Retro Comics are Awesome

[Dominic]

In fairness to Miller, Karen Page was a supporting character in a dying second tier comic. That is about as unimportant as it gets.

The *only* reason that Karen Page matters is because of what Miller did with her. Miller did not destroy Page by making her a drug-addled porn queen. He made her useful to a defining run of the comic.


On a related note:
Check out Marvel's current "Daredevil: Dark Knights" series. I cannot recommend subscribing to it, as the creative teams will be rotating. But, the first arc is solid (if a bit out of season) and the second arc is promising. (The third arc is billed as being by Palmiotti, which is reason enough to avoid it.)

[Onslaught Six]

I'm not a big fan of Frank Miller's over the top macho noir storytelling, but I have to admit that he seems to have brought his A-game to this story and he seems more restrained than he was in the Dark Knight Returns, for example.

His Daredevil run was before that, so it was even further before the "Frank Miller goes entirely off the rails" period.

[andersonh1]

There are signs of him going off the rails though, once the story gets to the Nuke character. But on the whole, having finished Born Again over the weekend, I have to say that it's very strong and very well written. I can see why it's held in such high regard by fans of Daredevil. And to go back to Dom's point about the book being a "dying, second tier comic", perhaps that's why Miller was allowed to alter the status quo in the way that he was, with the hero actually losing his secret identity to the main villain. Of course, these days in Waid's book, everyone knows that Murdock is Daredevil, even though he tries to deny it.

A few thoughts on "Born Again":
- Have we ever seen a "super hero" go as low as this? Homeless, desperate, losing his mind and assaulting both hotel owners and police? He doesn't call on friends for help, because he's convinced everyone is out to get him. He just goes straight for the Kingpin and tries to beat him up, but of course the impossibly huge Kingpin wins the fight and tries to drown Matt in the river.
- "It was a nice piece of work, Kingpin. You shouldn't have signed it."
- "There is no corpse" - now the Kingpin is starting to go off the rails too, mentally. He never goes as far as Murdock, but it's fun to watch him squirm after he's been so cocky up to this point in the story.
- Iron Man looks strange in his mid-80s armor. I'm used to the movie look. And it feels a little odd for the first five or six chapters to focus on Matt and his supporting cast and enemies, only to include Captain America as a main character for the last few. It feels disjointed, but then that's the nature of serialized monthly books that have been collected I guess.
- This particular story is a long way from the sanitized super-hero punch-outs that we usually get, or the sex and gorefests that some writers think makes a story "adult" and "serious". I think that's one of the advantages of a "street level" character who isn't invulnerable or rich or well-connected.

[andersonh1]

The Flash archives
The latest round in the Flash archives shows the crooks getting a bit smarter. The first few stories have Jay Garrick running rings around the bad guys, while the next few actually show them stepping up their game a bit and giving him some trouble. Keep in mind these are comics from 1941 when vast gaps in logic and plausibility occur. And they will.

I liked the first of the two stories quite a bit, even if it makes absolutely no sense on certain levels. And I like it because the writer remembers that Jay Garrick is a scientist, with knowledge of chemistry, which I vastly prefer to the slacker we saw in Earth-2, sitting around on a hill drinking beer and moaning about his life. Anyway, being a chemist is originally how Jay became the Flash in the first place, and it contributes to the plot here as Jay is helping a friend of his with a chemical formula. The formula itself is nonsensical, however. It turns things to stone, and the inventor talks about keeping dead loved ones around as statues, which creeps Jay out. Naturally the scientist blabs about it to the wrong person, who takes the idea to his boss, who has the scientist kidnapped so he can steal the formula, capture his rivals, turn them into statues and charge admission for people to see them. Ten bucks apiece, which he later raises to $15. And he actually manages to trap the Flash when he comes to investigate, turning him into a statue! Yes, it’s all a bit silly, but at least we’re moving beyond protection rackets and more run of the mill crooks.

Of course, the statue process doesn’t actually kill the individual in question. Don’t ask me how they breathe or pump blood or anything like that. The Flash manages to escape his fate due to a blood plasma drug that he was working on earlier and injected himself with, since he worried that he’d be turned to stone. Yeah. And he restores the other people who were turned into statues in the same way by injecting them with the drug… even though they’re stone now. Yeah. And then he turns the gang boss into a statue up to his head, and whoops up on the henchmen. Case closed.

So that’s crazy “science” out of the way. The second story goes back to gangsters in the form of a jewel thief, named “The Monocle” because he wears… a monocle. He steals jewelled hats from a fashion show which Jay’s girlfriend Joan is doing design work for, because the jewels in the hats are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jay (who is once again seen smoking in one panel) goes after him. The guy gets clever and uses a strobe light to allow his henchmen to see the Flash, who is normally too fast to see, and to shoot at him. The crooks are getting better. And the Monocle, with his big reference book on law enforcers, looks up the Flash and notes that he has a girlfriend, so he sends his goons to kidnap her. Should have worn a mask, Flash. Sometimes that whole secret identity comes in handy! One question: who wrote that book? Who did the research? Crazy.

Of course in the end the Flash stops the guy and makes him promise to reform, which he does. I believe him… really.

The archive volume also reproduces a page with “The Flash’s Speed Records”, in which the Flash talks directly to the reader and mentions some airplane speed records, land speed records by vehicles, etc. I wonder if this is where the infamous “Flash facts” we see later on with Barry Allen originated? There’s also a page with some short biographies of Gardner Fox and E. E. Hibbard, the writer and artist respectively. It’s nice to see both of these included along with the actual comic stories as examples of how comics were at the time. If nothing else, it’s interesting to see how the medium evolved into what we have today.

[Dominic]

Yeah, and for some reason, I cannot read comics published before the 70s.

I liked the first of the two stories quite a bit, even if it makes absolutely no sense on certain levels. And I like it because the writer remembers that Jay Garrick is a scientist, with knowledge of chemistry, which I vastly prefer to the slacker we saw in Earth-2, sitting around on a hill drinking beer and moaning about his life.

Just look at them as two unrelated characters.


I am currently reading through "X-Factor Forever". The high concept is "where the book would have gone if Simonson had stayed on it".

[andersonh1]

Yeah, and for some reason, I cannot read comics published before the 70s.

It's interesting... despite the simplicity of the few Golden Age comics that I've read, so far they're nowhere near the levels of sheer goofiness of Silver Age books. It's hard to make a fair comparison since I've only read a small amount of stories from either era, but so far the Flash stories from the 40s consist of putting a super powered character in a fairly mundane world of crime and criminals. Yes, the writing and art are unsophisticated, but honestly not all that bad. I doubt I'd find them worth my time if I didn't already like super-hero comics in general and the character of Jay Garrick in particular, but as part of Garrick's fictional life story I've enjoyed reading them.

I liked the first of the two stories quite a bit, even if it makes absolutely no sense on certain levels. And I like it because the writer remembers that Jay Garrick is a scientist, with knowledge of chemistry, which I vastly prefer to the slacker we saw in Earth-2, sitting around on a hill drinking beer and moaning about his life.

Just look at them as two unrelated characters.

While they are certainly two very different characters, both are Jay Garrick, the Flash. They are not unrelated, and the fact that I like the original so much means that I'm unwilling to view the Earth-2 version as anything other than an inferior, in-name-only substitute for the real thing. The same goes for the rest of the characters in that book, hence my great dislike of Earth-2. I'd rather read the 1940s Jay Garrick than the New 52 version any day.

[BWprowl]

Just look at them as two unrelated characters.

While they are certainly two very different characters, both are Jay Garrick, the Flash. They are not unrelated, and the fact that I like the original so much means that I'm unwilling to view the Earth-2 version as anything other than an inferior, in-name-only substitute for the real thing. The same goes for the rest of the characters in that book, hence my great dislike of Earth-2. I'd rather read the 1940s Jay Garrick than the New 52 version any day.

It's an interesting point. One comparison I would make would be TF, which re-hashes and reboots characters all the time. Personally, I don't really make comparisons between versions that influence my opinion, IE: I don't dislike TFPrime Optimus Prime because he's a 'poor substitute' for G1 Optimus or Animated Optimus, I dislike him because he's a bland, poorly-written character in his own right.

On the other hand, here's an obscure example in the opposite direction: This new anime called Gatchaman Crowds came out this season, obstensibly being a 'reimagining' of the classic Gatchaman show (aka Battle for the Planet aka G-Force). I'm watching it because I was super-fond of G-Force back in the day, and when pics of Crowds first came out, it...didn't look a hell of a lot like Gatchaman, so I wanted to check it out just to see how 'wrong' they would get it. Thus far, it definitely fits the 'in name only' manner of updating you describe, the only things Crowds has in common with classic Gatchaman are a group of young heroes putting on powered armor/suits of some sort fighting space terrorists, and a couple of 're-imagined' characters that are kinda linked to their classic versions. It could very easily be an original show with no relation to the original, but it insists on calling itself 'Gatchaman', and using the classic logo and transformation phrase. It might be kinda cool on its own (I'm still forming an opinion), but the whole time I'm watching, in the back of my head, I'm going "But why the hell did they have to try to pass this off as Gatchaman?"

So I guess what I'm saying is I can kinda see where Dom's coming from, but I can also see where you're coming from. Transformers has never meant anything more than a rough concept of 'Cybertronian robots turning into shit' for me, so I can accept deviations from the 'classic characters' on their own and judge them on their own merits. But with something like Gatchaman, I come into that franchise specifically wanting a five-man team of teenagers turning into bird-suits and flying around in a badass phoenix-jet. I guess Golden Age The Flash falls into that second category for you, where the character himself specifically appealed for one reason or the other, and you can't appreciate NuJay compared to the original version any more than you could appreciate, say, Barry Allen compared to classic Jay Garrick. There's no substitute.

The fact that you likely didn't like the way NuJay was written on his own probably didn't help either, I'd presume.

[andersonh1]

So I guess what I'm saying is I can kinda see where Dom's coming from, but I can also see where you're coming from. Transformers has never meant anything more than a rough concept of 'Cybertronian robots turning into shit' for me, so I can accept deviations from the 'classic characters' on their own and judge them on their own merits. But with something like Gatchaman, I come into that franchise specifically wanting a five-man team of teenagers turning into bird-suits and flying around in a badass phoenix-jet. I guess Golden Age The Flash falls into that second category for you, where the character himself specifically appealed for one reason or the other, and you can't appreciate NuJay compared to the original version any more than you could appreciate, say, Barry Allen compared to classic Jay Garrick. There's no substitute.

The fact that you likely didn't like the way NuJay was written on his own probably didn't help either, I'd presume.

I think if the Earth-2 Flash was an entirely new character, I'd be more than willing to judge him on his own merits. If he was named Greg Smith and wore a green and black Flash costume, and Jay was gone entirely, I wouldn't hold it against the new character. I think there's a new Dr. Fate in recent issues, and I have no problem with that. I have no problem with Jay and Barry coexisting and being entirely different characters with similar power sets, though yes I prefer Jay over Barry as a character, and Wally West over Barry too when it comes down to it. But if a character is going to blatantly be a new version of a character that already existed, then I'm going to make comparisons when making a judgment call. There's no way around that. For example, I dislike New 52 Superman because he doesn't seem at all like Superman to me, or at least not the version I've been reading since 1989 or so. Yeah, he's not meant to be the same, but on the other hand he's still meant to be Superman, so so comparisons with what I expect Superman to be and to act like are inevitable. It's not just Jay, it's just about everyone in DC's character catalog, hence the fact I'm reading so few of their books.

Change that occurs organically in the course of a story or as a result of dramatic events is fine. The 1940s Flash isn't the same as the 2000s Flash, but that's to be expected with 60 years of character growth and experience. But arbitrary change across the board is a different matter entirely, and has to be looked at in a different way I think.

[BWprowl]

But if a character is going to blatantly be a new version of a character that already existed, then I'm going to make comparisons when making a judgment call. There's no way around that. For example, I dislike New 52 Superman because he doesn't seem at all like Superman to me, or at least not the version I've been reading since 1989 or so. It's not just Jay, it's just about everyone in DC's character catalog, hence the fact I'm reading so few of their books.

I guess the question then becomes: What else do you do this with? Going back to the example I used previously: Do you dislike Animated Optimus Prime or TFPrime Optimus Prime simply because they're vastly different characters from the original version of Optimus Prime?

[andersonh1]

But if a character is going to blatantly be a new version of a character that already existed, then I'm going to make comparisons when making a judgment call. There's no way around that. For example, I dislike New 52 Superman because he doesn't seem at all like Superman to me, or at least not the version I've been reading since 1989 or so. It's not just Jay, it's just about everyone in DC's character catalog, hence the fact I'm reading so few of their books.

I guess the question then becomes: What else do you do this with? Going back to the example I used previously: Do you dislike Animated Optimus Prime or TFPrime Optimus Prime simply because they're vastly different characters from the original version of Optimus Prime?

I guess I look at Transformers differently. I take each continuity on its own merits and don't really compare, because they aren't connected, even if they borrow some ideas from other iterations. Having said that, I can see myself avoiding some future iteration of Transformers if it fundamentally departed too far from what I consider Transformers to be.

And that's my problem with most of DC, in addition to the fact that most of their characters have been around a lot longer, and received much more character development than any single Transformer ever has or will. We've lost more. It's hard to miss Slapdash or Joyride all that much, for example, with the limited page or screen time they've had. Oliver Queen wore a beard and developed a lot for 40 years, and suddenly that's all taken away. Time makes a big difference here. I'm not too broken up about Vibe being new and different, but Superman is another story. And that doesn't even go into all the characters that are simply gone now, like Wally West or Donna Troy, or the many children and grandchildren of the JSA. Where's Jesse Quick or Atom Smasher?