Batman: The Brave and The Bold is set to re-tell Bruce and the Joker's fateful first meeting as part of the new Dawn of DC era.
The anthology comic, which relaunches this May, will offer a four-part take on the lifelong foes' first encounter. Penned by Tom King ....
Well, it was nice while it was lasted.
My optimism that DC finally seemed to have the kind of basic understanding of its own characters, their universe, and what to do with them that, oh, any average reader does.
My hope that DC finally understood that, in the long run -- even in the short run -- preserving the integrity of characters and their world are more important than indulging its writers and their ticks.
But no.
I kind of blinked over it when I heard that Wally West was dead-again in "Flash" because it seemed like the story-contained dead-again, that could be safely ignored, much like I ignore everything with the Park-Wests. But the news that
"DC's new 'Dawn of DC' initiative to revamp the publisher's core superhero line is well underway, and the next wave of new titles will include a brand new Wonder Woman #1 from writer Tom King "
cannot be ignored or discounted.
Great idea, DC. Tom King. On Woman Wonder.
You can't even PRETEND that he's not going to ruin her. Because....
"After a mysterious Amazonian is accused of mass murder, the U.S. Congress passes The Amazon Safety Act, barring all Amazons from American soil," reads DC's official description of the new Wonder Woman #1. "To carry out its new law, the government sets up the Amazon Extradition Entity (AXE) task force to remove those who don’t comply by any means necessary," it continues. "In her search for the truth behind the killing, Wonder Woman now finds herself an outlaw in the world she once swore to protect."
Is there any single person who is familiar with Wonder Woman who doesn't realize this is a bad idea? That it's just Tom King writing under Alienated Hero Under Duress story, with whatever IP they'll let him handle? Will Marvel not hire Tom King? Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
Look, it's not that Wonder Woman hasn't survived becoming pantsuit Wonder Woman and opening a dress shop and dragging around an Inscrutable Blind Stereotype or becoming a Goddess for the Umpteenth time. It's not that "Something Interesting Couldn't Be Done With That!", which someone is going to comment.
It's DC clearly still doesn't really get it.
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| Someday she will have her revenge. Again. |
It begins, as it often does, with American eccentric SPEED SAUNDERS reading in his personal library.
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| “Let’s see what quandary Slam Bradley has found his way into this month…!” |
WHEN SUDDENLY A—
BREAKS OUT.
OH NO, it’s
ONE of them must be The Killer.
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| Speed gets "in the zone" which is what he call it when he's ace investigating, because he's an American eccentric. |
Carter Hall, digger of things.
Sierra Kirk, indiscriminate plaza piece.
Minato Morita, suspiciously helpful, means of income unknown.
Fuifui, supposed homeless person.
Hiro Suzuki, easily bribed N.A.P. inspector.
Shayera Hall, thing who is frequently dug.
The first suspect to be eliminated was Hiro Suzuki, the N.A.P. inspector.
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| It turned out he wasn’t there for the party. He had simply come to inspect the home, coincidently at the same time. Oops. |
Speed quickly began a stealth interrogation of the remaining guests through charming repartee about their tastes and habits.
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| Speed: <Discuss Interests>; <Ask: Taste in Food; Taste in Venues>. |
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| “Really, Fuifui? You seem surprisingly FIT for a homeless man who eats only junk food…” |
Speeds notices that Fuifui has a Bad Relationship with his Chinatown contact. How did THAT happen? Jealousy? Was that the connection?
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| The Face of Judgement looms AWFULLY close to Fuifui as the others look on with relief. |
HIs younger-indeterminate-female-relative and her odd-smelling husband (whom Speed really likes because he’s an expert on ancient foreign objects were the final guests to leave. Meanwhile, Speed made a call, on a hunch.
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| "Yes, doctor, stand by. Some STOMACH-PUMPING may be required. Hm, what? No, one of the guests brought Fruitcake." |
Clearing his head by jumping on a box repeatedly, as is his habit, and, realizing that his theory, no matter how counter-intuitive, MUST be correct…
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| "I must... LEAP! To a conclusion." |
he put on his skiing outfit and made some wienies to prepare for the final confrontation.
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| "♬OH... AN... Australian went yodeling, on a mountaintop high…♬" |
The Moment of Truth arrived. Hero versus...
Hiro.
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| “Yes, Mr. Saunders? You wanted to talk about your Neighborhood Action Plan inspection fine?” |
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| “No, Hiro. Actually, I had simply deduced something. That if YOU weren’t the killer….” |
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| “then I HAD to be.” |
-FIN-
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| "I dunno, Grim, sometimes it's almost as if Reality were like putty in my hands!" |
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| "So, one time I found this kid on a sled... oh, you heard about that? Oh, ha hah, right, of course you did..." |
Definitely my favorite one of last year.
Fortunately I kept the foresight to keep Aquaman from drowning or that would have been the one.
Yesterday, I was asked by a commenter, in response to my post on Geoff Johns reintroduction of Wing, the Crimson Avenger's sidekick (originally, valet/chauffeur)::
I wonder if anyone has an answer to this question: does anyone even want all these sidekicks? One or two of them might be entertaining, I guess, but is there anyone who was saying "you know what we need more of: Golden Age sidekicks"? What is Johns's game?
Of COURSE I have an answer to that question! It ain't called "The Absorbascon" for nothing.
I would have thought "Johns's Game" would be obvious based on everything else I've written about it.
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| Or, for that matter, everything HE's written. |
But sneaking what is obvious in retrospect past you is one of the hallmarks of Geoff Johns' work.
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| Pseudonymously, Geoff Johns writes fan-fic about Benoit Blanc and his precocious tagalong niece, Héloïse Grise. |
I have covered this in pieces in other posts, but it bears repeating, I suppose.
The last 20 years has been a Manichaeistic battle for the soul of the DCU between Didio's Dark Forces (writers of the grim & gritty and feet of clay) and Johns' Bright Brigade (champions of heroic idealism). Didio lost; Johns is now trying to make sure that loss actually, several years later, starts to result in a DCU of a different tenor, hence the Dawn of the DCU (an image of new light, you'll note).
Didio hated "legacy characters", and famously wanted to kill off Dick "Nightwing" Grayson, who is the ORIGINAL kid sidekick, the personification of legacy characters. It's no coincidence that Dick Grayson now is the centerpiece of the Dawn of the DCU. It's no coincidence that the Justice League is on sabbatical so that the Titans et al. can see some more time in the light.
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| Okay. Maybe I should have chosen a different metaphor in that particular case. |
Johns's Game has several dimensions to it, but they all bear his trademark expansive approach.
One is spatial: the multiverse has been reintroduced. Not ambiguously, as it was in the wishy-washy Hypertime concept. Nor in a limited and un-useful way, as in Morrison's Multiversity art project. No. It's the Big Ol' DC Multiverse, Bigger and Ol'er than Ever, with numbered earths for everybody, and all of it introduced by (who else?) Barry Allen, the character who introduced the ideal of the multiverse into the DCU to begin with (the one so synonymous with the concept of the multiverse that DC killed him off WITH it in "Crisis on Infinite Earths").
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| NEVER forget that the last person Barry Allen sees before he dies is Batman, his face covered in custard. Remember the Creped Crusader, people. |
One dimension is temporal; DC's iconic heroes must be shown to be mentoring potential future heroes as part of their legacy in the future. They must also be shown to be inheritors of traditions of costumed heroism and that very concept of apprenticeship from past generations of heroes.
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| [Batman #135, btw] Tom King killed off Alfred Pennyworth. Geoff Johns would have HIRED him for a two-year run on "Batman Family". |
This is why Johns is reconnecting the current DCU to the Golden Age. Characters are being inserted in the Golden Age to help anchor the present to the past. Present Ollie Queen turns out to have been the Golden Age Oliver Queen after all. There actually WAS a Golden Age Aquaman and won't HIS connection to modern Aquaman be interesting to learn about. The Golden Age JSA exist on an earth of their own (Earth-2, natch), but a version of them also exist in the past of Earth-0. There are forgotten kid sidekicks who will be rescued from limbo by Stargirl, a legacy of a Golden Age hero, and Red Arrow, the kid sidekick of a current iconic hero (who is ALSO a Golden Age hero). It couldn't be any tighter or clearer. The concept of the "kid sidekick" is being reintroduced to reassert the importance of legacy and the need to pass along the traditions of heroism.
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| "They might want to hit the deck; it's going to be oomphy." |
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| Starman's face is only partially shown, lest his glory eclipse his contemporaries |
One dimensional is financial. This isn't mere nostalgia. It's good business sense. The direct market era saw the aging of the comic book buying population and, in the long run, if you lose KIDS as part of the audience for comics you will run out of adult audience.
Didio had his own answer to this problem and it was characteristically reductive: kill off the old characters and replace them with ones that had been created under HIS aegis, for a New Glorious Era; the "5G Plan" that was the final straw that got him fired.
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| He was disappeared, really. I think the Shadow Demons got him, which, of course, would be comic book irony since, like him, they represent the forces of darkness in the DCU. |
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| I wonder whatever became of that kid. Probably got killed off by some cynical writer of a later, darker era. |
Do you think it's coincidence that David, the Boy Thunder, from Mark Waid's "previously untold story of Superman's kid sidekick" has just been revealed in World's Finest to be... Magog, the personification of the loss of heroic idealism in Mark Waid's Kingdom Come, the falling domino who leads to its dystopia? It is not a coincidence; Mark Waid is part of Johns's Bright Brigade. This is part of showing of the breakdown of the heroic apprenticeship system, of the failure to establish legacy leads to disaster in the future.
Just as failing to instill a love of heroic ideals --and the salable intellectual properties DC owns that represent them! -- will be disastrous for today's children (and tomorrow's comic books sales). And the answer isn't simply to pump out a bunch of coloring books and Underoos or conflict-free goo-goo Justice League Babies books. It's to make regular, mainstream superhero comics with a broader audience, including younger readers, in mind.
I know some (all?) of you don't understand my postings of Sims games with DCU characters. But it's not without reasons.
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| "You see, son, archery takes focus, strength, and patience." "You GOT this, Ollie!" "Ugh. Archery sucks." |
The makers of the Sims games, over the years, could have given in to pressure from their existing audience to become increasingly inward-looking in their product. Instead, at every juncture where they might have had the game become deeper but less accessible, they have chosen instead to try to make it broader and more inclusive, sometimes to the disappointment of some present players. But as a result, the base of players has only expanded and diversified with time, and, by opening the game up to easy modding, the player-base is free to deepen the game in ways that it wants to without corporate interference.
Clearly, that's easier to do in a game where the players tell the stories than in comics where the corporation has to. But the analogy is clear. Left to its own devices, fandom (of ANY kind) will crawl up its own *** and become withdrawn and increasingly inaccessible. The actual guardians of the objects of fandom --who are not the fans, no matter what we think-- have to make sure that they aren't pulled in along with them.
Johns's game isn't fan-pandering nostalgia. It's not squeaky-clean Silver Age fluff. He's trying to initiate a new Golden Age when comics were unafraid to be "childish" in their idealism, unapologetic about the need for young and old to face the evils of the world, when they were accessible to a broader population and not just comic shop denizens.
John's is starting the Gilded Age of Comics.
Geoff Johns wants you to think this is Wing.
I'm here to tell you it isn't.
Oh, I don't mean that it's a fake-out or a shapeshifter or anything.
What I mean is that this is the revised version of Wing that Johns is shilling. Not the Real Original Wing.
This is real original Wing.
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| Kato, as portrayed by Some Chinese Actor. |
Wing wasn't an action-star like Bruce Lee; he's really more of an "Alfred" than a "Robin".
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| I would NOT mind being taken under his Wing. |
But he was an invaluable partner, with useful talents and contacts.
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| "A friend of Wing's is mine also." Even Tong officials respect Wing. |
This was how the Crimson Avenger and the Wing were originally portrayed in the Golden Age, one of the comics features where Chinese characters were consistently portrayed with dignity and respect.
Until. Detective Comics #44, Oct. 1940 (which you probably remember better as the "Speed Saunders versus the exploding bowling balls" issue).
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| -FIN- |
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| Note, for later, two things about Wing. He's a big hulking MAN. His English is imperfect but not intended to be comedically or offensively so. |
We can blame Batman & Superman (et al.) for this absurdity. By 1940, it was clear that pulp-style slouch-hatted avengers were OUT and costumed crimefighters were IN.
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| This is NOT going to be oomphy. |
The Crimson Avenger, now authored by people other than his creator, leapt on the bandwagon so as not to get left behind.
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| Marty's late for school again. |
The Crimson Avenger did not make the transition gracefully.
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| That's got to be embarrassing. |
The Crimson Avenger didn't do anything gracefully, in fact.
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| I think the fin helps the aerodynamics of the frequent falls. |
His letterer seemed to have a drinking problem.
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| I mean, I'd drink, too. |
The Crimson clearly wanted to be Starman.
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| In the previous panel the lion has gorilla hands. Check if you don't believe me. |
His stories became lurid, even by Golden Age standards.
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| DEATH BY DACHSHUND PIT |
Almost as if to emphasize how badly the transition was being made, his costume sported a stylized bullet-hole symbol at exactly the same time that he switched from carrying actual pistols to gas-guns.
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| Just how MUCH gas can be in that gun? |
Yet, somehow, all this pales to how badly they messed up WING.
They re-made Wing over as a kid sidekick so that C.A. would fit in better with the Soldiers of Victory (yet ANOTHER strike against the SoV). The costumed version of Wing debuted in World's Finest Comics #4 (Dec. 1941).
December 1941 was not a good time to be an Asian character in comics. Even if you were a Chinese good guy.
This guy:
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| Handsome, dignified, and well-spoken. |
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| Adult, huge, and manly. |
was now THIS guy:
It's...bad. Even for 1941, it's bad.
This is the guy Geoff Johns is trying to bring back. Or, more accurately, to fix.
I sympathize with what he's trying to do. But doing so overwrites what we should be remembering, which is the real original Wing, rather than this painful embarrassment that GJ is trying to redeem. Who knows, Johns being Johns, he may have the Real Original Wing in mind as Costumed Wing's older brother; I wouldn't put it past him. No one know how to have his cake and eat it too like Geoff Johns.
But the other problem is: Real Original Wing debuted in 1938, but this Costumed Wing in 1941. Real Original Wing pre-dates ROBIN, the Sensational Character Find of 1940, and the Costumed Wing does NOT. I don't want Johns retrofitting Costumed Wing in a way that backdates him into being a costumed kid sidekick before Robin, The Boy Wonder, who actually IS the original costumed kid sidekick. Because that sort of thing can take on an inaccurate life of its own, and my fervent prayer is that it does NOT.
Anyway, just so YOU know, no matter what Johns does with it: Wing did not start out as a costumed kid sidekick.
