This isn't the 'New age' I've seen.

In my review of the JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS DVD I told everyone not to get the two disk edition because the second disk is worthless. I stand by that statement because it only contains a couple of JL cartoons and a documentary about the current 'age' of comics from the perspective of those in DC Comics who have shaped a lot of what has gone on. You're probably thinking to yourself, that this could be interesting and perhaps worth a view. Well, it is if you want to see some guys who seem to be completely missing the point.

The main point of discussion was the state of DC Comics from pretty much IDENTITY CRISIS to FINAL CRISIS. For those who don't follow DC this includes IDENTITY CRISIS, the comics leading up to INFINITE CRISIS, INFINITE CRISIS itself, 52, COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS, and finally FINAL CRISIS. This is years of comics here. A lot was focused on IDENTITY CRISIS, so lets start there.

Sales of comics were down around the year 2000. This isn't a surprising thing as the books had disappeared from the newsstands. You had to go into a comic book shop, know the secret handshake and then be ready to pony up at least two dollars for a comic. It's funny in the interview that Paul Levitz mentions sales being down in 2000, but also recounts how the first comics he ever bought were off a newsstand. Fanboys say that comics have grown up. Well they kind of have to when kids can't get their hands on them and can't squeeze a few dollars out of their parents for them when they do find them. Seriously, when I was getting JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA off that spinning rack at the 7-11 to go with my Slurpee it wasn't too hard to get my folks to pony up an extra sixty cents.

2000 came and went, bringing us to 2001 and a terrible tragedy: Dan DiDio's rise to power. DiDio was brought in pretty much right after the attacks on September 11th. He stated that he got a "feeling of dread" seeing the armed security around the Port Authority and he wanted to apply this to Superheroes. Poorly worded, but it later becomes clear that he wanted to convey a sense that superheroes were indeed mortal (in most cases I guess) and there are risks that came with that. He referenced the first responders that went into harm's way and wanted readers to know that there is risk that goes along with being a hero and that risk is still there when it comes to superheroes. The feeling was that readers needed to know that these characters could be hurt and that they could indeed die. This brought us to IDENTITY CRISIS.

I'm going to sidetrack for a little bit here, because that entire mindset both at that time and in retrospect is so ludicrous that my brain actually hurt while I was watching that documentary. This is what they were thinking in 2000? Really? Fresh out of the 90s and THAT was what they thought the readers needed to know? The previous decade saw the death of Superman, Batman getting his back broken, Aquaman's hand getting eaten off by piranha, Green Arrow dying and Coast City getting destroyed leading to Hal Jordan going off the deep end and eventually dying. I think the readers understood that the heroes could be hurt. In retrospect its monumentally hypocritical because we've seen in recent years the return of Oliver Queen, Hal Jordan, Barry Allen and Jason Todd to the land of the living. Death where is thine sting?

Back to IDENTITY CRISIS. This was written by Brad Meltzer, and I want it to be clear that I am a fan of his work. When his novels come out I snatch them up. He was just coming off of a run on GREEN ARROW which was pretty good and he wanted to do a Justice league story. His idea grew into becoming IDENTITY CRISIS. Meltzer excels at writing mysteries and this was a good mystery. It certainly caught my attention, but not in the way Meltzer had intended. I was looking for the other shoe to drop. I was sure that this was just the beginning of of something major, but what I was thinking was a bit further off from what the powers that be were planning. IDENTITY CRISIS was a lot of genre and character deconstruction, which I don't really care for. I got my fill of it with WATCHMEN. Still the stage was set for the heroes to become the victims. That little germ got started in JLA #101 and was spreading. DiDio claims "IDENTITY CRISIS will stand the test of time." Wioth apologies to Meltzer, I don't see that as a good thing.

The stage began to be set for INFINITE CRISIS. This was pretty much all done by DiDio, Geoff Johns, Judd Winick and Greg Rucka. The idea was to hit the heroes really hard to see what is brought out of them as characters. The series itself was written by Johns and was to be the sequel to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. It wasn't a bad story, but really it did pretty much crap all over the original series. The Flash had to 'die' because it was Crisis. Then there was a new Flash, whose series didn't sell worth crap and he got killed off, but he's back again. Superboy got killed, but he's back again. Four fondly remembered characters were brought back so two of them could die, one could be a prick and die, and the last could just be a complete bastard who everyone would like to just strangle. But there were good things to come out of it. The concept of the 'Multiverse' was reintroduced and that's a fun time. Also Batman began to cease being a complete prick, and was set up to go sit in a cave for a while which did him a world of good.

FINAL CRISIS was mentioned only briefly in the documentary and there was no mention at all of 52 or COUNTDOWN. I can't say as I blame them much for not wanting to talk about COUNTDOWN. If I had spent a year putting out a comic every week that had people laughing at it (not in a good way) and people who actually follow these things wanting to bounce their heads off of brick walls, I wouldn't want to talk about it either. On FINAL CRISIS DiDio said, "FINAL CRISIS is about being a hero in the face of a loss." That's such a gross oversimplification of the work that it borders on out and out falsehood.

Y'see, while DiDio was rolling through with his little "heroes can be victims" paradigm, something else was afoot. Its not talked about at all in the documentary. Heroes were doing some pretty wild stuff. They want to discuss comics in the 'Aughts' but they don't mention SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY? They don't talk about 52, which saw Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and Grant Morrison absolutely knocking it out of the park week after week for an entire year?

Dan DiDio wants it clear that superheroes can die. The genre answered him.



They didn't spend much time talking about FINAL CRISIS. That's understandable since most of the documentary was based on the concept of these heroes still being human. These heroes can die. And death is supposedly final, even if you couldn't tell from looking at the DCU nowadays. But FINAL CRISIS had it's say about things being final.



Yeah, that's pretty much everything you never wanted to know about the documentary on that disk none of you should purchase. Since you all were kind enough to read through all of this, you do deserve a little laugh, so here it is:Dan DiDio on getting his job in editorial at DC: "The first thing you had to do is you had had to shake out the fanboy in you."

Who says he doesn't have a sense of humor?