This was a very tiny week for me; two books and from both of the "big two" companies; the beginning of DC's "Holy crap, IC is over, now what!?' event, and the end of the latest "X-Event" in recent months. Since these are my only two books, prepare for some long analysis.
DREAD'S BOUGHT/THOUGHT FOR 5/10/06:
52 WEEK #1: And with IC officially over (a month later than expected) and OYL under way and likely loosing steam with each month, DC comes up with an ambitious, but overly unrealistically solicted, method of bridging their gap with Marvel over sales (despite often having the #1 selling book, Marvel outsells DC overall). The premise is to fill in the gap during the year between IC and OYL (which all the DC books are going with) with a weekly comic. Yes, that means 4 issues in 1 month. They have a team of 4 writers creditted with each issue, because apparently its that big (Geoff Johns takes one half of all consenants, and Grant Morrison takes the other half, with presumably Mark Waid on vowels and Greg Rucka on punctuation marks, or however the hell they're breaking this down). A slew of artists will likely be tapped for this thing (Joe Bennet takes this issue, and does a great job), with J.G. Jones on all 52 covers. The other big draw of the series is that it stars the entire DC Universe in the year-long aftermath of IC, except the "big three" (Batman is on vacation with his wards, as is Wonder Woman, and Superman is depowered yet again for the second time in about a decade after a major DC event). The cover shows Renee Montoya (another refugee from the B:TAS series and various Timmverse DCAU cartoon creations to reach the comics page, like Harley Quinn, Livewire, and a competant Mr. Freeze origin), Question, Booster Gold, Ralph Dibney, and Steel, who presumably may be the "stars" of this shindig. I am skeptical of 52 a bit because considering that DC's had plenty of lateness issues with their "event" books, it seems a bit unrealistic to assume that they can ship a book every week for an entire year without ONE issue being late. I mean, they can't even ship ALL-STAR books on a bimonthly schedule. INFINITE CRISIS lagged behind schedule by about the midway point. On the other hand, weekly comic books haven't been attempted in a good long while, and ambition is worth something. A price-tag of $2.50 is also appreciated; trust me, if Marvel were shipping a weekly book for a year, they'd charge $2.99 and shamelessly claim its "worth it". DC needs some credit for resisting the erge to milk fans for all their worth for a year.
The strategy is clear; Marvel still dominates the Top 10, and so long as 52 remains on schedule, this will mean that four issues of 52 will be out and competing every month for DC, with perhaps locking in a good 4 spots on the Top Ten. Add in other hot DC books like the occasional issue of JUSTICE or ALL-STAR, and this could be a serious dilemma for the "House of Retconned Ideas". And frankly that's enjoyable. Marvel's been fat, happy, and king of the hill for too long since they've righted themselves economically at the turn of the 21st century, and maybe being knocked to the mat a few times will get some new blood flowing over there.
So, why am I, a self professed Marvel Fan, bothering with a heavilly conveluted DC weekly thing that doesn't star their top 3 characters? The honest answer is JLU. That show's increased my appreciation of the DC universe and a wide variety of characters so much that over the past year and change, I've been buying more DC books than I ever did as a kid (or when I first jumped back into buying comics often around 2001 or so). Before that, I hardly cared about Booster Gold or The Question; now I like both. Ralph Dibney got put through the ret-con and tragedy ringer in IDENTITY CRISIS, but it helped me appreciate him, too. As for Montoya and Steel? The former has B:TAS and Steel, uh...well, I still don't care for Steel (Shaq didn't help), but I have nothing against him and know enough to get my feet wet (yes, I knew about his niece, Steel 2.0). 52 is definately recommended for casual DC fans who liked IC but may not have hopped upon some OYL books, or wanted to see immediate fallout from that "event". Booster Gold is capitalizing on yet another corporate heroism campaign, and his outfit is even bareing corporate sponsor logos like Capt. Amazing from the MYSTERY MEN movie (which is a great little film). Montoya is drinking to cover her emotional pain, but the Question seems ready to get her out of her doldrums for some task with his own "eccentric charm". Steel chews out his niece for abandoning the still-wrecked city to gather for a Teen Titans pep-rally, noting that the few heroes that are left have to pull in double-shifts, and strips her of her armor when she disagrees (Steel has always been about "hard work"; his name is John Henry Irons after all). Ralph Dibney is borderline suicidal after losing his house and his posessions so soon after losing his wife, and Black Adam is continuing to pull his "Namor-Lite" impersonation. Look, maybe Black Adam's always been this way, but I thought he was pretty much Capt. Marvel's token evil-clone before JSA sort of revamped him, and what I have seen makes him look VERY much like a Middle Eastern based, land-living version of Namor. Which in a way can be forgiven for being creative, as DC really lacks that sort of character (and Aquaman is too obvious; he's never going to escape the stink that SUPERFRIENDS gave him, and DC knows it). The big reveal is that all of the heroes that are left are gathering to assess their dead (mourning Superboy for his great sacrifice) and hear a speach from the "big three", but they don't show up (to the surprise of Booster and Skeets). Cue cliffhanger.
Definately an effective set-up issue. The only problem I felt was that Booster Gold has suddenly gone from being a serious hero who was anguished over the death of his best friend Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), to suddenly acting like he just popped out of JLU without a care in the world besides his own PR. While naturally the aftermath of IC, with many heroes dead, missing, injured, or whatever, now is a great time for BG to try to get into the "big leagues" as he was originally intended, it seemed a little sudden to see him shift a 180. And that's excusing whatever continuity fudges DC may have with OYL that I don't know about. The rest is just effective set-up and chatting (with the only action being Booster Gold's triumph over Mammoth and Adam thwarting a sucide bomber), but it moves along at an effective pace and I'm definately on board for the next issue, which I won't have to wait long for. I don't think all 52 issues will ship on time, being a realist, but I figure the first bunch should, so I should be along for the short-term. Definately have to give DC kudos for this ambitious idea; lower price, weekly comics by 5 hit writers, and not relying on their three main stars. New DC readers may still feel awkward, but I honestly don't feel DC is reaching to them anymore, and I appreciate DC at least being honest about that. Marvel's strategy has been to try to please both old vet readers and "new readers" who never materialize, and their results are mixed. 52 WEEK #1 definately was "the spoonfull of sugar" that helped DEADLY GENESIS #6 go down.
DEADLY GENESIS #6: Marvel's 6 issue X-Men "event" that dragged on some 2-3 months beyond schedule due to Hairsine's issues on art, presumably, which led to Hanna doing most of the art chores, and the book's art being better for it. Marc Silvestri, too good to do art on Image's own late-bogged HUNTER/KILLER with Waid apparently, still knocks in an effective cover that still screams of 1995. And Brubaker makes his debut on the X-world complete after managing to revive Bucky over in CAPTAIN AMERICA in a way that pretty much is how it would have happened in 1995 (Bucky comes back as an evil cyborg; cyborgs, along with ninjas, where "in" during the 90's) without being nearly as hated as Bendis and increasing Cap's sales dramatically as a result. The biggest hurdle this book faced was that a good 95% of the story hinged on the secrets within remaining, well, secret, and Marvel was not interested in that. Either through press releases, internet interviews or even issues of WIZARD, nearly any relevant data each issue had was spoiled or made irrelevant weeks in advance (heck, WIZARD #176 all but blew the ending of this issue by itself, making it obvious that Vulcan would live). So with that against him, Brubaker had his work cut out for him.
So what are we left with? Despite Brubaker's success on CAPTAIN AMERICA and DAREDEVIL, he pretty much does what nearly every new creative team on an X-book does; organizes a retcon of either the franchise history, or a character's history. Or both. It has become so old hat at the X-World that it should be a drinking game; something about the X-Men is retconned, take a shot. This time its events from GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1, which shipped before most X-Men fans were reading comics, or even reading, or even BORN. It wraps up on the "true retconned events" of that issue, with Vulcan and his crew of McTaggart X-Men being killed after helping Cyclops escape the island (who would warn Xavier and set in motion the amassing of all the "new" X-Men). The adapting mutant Darwin merges with Vulcan to keep both alive all this time (presumably about 10 years in Marvel time), even when Karoka was shot into space. Karoka even doesn't emerge inscathed, as he was supposedly just a mindless growling brute without Xavier doing some handy "mind-wipes" to keep his dirty little secret. Even the Shi'ar are involved, and if you know anything about crap X-Men stories from the past 15 years, is that they always involve the Shi'ar. The X-Men get involved with more aliens than the bloody Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer combined. There is a quick fight, Vulcan flies off in a hissy fit to fight the Shi'ar, and the X-Men mourn the utterly pointless loss of Banshee, before Xavier is booted by Cyclops and the final tagline is essentually, "would you be interested in buying some UNCANNY X-MEN?" Ah, that crafty Joe Q, always selling and selling. Very anti-climatic.
In a way, Vulcan reminded me a lot of Superboy-Prime from IC, only was a dozen times worse. Both were incredibly violent, irrational, overpowered "man-children" who had ties into the fundamental pasts of their universes. The only difference is that Superboy-Prime existed prior to IC, he had a backstory, he was REAL. Vulcan was entirely a sudden creation of Brubaker who is suddenly shoehorned into the X-universe to create some artificial emotional impact, sort of like what DRAGON BALL Z movies attempt to do with many of their own "sudden" villians. Superboy-Prime also had some sort of clear plan in his mind, whereas Vulcan was erratic. One minute he's out for revenge, the next he's whimpering for understanding, and then he's haplessly killing innocents who had nothing to do for his turmoil (unlike Xavier, who he rightly blamed, or the X-Men, who I guess he felt envy for). And Vulcan remains yet another high-level mutant that the X-Men can't beat, and who could seemingly kill them at any time, but chooses not to for storyline purposes (at least Magneto had his whole "I want us to be allies one day" baloney at times). Speaking of Magneto, it is VERY ironic that within the past 5 or so years, nearly any rotten action that Magneto has taken is either justified, or retconned away, while in that same length of time, conviently when Millar's ULTIMATE X-MEN became a hit, having Xavier do rotten things, or actually, retconning in things that he's covered up, has been on the rise. True, there IS some historical basis for it; Xavier would have rathered the X-Men believed him dead, complete with a stand-in, rather than simply say, "Look, I need to prepare for some big battle with the Z'nox, don't bother me for a few months". But this one (combined with DANGER and even with some of the 90's stuff like a lot of the ONSLAUGHT revelations) pushes it to the Nth degree and makes Xavier a completely unsympathetic character. It makes him a manipulating schemer ten times worse than Mesmero ever was, and it makes it hard to believe that MacTaggart would forgive Xavier enough to run around with afterwards. Hence why retcons don't make sense; given the retcon, you would expect many characters to have reacted differently, but they can't, because it is in the past. How cheap. How empty.
The story is also unsatisfying. The mysteries are nill, because Marvel ruined them. The villian is erractic and weak, and the battles unsatisfying. Banshee is dusted off and brought out of a 2 year limbo simply to be a sacrifical lamb to Vulcan in a death that meant almost nothing to the general story, and could have been written out without effecting the plot much at all (only the settings for some scenes would have changed). Havok once again acts like a simpering wuss when the chips are down. The series is little more than an elongated infomercial for Brubaker's stint on UNCANNY, but Marvel has to realize that not delievering on expectations is not always that great. Joe Q threw a fit that DG was being "underordered", but maybe that was because it was hardly the X-series of the decade it was hyped to be. For all the problems with INFINITE CRISIS, DC did something IN THE PRESENT, and built up the momentum for it IN THE PRESENT, barring some retcons. Marvel, by contrast, feels itself too clever to build on anything. Instead they remain addicted to strip-mining whatever they can from the Silver Age and adding on more retcons to hope to build some sort of emotional appeal, but it doesn't work that way. The entire series is a downer, and it fails on almost every level. The art only improved halfway through with Hanna. Brubaker at least injects some passable dialogue and action sequences, and in the end this story was handled better than it would have been about 7 years ago. But that is still not saying much.
Brubaker's plans for UNCANNY? According to WIZARD #176, his team will consist of Havok, Iceman, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Warpath, and a "secret-X-Man", who may end up being Darwin, doing his best impression of Metamorpho (what? Thought I'd be fooled?). And he talks about bringing in the Shi'ar yet again, and I groaned. The alien stuff was originally supposed to only be a side-lark to their true focus, because it has nothing to do with their original intention, and it has become canon. They spend more time fighting aliens and having soap operas in their mansion than doing anything productive for mutants at large; I can almost understand why Kid Omega rebelled at this point. Still, hyping an entire 6 issues series as a big event, and having it revealed to be an anti-climatic advertisement for the next run on the main title leaves one with the feeling of being suckered, and you know that saying about being twice bitten. DEADLY GENESIS is probably the most overrated failure of a Marvel event since HOUSE OF M. Let's pray that CIVIL WAR turns out better.
) and clean Beasts' beakers.
Dan Slott is the friggin' man. I laughed out loud so many times, but the ending was pretty depressing. A wonderful all-around book. 9/10
