like Alan Moore's voice.  This was probably a smart decision, as an attempt to mimic Moore & Gibbons would surely have failed.  There's no alternative attempt at innovation, though.  These are, for the most part, slickly produced books, but they don't say anything about the superhero genre or comics in general.  They don't advance the artform in any way.  At best, they are well-done superhero comics about familiar characters (and also Moloch) that also happen to include swearing.

Which is okay with me.  I know it's not okay with some others who feel it waters down Watchmen in some way.  It doesn't to me, again any more than War Games affects my enjoyment of Year One.  As I perused these books, DC's attempts to brand it as part of Watchmen more or less slipped my mind.  "Before Watchmen" became its own brand, and a brand that I associate with quality because I was (mostly) liking the books.

To some extent, I think, a good story provides its own justification.  I think this event provided us with several good stories and one really good one (Silk Spectre).  None of them are on the level of Watchmen, but then again I didn't expect any of them to be.  Very few comics, period, are as good as Watchmen, and I refuse to judge these by that impossible standard just because they have the word "Watchmen" on the cover.  I appreciate the appeal of the retort that it would have been preferable to tell these same stories with all-new characters - and Id've been fine with that too - but that's not what exists.  I'm not going to judge these books against some other hypothetical book I'd rather have seen, either.  That's criticizing an apple for not being an orange.  (And of course, I do realize we're skirting back up against the creator rights argument here, and I appreciate the fact that, for some folks, that's where the analysis ends - but it's not where it stops for me.)

There was never any need for more stories about Silk Spectre, and there was no one clamoring for such a thing, regardless of what DC reps say in a press release or interview.  But could a story about a younger version of that character, struggling to find her independence and her place in the world, be entertaining?  Damn skippy.

As to the individual books:  Minutemen was more or less the flagship, as far as I could tell.  The comparisons to New Frontier are inevitable.  Cooke opened with an uneven issue that was way too heavy on exposition, then settled in nicely beginning with #2.  It's darker and less optimistic in tone than New Frontier, as perhaps is fitting in this universe.  It's nowhere near as dark as Rorschach, which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect.  It's super-dark and grimy and dirty and nihilistic, but it's a well-done example of all those things.  Bermejo just killed it on the art, too.  In fact I wonder if that might've been the tipping factor between Rorschach and Comedian, the latter of which had good art but not blow-you-away good art.  Azzarello wrote both books in a similar style, to my mind, so my more favorable reaction to Rorschach might've been a function of the art.  (By the way, this post owes spellcheck a huge debt of gratitude, as I cannot spell "Rorschach" to save my life.)

Moloch was much more straightforwardly straightforward than the others.  There's really nothing particularly noteworthy about the story - it's competently told but nothing you haven't seen before.  I am a huge Risso mark, though, so that was a must-buy for me, and it was cool to see Risso collaborating with someone other than Azzarello (or Carlos Trillo).  I quite liked the second issue in particular, even if it was a bit continuity-pr0nish.  I've gushed over Silk Spectre before and won't repeat myself - easily my favorite of the books I read.

So bottom line, I was pretty pleased with this endeavor, and I actually would like to see more Before Watchmen books, provided the quality remained high.  I'm a little sorry to see it end, which I would not have expected given the size of the event.  Usually by the time I get to the end of stuff like this I'm past ready to move on to the next thing, but not so here.  I'm not sure how much more there could possibly be left to mine here, but then again Id've said that before Before Watchmen began at all.  I like this world.  I enjoyed revisiting it, even in a way that has nothing to do with the original work.