So last time I was, as the grandfathers say, rappin’ at you kids, I was surprised that DC has decided to turn Superman/Batman into a look back at specific past events. I asked, “Why is DC pushing ‘untold tales” when ‘untold tales’ are rarely sales successes?”

We might ask a broader question, “Why does anybody push ‘untold tales” when ‘untold tales’ are rarely sales successes?” In limited doses, they work. Take Batman: Year One, for example, or Matt Wagner’s retellings of Golden Age Batman stories. But try it as an ongoing, and Marvel couldn’t keep Untold Tales of Spider-Man afloat, nor X-Men: Hidden Years, nor X-Men: First Class. Yet they keep publishing and canceling series like that.

The conclusion I’m drawing from this is that these series can’t be motivated by sales, because ongoing series set in past continuity are, with few exceptions, proven failures. Instead, they’ve got to be driven by creators and editorial wanting to fill in those blanks.

There are any number of reasons creative types might want to do this:

“Year One” type stories and others are intended to build the myth. Since superhero characters are patchwork creations, built over decades according to no set plan from the beginning, these stories look back at their superhero with the benefit of years and years of concept refinement and try to square it all away. Alfred, for example, doesn’t appear in Batman comics until four years or so into publication, but myth-building stories recognize Alfred as vital to the Batman concept and go back to plug him into the mythology from the beginning. How did Batman and Commissioner Gordon meet? Where did Superman’s costume come from? These stories are all about finding meaning in stories where they did not originally exist. See also: Claremont’s Classic X-Men backups.

Then of course, there’s simply wanting to play in the sandbox. Untold Tales of Spider-Man, it seems, comes largely from Kurt Busiek absolutely loving the early Lee/Ditko Peter-Parker-in-high-school stories and wanting to see more of them. There’s not too much myth-building in the stories (of course, you could argue those early Spider-Man comics don’t really need them); there are a few nods and prods to readers who know their history, but they largely exist as entertaining stories on their own merit. The same with Hidden Years, which really only exists because John Byrne loved the Thomas/Adams era original X-Men lineup and wanted to make supplementary issues to the originals.

There’s a third reason that can be related to either of the two above, namely wanting to leave one’s mark. Of course, everyone who works on an existing superhero comic wants to contribute to the legacy, but I imagine it’s far more difficult to pull a Frank Miller on Daredevil and reinvent the concept in the current day than to pull a Frank Miller on Batman and retroactively contribute to the origin of the concept. If I go in and say, add a reporter to the Daily Planet staff who took Clark Kent under his wing upon his arrival in Metropolis, not only did I add something new to the Superman mythos, but I’ve made it so it was there all along. Of course, the difference between this and myth-building, or even just playing in the sandbox, is largely a matter of personal taste. If you love the story, the creator is trying to enrich the concept; if you hate it, they’re just pulling a cheap ploy so that they’ll be mentioned in the Wikipedia article for the character one day.

But I find the worst reason is the continuity patch. Say, in Heroman #347 (1982), Dr. Villain says he’s lost the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes, but when Dr. Villain appears next in Brooding Vigilante #298 (1986), he’s got laser-eyes again with no explanation. There are a lot of writers who are just itching to tell the story of how Dr. Villain got his powers back. Now, it’s entirely possible that there is a really good story you could get out of that; if that’s what’s motivating you to write, you might have something there. But if you’re writing that story just to fix the mistake, aren’t you just mending instead of creating?

Now, it sounds like Superman/Batman is falling into the “continuity patch” category, which does not bode well. I have a sneaking suspicion that this move is just to keep the title going, and that DC has some big plan in mind for when Superman comes back to Earth and Bruce Wayne is Batman again. But even so, they could just as easily keep it out of continuity or do Dick Grayson/Mon-El team-ups. Why this?

Well, I’m betting somebody just wanted to do it, even if nobody’s demanding it. And think about it — that’s a rare thing indeed for DC or Marvel, where sales usually drive everything. We comic fans always say “If you’d just stop buying (company-wide crossovers/books with pointless character deaths/team books with Wolverine shoehorned in them), then they wouldn’t make them anymore!” Which is probably true, but surely these past-continuity stories creative teams keep pushing are the exception to that rule. Because it’s been demonstrated that fans’ demand for such books is far, far less than what writers and editors are willing to supply.

There might be a case to be made, then, that “untold tales” are some of the most personal, most passionate works by superhero writers (and in turn by the editors who greenlight them), because you can be damn sure you’re not doing this for sales. Even if it is just a wretched story to fix some continuity error nobody really cares about, it shows a personal investment relatively untouched by the business end of things.

I’m not saying it’s good or bad, exactly. But it is rare, and it is worth taking a second look at, I think. Next time you pick up an out-of-continuity book set in the past, really think: Why does this comic exist?

You may find that issue of Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty more interesting than you’d originally thought.

Where do gods come from in the Marvel Universe, anyway?

I mean, at this point it’s pretty clear that they exist independent of human belief, so the ever-popular Terry Pratchett theory of godly creation (which was adopted by Neil Gaiman for the DCU in Sandman) is right out. They’re just sort of there. Either they were created by some even more vast power than they themselves might be, or perhaps they grew out of nothingness: the primary gods in each pantheon were formless energy which somehow gained sentience in the early days of the universe. Each theory has its proponents, of course (with more than a little personal interest backing said theories more often than not).

What we can adduce, though, through simply observation, is that regardless of whether or not the creation of gods is directed or spontaneous, it is most certainly difficult, and likely requires a set of circumstances that mostly do not exist nowadays: the heady days when every cosmic fart would create a brand new pantheon looking for a bunch of believers to collectively call Home are long since over. The gods themselves don’t know how they came to be: if you asked Odin or Zeus or Izanagi or Gitche Manitou how they came to be, not a one of them would remember. And even if they did, and they don’t, they certainly wouldn’t tell you.

Which is why it comes as a shock to Stephen Idle, a bike courier in Los Angeles, when he suddenly figures out that he’s the God of Couriers. He’s not sure how it happened; all of a sudden he’s faster on his bike than the wind and can hear the nonspecific prayers of his fellow couriers for speed and skill and truck avoidance. Plus, there is that one time that he flips a semi when it’s about to hit his best friend, with naught more than a wave of his hand. And why are all the girls at the courier agency looking at him like he’s James Bond all of a sudden? He gets himself checked for a mutant gene, but there’s nothing there. His powers aren’t natural; hell, when he tries to get them identified they disappear entirely, like they don’t want to be seen.

Hank Farnell, in Oklahoma, realizes at about the same time that he is the God of Cowboys. His lasso can snare the horizon itself. The cattle follow him like loyal dogs, his horse seems to be glowing for some reason, and Hank’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be able to ride across falling snowflakes. Betsy Klein in London discovers that she is the Goddess of Negotiation when the company she’s dealing with, in a tense labour standoff, agrees to not only accede to the union’s demands but offers a potential worker buyout – the CEO says he’s so very sorry, and would they like his past decade’s salary as a sign of good faith? Alex Ngwambe in Zanzibar comes to understand his place as the God of Bargains; Thoi Pham in Hong Kong learns he is the God of Mad Beats; Shannon Mckittrell in Auckland learns she is the Goddess of Bungee.

And if the societal confusion caused by this brand new pantheon was not bad enough, here is the thing: the other gods, the ones already extant? They’re pissed. Most of them, remember, aren’t really very nice people: good chaps like Hercules and Thor are not very representative of their pantheons, really, and the Asgardian and Greek pantheons are actually a couple of the nicer ones. Tensions start ratcheting up; half of the pantheons just want to kill these newcomers and the other half wants to recruit them. And what’s worse is that most of the new gods don’t want to be gods at all. Really, godhood is kind of a pain in the ass. (“Worshippers? You can have ’em. And what the fuck is up with auguries? Why am I expected to respond to a pile of steaming entrails?”)

This is the sort of thing only the Sorcerer Supreme can do: serve as the go-between and negotiator for a dozen pantheons while simultaneously putting his foot down to protect the former mortals (even the leaders of most pantheons, powerful as they might be, don’t want to risk that the current Sorcerer Supreme might be able to take them on) and investigating to figure out why suddenly there’s so much spare godliness to go around (and who or what might have caused it). The fact that there’s any new gods at all isn’t wondrous: it’s potentially very worrisome. That’s the sort of thing that prompts Dr. Strange to make house calls.

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?

This is somewhat old news (in 2009 terms, at least, which is four days ago) that somewhat slipped under the radar, but I was reminded of it when Andrew Hickey’s impressive and exhaustive (but exhaustive in the good way!) “Hyperpost” series got me to thinking about comic book continuity, and the desirability thereof.

To wit: Did anybody see DC is overhauling their Superman/Batman title?

Quoth Dan DiDio:

Over the next few months, you’re going to see Superman/Batman actually reflecting major events of the past of the DC Universe. We’re going to be building on other stories, other events, using these characters. So you’re going to see an expansion on Superman/Batman’s role in the post-“Emperor Joker’s” world. So you’re going to see effects of “Emperor Joker” in Superman/Batman. As well as “Our Worlds at War”. There are going to be events that we’re going to be filling out there.

Now, let me just say I haven’t been reading Superman/Batman and don’t intend to start right now. I don’t mean that as a judgment, but rather just to say that I have no vested interest in the title, and so this decision impacts my life in no way whatsoever; I am an entirely outside observer.

That said: It’s damned weird, isn’t it?

I don’t keep up with current sales figures and don’t really know where to look for a complete list, but I am guessing Superman/Batman isn’t selling as much as DC would like it to, right? Hence the shakeup. That makes sense. And DiDio does say the stories will also be tying in with events in the current DC Universe. That also makes sense. You can ignore a Superman/Batman book that’s going on in its own little bubble, but if it’s got a “Blackest Night” banner on it, you’ve got to buy it, right? (Note: You do not actually have to buy it.)

But expanding on past stories? Books like those aren’t known for tearing up the sales charts, are they? Legends of the Dark Knight had 200-plus issues, Legends of the DC Universe did okay for a while, and they’re still putting out Batman Confidential. But Superman Confidential only lasted 14 issues. JLA and JSA Classified are gone and not terribly missed. Untold Tales of Spider-Man was well-regarded (and don’t think I didn’t love it), but cancelled after 25 issues; Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man only made it to 18.

Also, look at the specific examples DiDio uses. “Emperor Joker” and “Our Worlds At War,” circa 2000-01. All right, here is where I admit something to you: I bought both of those crossovers when they first came out. (I was in high school and had a part-time job, so I had money but little responsibility; I have never bought more monthly superhero comics on a regular basis before or since, and I probably never will again.) “OWAW” reads like a hamhanded commentary on 9/11 and the national mood in its aftermath, although strangely it came out just a few months before. “Emperor Joker,” on the other hand, a story where the Joker gets access to Mr. Mxyzptlk’s powers and remakes the world in his own image, I remember as being thoroughly decent; not great, not awful, but entertaining enough for what it was.

And yet, I have no interest in this whatsoever. I thought “Emperor Joker” was already too long at nine issues spread over two months. And an “expansion of Superman/Batman’s role” in the storyline? The story was all about Superman and Batman in the first place. It’d be one thing to ask, “What was going on with these characters during a crossover in which they were only marginal figures?” This is like saying you’re going to retell Spider-Man’s origin from Spider-Man’s perspective.

Mr. DiDio: I do not often agree with your editorial decisions, but I am not the sort to wave my arms about and call you an idiot. I realize that being EiC of a superhero comic book company is a demanding but somewhat thankless job. Nevertheless, I have to say I fear you have made a grave miscalculation here. Because I am the target audience for this book; older fans probably care more about stuff like “Invasion!” or “Legends,” and younger fans have never heard of “Our Worlds At War.” This should be right in my nostalgia wheelhouse, and yet “Emperor Joker” is maybe a notch below Deep Blue Something in the grand hierarchy of Things I Cared About In High School.

So I have to ask, who is supposed to be buying this comic, if not me? And why is DC pushing “untold tales” when “untold tales” are rarely sales successes?

It may not surprise you to hear that I have a theory, but it can wait until next week. But let me know in the meantime — does this strike anyone else as a baffling strategy, or is it just my problem?

The Tarantula is interesting in that everything that’s been done with him in the modern era is effectively unconnected to the Golden Age rendition of the character. After all, if you’ve read any of the Golden Age appearances of the character, he’s probably one of the most generic mystery men out there. A boring yellow-and-purple costume (which would later be adopted by the Wesley Dodds version of the Sandman in a weird coincidence), boring stories, boring name (come on, his name is literally “Johnny Law”), and token gimmick: suction cups on his boots so he could walk up walls.

And that was pretty much it. Unlike a lot of the Golden Age heroes DC bought over the years, the Tarantula was boring and one-note: he wasn’t that successful in the Golden Age (his run in Star-Spangled Comics was pretty brief) and didn’t do anything memorable, unlike for example the entire Justice Society, which really was an all-star assortment of characters back in the day.

So when he was brought into the All-Star Squadron in the 80s, he was effectively a blank slate. What Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway did was take the name and create an interesting story hook: John Law wanted to write a book about superheroes, so he became one. They added a “wirepoon gun” that fired “thin but superstrong” nylon cord as his version of a spider’s web-shooter: a joke on the fact that in Tarantula’s first Golden Age appearance, somebody called him a “spider man.”

The “why does he have the same costume as Sandman” thing was resolved by having Dian Belmont design a costume for Wes, and then when Wes initially rejected it John took it for his own use, but eventually decided to go his own route and thus Jerry Ordway (who, incidentally, had one of the best artistic runs on any superhero comic ever when he worked on All-Star Squadron) created one of the more memorable and successful costume revamps in comics: the Tarantula’s new outfit still feels “Golden Agey” but adds a welcome touch of modern complexity.

The result of all this was to take a character who was the definition of “fringe” and make him into a mainstay of one of DC’s more successful team books for about fifty issues. That’s the definition of a successful reintroduction of a character. Tarantula might not be a star player, but he filled his role in the Squadron very well.

If you had any doubt that Rex the Wonder Dog views physics as being strictly optional, watch how he rescues people from burning buildings.

EXTRA BONUS: Proof that Rex the Wonder Dog has walked on the surface of the sun.

Recently there has been an internet kerfuffle about a scene in Amazing Spider-Man #603, wherein the Chameleon, while impersonating Peter Parker, has sex with Peter’s roommate Michelle (because she of course believes him to be Peter). A number of fans have called out writer Fred Van Lente for using rape as a plot device in a comic book. So people naturally emailed me (a lot of people), all to the general gist of “hey, is that rape?”

The answer is: maybe.

continue reading "The Odd Legal Ramifications Of Dmitri Smerdyakov"

Iggy Popped

Poor Michael Ignatieff. For months he’s been neck-and-neck with Harper in the polls, and people have been warning him that if he doesn’t force an election soon it’ll make him look weak. Then no sooner does he say he won’t support the government any longer but his support drops by ten points, because people say they don’t want another election. Even the publication of a nearly hagiographical profile in The New Yorker probably can’t cheer him up now.

So what’s behind the about-face? Were people’s eyes just bigger than their electoral stomachs? Personally I think the not-another-election thing is a smokescreen, a rationalization for the ugly truth: people feel they ought to want to vote for Ignatieff, but nobody really does. Outside of the West nobody much wants to vote for Harper — certainly nobody wants to hand him a majority government — but they’re not ready to vote for Iggy either. He’s the classic case of someone who looks good on paper, the computer-selected date that generates no chemistry: he’s everything we say we want in a prime minister, but when it comes down to it we just can’t get behind him.

The reason, I think, is that he isn’t mean enough. It seems odd to say it, since Canadians are renowned for our polite and easygoing nature, but the fact is we like our leaders to be sons of bitches. Sure, we tell ourselves we like Trudeau because he was charming and did pirouettes and brought home the Constitution, but what we really liked was that he fought with US presidents and gave people the finger and invoked the War Measures Act. No wonder Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark — nice guys both; try to get anyone to say a bad word about Joe Clark — didn’t stand a chance. Mulroney was certainly mean: the only thing more dangerous than being his enemy was being his friend, always a temporary condition. And Chretien? The man choked a protestor! He made jokes about people being pepper-sprayed! He FOUGHT OFF A BURGLAR WITH A PIECE OF INUIT SCULPTURE! (That’s to say nothing of the damage he did to the English language daily.)

But Ignatieff is in a bind, because if he goes on the attack too much he’ll sound like he’s lecturing, which nobody ever likes. He also seems to be a guy who instinctively plays defense rather than offense, which doesn’t bode well for him. So Harper, whom we all say we don’t like, will probably stay, because he’s mean enough for us to respect him. (He’s also learned the secret to governing with a minority, which is to bypass Parliament completely and run the country through the PMO.) And we’ll all grumble and complain about the money that was wasted for yet another election that doesn’t change anything, and six months later we’ll be wondering why Ignatieff doesn’t man up and bring down the government already.

Revenge of the third banana

In all the hoopla around the Marvel-Disney deal and the Warner-DC restructuring, one point that’s come up again and again is the rich bank of characters each publisher owns, with the assumption that this is a good thing. The problem is that each company only owns one or two genuine first-tier properties (with first-tier being defined as “someone with whom a non-comics fan is almost certain to be reasonably familiar.”) For DC it’s obviously Batman and Superman; for Marvel it’s Spider-Man and maybe the X-Men or the Hulk — the X-Men weren’t really familiar to non comics-fans before the movies, but their fanbase was enthusiastic enough to guarantee good sales, while the Hulk is well-known to a certain part of the population which is, unfortunately, not the part that goes to movies. When you’ve only got a small number of properties, you’ve got to get them right: it took eight years for Warners to relaunch the Batman franchise after Batman and Robin, and they’ll probably have to wait ten years before the stink from Superman Returns blows away.

The success of Iron Man has people saying that the future is in the second-tier properties — which is a reasonable argument to make if you forget about Daredevil, Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider. I would argue, in fact, that Iron Man was successful because it wasn’t a comic book movie, or at least it didn’t look like one to the general public. After all, no matter how successful a comic book is, there simply aren’t enough fans to make a movie successful, never mind a franchise; you’ve got to appeal to people who don’t read the comic, and in most cases the trappings of a superhero comic — the costume, the secret identity, even the superpowers — work against that. But Iron Man, as presented in the movie, doesn’t have any of those things. The suit is presented as a tool or a vehicle throughout (note the direct comparison to a car), and the emphasis is always on Tony Stark as the pilot of the suit; we’re not invited to conflate the two into a single identity, as we are with Batman or Superman. As well, note that the villain uses the exact same technology as the hero, removing the two-origins problem that afflicts so many superhero movies. Even though it’s not actually more plausible than a typical superhero story, Iron Man feels more believable to people who aren’t accustomed to the tropes of superhero comics.

So are those thousands of characters, the ones that Disney just paid a mint for and Warner just realized they own, actually worth anything? Sure — but not the way people think they are. It’s very unlikely that Deadpool or Green Lantern or Thor or Wonder Woman are going to be franchises or even successful movies — cripes, I don’t know why Wonder Woman is even still a comic — and, more to the point, a flood of unsuccessful superhero movies, like the one that followed the 1989 Batman, will most likely make comic-book movies in general radioactive. If either studio is sensible, they’ll focus on the properties they own that, like Iron Man, can be sold to a broader audience: it’s probably no coincidence that the next two DC movies to hit the screen will be Jonah Hex and The Losers, both non-superhero comics. Another good example is Blade: could anyone have guessed that a supporting character from a long-cancelled comic would wind up being one of Marvel’s most successful licensed movies? But in fact it was the lack of baggage, the absence of superhero trappings that let Blade just be an action/horror movie, and that’s what let it be successful.

See, as comics fans we tend to assign an inordinate value to these properties, but to the movie industry they’re just more grist for the mill: they don’t care if something’s had one issue or a thousand, they don’t care if someone read it by flashlight under the covers when they were nine, they just want something that can be quickly made into one of the hundreds of scripts that keep the development cycle flowing — the more cheaply the better. If I were a production company, I wouldn’t even look at a DC or a Marvel property; I’d be scanning the small presses and webcomics, looking for the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Men in Black.

I realize you’re real busy tracing lightboxing photocopying drawing comic books and all, but I’ve got a question. So I am looking at the Marvel solicits and I see a solicit for a new Black Widow series, and you’re doing the cover. So…

…since when is the Black Widow a double amputee? Is this going to be the result of Dark Reign? Is Norman Osborn going to chop off the Black Widow’s legs? (Or part of her legs.)

I mean, I’m all for inclusiveness, but doesn’t Silhouette of the former New Warriors fill the “handicapped superhero” niche?

Last week, I mentioned something about Batman and Superman’s secret identities, and that I would talk about them if anyone was interested. Well, I recall at least two “yes” votes. That is really all it takes. To be frank, I wanted to do it anyway as long as no one actively said BOO THIS IS A SUBJECT ABOUT WHICH I DO NOT WISH TO READ.

But let me preface this with two things.

-I can’t claim the ideas I’m going to talk about are totally new or innovative, especially because I’ll cite existing sources of the characterizations in action.
-I also can’t claim my take is the “right” way to handle Superman and Batman’s secret identities. There is no right way; these characters are 70 years old, so diverse and contradictory interpretations are valid and inevitable. I’m just saying this is the way I prefer to think about it, and you might dig it as well.

So here goes: Superman and Batman do not have dual identities. They have triple identities.

See, during Batman Begins I always think Rachel’s being unfair in that bit at the end where she touches Bruce’s face and says, “This is your mask,” the idea being that Batman has become the “real” personality, and the Bruce Wayne persona is an act. This is a popular characterization of the Bruce/Batman split, and I used to buy into it as well.

But then who is that sharing jokes with Alfred, and who is that talking to Rachel at that very moment? It’s not the public “drunken playboy” persona that Bruce has cultivated, but it’s not Batman, either. Bruce doesn’t talk in his gravelly “intimidation voice” to Alfred or Rachel or Ra’s al Ghul (and thank goodness for that). Heck, this is a guy who talks about Batman in the third person (“Batman has no limits,” not “I have no limits”).

The Dark Knight is as much a role, then, as the drunken playboy. The real guy isn’t Public Bruce or Batman, it’s Secret Bruce. In the JLA trade paperback of “Rock of Ages,” there’s bios of all the Justice Leaguers, and I absolutely adore this fragment of the one Morrison wrote for Batman (or at least I assume he wrote it, because it sounds like him, and it’s somewhat in opposition to DC’s official treatment of Batman at the time).

“Perhaps the most misunderstood and complex figure of his day, Batman is not driven by vengeance, as he would have us believe, but by a desire to use the persona of the Dark Knight to instill fear in his opponents and ensure that others will never experience the tragedy that has shaped his life.”

That absolutely blew the doors off of how I used to think of Batman the first time I read that in high school. I knew the big scary “I AM THE NIGHT” stuff was to scare criminals, but I never stopped to consider he might be trying to put one over on his JLA comrades as well. The guy is a method actor. And whoever’s writing that text does say “us”; looking at it through a metafictional lens (metafiction in a Morrison comic? Unheard of!), what if all of Batman’s dreadfully angsty, emotionally stunted “MY PARENTS ARE DEEEAAAD!” characterizations in other comics are him trying to fool the audience as well?  Maybe Private Bruce, that ultracompetent perfectionist seen in all of Morrison’s Batman appearances, is so committed to his role that he even started thinking like the psychotic vigilante sometime in the eighties just in case anyone is reading his mind (or reading his thoughts in little word balloons over his head)! He out-Andy-Kaufmans Andy Kaufman!

No? Well, it’s just an idea…

As for Superman, I tend to go in a similar direction. Mort Weisinger’s version was Superman first, with Clark Kent largely a charade; I confess I don’t really understand what pre-Crisis Superman would get out of just pretending to be Clark Kent. John Byrne’s version was Clark Kent, and Superman was just a suit he wore; I don’t feel the two identities were contrasted enough to be compelling, and Byrne’s assertive, outwardly confident Kent lost that poignant humility that’s the whole point of the character.

So instead, I like the notion put forward in Millar/Morrison/Peyer/Waid’s rejected Superman 2000 proposal:

“Clark Kent isn’t what Superman really IS, Clark is what Superman WAS–until he reached his teenage years and began to realize what all those years of soaking up the Kansas sun had done to his alien cells.  Superman’s story here is seen as the tale of a Midwest farmer’s son who BECAME AN ALIEN shortly after puberty.  […] This is someone who by any stretch of the imagination is no longer just human–except for the part of him, the ethical, humanitarian base nurtured by the Kents, which forms the unshakable foundation for everything Superman is BUT WHO IS WHAT SUPERMAN CAN NO LONGER BE.”

Thus, the “real” character in this dynamic is the alien who was raised by the most decent people in the world. Let’s call him Kal-El for the purposes of discussion, though he might more properly think of himself as Clark.

Metropolis (or Public) Clark, then — that timid, bumbling, sad-sack reporter — is a role; even if he had no other reason to exist, his function is to give this incredibly powerful demigod some much-needed perspective, to remind him no matter how powerful he becomes or how high he might fly, just what it feels like to be The Little Guy.

But Kal-El isn’t just Superman, either, because Superman has to be a symbol. Superman has to be all things to all people as the world’s pre-eminent superhero; the Kal-El lovingly raised by the Kents, on the other hand, is a specific person. Superman has no political ideology, but Kal-El does. Superman endorses no religion, but Kal-El has his own belief system. Superman doesn’t have a preference when it comes to Coke or Pepsi, but Kal-El certainly buys one or the other when Clark Kent goes to the supermarket.

This “threecret identity” notion, I feel, is a richer way of looking at what is usually thought of as the dichotomy of superheroes’ lives, and I feel it’s more relevant for the 21st century. In 2009, it’s not quite as simple as one’s “public” life and one’s “personal” life anymore, is it? The lines have blurred; we have multiple facets we show the public, whether they’re on our blogs or our Facebook pages or our interactions with co-workers, and these merge the public and personal in many respects. But somewhere underneath it all is the true self, the one not even the closest to us are invited into entirely.

Maybe sometimes you even think differently than you feel … just in case somebody’s reading, right?

-In terms of tangible changes to actual comics produced, I suspect this is actually bigger news than Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, at least in the short term. I wonder how many DC editors are updating their resumes this afternoon…

-Bugs Bunny could totally kick Mickey Mouse’s ass. Just saying.

-Rob Liefeld isn’t young enough to be taking cheap shots about Paul Levitz’s age.

-Number of times Diane Nelson’s connection to Harry Potter is mentioned in the press release: 3. I’ve got to give them marks for restraint on that one.

-DC Entertainment will release roughly 90 comics a month, at least 5 of which aren’t going to be written by Geoff Johns.

-As one of his final acts as DC publisher, Paul Levitz screws Christopher Bird by returning to write the Legion of Superheroes. I’d find that really exciting if I was still fourteen; as it is, I just hope he’s happy. Levitz, that is. Bird’s funnier when he’s pissed off. Sorry Boss, but it’s true.

-Sorry, Joe Quesada. You had your chance in the spotlight and you waited too long. Nobody cares about Marvel and Disney now, that is soooo last week.

-A few years back, an acquaintance of mine predicted we’d see a day when DC and Marvel would stop publishing and instead license their characters out to be published by others. This is still a ways off, but I can actually envision a time when Dynamite Entertainment’s SPIDER-MAN comic vies with Todd McFarlane Productions’ BATMAN for top spot in the sales charts.

-Does anyone happen to have a spoon handy? After that last thing I feel an overwhelming urge to gouge my eyes out.

Foley

this is probably the closest we will get to a Rex The Wonder Dog teevee show any time soon.

I was trying to figure out when to do this post, and then I realized, based on an Ancestry.com search, that Harry Lucey died in August 1984. I don’t know the exact date (like I said before, there was no obituary), but even though I’ve missed the 25th anniversary of his death, this might be the right time to write a bit about him. The rediscovery of Harry Lucey has been one of the best things to come from the revival of interest in Archie comics in the last few years. I don’t think most people, including me, had any idea who Lucey was until quite recently. He retired before Archie started giving credits, so readers couldn’t see credited stories in the ’80s and use them to identify the earlier work. And he doesn’t really have a clear hook to identify him: Bob Montana created the characters, Dan De Carlo set the new house style in the ’50s, but Lucey was… well, he was a house artist at MLJ who did a lot of fine work on their superhero and adventure titles (including Madam Satan, a character he helped create), proved equally adept at comedy when his company chose to focus mostly on “comical comics.” According to a commonly-told story, his girlfriend’s sister at the time was named “Betty,” which is how the name came about. (The only other stories about him are that he once came into the office to hand in his pages after being hit by a car, and that he used to draw his stories with the girls wearing no clothes on all but the first page.) He was the main artist on the Archie title from the late ’50s through the mid ’70s, applied his skill to everything from regular 6-page farce stories to an issue-length Beverly Hillbillies takeoff where Veronica apparently falls in love with her own cousin and even bringing some decent craftsmanship to that infamous story that was nothing but 12 pages of plugs for Archie merchandise. In 1974 he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and retired.

But now I think that while he’s not precisely a cult figure, he’s better known than he was at any point in his lifetime. He even has some advocates: Jaime Hernandez frequently talks about Lucey as a big influence (along with De Carlo), Kurt Busiek recently cited this Lucey Betty and Veronica cover as his favorite of the series. Dan Nadel wanted to include Lucey in his book “Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969”, and reluctantly left him out only because he decided the book should be exclusively focused on non-mainstream comics creators. But that’s how interesting Lucey has become to some collectors, artists and historians: he’s an Archie guy who is discussed in the company of the greats.

This thread provides a good selection of Lucey covers and art, including one of the quintessential Lucey stories, “Two Little Words” (which, miracle of miracles, recently turned up in a digest, and Archie wasn’t even re-drawn to remove his bow tie). And I’m going to borrow this comparison idea from the beginning of that thread: There’s a 1973 issue of Life With Archie that had a cover story drawn by Lucey, but the cover itself was drawn by Stan Goldberg (starting in the late ’60s, almost all covers had to be drawn by De Carlo or people who drew in his style, like Goldberg; Lucey and other artists rarely got to do covers from that point on). This is Goldberg’s cover, based on the splash page of the main story.

Now, that’s a good cover. It shows that Goldberg wasn’t always the guy turning out disfigured tinmen. You can see, with Reggie, how the curved mouth-to-jaw line, which has now gotten out of hand, was effectively and tastefully used. It’s the work of a very good artist. But then we turn the page and see Lucey’s splash page from the story proper. It’s not like this page is Lucey’s best work or anything; his way of drawing faces had become so stylized as to be a little freaky at times. But everything is specific instead of generic, even though it’s a generic scene. The girls aren’t just doing standard girlie-art poses, they’re holding themselves at slightly awkward angles, trying to find things to do with their hands. If there were no dialogue balloons, you’d still get a sense of every character’s role in the panel. (Why Jughead replaced by Reggie on the cover, don’t ask me.)

The thing Lucey was really good at was physical acting: making body language convey emotion, making one drawing convey the feeling of something that led up to it, giving the feeling of physical impact to a drawing. When money-sniffing Cricket O’Dell makes her first appearance by literally running over Archie to get a quarter, you sure feel the impact of him getting knocked over. (Though you may also wonder what happened to his head.) Of course he could always handle a “Archie gets thrown out of Mr. Lodge’s house” splash page, conveying every bit of pain inflicted on Archie but playing it for comedy.

And Lucey’s body-language skills made him especially good at handling those Frank Doyle scripts where it’s almost nothing but the characters talking for six pages; those scripts are great, but they can’t work without an artist who always keeps the characters moving and active and never makes the story seem static.

The other thing that I think makes people value Lucey so much is that he really made Archie into a more endearing, funny, everyman kind of character than anybody else. It’s easy to make Archie a bland, personality-free loser who undeservedly has two sexy girls fighting over him. Lucey always seems to play up the more specific and interesting aspects of his character: his clumsiness, his tendency to get really emotional and demonstrative, his over-reaction to any situation. Lucey’s Archie is always getting really angry or really scared, crying, screaming, waving his hands in the air and railing against fate; when he’s happy, he’s unbelievably happy, and when he sees a hot girl his eyes look like they’re this close to doing a Tex Avery pop-out. Lucey’s Archie is also the most destructive (he always wrecks everything in Mr. Lodge’s house). All the characters benefit from Lucey’s theatrical, broad gestures, the flailing arms, the angular poses (he could rarely bring himself to let characters walk or stand completely straight), because it’s funnier that way. But Archie himself benefits most of all, because by giving him a broader emotional range than any other character, Lucey sort of gives him the right to be the star of the comic.

Other characters Lucey was really good at: his Veronica was probably the only version who could actually make you understand why Archie found her hotter than Betty, despite their identical faces and figures. De Carlo was an undisputed Betty and Veronica king, but he drew them more or less as the same wholesomely sexy type; Lucey usually made Betty a little more wholesome in her body language — and very needy and clingy when Archie was around — while Lucey’s Veronica is very sultry and self-possessed. His version of the Mr. Lodge/Smithers comedy duo was also a highlight; I almost wish they had given him some kind of Lodge family spinoff.

If IDW makes good on its promise to publish best-of collections for the great Archie artists, I’m hoping there will be a Lucey collection in there somewhere; if not, the best way to get your Lucey fix is to pick up some cheap copies of Archie from before 1974. Especially the late ’50s/early ’60s because that’s when the whole company’s output was at its strongest. But even with the coming of new fads, strange story ideas, Saturday morning tie-ins and some inkers of dubious quality, the basic Lucey virtue — strong, emotion-specific poses and staging that sells the jokes — is usually there. Even when he’s asked to turn “Archies” producer Don Kirschner into a comic book character.

Finally, probably the quintessential Lucey story is still “Actions Speak Louder Than Words” from Pep 140. It’s a story that makes good on its title: No dialogue, and there doesn’t need to be because Lucey’s drawings tell you everything you need to know about what the characters think and want.

What do Citizen Kane, The Matrix, and Meet the Spartans have in common?

What do War & Peace, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and The Destroyer Volume 11: Kill or CURE have in common?

What do Persepolis, Jack Staff, and Tyrese Gibson’s MAYHEM! have in common?

I imagine the answer to the first two questions is obvious to pretty much anyone who’s familiar with films and novels.1 Unfortunately, I don’t need to imagine getting into an argument over what I believe is the obvious answer to the third.

I understand why Will Eisner came up with2 the term/format of the “graphic novel.” He wanted a “real” book publisher to publish his comics3. Comics at the time carried the stigma of being throw-away entertainment for kids. Getting a traditional novel publisher interested meant convincing one or more of them that the comics being offered up for publication were, in fact, something other than comics.

Fair enough. I’d call my feet tits if I thought it’d convince someone to give me money to touch them. I’m not proud.4 But I’d like to think that when I got out of the long, scalding hot shower I’d take after having whatever’s at the ends of my legs fondled, I’d be able to recognize that my feet aren’t breasts.

It’s frustrating to me to see writers and artists I respect giving more than the minimum lip service required to the notion that their work in the medium of comics is something other than comics work.

In his (Revised) Graphic Novel Manifesto, Eddie Campbell states: “The goal of the graphic novelist is to take the form of the comic book, which has become an embarrassment, and raise it to a more ambitious and meaningful level.”

(EDITED TO ADD: I’ve since been informed by someone who’d know that the Manifesto in question is intended as a work of comedy–a context I’m embarrassed to admit I missed due to clearly insufficient research on my part. I thank Mr. Campbell for clarifying the matter in the comments {which anyone who can be bothered to read my blathering should definitely check out}, and apologize for inadvertently misrepresenting his position.)

I’m all for more ambitious and meaningful comics. And I can even see how someone of Campbell’s stature could perceive a medium that includes the work of Alex Toth, Jack Kirby, and Bernie Krigstein, among many, many others, an embarrassment, irrevocably connected in the public’s mind with the stereotypical “Biff! Bam! Pow!” Adam West Batman image as it seemingly is, even to this day. The still widespread perception that comics are for kids is problematic (most North American comics not being for kids is also problematic for entirely different reasons, but that’s another post.)

I submit to you that the solution to the problem isn’t to create a new term for comic books,5 but to create more and better work in the comic medium–while making sure as many people as possible know that’s the medium the work is in.

As a comic book, From Hell elevates the comic book medium. As a graphic novel, it diminishes the comic book medium, in the same way Margaret Atwood insisting A Handmaid’s Tale isn’t science fiction diminishes science fiction. Both situations encourage those who don’t know what a comic/sci-fi is to believe the comics/sci-fi they’re consuming is something else. They are given no incentive to seek out good comics or sci-fi, because they aren’t interested in comics and sci-fi. The fact that they just enjoyed those very things is immaterial to their future reading choices, because they don’t understand what they just read was the very thing they’re predisposed to believe they’ve no interest in reading.

That’s not entirely an apples to apples comparison, as comics are a medium and science fiction is a genre6. But the point is that some comics will be embarrassing to people who want their comic work taken seriously for its literary or artistic merit for as long as there are comics. And whatever necessarily arbitrary distinction one tries to make between comics and graphic novels won’t change the fact that there will be some graphic novels that will embarrass creators who want their graphic novel work taken seriously for its artistic or literary merit, too. Because the distinction is arbitrary, and it’s an arbitrary distinction I suspect many would be unwilling, unable, or simply unprepared to make, even if there were widespread agreement on what the distinction should be7.

A year or two back, I was contacted about editing a series of graphic novels for a corporate client. Each of the graphic novels was to contain a central theme educating the reader about the client’s product; each was to reveal that theme in a humourous way; and each graphic novel was to consist of a row of three to four panels.

I tried to explain to the client that what they were describing would more accurately be called a comic strip. The client was quite insistent that they didn’t want comics, strips or otherwise. They wanted graphic novels. Four panel graphic novels.

That’s what those who’ve tried to elevate comics to the level of serious literature by creating a new and, from an artistic standpoint, unnecessary term have gotten from the public for their effort: a complete lack of any recognition of a qualitative (or even quantitative) difference between a graphic novel, a comic book, a trade paperback, and/or a comic strip.8

At the end of his Manifesto, Campbell returns the idea of the graphic novel to its original context, that of a marketing tool–a context in which the term had, and continues to have, a positive value for the comics creator. Says Mr. Campbell: “The graphic novelist reserves the right to deny any or all of the above if it means a quick sale.”

The use of the term graphic novel to describe comics has enabled a huge number of sales, to publishers, potential readers, and the Hollywood moneyhandlers who arguably keep the North American comics industry solvent (or at least inspire people to continue creating and publishing work inside it, if only for the worst reasons.) But at the end of the day, a graphic novel’s just another word for a comic book.9

There are more and better comics being made today than ever before. Instead of being embarrassed by those examples of the medium that display modest (or no) ambition, I’d prefer comics creators acknowledge what’s gone before, celebrate what’s been accomplished in the medium so far, and embrace the possibilities of what’s yet to come.

Unless, of course, doing so would interfere with a quick sale. In that case, here’s your four panel graphic novel; where’s my cheque?

-Foley 10

1. For those who aren’t familiar with those things, the answers are “They’re all films” and “They’re all novels” respectively; “They’re all stories told in the same medium” is a perfectly reasonable answer to both. [↩]
2. or co-opted, depending on whose version of events you believe [↩]
3. Considering the way comics creators were treated by the major comics companies of the time, you really can’t blame him. [↩]
4. I’m also not wealthy. [↩]
5. though that ship’s already sailed and it ain’t coming back to the dock. [↩]
6. regardless of what my local mass market bookstore thinks [↩]
7. and there isn’t, as far as I can tell [↩]
8. Well, that and a shelf at the local chain bookstore, a topic I may revisit in a future post if some politician fails to say something suitably moronic in the next few weeks. [↩]
9. At least in Canada and the United States. Over in his blog, Campbell has suggested the term “comic book” may carry substantially more baggage in a European context than it does in the one I tend to experience it in. [↩]
10. “Co-writer” of the “graphic novel” Cowboys & Aliens. Which we still don’t talk about. [↩]

LIKED

– Extract isn’t quite on the level of Mike Judge’s other brilliant comedies, but it’s still damn funny; Jason Bateman, JK Simmons, Kirsten Wiig, and Clifton Collins Jr. are all fantastic (and Beth Grant deserves a shout-out for creating the most hilariously annoying character ever; seriously, you will wish she would get run over by a truck), but you have to give props to Ben Affleck for being just goddamned awesome. I honestly think Ben Affleck doesn’t get enough props in this world.

– Strange Tales #1 is exactly as good as you thought it would be. Not sure why Marvel made us wait so long for it, but it’s fantastic. I thought the much-hyped Peter Bagge “Incorrigible Hulk” story was actually one of the least impressive; it’s still good, but I was a bigger fan of John Leavitt and Molly Crabapple’s She-Hulk story, Jason’s story of Spider-Man wanting to get into a barfight, and of course Dash Shaw’s Dr. Strange.

MEH

– Yes, I get that Spelunky is brilliant programming and revolutionary in its application of roguelike principles to platform gaming and blah blah blah but here’s the thing: a lot of little things that would have made this a truly great game as opposed to a truly great exercise in programming aren’t quite right. Most glaring is that there isn’t enough lifegain to quite counter the numerous ways to lose life in the game; the only way to gain life is to rescue the girl, an exercise that can frequently end up losing you life in the process (since carrying things is such a pain, given the loss of the whip and ability to run). There are other things: the dart-shooters do two points of damage rather than one, and given that it’s really easy to run towards one that’s offscreen and not see it before you’re getting shot with a dart, that feels unbalanced. The skulls sometimes becoming skeletons injects additional required caution that makes the game tedious. And the ghost showing up randomly is just goddamn annoying and makes the game less fun. It’s frustrating because the game is nearly great. But it’s not.

DIDN’T LIKE

– “All right, Supergirl, here you are. And you saved my life – much appreciated, by the way. But I still have to ask – are you here now as a hero… or as a villain?”
(Supergirl sheds single tear)
– “I’m Kryptonian, sure, but I’m not bad. I’m good.”
-“My father’s dead. I want justice. Together we can be justice!”

Somebody actually paid James Robinson to write Cry For Justice #3. Now, in fairness, the bits with Congo Bill and Mikaal Tomas teaming up actually flow quite well and I wish I was just reading Congo Bill and Alien Starman Fight Baddies, and there’s a nice bit with the Shade and Bobo that, one awkward line aside, feels like classic Starman. But everything with the actual star-billed superheroes in this book is total crap, and that’s before you get into the implications of them torturing a baddie who turns out to be a different baddie.