With my in-laws scheduled to arrive sometime tomorrow and my brother-in-law and his family due a week from today and the baby due...well...whenever he damn well feels like it (though we are thinking potential inducement two days early to solve a number of problems...Tash's doctor will still be here, her whole family will have arrived and we'll have seen Batman Begins...so everyone'll be happy), I figured today I'd catch up on a few things I've been holding back for a while...mostly about comic books (so those of you with no interest -- which means most of you -- can skip around and come back another day).
When I was in my comic book reading hey day (and I know some of you out there are going "wasn't that yesetrday") back in high school...I was mostly a DC Comics fan. Sure there were a few heroes I loved over at Marvel (Captain America & Doctor Strange) and I was reading a lot of Marvel Comics (almost everything except for the X-Men books and the Spider-Man books), I read EVERYTHING that DC published and I do mean EVERYTHING (except Legion of Super-Heroes).
In the mid80s, comics were fun and nowhere was that sense of fun more prevalent than DC. In the middle of their gigantic company changing crossover known as Crisis On Infinite Earths we still had time to smile and relax with goofy heroes like Blue Devil, Blue Beetle and Ambush Bug. Heck, even Batman had a sense of humor and a goofy side-kick to boot.
After the Crisis was over and the entire DC Universe restarted from the beginning of time things got a bit darker...for some characters...but stayed relatively cheery for others. And it's pretty much been that way up until August of 2004. Last summer, DC published a new crisis story...one called Identity Crisis and the DC Universe hasn't been the same since...it's gotten much much darker...and there's another crisis on the horizon...and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Normally I wait for the trade paperbacks to colect stories like Identity Crisis but I was watching each issue get reprinted 4 or 5 times over an eight month period and finally on a day when I needed instant gratification broke down and bought the 7 issue series (well...some of it...the last round of reprints were done at a rate of 2 issues per week...so it did take a month to read). Since then I've learned there will be a collection in October...but Dan Didio, the VP over at DC, recently went on record as saying that if people are wiating for the trades they're not doing their job right...which is creating exciting, well told stories that get people back to reading the individual issues.
When it comes to reading a story, it's not necessarily about instant gratfication...it's about a fun journey. The premise that DC was hyping dealt with someone trying to harm the loved ones of the various super-heroes...in the end it wound up being about much more than that.
The story starts off with the brutal murder of Sue Dibney. She is the wife of Ralph Dibney who is better known as Elongated Man (he's a guy who can stretch body parts...the geek in me would like to explain how his powers differ from those of Plastic Man or Mister Fantastic, but I won't). The thing about this B string (some would say D string) super-hero is that his stretching power isn't what makes him interesting...he's a detective as well...on par with Sherlock Holmes (when he's written well) and his wife is part of that equation. Ralph and Sue are the Nick and Nora Charles of the super-hero set and while many said that the pointless death of a minor supporting character related to a low level hero is no cause for hyping a book, I'd disagree. DC killed off half of a team that was all about fun and set in motion a chain of events that still haven't ended.
Sue's death brought a secret to the surface that the Justice League had been hiding for years. You see, one night when Sue was up in the JLA Watchtower, the goofball villain (weren't they all goofball villains in the Silver Age) known as Doctor Light snuck on board and tried to rape her. He was stopped when the League walked in on the attempted rape. But by the time he had been subdued, he had discovered the one weakness every hero has...loved ones...it would just be a matter of time and energy to deduce the real identities of everyone in the JLA and get at them through their families. So, to put a stop to it right then and there...the seven members present (Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, Atom, Flash and Zatanna) made a decision by majority vote to have Zatanna use her magic to essentially give Doctor Light a lobotomy turning him from a deadly psychopath into the goofball we all loved.
And they didn't stop at Doctor Light...but Ralph is pretty well convinced that Light is behind the death of his wife...so as the secret of the mind wipes come to light and the villains regroup to protect each other, we get slowly led away from the "real" story of who killed Sue to something much more darker. By the end when we discover who did it, it no longer matters. The proverbial "cat" is out of the bag and you're left wondering "where do these guys go next".
Well..."next" turned out to be a one shot called Countdown to Infinite Crisis where we find Blue Beetle investigating a number of odd circumstances that lead him to discover one big bad secret that is currently rattling the entire DC Universe. Unfortunately, Ted Kord doesn't survive the issue once he confronts the man who used to be his friend. It's a very brutal and sad death for someone who was a fun read for many years. Hopefully, someone will take up the mantle of Blue Beetle (I'd like to say that no one stays dead in comics and for the most part it's true...but he was shot in the head at point blank range and his body was then cremated...theoretically characters don't get much deader than that).
Once the Countdown started, DC opened the flood-gates. Four mini-series are currently running in the lead-up to whatever this Infinite Crisis is going to be.
The OMAC Project picks up the trail where Blue Beetle's investigation left off as Booster Gold, Wonder Woman and Batman try to find Ted and discover that one of Bruce Wayne's inventions has fallen into the wrong hands and what this thing was invented for is a bit of a doozy that will put Batman at odds with all his other super friends (but when is he not at odds with them).
Day of Vengeance finds the Spectre, no longer tied to a human host, and Eclipso, with a new human host in Jean Loring, (ex-wife of The Atom and killer of Sue Dibney) teaming up to obliterate all magic from the world. trying to stop them is an odd team of Ragman, Enchantress, Blue Devil, Nightshade and Detective Chimp (don't ask). Captain Marvel and the wizard Shazam seem to fit into this somehow as well.
Villains United follows a group known as The Secret Six (made up of some C list villains) trying to stop the rest of the villains from uniting as The Society where Lex Luthor is running the show with help from Doctor Psycho, Talia al Ghul, Black Adam and a few others. Why are the villains all joining up? For protection in case the heroes decide to perform more magical lobotomies.
The Rann-Thanagar War tracks all of DC's alien species in the middle of a battle that a few of the "off world" heroes get involved in (Hawkman, Adam Strange, a few of the Green Lanterns).
How will all of this tie into what's coming? I have no idea...but apparently once the Infinite Crisis starts all of the monthly books will be jumping ahead by one year so you will see the ramifications of the event before you actually know how it ends.
With all of this stuff going on and the excitement of this summer's Batman Begins, next summer's Superman Returns and the current seasons of Teen Titans and Justice League Unlimited (which has an over arcing plot that seems somehwat similar to some of the stuff going on in the comics) it's an exciting time to be a DC fan.
Now...over in the Marvel Universe, things aren't as exciting. With Marvel, there's almost no need to breakdown and not wait for a trade collection as they tend to run late on issues and wind up publishing the collection the same week the final issue comes out. They've got a major company wide crossover happening called House of M which I'll get into another time. Today I want to talk about my disappointment with what they've allowed to be done to one of my favorite characters...Doctor Strange.
I've been a big fan of the writing of J. Michael Straczynski for a while now and have tried to get to everything he's written. Babylon 5 and all of its off-shoots are amazing works of science fiction. His original comic book works Midnight Nation and Rising Stars were also amazing reads. His run on The Amazing Spider-Man actually made he a fan of the character after so many years (I even had no problem with his recent controversial storyline in which it was revealed that Gwen Stacy had a brief affair with Norman Osbourne and sired two children before she died at his hands). So I was excited beyond belief that my favorite writer would be tackling my favorite character with an updated retelling of his origin.
The six issue mini-series entitled Strange starts off okay. The first issue is actually a really good set-up for who Stephen Strange is before his accident. The problems start in the second issue where JMS changes the circumstances of the accident. You see, one of the things I've loved about Strange is that before his accident he was this pompous jerk and it was his own ego that caused his downfall when a drunk driving accident takes away the use of this brilliant surgeon's hands. JMS has Strange hit a tree while skiing. Ummm...okay...not a good sign...but I figured maybe he'd recover...
By the time issue three rolls around and we start to see that JMS has essentially stolen the plot of The Matrix to reinvent Doctor Strange I gave up all hope. This is not the Stephen Strange I know and love...it's a bad clone of the Neo I know and HATE.
Luckily, in recent interviews JMS has stated that the fate and future of Doctor Strange rests in someone else's hands as he's too busy with other things. This is a good thing in my opinion.
Well...I've talked enough about comic books for one day. I'll be back soon with a look at Batman (and some friends) before he Begins...unless of course, Malcolm arrives sooner than we expect...
We'll keep you posted
Be seeing you
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