Coming Soon

Just a note - starting tomorrow, I'll be updating this blog much more frequently. I've got a column I'll be launching that's exclusive to this blog, and I'll be making it a point to add DVD and comic reviews to here just a few days after Comic Related and Blog@Newsarama get the same. Anyone who might actually see this, check back in 24 hours for the first installment.

“World’s greatest superheroes?” I just don’t see it.

The first issue featuring the newest incarnation of the Justice League of America’s lineup hit this week, and over the top of the title, DC blares that the book features the world’s greatest supeheroes. While no more inherently ridiculous than the Fantastic Four’s long-held claim to being the greatest comic magazine, this one’s a lot more offensive. Why? Because the cover features Congorilla, Mon-El/Valor wearing a Superman logo (everybody’s doing it—the Eradicator, raised from the dead without explanation in this month’s issue of The Outsiders, is back to sporting a big, red S as well) and Starfire, who’s come to this team straight from the orgy of failure that is The Titans. Joined in this comic by fellow Titans (not Teen Titans—Titans. There’s a difference) Donna Troy, Dick Grayson and Cyborg, it soon becomes clear that the Justice League of America has become the dumping-ground for promising characters who just don’t fit into DC’s idea of what they want to do with other titles (like letting a crazed badguy who’s already been overexposed since Identity Crisis lead his own team of “Titans”). Mon-El and The Guardian, both so incredibly popular with the fans that during the time they’ve starred in the Superman titles, sales have dropped by about forty percent, represent the Metropolis contingent with Batman’s understudy and Hal Jordan (currently featured in three monthly books as well as guest-starring all over the place) being the closest thing this team has to A-listers. Seriously, folks, I think that the upcoming Justice League: Generation Lost by Keith Giffen and Judd Winick, which will feature Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice and the rest of the old JLI—once known as the all-time bottom of the Justice League barrel—may feature a more prestigious lineup than these clowns.

Inside, Red Tornado has been torn to pieces for something like the 185^th time in his last 185 appearances. Vixen, the only representative of the Detroit Era JLA to make it into this volume of the title and who has been, to the disappointment of many fans, a member of the team since J’Onn J’Onzz left for no reason after having been with the team since its founding, decides that she’s got to quit the team, because she’s ashamed of what they did at the end of the hideously misguided editorial abortion known as Justice League: Cry For Justice (yes, the end of the miniseries that hasn’t ended yet).

The rest of the team struggles to recover from the aftereffects of Blackest Night (yes, the end of the miniseries that hasn’t ended yet), which raised many of their old teammates from the dead as villains, and even forced some living heroes to play dead for a while so they could be villains. Don’t worry, James Robinson assures the readers, “We ‘awoke,’ though. We survived.” That’s good news, I guess, for the thousands of readers who are eagerly awaiting February 24^th’s Blackest Night #7 (of 8), in which the story of those heroes who have been taken over by Nekron continues to play out. I’m sure nobody would mind being told that the biggest event of the year, in which many fans have invested hundreds of bucks following every arcane tie-in, comes out alright enough in the wash.

All of these little editorial gaffes might be forgivable…if the comic were any good. Or original. Or fun. It’s none of those things. Mark Bagley’s art looks rushed and is outright hideous in some places (look at Damien’s face as he declares himself part of the Justice League, or Donna’s as she arrives to invite Batman. Also, if Hal Jordan’s body hasn’t been horribly mangled on a torture rack of some kind by the end of Blackest Night, there’s no reason whatsoever for the length of his torso and legs in comparison the rest of his body on the final story page). The story is dull and something we’ve all seen a hundred times before—Wonder Woman, acting as the only member of DC’s trinity not currently dead or living in outer space, picks a League and the rest of the issue is spent on a recruiting binge. There’s very little in terms of logical, reasonable cause to bring the characters together. Instead, it’s a team that’s being forced together out of the disparate pieces that DC editorial have decided, and Wonder Woman has prescribed, will compose it. It’s a whole issue of going through the motions, and the cardboard dialogue and pedestrian plot has to remind readers of last week’s awesome Starman #81 that James Robinson is best when he’s not handling the icons. Taking a franchise that nobody believed in or cared about, he crafted arguably the best ongoing monthly of the 1990s. Taking control of Superman and the Justice League of America, he’s created a directionless mess filled with uninteresting takes on third-tier characters.

Hal Jordan Calls Out Superman as an Elitist

It's funny--when Infinite Crisis was new and on the stands, the scene that struck me the most was the one where DC's "trinity" of characters split, after Batman declared that the last time Superman inspired anyone had been when he was dead.

The funny thing about it, is that I'm a Superman guy. My entire "mature" comics-reading life, I have been. I loved Kingdom Come and I came back to comics after a hiatus when Supes died. Now James Robinson--whose Superman comics I haven't been reading becuase they don't, after all, revolve around Superman anymore--is writing Justice League, a miniseries wherein a number of Justice Leaguers and other DC Universe heroes start their own team and pursue bad guys in a proactive, aggressive fashion. It's retribution, not really justice, and so a lot of what founder Hal Jordan says is nonsensical on the face of it...but the panel at left is one of those great moments

where you really see the superhero as a human being and understand a little of what he's facing every day. It makes Hal more real, and even though it's a little bit petty, you know it to be true. Think about high school and how everything that happened was always viewed through the lens of the small handful of cool kids who ran the athletics teams, the student government and the activities. That's Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

Of course, a little of the strength of his argument is undermined when he makes sure to include Supergirl and Batwoman on "his" Justice League, which according to interviews with Robinson was "to make sure we got those logos on the book" or something like that.

Marc Andreyko Brings Manhunter to the Streets of Gotham

If you thought you’d seen the last of “Closing Arguments,” Kate Spencer or Marc Andreyko around here, you apparently haven’t been paying attention for the last few years. We read the book, DC cancels it, we bitch, and it comes back a little while later. That’s the arrangement that we Manhunter fans have been getting more and more used to! And while issues #37-38 featured a story set in the future that writer Andreyko envisioned as Kate Spencer’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” equivalent, answering a number of questions about the characters’ long-term future, that isn’t to say that the status quo can’t be shaken up quite a bit: transplanted from the West Coast to Gotham City, Kate Spencer is the new Gotham City district attorney, following the murder of the previous one (that does tend to happen in Gotham, doesn’t it?) by, apparently, another previous one (Two-Face). And that, of course, is where it starts to get interesting. Here, we’ll talk to Andreyko about what’s coming next, both in terms of what we’ll be touching down on from the book’s past and the new stuff we’ll be looking forward to.

 

Will we be dealing with the abortion story?

That’s going to be left dangling. I don’t know if you read the new issue of Final Crisis: Escape, but Cameron Chase is a character in int and I spoke with Ivan Brandon before that and said, “Hey, don’t worry about her being pregnant. That’s going to be addressed at a later date, you don’t even have to mention it. So hopefully someday either Manhunter will get her own book back or maybe if I generate enough goodwill, I’d love to do an original graphic novel of it because that allows a level of freedom—if you look at Brian Azzarello’s Joker graphic novel, that has a little more freedom of content than a regular monthly comic would.

 

Given that Kate and friends are now returning to regular publication, do some of the more dramatic changes in the Some Years Later story take on a different bent? Are they more or less likely to happen, and do you still think of that story as canonical?

I absolutely think of it as canon for Manhunter and yes, things that we saw in those issues in the future will be happening in the course of Manhunter in this book.

 

One of the best aspects of Kate has always been her supporting cast—but with a “friend” killed leading up to her first Streets of Gotham issue, and substantially fewer pages in which to tell stories, will we be seeing less of them?

We’ll definitely see them—we’ll see them a lot, actually, as much as I can get them in there and as much as the story allows. The thing that’s great about the nine-page thing and daunting about the nine-page thing is trying to get enough story in there and have a beat that has a beginning, a middle and an end but is still propelling things forward. And I’ve already been playing a little bit with the format—one of the chapters is a nine-page that’s basically one scene. But, you know—sometimes it’ll be nine, one-pagers. It just depends. As far as the supporting cast—some of them aren’t available right now, which is a good thing; they’re being utilized elsewhere. But they’ll be there, absolutely. A lot of this stuff is addressed; Kate addresses that she’s not in Gotham permanently; she’s doing this to help out Gotham City in a short-term sort of position. This being comic books, not being permanent can be twenty years from now that she leaves Gotham City—when I’m no longer in the business and someone else turns her into a cyborg. But yeah, there’s definitely in my mind a plan and I’ve got to say, at the risk of sounding like a company guy, that my hat’s really off to DC for doing this because I think it’s a smart choice. You know, people always complain that new characters don’t sell and then people complain that there aren’t enough new characters. DC’s doing a real smart thing, I think, in long-term investment in their intellectual properties in the sense of taking characters who are newer, who may have a little cache, and putting them in a place where they’ll be seen more for less of a risk. I’m telling you right now that unless I’m completely mistaken, the first issue of Batman: Streets of Gotham will outsell the best-selling issue of Manhunter thus far probably by five times. So, more people are going to get to see Kate in the first issue of Streets of Gotham than have ever seen her before. And it’s in a Paul Dini-written Batman book main feature, so what have you got to lose there? I couldn’t be happier! And I think it’s a real testament to DC, and a real vote of confidence in the character, that they said, “Hey, you want to make her the DA of Gotham City?” Okay, yeah, I’ll include her in your number one character. Sure, twist my arm!

 

What’s Ramsey’s status quo going to be here, given that Kate is moving all the way across the country from his father?

Again, my answer for publication is a lot of these questions are the questions I had with “What’s going to happen here, what’s going to happen here?” and I answer as many of the big ones as fast as I can in this first chapter. Ramsey’s going to continue to be a character, but for the time being it’s going to be all about Kate kind of growing into her paws in Gotham. It’s a good thing Bruce isn’t there, because he didn’t like her very much. [laughs]

 

Bruce doesn’t like Cameron very much either, so this whole book is kind of chock full of people he could do without.

No, and what’s great too is that Kate has a playground of great characters to deal with. I mean, Oracle’s there, Huntress is there, Batman is there, Robin is there, Red Robin will be there, I’m assuming. And the great villains, you know? Everybody was let out of Arkham—okay, cool! For me as a writer, getting to be a part of the Batman universe on the heels of a huge Bat-event is really, really exciting.

 

This event, despite being very Batman-centric, has obviously been made a little more universe-wide than usual. I mean, hes’ been in Blackest Night, he’s in Booster Gold next month, or rather whoever’s wearing the Bat-suit is in Booster Gold next month.

The thing that I think is cool about it is that I think everybody knows that someday, Bruce Wayne is going to come back in some way, shape or form. That’s just going to happen. I have no insider information, but if that doesn’t happen in the next ten years, I’ll be shocked. What’s great about that is it’s freeing. Because we know that Bruce will eventually come back some day in some way, there’s actually a lessening of the pressure for me from a reading standpoint of, I can just enjoy these stories as they come out. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I can just enjoy with them and go with the flow with them and I’m having a really good time with reading these as well. I think it’s been a real reinvigoration of the books—something that could have failed miserably has worked really well I think.

 

What was the reasoning for bringing her to Gotham?

I can’t tell you. A lot of the stuff will be revealed in the first chapter. And it’s pretty clear what’s going on—I really, really think the first chapter in Streets of Gotham is really accessible. And Georges Jeanty and Karl Story—Whoo! Amazing work, some of the nicest stuff I’ve ever seen Georges do. And Karl’s a phenomenal inker.

 

Did you have any input in deciding who the artist was going to be on the new series? You’ve been blessed with a string of great collaborators—even the last issue of the monthly, all those guys were strong enough that it didn’t bother me so much that the style was jumping around.

We’ve been really lucky and there were people presented and names bandied about. People I suggested and people they suggested and names you just throw out there, you know? “Hey, how about Walt Simonson or Jose Garcia Luis-Lopez, you know? You throw those names in there hoping you’ll catch them on the right day. But Georges’ name was tossed out and I was intrigued by it. It’s a real departure from what Manhunter looked like the last time, but it’s really great. His storytelling in this first section, and his use of transition between scenes is really, really, really just smart and subtle and doesn’t call a lot of attention to itself and yeah, I’m just thrilled. And like I said, Karl’s inks on him are just gorgeous so I’m really excited. Karl Story is one of the best inkers in comics and I don’t know why he doesn’t get the accolades he deserves because when Karl inks someone—and I don’t know Karl at all, I’ve never spoken to him, I wouldn’t know Karl if I backed into him with my car—but his inking? He never overpowers the artists so much that you’re like, “Oh, Karl Story inked this,” but he’s got a definite personality in everyone he inks. His inks are really great, and I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, and getting to peripherally work with him has been really nice because Georges’ pencils were amazing and Karl’s inks just brought so much to the table as well. I hope to work with him again.

 

After the last relaunch, we talked about an editorial mandate to build on the book’s existing kind of social conscience; will some of that be lost to the shorter format and the fact that you’re now in Gotham?

You know, it is the “Bat-Universe,” not the “Kate Universe,” so we’ll definitely be dealing with things in Gotham. But there are ways to weave in relevant metaphorical situations as opposed to kind of spelling out the obvious situation. And you know, if this book were still taking place in a real city I would like it to bemore about that, but because it’s in Gotham and it’s such a rich playground, there’s a lot to do there and it won’t be quite as “Law & Order: Torn From the Headlines” as the monthly book was going to be, but there will still definitely be a social awareness in it; that’s not all going to disappear at all. And like I’ve said, my voice creeps in there in some of the characters, my uber-liberal opinions, so there’ll always be some of that stuff in there.

 

 

I know how much you thought Joan Hilty was an asset to the book; will you still be working with her now that you’re a Bat-book?

Joan is not. Joan is now a Vertigo editor; they’re doing a bunch of cool special projects there; they’re doing an initiative of expanding their original graphic novel material. I guess like The Alcoholic, and stuff like that, which is great—if you haven’t read it, pick it up, check it out, it’s fantastic. But we do have a woman editor, which was a very big thing for me. Janelle Siegel (and no, she’s not related to those Siegels, I asked her, too). But she’s a great editor and she’s really excited and enthusiastic and answers my questions quickly, and with correct information! I love her; I’m going to miss Joan greatly and I’ve always said if we ever got a “created by” credit, it should be “created by Marc Andreyko, Jesus Saiz and Joan Hilty,” but I’m really excited to be working with Janelle because I think she’s going to be a big deal in the future. I kind of wish that I had some sort of awful dish to say about the people who I’ve worked with on the book, but other than the fact that it’s been canceled like twelve times, everything else is wonderful!

 

What do you think about the prospects for Kate to become a character with some mainstream awareness?

It takes time, it takes time. I mean, who would have thought there’d be a Deadpool movie in development? It takes time for these new characters to build up and that sort of thing, you know? And I’m still deeply humbled and moderately confused as to why the character has resonated with so many people, so deeply and so quickly. I take that responsibility very seriously—it’s actually more intimidating when you know that there’s a core group of people who really love the character because now I’m not just writing for me, I’m writing for you guys. And even with all the cancellation stuff, we’ve been incredibly lucky with this character. A new, female character based on a superhero name that’s been done seven or eight times before? You know, we got 38 issues and we’re now in the Batman universe. Ultimately, that’s pretty fucking cool.

 

For how long are you—at least ostensibly—going to be around? Have you got more than one arc already written?

We’re the regular monthly backup co-feature actually is what they’re called now. It’s open-ended unless people absolutely hate it and write in and say “Get rid of it,” or people write in and say, “It’s brilliant, it’s brilliant, it’s brilliant, give it its own book back.” I’m hoping that at least five percent of the people who are introduced to Kate form this new book like her, because if you add them into the regular, other people, we’d have a decent circulation! And look at it this way: If I pick up a comic book and it has a backup feature, and I’m paying $4 for it, I’m going to read the backup feature and see if I like it. And if I do like it, that’s awesome. I got another book I like, I’m getting basically a book and a half for an extra dollar. That’s great. And if I don’t like it, you know—unless I absolutely hate it I’m not going to drop the book, I don’ think. So I think this whole co-feature thing is really, really smart. The potentials for winning so far overwhelmingly outweigh any sort of risks, I love it. But there’s also the intimidation factor because at this point it’s mine to fuck up, you know? How many times—I’m beginning to feel like Michelle Pfeifer at the end of Batman Returns; I’m like, “I think I’m running out of lives now, Max.” [laughs]

 

In terms of fallout from the Mexico story—at the end of that, we saw that Vesetech had deep ties to a number of individuals and corporations in the DC Universe. Also, we saw that Kate’s interference with the Suicide Squad brought the hammer down on her relationship with the DEO. Are either of those going to be threads that we get to pick up and run with in the near future?

That’s stuff for down the road. The first arc will basically be Kate adjusting to life in this new town. It’s going to be a lot of Kate settling into the city and initially trying to figure out who the hell ordered the hit on the DA. No one knows who the killer was, and the killer, “Jane Doe,” lied when she said “This is from Two-Face,” as we know from Battle for the Cowl. So there’s lots of misdirection going on. As Kate tries to find the actual assassin, she’s going to then go after who she thinks ordered it, and his name is Two-Face and he was the DA of Gotham as well, so I can’t wait to get to write that. That’s going to be so much fun! And one more thing, remember: going back to the supporting cast issue…Dylan went to Gotham. That’s all I’m saying.

Flash Facts: Ethan Van Sciver on Flash: Rebirth #2

Van Sciver Talks Designing A New Costume For Wally West

Artist Assures That The Flash: Rebirth #3 Will Be "A Revelation"

Following the events of Final Crisis, Barry Allen is alive and well again…but he’s hardly spent a minute not wearing his Flash suit. Since helping to defeat Darkseid, he’s been wandering the countryside, averting catastrophes and wondering aloud if the world was better without him. In the closing moments of #1, the villainous speedster Savitar emerged literally out of Barry’s chest, but was almost immediately caught by Allen…whose touch turned the self-appointed “speed god” to dust. This issue follows up on the events of that book, and features the death of all the members of Savitar’s speed cult.

There’s a framing device where the action—such as it is, in a book where so little happens that the reader is left to feel like Barry Allen, watching the seconds tick by like hours—of some of the apes in Gorilla City painting a cave mural of Barry Allen, with black lightning bolts reaching out and blasting other speedsters. When asked whether the painting itself might be a clue to one of Geoff Johns’ arcane mysteries, not unlike the chalkboard in Rip Hunter’s lab during the writer’s runs on52 and Booster Gold, artist Ethan Van Sciver said, “I wouldn't look for anything like that. It's fairly direct, and one-dimensional in more ways than one. Then again, maybe Geoff had something else up his sleeve. He always seems to.”
There’s a whole lotta nothin’ goin’ on in The Flash: Rebirth #2 by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver. The art is absolutely beautiful—some of the best work of the already-very-accomplished Van Sciver’s career—but the whole issue is spent telling what the first issue already showed (a clear violation of one of the cardinal rules of comics and cinematic storytelling). Let’s review:

·         Barry Allen, back from the dead after all these years, isn’t as thrilled about it as everyone else is.

·         He’s acting very standoffish, making even his closest friends feel a touch awkward around him.

·         As a result of his resurrection, crazy things are happening in and around the Speed Force, including but probably not limited to the death of Savitar (seen last issue when Barry touched him as he tried to escape from his prison inside the Speed Force) and the strange “speed seizures” that this provoked in DC’s other speedsters. The fact that the speed seizures were greater for those characters more directly connected to the Speed Force is not surprising, but one of the few new pieces of information given this issue.

·         Barry Allen is the new Black Flash.

This last point isn’t necessarily old news (although I think everyone with half a brain had assumed it at the end of issue #1) but it certainly was done in a telling-instead-of-showing way, with Wally actually saying the words to Barry at the end of the issue.
Given that Barry and Wally spend most of the issue talking or running together, the issue of their almost-identical costumes becomes a bit of a bone of contention once or twice, particularly since one of the only weaknesses in Van Sciver’s art is the fact that the two of them have virtually identical faces. “It's a major problem,” the artist confirms, adding, “and will be dealt with in this miniseries. I do my best to always distinguish them from one another, but it's hard sometimes.” He says that “the easiest answer, to alter Wally's costume more drastically from Barry's,” is “part of the gig.” Says Van Sciver, “It's my job to find Wally a new suit that is familiar to fans and different than Barry's.”

We get all of this for our money, plus about ten pages dedicated to the “Nora Allen’s unresolved murder” retcon introduced last issue and the heart-pounding “Secret Origin of Barry Allen’s Bowtie,” which might have been a great story if written tongue-in-cheek but unfortunately was neither. There are also other, quieter retcons in the series as well (continuing the tradition Johns started in Green Lantern: Rebirth when anything that didn’t serve his needs was treated to have simply never occurred) as “I was in witness protection” is apparently a magical phrase that makes the world forget they spent the last however-many-years knowing that you were The Flash.
Ultimately, as much as I love Geoff Johns ordinarily, he’s striking out with this series so far for me. I didn’t need to see Barry back as The Flash before this story started, but at least I wasn’t openly hostile to the notion. I’m getting there. The flawless work by Van Sciver might make this the best case of lipstick on a pig in recent publishing history, but that doesn’t make it inherently worth reading. 
According to Van Sciver, though, if you agree with my assessment of the series so far, “Issue #3 will be a revelation for you.”