Platypus Thoughts: Millar Time

Apparently long-time Marvel Comics writer and 20th Century Fox superhero “guru,” Mark Millar says that a Justice League film is a good way to lose $200 million. Can someone in the audience tell me what is wrong with this picture? It is not that Mr. Millar is wrong. A Justice League film has the potential to be a nine-figure atom bomb like 2011’s Green Lantern but his reasoning for why such an endeavor would fail bothers me.

“I actually think the big problem for them is the characters are just too out of date. The characters were created 75 years ago, even the newest major character was created 68 years ago, so they’re in a really weird time...The actual logistics of each member of the Justice League is disastrous, and you put them all together and I think you get an excellent way of losing $200 million.”

Mr. Millar has always entertained the notion that Superman and his cohorts were too “outdated and irrelevant” to the point where it borders on obsession. When I peel away his reasoning, that most of the Justice League members should be collecting old age pensions, it falls apart when I take the longevity of Marvel’s stable into account. Captain America is pushing seventy-five himself, the Hulk and Thor are now fifty, and Iron Man will be turning fifty this year. I fail to see how DC’s characters are irrelevant because of their age when Marvel’s characters are not exactly a breath of fresh air themselves. Never mind the fact that the current incarnations of the Flash and Green Lantern predate Marvel by a few years (1956 and 1959, respectively.) That would be akin to a seventy-five year-old telling me he is not a senior citizen because his neighbor is ninety-five.

Logistics, on the other hand, is where Mr. Millar may bring up a valid argument. Let us hear what he has to say:

“Now the stuff I grew up with… I adored the DC stuff growing up but really, how do you do a movie about Green Lantern,” asks Millar, “his power is that he manifests green plasma from his imagination and uses them as weapons against someone? Even that in itself if you just imagine then watching a fight scene with a guy who’s like a hundred feet away making plasma manifestations fight someone – it’s not exactly raucous, getting up close and personal.”

This statement demonstrates how Mr. Millar knows very little of why the Green Lantern film was a failure. There was and is nothing wrong with the concept behind it: a dying member of an extraterrestrial police force gives test pilot the most powerful weapon. It was the horrible writing abysmal execution that torpedoed it with its rushed plot that was thin on characterization, packed with needless exposition, and overuse of computer-generated imagery to name a few. Furthermore, I fail to see how Green Lantern’s ability to generate plasma constructs through his ring would make fight scenes any less exciting because it is not “exactly raucous” or “up close and personal.” Especially when many of the Marvel films to not heavily depend on close-quarters combat.

Take Matthew Vaughn’s (who also directed the film adaptation of Millar’s Kick-Ass) X-Men: First Class where neither Charles Xavier nor Magneto possessed powers that required them to get up close and personal with Sebastian Shaw and his associates. Likewise for Banshee, Havok, and Emma Frost. Similarly, neither Iron Man nor Thor needed to get into a physical confrontation because of the nature of their abilities in the Avengers. Iron Man could dispatch enemy combatants from a hundred feet or more with his armor’s repulsor rays and Thor could just as easily summon lightning and hurricane-force winds with Mjolnir and that did not make the film any less enjoyable. Conversely, Green Lantern can produce swords, axes, and other close combat weapons with his ring to physically engage with his adversaries (like Sinestro) similar to how Thor uses Mjolnir as a blunt weapon against the frost giants. Also, given Hal Jordan’s brashness, it would make more sense for him to engage in close-quarters combat because of his ego.

Millar, quite frankly, is grievously mistaken in his assumptions over Green Lantern’s failings. The Green Lantern franchise has the potential to become DC/Warner Brothers’ answers to Lucasarts (and now Disney’s) Star Wars. However, the management was too eager to jump on the superhero bandwagon 2008’s Iron Man started and they paid for it in disappointing box office returns. Perhaps DC Comics and Warner Brothers should watch the original, unedited Star Wars trilogy and read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Methinks they would learn more from those sources than from Mr. Millar’s ill advice.

Moving on…

“The Flash has door handles on the side of his mask and if he doesn’t wear that mask, I’ll be pissed off, you know what I mean? They’re in a weird, weird situation – if you’ve got a guy who moves at the speed of light up against the Weather Wizard and Captain Cold or whatever, then your movie’s over in two seconds.”

I see it as bad omen when Mr. Millar begins with a criticism of the Flash’s costume. Partly because the wingtips on his “ears” not only invoke the mythological imagery of Hermes/Mercury, but also speaks to the characters streamlined design that hails from the jet age. Perhaps, Mr. Millar is correct in that the Flash’s speed makes it difficult to give the character dramatic tension when he could theoretically solve any problem in a matter of nanoseconds but it is not impossible. A potential film could easily borrow from Barry Allen’s post-New 52 origin and adapt the “Move Forward” storyline with Mob Rule. While some Rogues like the aforementioned Weather Wizard and Captain Cold may not be conductive for a film format due to the nature of the characters but Gorilla Grodd could still give the Flash trouble with his telepathic powers and raw savagery. Talking gorillas from a hidden city may stretch the suspension of disbelief, but would it be more of a stretch than let us say, a city of technologically advanced space Vikings in a distant galaxy?

Then we have Mirror Master, who can conceivably keep the Flash on his toes with the light motif, or the potential for a Reverse-Flash down the line. Plus, with the Flash’s history of traveling through time or to parallel worlds, there is a wellspring of potential.

I am beginning to wonder if Mr. Millar simply lacks imagination.

“You can get away with stuff in comics that in live action’s just a bit sucky – the best one is definitely Aquaman. Aquaman can’t even talk under water. If you think about it in comics it’s fine, you just have a speech balloon, but how do you have Atlantis and people talking under water? Are they gonna talking telepathically? Is it going to be body forms?”

Okay, this is beginning to get more ridiculous. Out of all the reasons not to produce an Aquaman film, Mr. Millar is worried about how the people of Atlantis are going to speak underwater? Given the possibly Shakespearean drama from a plot where Aquaman is locked in a struggle for the Atlantean throne with his brother, Orm (AKA Ocean Master), I would believe that any such concerns regarding how they will speak underwater is secondary. I could cite examples of how Wonder Woman, and even Firestorm, could have the potential to be great concepts but the problem here is that I believe Mr. Millar, in his capacity as a creative consultant for the pending Fantastic Four film reboot, is simply trash talking the competition. I also detect some lingering acrimony from the controversy over censorship of his run on The Authority might factor into his criticisms as well. Personally, I do not know why a website such as SciFi Now would consider Mr. Millar a “superhero guru” when is a decent, if not good, writer at best. Why not ask Kevin Feige, how has overseen the Marvel Cinematic universe? How about more acclaimed writers like Millar’s former partner, Grant Morrison, or academics like Ben Saunders? Millar’s criticisms strike me as shallow, unimaginative, and I fail to see why I should take them seriously.

ADDENDUM:
 

However, does he have a point? I suppose. As a friend of mine said in response to the original draft of my commentary, one of the major obstacles to a Justice League movie is that it would appear to be a desperate attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Avengers and the ill-conceived Green Lantern film does not do much to allay those fears. But Mr. Millar is especially off base in his claims that Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and so forth are irrelevant due to their age and the nature of their abilities. I will also put my friends assertions that Iron Man and Thor’s abilities are “more accessible” into dispute. Jane Foster herself paraphrased Arthur C. Clarke in Thor when she said, “Magic is science we do not understand yet.” So if Mjolnir and the Bifrost are products of technology that is far more advanced than anything found on Earth, then why Green Lantern’s ring, a piece of alien technology, is less believable than anything found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? The same applies to lightsabers and hyperdrive from Star Wars, which movie going audiences had little difficulty in suspending their disbelief for, but I digress. Maybe it is simply the wrong time for DC and Warner Brothers to try to shoot for the Moon in a cardboard box when Marvel already won that race, which Mr. Millar is attempting to convey but lacks the eloquence to do so.

Yet Marvel may have shot itself in the foot with the Avengers because how can they top what many believe was nirvana for comic book geekdom? Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and perhaps the Hulk are all viable franchises but what else does Marvel have to use? 20^th Century Fox owns the film rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises and Columbia holds the rights to Spider-Man to which both companies will keep producing films for to hold said rights. That leaves Marvel with Daredevil? Luke Cage? Black Panther? Captain (formerly Ms.) Marvel? I seriously doubt that any of those characters, aside from Daredevil, are capable of carrying a film by themselves. I enjoy Edgar Wright’s work but I do not have any reason to believe that he can rescue ­Ant-Man from obscurity than he could with Scott Pilgrim. Nor do I believe that Guardians of the Galaxy will be a roaring success because those characters are on an even lower tier than Daredevil and Ant-Man. When I give it more thought, perhaps it is a better idea for DC to shelve their plans for further Green Lantern or Flash films and carefully watch what their competition is doing. After all, despite their terrible luck with non-Batman or Superman films, they have done a respectable job with their properties on television with Arrow as their latest example. Perhaps they can learn a few lessons if Marvel’s cinematic universe implodes under the weight of its own success.

Platypus Thoughts: Alternate History + Superheroes = ?

Superheroes and alternate history are two subgenres of science fiction that have always appeared to compliment one another but very few writers ever dared to combine and exploit to its fullest. One reason for this is continuity, the holy grail of all comic book geeks. Ever since the debut of Superman in 1938 and the Fantastic Four in 1961, the Big Two of the comic book industry more or less on a floating timeline that prevents their characters from aging (though continuity is far murkier for DC after two major reboots and countless smaller retcons.) Superman could be BFFs with Joseph Kennedy in 1963 then be shaking hands with Ronald Reagan twenty years later without aging a single day. Another reason is because both companies, especially Marvel, pride themselves on verisimilitude by making their universe superficially similar to ours so neither company has fully addressed the social and geopolitical implications of the effective demigods in their midst until recent years with Marvel’s Civil War and DC’s 52.

However, one can consider Marvel’s “What If?” titles and DC’s Elseworlds line alternate history to some extent. These titles largely centered on the individual histories of their characters like “What if Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four?” or “What if Sgt. Nick Fury Fought World War II in Space?” rather than historical events from our world. Some scenarios such as “What if Captain America Were Revived Today?” from What If? (vol. 1) #44 possesses some trappings of alternate history. For example, Namor the Sub-Mariner took a different route when the Avengers pursued him in Avengers (vol. 1)  #4 so he never discovered the group of Inuit who worshipped a frozen Steve Rogers and thus never hurled Captain America into the ocean for the Avengers to find. The Avengers eventually disbanded without Captain America, but more disturbingly, a janitor working at a government facility awakened the mentally unstable 1950s Captain America and Bucky from suspended animation and convinced them that the United States was in danger from subversive elements. As such, the impostor Captain America and Bucky became involved with a political movement that transformed the United States into a police state until a crew of American sailors found the true Cap in the Arctic.

 

Marvel, aside from a dalliance with a robot Stalin, waited almost twenty years to dip their toe into the alternate history ocean with Neil Gaiman’s 1602. While not technically a What If? issue, the mini-series has a point of divergence (a Captain America from a potential future goes back in time to the failed Roanoke colony and aids in their survival) that causes various Marvel characters to appear nearly four hundred years before they should have. Instead of being the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury is Elizabeth I’s chief intelligence officer whose apprentice is Peter Parquagh, an ersatz version of a nameless friendly neighborhood webslinger. However, one of the more intriguing elements of Marvel 1602 is Gaiman weaved themes from X-Men into late Elizabethan history, particularly James I’s persecution of the “witchbreed” or mutants and how Magneto is ostensibly a grand inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition but hides his illicit activities behind his position. 

 

This fascination with alternate history continued with the fourth volume of What If? in late 2005. Unlike most issues of the title, which were largely self-contained worlds, this volume of the series took place within in a single timeline where Captain America’s genesis occurs in the American Civil War as opposed to World War II and the Fantastic Four were Russian cosmonauts. Being more of an aficionado of American history, I prefer the Captain America one and appreciate how Cap because more of a physical manifestation of the American spirit during one the nation’s most troubled periods rather than symbol. Because of this Cap’s presence shortens the Civil War, prevents Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and his origins in Native American mysticism sparked a cultural craze that prevented the Indian Wars of the 1870s. Out of the six What If? (Vol. 4) one-shots, only Captain America and Fantastic Four address the broader strokes of alternate history whereas the other four are more character-focused. Unfortunately, Marvel did not revisit this timeline as they did Marvel 1602, but they are well worth the effort of searching through the odd long box for.

Meanwhile, DC, like their marvelous competition, has only dabbled in the realm of alternate history with its Elseworlds line but there are a few notable examples such as Batman: Holy Terror written by Alan Brennert and illustrated by Norm Breyfogle. The point of divergence for this story is that Oliver Cromwell lived ten years longer and the United States became a totalitarian, theocratic state. While I have never read the issue on account that it has been out of print for over twenty years, a cursory glance of the synopsis on Wikipedia was enough to pique my interest and should do the same for other alternate history enthusiasts. DC’s Tangent imprint, introduced in 1997, operates under a similar premise where there are not only vastly different versions of Superman, the Flash, the Atom, and even obscure characters like the Sea Devils but the presence of superpowered beings radically altered history from what we know. The central premise behind the imprint is that an alternate version of the Atom intervened in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which resulted in the destruction of Florida and Cuba. As such, Atlanta became an underwater city populated by merpeople, their technology advanced further than the mainstream DC Universe, and the hippie movement was in its infancy when the nineties rolled around. 

 

Dan Jurgens, the man who killed Superman and the brain behind Tangent, justified this divergence when he told Comic Book Resources:

“While the DCU Earth is essentially the same as our own, no more advanced in terms of technology or communications despite the existence of those qualities within the super-powered community, Earth Tangent is greatly influenced by all of that. Earth Tangent's economic, geographic and political landscapes are defined by the superhero community, whereas in the DCU those aspects exist unaffected by the superhero community.”

Jurgens brings up an excellent point about a medium that birthed the trope, “Reed Richards is Useless.” Take the Flash’s rogues gallery for example, Captain Cold and his cohorts possess technology that can generate temperatures near absolute zero, alter weather patterns, and even transmute the 118 elements. Why did the scientists and business leaders not reverse engineer the technology after the Central City Police Department confiscated it? The Tangent imprint gives something of a look at such a world and is perhaps a blueprint for how ambitious writers should combine the two genres.

Some could argue that Superman: Red Son is an alternate history and I suppose it is to some extent. The premise is simple enough: baby Kal-L lands in Ukraine in 1938 instead of Kansas. However, my impression of the mini-series is that if it is alternate history, it is about squishy as bag full of marshmallows (or a Type X on Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility.) Its writer, Mark Millar, makes reference to even greater civil unrest in the late 1960s under surviving JFK, a war against communists in the South Pacific in 1983, and a second American Civil War in 1986 without too much elaboration. Granted, there are constraints to the medium but it is clear that the focus is more on Superman as a seemingly benevolent leader of the Soviet Union and his rivalry with Lex Luthor than on the butterflies that a Soviet Man of Steel would create. That is not to say Red Son is not worth reading, it is more fantasy than alternate history. 

 

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is the mirror image of Red Son in terms of realism and setting. In fact, the world of Watchmen could be a reflection ours until 1938 where the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1 inspired a wave of costumed vigilantes, and again in 1959 with the creation of Dr. Manhattan. Alternate history is one portion of Watchmen’s complexity that Moore executes extremely well. Dr. Manhattan essentially gave the United States the strategic advantage in the Cold War and practically won the Vietnam War single-handedly but that also becomes a disadvantage because he is also the lone reason why the Soviet Union stays in check. Hence, Moore makes the consequences of his departure realistic as evidenced by the Soviet invasion of Pakistan and bringing Earth closer to the brink of Nuclear War. However, there are also several other economic and cultural consequences as well. The good doctor’s ability to synthesize lithium allows for the mass production of electric cars, hence reducing the United States’ dependence of foreign petroleum, and the appearance “real” superheroes essentially led to the death of the medium in the late forties so pirate comics like “The Tales of the Black Freighter.” (Though I wonder how Indian fast food became so popular with the American public instead of McDonalds.) Watchmen is practically required reading for all comic book fans, but to read it again from the prism of an alternate historian demonstrates how well the two genres blend.

One of the things I admire about alternate history is that it posed a question Marvel asked when they released a new title in February 1977, “what if?” Personally, I am not as interested in the typical “What if the Axis won World War II?” or “What if the Confederacy won the American Civil War?” as I am interested in smaller events like “What if a more moderate candidate sought the democratic nomination in 1972” or “What if Lucille Ball decided not to sell Desilu Studios to Gulf+Western?” because even the smallest pebble can create many ripples. Marvel 1602, Tangent Comics, and Watchmen demonstrate that alternate history can blend with the fantastic as peanut butter tends to do with chocolate, and they are only the tip of the glacier. In a universe populated by gods, aliens, and immortal cavemen who could alter the flow of history well before the 20^th century, the myriad of scenarios to use as story fodder is practically endless. Is there a writer ambitious enough to push this hybrid genre to its creative limits?

Only time will tell. 

Platypus Reviews: A Legion Lost Retrospective

Today saw the last issue of Legion Lost, another New 52 launch title, hit comic book shops and the cancellation leaves me with conflicted feelings towards the title. On one hand, it was nice to have a second Legion of Super-Heroes title for the first time in twelve years, but the title was scarcely above average at best and mediocre most months. Not that there was anything with the concept: a team of legionnaires chase an anti-human terrorist who wants to change the past by mutating the humans of our era, but everything goes to hell when their arrival ends with two legionnaires dead and their advance technology inert. A concept that shares similarities with James Cameron’s the Terminator and the deaths of the two legionnaires ramped up the stakes. So where did the title go wrong?

I am afraid that the title was doomed from the beginning and I am, quite frankly, surprised that Legion Lost was not a victim of the first and second New 52 cullings. The Legion of Super-Heroes, similar the New Teen Titans, was a niche title since the seventies after the apex of the team’s popular Adventure Comics run in the sixties. Legion fans have an eye for minutia for continuity and obscure characters who made a single appearance like Legion rejects and the like. If you never had picked up a Legion title before the New 52, chances are that you would find the first issue confusing and chaotic. If you had no idea of who Dawnstar, Wildfire, Timber Wolf, or especially Chameleon Girl and Gates were you had no reason to even care that a time travel accident left them stranded in the 21^st century. Writer Fabian Nicieza did not give much of an introduction to these characters nor did he establish their personalities to make an uninitiated audience care.

Things did get better over the next five issues when things calmed down enough to show tensions between the time-lost legionnaires. Especially team leader Tyroc who had to deal with the always hotheaded and belligerent Wildfire or Timber Wolf who (appropriates) broke off from the crew to hunt for their target. Likewise with Dawnstar who seemed emotionally distant from her teammates, which led to a rift between her and longtime love interest, Wildfire that I always found forced because Geoff Johns pulled on this plot thread in Legion of Three Worlds. Combine that with the fact that they were persona non grata in the 21^st century, survival became a concern, especially when unidentified metahumans tended to attract unwanted attention from the US government and the secretive team of metahuman operatives Stormwatch.  However, two events sent the title sliding into mediocrity: the departure of Fabian Nicieza and “the Culling” crossover with the Teen Titans. Not that to knock on Tom DeFalco’s skills as a writer but “the Culling” was a needless diversion from the main storyline and some of the names he used (like “Psy-Kill” and the “Meta-American”) sounded like a villain from an early 90s Image comic penned by Rob Liefeld. So the conclusion to the first arc ended on a whimper rather than with any meaningful resolution, so the title dithered on to its final issue.

Not that there were not any interesting plot developments. I found the Echo division of the Science Police (the 31^st century version of the FBI, or the Mounties if you are Canadian like me), who monitored the timeline and sent denizens of the future to past eras as part of a Witness Relocation Program intriguing. Even the revelation that Chameleon Girl was an SP spy was a clever touch considering that the character infiltrated the Legion back in the eighties during Levitz’s acclaimed run on the title. Even, her superior, Captain Nathaniel Adym (any relation?) had a sinister presence as her superior who ordered her to make sure the stranded legionnaires fulfilled their destiny. And then a space barbarian and his talking dragon show up to threaten Earth for no reason other than he just can.

Seriously, an evil, celestial version of He-Man and Battlecat are the final villains the stranded legionnaires face in their own title. To quote a certain contributor to That Guy With the Glasses, “I could not make this shit up if I tried.”

To sum up the plot that the last issues in as few words at possible: the ersatz He-Man sets up a force field and builds a machine. Captain Atom—I mean, Adym decides to blow up ersatz He-Man with a singularity bomb that will destroy half of North America to “save quintillions.” The Ravagers, Superboy, and even Harvest from “the Culling” join the fray. Then Gates teleports ersatz He-Man, his space dragon, and the bomb into the nearest black hole to eliminate the threat; all the legionnaires are alive at the end and there was much rejoicing!

Except when telepathic goldfish, Tellus, reveals that ersatz He-Man’s intended “to communicate” to an unrevealed presence with his machine and not to destroy the Earth as they first thought. So the stranded legionnaires will be waiting for whoever was at the end of ersatz He-Man’s call and the final issue ends with, “Never the end!”

I know I am glossing over more that a few details, but does it really matter at this point? I cannot help but feel that these sixteen issues were a waste of my time because despite the compelling story elements Nicieza and DeFalco offered me as a reader, the bad far outweighed the good and DC could not bother to give us long-suffering readers any resolution other than the promise that these Legionnaires may make an appearance in a future issue of Teen Titans or The Ravagers? I would rather have had DeFalco take them back to the 31^st century where they would receive the attention they deserve than have them sit around and wait for Harvest or whoever to show up. In the end it feels like a waste. A waste of my money, a waste of my time, and a waste of my patience with DC after the New 52 nearly burned up the last of my good will.

But at least The Flash has been a compelling read and a visual treat, but please do not tell any Wally West fans that I said that.

Platypus Reviews: Green Lantern #15

 

I expressed my cautious optimism for the new Green Lantern, Simon Baz, when I reviewed Green Lantern #0 three months ago and I can now assuredly say that his arc has gone off the rails. Structurally, Green Lantern #0 had a much tighter focus but Green Lantern #15 is cluster-bombed and offensive wreck of comic book. Allow me to make this clear, I like Simon Baz. I like that he is trying to capture the terrorist that planted the bomb in the van he stole, even when a fugitive on the run from both the federal authorities and the Justice League. However, one revelation irreversibly soured me on this arc. The terrorist that “set” Simon up? He is a white male and presumably a survivalist or part of a militia judging by the arsenal in said terrorist’s basement and the “an American hero” comment he makes in the issue is equally frustrating.

Before anyone accuses my statements as racist, that is not my intent. My issue with this comic book is that it reinforces “us vs. them” mentality I see in today’s race relations. European males maintained a political and cultural hegemony for centuries, I get it; I know that there are more than enough homegrown terrorists in Middle America as evidenced by Adam Lanza’s killing spree in the recent Newtown tragedy. Geoff Johns scraped the bottom of the bottom of the barrel when he used the “angry racist white man” stereotype in Green Lantern #15 and it shows. Personally, I was hoping that the terrorist(s) in this issue were Muslim Arabs. Not because I believe all Muslims and Arabs are terrorists but because I believe that Johns wasted an opportunity to rise above petty politics and show Simon Baz as the hero he can be.

Martin Luther King Jr. said nearly a half century ago, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” My main issue with the “us vs. them” mentality is that it leaves no room for the subtle grays in between. There is good and bad in every human regardless of race, ethnicity, or creed and it is through our decisions where reveal the true content of our character. While Simon Baz is a car thief, he also cares deeply for his family, feels a deep sense of responsibility over his mistakes, and places the safety of others over his own needs. Had the terrorists he was searching for been Arab-American, I believe that his better traits would have shone through his skin color and he would have risen above the negative stereotypes associated with his community. However, Johns chose the intellectually lazy route that I see has grown prevalent in mainstream American culture. Just like one cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong, one cannot valorize a minority by demonizing the majority. I find it unproductive in any meaningful dialogue.

The lack of focus in Green Lantern #15 only exacerbates the problems I see in this issue. In addition to the Simon Baz arc, there is also the Hal Jordan/Sinestro subplot and the subplot involving the Guardians of the Universe and the First Lantern, which do not receive much attention because only so much plot can fit in twenty-two pages. With the supposedly cosmic scope of Green Lantern and the Guardians’ scheme to extinguish free will in the universe, Simon Baz’s storyline feels forced and extraneous to the Rise of the Third Army “event.” That is also my biggest problem with Green Lantern and its sister titles, everything feels like a build-up to the next intra-line event. In the span of five years there was Sinestro Corps, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, War of the Green Lanterns, and now Rise of the Third Army, which feels like the build-up for the next big crossover. Personally, I have had enough of this nonsense, Green Lantern is not enjoyable as it was earlier in Geoff Johns’ run and it has gotten formulaic to the point of repetition, the race/ethnic relations undertones make it insulting.

In some ways, I believe the drop in quality is endemic to what I see in the New 52 (and the Marvel Now initiative to a lesser degree.) Despite, the repeated claims that this reboot is a “fresh” new start to the DC Universe, most of it is stale as week-old bread and buildup to Trinity War feels like the same intra-company crossover, but that is another rant for another day.

Platypus Reviews: Legionnaires

I maintained that two things that destroyed Legion continuity are Crisis on Infinite Earths and the fans at the beginning of my previous post. In my haste I forgot to clarify is it not so much the fans’ fault for the title’s often-confusing continuity but how fan appreciation for the Legion’s rich history turned into continuity porn. The Terra Mosaic is probably the most egregious example where the Bierbaums revealed that longtime supporting character, Shvaughn Erin, was actually a man who used 30^th century drugs to turn himself into a woman to get Element Lad to love him. Addressing the issues of transgenderism was very progressive and admirable in 1992, but I believe that they wrote the story to service longtime fans’ suspicion that Element Lad was gay. It becomes all the more glaring when you consider Tom and Mary Bierbaum were members of the fan club, the Legion Outpost, and the Interlac amateur press association (a precursor to contemporary message boards/forums online.) It simply made an otherwise good story look like an amateurish piece of fanfiction.

However, while I did not care for Terra Mosaic, at least it introduced the Batch SW6. “The who?” you may ask. The SW6 Legion were teenaged “clones” of the then-adult Legion that woke up from stasis during the Dominator occupation on Earth. While the Adult Legion believed them to be clones created by the Dominators, new (but inconclusive) evidence suggested that the Adult Legion were, in fact, the clones, which led to the cloning blues between the two teams. Only a couple years before Spider-Man made the word “clone” a dirty word for most comic book fans. Thankfully, Legionnaires sidestepped the prickly issue and focused on good, old-fashioned superheroics.

Where the fourth volume of Legion of Superheroes dispensed with the codenames, Legionnaires embraced them but with “radical” nineties sensibilities. Lightning Lad became “Live Wire”, Phantom Girl became “Apparition,” and Chameleon Boy shortened his name to “Chameleon” but more than a few kept the old names. I read that many longtime Legion fans hate, hate, HATE the new codenames but in the context the 30^th century with an early-nineties cultural zeitgeist, would a teenaged superhero from 1993 call themselves Lightning Lad? While I admit some of the names like Alchemist, Gossamer, and Leviathan are just plain silly, some like Live Wire actually complimented the personality of the character. Moreover, it always bugged me the Bierbaums could conceive of a replacement for Supergirl with Laurel Gand, they never bothered to give her a codename until the SW6 Laurel called herself “Andromeda.” The name not only evokes a sense of majesty because of her namesake from ancient Greek mythology but also power because Andromeda is also the name of the galaxy next door. Laurel Gand is the name of that attractive blonde in accounting, not a girl who can shoot lasers from her eyes and juggle boulders.

(Interesting how little fashion changed between the 1990s and the 2990s in the DC Universe.)

With that said, character and pacing make Legionnaires work especially well for me. As much as I loved reading the Silver Age Adventure Comics from my mother’s collection as a child, the characters were relatively flat. Though storytelling grew more sophisticated through the Bronze Age, Lightning Lad never grew to be more than the devoted, but incredibly bland, father and husband whereas his SW6 counterpart lived up to his chosen codename. Moreover, the founders (Live Wire, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy) very much resemble a Freudian power trio with the impulsive Live Wire as the id, the stoic Saturn Girl the superego, and the straight-laced Cosmic Boy the ego. Plus, Cosmic Boy’s seemingly reciprocated affections for Saturn Girl brings a conflict that was not present in the old Adventure Comics stories because of her long-running relationship with Live Wire.

The Bierbaums go even further by dividing the Legion into separate cliques, notable Live Wire’s friendship with the former Sun Boy, Inferno. Both characters are womanizing jerks in their own right, but together their general jerk-ishness is off the charts. Particularly in Legionnaires #2 where both characters berate and insult the applicant, Cera Kesh, after her telekinetic demonstration goes awry. While I will not spoil details, Inferno’s spurning of her affection is an important story pivot for the next four issues. I also appreciate what the Bierbaums did for Ferro, now without the “boy.” Since Ferro Boy was only a member for six issues before his death in Adventure Comics #352, he never got much character development other than exuding a reckless confidence from his Legion audition. His SW6 counterpart is not much different as one of my favorite scenes in the first issue of Legionnaires is when he takes of his Legion flight ring to literally get the “drop” on a band of fleeing miscreants and turns to his iron form moments before crashing into him.

(So that's where the "Ya Tuh Duh" from Legion of Three Worlds comes from.)

There are so many of these little character moments, I could write a three thousand word essay, but will probably not because of time constraints. Outside of the varying and charming personalities, I appreciate how the Bierbaums make the first six issues interconnected. Each issue reads like it is self-contained but it clearly builds up to the show down with a reformed Fatal Five, who are the seminal Legion villains, and ties up almost every dangling plot thread at the arc’s conclusion. While the build-up and final execution are formulaic in most respects, Legionnaires is still highly enjoyable in its simplicity. Plus, the story does not take itself too seriously. Case in point, the odd life of Tenzil Kem AKA Matter-Eater Lad.

I always had a fascination with the less powerful members of the Legion of Super-Heroes like the first Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg), Bouncing Boy, and Brainiac 5 but something about Matter-Eater Lad that fascinated me. Maybe it was the sheer ridiculousness of his power and why him, out of all Legion applicants got to bump elbows with powerhouses like Ultra Boy or Mon-El. Granted, M-E Lad did not come into his own as a character until Keith Giffen and the Bierbaums re-envisioned the character, his absurdist sense of humor livened things up. Especially when he takes on the Persuader in Legionnaires #6. You have a guy built like an entire armored brigade who swings an axe sharp enough to slice through gravity’s pull, and M-E Lad gnaws the handle.

Add it a peppering of wisecracks and non-sequitirs, I almost think M-E Lad could carry this book himself. Though my only complaint is that the Bierbaums did not give me enough of Plaid Lad.

 (Mutant ability? Careful Plaid Lad, or else Marvel will send Litigation Lass after you for copyright infringement.)

As for art, I am not much of a critic in that regard. You will probably enjoy it if you are a fan of Chris Sprouse’s work on Tom Strong. It looks more manga-esque than his later work but compared to the grittiness of Keith Giffen, and others’, work on Terra Mosaic the characters appear more animated. The backgrounds are detailed but not overly ornate and the new uniforms bright and more reflective of comics’ emergence from the “grim n’ gritty” era of comics. Unfortunately, this series was never collected into trade paperback format to my knowledge and is unlikely that it will ever be collected at this point. I would highly recommend hunting down the first arc (Legion of Super-Heroes [vol. 4] #41, Legionnaires #1-6) online or at conventions. While it may not be Watchmen, Legionnaires is what I wanted the Legion of Super-Heroes to be.

Platypus Thoughts: Long Live The Legion

To say the Legion of Super-Heroes has continuity troubles would be an understatement and I could attribute their woes to two things: Crisis on Infinite Earths and its dedicated fanbase. Ever since the Crisis rebooted the DC Universe, the Legion has had to make several retcons, revamps, and reboots to fit into that universe but every attempt was akin to nailing a square peg into a circular hole. Pre-Crisis, the Legion’s history was simple, they were a team of teenage superheroes (eight years before the Teen Titans) from the 30^th century who were inspired by the example set Superboy to fight injustice across the galaxy. John Byrne’s 1986 Man of Steel reboot of the Superman mythos eliminated Superboy and had Superman begin his career as an adult and thus created the first continuity snarl that would unravel the Legion of Super-Heroes eight years later.

If Superman was never Superboy, then who inspired the Legion founders (Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl) to band together? Moreover, how did Mon-El come to become a member of the Legion if he never met Superman? Paul Levitz attempted to rectify they paradox by having Superboy come from a “pocket universe” and long time Legion foe, the Time Trapper, would redirect Superboy and the Legion between the universes each time they went backwards or forwards in time. Superboy died at the Trapper’s hands in “The Greatest Hero of Them All” (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #38.) However, the funeral scene reveals another snarl. 

(Notice the statue on the left.)

Apparently, the pre-Crisis Supergirl was still a member of the Legion despite her erasure from existence after the Crisis but this paradox would go unaddressed for a couple more years still. Paul Levitz’s second tenure on the Legion ended in 1989 and Superman editor, Mike Carlin, ordered the removal of every Superman reference in the Legion of Super-Heroes, which addressed the problem of Supergirl. Artist/Plotter Keith Giffen and the Bierbaums would “reboot” the Legion by replacing Superboy with Mon-El as the inspiration of the team (albeit under the new moniker of “Valor”) and replaced Supergirl with another Daxamite, Laurel Gand. Valor is apparently a messianic figure in the 30^th century of this new timeline because he seeded several worlds with metahuman captives of the Dominators that would later become members of the United Planets.

I have to admit that I never warmed up to the fourth volume (otherwise known as “Five Years Later”) of the Legion. The gritty Blade Runner-esque dystopia never appealed to me, and it stripped away the shining futuristic technology and the colorful uniforms and codenames that made the Legion so entertaining to read. Instead of a utopian future where the Legionnaires gallivant across the galaxy, fighting the Fatal Five, the United Planets’ economy collapsed, the Legion disbanded, and Earth is under the covert control of the Dominators. Far from the wonders I have read from Adventure Comics toe Levitz’s run. The Legionnaires discarded the staple codenames and uniforms in favor of a more “realistic setting.”

However, there was at least one light in murky grittiness of “Five Years Later” and the reason for this lengthy and meandering exposition: Batch SW6. With 1993’s Legion of Super-Heroes (vol. 4) #41 the Bierbaums brought back some of that magic back with the highly underrated Legionnaires series…

To be continued…

Platypus Reviews: Green Lantern #0

I picked up a copy of Green Lantern #0 this afternoon so I would at least give my impressions of it to see if the backlash I mentioned in my previous post is warranted. To put it in simple terms: it is, to a degree. There are parts of Simon Baz’s character that I like; he possesses a degree in automotive engineering and was involved in a street racing accident that killed his brother-in-law so he took auto theft to give the proceeds to his widowed sister and nephew. There are some parallels to Hal Jordan from Emerald Dawn where Hal drove while intoxicated and critically injured a friend in an automobile accident. There is much to work with Simon’s character here, he is a young man that made a deadly mistake and is trying to atone for it as a Robin Hood-like character, though not in the Green Arrow vein. Simon unwittingly jacks a van that contains a bomb and drives it into an abandoned factory to save innocent lives…

…and that is when Geoff Johns drops the anvil on my head.

For those who have never visited TV Tropes, the “anvil” I refer to is shorthand for anvilicious, which the site defines as:

“A portmanteau of anvil and delicious, anvilicious describes a writer's and/or director's use of an artistic element, be it line of dialogue, visual motif, or plot point, to so obviously or unsubtly convey a particular message that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head.”

The frequent references to 9-11, the backlash against Arab-Americans, the harassment, and the increased airport security was heavy-handed enough, but Simon’s “vacation” to Guantanamo Bay is what had a flock of canaries circling around my head for the bus ride home. Then came the interrogation where Simon protests that he was, “A car thief, not a terrorist” and the "advanced interrogation techniques", which struck me as pedantic and condescending to the reader. To be honest, I expected better from Geoff Johns. This issue would be much better if he focused on Simon’s positive qualities and had not used him a rhetorical device to lecture us on how the United States government is so bigoted towards Muslims. If you are a new reader, I suggest avoiding this issue. If you are a collector, I would say pick it up if you are following Rise of the Third Army.

And thus the Magical Platypus commanded, "Thou shalt not drop anvils on thine neighbors head. For it is often painful and sometimes a poor literary device." (Rule #42)

Playpus Thoughts: Simon Baz, the Arab-American Green Lantern

It looks like we have a new Green Lantern, and guess what, he is Arab-American. Granted, this is not actually news since some vigilant comic book fans spotted the tattoo with the Arabic lettering on Simon Baz’s forearm shortly after DC Comic released the solicit to this week's Green Lantern #0 months ago. The DC media machine is ramping up the publicity for the character via an interview with Green Lantern writer, Geoff Johns. What caught my attention is how Jeff Kaurob of the Associated Press wrote that Arab-Americans fell, “under intense suspicion and ostracism in the days, months and years following the [9-11] attacks.” This caught the attention of noted counter-jihadist, Robert Spencer, who criticized the press release and Geoff Johns for, “wittingly or unwittingly . . . abetting that victimhood mythology, and its sinister goal.”

While I do believe that certain interest groups abuse the term “Islamophobia” to suppress legitimate criticism of Islam, my concern with Simon Baz is that DC is not treating him like a viable character. For one, hate crimes against Muslims are not as prevalent as the article suggests. Muslims only accounted for only 13.2% of reported hate crimes in the United States in 2010, according to the FBI. Compare that to Jewish-Americans, who comprise 65.4% of reported hate crimes the same year. So I agree with Mr. Spencer that this is pandering.

However, since there are hate crimes against Arab-Americans (albeit much fewer that DC Comics or the Associated Press wants us to believe), I can accept that Simon and his family have faced suspicion and ostracism. What I do not want DC to do is tell me why Simon Baz is an interesting character, I want them to show me in the comic and issuing press releases that spoil the issue is not the way to do it. This is a problem endemic to the industry; comic book sales are falling across the boards and publicity stunts like Jeff Kaurob’s article, and the New 52 in general, only bump up sales in the short term, which implies desperation, especially after the failure of the Green Lantern film last year. Marvel pulled similar stunts with the deaths of Captain America and the Human Torch as well as President Barack Obama’s appearance in Amazing Spider-Man. I am simply tired of these press releases and want to enjoy the story on its own merits.

So there is my problem with this article: it is not the fact that Simon Baz is a Muslim or Arab, it is that they feel that they need to beg the public for attention just to get a momentary sales spike. Personally, I think Simon Baz may be an intriguing character in that he wears the tattoo, which is haram in Islam, so he is not a devout Muslim as Johns admits,

"He's not a perfect character. He's obviously made some mistakes in his life, but that makes him more compelling and relatable," he [Geoff Johns] said. "Hopefully (it's) a compelling character regardless of culture or ethnic background. ... But I think it's great to have an Arab-American superhero. This was opportunity and a chance to really go for it."

I am invested enough in Green Lantern to pick up the title through Rise of the Third Army but am I am simply tired of DC’s fickleness. Simon Baz had potential but DC Comics squandered it through its histrionics and pandering.

Platypus Thoughts: One More Day

Noted Internet reviewer and critic, Lewis “Linkara” Lovhaug, recently savaged the much-maligned Spider-Man story, One More Day, for the two hundredth episode of his web series, Atop The Fourth Wall, and rightfully so. Throughout the course of the seventy-five minute view, he exposed a number of plot holes and contrivances that bring the quality of the story into question but I find this criticism of particular interest: Spider-Man is the most irresponsible hero in any universe. A curious notion considering the axiom, “With great power comes great responsibility” defines his very motivation for becoming a superhero in the first place. However, I have difficulty disagreeing with Mr. Lovhaug who notes that Peter Parker always uses his alter ego as an excuse for his personal failures and repeats the same mistakes. One example Mr. Lovhaug uses is that Spider-Man did not even have life insurance to ensure his family’s well being in the event of his death at the hands of a supervillain. As Mr. Lovhaug says:

“He never learns from his mistakes. Never takes into consideration how his life as Spider-Man affects everybody else.”

What would happen to his family if he were to die from an “occupational hazard?” What does he do if his gallivanting as Spider-Man negatively impacts his family and friends?” He rarely takes those questions into account and lets his personal and professional life suffer because he refuses to make the necessary sacrifices. This becomes especially egregious when you take Peter’s age into account. Peter became Spider-Man after he turned sixteen and at least ten years passed since then according to Marvel’s “floating timeline”, which would make him at least twenty-six years old. Most adults around that age try to find some balance in their lives between work, love, and recreation but Peter’s approach to the world is still that of a teenager. That has to make me wonder if Peter Parker’s irresponsibility and immaturity is indicative of a deeper malady afflicting the comic book medium: the refusal to believe that even fictional characters are, in fact, mortal.

The problem with the comic book medium is that it is a serialized form of fiction with decades worth of continuity to draw from (seventy-five years for DC Comics, and fifty years for Marvel.) Very few formats, aside from the waning daytime soap opera, can even brag to have that kind of history. However, the problem Spider-Man poses is that these characters static because the perception that character development destroys the long-term marketability of the Big Two’s major trademarks. Joe Quesada, current Chief Creative Officer of Marvel and main architect One More Day, justified the magical annulment of the Peter/Mary Jane marriage with the following assertion:

“We worked too hard to get Peter to this point. I can understand why some of you want to see the characters grow old, but we have to manage these characters for the future – a future beyond you and me. A married Peter Parker – as cool as that may seem – from a creative standpoint, it handcuffs the character. It’s a very problematic thing for Peter because it cuts him off and makes Peter the oldest person in the book.”

I can understand Mr. Quesada’s standpoint. Our lives unfold in phases: we are born, go through childhood and adolescents, accept the responsibilities of adulthood, marry, raise children, and ultimately die. As reviled as the Clone Saga is to this very day, Peter Parker already passed several milestones by the mid-nineties. He married the love of his life, Mary Jane Watson, Aunt May passed away in the memorable Amazing Spider-Man #400 (a very nicely crafted story by J.M. DeMatteis where Peter was finally able to let go), and it appeared that he was going to accept the responsibility of fatherhood. Though Marvel erased the latter two events, it left the character with two options from Mr. Quesada’s perspective: retire or die.

Almost all stories since the days of antiquity are finite in scope. Both principal characters of the Illiad, Achilles and Hector, died by the epic’s end and the Norse gods would meet their end in Ragnarok. Every character aside from Horatio died at the end of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and even J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series came to an end with the Death Hallows. However, the very nature of comic books rarely allows for meaningful conclusions or happy endings for their characters. Mr. Lovhaug’s tone in his One More Day review seems to indicate that he wants character development but the truth is that comic book fans are a very conservative lot and very attached to their characters.

Convoluted storylines aside, Marvel could have given Peter Parker a happy ending in the Clone Saga; he could have handed the mask to Ben Reilly and rode off into the sunset with his wife and unborn child without the question of, “who is the real Peter Parker?” However, could the fanbase or Marvel’s marketing department have accepted it in the long term? I sincerely doubt it for one important reason: Spider-Man became part of the public zeitgeist as the “everyman” hero. He had appeared in at least three animated series by the nineties and the crossover between mediums insured that Peter Parker would always be synonymous Spider-Man in the same way Clark Kent is synonymous with Superman and Bruce Wayne is synonymous with Batman. So struggle does not become so much as the “the man vs. the mask” as it is “the man vs. the icon.”

Characters such as the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom are the exception to this rule because there had been no crossover to other mediums in the interregnum between the Gold and Silver Ages. According to some accounts, editor Julius Schwartz created a new Flash (Barry Allen) instead of using the original Flash, Jay Garrick, in Showcase #4 because or a perceived turnover in the fanbase. Barry Allen became an icon of the Silver Age and many concepts of that era, namely the foundation of old DC Multiverse where his predecessor existed on a parallel Earth, are tied to him. The beauty of Barry Allen’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths is that DC gave it a sense of finality. I have the “last” Barry Allen issue of the Flash (Flash vol. 1, #350) where he had his “final” battle with the Rogues and reunited with his long-thought-dead wife, Iris West-Allen, in the thirtieth century to have his happy ending, at least until Crisis on Infinite Earth #8. The beauty of his death is that DC gave the character a proper sendoff and effectively ended the old Silver Age status quo in 1986. Similarly, DC Comics gave the Silver Age Superman his own ragnarok with the Alan Moore-penned Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow that closed that chapter of the character’s history and wiped the slate clean for the John Byrne reboot.

However, my problem with the Post-Crisis DC Universe is that DC never properly gave its Pre-Crisis status quo a proper farewell. Most DC’s “history” remained intact aside from the fact that the surviving Earths from the Crisis folded into one universe and former Kid Flash, Wally West, took his mentor’s costume and became the third Flash. While I have no problem with legacy heroes in theory, the very act of putting on Barry Allen’s costume at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 symbolically crippled Wally West as a character. Granted, the lasting appeal of the character is that Wally grew from a womanizing, self-centered jerk into a responsible and respected hero much like his uncle from the Baron run to Messner-Loebs to Waid to Johns' run at the end of the second volume. Unlike Spider-Man, DC Comics let Wally West develop as a character by letting him overcome his insecurities of living up to his mentor’s example. What made Wally’s growth problematic is that he grew up in a universe full of icons.

DC went to great pains to state that there could only be one Superman and Batman in the Death of Superman and Knightfall story arcs. Though DC presented its audience with four “Supermen” in Reign of the Supermen, none of them could ever be the genuine article, and Azrael proved to be a poor substitute for Bruce Wayne. If Barry Allen’s uniform became the “iconic” look for the Flash then would Wally West be slightly more than a substitute for his predecessor? I concede that Greg LaRocque redesigned Wally’s uniform in 1991 but it was still too aesthetically similar to Barry’s to truly distinguish the two. Wally West fell in love with and married a television reporter, Linda Park, as Barry did with a newspaper reporter, Iris West. Both had twins in Don and Dawn Allen (The Tornado Twins of the 30^th century, long story), and Jai and Iris West. Wally took Barry Allen’s position on the reformed “Big Seven” version of the Justice League, and though he had his own unique Rogues, Wally West inherited Barry Allen’s enemies during Geoff Johns first run on the Flash. Wally West essentially became “Barry Allen-lite.” Even Bruce Timm and his production team had to radically transform the character from his personality to his motivations to make Wally viable for Justice League.

I own a few issues of the original Barry Allen run (mostly those with the Firestorm backups), and while the Geoff Johns writing was more sophisticated Cary Bates, I have trouble seeing what makes Wally distinct from Barry in terms of personality. I would go as far as to say that the focus of the title moved from Wally to Captain Cold and the Rogue during Johns’ first run, and then to Jai and Iris West during Mark Waid’s third run. The fact that Bart Allen’s “death” and Wally’s return coincided with the just-as-maligned Countdown probably did not help either.  Between Marvel’s mishandling of Spider-Man in One More Day and DC’s mishandling of the Flash franchise from Infinite to Final Crisis, I have got to wonder why the Big Two simply do not give their universes a complete reboot. After all, the 2003 re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica kept no continuity from the 1978 original and it was successful. It comes down to the fact that DC and Marvel kept their characters in continuous publication in the almost twenty-five years whereas Battlestar Galactica had been off the air. The fact is that we, as fans of DC and Marvel’s characters, want our beloved characters to grow but yet we tend to grab our pitchforks and burn Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio in effigy that idea of making too radical change. The fact is that we cannot have our cake and eat it too. If we want our characters to grow and change, we have to accept that their stories have to end as Barry Allen and the Silver Age Superman’s did twenty-five years ago.

That is my fundamental problem with One More Day: Joe Quesada believed that he could “magically” erase twenty years of continuity to reorder the fictional cosmos of the Marvel universe to suit his whims. That is simply amateurish and reads like horrible fan fiction written by an eleven-year-old with a “D+” in English. (I must apologize to all eleven-year-olds now. They could write much better stories than One More Day.) Moreover, One Moment in Time essentially made One More Day even more pointless because Peter and MJ were still “together” for those twenty years but just not “married.”  At least DC tried to bring their character back to formula after Crisis on Infinite Earths and The New 52. Sure, they failed spectacularly with how you need a scorecard to keep track of the history of the DC Universe but at least they tried to simplify their universe. I do not want to figure out how Emerald Twilight, Green Lantern: Rebirth, Sinestro Corps, Blackest Night, and Brightest Day “happened” when many of the principal characters like Firestorm did not “exist.” I am not interested in seeing the pre-Flashpoint DC Universe or Peter Parker’s marriage return. I would much prefer to see the Big Two grow a pair of stones and do what Julie Schwartz did back in 1956: sweep out the clutter and start over with a clean slate. Comic book fans are essentially the hoarders of popular culture fandom; we cling onto every obscure scrap of continuity and complain whenever the big two deviate from it. After almost three decades of grandiose “events” where the Big Two claim that, “nothing will be the same again,” only for the characters to revert to their standard modus operandi because writers, editors, and fans cannot “let go” of the stories of old, I have serious doubts whether the industry has much life left in it.