WTFDCU?

Its Sunday, June 12, 2011 and this is The Side. Sorry, I don't have anything on last night's UFC. Wasn't able to make it to go watch the fights. Congrats to Junior Dos Santos for the big win. I'm looking forward to him getting his shot at the title.

COMIX!!

I'm stuck in an awkward position, and not because I slept on the couch again. I review comics every Friday, but this isn't the only place that my reviews appear. They also appear over at the Comic Kings site. Comic Kings has been very good to me over the years, and I'm more than happy to put my reviews up on their site. Its minimal trouble, and decent exposure for my blog. I also put the occasional comic related piece or comic movie review up.

On here, I've been pretty clear about what I think about the impending DC reboot. However, I've been keeping my feeling on this mum on the Comic Kings site, because while I'm not going to be buying DC comics once this thing goes into full swing, I don't want the shops business to be hurt. They've been very cool about my feelings about this. They didn't say anything when I started scratching stuff off my pull list. Right now as far as my DC reading I'm down to ACTION COMICS, DETECTIVE COMICS, BATMAN INCORPORATED, and BATGIRL. But I have been adding other titles to my list like MORNING GLORIES, THE WALKING DEAD, and USAGI YOBIMBO. While I don't see myself quickly making up the gap in my reading, I'm sure it'll pick up a bit.

Let's talk about the point of this reboot: getting new readers. The Missus asked a brilliant question when we talked about this, "With them trying to get new readers, are they trying to get rid of the old ones?" I've seen the renumbering stunt quite a few times before. Its something I never really approved of. The thought is that people feel more comfortable jumping onboard a title with its first issue. I never thought I'd see the day that they do this to ACTION COMICS or DETECTIVE COMICS. That's not even my main gripe. They say that they want to move the DCU into the 21st century. I know that there's a problem with some things time-wise. There's characters from World War II still active who have to be pushing ninty and that's being generous. But I'm looking at who they have on board for this. A lot of these guys have had their heyday nearly twenty years ago.

Rob Leifeld is drawing a book? And the defenders of it are the people who read HAWK AND DOVE way back in the 80s? How's that going for new readers? Jim lee is designing outfits which look like the stuff he was designing back in the 90s. I've gotten a look at the covers for these impending first issues, and a lot of them really do look like early image books. This isn't a good thing.

And what on Earth are we doing having artists double as writers again? Tony Daniel, Ethan Van Sciver, and J.H. Williams III are all writing books. I'm going to say this as nicely as possibly: just because you can draw a comic does not mean you can write one. No one is asking Grant Morrison to go draw a comic, now are they. We saw a lot of this in early 90s Marvel and Image, and we got a lot of really stupid comics from that little experiment. Speaking of Image, a lot of Jim Lee's Image creations will be melded into the DCU proper. There's also going to be a "darker" side to the DCU. I bet it'll be dark and epic! Epic and Dark! And George Perez is writing SUPERMAN. You're not going to hear me say a single bad word about George Perez, but this is a guy who can draw any character doing anything and make it look like spot on. Why is one of the best artists ever in comics writing a book and not drawing one?

Where's Bryan Q. Miller in all this. I'm not seeing his name anywhere. They show Mark Waid the door. Greg Rucka gets out. Nick Spencer gets off the reservation. Now I'm not seeing anything by one of the most enjoyable writers currently in DC. But Judd Winick is still around. Yay.

Speaking of writers, there's a bit of confusion going on. Some people are saying that everything that's gone on in the DCU has still happened. Others are saying that this is taking the characters back to earlier points in their lives, hence Barbara Gordon walking again. (Sidenote: way to show diversity. Have your premier disabled character magically out of her wheelchair.) But Geoff Johns said that all the stuff he's done with "Blackest Night" and his other crap have happened. And somehow all of the Robins are around in some way. But Lois and Clark aren't married anymore. There's no consistency here, unless its "Geoff Johns is awesome and we won't write off anything he did".

So, obviously I don't what DC is up to one bit. But a part of me is stupid and thinks that this'll all just be temporary, and in six months they'll come back to their senses and put everything back as they found it. This is the same part that previously said stupid things like "There's no way they'd be dumb enough to bring back Barry Allen." I still can't bring myself to wish ill on the company because if this goes horribly, and it will, then likely they'll make an even worse decision to try to "fix" things. I love the DCU. I love the characters. Its the editorial shenanigans that should be helping books get out and not making dictates as to what they want to see. They say they want to move forwards, but all I'm seeing is a lot of looking backwards.

Will this help bring in new readers? No. I'm honestly expecting the numbers to go down. All of this won't bring in anyone who doesn't currently read comics. If you want to see new readers you have to get comics in view of people who don't normally read them. Can't really get them on newsstands anymore. Even 7-11 is doing away with selling anything more than newspapers are far as reading material. Really it comes down to the current readers. They have to be willing to say to a friend "hey, I think you might dig this" and put an issue in their hand. I did that the other day with one of my students. They forgot the book they were reading at home. I had an issue of TEEN TITANS in the car and she wanted something to read while her father's class was in session. She loved it. I've created more new readers than this stunt DC is pulling will.

So, if you're excited about what you are seeing from DC's plans, then by all means go buy the books. Hope you enjoy them. I'm going to be off reading something else.

MUSIC!!!

Any time is a good time for some Warren Zevon.



That's it for me today. See y'all Wednesday.

Done with DC

Its Wednesday, June 1, 2011, and this is The Side. It really sucks when you realize that something you've really enjoyed for over a decade has jumped the shark.

COMIX!!

I've been a solid DC reader since 1996. I've read a lot of their titles. I've been cautiously optimistic about the company and the direction its taken over the years. Sure there's been plenty of missteps and stupid moves, but I've always felt overall that they were a solid company and despite the missteps they would come through. lately there's been rumors of renumbering all their titles back to #1. I called it an aggressively stupid idea. I figured with a recent letter writing campaign that got WONDER WOMAN back up to its proper numbering that we had taken a step to move past the constant relaunching to titles.

Guess I was wrong.

I actually had a bit of hope when they said there was going to be an announcement coming from Geoff Johns, DC's creative director, and Jim Lee, DC's co-editor-in-chief. But the announcement was that they're going to be doing JUSTICE LEAGUE?

This is one of those times in which I'm trying very hard not to just type the word "fuckers" about a thousand times. I've just lost what faith I had in DC. So when they do their relaunch I won't be onboard. I just can't support something this dumb coming off of this stupid FLASHPOINT event. Honestly, I feel a bit betrayed by a company I put such an investment of time and interest in. I'm typing this wearing my favorite t-shirt. Its a Wal-Mart shirt with the Silver Age Justice League on it, and I feel like a fucking tool wearing it.

So where does that leave me? I'm getting away from DC. Marvel's got nothing that I'm interested in. I still get HELLBOY and few odds and ends from other companies. So I guess I'll be exploring a bit more of the stuff from Dark Horse and other companies.

I feel like its 1996 all over. That's when I dumped Marvel entirely due to their going exclusive with Diamond. I'm dropping the vast majority of my reading list. But now there's a lot more webcomics so I may very well just read more of those.

I'm going to miss superheroes.

MUSIC!!!

Four guys who don't need electricity to make awesome music.



That's it for me today. I'm going to go and try to deal with the fact I'm going to be one of those guys who only reads independent comics. I promise not to be as pretentious as most of those tools.

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?

Every/nobody's right/wrong.

Things are moving in an interesting direction concerning some characters over at DC. It was something that I was aware of, but had not thought too much about until Linda made mention of it. DC has had its continuity rebooted a few times. This allows some things to get cleaned up that were overly complicated and also allows some idea to get a fresh start. However it's getting interesting now in that there's a heavy nostalgia going on. Older characters that have been pretty much written off to obscurity or even killed off are getting a second chance to shine. Sometimes it works (Booster Gold, Nemesis) and sometimes it doesn't (Hal Jordan, Barry Allen). But there are other characters that have been altered with these reboots and taken in new directions. But with this wave of nostalgia the previous continuites are being considered again, and not just as a reference as to what went on before. The different takes on characters are all being considered in current usage.

The first to show this was Hawkman. Hawkman for a very long time was a continuity nightmare. At one point he was a reincarnated Egyptian King. Then he was from an entirely different planet. Geoff Johns married these two concepts quite well. This was back when he was getting a good reputation for plugging continuity holes.

Well, Johns is still doing this and most recently in the two characters that Linda made mention of: Brainiac and Toyman. These two Superman villains have had radically different interpretations over the years. Johns took the same approach with both characters. All the different interpretations have been minions or robots created by the "real" character. Not a bad concept, but it got used in the same comic twice inside of a year. Bad form.

Grant Morrison had a different take, and he laid the groundwork for it way back in his JLA run in dealing with Joker. That's when he introduced the notion of "super sanity" in which the character constantly reinvents himself on a regular basis as a response to the world around him. This is how we can have the same character be a relatively harmless mischievous prankster in one story, a criminal mastermind in the next, then a bad dog sociopathic killer, and then back to prankster. This makes every interpretation of the character from his creation decades ago a valid one.

Morrison did something similar with Batman, but that's less to do with the character and more to do with stories that he was involved in. Morrison went with the notion at every story every published about Batman happened. Everything from super villains, to mobsters, to weird rainbow creatures, to Bat-Mite.

This is an interesting difference. Johns took all the differences and tried to line them up to make them make sense together. Morrison took all the differences and accepted them wholesale. Of course this makes reading the Morrison stuff a lot trickier, but the payoff was worth it. It also served to keep the characters moving forward in interesting new directions and made for great stories.

Nostalgia's fine, but living in the past gets you no where. I'll be following the writers that drive new narratives, not the ones catering to those who think comics should be just as they were back when everyone wore bell bottoms.

Barry Allen made me Marty Nozz

Yeah, I know I said I was going to stay away from the FLASH: REBIRTH idiocy, but the part of me that has to look at car accidents as I drive by made me check it out. For those who don't know Barry Allen was the Flash way back when i was a little kid and watching SUPER FRIENDS. In the mid-80s, Barry died saving the universe during the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS series. Since then his sidekick Kid Flash, AKA Wally West took over. So Wally's been the Flash for over twenty years.

So why bring Barry back now? It's simple, Dan DiDio is the DC editor-in-chief and he wanted Barry back just like he wanted Hal Jordan back. Guess he really liked SUPER FRIENDS back in the day. Yes, it's a stupid reason. Yes, it's a horrible idea. Yes, I'm not the only one who thinks so:

"And Barry... well I love him, but he was a stiff. Did he have any personality at all?"

"Barry Allen was the perfect hero for his time. The 1960s."

Those quotes come from a conversation from when this topic was brought up before. If you don't know who said them, I'll tell ya later.

As for the issue at hand, it's not a total loss. The art is really nice. Ethan Van Sciver isn't afraid to put a ton of detail into his pages, and i really dig that. There is a one little coloring error in there. Not as bad as Mister Miracle's ethnicity change in the middle of FINAL CRISIS, but it made me smirk.

Let's start with the line that gave this post it's title. "Barry Allen made me the Flash." Now, reading this out of context one would think that this line would be given to Wally West. But no. That would make sense. It's given to Jay Garrick who was the first Flash back in World War II. In continuity, this was the guy who Barry idolized. Following that line is a bunch of poppycock about how Barry inspired Jay to come out of retirement, and that led to the Justice Society returning and so forth.

Here's what gets me: Barry Allen is the Saint of the DC Universe. He's the guy who sacrificed himself for everyone. That claptrap that Geoff Johns wrote trying make Barry Allen feel important is rubbish and a waste of time. He's a very important character because of the sacrifice he made. That sacrifice is pretty much null and void now.

On to another really stupid line: "The bow ties weren't my fault." This seems really trivial but it's really not. Barry Allen was not cool. He wore the bow ties because they went well with his pocket protector. He always wore those bow ties, and he didn't apologize for them. However, he did tell that line to Hal Jordan, the poster boy for 'it's not my fault'. Perhaps Barry was possessed by the cosmic entity Geekallax who caused Barry to wear those bow ties.

As for appearances, whatever plastic surgeon Iris Allen went to, he's absolutely fabulous. It had to Doctor Midnight, because only a super-hero surgeon could make a woman approximately fifty years old look like that. Kind of spoils the illusion of Iris supposedly being in her late 20s when her GRANDSON appears in the very same issue. When Iris returned from the future with her grandson Bart she was in her forties. That was being really generous too. Time has passed since then. Now it's getting wound backwards. I get that Barry's body is physically the same age as when he died and now he's supposed to be about the same age as Wally. Does this make Iris a cougar?

On to the continuity clusterfuck, which really surprised me because Johns made his rep by plugging continuity holes. Seems according to this issue Barry's father was arrested for murdering his mother. Never mind the fact that both his parents were alive and well and helped to comfort Barry after Iris's supposed death. This is a recurring theme in John's work. The hero must have some sort of tragedy befall them, and it's often revolving around family especially fathers. Hal Jordan watched his father die in a plane crash. Jonathon Kent got killed off last year. Now this. I know a few people would considered John's creation Zoom to be a Mary Sue (note: a Mary Sue is a character that represents the author). Zoom believed that a hero had to go through tragedy to become a better hero. Guess the Mary Sue theory just got more evidence.

As I was reading the issue I just kept thinking to myself 'who is this guy?' They kept insisting he was Barry Allen, but frankly it sure didn't seem like him. He was impatient. He couldn't get away from Hal fast enough to go do whatever he was going to do. He spent zero time with Iris in the issue. I mentioned his makeover before. Frankly I thought I was reading "The Return of Barry Allen" all over again and was waiting for the reveal that it was really Eobard Thawne masquerading as Barry again. That would actually make more sense with how he's acting.

Caught on to who I quoted before? It was a conversation between Mark Waid and his editor Brian Augustyn that spurred from Waid's frustration about people asking him 'when's Barry coming back'. They both knew then that it would be a bad idea, and the "Return of Barry Allen" was a healthy does of be careful what you wish for directed at the drooling fan boys of the time who expected death to not last forever. It seems from what I've heard from critics and readers alike that this is another does. Honestly, I know very few people who wanted this to happen. A lot of them are disappointed with this issue too.

The only bright spot in the writing was the handling of Bart Allen. I'm glad the character is back as Kid Flash. I can understand Bart being upset about Barry's return. He still misses his mentor, Max Mercury, and with Barry could return, then why couldn't Max?

So, where's this thing going to go? Pretty easy to answer. Barry is going to investigate why the Speed Force is acting for weird and think he's at fault for it. It'll turn out to be the killer shown at the beginning of the issue who as it turns out framed Barry's father for the murder of his mother. This will be followed by Barry racing Superman to figure out who is faster even though Superman is supposed to be away for a year and the fact that this notion has been done to death and then some. I have no basis really for any of that, but let's see how accurate I am.

Welcome back Barry. Now go away.

Times a-changin'...

I'm not liking what I am seeing from where my entertainment money goes. I one consistent expense for my own amusement is my weekly comic fix. The majority of the comics I buy are DC. DC is heading in directions I don't like. What really galls me is that the writer attached to much of what I'm not liking is someone I had been a fan of: Geoff Johns.

What I liked about Johns was that the stuff he wrote was genuinely engaging to me. He's very good at hooking a reader in. I liked his FLASH run. I loved his TEEN TITANS run. He's still doing stuff I enjoy. I love BOOSTER GOLD. But then things start to pop up. GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH was the first big bump in the road. Its no secret to anyone who has followed this blog for a while that I feel that DC should have never brought back Hal Jordan. I think it degrades the excellent stories, like FINAL NIGHT, however I went along with it. I picked up the first few issues of the new Jordan starring series and now had evidence of something I knew all along:

Even though I loved Hal Jordan when I was a kid, I'm not a kid anymore, and Hal Jordan isn't really very interesting.

Seriously folks, who would you think I'd relate to: the fearless, skirt chasing jet test pilot or the artist/graphic designer who was in the right place at the right time but does his best to step up to the plate?

Fast forward to this week. LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #2 and ROGUES' REVENGE #3 hit the stands. Both penned by Johns. ROGUES' REVENGE wraps up things paving the way for the impending FLASH: REBIRTH (very imaginative title, insert eyeroll here please), bringing the return of Barry Allen to the title role of the FLASH comic. As I've written before, this is easily the stupidest move I've seen DC make. To make matters even stupider, at the end of the issue in question, the Rogues are referring to Allen's return, saying he's the Flash that never cut him any slack. If he's coming back then it's big time trouble.

Barry Allen? Hardcore? Whiskey tango foxtrot?

Moving over to the Legion. Yes, I've written and sent my letter trying to save the current series. Then I go and read LEGION OF THREE WORLDS. I want to say I haven't seen such bias in a long time, but its an election year so we know that's false. George Perez is the sole reason that this book wasn't a complete crapfest. Perez, as always, brings all the goods to the table, and while I rarely endorse a comic solely for the art, I will do so here. Kudos to Mister Perez. Jeers to Johns. We get the textbook, big super villain team up. We get the heroes bickering over whether or not to bump off Superboy-Prime. We get Sun Boy seeing the action from his apartment, making a really corny line about a sun shining and retreating into his apartment, likely to write self-loathing poetry. Nice to know the emo fad has lasted 1000 years into the future. We get the horribly uncharacteristic writing of the Threeboot Brainiac 5. Add in some Green Lantern fanboyism and of course a character from the current Green Lantern books managing to still be alive a millennium later. I'm really on the fence about dropping this book. Lousy writing, but spectacular art.

My current pull list has been hemorrhaging DC titles this year. So what will this mean for my future as a read? Will I go over to Marvel? No, I dropped them back in '96 and see nothing there to entice me back over. Will I drop DC entirely? Also no, they're still putting out great titles like WONDER WOMAN and TINY TITANS, and those are works I'm very much enjoying still.

So which direction will I head in? DC seems to not want my business as much anymore with their insipid "retro trend". Honestly, if I want to read about the silver age Justice league, I'd buy the old comics, I don't need the characters resurrected. I'm not heading back over to Marvel, because I'm not into the whole Skrull-o-rama deal.

It's time to explore other options. More on this later.