Comics are awesome.

[Dominic]

OMD was Marvel trying to have it both ways. They wanted to say things counted....except not. Given actual provable numbers, marriage is little more than a long-term relationship with a bit of legalese thrown in. I have know people with courtships longer than most marriages.

I do see what Anderson and Sparky are saying about OMD regressing Spiderman though. Besides the marriage, Peter is back to being a young-ish, (or perhaps immature) bachelor with less responsibilities. To paraphrase my common complaint about "GI Joe", "Spider-Man" is now just Archie with super powers.


I would argue that a divorce is less irksome than having a kid out of wed-lock.

Mind you, there is nothing that says un-married people cannot take care of a kid. I know a happily married couple whose kid was a year old when they actually got married. They are still together, and have had 2 more since then. It was just a question of the hows and whens. A couple need not even be together to raise a kid. A friend of mine makes no bones about the fact that his little girl is better off with her parents not pretending to be in a loving relationship, as that would give her a worse business model than having daddy show up several times a week and talk to mommy like an adult.

But, a divorce is not a big deal at all. It is a legalized break-up.

Either way, "One More Day" gave me a distinct vibe that the pregnancy never happened. (Which both closed any possibility of M2 being in context with 616 *and* removes the stain of possibly infanticide from Norman Osborn.)

I found Peter's and MJ's complete lack of reaction to their baby probably being murdered to be far worse than a divorce or an out of wed-lock birth.

Time? The Lost Lanterns were saved by Hal himself about 4 years ago from the Manhunters. Then they saw Kyle possessed by Parallax during the "Sinestro Corps War". If they didn't forgive Hal after all of that, what makes you think that'll change with more time? Boodikka in particular is more stubborn now that she's become an Alpha Lantern.

I will concede that I might be a bit cynical. But, DC has next to no crediblity with me post "Countdown", especially given Morrison's comments on comics in general. Bodikka and co will likely forgive Hal when the Alpha Lantern thing ends.

Hell, if the spectrum the Alphas and other new elements are still meaningfully around in 5 years, I will give DC and Johns (effectively an editor) props. But, they need to earn my trust.

What? How can you say if one was worth it so was the other? The two are completely disproportionate to each other. Parallax and the Emotional Spectrum have greatly added to the Green Lantern mythos and has brought about consistently great stories. The deal with the devil, on the other hand, has taken more away from Spidey (his marriage, his 'new' powers, a sense of independence and so on) than it gave him back, and the stories have been generally pretty terrible since then. Making Parallax a separate entity was a great move, while Spidey's deal with the devil was terrible, and not worth it just for Harry being back.

Scourge is saying that both more or less set a hero back to where they were "back then" by using some kind of magical McGuffin, be it Satan or the yellow scabies.

How are you defining post OMD as terrible? Is it the fact that all of the arcs are short, or that you are waiting for the other shoe to drop and devalue context further?

(By the way, I find it nothing short of hilarious that Sparky and I still cannot even agree on OMD et al being terrible. "It sucks for this reason." "Noooooo, actually, it is horrible for a completely different reason." "Actually, what you are missing is...." "But, your reasoning completely over-looks...."

Irredeemable is exactly what we got with Parallax. He killed everyone in the entire universe from the beginning of time until the end. That's mass murder of unimaginable proportions. That's not something to just gloss over.

Point of information, "Irredeemable" is an actual comic I was using as an example of bad comic that are grim for the sake of...being HARD CORE BITCH!.

Hal's logic was that wiping out the universe and starting over was the most expedient way to solve the problems he saw. (Mind you, I am not defending it. But, that was the logic.) And, yes, it did make him pretty well horrible....unless it turns out he had scabies and it was the scabies that made him bad. Then, it is all good.

And, that is why I dislike the yellow scabies so much, and how they are like OMD. DC keeps the event, but gets rid of any real consequence of it. Hal did not kill anyone. And, most of the people killed by the yellow scabies that made Hal go all goofy are back, so hey.....

If DC just came out after "Infinite Crisis" and said "Emerald Twilight never happened", I would be more okay with it. But, DC could not muster the nerve to do a hard reboot, so we get more events with no real weight.

Dom, why exactly do you read comics?

Because...your friend Dom is a JUNKIE!!!!

Sorry, had to go for the O'Neil/Adams riff.

Joking aside, habit does play a role. I have been reading comics for 25 years. It is a tough habit to break.

Comic are fairly quick to read, even full arcs. Given the amount of reading I try to do, it is hard to justify too much time on fiction. (The amount of novels I read has steadily declined over the last decade, with a precipitous drop over the last 5 years.) This means that good comics have a high rate of return. And, just as appealling, bad comics have a lower rate of cost.

But, I am not going to spend time and money on reading something that does not progress in any real way. If a story is primarily event or character driven, that is enough of a problem. (There is plenty of real life trivia to keep track of.) If the events and characters are redundant, that is even less of an incentive to commit to reading a title.

They could always have kept Wally as the main Flash, but what else are they going to do with him that they haven't already done?

Kill him and replace him?

By the way, did you know that Marv Wolfman had left an out in case anyone ever wanted to revive Barry Allen after the Crisis? His idea was that someone could have pulled him through the 'time windows' he was passing as he ran to his death.

Yeah, yeah, I read the compilation as well.....


Dom
-5 comics away from done with FCBD!

[andersonh1]

As I see it, the problem with trying to keep some degree of change and progression in comics is that it conflicts with the way time passes in comic books, or at least in DC's universe. I don't know if this is how it works over at Marvel or not. The books are always set in "the present day" with things happening x number of years ago. So Robin (Dick Grayson) didn't start fighting crime with Batman in 1940, he started, say, 8 years ago. No matter what year it is now, his origin was 8 years ago.

Somewhere along the line, actual time of origins began to change. Maybe it was because a comic was updated to reflect the times. Maybe the writers didn't like the idea of Superman hitting 50 (or even 40), because the target audience wouldn't go for that, so they kept him young. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent should be in their 90s right now, but that would kill both popular and lucrative franchises, so it's never going to happen.

So how does a character like either of the above change? How do they progress? They either change over time to reflect the time we're living in currently and the storytelling sensibilities of that time, or else some creative time tries an out of left field change that is either meant to be temporary or that a future creative team will undo, or we get a clean reboot. We've seen all of these happen, and we even have a few characters still tied to their actual year of first publication. All of these coexist in the DC Universe. Meaning that there is no one approach to character growth and change over time, and no real way to enforce any one approach without killing popular or profitable franchises.

If the entire DC Universe had a consistent application of time, and it was accepted within the universe that every character would eventually grow old, pass on the mantle or retire, and then die, as in the real world, you might be able to expect long term development. But that'll never happen now. And I'm not sure it should.

[andersonh1]

Point of information, "Irredeemable" is an actual comic I was using as an example of bad comic that are grim for the sake of...being HARD CORE BITCH!.

I'm familiar with it in passing... some kind of Superman expy gone bad, or something? I thought I'd use the term "irredeemable"to segue into my point, but I guess it didn't quite work.

Hal's logic was that wiping out the universe and starting over was the most expedient way to solve the problems he saw. (Mind you, I am not defending it. But, that was the logic.) And, yes, it did make him pretty well horrible....unless it turns out he had scabies and it was the scabies that made him bad. Then, it is all good.

And, that is why I dislike the yellow scabies so much, and how they are like OMD. DC keeps the event, but gets rid of any real consequence of it. Hal did not kill anyone. And, most of the people killed by the yellow scabies that made Hal go all goofy are back, so hey.....

I understand. But if DC hadn't made him go bad in the first place, they wouldn't need a retcon to explain it all away to free Hal of any culpability. I always favored Malvolio's ring as the explanation myself, but I guess that was too obscure. And Johns got more story mileage out of Parallax anyway.

Comic are fairly quick to read, even full arcs. Given the amount of reading I try to do, it is hard to justify too much time on fiction. (The amount of novels I read has steadily declined over the last decade, with a precipitous drop over the last 5 years.) This means that good comics have a high rate of return. And, just as appealling, bad comics have a lower rate of cost.

Sounds like my reasoning. I used to read any number of books, but I find that I don't have the time or inclination. And as you say, comics are quick and easy. They don't require a huge investment of time.

[138 Scourge]

I can understand your disposition toward Parallax because of your dislike toward "Rebirth" but there is nothing boring about the stories that have come after. The War of Light has been a great plot line, making GL seriously one of, if not the best comic book on shelves these days.

Well, that's just like, your opinion, man.

Nah, even outside of my dislike of Parallax or Hal, from what I can tell the GL books do the opposite of the kinds of comics I want. For instance, this whole thing with the Rainbow Lanterns , that's been happening for how many years now? And I want more single-issue stories, or at the very least short arcs that move quickly. I mean, I dropped "Invincible Iron Man" despite liking the writer, artist, and characters involved because the "World's Most Wanted" storyline was up to part eleven or something. So the space epic or whatever of GL is totally lost on me and fails to get my interest. Now just to clarify. Right here, I'm not saying it's bad as such, just that for me, it'd be a huge waste of time to ever try reading 'em again.

[138 Scourge]

There have been a couple comic universes that were set in "real time" as it were. That was one of Valiant's big things back when they first started up, every story would tell you the date and time the story was happening. Of course, for them, "real time" was only a couple of years.

The New Universe was intended to have time pass in the comics like the outside world did. And a lot of things changed for that universe very quickly. But mostly that was because people weren't buying 'em so much, so they used shock tactics to get attention. Of course, things like the Pittsburgh disaster would be pretty likely if superheroes were really going around. As an aside about the New Universe, given the choice, I'd take the Star Brand over the Green Lantern ring. They seem to be of about equal power and all, but I'd rather have a tattoo that gave me limitless power than a piece of jewelry that did the same.

And while they aren't technically "comics", the Wild Cards series moved in real time, and never brought a dead character back to life. Of course, that means that if you had a favorite Wild Cards character, they're probably dead now.

Astro City's probably the most successful superhero story to have a "real-time" kind of thing. Characters may come back from the dead over there, and they may get up to all the usual superhero shenanigans, but by golly, they do it while living in real times. Since Busiek does stories set in whatever decade he feels like, that place really feels like it has a past. Man, I should read more of those.

But for the mainstream Marvel and DC universes, it'd be hard to see how they could make real passage of time work. Superman's probably immortal, and the Flash and Lantern mantles can be handed down, but people aren't likely to let Dick Grayson take over as Batman forever. The occasional alternate-universe stories give entertaining glimpses of how dealing with real-time might work. But I tend to agree that maybe they shouldn't. Because if superheroes age in real time, then eventually I get adult Power Pack, or Lockjaw needing to be put down. Really, do not want.

So I'm thinking Spider-Man would have quit superheroing if he had a wife and child to be responsible for, and would have trained Robbie Baldwin as his replacement...either just as Speedball or by taking up the mantle of Spider-Man.

[andersonh1]

But for the mainstream Marvel and DC universes, it'd be hard to see how they could make real passage of time work. Superman's probably immortal,

That's implied in the JSA issue where Kingdom Come Superman returns to his universe. He's shown at one point as still alive at the time of the Legion of Super Heroes, 1000 years in the future. He's a shrunken white-haired old man, but he's still kicking.

and the Flash and Lantern mantles can be handed down, but people aren't likely to let Dick Grayson take over as Batman forever. The occasional alternate-universe stories give entertaining glimpses of how dealing with real-time might work. But I tend to agree that maybe they shouldn't. Because if superheroes age in real time, then eventually I get adult Power Pack, or Lockjaw needing to be put down. Really, do not want.

Exactly. And I would venture to say that the vast majority of the reading audience doesn't want that either.

[138 Scourge]

That's implied in the JSA issue where Kingdom Come Superman returns to his universe. He's shown at one point as still alive at the time of the Legion of Super Heroes, 1000 years in the future. He's a shrunken white-haired old man, but he's still kicking.

Huh. For some reason, I find that image kind of funny. Superman shows up in DC 1,000,000 in the 853rd century, having spent some time in the sun (like, inside the sun) does good for him, he's back to his prime and made of gold. So yeah, apparently immortal.

[138 Scourge]

"Spider-Man" is now just Archie with super powers.

One could argue that "Spider-Man" was totally Archie with super-powers when it started. That's what set it apart from other super-hero books.

Anyway. I got some comics, I'ma summarize.

Secret Six #22: The impressive thing about this story is that it manages to remove Catman and Cheshire's son without killing a baby. I have no idea what's going on here, it's odd that this story happens right after the whole Star City nonsense. They didn't want her to be a grieving mother with a surviving child? Whatever the reason, I like the route Simone found to get rid of him.

Spoiler

The guy behind the kid's kidnapping adopted him out to a "loving childless couple" where he'll be safe.

Seems the fella in question's family was in Qurac when Cheshire nuked that country awhile back, so this whole situation was to hurt her. So the Catman bit of the story was good, but I'm not sure what the point of the rest of the team's half of the book was. They quit to go chase Thomas down, there's a fight midway through because Black Alice thinks that Scandal Savage is after her boyfriend Ragdoll's nuts (Which is hilarious for a few reasons. One's lacking the anatomy and the other the inclination), and then they decide "Ah, screw it" and go home. It flows okay in story, but afterwards I kind of think "Wait, why?". This book's been consistently enjoyable, but I'm kind of losing interest. Next issue makes or breaks it for me.

S.H.I.E.L.D. #2: This book is extremely dense, but very fast. Anyway, the new initiate of the secret SHIELD society that's defended humanity since the days of ancient Egypt runs around 1950's Rome with Leonardo DaVinci while trying to not be caught by Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic's fathers. I didn't dig it as much as the first issue, but it's worth another purchase. I just like that this book isn't afraid to range from challenging to outright obscure. And the art looks pretty, too, which helps.

Secret Avengers #1: Huh, I guess Bendis can't write them all. I got interested too late to properly get into Brubaker's run on Captain America, but I've read enough to know I like where the guy's head is at. He killed off Nomad, brought back Bucky, and made me like it. That's impressive. So here we have Steve Rogers' secret-agent team of Avengers that do the espionage. It's an interesting lineup: Steve, Black Widow, Valkyrie, Moon Knight, Nova, James Rhodes, and the Beast. Yet it works, the team seems like a mismatch, but it works well enough. As for the art, I've never been that big a fan of Mike Deodato until recently, but his work is perfect for this shadowier group. Decent stuff, worth getting the next issue.

Spider-Man: Fever #3: No, but seriously, it's great when Spidey and Doctor Strange get together. That double-Ditko magic, I guess. But it's great to see how that stylized Strange speech plays off Spidey's wiseguy patter. And Spidey's reactions to the magical worlds that he runs into through the Doc are priceless. Great combo. This book's thrown out the idea that the spider that bit Pete was one of these Arachnix demons hiding in our world to combine human and Arachnix, which is obviously nonsense, but it almost works. And it is straight-out said that the demon would lie to him, but not straight-out said that that particular thing was a lie. And man, talk about pretty to look at, man, this guy draws great Ditko psychedelica and puts his own spin on it. This thing turned out great, and I'll be looking for more of Brendan McCarthy's stuff.

Prince of Power #2: Holy crap, this story moves fast! Amadeus Cho's quest to beat Loki's son to the four ingredients for omniscience leads to Thor thinking that Cho stole the Golden Apples of the Norse Gods. Thor, as is his usual, reacts with a cool, level head and engages in a rational discussion with Amadeus about this issue. Well, he more tries to hit him with his hammer and states that he, Thor, was Hercules' best friend. Fantastic book, managing to advance the plot and spend most of the issue with people fighting and talking to one another. And I love comically lopsided mismatches, so Norse God of Thunder vs. seventeen-year old skinny kid with a Hypermind? Yeah, I'm in. And as always, this book does Marvel Mythological characters better than anyone since Walt Simonson. Best of the week and highly recommended.

[Sparky Prime]

I will concede that I might be a bit cynical. But, DC has next to no crediblity with me post "Countdown", especially given Morrison's comments on comics in general. Bodikka and co will likely forgive Hal when the Alpha Lantern thing ends.

"Might"?

Seriously though, I don't see that the "Alpha Lantern thing" will come to an end. They are an element that has been established as something that will last given they are required to devote themselves completely to the Corps and go through a surgery to become essentially Cyborg Manhunters. The only way anything ends for them is if they are killed now. And I don't see that the Lost Lanterns will forgive Hal even if the Alpha Lanterns come to a close.

Hell, if the spectrum the Alphas and other new elements are still meaningfully around in 5 years, I will give DC and Johns (effectively an editor) props. But, they need to earn my trust.

With how popular the spectrum has been among fans, I can't see any reason to believe why it wouldn't continue to be in 5 years and beyond that. The Alpha's, I could care less about honestly, but they do play an important role with the Green Lanterns new laws about being able to use lethal force, so again, I see them as a lasting element.

Scourge is saying that both more or less set a hero back to where they were "back then" by using some kind of magical McGuffin, be it Satan or the yellow scabies.

I know that's what he's saying, but I don't agree and is why I said: "The two are completely disproportionate to each other". "Rebirth" didn't set Hal to "back then" at all, what it did was facilitate his return to being a hero "today" and maintain continuity. OMD on the other hand was done specifically to set Spidey to "back then" by changing continuity.

How are you defining post OMD as terrible? Is it the fact that all of the arcs are short, or that you are waiting for the other shoe to drop and devalue context further?

Are those my only two options? Because there are several points I have for defining post OMD as terrible beyond those...

Well, that's just like, your opinion, man.

Yeah.... you voiced your opinion about it and I wanted to voice mine to show the contrast.

For instance, this whole thing with the Rainbow Lanterns , that's been happening for how many years now?

That would depend on what you'd define as the starting point... Generally I'd say it was "Sinestro Corps War" (2007) as that's the first Corps (besides the Green Lanterns of course) to form and begin their fighting. However, it wasn't until "Rage of the Red Lanterns" and "Sins of the Star Sapphire" (2008) that several other Corps was introduced. But not all of the Corps were introduced until "Blackest Night" (2009).

I can understand the style of a story not suiting your personal tastes, but honestly, this wouldn't make a good story if it moved quickly or was only formatted in short arcs. They've been introducing 6 brand new Corps (might as well say 8 with Black and White), which of course means tons of new characters and concepts. All of this takes time to develop and unfold to an audience, otherwise, it would come off feeling rushed and incomplete. The way Johns is telling this story is well balanced with story progression. It feels natural to read and leaves you wanting to see what's next. To me, this is the ideal way to write any comic book series.

[Dominic]

Anderson, how do you reconcile not wanting changes to the status quo with being a fan of "JSA", a book that can only exist because of changes to an earlier status quo? At a basic level, the book makes those awful Gardner Fox comics from the 60s worth it.

Dom
-feels dirty having praised Fox.