And there's the problem... trying to apply to much realism to a fantasy concept.
It is not a question of realism. It is a question of how much something lends itself to a comic/movie/novel being good.
Superman is functionally a "broken" character. If somebody were to try to introduce a Superman-level character in to an RPG (or a kid's play session), they would likely be shouted down because the character is not only too powerful, the power set does not make sense. (The only reason Superman perpetuates is that the idea of the character has enough history and branding to support it.)
But, that does not take away from something like "Red Son" or "Master Men". If anything, Superman's broken power-set lends itself to making Superman a good analogue for the use of power. (Or, for Marvel's Hyperion to be that analogue. You get the idea.)
Having Aquaman talk to or control (or whatever) fishes is just too much of a Silver Age idea. It needs to be rolled back.
Iron Man is another good example. The best "Iron Man" comics are about futurism and the use of technology. Iron Man's suit does not have to be realistic. But, the roller-skates are stupid beyond "Tony Stark is enough of a twit to build them in".
I think there's also something to be said about suspension of disbelief. Mine can only go so far and DC often has characters that go way beyond my threshold. Flash is a perfect example of this since I have actually ran faster than what my legs were capable of. The real world consequences of that are well known to me so seeing a story where the main character routinely runs at speeds far in excess of what any human or even most sci fi spaceships are capable of just completely takes me out of the narrative. The talking to fish thing is right up there. Ok, the ability itself doesn't necessarily, but the real world application does. I mean, what would a shark have to say in a conversation. I could maybe understand some of the more intelligent sea life, such as octopuses and dolphins, but your average fish is probably only going to have one of 4 words to say: "Run" "Fight" "Food" "sex". and that's it. I seriously doubt it would be anything like Finding Nemo/Dory where everything is just chatting endlessly.
Shockwave wrote:I think there's also something to be said about suspension of disbelief. Mine can only go so far and DC often has characters that go way beyond my threshold. Flash is a perfect example of this since I have actually ran faster than what my legs were capable of. The real world consequences of that are well known to me so seeing a story where the main character routinely runs at speeds far in excess of what any human or even most sci fi spaceships are capable of just completely takes me out of the narrative. The talking to fish thing is right up there. Ok, the ability itself doesn't necessarily, but the real world application does. I mean, what would a shark have to say in a conversation. I could maybe understand some of the more intelligent sea life, such as octopuses and dolphins, but your average fish is probably only going to have one of 4 words to say: "Run" "Fight" "Food" "sex". and that's it. I seriously doubt it would be anything like Finding Nemo/Dory where everything is just chatting endlessly.
I'm guessing that's why superhero comics don't hold a lot of appeal for you, because they certainly require massive suspension of disbelief to work. I still enjoy the "heroic fantasy" we get with superhero comics, while recognizing that they are utterly implausible in almost every way.
It is also a question of where the bar for realism is set. Do the characters react to events in a sensible way? If they react stupidly, is it a realistic stupidity? (For example, in the second Nolan "Batman" movie, the Gotham Police made foolish errors when dealing with the Joker. But, they were credibly foolish errors that I would expect a major east coast police department to make.)
With "Transformers", the idea of giant space robots is unrealistic. (Kurzweil makes a pretty good case for why, divorced of comic logic. tl;dr -space aliens are likely to be smaller, rather than larger.) But, that is not the point. And, it is realistic for people to react to those robots with skepticism and caution.
Superman need not be realistic to work as an analogue for power, unless the point of the comic in question is the realistic limits of power. (Gillen originally framed "Uber" in this way. But, that premise was lost in the morass of Avatar Press' need for shock-value.)
Today's comics: Detective Comics #935, Action Comics #958 and Aquaman #1... yes, even though he can't talk to fish.
Action Comics #958
Cost aside, I'm going to like these biweekly books. It's nice to get the next chapter of a story in two weeks instead of a month. That's still a long time in our instant information age, but it's an improvement. This issue picks up right where the last one left off, with Superman and Lex Luthor fighting Doomsday, or rather Lex getting tossed aside like a bug, and Superman taking on Doomsday, with Mr. Oz still watching both him and Lois and Jonathan. As I said before, Superman and Wally West appear to be the main characters to watch when it comes to the main Rebirth storyline, with Superman being openly manipulated from behind the scenes by Oz in order to learn about him, or learn how to defeat him, or something. Oz is able to survey both Metropolis, and Lois and Jonathan at home in their farmhouse, somehow.
Superman and Doomsday slug it out across Metropolis, and Jurgens does a good job making it feel like a repeat of history, as Superman struggles against the larger, stronger and faster Doomsday, and is even cut by one of the bones that stick out all over the creature. Lex pulls him out of danger once and promptly gets swatted aside for his trouble. Both men evaluate each other during the fight, and Superman is busy trying to think of a way to defeat Doomsday without getting himself killed. The issues opens with him noting that this thing looks, smells and sounds like the original, but then over the course of the story he notices differences. When Superman stops to grab a derailed train, Luthor rushes in to fight Doomsday and is just about to be killed in about 10 seconds flat, with Oz noting that Superman now has to make a choice between saving the train full of people and rescuing Lex Luthor. End of issue.
In between all the fighting, Lois and Jonathan are watching the whole thing on live tv, and Jimmy Olsen is taking pictures while talking with the mysterious Clark Kent. Jonathan is asking all sorts of questions while watching his dad fight a monster on live tv, and Lois is of course well aware that Superman was killed by that same creature. Here's where the Superman Rebirth issue ties in, as we got a good few pages of flashback to the original Death of Superman to put new readers up to speed. Lois finally turns the tv off when it really starts looking bad, to spare Jonathan the ordeal of possibly watching the worst, but he's caught up in it now. He's ready to fly to Metropolis and help his dad. What is a mom with a super-powered 10 year old supposed to do?
Detective Comics #935
I'm calling it now: Batwoman's father is the villain. He's in the military, so in comic book land, that makes him automatically shifty and evil. No doubt he's running some secret black ops program that's off budget and is his own little private army. And he knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne, so that automatically makes him suspect. Now, let's see the writer surprise me and prove me wrong.
Detective Comics has been set up as the team book, consisting of Batman, Batwoman, Red Robin (Tim Drake), Spoiler, Orphan and Clayface, oddly. On the other side is the mysterious Colony, named as such by Azrael, who survived last issue's attack by the mysterious villain. Batwoman is training the younger characters with the help of Clayface's shapeshifting abilities in order to create hordes of villains for them to fight. Tim puts a stop to the simulation when it's clear that the others are exhausted. What follows then is a series of character moments that tell us where each one is, and which advance the storyline. Batman and Robin go to see Azrael, who is hidden at Leslie Thompkin's clinic, and they learn the name of the mystery villain. Tim has been offered a full scholarship to a university and is seriously considering taking it, which would take him away from Gotham right when Batman needs him. Batwoman goes to see her father, who tries to talk her back into the military and out of her vigilante role. It's all good material for the various characters, letting us know a bit about each.
It's the final sequence that makes a great cliffhanger for the issue. Batman is alone in the Batmobile when he sees that while his instruments say he's alone on the road, he can see that he's flanked on both sides by vehicles that look to me like the Tumbler from the Dark Knight movies. Batman ends up forced off the road and surrounded by the army wearing the bat masks that we saw at the end of the last issue. There are 50 of them, and they've come to take him in. He says, "you can try" and takes them on. End of issue.
The strangest thing to me is the odd idea that Tim Drake was never Robin, but was instead "Red Robin". I guess that's one of the many continuity changes introduced with the New 52 that I was unfamiliar with. Tim is probably my favorite Robin, so I hate seeing the character altered for no real reason other than to fit into that stupid five year timeline they forced on to Batman. Hopefully Rebirth will fix that. Batwoman is also Bruce Wayne's cousin. Who knew? This is a good, solid Batman book, with a more old school, less perfect Batman who can be surprised, and who is capable of expressing positive feeling towards his friends.
Aquaman #1
Interesting art style on this book, and it's a huge improvement over the art from the Rebirth issue. The plot doesn't advance a lot from that issue, though there are a number of nice scenes between characters to keep the book moving along. Black Manta is stalking Aquaman and Mera as they open up the Spindrift embassy to reporters as a part of Aquaman's quest to improve relations between Atlantis and the surface world. A number of probably future supporting characters are introduced, including an Atlantean captain of the guard and a young woman who is in the British navy. There's a nice scene where Mera shows her efforts to compliment the young woman by speaking well of the old British navy and its history.
There's also a new reporter from the Daily Planet among the press admitted to the embassy, and it turns out to be Black Manta in disguise. He immediately goes to acts of terrorism, killing a guard and attacking Mera, and then Aquaman. In New 52 continuity, Aquaman killed his father, so that's his motivation for hating Aquaman. I prefer his old motivation, which was pretty much just that he's a vile, hateful person. IN a genre where dead parents are such a common motivation, it felt less cliched to me. Manta is pretty close to Aquaman's physical equal thanks to his undersea gear, so the fight goes back and forth with both men being injured, and the sea flooding into the embassy as the book closes.
Black Manta is a pretty safe choice for a villain to open the book, and thus not terribly creative. But the desire of Aquaman to improve relations between his people and the surface world gives the book a nice bit of narrative focus around which to build other stories. I like it, and if they can avoid the grim depressing violence that turned me off Geoff Johns' New 52 Aquaman run (which started off great but went downhill fast), I may stick with the book for awhile. One of my favorite parts is the loving and respectful relationship between Aquaman and Mera which was almost unique among DC's main characters for a long time, and even survived the New 52's purge of long term relationships. Mera is essentially his co-star, and that's not a bad thing at all. She's a great character in her own right.
Wonder Woman #1
This isn't a book I normally buy or a character that I have much investment in, so I don't intend to add this series to my monthly list. This is a book I bought because I enjoyed the art, which is a rare thing for me as a "character first" type of comic book reader. Not that the story isn't interesting, and it may keep me reading for awhile. It's another continuity-band aid story, where Diana, in a very meta line, says that her past makes no sense because "the story keeps changing". If reality is being altered, it may be more closely tied to the overall Rebirth storyline than I thought at first. I do think I'm going to buy the actual Rebirth issue that precedes this series and see what kind of story Greg Rucka is setting up.
Diana has gone to Africa to look for her old enemy Cheetah. Unlike many other DC characters, I know very little about the ongoing narrative of Wonder Woman's various series, so I'm picking everything up as I go. Cheetah is referred to as an animal 'god' by Diana, who has to make her way through hordes of half-human, half-beast creatures to reach Cheetah. She tries to warn them off rather than fight, insisting that she's only their enemy if they choose that approach, and it works for awhile. She fights off all the creatures, only to be soundly thrased by Cheetah, before begging her to help her find Themyscira.
The B-plot involves Etta Candy (race-flipped, I notice... she used to be white, now she's black... reminds me of old-style Amanda Waller in a lot of ways) contacting Steve Trevor, who is with a commando team in the same African country that Diana has entered. There's some concern that he told her why he was there, but he promises that isn't the case, and that he and Diana haven't talked in some time.
Overall: as I said, I really enjoyed the art. The story itself is the most decompressed of all the Rebirth issues I've read so far. It feels like not a lot happens, or rather that more should have happened if only Rucka didn't want to stop at a certain point in the story for his cliffhanger. And unlike the other biweekly books, the resolution to the cliffhanger is a month away, since there will be two storylines alternating from issue to issue. Diana herself seems less prone to hit first and ask questions later, unlike a lot of the male superheroes. I like the reversion to the red, blue and gold colorscheme for the costume. It's more like the movie costume than the old "swimsuit" look, but that's not a bad thing. It gives her a bit more dignity, even though she still has a lot more skin showing than the men.
andersonh1 wrote:The strangest thing to me is the odd idea that Tim Drake was never Robin, but was instead "Red Robin". I guess that's one of the many continuity changes introduced with the New 52 that I was unfamiliar with. Tim is probably my favorite Robin, so I hate seeing the character altered for no real reason other than to fit into that stupid five year timeline they forced on to Batman. Hopefully Rebirth will fix that.
I'm sure that's been talked about here before... When the New 52 first launched, the first issue of Teen Titans gave Tim Drake's background as having been Robin before becoming Red Robin, just like he had originally. In the meantime, DC editorial decided they wanted to tweak the story, so by the time the TPB came out, they changed the dialog to remove any reference he'd been Robin without the Red. They later explain that as a sign of respect to Jason Todd's death (which is moot now either way), he decided not to be Robin (which is dumb when Robin is still in the name). They also decided that Tim Drake isn't his real name anymore. That's his witness protection name, which he got after he stole money from the Penguin and gave it to charity, just to get Batman's attention. So yeah, I'd have to agree with you that hopefully they'll fix his backstory when so much of the changes they made to his character wasn't necessary.
I like the new costume he's got. Reminds me of his original Robin suit, with some influences of Dick Grayson's New52 Robin costume. Although I'm not sure why they completely ditched the Red Robin look to go back to a more traditional Robin look. And the "RR" symbol seems silly.
I do remember that things appearing in the first issue of Teen Titans that were edited out of the trade. It all seems so oddly arbitrary too, to alter Tim Drake's past in that way. It doesn't really accomplish anything, it doesn't remove anything dated, it just changes him for the sake of change.
As for the Red Robin name, Tim had his own Red Robin series for a while, pre-Flashpoint, where he had a costume that looked like the one in Kingdom Come, cowl and all. I agree with you, I do like the new Robin costume they've given him.
andersonh1 wrote:As for the Red Robin name, Tim had his own Red Robin series for a while, pre-Flashpoint, where he had a costume that looked like the one in Kingdom Come, cowl and all. I agree with you, I do like the new Robin costume they've given him.
Yeah. It was a good book too. It made sense for him to take on the Red Robin name at that time. He was pissed Dick picked Damian to be his Robin, and wanted to go off on his own to prove Bruce was still alive, so he took on a (somewhat) new identity. It worked for his character, showing him to be growing up and making a name for himself, just as Dick had done when he took on the Nightwing identity. But to make Tim Red Robin from the start... makes no sense.
I also liked the New52 Red Robin costume... Although it took some getting used to the wing cape thing.
Skip week this week. With no new books to read, I put down a few thoughts about the New 52 volume of Green Lantern, the one book I mostly bought from start to finish.
New 52 Green Lantern
So we have two distinct halves to this four and a half year volume of Green Lantern. The first two years, more or less, are the tail end of Geoff Johns' long run as writer of Green Lantern, and though he had some good material and had no doubt revitalized the franchise, those last 20 issues were not his best work, and I can't really say that he ended on a high note. Quite the reverse, in my opinion. Having a new writer on the book in the form of Robert Vendetti was a breath of fresh air, but I don't think Vendetti ever managed to hit the highs that Johns did, though the book remained enjoyable if not as compelling as it had been in the past. In the end, with the exception of the Third Army and First Lantern storylines, (which I started reading but hated, so I dropped the book until they were over), Green Lantern was the only DC series that I stuck with through the entire New 52.
Geoff Johns - Issues 1-20
Hal had been booted out of the Corps at the end of the previous storyline, right before Flashpoint, so he began this series on Earth with Carol Ferris. I don't want to review every plot point, but I will say that putting Sinestro front and center in the book and making Hal Jordan his sidekick annoyed me, but it fits with Johns' predilection for writing villains and fleshing them out as characters. Hal seems to have lost a ton of experience and even intelligence in the New 52, something I noticed about him over in Justice League where I had assumed it was because he was younger there. Nope... Hal had become an idiot and practically a rookie, and he looked pathetic trying to match wits with Sinestro. The final bit of information about the Indigo Tribe was interesting, but the confrontation with Black Hand led to the creation of Simon Baz, a character who is, in my view, utterly redundant as the fifth Green Lantern from Earth.
Johns completed his character assassination of the Guardians before killing them off and replacing them with the Templar Guardians. I always regret seeing the Guardians as the dark and evil characters they had become in recent years. The Silver Age Guardians were fair-minded and supportive of the Green Lantern Corps they had founded, but starting with Denny O'Neil, they turned into "bad bosses" and seem to have steadily worsened over the years, depending of course on the writer. They were aloof and inscrutable under Gerard Jones, impotent and lacking in motivation under Ron Marz, and ultimately would-be universal dictators who had forgotten why they started the corps in the first place under Geoff Johns. I think Johns stayed a year or two too long, honestly. As much as I enjoyed what he did for Green Lantern, he ended on a low note rather than going out on a high.
Robert Vendetti - Issue 21-52
I'm going to say right off the bat that Billy Tan's art badly hobbled this era of GL. Tan can draw, but his compositions are not as dynamic as they could be, and he cannot draw the lead character well, which it seems to me would be an automatic disqualifier. I've never liked his rendition of Hal Jordan. Every guest artist did a better job than he did.
That aside, while Vendetti's run hasn't been stellar, it's been solid and has featured a number of positive things about it. Hal's brother and his family have turned up on several occasions, and I always enjoy seeing them. Hal's tenure as leader of the Corps would perhaps have worked better for me if we hadn't seen something similar when Gerard Jones was writing the book, and I hadn't made mental comparisons between the mature and experienced Hal of the 90s, and the less mature and less intelligent modern day Hal. The evil actions by the Guardians were at least put to good use as the Durlans were able to use them turn the universe against the Green Lantern Corps, leading to Hal going renegade in an attempt to take the blame himself and salvage the reputation of the Corps, only for the plan to fall apart when the Corps vanished. The whole year long storyline with Hal as a renegade was fairly flat, honestly. It had some good issues, but I'm very glad it's over and done with. It never quite felt like Green Lantern to me. Godhead was better than I expected, though I just refuse to play along with DC and pretend that the New Gods and the Green Lanterns had never met before, so it was a frustrating storyline in that respect. The return of Parallax was wasted since he was written as a two-dimensional ranting lunatic, rather than a character who showed flashes of regret for some of what he had done, but believed that for the most part he had done the right things.
Overall: The four and a half years were definitely on a downhill trajectory after Green Lantern peaked in quality and creativity with Blackest Night. That's not to say all four years were poor by any means, but there has been a marked decline. Better art would have helped Vendetti's run, no doubt. But overall, it's the only book I stuck with through the entire New 52, so that says something about it I guess. If nothing else, the characters and the relationships between those characters most resembled the lost pre-Flashpoint continuity, and that was always a point in the books favor. I am looking forward to Rebirth, and here's hoping for bigger and better things in the future.
