JSA #1 (again)

As mad as I was (am) about Geoff Johns' embarrassingly self-indulgent and anticlimactic end to his run on Justice Society of America (really more of a saunter than a run), I am still quite intrigued by the forthcoming "JSA" series by Jeff Lemire (a name I recognize but have no pre-exiting opinions of).  

I know only that he wrote "Sweet Tooth" and saved Green Arrow from Ann Nocenti, so I'm just going to picture him as an adult Golden Age Speedy, since he had to save Ollie.

The Justice LEAGUE is easy to write.

Although writing FOR the Justice League can certainly be a challenge.

All you have to do is put DC's six most iconic heroes (plus one more that DC is trying to pretend is iconic) at a table and boom there's the Justice League. The Justice League has always been about simply seeing DC's biggest heroes interact and work together.

The Justice Society is a more complicated manner.  You have to balance past and present, tradition with modernity, legacy with innovation.  And unlike the JLA, the JSA is not and never has been composed of pre-sold commodities.  It's not a "super-group" of icons, it's an ensemble piece. It's a many-bodied problem, more akin to the Legion of Super-Heroes, where the whole must be greater than the sum of the parts in order to justify its existence.  This is something that Lemire seems to understand, based on a recent interview:

“For me, it was about taking everything I love from past runs — whether it’s Infinity Inc., All-Star Squadron, or Geoff Johns’ era — and making it important again while keeping it accessible and modern,” he explains. The challenge, then, is making the JSA resonate with today’s readers while honoring its long history.

“I stopped thinking of them as superhero team books and started thinking of them more as ensemble dramas,” he explained, focusing on developing characters over time rather than trying to feature everyone in every issue.

"For fans wondering what sets the JSA apart from the Justice League, Lemire offers a clear answer: it’s all about legacy and generational storytelling.

"The JSA is unique in that its members span multiple generations, giving the team a rich sense of history that other superhero groups lack. For Lemire, the heart of the JSA lies in two characters: Jay Garrick and Alan Scott. Jay, the original Flash, serves as the team’s heart, while Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, acts as its head and leader."

Now, I have read the first issue.  I cannot think of a less interesting threat for the JSA to be dealing with than Kobra;

I still can't believe that trite, pedestrian cult leader Kobra (with his ridiculous twin brother trope) was inspired by DR. EFFING PHIBES, which was Vincent Price at his most batshit, but such is Jack Kirby.

and I can't think of anything more off-the-rack than the children of JSA leader Alan Scott's children, Dark Hard-Nose Obsidian in conflict with Bright Idealistic Jade, over the direction of the JSA;

Do you think DC even remembers Todd is gay?  I remember. Often.

but...

we learn already in the first issue that neither one of the two conflicts that we see are actually TRUE, don't we?  And that the really threat, the real source of both conflict is...

Okay. THAT's a different story.  One I am ready to follow....

In a Nutshell

 Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Marvel Comics.

I cried today

I cried today because of a comic book.

It wasn't a sad comic book. It was simply so beautiful. So beautiful that it made me cry.

It was Batman & Robin: Year One, title by writer Mark Waid and artist Chris Samnee.  

I couldn't believe a "Batman and Robin: Year One" hadn't been done before, but... this is it, now, apparently.

At first glance, you might just lump it in with the Mazzuchelli style (the one "Batman: Year One" was drawn in. Thick lines, with a vague air of Madison Avenue-era ad art.

But it's much better than that. A little more on that later.

Both the writing and the art do a great job of (SUBTLY) referencing the Batman '66 television series.  For example in the cover art above, you can see references to the show's opening credits in the villains they are fighting.

See for yourself.

Dick Grayson chaffing at some obscure study at home, then being reminded how important studying (Egyptology, leaf structures, bird songs, etc.) was for proper education. With a slight change in dialog this is nearly a scene from the show.

Then a Death-Trap Escape complete with "follow my movements exactly", which could have come straight from the show.

That was a LOT easier than the killer player-piano roll machine.

Add to that a nearly pitch-perfect version of Two-Face

which references the essential irony that he is both extremely predictable in some ways and extremely unpredictable in others.  Nowadays, a good characterization of Two-Face is so rare as to bring tears to my eyes all by itself.

There's even an old school mystery of the type we seldom get in stories about the World's Greatest Detective: Two-Face has stolen a FILE from Commissioner Gordon and neither Gordon NOR Two-Face will tell Batman what's in it.  

Batman is puzzled by the villain's apparent uncharacteristic diversion  from the "two" motif in this crime.  

My bet is that the file is Gordon's deductions on Batman's DOUBLE identity.

All this is very Silver/Golden age.  But wisely there are certainly nods to modern sensibility, such as Gordon balking at the "kid sidekick" and Robin being confounded by the supercriminals who don't simply kill you on sight.  The whole issue is a truly timeless story, using lots of very traditional elements of Batman history that most modern writers would be scared to death of attempting.  It's the kind of thing that, currently, only Mark Waid can pull off.

Well, Sholly Fisch could.  
Because there's nothing Sholly Fisch can't pull off.

All this storytelling is ideal for a long-time fan like me and Chris Samnee's ability to draw in essentially an abstract, Golden Age style, but through a modern lens is the perfect complement.  This, though, is the panel where it really hit me what I was seeing:

At first, it might seem unremarkable to you. I mean, there's little action, no dialog, no interactions, no captions.

But I just keep staring at.  Maybe five minutes. Then I realized I was crying.

Because it's perfect Golden Age composition, where the art tells the story.  The Batmobile, unassuming, is headed for a conflict with THAT MAN, who is high above, but in a direct line across from its path, from our view.  And colored with meaningful and tasteful contrast.  

Let's put this in some context.

This is Golden Age art.  It is a study in economy and contrasts.

This is modern comic book art.  It tends toward photorealistic and maximalism.

Don't get me wrong; these are both "good art".  But the modern art impresses me with its technical proficiency while the classic art moves me, emotionally and intellectually with its skill at choosing the right art for the storytelling at hand. It is art that is there for the story, not for itself. That, to me, is the appropriate role of art in this medium.  And seeing Chris Samnee's work in Batman and Robin: Year One made me realize that it was NOT a lost art, as I had feared.

The relief that gave me was worth more than a tear or two.  Thank you, Chris Samnee.

On the New Aquaman

 

Well, here's some good news.

"The announcement of the first new ongoing Aquaman comic book series since the end of the Kelly Sue DeConnick-written run in November, 2020 came during DC’s Absolute/All In Universes panel at New York Comic Con 2024. The series will be written by Green Lantern scribe Jeremy Adams, with art by John Timms; the title will launch January 8, 2025."

Apparently Aquaman will not only be back, but Better Than Ever.

Like any sensible person, I skipped the "Absolute Power" crossover. An upside of it, however, seems to be that if you take everyone's powers "away" for a bit...

Don't you hate it when that happens?
The idea that "powers" are these magical abstractions that can be added and subtracted, rather than natural results of particular physiologies and circumstances is really too absurd even for comics, but... we are stuck with it.

...you can give them BACK in whatever form you want.

In the immortal words of that villain of villains, The Hooded Claw:
"How TERRIBLY convenient!"

There are probably several (many?) characters who are being polished with this plot device; today, we discuss only Aquaman, who, FINALLY, is getting some form of hydrokinesis. We know this not simply from the cover image about, but from solicits.

Each of the seven seas? There's a kaiju in the Adriatic Sea? I'm just going to assume you don't mean the Classical seven seas, but are using "the seven seas" to mean "all the oceans". 

That solicit refers, interestingly, to Dagon (historically a one-off hydrokinetic foe of Aquaman).

With a snarky attitude and really questionable taste in swimwear.

It also refers to "The Blue" (also sometimes called "The Clear", because of course water isn't really BLUE), an aquatic parallel of "The Green" (the force that Swamp Thing accesses to control plant life) introduced in comics in 1995, but not discussed a lot since its initial introduction.

So, it sounds like this new writer, Jeremy Adams (whom the internet seems to love but I've never heard of), is using this opportunity to tie Aquaman back into some forgotten pieces of his lore, rather than crazily blasting off in some new, outré direction.

I mean, you'd have to be a fool or a monster to do that.

I am certainly happy that Aquaman will return to comics, and to finally see him get some form of water manipulation power.

Which he has had in several other media instantiations.

Because this means that Aquaman will at last have:

BALLS!

Filmation Studios (makers of the '60s Aquaman cartoon) knew instinctively what Aquaman needed to round out his power set: a ranged attack that didn't require FISH. 

Not that that power isn't awesome, mind you.

A bottomless source of aquatic batarangs with which to wallop enemies.  And so he had his hard water balls.

I know there are some Mera-stans who think hydrokinesis should be Mera's schtick, alone.  But if you look closely, Aquaman's used of HK has always been more limited and specific than Mera's. Without belaboring the details, Mera's HK works at a distance and on a larger (and finer) scale .  Aquaman's HK always works the same way: he can use it to create a smallish simple weapon he's holding.  One assumes his hard-water balls have a limited distance or time they can travel away from him before they dissipate. 

It's perfectly reasonable for Arthur to have a simpler, more limited version of this power, in the same way that not all characters with "superspeed" or "superstrength" or "telepathy" have the same kind or degree of that power.

That discussed, there is another aspect of this cover that I want to point out and it's just as ingenious and overdue from an artistic standpoint as the HK is for the purposes of plot.

Ask a gay person what color those pants and gloves are; they will NOT say "green".

This cover does a great job of narrowing the color palette to create a more iconic image. But the key is the main change he has made in order to do so: the formerly green parts of Aquaman's costume are now AQUAMARINE.

Aquamarine is not green. Neither is it blue. Nor, for that matter, clear.

THAT CHANGE makes Aquaman's color scheme click into place.  Because while 'orange and green' are not the most natural color combination, 

(which, as Rousseau knew, evokes the jungle, not the sea)

"orange and aquamarine" not only look very complementary, but evoke a maritime environment.

After over 80 years, that single cover image has solved Aquaman's " costume problem". 

A fresh take on Aquaman by a popular creative team who know how to synthesize a new interpretation that takes some of the best aspects from previous versions, integrating them thematically and visually with his environment?  

Sign me up.

Crossing the Line

 Geoff Johns has crossed the line.

Actually he crossed a line in Justice Society of America #11. Right here:

It reputed that it was Stan Lee who said, "Every comic book is someone's first."  

And who am I to argue with the creator of Stripperella?

It's a simple principle. You have to write comics with that in mind.  Otherwise, they become soap-opera fortresses guarded by impenetrable lore, 70 years thick.

Now, I love the world-building aspects of comics.  I like that DC is "a universe" not just a bunch of separate lines of comics.  But you shouldn't have to know all of it to understand any of it, because then every year, each issue, you necessarily shrink the pool of people to whom your stories--your PRODUCT--is meaningfully accessible. 

And when you author a page that is based on knowledge of Solaris The Tyrant Sun, a character whose significant appearance was in the DC One Million crossover, which was 26 years ago, you have clearly lost that concept.

He/it also appeared in All-Star Superman, but that's, you know, just an Imaginary Story. It's not REAL.

At the point, you clearly care more about your own ability to yoke the power of more original writers, like Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, to your own wagon.  About your using your own encyclopedic knowledge of DC lore as a gatekeeping tool. About connecting your moments and concepts to pre-existing cool moments and concepts in the hope it makes yours cooler.  

And are SO eager to do this, that you ignore the fact that Solaris doesn't EXIST until the 25th Century.

This line -- forgetting, or simply not caring that every comic book should be able to be someone's first --  is bad enough.  But in the very next issue, Justice Society of America #12, Johns crossed the next line, a line of no-return.

Because this comic is nothing AT ALL but Stargirl's graduation speech.

Because OF COURSE Courtney Whitmore is valedictorian, cuz she shits marble.

It's nothing but a sappy graduation speech with 47 double-splash pages of thousand-character fight scenes (all with Courtney as a centerpiece, of course, because Courtney is the center of the DCuniverse).  I kept waiting for The Story to start; there wasn't one.  Just a series of splash pages with dotted with treacly pap from Courtney.  

I want my money back.

I should not have to pay for story-less comics that Geoff Johns is clearly writing not for readers but simply for himself so he can pretend his sister is still alive as the Mary Sue center of the DCU.  That's a line no writer should cross and I'm not joining him on the other side of it.

Non-smooth Move

Ugh.

My confidence in James Gunn's ability to handle properly the DCU on the big screen has always been low. It certainly doesn't help that near every word or image I hear from him seems to lower it further. 

But

Get a haircut, yippy.

making Krypton shaggy instead of smooth-coated (because his OWN doggy is shaggy) is the worst sign yet that Gunn cares more about "James Gunn's DCU" than he does about "THE DCU".

Krypto is a VERY simple character. 

His DESIGN is simple, I mean.

He has a longish 'hound-like' muzzle and flap ears, a smooth white coat and, when possible, a Superman cape. His personality is "I'm a dog", so pretty much the only way you can screw it up is by "drawing' him wrong, which Gunn has , Yes, it's a bold move to put Krypto on the big screen. But if you going to gratuitously screw up the depiction of one of comics' simplest characters, then I don't trust you with more complex ones.  This is one Shaggy Dog Story where I don't think the punchline will be worth it.

Maybe the plot of the film is from "The Super-Dog That Replaced Krypto".
But I doubt it.

Some Bad Things

Okay, I promised I wouldn't make fun of Absolute Batman (& His Amazing Friends).

However, I didn't promise I wouldn't let it make fun of itself.

Apparently one of those bad things is dialog.

I mean, what can I say to make that any more ridiculous than it already is?  It sounds like a quote from 

Zorro, the Gay Blade.

Actually, the line in ZTGB is "an' I'm going to dooo some terreebul theeengs ... to CHU!" But it's pretty close.

In the Ghetto

 I come to praise Absolute Batman, not to bury him.

Absolute Batman, which reads not just like fanfic but fanfic as it's being made up by schoolchildren while on the playground, 

Credit for this insight goes to the clever and charming Casually Comics, who has unintentionally taught me to love the Absolute Universe.

Not that it's that bad in itself, but I weary of a comics shelf overrun by Edgy Elseworlds comics.

I didn't like DC forcing Alfred's fanfic on me in the 1960s.  I certainly don't like the contemporary versions any better.  "Nobody will ever read it." From your mouth to god's ears, Bruce.

I didn't like the elseworld stories in the 1960s, I didn't like 30 years later in the 1990s when the major heroes were replaced by edgy alternative versions of the characters, and I certainly don't like it now 30 years even later, when the comic shelves are now devoted to Elseworlds starring edgy alternative version of the characters.

So, really, I couldn't imagine anything I would like less than a New Universe based on "Bad Darkseid Energy" (BDE, I guess) where all the heroes will have A Tougher Time. But (as Casually Comic kindly explained), this may be the best thing that's happened since Jack Kirby died.

That's not to say that Jack Kirby dying was a good thing.
I'm not a fan of his work, but by all accounts, he was a great guy.

One of the things that is made clear is that there is only one version of Darkseid; he doesn't have multiversal counterparts.  Tired of his CONTINUAL failure to accomplish, well, pretty much anything in the mainstream universe, Darkseid decides to create ANOTHER universe based on his OWN BDE, where he CAN succeed.

Also known as "Gym class".

In short, Darkseid has built HIMSELF into a GHETTO.

I would call it an "Armagetto", but, of course, that would be ridiculous.

A ghetto where I can IGNORE HIM and all his associated silliness.  

And I could not be MORE supportive of that! Long live the Absolute Universe!  

Joker: Folie a Deux, The Odyssey, the Brave Little Toaster, and Drag

Sit down for some shocking news you may not be ready to handle:

The sequel to Todd Phillip's Joker film, Joker: Folie a Deux, is not doing well at the box office.

Sorry if I was the one to break it to you.  But, if THAT bit of news actually did shock you, then there's certainly nothing I could have done to prepare you for it mentally. It's not just "not doing well", it's doing worse than Sony's Morbius did.

So perhaps Jared Leto isn't the problem, after all.
Merely "a" problem.

Many have identified the fact that the "Arthur Fleck" character of the original movie is in the sequel revealed to be obviously a shell, just an empty figurehead for a bunch of gratuitously aggrieved numbskulls. You know, just like in real life.

To me, the problem with JFAD isn't that it's a semi-musical or that it seeks to undo the misinterpretation of its predecessor.

Because you know what else was a semi-musical sequel that sought to undo the misinterpretation of its predecessor?  Homer's Odyssey.  But audiences ate that **** up.

Homer, it is deduced, was displeased that dullards in his audience took The Iliad as praise of the Greek Heroic Ideal, rather than as the condemnation it was intended to be.  Thus, its "sequel", the Odyssey, took to deconstructing that "ideal" more explicitly and aggressively.

And it takes some effort to do anything more aggressively than The Iliad.

It's clear that the creators of JFAD were making a Homerically heroic attempt to undo the misinterpretation of the first film as an endorsement of destructive nihilism by an aggrieved audience of dullards.  It's only natural that it would thus alienate fans of the first film and attract exactly no one else, since sensible folk don't really need to hear that message.

Similarly, The Brave Little Toaster would not be a beloved classic if its message had simply been "don't stick your finger in a toaster", because that's not a message sufficient to sustain a feature-length film.

But as a comics fan, I see the real problem of Joker and JFAD much more broadly. To me the problem is "Villain Drag".

No offense intended, guys.

The problem, in short, is when DC (or any IP-owner), allows an independent creative entity (a person or another company) to a tell story about a character that wouldn't otherwise get funding by draping it in the disguise of a well-known character they own.  This character is often a villain, because the company is less invested in the "purity" of the portrayal of such characters.

There's three easy examples right there of characters who have been put in villain drag to capitalize on the Q rating those villains have built up over 80 years.  It's not a sure-fire formula for failure; "The Penguin" seems well received so far. But nothing could symbolize the fact that it's just Villain Drag better than the show runners changing the character's name to "Oz Cobb", rather than Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.

The Penguin's name is SUPPOSED to be stupid. That's part of the point of his effete but fatal "gentlemen burglar" routine.

Adaptation is one thing, and variants are necessary and helpful mechanism for building a truly mythical character long-term. That's just how ancient myths were developed, too.  

I mean, this guy killed a hobo for a sandwich, fell in love with the Riddler, and was nearly emaciated. But he was still definitely The Penguin.

But there is a palpable difference between wanting to do a new take on a well-known comic book-based character and simply creating a character you want to tell stories about and then covering them with a coat of paint to make them LOOK like the comic book character.

As I mentioned, this phenomenon is not confined to villains, but the less the company has invested in the purity of the character's portrayal, the more likely a target the character becomes.

Sometimes this can be happening without anyone really noticing it.

"Batman versus Superman" is a good example of Anti-Hero Drag.  The essential thing wrong with that movie is that well-known characters chosen specifically because they are well-known characters are acting completely out of character.

You really can't have your cake and eat it, too. If you want to tell a story about BananaMan, then, damn it, you have to be prepared to tell a story about a man who throws Bananarangs, has a pet monkey, and adopted a kid sidekick named Second Banana. These characters aren't just COSTUMES; they come with stories and personalities BUILT INTO THEM; it's why everyone knows who they are already. It's the source of the popularity that opportunistically parasitic outside creators are hoping to leach.

Putting on a little grease-paint and faking a smile doesn't make someone the Joker.

So don't be surprised when "comic book adaptations" that think it does wind up failing hard.