Someone recently emailed me asking “when are you going to do another comics parody?” It’s a question I get fairly steadily, so I thought I’d address it right now: the answer is “who knows.”
See, the thing that makes parodying something like Civil War fun is that, as stupid as Civil War fundamentally is, a lot of shit happens in that comic. Compare it to Secret Invasion, which was a ton of buildup for eight issues of subpar fight scene, or Dark Reign, which is basically one long, long look at the Marvel Universe circling the toilet, and you get an idea of how Civil War really had a lot going for it: it may have been flawed, but dammit, it was an event comic.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I actually think Marvel’s output, quality-wise, is right now pretty damned high: the main comics are all pretty entertaining and the make-a-quick-buck miniseries are much better than they have been at other times. But every Dark Reign story has the same two problems.
Firstly, the whole “Norman Osborn in charge of the world” premise is just stupid, no matter how much one tries to justify it (and Marvel’s stories have tried to justify it a lot). Norman Osborn is not Lex Luthor; he’s not a brilliant evil tactician and never was. Norman Osborn is a lunatic who was loathed by the public and who barely holds it together, and even if you give him magical meds to make him completely stable, he’s still not Lex Luthor. When every single comic has heroes and villains alike saying “welp, this ain’t gonna last,” you need to think about how plausible your starting premise was. (Henry Gyrich, for example, would have been a lot more believable in the Osborn role for Dark Reign, because he is A) sane and B) respected.)
Secondly, these comics are incredibly metareferential. Now, meta isn’t a bad thing per se, but just about every Dark Reign comic has to describe itself in the “gosh, this isn’t like back when the Avengers and X-Men would go beat up the High Evolutionary then come back and have a picnic and ride bikes” way that started out twee and got tired in a hurry. When every goddamned character feels the need to point out that this comic isn’t The Good Old Days, there’s a problem: the “new Marvel world” only exists as a oppositive description of the previous Marvel world, because the “realism” that Civil War (and everything after) brought to the table isn’t realism. It’s a desperate patch to make the Marvel Universe seem realistic in a real-world context, but it doesn’t work because the Marvel Universe starts from the “riding bikes” era, which of course makes no sense in a real-world context, but that was never the point.
At some point, I think Marvel’s editorial direction is going to shift back to “classic” mode with superheroes beating up supervillains and then riding bikes at the picnic. (I mean, Mark Waid has a family to feed, people!) But in the meantime, it’s just one long metastory, with high points and low. And that’s no fun to make fun of.
But Marvel at least seems to have a long term creative plan. DC’s creative plan, in comparison, very much seems to be throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. That having been said, I have to give them full credit for being committed to a host of stupid ideas: I mean, they went ahead and designed a year-long Superman story where
1.) Superman would not be in any of the actual Superman comics
2.) Superman would not be the Last Son of Krypton but instead one of a hundred thousand Kryptonians
3.) Humanity would fear Superman for being an evil alien invader
4.) Lois Lane’s father would be the big villain
Now, if you wanted to get as far away from every single thing people like about Superman, I don’t think you could do much better than this. Maybe you could give Superman a big jagged knife and have him use it to stab baddies, but that’s about it.
People have been asking specifically if I’m going to parody Blackest Night, but the problem with Blackest Night is that it’s almost too bad to parody. Civil War was at least fun. Blackest Night is a joyless slog. Part of the problem is that Blackest Night was originally intended to be a Green Lantern storyline and got “promoted,” but nobody thought to rewrite it a bit so it made sense as a “DC Universe” story rather than a Green Lantern one: the result is that in issue three, we learn that the only thing that can stop the evil Black Lantern zombies are Green Lanterns working in concert with all the other various Lantern Corps, which begs the question “so why does Barry Allen have to be in this frigging story if he can’t, you know, do anything?” Toss on a lot of fresh corpses to amp the drama level in classic Geoff Johns style (and let’s be honest: nobody in the whole world gives a shit whether Hawkman lives or dies, so it’s not gonna work) and you’ve got a clusterfuck of massive proportions.
Also, the zombies are lame. I’m just going to quote Jim Smith here for a second:
…the Black Lanterns all basically do the same thing, which is stand around and act like assholes to the people they loved in life. I suppose this serves their goal of provoking strong emotions in the living for them to consume, but the end result is that they all act and sound the same. Worse, they all act and sound like the same unsophisticated internet troll – there’s no cleverness or imagination in the way they antagonize the heroes. For example, if Bruce Wayne were really dead and were a Black Lantern in this story, I can guarantee he’d just go up to Dick Grayson and go “Hey, Dick, how’s it going? You know I was a better Batman than you! I never thought you could be Batman!” I mean, he’d be saying stuff that makes it blindingly obvious that it’s not the real guy talking, which defeats the purpose of targeting people with their dead friends. Seriously, Black Lantern Elongated Man telling Hawkman that Hawkgirl hates him? Like Carter’s really gonna take Zombie Ralph’s word for it? I keep waiting for the Black Lantern Corps to launch a massive “You’re so gay” offensive.
And on top of that, let’s not forget that the story basically has to do cartwheels to get around the fact that a zombie story in the DC Universe is strikingly stupid given that death has become so arbitrary a boundary in the DCU that those mopey superhero funerals now end with people saying “well, let’s hope he comes back soon.”
Now, I’m not saying Blackest Night isn’t going to sell well. It will. And fans will probably like it, to which my reaction is “yeah, and Transformers 2 made $400 million at the box office, but it was still shit.” It’s not fun making fun of total shit. Civil War was a pretty great idea with some horrible execution. Blackest Night is just bad in all respects.
And Blackest Night just echoes the general aura of suck that permeates DC right now. Other than a very few high points – Batman and Robin, Secret Six, and… okay, that’s pretty much it – the best DC can generally manage is a string of mediocrities and inoffensiveness. Power Girl and Booster Gold and the post-Bruce Batman books aren’t classics, but they don’t suck. Is that a case for spending money on comics? Because it isn’t to me. They’re just kind of there. And books like Teen Titans and the like are just unpleasantly bad; not even crazy weird bad, just boring, boring comics. Why am I supposed to care enough to make fun of them?
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Those are actually alot of really good points. I’m just wondering what you would do differently? And I don’t mean that in a, “Geoff Johns is the shit, you’re so lame, what would YOU do???!!!” way, I mean in a, “I like the way your ideas tend to go, so I’d honestly like to hear what you would do” way. What Dark Reign should be like, what Blackest Night should be like, that sort of thing. What Deadpool should be doing right now(i.e., blowing up random Dark Reign buildings for laughs and because Tony Stark is paying him a FUCK load of money), what the War of Light should be like, you get the idea.
I think “Norman runs everything” works if you go with the idea that the Initiative and SHIELD foolishly centered all its power around Tony Stark, to the point that Tony’s authority and security clearance was so high that literally anyone in his place could do his job simply by pulling rank. In the same way Norman doesn’t have to be smart enough to build his own armor when he can use one of Tony’s suits, he doesn’t have to be crafty enough to manipulate the Marvel Universe because he likely has an Executive Committee On Dicking With The Marvel Universe to do that for him, and they have to because he can dispatch the HAMMER Comission On Black-Bagging Your Ass To The Stone Age if they don’t.
Accepting this premise (and it’s clear the writers aren’t working from it, but anyway) it never mattered who took Tony’s job so much as that Tony’s job should not have been created in the first place, because it has virtually no oversight; if someone was dumb enough to reassign it to, say, Wendigo, we’d be doomed. Norman just happens to be a more plausible nightmare scenario, because he was in a position to say “I’m with the Thunderbolts, and they can redeem anybody, so I’m good now!” and then say “I’m way more heroic than Tony Stark because I killed the Skrull queen!”
Gyrich would work better as the head guy if the goal was just do this for months and months with no clear endgame. Osborn works better if the idea is that eventually he’ll flip out and use his power to execute some master plan with a laser beam on the moon and Steve Rogers has to come back and kick his ass. What drives me nuts is that Dark Reign: The List really out to be Dark Reign: Norman Reveals The Giant Laser, but it’s just more of the same treading water until…something happens.
Power Girl is fun, in a way superhero comics haven’t been fun in a long time. It’s not a classic, but it’s more than just ‘it doesn’t suck’.
Other than that… Yeah, DC does pretty much suck right now. Go buy the Zot! TPB.
DC comics I’m picking up at the moment: Secret Six and Detective Comics featuring Batwoman. Which is Greg Rucka and JHWilliams, is deliberately detached from the whole “new Batman” thing, and is exactly as well-written and good-looking as you’d expect from those two.
Detective Comics (though only has three or four issues out, but so does B&R) is definitely worth reading.
And, er, I realise the irony of saying that Detective Comics, the longest running direct market periodical, might not count by virtue of the shortness of its run…
Not to jump on the bandwagon here, but I am kinda glad that mainstream Marvel and DC are boringly shitty because it gave me an excuse to go outside the big 2 and look at and start collecting some very cool smaller press comics.
A lot of people forget in this day and age rife with satire, cynicism and sarcasm that parody is an affectionate act.
A parody written by somebody who doesn’t like the material just feels stale and mean spirited. And satire written by someone not at least invested in the topic in some way sounds uninformed and trollish.
The Batwoman story is gorgeous to look at, but it’s really just kind of boring in terms of writing: the pacing’s off, the plot’s kind of dull and the scripting average. Rucka has done much, much better.
I wanted to come in here and defend DC comics by pointing out what is still good, but after about a minute of wracking my brain, all I was able to come up with was…Detective Comics, Power Girl, Secret Six, which is a legitimately good comic, and…yeah, that’s all I got.
I wanted to say Green Lantern as well, but for the last year or so, I’ve just been picking it up out of habit, which is a terrible waste.
Well apart from the fact that I’ve been digging the hell out of Booster Gold (and the Blue Beetle back-up), I’ve got to agree with everything you’ve said.
I like Booster Gold. I also happen to agree on the whole events not really being events and the ‘Zombies’ not really doing anything till the gt the desired response. As for the whole Dark Reign, I believe it less to be Norman controlling everything then the villains using Norman and him and the heroes believing him to be in charge. I mean on of his first steps is to make a cabal of villains he thinks he can control. Of course he did choose Doom and Loki as villains he thought he could control, and Loki has already proven to be planning something against everyone and working with Doom for something else. Dark reign could have been better executed if someone more stable was in control, but who else is able to be put in charge and have everything fall around him faster then Norman?
I am now imagining Henry Peter Gyrich in charge of everything and shuddering with terror.
“Henry Gyrich, for example, would have been a lot more believable in the Osborn role for Dark Reign, because he is A) sane and B) respected.”
Well except for c)he isn’t evil. See, Henry Gyrich was a JERK, but he was a jerk in a bureaucratic antagonist way, for the most part. He may hate the X-Men and Captain America, but he’s not stupid enough to think that Bullseye and a more cannibalistic than ever Venom would either do a better job or be easier to control. He certainly wouldn’t be pulling this “Oh, you can be as evil as you want, just keep it discreet” bullshit, nor would ‘the Cabal’ exist.
I have to admit, I’m picking up Blackest Night. But it’s really just… meh. I mean, SHOCK VALUE OF KILLING B/C-LISTERS IN HORRIBLE WAYS OHNOES aside, do we really think these people will stay dead?
I honestly hope not. I like the characters that got whacked so far. Blar.
Have you not been reading REBELS? Easily one of the high points of the DC books right now (shame like every other book its being dragged into BN however)
I don’t agree Civil War was a good idea. It required characters to behave in OOC ways. What should have been a minor disaster was ramped up despite Earth 616 experiencing worse several times. Basically any story that really points out how the people of the MU don’t deserve their heroes is a bad one for me.
I’m really enjoying Blackest Night. The deaths don’t seem so much about shock value as a logical consequence of what’s happening. Why does Flash need to be there when he can’t defeat any of the zombies? Well, what else should a hero be doing when the world could be ending. And so what if Hawkman doesn’t believe BL Ralph about what he said about Hawkgirl. He’s still hate him for saying it.
The Superman story isn’t bothering me. General Lane is the low point but I like most of it. I do handwave the situation with Superman and the Kryptonians and the people of Earth. I figure people still trust Superman but none of the other Kryptonians and realize he wouldn’t be able to stop them all.
Gyrich is not respected. See the way he was dismissed in Avengers:Initiative. And I don’t consider any anti-superhero people sane
Of course I guess it’s pretty obcious we don’t like similar comics, despite me liking your If I wrote entries. I wouldn’t take a copy of Batman and Robin if someone paid me.
First, there’s no reason Lex Luthor EVER should have been respected enough to become leader of anything major, especially not an elected one. At least Osborne has the advantage of being appointed (and they have the handwave that someone else was the Green Goblin after Headsman dressed up as the Goblin). The whole person in charge thing has clearly been in shambles since Fury left – I like Maria Hill well enough, and she’s capable enough, but it’s clear that she wsan’t doing a great job either. And putting Tony in charge to begin with was an inuniverse idiot move.
Second, I counter your anti-Superman point with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_At_Earth%27s_End
Also, as bizarre as it sounds, this stuff is pretty fun. I’m digging Robinson actually writing something I want to read rather than Atom braindancing people. And let’s be honest, Last Son of Krypton status hasn’t existed in years. There’s always someone or something – you can’t have a unique concept in superhero comics, you need spinoffs. There’s been Superboy since the 90s, various Supergirls over the years, Chris Kent a couple years ago, various Kryptonian villains, etc.
And honestly I think Batman and Robin is awful, but I am more than willing to admit I do not like Grant Morrison writing mainstream superheroes.
“And putting Tony in charge to begin with was an inuniverse idiot move.”
huh? Tony did a great job but the timing was against him and now in IIM (on of Marvel’s best books easily) hes attempting to fix all his mistakes.
As stupid as I find Blackest Night, I think it could have been alright, given a tweak or two.
First, instead of just resurrecting every dead superhero, resurrect just the superheroes who had a bad death (where they died in a way where they betrayed their better angels). I thought one of the bright spots in Blackest Night was that Don Hall wasn’t resurrected, probably because the idea of Dove actively hunting and killing would be deeply retarded. You wouldn’t have as much of a roster, but at least it would be less offensive.
Second, instead of having the resurrected heroes be blatantly and obviously evil, make it so that they are a little more insidious. Instead of having them immediately attack the living heroes, have them come back looking and acting as the heroes that they were, but as they are coming back, a rash of superhero killings occur.
That’s just me, though.
2.) Superman would not be the Last Son of Krypton but instead one of a hundred thousand Kryptonians
I’m confused why this is a problem. It’s not like Kandor hasn’t been around forever, as has Supergirl. (The other three issues are legitimate problems.)
——
If we take the Atom’s description of the Black Lantern rings to be accurate, the BL’s aren’t zombies, but programmed soldiers of Nekron using shock and awe tactics taken to a logical extreme. (Basically they act roughly the same because they are roughly the same, and their appearance as the dead is partially a tactic.)
Plus there’s some biblical stuff floating around Blackest Night, which will probably be made more explicit later on. (As I’ve joked elsewhere, I wouldn’t be surprised if the heroes of the DCU built an ark and collected two of each legacy line to live on it while the Black Lanterns rage for forty days and forty nights. In the end they’ll send out Raven and Dove to see if it’s safe to return; Raven will fail, but Dove will succeed. And the Rainbow Lantern Corps will be Nekron’s promise that he will never try to do this again.)
Of course, I’ve probably thought about this too much.
from interviews it seems like Bendis had someone else in mind, but picked Osborn after the awesome that was Ellis’ Thunderbolts. and I honestly don’t mind, it’s been a fun ride.
also say what you will about the current direction of the Superman franchise, but Supergirl went from being completely fucking unreadable to something I gladly pay for each month. that’s huge in my book.
It was an idiot move because no matter how good of a job he did it set up a far too complete power structure for someone else to fill. In charge of Shield, ok. In charge of the superhuman registration act/Camp Hammond, ok. Both? Too much consolidated power.
Andre: Having read your ideas, it’s not just you any more.
Well, re: Blackest Night, they aren’t the souls of the heroes, which you see with Deadman, as a BLRing animates Boston Brand’s body, but Deadman himself is still floating around going “Hey! LEAVE MY BODY ALONE DAMNIT!”
It you want things to get better, just abandon the Big Two and start buying more indys.Seriously, as long as these stupid “events” keep selling, DC and Marvel will stay on this road, no matter how much everyone complains. But if next month’s sales figures show “Blackest Night” crashing and burning, and the new B.P.R.D.(or other indy book of your choice) mini going through the roof, they WILL get the message…
The problem with the current Superman storylines isn’t that there’s more than one Kryptonian (or even more than five), it’s that there are three main Superman titles and Superman is only in one of them, in which he does nothing but stand around and ponder Kandorian political intrigue. Further, Mon-El is a dull character, Nightwing and Flamebird are dull characters, and General Lane and his minions are dull villains.
I suppose there are ways you could take all of these concepts and characters and arrive at something engaging and exciting, but Rucka and Robinson can’t do it–all they can deliver is Mon-El calmly brooding about his problems and Nightwing and Flamebird having all the sexual tension of a pair of tater tots. A year into Robinson’s Superman run I have begun seriously questioning if I ever want to check out his Starman–that’s how boring this stuff is.
Nightwing and Flamebird’s sexual tension doesn’t do much for me but I like their backstory and personality.
So, the Black Lanterns are internet trolls.
Superboy Prime’s deal was that he was an overzealous fanboy who felt entitled to demand comics be made his way.
Clearly, Geoff Johns’ next major villain will be the guy who starts every post with “I’m not racist, but…”
I’m liking Simone’s WONDER WOMAN along with some of the titles that have been mentioned. POWER GIRL is solid, but trying way too hard to shoehorn sexual politics into every story. “The Ultra-Humanite isn’t just an evil mastermind out to conquer the world- he’s a chauvinist pig!”
Booster’s not nearly as good since (and you may find this ironic) Geoff Johns stopped writing it. I know it’s his character, but Dan Jurgens isn’t as good; for one thing, he seems to have no interest in the supporting cast beyond Rip and Skeets. For another, he’s not nearly as good with the humour.
It warms the cockles of my heart to see so many people in this thread jumping in to recommend non-Marvel or DC comics. Yes, yes, yes. We really need to break the stranglehold Marvel and DC have on the comics-reading imagination, and stop associating “comics” with “superheroes”.
Um, that said, there aren’t a ton of really great non-big two books right this minute…I always love The Goon, Roger Langridge’s work on the Muppet Show comic is one for the ages, and whenever The Umbrella Academy comes back I will be happy (that series provides all the superhero fun I will ever need as far as I’m concerned). But because of the nature of those companies, unlike DC and Marvel you don’t despair that they’re locked into some corporate death spiral and that, consequently, they could produce something good at any time.
I like the new krypton stories :/
At the moment, I’m reading a handful of DC books (GL, Blackest Night, Wonder Woman) plus various Vertigo trades.
If you’re looking for a challenge, MGK, maybe trying writing a parody of a good comic; try making an issue of Incredible Hercules funnier or something like that.
“And fans will probably like it”
I doubt it. They’ll buy it, but they’ll tear it apart like everything else.
I’d say ‘rewrite Titans using the plot and script of a daytime soap opera’, but I can’t see how it’d make a discernable difference. Once while flipping channels I saw one that had a vampire with a midget assistant; a bright green shapeshifter and the daughter of a/the Devil are TAME compared to that crap.
On the subject of all of the Black Lanterns’ “You’re gay!” offense, In Green Lantern Corps (to my recollection) when Black Lantern Jade was trying to get to Kyle by doing the opposite (saying that she still loved him and that they could get back together). To Kyle’s credit, he wasn’t fooled once he got over the shock of seeing her again.
Norman Osborn was retconned into a diabolical manipulator after the Clone Saga just because they needed *somebody* to be the mastermind behind it all, so why not have it be Spider-Man’s most notorious villain?
Only problem is, when you actually read the original Green Goblin stories, if you take away the initial mystery of his identity, his connection to Peter Parker, and killing Gwen Stacy, Norman’s just a Halloween-themed dude who wants to take over the underworld. This is not an A-list villian for anybody but Spider-Man because of the personal connection; Captain America would probably regard him as being somewhere between the Grey Gargoyle and the Owl (hey, at least the Owl *has* a power base instead of always trying and failing to build one!).
I want to defend DC, but… yeah.
I’ve been enjoying WoNK and Supergirl, somewhat enjoying Flamebird and Nightwing, and pondering where Mon-El went wrong (I think it was the new haircut — either the haircut itself, or having it be the high point of the first issue).
And Batman and Robin is a great read. And Adventure.
But, Incredible Hercules is so much better. So very much better.
Oh and I’m not reading Blackest Night, so I’m relieved that it doesn’t undo the kinda cool Ghost Detective angle that Dixon was working on before he left Outsiders for Ralph and Sue.
Also, if you’re gonna read a good zombie comic, make it Walking Dead. Other good stuff: Invincible, Astounding Wolfman and Brit. And in case you don’t like Robert Kirkman: Atomic fuckin Robo.
Gyrich in Dark Reign? That could be interesting. Now why would they pick Osborn over Gyrich? Name recognition, I guess. Norman was in some Spider-Man TV cartoons & a movie, Gyrich was a minor out-of-character guy killed off in the X-movies.
But really, it’s the flaw of modern Marvel that they seem to really want to write Superman. (Every third thing the Sentry does. The Death & Return of Captain America–which DC is now picking up on & imitating with Batman!) Spider-Man is the big franchise, so of course he’s Superman, & of course he has to have a Luthor, & instead of using a halfway reasonable equivalent like Doc Ock or the Kingpin, they resurrected Norman O. to play the role. :gag:
Still, I imagined someone saying, “Gyrich can’t be the arch-villain! He was killed by Mystique! It’s in the movie!”
So now I have an idea for how to retcon this: Norman Osborn is really Gyrich is really Mystique–or, rather, a duplicate of Mystique that took Gyrich’s place & then decided to take over Osborn’s company….
OK, I need to get some sleep.
Dissenting opinion here. I think DC’s output is currently pitch-perfect, novel, and interesting. Your slagging on Blackest Night reveals an ignorance of the details – Green Lanterns aren’t the only ones with interesting interactions with the antagonists. Dove, Deadman, the Phantom Stranger – all getting some interesting hooks that will be paid off somehow.
I thought about refuting Drmedula’s “vote with your wallet” suggestion, but it got kind of big and unwieldy, so I just turned it into a blog entry. You can click my name to read it. 🙂
Other than that, it’s pretty much a “What he said,” to the whole post.
If Geoff Johns didn’t have a history of coming up with interesting side ideas in his epic stories that he never addresses, I would totally have faith in your theory. Except, whoops, he does.
Also, Barry and Hal’s conversations in Blackest Night being described as “pitch-perfect” rather than “my god, what shitty writing” is… interesting, but to each their own, I guess.
(And the hook for the Phantom Stranger is wholly annoying, based as it is on giving the Stranger a definitive origin, which misses the entire point of the character.)$
Gosh, I’m arriving to this party forty posts late, but hopefully it ain’t too late to go back to the original topic of it rather than discussing the current state-of-the-stories.(Which is also pretty cool.)
MGK, I can’t speak for other people, but I want to see you do more comics parodies not so much because I want stuff made fun of, but because I really, really like your writing and I want MORE of it. One of your final ‘I Should Write Dr. Strange’ posts, where it was Strange and Wiccan in the diner? That was GOOD SHIT, and it wasn’t parodic at all. Your Death of the New Gods take clearly was parody… until we got to the end and I felt more impact from YOU writing Barda’s death than I did in the actual commercial product.
Heck, I would like to read your SCRIPTS, because you’re really strong with dialogue to begin with and a well-written comics script reads clean even without art.
It seems clear you only want to do a parody when there’s a ‘classic’ case for doing one. That’s awesome, and you gotta write what YOU wanna write. And again, I can’t speak for everyone. But speaking for me, I just want more ‘MGK Presents: .’ I’d pay for it if I could, but Marvel and/or DC don’t seem like they’re going to give you a book, the dastards.
oh just an FYI, Gyrich is being given control of SWORD. First arc will be Brand dealing with the fallout.
This is probably a good time to point out that we’re coming into indie comic season, with SPX this weekend and APE a few weeks later.
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John Seavey, I appreciate being singled out, but you don’t QUITE get my point.I’m not just talking about the “floppies”.We all know the future isn’t in the comics shops; it’s in mainstream bookstores.And the original graphic novel is here to stay. Not to mention collections of quality material: I’ve spent more money on reprints of classic material than I ever thought I would (mostly because I never concieved of hardcover comics being a regular part of the industry!)It’s not nostalgia to want to read Kirby’s run on THOR; but sticking with books you actively dislike just because they were good once and might someday be good again someday is self-defeating, and in fact GUARANTEES the mistreatment of the material WILL continue, because it’s profitable. (Trust me-even if DC cancels FLASH, the character will come back- he’s too established to vanish forever. BUT if a creator-owned book goes under, it may discourage that creator from doing similar work again…)
If Geoff Johns didn’t have a history of coming up with interesting side ideas in his epic stories that he never addresses, I would totally have faith in your theory. Except, whoops, he does.
I can’t really think of any interesting side ideas that he’s failed to address. Grant Morrison is the big offender in that department, not Johns.
Also, Barry and Hal’s conversations in Blackest Night being described as “pitch-perfect” rather than “my god, what shitty writing” is… interesting, but to each their own, I guess.
If I’d said that the dialogue in Blackest Night was pitch-perfect, you’d have something resembling a point, but I was speaking of DC’s output (hence using the words ‘DC’s output’) in general – the overall tone struck by the DC Universe family of titles. (as opposed to, say, the overall tone of Marvel right now)
(And the hook for the Phantom Stranger is wholly annoying, based as it is on giving the Stranger a definitive origin, which misses the entire point of the character.)
You’re jumping to conclusions. That may be how it goes down, and I admit a certain dread that they will do that. But I’m withholding judgment until I actually see what they do.
Civil War was a terrible idea wrapped around a terrible execution, or more accurately a terrible execution with a terrible idea shoehorned in as an excuse, because that’s how Millar rolls.
Dark Reign is great because it’s just Civil War / the Initiative redux except with a villain that none of the writers feel obligated to pretend is a hero.
Norman Osborne is the perfect person to hold a major position of power in the MU’s United States government because the MU’s United States government has always been at least as insane as Norman Osborne ever was. They built Sentinels! They built giant purple murderbots and let them loose on American cities and thought this would all work out great. On a given day you could probably talk the MU electorate into voting Red Skull in as President on a platform of “I will wear Captain America’s ribcage as a party hat.”
Dark Reign isn’t an event comic because Dark Reign isn’t an event and thank God because instead of that it’s just something that whichever MU comic can use to whatever degree it likes and then ignore it otherwise. If the shambling corpse of Event Comics finally keeled over and died and stuff like DR took its place I wouldn’t shed a single tear.
Unless Keith Giffen wants to write about outer space in which case he can do it any way he wants.
Yes, but MGK, if you don’t do parodies how will I know what’s going on in these events? I’m certainly not going to read them, even reading the summaries makes me groan and hit the back button reflexively.
Oh well, I guess I’ll live in ignorance.
SC
Does not compute.
“Dissenting opinion here. I think DC’s output is currently pitch-perfect, novel, and interesting. Your slagging on Blackest Night reveals an ignorance of the details – Green Lanterns aren’t the only ones with interesting interactions with the antagonists. Dove, Deadman, the Phantom Stranger – all getting some interesting hooks that will be paid off somehow.”
you know Bringing up Phantom Stranger and change
here
is a bad idea
Without having actually read any of Dark Reign, I would like to see Gyrich wind up as the hero of the piece, in that he’s the one that takes Osbourne down.
After all, political machinations & secret government ops? Gyrich has been doing that sort of thing for decades. Osbourne, by comparison, is a rank amateur.
Can you imagine how the Avengers would feel knowing that they should feel grateful to Gyrich for serving them Osbourne’s head on a platter, and that they’re pretty much in his debt as a result?
@Perry Holley
Moral and ethical ambiguity? In my comics?! I say thee nay!
Perry, that would be awesome, but it’s too poetic to happen.
Homeless Superman armed with knives to stab evil doers, coming soon to _Superman: Man of Steel_.
@dan: “On a given day you could probably talk the MU electorate into voting Red Skull in as President on a platform of “I will wear Captain America’s ribcage as a party hat.””
I wouldn’t vote for him on his executing Captain America policy, but he is the kind of guy who would give the US a public healthcare system (a healthy minion is a productive minion). Plus a Red Skull / Schwarzenegger ticket has major star power, even if it wouldn’t poll well among the Jewish community.
I think the ship of “a definitive origin for the Phantom Stranger” has sailed; when you publish four possible origins for the Phantom Stranger, and one of them is written by Alan Moore and the other three aren’t, it kind of puts an end to that question. 🙂
And Drmedula, I’m not saying people should stick with books they actively dislike. Lord knows I didn’t. 🙂 I’m just saying that voting with your wallet isn’t likely to solve the problem of bad books, based on over a decade of available evidence.
Really, really even-handed write-up here. Not that I’m surprised. I get that the main idea behind Marvel right now is a bit silly but it’s fine because the execution across the board is just excellent. On the other hand, it’s not exactly something I could suggest to a layperson. Civil War was made for new fans. It was Millar trying to make money and Millar is very good at making money. He’s not very good at writing comics *I* like, but he’s not trying to.
Dark Reign just isn’t a very marketable story, no matter how well Marvel Editorial has managed to put amazing writers on their comics. For one thing, it’s about 2-5 years too late. Obama won. Were they planning for him not to win or something?
DC’s certainly better than it was two or three years ago but they haven’t had a solid direction one way or another since Infinite Crisis (and btw, that was the WRONG direction. It was BACKWARDS which is endlessly frustrating because the direction of Countdown to Infinite Crisis was, in fact, very promising).
I grew up a Marvel fan, very much into the comics and characters, and then the Jemas era completely shattered my connection to the characters with Civil War being the last straw, of sorts, when it came to that sort of thing. And y’know, I’m happier for it. Now I can just enjoy the Marvel output for being well-written and fun (and Marvel IS fun lately. Post Nextwave, they’re mining the deep pools of characters and you get things like the Scourge-killed villains in Punisher or a Killdozer-inspired Trull in Ghost Rider or the White Rabbit over in ASM, etc. etc,).
The other thing I DO like about Dark Reign is that it’s not about Osborn being EVIL, but about this unbalanced jerk honestly trying to do his best, at least in 3/5th of the comics he’s in. He’s making all of these honest attempts to make things better (as he sees it; see: “Why the hell can’t we just work with Doom?”) and to therefore stay in power and that’s a lot more interesting than what Luthor was doing as President.
Blackest Night zombies being internet trolls is just the perfect description.
I agree that the real hook of Reign is that Norman stepped into Stark’s shoes – however, this an Osborn much deprived of Ellis’ satiric bite.
Sigh. It could’ve been great.
Hey, sidebar: speaking of Peter Henry Gyrich, he’s coming back and taking control of at least one Marvel organization. He even gets a cover shot in December. Frankly, I’m amazed it’s taken this long for somebody to create this series after Whedon introduced the concept.
I think Secret Six is the best mainstream DC book coming out right now and definitely one of the very few I get excited for every month. Power Girl’s plots haven’t been incredibly interesting but Amanda Conner’s always amusing artwork makes up for a lot. Detective Comics is a good book too, even if I get taken out of the story by the urge to frame a few pages and hang them on my wall. Rucka’s stuff is always enjoyable and I’m actually liking World of New Krypton. The nerd in me wishes they’d delve even deeper into the minutia of Kryptonian life, like food, music and holidays.
What really burns me up about these mega “events” is that a writer doesn’t get a chance to settle comfortably into a fictional world, let the characters breathe and tell the story they want to tell. With the exception of Agents of Atlas, Secret Six, Incredible Hercules and a few other fringe books, I haven’t read many writers keeping their footing with all these far-reaching crossovers yanking the rug out from under them. I would kill to read a solid superhero story that lasted for a year without a shoehorned crossover.
Anyways, enough ranting. I’ll add to the chorus of people mentioning that your writing rocks whether you’re parodying something or not. If you ever do write another photoshop parody, I’d give you free cookies to do something related to Deadpool’s annoying, brand=new secondary word boxes.
Yikes. I feel like one out of two or three comic readers who like the idea of Norman Osborn in charge (albeit US superhuman affairs AFAIK, which isn’t quite the same as ‘the world’), even if the excution is a bit ropey.
I feel almost the same way as Dan: “…with a villain that none of the writers feel obligated to pretend is a hero.” But it’s bit more than just having a clearly-defined ‘baddy’. Maybe because I think most marvel heroes skate too close to being ‘heroic villains'(i.e. self-righteous jerks) anyway, despite the writers’ best intentions. Norman’s supposed to be a jerk and you want him to be a jerk. It’s a kind of Hannibal Lecter effect.
Er, I think I’ll just fall back on the ‘villains are more interesting’ defense. Wile E. Coyote finally caught the Roadrunner. For now, at least.
Matt D: “For one thing, it’s about 2-5 years too late. Obama won. Were they planning for him not to win or something?”
Er… not sure what that’s got to do with anything.
Lastly: I want to start reading Incredible Hercules but the prospect of a wisecracking boy genius stops me even opening an issue to flick through. Anyone feel like convincing me otherwise?
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