From the most recent round of DC Comics cover solicits:
Hoo boy.
If I have one great criticism of DC Comics in the last couple of years (well, I could go for more than one if I felt like it, but let’s prioritize), it’s that everything has to reflect backwards – seemingly everything is a retelling or a revamp of existing properties and stories. (If you want proof of this, go read Arena, where they desperately try to suggest that Apollo from the Authority is an analogue of the Ray. Look, I like the Ray, but he’s not exactly totemic, you see, and suggesting that he should be is kind of dumb.) It’s usually written off by fans as “well, DC has a tradition of…” and then they kind of tail off, because it’s still stupid.
The Black Mercy is just another symptom of this. For those who don’t know, the Black Mercy is a story element from a classic Superman story by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, “For The Man Who Has Everything” – it’s considered a modern classic. The idea is, the Black Mercy is a sort of telepathic flower that feeds off people’s happiness, so what it does is it attaches onto you, and then you hallucinate that you are in the happiest world possible and the plant goes “yum yum.” Except, of course, in the original Superman story, Superman hallucinates that Krypton never blew up and he has a wife and kid there – but the problem with that is that such an instance directly conflicts with the survivor’s guilt that’s part of the core of Superman’s personality, so his subconscious starts making Krypton really suck, and he manages to fight off the Black Mercy that way.
And there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s a classic story for a reason. However, this is the second time in the last couple years that the Black Mercy has shown up in other titles. (Possibly more. I lose track.) Firstly it was a pretty bad issue of Green Lantern, and now it’s going to show up in an issue of All-New Atom. Which is ridiculous, because the All-New Atom hasn’t been around long enough yet to merit this kind of “what’s in the core of the personality” story – before you really start delving into the inner layers, it’s a good idea to establish outer layers first so you have something to contrast against, and Ryan Choi just isn’t there yet.
But this is just a symptom, isn’t it? Everything DC produces lately seems to be an homage or a pastiche or a retelling. This isn’t to say that it can’t be good – witness Grant Morrison’s “Club of Heroes” arc on Batman, for example – but all the same, it’s just remixes and mashups of what’s come before.
(Of course, DC is notoriously unable to strike the proper balance between using its past elements exclusively and creating hordes of new characters nobody cares about – consider the mid-90s, when the pendulum was tilted the other way. The Bloodlines event, Extreme Justice, Aztek, Takion, Resurrection Man, Hitman… I could go on. DC during that period was almost ignoring its rich and dense history in favor of new kewl characters, many of whom (other than Tommy Monoghan, of course) were kind of, like, not good.)
And yet another Black Mercy story – and they’re all the same, really, because every Black Mercy story is “hero gets hit with Black Mercy, then figures out he’s too happy in the dreamworld and fights it off” – is just another case of the DC story iPod on endless repeat. It might be entertaining, it might not, but more and more it’s leaving me dissatisfied, and judging by DC’s rapidly declining readership I’m not the only one.
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I always liked Aztek
I maintain that Resurrection Man was great. A notch below Hitman to be sure but still a very good title.
Is there really anything about Ryan Choi that would’ve caught Mongol’s attention anyway? Making Superman suffer? Sure. Hal Jordan? Likely.
But a rookie shrinking hero wanna-be? Nah.
No disagreement, but I do think this is the ultimate extension of the last thirty years of DC and Marvel’s marketing and distribution decisions. (Marvel is just as guilty as DC, I think…their last four major crossovers have had as their villains, the Scarlet Witch, the Scarlet Witch, Iron Man, and the Hulk. Seems fairly cannibalistic to me…)
Essentially, they’ve put themselves into a situation where it’s fairly difficult to attract new customers (because their product is sold almost exclusively in specialty stores, and they do very little advertising outside of materials for said specialty stores, ads in trade magazines, and websites designed to attract comics fans. The average “man on the street” never even heard about World War Hulk.) Which means that they have to pander to their existing fanbase, just to keep it. This means nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia, because their audience has dwindled over the years to the point where only those with an obsessive interest in the company’s history are left.
This is something that’s fairly easy for the writers and editors to get behind, because let’s face it, you don’t go to work for a comics company unless you’re a fairly serious fan as well…it’s not someplace you go to get rich and famous. So they love nostalgia just as much as their fans do. And, not to suggest laziness or incompetence, sequelization and pastiche are two things that are very easy to write, and when you’ve got those deadlines popping up every month (and many writers write multiple books), it’s always tempting to bring back an old villain, turn up the volume on his/her atrocities, and rake in the fanboy praise for making that villain “scary” again.
What’s really needed is a push on all three areas, at the corporate level. Find ways to get comics to places outside the standard comic store, find ways to let people know about them, and push for new-reader-friendly content. You can kind of see this happening if you squint (the Johnny DC and Marvel Adventures lines), but it’s far from the serious, “this is the future of our company” effort it needs to be, primarily because again, the writers and editors at both companies like continuity and nostalgia too much. You don’t bring back green battlesuit Luthor because you’re interested in moving forward.
I can no longer stand to read Geoff Johns work for precisely this reason. That and his obsession to have silly/silver age/iconic characters be covered in human entrails.
If I were a DC writer, I’d be terrified of writing a lame-ass rip-off like that, for fear of Alan Moore showing up on my doorstep in the middle of the night with a grapefruit spoon and the willingness to use it. He does not seem like a man whose train I would be willing to jump.
Gail’s All-New Atom is one of my favorite books. I say wait until the issue comes out before judging. It’s consistently been one of the best, most fun books DC puts out. It brought us Jet-Pack Hitler, for cryin’ out loud! I have faith that this issue will be just as good as the ones that preceded it.
I think another problem with the fanbase is that it literally does not know what it wants. If it gets one thing, it’ll say it wants the opposite, and vice versa. They say they want stories where heroes act like heroes, but piss over stuff Ross puts out and call “Superfriends fanfiction,” and say they want more mature stories. You get something like the Ultimates, and it gets reamed out for destroying iconic characters and raping childhoods. The existing fanbase at its most vocal seems made up mainly of people who make it their mission to get disappointed, but still spend money week in, week out.
Sure, there’s people out there making fair calls. They’re just drowned out by the hordes of people saying “it sucks! it sucks!” at everything put in front of them.
“Is there really anything about Ryan Choi that would’ve caught Mongol’s attention anyway? Making Superman suffer? Sure. Hal Jordan? Likely. But a rookie shrinking hero wanna-be? Nah.”
It’s not Mongol in All-New Atom.
What the world needs is more Alan Moores and less Alan-Moore-Wannabe’s. Using the Obvious-Inescapable-Plot-Device (“OIPD”) of a previous, greater writer does not put you on par with that writer. Come up with your own OIPD and make a classic as opposed to clinging to the coat tails of another one.
PS: What’s up with the Atom’s ears? Are those is his super power, growing giant ears?
PPS: IREAC is what the professor’s want. I’m graduating in 2 1/2 years from law school due to a religious devotion to IREAC. (2 1/2 years is unheard of in U.S. law schools. Pity the poor, indebted U.S. law students.)
Gail’s All-New Atom is one of my favorite books. I say wait until the issue comes out before judging. It’s consistently been one of the best, most fun books DC puts out. It brought us Jet-Pack Hitler, for cryin’ out loud! I have faith that this issue will be just as good as the ones that preceded it.
Or perhaps you could READ his post, see that WHETHER the story is any good or not was IRRELEVENT to his complaint.
You know why Apollo was brought in as an analogue for the Ray, don’t you? It appears to me to be an attempt by DC to say, “What, a gay Superman? No, no, no–he’s a gay Ray, see?” Perhaps I’m being too cynical, though.
I think you’re being a little too cynical. His powers are light-based, after all.
I agree with Charles W. entirely. Apollo’s powers are only vaguely more “light-based” than Superman’s, and he and what’s-his-name are so obviously a gay Superman-and-Batman duo that you’d have to be deliberately oblivious to miss it.
Sadly, being deliberately oblivious is a common trait among fandom. Never mind that they originally came from a team with a warrior woman, a fast guy. and a guy who used an alien artifact to make distinctively colored energy constructs. I recall people refusing to believe Apollo and Midnighter were gay until it was spelled out in skywriting. “They’re just sharing the same bedroom… naked…”
Back to the actual post topic, I agree entirely with the spirit of the argument, although I wouldn’t say the Black Mercy itself is a problem. Trapping the hero in a fake perfect world is an old idea, used by plenty of writers before Alan Moore. If you’re going to tell one of those stories, why not recycle the device in a throwaway nod to continuity?
That’s not to say that DC is essentially masturbating to old pictures of itself as the fluids mix with its tears. Look at Arena, which seems to be little more than a series of versus battles culled directly from comic forums. Then you have most of the output of Geoff Johns. Roy Thomas would think Johns’ fetish for reviving old characters is a bit much.
I thought you were complaining about tentacle rape, not the Black Mercy.