The Order is one of the best superhero comics available on the stands today, and it’s also selling quite poorly at present. On one level, this is understandable, because it’s a superhero title trying new things with brand new characters and comics fans are so often reluctant to buy anything that doesn’t have Wolverine in it. On the other hand, this is ridiculous, because comics fans are known for complaining that they want new, exciting characters rather than the same old boring retreads. (I know, I know, comics fans claiming they want something and then not being interested in it when offered, go figure, right?)
To more firmly make the point, here are some very common criticisms of current superhero comics, and why, if you have made these criticisms, you should purchase The Order.
1.) “It’s all-death comics nowadays. Killing off people for shock value.” Now, granted, the first issue of The Order begins with four members of the team being fired for not being good people, and this led many to believe that the book was the new X-Statix and it was going to feature lots and lots of relatively comical (or at least extremely bathetic) death. This is not the case. The four individuals fired in the first issue are part of a larger ongoing plot, and their firing additionally happened to set the tone for the team as one where the members take their jobs as superheroes (and by extension public icons) seriously. Which brings me to point two.
2.) “Everybody in comics is a jerk now and it sucks.” Just about every major character in The Order is a deeply laudable individual, because the premise of The Order is that its members have chosen to apply superpowers they believe to be temporary in order to serve the public good. Anthem helps conduct rehab centres. Veda teaches orphans karate (no, seriously). Hypernaut is a disabled liberal veteran, for crissake. You might think that all this virtue might make the characters unsympathetic, but Matt Fraction understands full well that simply because somebody is good doesn’t make them be not complex or interesting. Given that Aralune, who as a teenaged pop star turned superhero should be the character everybody hates, is instead one of the most popular characters in the book… you see where I am going with this, I expect.
3.) “Comics aren’t cool enough any more.” Thus far in six issues of The Order, our heroes have fought both reawakened cryonized Soviet super-soldiers and zombie robot hobos. I trust you see my point on this score.
Now, some fans have suggested that they don’t want to pursue a series where the lead characters won’t be the lead characters in a year’s worth of comic time, since the powers are all “temporary.” I would counter this with the fact that Matt Fraction obviously knows how to write a book, and I doubt that he’d trash a bunch of perfectly nifty characters just because of a prior writing decision – in fact I tend to believe that whatever happens, the core characters in The Order are going to stick around for a while to come yet, because the time and care taken into writing them isn’t something I think Fraction intends to waste.
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The Legion of Super-Heroes #37 came out last week, and I picked it up because the Legion is, ahem, something in which I maintain an interest.
And it’s pretty good. It’s not all-the-way full-on-brilliant, like (for example) the Grant Morrison JLA run was. But it’s definitely good. It’s already better than the flawed-but-admirable-in-retrospect Mark Waid run, and it’s much better than the dreadful fanboy porn Tony Bedard pumped out for six issues. (This is not meant to slam Tony Bedard, who I expect had a set number of editorial mandates to fulfill for his fill-in run and decided to just crank out six issues of what the hardcores would like so as to cause a minimum of fuss: IE, new Wildfire, new Matter-Eater-Lad, new Evolvo Lad even. But still: his six issues of Legion were the worst kind of boring, designed-to-be-inoffensive tripe that’s been killing the title for a decade at least.)
Some thoughts:
1.) Francis Manapul’s art is terrific stuff; a little Image-y, maybe, for the title in places, a little more cheesecakey than is to my personal taste, but he’s got a good dynamic sense of action (not unlike a less stylized Todd Nauck) and with this issue he’s already demonstrated he can handle the sci-fi and the superheroic aspects of the Legion with equal skill. Manapul wouldn’t have been my first choice for a Legion artist, in all honesty – I’d love to see a Western/manga hybrid artist like Takeshi Miyazawa (Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane) take a crack at the Legion, in all seriousness – but he’s quality, and you can’t argue with quality.
2.) Manapul’s art ties in with Shooter’s pacing excellently. In an age where a lot of major comics have only two or three panels per page, Shooter averages six; he’s recompressing the comic, writing like he’s the anti-Bendis. This is good, because the Legion requires a dense flow of information to handle all the extra concepts that come along with writing the book. The net feeling is one of efficiency – Shooter’s hitting all the bases he needs to hit, using about half the massive cast in a single issue without having any of them feel like afterthoughts.
3.) Shooter’s plotting and sense of story likewise get a thumbs up from me. New villains that seem bad-ass: check. Brand new character introduced (and although she “dies” during the issue, I am betting dollars to donuts she ain’t really dead) rather than going to “new version of old character” that makes the Legion feel horribly like an Ultimate Marvel comic book: check. Introducing sense of danger and scale immediately: big ol’ check. This is the first time in the postboot history that the title has felt like a Legion comic book is supposed to feel. (As I’ve said before and will say again: Mark Waid was writing something, and it was sometimes good and sometimes not, but it was never really the Legion in terms of tone.)
4.) Dialogue… okay, first let me say that the dialogue is very, well, Shooter-y. Which is to say it’s verbose (which isn’t necessarily bad), and there are some characters he’s obviously got a real handle on already: Projectra and Lightning Lad are the obvious examples. The problem is that, like the comics he wrote at Valiant, the characters he’s really got down to a science have to interact with all those other characters he doesn’t have as good a handle on, and the result is a bit of a trainwreck. The scene between Light Lass and Lightning Lad, for example, where Garth is speaking in naturalistic tones and Ayla’s responding with this incredibly stiff, awkward dialogue – it’s just painful.
Shooter also writes boring expository dialogue at times, some of his jokes just fall flat or aren’t as good as he thinks they are (“okay, KK” is a great example – as a piece of natural dialogue, something somebody would say because it amuses them, it’s good – as a joke to be repeated multiple times over the course of the issue, not so much) and definitely still has the 80s-ish tendency of telling with dialogue rather than showing or implying (the fight scene with Saturn Girl and Invisible Kid’s various expounding is an excellent example of this). I’m hoping these are kinks that can be ironed out, but I tend to think that this is where Shooter is at now and he’s likely not going to change that much, considering how much this reminds me of his Valiant work.
Still, even with the dialogue issues, Shooter’s plotting and technical mastery in other areas more than compensate. He’s got the spine of the Legion exactly as it should be for now, and that’s the most important thing.
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Sounds like about what I was expecting from Shooter–he’s a great plotter, has an excellent grasp of story, and has always been a pretty workmanlike scripter. I’ve always thought he was brilliant, just never was able to properly harness it.
For some of these characters, Supernaut and Calamity in particular, seem like they could keep their powers indefinitely. Also, I’m not buying the one year only thing, I’m wondering if that isn’t a calculated ploy, but we’ll see (from the tone of the post, we might be on the same page with that one)
I’ve always felt that the Waid Legion would have been better served being called Teen Titans 3008 or something similar. Yes, they were fun concepts and some really good stories (and Kitson’s art was just drool worthy usually) but there was a spark there that said Titans and not Legion to me.
You make some good points about The Order, but I would counter with one counterpoint: Its a spin-off from civil war, an event that managed to move through “bad” and end up at “Downright offensive”. So basically No.
oh, and on the note of your Legion post, since I seem to lack the mental capacity to figure out how to comment on that post.
Of course Timberwolf should be more feral and yes, I’d go so far as to say Wolverine-like. Except the other way around. I mean, it’s not like Wolverine is based on Timberwolf or anything.
Oh, wait
And yes. More Legion ideas please.
I want to like The Order. I really do. I should like it. But nothing about the book clicks with me. Its not even a case, like with Avengers: The Initiative, where I was like Simon K and refusing to get into a book that spun-off from CW. But Slott’s writing won me over on that book…
But The Order is like Warren Ellis’ Thunderbolts, I can see its quality but I just don’t LIKE it at all. I think in both cases part of it is that I feel SORRY for the characters without actually connecting with them beyond that. And its weird, because currently Marvel is kicking DC’s ass with books I enjoy. But two of their best-written (and I’ll definitely admit to that) just don’t do anything for me…
I’ve been reading The Order since #1 and have been loving it. The Calamity reveal was just one of my personal highlights. Fraction is firing on all cylinders, and Barry Kitson’s art has never looked more beautiful. Here’s hoping it lasts a long, long time.
And some of us don’t like the Order for none of those three reasons, but because it’s set up to support Marvel’s new central theme: the place of a hero is not to make moral decisions for themselves, but to do what the futurists tell them. That Tony Stark and Reed Richards are superior human beings not bound by common morality or law, because they know what is right for everyone because of their secret knowledge. And in fact the lesser folk should be grateful for having the horrible burden of making their own decisions taken away.
The metaphor I’ve used is that it’s as if someone wrote a series that used all the tropes and and imagery from the civil rights struggle: police dogs and water cannons, governors standing in the school room door, leaders shot down. And then in the aftermath, informed us that MLK was wrong and the CCC set up a nice shiny white superhero team to demonstrate how their way is superior. Where the individual members are perfectly nice people who do heroic things — but all of their heroism serves in support of a vile ideology.
If I wanted to read Straussian neocon propaganda, I could read any number of wingnut blogs for free.
because it’s set up to support Marvel’s new central theme
This is either intentionally hilarious or proof you’re condemning the series without reading, because one of the central tenets thus far in The Order is that although Tony Stark makes awesome super-guns and the like, he’s kind of shit at running this whole fifty-state initiative thing.
Now, if we were talking about the exceptionally creepy Avengers: The Initiative, you might have a point.
They are exceptionally powerful, they save the world, anyone who violates the rules is immediately expelled — in what way is this not an endorsement that Tony Stark’s Way is the Right Way to do superheroes?
What you’ve just described would work for just about any major superhero team. The Order simply have a stricter, more defined code than some.
Yes, and that’s portrayed as a good thing, the result of Tony Stark’s principles put into action, and thus support of his actions and the new Marvel ideology. You are making my point for me.
He’s hardly doing so. You’re simply foaming at the mouth and skewing evidence to suit your case.
And even in Avengers: The Initiative, no one’s a good little ubersoldaten. The three MVP clones are off disobeying orders, the former New Warriors are going all Joker on Gauntlet, and the other people are doing their thing. What’s that one dude who stole that dart that was going to depower the Hulk? Seriously, not at all a ringing endorsement of Tony “Lil’ Adolf” Stark. I’m surprised that it’s not embarassingly transparent how bad an idea the Initiative is. They’ve even got a Nazi on staff.
If the Order turns out good (I can’t say, I haven’t read it), evidence abounds that Tony Stark’s not perfect.
You had me at anti-Bendis. As far as the whole “perfectly nice people who do heroic things — but all of their heroism serves in support of a ideology” thing goes isn’t that pretty much the X-men’s whole M.O.? Not that “mutants aren’t bad! –except for the animal guy, fat guy, magnet guy, shapeshifter, and chick who rewrote all of reality.” is a particularly good ideology to live by.
No. The X-Men is all about chucking bowling balls at unsuspecting mutants’ heads.
I find it amusing what excuses comic fans will spew to avoid reading a title that has everything they want. The Order doesn’t say Tony Stark Is Right. It also doesn’t say Tony Stark Is Wrong. It just tries to be a fun, well written super-hero book. And if it fails in the sales, Joey Q will just say “See, Fun doesn’t sell.”
Initiative on the other hand is very amusing. It is implying, strongly, that Tony Stark Is Right. However, at the same time, it’s showing how screwed up the whole thing is and how out of his depth Tony is. For while his old friend Rhodey is supposed to be in charge of the camp…the US gov’t (Which is still technically in charge of the SHRA, no matter how much other books try to simplify it) more or less has given the camp to Gyrich, whose in league with a nazi supervillain.
It’s rather amazing. But in the Marvel books, if you read between the lines, the well written ones tend to show how screwed Tony is. Even when Tony doesn’t manage to appear. If only Marvel had the editorial cohesion to make this a real point. (Then again…If there was some sort of Vision at Marvel, Tony wouldn’t have acted like a supervillain in CW)
I read the first issue of The Order and for the life of me, I can’t remember why I didn’t keep up with it. Probably because Aaron Stack starting appearing in Ms. Marvel and I can also spend so much on comics a month…
Interesting notion: how would The Order had been received if it wasn’t part of the greater Marvel continuity? They’re still part of a nation capes registration project, they’re still bankrolled by a futurist millionaire recovering from an alcoholic past, the storyline follows the same arc, but they just aren’t implicitly tied into the events of Civil War? I do wonder how a book like this would do if it was published de novo.
I’m buying The Order, but more on potential than actuality so far. And it’s not because I don’t like the idea that characters may be vanishing in a year or that they’re not familiar; I really liked the book the concept was presumably taken from, namely Strikeforce: Morituri (which wasn’t even set in the MU…but did have an extra bit of seriousness in that in a year or less the characters given powers would die, not just lose the powers).
Problems with The Order; The superhero names are generic and/or inapplicable to the powerset, or just weird. Quick, what’s the powerset/difference of Supernaut and Heavy? What’s an Aralune or Veda and how does that match their powers? Calamity isn’t a speedster name and Anthem’s just a WTF name decision. While this seems trivial, I really have problems remembering which character is which if just a name’s given.
I’m also not thrilled with the pseudo-decompression decision to focus each issue so strongly onTa single/different character, particularly giving the back history for each character in individual one issue lumps. I want more character interaction (the only two who really seem to interact are Pepper and Henry) and would rather have character backstory come out naturally based on dialog and actions than expository lumps. Spotlight issues in a group book are fine as the occasional bit, but particularly as these are all new characters, the first N issues should give roughly equal weight and info about all characters each issue. The focus bit also makes each issue feel a bit Afterschool Specialish. This issue, Foo’s Story and why they aren’t perfect. Etc.
And, for sales reasons, I would’ve had more team members have connections to existing characters, both good, bad, and supporting, than just Pepper and Henry…and Henry goes way too far, being portrayed both as Tony Stark Lite sans engineering and intellect and Tony’s previously unseen AA sponsor….who you sorta think we’d have heard about before.
As far as the whole “perfectly nice people who do heroic things — but all of their heroism serves in support of a ideology” thing goes isn’t that pretty much the X-men’s whole M.O.? Not that “mutants aren’t bad! –except for the animal guy, fat guy, magnet guy, shapeshifter, and chick who rewrote all of reality.” is a particularly good ideology to live by.
Ah, someone who gets my point. Like The Order, the X-Men was a title that supported an ideology by having nice folks carry out heroism. Now, some people live in a world where are ideologies are the same; but I find a difference between “support the ideology that mutants are people and shouldn’t be attacked or kicked out of their homes or be killed just for being mutants”, and “support the ideology that it’s perfectly just and heroic to arrest and imprison people in the Negative Zone without trial just for having superpowers”. The Order are the equivalent of Magneto having happy puppy superheroes in his paradise future to support the ideology that it’s better to have mutants rule humans.
Simon K: no offence intended, but that’s one of the weakest points I’ve heard of not to try out a book.
I am personally really digging The Order, though I seem to like most things written by Matt Fraction anyway. The depiction of Tony in the last issue struck me as hilarious.
I didnt say I hadnt TRIED it. Just that I didnt like it, and am not going to buy it. My default has never been “I am buying every comic”, so I dont have to have a reason not to buy a book. Quite the reverse, if marvel/DC/whoever want my money then they have to give me a reason to buy the book. I had a flick through the first issue, saw no reason to buy it, so I didnt.
While “Government Mandated Superhero Team” isnt necessarily a bad premise for a book, its also not a terribly original one, and much as Matt Fraction can be an excellent writer (Five fists was great, and Iron Fist is monthly gold) this just didnt grab me.
Why, what WOULD you consider a good reason to not buy a book if “It spins off from a book I found both stupid and offensive” isnt a good enough reason?
Maybe I’m missing it when I actually read the book, but I’m really not seeing a whole lot of Tony Stark’s ideology flowing through it, anymore than it flows through most books in either company. The JLA and Avengers both would have issues if you violated what they laid down as unbreakable rules. The Order just has different ones because of the nature of the team. If this book had started coming out a year or two earlier than it did, no problem. But even dare mention Tony Stark in a positive light, and holy fucking shit, it’s the devil incarnate, kill it with fucking fire.
>You make some good points about The Order, but I would counter with one counterpoint: Its a spin-off >from civil war, an event that managed to move through “bad” and end up at “Downright offensive”. So >basically No.
I had the same feeling, very strongly, going into the Order, but it’s become one of my favorites.
I think the one thing MGK doesn’t mention — and it’s in striking comparison to his review of Shooter’s LSH — is how well I think Fraction scripts the series. He manages to make me laugh every issue, and I still chuckle at “Oh my god, y’all, I just ate a bomb!” If I used .sig files more often, that might be in it.
Tyg, I think there’s been some decent interaction between characters. Yes, it’s still developing, but I think that makes sense. These people don’t know each other, so they’re not likely to be chatting like they were old friends. It takes time to see relationships develop, but I think it’s happening. The one-issue back stories are working for me (except during the pause to talk about the fricking publicist), though I don’t know if the format can continue to work once we’ve been introduced to all the primary characters.
MGK, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on One More Day, and more specifically the clusterf*ck that’s surrounded it in the aftermath (not that OMD itself wasn’t an immense clusterf*ck of Galactus proportions).