Seeing SuperMen and Women As They Were

So the new DC Universe has launched. The first month of new series and newly re-launched series has passed and the shared fictional universe inhabited by the DC superheroes 'will never be the same'. Sorta-kinda-not-really.

[Josh has already reviewed two of the re-launching books "Justice League" #1 and "Wonder Woman" #1, and I intend to review at least one of them myself, but here I'm trying to take a big-picture outlook on this relaunch and the superhero characters at its center. This is a snapshot, a time-capsule, of the moment before long-time superhero reader Jon Gorga has read a single one of DC's New 52 issues.]

The truth is that this is far from the first time these characters have been reinvented. (1986's "Crisis on Infinite Earths", most notably.) The highest-profile retro-fitting maybe. Mentioned in newspapers. Advertised on TV. But still. As I've written before, these long-running pop culture characters have to be treated like rubber bands. Stretch! Stretch who these characters can be! Make Ray Palmer, the superheroic, super-shrinking Atom, a widower to a crazy serial killer. (That was done back in 2oo5 in the near-universally-revered mini-series "Identity Crisis".) Make Batman and Superman aging neo-fascists. (Frank Miller seemed to have no fear in pushing that concept in his works "The Dark Knight Returns" and "The Dark Knight Strikes Again".) Place Superman's famous crash-landing in the corn fields of the USSR instead of the US circa 1938. ("Red Son", Mark Millar's alternate take on the DC mythos is also a popular one.)

Over these past weeks of reading and rereading, I've (re)encountered:

4 versions of Wonder Woman
9 versions of Superman
and
25 versions of Batman...

plus:

3 versions of the Martian Manhunter

2 versions of the Flash

2 versions of Green Arrow

3 versions of the Question

And so on...

I finished reading all the non-continuity Elseworlds stuff sitting around my house from Frank Miller's goddamn Batman to J.M. DeMatteis' Realworlds TV producer Batman to Warren Ellis' interpretation of Adam West's Batman to Brian Azzarello's First Wave Batman to the kiddie Batman from "Batman: Brave and the Bold".

Then I moved onto the origins of these fantastic characters: "Batman: Year One", "Superman For All Seasons", "Superman: Earth One" (which I reviewed when it came out last year), "Superman: Secret Origin", "DC: The New Frontier".

I followed this with two issues of "Justice League of America" circa late 1973 I've had sitting around for a very long time. #107 and #108, which make-up "Crisis on Earth-X!" specifically. And I chose to finish in entirely unfamiliar territory: a copy of Jack Kirby's "OMAC" #6.

The result? A whole mess of Batmen, actually. I realized that my first childhood favorite was still my favorite among the DC pantheon and the amount of his appearances among my reading material from the company belied this.

But in that, I discovered something about all these different interpretations of the character: they are all completely different but they all have something in common. Something that makes them all still qualify as Batman.

From Warren Ellis' original pitch for the one-shot "Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth":

"The Batman sees how to end it -- and tells Blank how to see the world. What worked for him when he's teetered on the edge. How to perceive the world." Batman, the man who "tries to make the world make sense by thinking about it..." (Batman/Planetary Deluxe Edition, p. 50)

From the script to the same:

"[Elijah] SNOW; YOU'RE NOT A COP ARE YOU?

SNOW; I DON'T THINK VIGILANTE IS THE RIGHT WORD, EITHER.

...

BATMAN; DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR PARENTS?

BLACK; YES.

...

BATMAN; DO YOU REMEMBER TIMES WHEN THEY MADE YOU FEEL SAFE?

BLACK; YES.

...

BATMAN; THAT'S WHAT YOU HOLD ON TO.

BATMAN; THAT'S WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR OTHER PEOPLE.

BATMAN; YOU CAN GIVE THEM SAFETY. YOU CAN SHOW THEM THEY'RE NOT ALONE.

PAGE FORTY-SIX

Pic 1;

A half-page portrait of the Batman, head and shoulders -- THIS is the reason he does what he does. This is the lost core of the man.

BATMAN; THAT'S HOW YOU MAKE THE WORLD MAKE SENSE.

BATMAN; AND IF YOU CAN DO THAT --

BATMAN; -- YOU CAN STOP THE WORLD FROM MAKING MORE PEOPLE LIKE US." (Batman/Planetary Deluxe Edition, pgs. 91-94)

This got my wheels spinning... Batman changes his point-of-view through sheer willpower and that altered POV is absolutely required to do "what he does"? If Warren Ellis (@warrenellis) says it, it must be true!

Same sentiment said faster, perhaps, by Brian Azzarello (@brianazzarello) in "Batman/Doc Savage: Bronze Night" one-shot:

"I know I can make the world better. ... Hell, from before I could think for myself, that's all I thought to do." (Batman/Doc Savage Special, pgs. 4-5)

I don't talk much about Realworlds: "Return of the Justice League" in this article. You should read it anyway.

In "The Dark Knight Strikes Again", on his return to Earth after a very long sojourn, at Batman's request, Hal Jordan the Green Lantern thinks:

"How strange that it would be you. The mean one. The cruel one. The one with the darkest soul. ... How strange that you, of all of us, would prove to be the most hopeful."

(The Dark Knight Strikes Again Deluxe Edition, p. 202)

"The Dark Knight Strikes Again" really should be titled something like "The Justice League Returns" as it's more of an ensemble piece than the name suggests.

Furthermore, a careful reading of Neil Gaiman's (@neilhimself) "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" brings us a parallel as the supposedly dead Batman speaks to his long-dead mother Martha Wayne:

"You don't get heaven, or hell. Do you know the only reward you get for being Batman? You get to be Batman." (Detective Comics #853, p. 19)

Perhaps a better selection from that work, that comes closer to the meat of the answer I want, is:

"I've learned... that it doesn't matter what the story is, some things never change.

...

The Batman doesn't compromise. I keep this city safe..." (Detective Comics #853, p. 12)

Batman is the man who makes the world a better place by altering his point of view.

But what about those other two heroes of DC's holy trinity?

Superman seems so simple on the surface that most discount him entirely. 'Superman isn't brave, he's invulnerable', I've heard people say. This is a mistake.

Superman is vulnerable in that he is too emotional, too nice. Too perfect.

Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" presents Superman as a man broken by the yoke of his own fears. A superhuman so afraid of any loss of human life, he allows for a complete destruction of the quality of all life.

The sequel to "The Dark Knight" quadrology from 1986 is almost universally reviled among comics-fans. It's a tremendously dark and depressing portrayal of the DC Comics superhero characters. In the end, Superman is convinced by the daughter he has had with Wonder Woman as well as Miller's fascist Bruce Wayne that the remaining superheroes ARE categorically different, ontologically different, and unquestionably better than petty, average, normal human beings. So why NOT rule over them and force them to live better lives? Millar's Emperor Superman from his "Red Son" comes to the exact same conclusion: be the alien overlord, force the peons to be good.

In the movie "Kill Bill:Vol. 2", David Carradine gives a soliloquy on the nature of Superman in the middle of a fight scene with Uma Thurman. Quentin Tarantino very smartly cribbed from Jules Feiffer's famous essay "The Great Comic Book Heroes" when he had the character of Bill say:

"Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume." ("Kill Bill: Vol. 2", 2oo4)

So:

Superman is the secret identity.

Clark Kent is the disguise.

But:

Clark Kent is the everyman.
And Superman is like no man.

Emotionally and psychologically very human but ontologically alien. Biologically Kryptonian. Somewhere in-between is the real person, Kal-El. The Superman, the Ubermench, the In-Between Man. He may not be the everyman, but he is of every person who's ever lived.

Somebody wise once wrote: Batman is a man trying to be a god, Superman is a god trying to be a man.

I think that's the truth. Just not the whole truth. They are both men and both gods, both effect change in a positive way, but from different sources of energy.

-Superman is 'good' striving forward, positively
-Batman is 'bad' striving forward, positively.

That's why Batman appeals to people who find the Superman character repulsively simple, while Superman fans rarely fail to be Batman fans also. Batman took negative energy, used it, and spun it positively. Parents murdered in front of him at an early age. So he struggles to fight so that none may have to experience what he did. Superman took positive energy and spread it exponentially. He was shown kindness by his adopted planet from day one, despite his great loss in never knowing his birth parents, his birth home. He struck out to make others feel as welcomed and safe as he was.

So then...

Is Wonder Woman just a female clone of Superman? Just more good vibrations? A god trying to be a woman? It's been suggested that as she is the enemy of Ares, and thus the enemy of War, she is the peace-maker of the DC pantheon. ("Super Heroes United!: The Complete Justice League History", Justice League: The New Frontier DVD, 2oo8) Yes, but they are all peace-makers! I think Wonder Woman might be among the clearest examples of what all mythic characters are at their core: ideas striving to be alive. Womanhood. Strength in femininity. Fortitude in the face of social-bondage.

And what of these other men and women with remarkable abilities?

The Flash has been portrayed as a man running away from his past and/or toward solutions. The Martian Manhunter feels like an old soldier brought into a new fight. Green Arrow is the superhuman social conscience. Black Canary is the superheroic working woman. Green Lantern is a bureaucratic superhero, a space-cop who has to answer to the intergalactic Guardians. The Question is the spiritual warrior.

They each serve a purpose, fill a role. All evolved from very simple to complex characters, and all have their own personal struggles. All reflect something different back at us, the reader.

I believe, now, what I've always believed: superheroes are an intrinsic part of the human psyche exploded and clarified, expanded into colorful representations of our desires, our needs, our hopes, and our dreams. DC was there first and, in some ways at least, did it best. And I suspect no re-boot, re-launch or re-imagining will change that.

~ @JonGorga

NOTE, a full Flickr set exists that tracks my adventures in reading this stuff...

P.S. ~ I'm looking forward to reading some non-DC comics for the first time in roughly two months...

Words and Pictures with Cliff Chiang

At last weekend's New York Comic Con, I did some reporting for Bleeding Cool. They were kind enough to let me mirror some of the interviews that I did for them here at THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT! This is Cliff Chiang, talking about his work on Wonder Woman, and it was originally posted to Bleeding Cool on 10/16/11

JK: I was wondering how you like drawing Wonder Woman?

CC: It’s great. We’ve been given a lot of creative freedom with it, to be able to take it in this direction has been a lot of fun.

JK: What are you guys doing with all that creative freedom?

CC: Well, we’re just trying to tell good stories in a way that people aren’t expecting from Wonder Woman. There’s a lot of preconceptions about what a Wonder Woman story is, and we’re trying to blast through that.

JK: is there a way that your Wonder Woman is different than the way she has been approached in the past?

CC: I think other people have also done this, but that there’s more eyes on it now. I think we’re trying to do a very straight forward Wonder Woman, that isn’t tied up in backstory, and just present her as a very straight forward warrior.

JK: Do you have anything other than Wonder Woman going on right now?

CC: No, Wonder Woman is taking up all my time.

Diana

While I was in Greece in June, both that country and the comics industry were undergoing a bit of upheaval. Although I got back to the States before protesters started climbing the walls of the Acropolis, it seems sort of appropriate that among the most initially controversial of the New 52 was one of the two I was most looking forward to, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's Wonder Woman. There was something so crazy about the idea that I thought it just might work and, although part of my initial excitement for the title faded after I realized that it was based on a misjudgment of Azz's awful Superman run, I'm glad to see that the title does, indeed, sort of work.

Don't get me wrong; it is certainly flawed. It leaves too many open questions for my liking, and it doesn't do a very good job of introducing Wonder Woman, or, at least, it doesn't beyond a vague sense of her personality (which, admittedly, has a certain kindness and an element of self-deprecation that I did not expect), the fact that she is Wonder Woman, and that she prefers the name Diana.

That last bit is intriguing (in fact, the whole comic is intriguing), and I will be interested to see where Azzarello takes it, but, for now, he does more to introduce the order of the universe and the threats that his heroine is up against than he does of making us aware of her as a character; I have no doubt this will change as the series moves forward but, for now, it is a little frustrating. What is less frustrating (perhaps even welcome) is how little this resembles a straight up superhero comic; Azzarello has said that this book is really more of a horror comic, but, while it certainly has elements of horror to it, I'm not sure I would take it that far. Instead, it seems to be cribbing a little bit from some of the stronger "superheros as mythology" stories of the last thirty years, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing in particular, taking the deconstructive tendency of those comics and applying it towards more traditionally mythological characters, that is, Brian Azzerello is writing Greek Mythology like the Greek Mythology that was passed down to us, with capricious and jealous gods and heroes willing to defend humanity from them. I don't know very much about the publishing history of Wonder Woman, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the most actually classical reading of her as a character.

It helps, of course, that Cliff Chiang is as good an iconographer as they come, and that colorist Matt Wilson seems to understand that. His Wonder Woman (in fact, all of his gods) have an ethereal, otherworldly quality to them, they stand out from the drab background of the human world. Interestingly, for reasons probably having to do with the hand-drawn panels, his work here reminds me of Jeff Lemire's. It's more confident than Lemire's hand is, though, and the lines are thinner and less sketchy; the world that Chiang makes is obviously an imperfect one, and that adds greatly to the atmosphere of the book.

If Azzarello can manage to introduce his Wonder Woman to us over the next few issues without having to stop the story that he's put into motion and Chiang's art works stays strong, this book may very well number among the best of the New 52; if you have to pick one of them, I would make it this one.

Quote for the Week 9/1/11

"...sixty years of story-lines that make the characters feel old sometimes. ... Let's just take Wonder Woman as an example-who's one of my favorite characters-just because she has been around so long, she feels old even if she's not written old.
...
And they've taken the classic characters that everybody's familiar with and loves and they've fit 'em into a modern time ... and so now we have the chance to have a whole new generation be able to love these characters like we did. And some of this stuff, if we don't change it, it starts to look silly after a while.
...
Even though, I will honestly miss some things that I love."

~ Gail Simone (@GailSimone), in an interview with John Siuntres on his Word Balloon podcast (July 19th, 2o11 episode) [I always enjoy Word Balloon (@johnwordballoon).], speaking about the DC Comics (@DC_NATION) re-launch beginning this week, among which will be Simone's new "Batgirl" series.

I've never seen anyone put so on-point the feeling of these character's legacies affecting the feel of the stories.

~@JonGorga

I Know I'm A Little Late To This Party, Forgive Me As I Am In Greece

[the first in a series of posts about what I'm looking forward to about DC's relaunch]

I think this business about rebooting the whole DC Universe is exceedingly silly. For that matter, I think canceling Uncanny and putting Steve back into the flag are silly too, but those are things we'll get to later: for now, rebooting the whole DC Universe is silly. Not that I mind; I've never followed DC's events, as I prefer to borrow them later from friends.

Can you imagine, though? Paying all that money? Following those stories just for them to come to nothing? I suppose it all depends how you look at it, though. If you're inclined (like I am) to view superhero comics as a certain kind of modern mythology, then a reboot that shakes continuity in order to bring a character back to their essentials well, that can't really be a bad thing. At the same time, I think I'm in the minority: I think most people are in it for the long-term, continuous serial storytelling.

And that's why I think that this reboot thing is silly, because I think it's going to backfire. DC might get a sales spike for the first couple of months, but, although I would be curious to see what comes after that, I am pessimistic about the long-term viability of this as a choice.

The positive upshot of this, though, is that DC really does have a chance here to revitalize some old properties and to try some new things. If they can, by erasing the twenty-five years of storytelling since the last time they did this, make comics simpler to understand and less worried about continuity, they might bring people who are intimated by comics as they stand now into the fold, and after a spike and then another dip, they might see a nice little increase in readership.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that, among the books on tap, there are these:

ACTION COMICS #1

Written by GRANT MORRISON

Art by RAGS MORALES and RICK BRYANT

Cover by RAGS MORALES

Variant cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS

On sale SEPTEMBER 7 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T

The one and only Grant Morrison (ALL-STAR SUPERMAN) returns to Superman, joined by sensational artist Rags Morales (IDENTITY CRISIS), to bring you tales of The Man of Steel unlike any you’ve ever read! This extra-sized debut issue is the cornerstone of the entire DC Universe!

I hate Superman.

But here's the score: if Grant Morrison's writing it, I'm probably going to buy it. And putting Grant Morrison on Superman? That's a stroke of genius, and one that comes with a pretty good guarantee. Grant Morrison gets Superman (in a way that someone like a certain superfan who has the initials JMS doesn't), because Grant Morrison gets archetypes, and that's the sort of writer that Supes needs, a mythographer rather than a fanboy. We know that Morrison is such a writer because the Scot already rebooted the big blue boyscout once, and All-Star Superman is, to my mind, the best Superman comic in decades (and maybe the only decent one in just that long), and it's the best Superman comic in decades because Morrison was playing with expectations and mythology. Grant Morrison is going to write a Superman good enough to wash the taste of Grounded out of our collective mouths-- and that alone is worth the $3.99.

WONDER WOMAN #1

Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO

Art and cover by CLIFF CHIANG

On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

The Gods walk among us. To them, our lives are playthings. Only one woman would dare to protect humanity from the wrath of such strange and powerful forces. But is she one of us – or one of them?

It's not that I don't like Wonder Woman, exactly, it's just that I've never thought she was very interesting: the WW stories from the past couple of years haven't helped this perception, exactly. Putting Brian Azzerello and Cliff Chiang on the relaunched book, though, that's crazy enough that it just might work.

Actually, let me step back: putting Chiang on WW was a no-brainer, and someone should have done it years ago. No one, no one, in comics today is an iconographer of the quality that Chiang is: look at the way Diana stands out from the background of that cover, like she's made of halo, separating her from her surroundings as if to say "Yeah, this one's different." And Wonder Woman should be different. She should be a hellraising, badass, Amazon warrior stuck between two worlds, prepared to do what it takes to defend those who need it from forces way beyond their control. And Chiang, if the cover is any indication (and I know it is) is the man for the job.

If Chiang was an obvious choice, Azzerello was a stroke of mad brilliance: at first glance, a man known primarily for his killer crime comics is not the man for this job. But there is some precedent for it: the only Superman comics I own besides Morrison's are Azzerello's and they're pretty good (not great, but pretty good), and they're pretty good because Azz took an old kind of story, a classic, almost a cliche (a man wanders away from home briefly, and comes back to find that everything has changed) and he put Supes in a position he had never been in before, a position for which there was no good solution, no tall buildings to leap in a single bound, no flying around the world backwards. If he could pull the same sort of trick with Wonder Woman, if he can strip off the lasso of truth and the invisible jet, then this book will be an instant classic.

Who's excited for tomorrow's Brave and the Bold?

I'm excited for tomorrow's Brave and the Bold.

For those of you who don't know, J. Michael Straczynski has been knocking Brave and the Bold out of the park month after month, pairing together characters that you would never imagine teaming up. Green Lantern and Doctor Fate? The Atom and the Joker? Aquaman and the Demon? Each better than the last in my opinion.

Last month, we saw Aquaman and the Demon teaming up in a quest to save the world from Cthulu- I mean, The Old Gods. I was highly impressed by JMS's ability to channel Lovecraft so well, while still keeping his unique voice. It was one of the best one shot comics that I had ever read, and I was really unsure how he was going to top it.

Oh wait. He'll write a new one shot with three of my favorite characters and have it be drawn by one of my favorite artists. Duh. Why didn't I think of that?

While, the team-up roster is a little more predictable than the usual team-ups on JMS's Brave and the Bold run, I'm stoked for a great ride and another fun issue.

Thanks to DC's blog The Source for posting the preview pages. You can check them out here!