Jimmy Olsen’s Blues

I was pretty obnoxious in my pronouncement earlier this year that I was buying summer blockbusters Final Crisis and Secret Invasion, and that was it. No tie-ins, no reprint “catch-up” books, nothing extra.

That was stupid. I’m still buying at least 2 or 3 comics a week, but now I almost feel like I need to sneak in and out of my LCS in a disguise, immediately put the comics in a different bag, go home and hide them under the bed, so I can read them at 2 a.m. in the bathroom.

Here’s what I read at 2 this morning:

Captain America #40. How is that Ed Brubaker is still keeping his story on a slow burn, yet each month still leaves me satisfied and fufilled? It could be all the punching and defenestrating going on between Captain America 2.0 and Captain America 1.5 this issue and last. And… girl-fighting! And girl-stabbing!

MIghty Avengers #16. I’ve never been a supporter of holding Marvel to the statistical filler that litters their Handbooks. (“You showed the Hulk straining and gritting his teeth while lifting that school bus! It clearly states in the Handbook that the Hulk can lift 100 tons, about ten school buses! I demand a No-Prize!”) But, a little consistency among different comics, when the same writer’s involved, would be appreciated. This issue, we find out the hows, whys, and whens of the Skrullswap that started it all: Elektra. And while I enjoyed her appearance and salute her death-dealing valor, the length of time she holds her own against four of the Super Skrulls currently laying waste to a dozen Young Avengers, New Avengers and Mighty Avengers is a little hard to swallow. And why is next issue touted as “The Truth About Hank Pym”? Wasn’t that last issue?

Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge #1. I get annoyed when I ask someone their opinion on a comic or a CD or a movie and they respond, “If you like their other stuff, you’ll like this. If you don’t, then you won’t.” Ugh.

That’s why it pains me to write this: if you enjoyed Johns’ and Kolins’ take on the Flashes and their Rogues (I did), you’ll no doubt enjoy this. However, if you’re not digging Final Crisis so far, you might still enjoy Rogues’ Revenge despite its tie-in status, as it only brushes on that series’ Libra and his plot as it affects the Rogues.

Hey Kettle; Pot here. Did you know you’re black?

Incredible Hercules #119. Jeph Loeb can keep his Hulk of Many Colors right where he is, if it means we get to keep this sleeper title. It’d be really easy to fill in the plot blanks of a Secret Invasion crossover with a one-note Hercules and his Gift, but Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente are obviously not settling for that. Each issue’s opening recap page is itself worth three bucks, and the full story has been consistently taut and surprisingly inventive. And structurally, they leave the door open to new readers each issue, with more self-contained plot points and skillful retellings even outside the aforementioned recap pages.

If you’re not reading this book, but are slogging through the rest of Secret Invasion, I suspect you just don’t like good times.

(Y’know when someone prefaces their monologue with, “I don’t want to be a dick, but…”? That usually always means, “I’m about to be a dick”.)

Too much Anti-Life Equation, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for this to have made it into the published version of this week’s Justice Society #17.

One week only! Composers Amazing Man and Gog will perform their entire repertoire, called by some “the strongest”. Miss it at your own risk!

I don’t want to be a dick, but did he mean rapport?

In better Geoff Johns news, the rest of JSA was typically solid, even though he’s really just moving the story from predictable ground to Really Predictable Ground. Awakened demigod Gog isn’t happy about anything bad in the world and he apparently has the power to fix it all, even the bad things that happened to many of the JSA. So what are the odds that nothing is as good as it appears, and that the JSA’s gonna have a mini civil-war very soon?

In even better Geoff Johns news, Action Comics was jaw-droppingly good and my favorite book this week. Though he’s been taking care of Super-business for quite a while now, he’s really beginning to hit his stride in Action and not just saving his best blend of characterization and action for Green Lantern. In the course of finding out more about Braniac’s latest campaign, Supes (and the reader) gets some insight into his cousin (she actually lived through a Braniac assault as a “normal” Kryptonian and still carries scars. And we witness her teary eyed heat vision–powerful stuff.^[1]), his adopted father (he kept souvenirs!), and himself (he doesn’t really know what it’s like to miss home). For a change, he gets all of this while actually doing something instead of talking to everyone about it.

I bought non-Johns comics this week too, like Final Crisis:Requiem. Some of the negatives being thrown around elsewhere are valid (unnecessary to Final Crisis proper, a little long in the violence department), but overall, I thought it was a competently written and illustrated comic that did what it said it would: show a little more detailed version of J’onn J’onzz heroic last stand, remember his life and show what his last wishes were. The flipside, though: Green Arrow’s “He was my favorite Martian” line makes it almost impossible to defend this book.

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[1]If there is a god, a god who like pretty comics, we’ll see a Gary Frank Supergirl book again one day.

Tim: Unlike any other previous miniseries or even regular story arc, I’ve decided to read the entire series as a whole each time a new issue comes out. Sure, my comic-buying process required me to immediately read the latest installment over Chinese on New Comics Day, but I did read both issues together last night, the better to feel the rhythm of the work. I think I got more out of Final Crisis this way, and will continue until further notice.

First thing I noticed under the new method? The art, while solid in #1, was stunning in #2.

Allen: As much as I enjoyed this issue, I’m still wondering where, exactly, Morrison’s going with this story. We’re two issues into a seven-issue series with the word “crisis” in the title, implying some sort of multiversal shakeup, and the multiverse is, so far, just a bit part of one of the storylines weaving through the series. I have every faith that Morrison has something planned, but these first two issues have really all been setup. And I have a feeling that #3 will also be setup for The Big Stuff which will start going down in #4.

T: I don’t know… I’d say “RUN!” was a pretty charged way to end part two and send us hurtling into part three. Yeah, there’s some continuing setup, but the mood that goes along with that (creepy and dire) is right on for me. And the pace is a little quicker in #2, as it should have been if he’s giving us some kind of “full on, no bull&@%& twilight of the gods” in #3. The question: is there a story being told in Final Crisis so far, or is it just A Repository of Hints? I side with “story”, though the extended caveman bit in #1 has to be some kind of treasure chest of clues, right? That’s the only explanation I see for how long that dragged out. And the 4th-wall-breaking opening page to FC #2 is probably more informative than my lazy butt’s willing to discover.

A: This seems like it would be a good time to break in tell our readers to go check out Douglas Wolk’s Final Crisis Annotations — he had the first batch of annotations for #2 up by yesterday afternoon, and he has some really good stuff on there I certainly didn’t catch.

T: Good stuff I didn’t catch? For me, that was Sonny Sumo. Had no idea he was a Kirby 4th World creation. Didn’t care that I didn’t know and I enjoyed his appearance anyway (the half-finished heart transplant that skeeved us out a little notwithstanding).

A: I can’t believe I didn’t catch the reference to Flash #163 on the first page. And I know you didn’t, either, based on what you said above.

T: Totally missed that. And it does bolster your point about the added benefit to looking for that kind of Easter egg. I just have a harder time reading anything from that point of view at the same time I’m trying to absorb surface-level action-n-talkin’. If I do analyze a comic like FC in more depth, I’m usually more jazzed when I see something that charges the atmosphere or emphasizes What’s Going On (the Human Flame’s getting video of Libra and of J’onn’s execution on a “DAMRUNG” phone, for example) than I am at some quarter-inch billboard in the background of page 2, panel 4 telling you What’s Going to Happen In the End.

Which makes me ask: should the reader really have to embark on some panel-by-panel dissection of Final Crisis? Should they even want to? Is there that much caché in guessing the Shocker before it happens in print? In knowing exactly who all these characters are? These are Grant Morrison comics, not M. Night Shyamalan movies.

A: I don’t think they have to, but I think it’s rewarding that they can. The fact that Morrison has clearly put a lot of thought into what’s going on and tried to load it down with symbolism and foreshadowing adds to that feeling that this story is something Epic and Important. It’s part of what makes reading Watchmen so rewarding (not that I’m saying this series is on the level of Watchmen, mind you) — I’ve read Watchmen seven times and I’m still catching bits I had never noticed before. It’s nice to see the creators taking their work so seriously.

Also, you certainly nailed the “mood” part. Creepy and dire it is — there’s definitely a feeling that we’re building up to something Big and Unspeakably Evil. I still have the feeling that the “multiversal upheaval” is going to require a rebuilding of the universe(s) after Evil destroys all of the good, including killing all or most of the DCU’s heroes. (Which could mean that the characters who implicitly died in the issues, and J’onn J’onzz in the last, could be Actually Really Dead yet still be back good as new when this series is done.)

But if that hypothesis is even in the right ballpark — that this series will result in some kind of redesigned or rebuilt DCU, whatever form that takes — well, it certainly seems like none of the rest of the DCU books are playing along right now, doesn’t it? It doesn’t feel like the books in the rest of the line are building toward any sort of apocalyptic (or Apokoliptic?) death-and-rebirth. Seems like the creators many of the books have long-term plans which don’t involve the Cosmic Reset Button. And if Morrison is going to be rebooting the DCU (in whatever form that takes), shouldn’t the rest of the line be playing along? (Though with what we’ve seen of DC editorial over the last few months, it’s likely not safe to assume that there would be any interoffice editorial communication.)

T: Is Morrison’s Batman R.I.P. even one of the threads to be woven into FC? Doesn’t read like it.

A: I agree — it’s just about the only book which we’ve been told is pretty directly Final Crisis-related… but so far, I’m having trouble seeing how. Given the high-concept pitches of both series, I don’t know how they’re going to be part of the same story, though given that Morrison’s writing both, I’m sure he’s up to something.

It’s inevitable that we stack up what’s gone on here so far against Marvel’s own summer megalith, Secret Invasion (a series we’ve talked about surprisingly little on this site so far). Compare and contrast the Final Crisis arc thus far to Secret Invasion’s: SI might have jumped right into the Big Action more quickly, but Big Action happened in #1 which hasn’t been even referenced again in the main series — for instance, opening the Negative Zone inside the Baxter Building. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue with Final Crisis. I think we’ll get some serious payoff for what’s been set up already. If FC is Batman Begins — more thoughful, leisurely-paced — then SI is Transformers, bigger and louder and punchier. Both have their place, but I think FC will wind up feeling more cohesive and, ultimately, satisfying.

T: Except Michael Bay didn’t make you go watch Iron Man to see how we got from Point A to Point B in Transformers. (Or more accurately, Transformers didn’t have an intermission during which you really should go to the lobby to watch these Mighty Transformers and New Transformers DVD’s.) I think both Big Events will satisfy in different ways, as you say.

A: A digression: at what point, exactly, did the comics industry decide to give up the pretense that we were expecting kids to be reading comics? Not that this topic is specific to FC #2 (and not that it’s the first time I’ve talked about it), but it occurred to me while reading it — the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was to DC 1985 what Final Crisis is to DC 2008, didn’t have a freshly-ripped-from-its-owner’s-chest heart in a bar glass. It also certainly didn’t feature the word “asshole” — the strongest cursing you got in mainstream comics back then was an occasional “hell” or “damn,” and Marvel wouldn’t even use those. It’s not that I have a problem with either element on their own — I mean, c’mon, Preacher is one of my favorite comics ever. But Preacher is clearly marked NOT FOR KIDS. Final Crisis is DC’s flagship event for the summer, kids are going to be reading it, and I think maybe a little more editorial control and forethought could’ve gone into those elements of the story.

T: “Asshole,” while character- appropriate, really took me out of the scene. There was an awful lot of @!$&#$ being used, so why let that one blue word go? It sucked all the coolness out of “…give you brain damage with a toilet seat!”

A: My thought exactly — it would’ve taken nothing from the story to throw a “@!$&#$” in there instead.

T: So do you want to talk about some of the happenings this issue? To me, that Libra “co-plot” (not really a subplot, not quite the main thrust) needs to do something different or just more in #3. It hasn’t strayed too far from Underworld Unleashed at this point.

A: Yup, I think that’s a plotline that’s going to blossom next issue, likely with the return (somehow, some way) of Darkseid. (Funny to think of it as a “return” when he hasn’t been “gone” very long at all.)

T: What are the odds that Libra’s “boss” isn’t Darkseid? Long, I’m sure, but hear me out: If Libra’s all about the balance, and Darkseid represents the idea that Evil Won, wouldn’t someone like Libra be a counter to that? Maybe’s he’s giving the bad guys what they want in exchange for something that’s gonna bring the Goodness back.

A: Hmm, not sure I buy that theory, but if it turns out to be true, I’ll certainly give you all due credit! I’m pretty sure “the boss” is indeed Darkseid — in fact, I think Morrison or Johns might have admitted as much in an interview with Newsarama around the time of DC Universe #0. Might have to go look that up. I think the theory was that the balance Libra was correcting was the fact that good guys always come out on top in the current DCU — it was time for the bad guys to win a few rounds. But I suppose we’ll see! (Let’s not even get into the “Libra is Barry Allen” theory just yet…)

T: Oh, I realize Darkseid’s the Big Bad here — I’m just wondering if we’re just assuming Libra’s working for him. Again, the odds are long that he’s not. (And to the Barry Allen as Libra supporters: Morrison can twist with the best of ‘em, but he’s more conventional than he gets credit for. I wouldn’t even bet my copy of Zero Hour #0 on this happening.)

Bludhaven as a Apokolips Firepit franchise — this was truly chilling, and succeeds mightily in a crucial way for something Final and Crisis: it suspends that belief that the good guys will always find a way to save the DCU. Even if you only allow a .0001% chance of it happening, you do allow it. Bravo, with emphasis on the “brrrrr”.

A: And I think what Morrison’s very strongly getting it is that this time, they’re not going to find a way to save the DCU — at least not until after the fact.

T: Overall? I say the last page of FC #2 is a blatant shout from Glorious Grant that we’re going to be moving a lot more quickly from here on out. And while I admit there are rewards available by reading the book with one eye on a magnifying glass and the other on Wikipedia, there’s also a thrilling ride to be had by letting the story itself do the driving and not worry so much about seeing every mile marker and street sign on the way to the final destination.

So I’m starting to formulate what I’m sure is an entirely off-base, probably nonsensical theory about Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis. [1] This idea of mine comes both from some history of Morrison’s and from, of all places, statements by trade dress designer Chip Kidd and artist Gene Ha, who doesn’t even have anything to do with this book.

Let me ’splain.

I’ll start with Ha’s comments, which were made last September in passing as part of an explanation for the huge delays behind his and Morrison’s run on The Authority:

“First off, I don’t think The Authority #3 by Grant Morrison and Gene Ha is ever coming out. Grant is busy redesigning the DC Universe and I’ve moved onto new projects.”

I think that’s the first place I’d seen reference to that idea of Morrison “redesigning the DC Universe,” or at least put quite in terms quite that specific. We knew even then that Final Crisis was going to be another epic multiverse-shaking story, but little was known about what sort of result the series was going to have. (Honestly, we still don’t know that much about it; DC’s been doing a damn good job of not letting that particular secret slip.)

So we know (or can at least theorize with some degree of certainty) that when Morrison’s done, the DCU will have been changed in some way, likely with his particular brand of highly imaginative neo-retro fusion. (Really, if you were going to redesign or modernize/futurize a comics universe from the ground up, wouldn’t Grant Morrison be on or close to the top of your list of creators you’d want involved?)

The second bits of info which got my neurons rubbing together to form this wild-ass theory came from Chip Kidd when discussing the distinctive, if thus-far uninspiring, FC trade dress:

NRAMA: So what went into the process for Final Crisis’ look?

CK: Well, to start with Final Crisis – the big thing that no one would be able to know yet, and I won’t get too specific here, but for the people that think it’s a generic look – wait. By the third issue, you’ll start to get it. Basically, the trade dress dissolves. So, it’s starting out as something now, and by the second issue, it will be slightly different, the third issue, even more different, and between the third and fourth issue, I hope people will get it, and understand what we were doing all along. It might not make people like it any better, but they’ll at least understand what I have in mind. It’s an evolving trade dress. … There are people who are in the talkbacks saying that DC is just riffing off Civil War, but again – wait and see. By the fourth issue, you’ll realize that’s not what we’re doing. We’re doing something else.

So the trade dress is going to start to dissolve and turn into something else which will be apparent — or at least the direction will — by the third or fourth issue. This implies to me either the current dress and logo will “fall away” to reveal something new underneath, or will degrade and reform into something new over the last half of the series’ seven issues.

I don’t think what’s revealed or regrown will be simply a reworked presentation of what came before. I think it will be something entirely new.

I think the title of this series is going to change halfway through, or perhaps begin to change only to be complete at the end of the series.

Title and trade dress are important to Morrison. When he took over X-Men in 2001, he changed the name of the book to New X-Men precisely because he’d designed a logo for it which could be rotated 180 degrees and read the same. He had Marvel redesign the trade dress for all of the X-Men books to make them more visually distinct from the rest of Marvel’s line. I think to him these elements of comic books have more meaning than beyond the simple graphic appeal of them — while I’m not willing to say for sure it ties into Morrison’s interest in magic, it’s possible that it does, but at the very least ties into his penchant for meta-story. The trade dress of many of his books say something about the books themselves.

So I’m looking at the words “Final Crisis.” And I know that Morrison is building a new DCU. And I know the trade dress is going to change. And I know that there’s a tremendous battle halfway through the series which, I speculate, is going to result in the deaths of most or all of the DC heroes. And I know that Morrison’s using Jack Kirby’s Fourth World creations extensively in this series.

And while I can’t say for sure exactly what’s going to happen…

…I want to note that it wouldn’t take a lot of work visually for the word “Crisis” to evolve into the word “Genesis.” (New Genesis, remember, is Kirby’s “good twin” of Darkseid’s evil planet Apokalips.)

When this series becomes Something Genesis by issue #7, launching the shiny new Morrison-ized DCU, I want you to remember where you heard it first.

[1] That’s not to dismiss the work of artist JG Jones, by the way; it’s just that this particular notion of mine lies along the story and meta axes, so it’s much more in Morrison’s court than Jones’.

Allen had a point related to DC’s upcoming Final Crisis yesterday:

DC has always seemed to work much more in a cyclical fashion than Marvel has, and I think twenty (or so) years since the last universal shakeup probably means it’s about time for the cycle to end and begin again…

Quite true, but why? Why is it always DC and never Marvel that finds itself in that paradox: being in a cycle of trying to break the cycle, where each big shakeup is intended to be the Last Big Shakeup? Look at the titles alone: DC’s following up a series called Infinite Crisis (which implies that there is no end) with one called Final Crisis (which implies that there actually is an end, and this is it).

The simplest answer is that DC had a nice little Golden Age headstart on Marvel proper, from Superman’s debut in the late thirties until Marvel got their ball rolling with Fantastic Four over twenty years later. Stan and Jack (and later Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and others) quickly realized this apparent deficit was actually an advantage. They could see the future through DC’s innovations and also through the continuity minefields DC blindly strolled into first.

Around the time Marvel began picking up steam with FF and then Spider-Man, DC was putting the finishing touches on its perfectly circular universe. Barry Allen met Jay Garrick, the Justice League met the Justice Society, about fifteen multiversal cans of worms opened wider and wider, and DC found itself having to answer questions they never expected from their audience. An audience that had only gotten older and weren’t about to let DC loose from their commitment to continuity.

I bet Stan Lee read “Crisis on Earth-2″, went to the office, burned all evidence of his Brand New Captain America concept, and asked Jack Kirby for his thoughts on drawing icebergs.

40-something years after Flash met Flash, DC’s still trying to get those worms collected and re-sealed, while some Marvel editor is asking why all those sealed cans are sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

^{“I CAN’T EVEN TELL WHICH SUPERGIRL THIS IS AND I’M FREAKING SUPERMAN!!”}

As you’ve no doubt seen by now, DC released their first teaser image for next year’s Final Crisis event yesterday. The tagline — “Heroes Die, Legends Live Forever” — certainly implies to me some kind of large-scale DCU reboot might be coming at the end of what I sincerely hope is the least line-wide crossover for awhile. It’s obviously too early to know what could be coming up in Final Crisis, but I’ve got some half-assed speculation going on in my head already. To wit:

• I think we can all agree that those Sinestro Corps villains will play into the story in a big way. It’s obviously not a coincidental conglomeration of characters, since it just happens to feature the Big Bads of the last twenty years worth of major DC “reboot events.” Clearly putting all of them together in one massive batch of evil will mean some bad, bad things for the DCU. In fact, I’m thinking that…
• The result of all of that combined evil will be a sort of Ragnarok for the DCU. DC has always seemed to work much more in a cyclical fashion than Marvel has, and I think twenty (or so) years since the last universal shakeup probably means it’s about time for the cycle to end and begin again. My hunch is that most or all of the DCU heroes (and probably villains, too) will die, most in a valiantly manner, showing why they’re heroes. (Another hunch: most of this will be kicked off with the death of a character that would seem to be on the “but you can’t kill HIM/HER!” scale, showing that nobody will be above the Crisis.) Only Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman will be left standing at the end to face what’s left of the Sinestro Corps; having lost everyone and everything, we’ll see their true heroism rise as they manage to defeat the bad guys in one final universe-ending gesture, paving the way for…
• A new Earth, possibly a new Earth-1 in the newly-created multiverse. [1] This Earth will differ radically from the current one, rather than simply tweaking a couple of relatively minor points of history. You know how different the new Earth-2 looks from the original (from the one small image we’ve seen of it in 52 #52)? We’re talking that kind of different, at least in some ways. Anything that they want to fix/change will be fair game, creating a “DC Universe for a new generation” or some such. This might be the long-rumored “Ultimization” of the DCU, or this might just be an opportunity for a massive continuity cleanup (hey, Kurt Busiek is the rumored writer for Final Crisis, and he’s already proven he can straighten out mucked-up continuity with Avengers Forever). And this new Earth-1-or-Whatever — that’s where we’ll get this new brighter, more heroic Earth we were promised we’d get as the result of Infinite Crisis (which we clearly don’t have right now). The final heroic sacrifice of the Big Three will somehow imprint on the very nature of the newly-created Earth, and heroism will be brought more to the forefront of the new universe.

When all is said and done, you’ll have a nicely refreshed Earth-1-or-Whatever (one which will hopefully focus more on heroism and less on the darkness which has pervaded the DCU for so long), with a newly-defined single history (one which will hopefully be explained to us, unlike those minor changes to the current history mentioned above), and a newly-created multiverse where all kinds of other stories can be told. And this will be the last time DC does this kind of thing… at least until someone else is in power in DC editorial 20 years from now and has 20 years worth of continuity cleanups to do.

[1] I’m assuming the multiverse is going to stick around, since DC went to a lot of trouble to set it back up and haven’t even played with it properly yet. Plus, they’re spending a lot of time during thisCountdown era exploring how it works and what’s out there. So the multiverse stays.