Gunn Shy

Okay, I will happily admit that I am nothing short of DELIGHTED that Anthony Carrigan has been cast as Metamorpho in the new James Gunn- helmed cinematic DC universe.

Obviously, I was hoping for KALE, but one must be reasonable.
Besides casting THAT perfect could cause the multiverse to implode.

This is the THIRD DCU character Carrigan will have played (he was The Mist on Flash and Mr. Zsazs on "Gotham") and I'm sure he'll be awesome because Carrigan is always awesome.

And the fact that he looks like my late partner, Ted, does not influence my opinion at all.

But EXCEPT FOR THAT...

I have next to zero faith in James Gunn.

Why, you wonder? 

1. I have seen other James Gunn movies. Before you'd ever heard of him. Because I'm a film hipster. Specifically, I am a HORROR hipster, the world that James Gunn comes from.  Dude is TROMA. And if you don't know what THAT means, well, then you AREN"T a horror hipster.  

James Gunn. James Wan (Saw; Insidious, etc.). David Sandberg (king of the $10 horror short).  It's no accident that owners of superhero IPs have turned to same directors who revitalized horror (another easily ridiculed and previously unrespected genre that now dominates the box office).

I'm certainly not going to assert that James Gunn is not talented. He certainly is.  He's Troma!  But James Gunn is.... not classy.  

I can't articulate why I think this.
It's just an instinct I have about it.

And not in the "I COULD be classy but I am choosing not to be"way of the intentional avant-garde.  No, I don't think James Gunn CAN be classy.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think someone who can't be classy shouldn't be in charge of the DCU's intellectual properties.

 I can't articulate why I think this.
It's just an instinct I have about it.

2. James Gunn trusts Tom King. 

“He’s been one of the guys in the room with us, along with four or five other others. I love his take on these characters. He just turns them slightly to be something very unique.”

It makes me wonder who the others four or five were.

Similarly trustworthy advisors, I'm sure.
P.S. Carrigan would be an AWESOME Tharok.

Troma should mean crazy, but not crazy STUPID. I can't imagine a worst choice for a person to advise on What To Do With/How To Handle DC characters, sort of reanimating Cullen Bunn (I mean, he's dead to me, at least).

Or asking Bob Haney to return from the planet Shakari
And HE could at least help with Metamorpho.  Just keep him away from Batman Stuff.

3. He's hired Nathan Filion to play Guy Gardner. Look, I know a lot of people have a soft spot for this actor, and I'm sure he's a wonderful fellow.  But (A) Nathan Filion, at 52 years old, is at least 15 years too old to play Guy Gardner and (B) even I, who barely know who Filion is, know that he's OBVIOUSLY a "Hal Jordan" not a "Guy Gardner".  How easy it would have been to find someone unlikeable who we were already primed to dislike. I'm sure Cullen Bunn's available.

I can't articulate why I think this.
It's just an instinct I have about it.

Gunn didn't hire Nathan Filion because he was right for the part (as Carrigan is for Metamorpho). He hired him because he likes him and has worked with him before.  I get what a Boy's Club Hollywood is but... yeah, you just proved to me that cronyism matters more to you than doing what's right for the character.  And if you have ME concerned that someone isn't doing right by GUY GARDNER... you cannot be trusted with the DCU.  

The War for the Soul of the DCU

With the release of DC's December solicits it's increasingly clear that (as previously mentioned) the winds of change have blown through the editorial halls of DC and, as my great-grandmother would have said in heavily-accented English, "blowed der stink out". 

Examples:

Tim Drake is back as Robin in his own solo comic.

After rescuing the Cheetah from the clutches of the evil International Milk Company, Wonder Woman must set her sights on the real monsters behind it all…the gods of fear and panic, Phobos and Deimos. Wonder Woman, Cheetah, the evil International Milk Company, Phobos and Deimos. The only thing that sentence lacks is ETTA CANDY to make it perfect.

The Evil International Milk Company.
With that phrase, DC just won back my heart.

This:

I want to see Flash dealing with villains and threats like a superhero, not fussing fetidly with "speed force" and internal personal legacy nonsense like a Regency novel character.

Two Tom King comics are ending, one in which he kills a Wayne family member and the one where he killed a Green Lantern.  The ending of Tom King comics is always a good sign.

Two-Face is back menacing Renee Montoya at the GCPD. Or is he on her side...? Regardless, it's old school comics.  

Never count Two-Face out; he's VERY well connected.

DC: Mech is ending. If you don't know what it is, just be glad.  So is DC vs. Vampires (ugh).

Geoff Johns is bringing back the Justice Society (again).

Which he's been trying to do since 2016, if you haven't been keeping track.

Jaime Reyes is back to Blue Beetling.

Kal-El is back on Earth and here to stay.  

Lady Cop is back (although she's in the hands of Tom King, so expect her to be kicked to death by the Killer in Boots).

And perhaps most dramatically:

The Sensational Character Find of 2022

Gone are the remnants of Dan Didio's 5G plan to Kill Everyone's Childhood and replace all heroes with replicants containing only his DNA.  His crisis-driven/Crisis-driving style gave us a mess of messes for nearly two decades before the backlash overwhelmed his momentum two years ago and he was removed as swiftly, completely, and mysteriously as if he were a victim in a '70s Spectre story. 

"I can't find Dan; anybody know where he is?"
"Last time I saw him, he was... headed out."

Big ships turn slowly. Since that change was a sudden one, there was no real plan in place to follow it and it showed.  Various unpleasant initiatives with Didio's sticky DNA all over them--darkly cynical gigantic crossover events like DCeased and *snort* Dark Crisis--have had to wind their way to a close, like dying automata from a passing steampunk era. 

"ZOMG THE JUSTICE LEAGUE IS DEAD and now they're going to replace them with legacy characters!"
Uh-huh. Yes. Yes, I'm sure they are.

One of those unpleasant initiatives is Damian Wayne, a character who truly personifies Didio's approach to things.  "Robin is currently a super-competent, well adjusted guy named Tim Drake.  He's been Robin for over 25 years; as long as Dick Grayson had been when the Batman '66 TV show began. Let's dump him for Batman's illegitimate son from an Elseworlds story, who's an unlikeable murderous little ****." Didio didn't come up with the idea but he supported it 1000% percent. 

In the old days, that would have been a one-issue "fear of being replaced as partner" story,  and the kid would have been revealed as a fake by the end, AND redeemed himself by taking a bullet for Dick from  some random gangster and dying on the spot, with a few final words of regret. Instead, we've been trapped in a 15-year-long "Ransom of Red Chief" scenario.

Maybe Damian can pair up with Nightman:
"Nightman and Red Chief".

Batman versus Robin is pretty clearly about taking Damian out of the Robin role with Tim Drake going back into it.

All of the above is part of the real-world internal war for The Soul of the DCU, one that's been raging for 20 years. If Crisis on Infinite Earths issued in (or at least coincided with) the beginning of roughly 15-year Dark Era in the DCU (with its '90s exxxtreme badassery and antiherohood), the following 20 years has been a grand Zoroastrian battle between Dan Didio's forces of Darkness and Geoff Johns' forces of Light.

Look, just read Action Philosophers, okay? All of it. All. Of. It.

For 20 years, Didio was pushing his vision for the DCU and Johns another and they were, at heart, as completely opposed as Uxas and Izaya. At one point, Tom King (Didio's Desaad) had Wally West going insane and murdering other heroes at the very same time Geoff Johns was bringing him back as the Personification of Hope in the DCU.  Johns eventually fell back and distanced himself from DC, given how entrenched Didio's forces were... but all that changed two years ago.  

And now Johnsian apostle Mark Waid is writing the comic that's shuffling Damian off and making way for Tim Drake, as well as bringing back to life Alfred, whom Tom King gratuitously killed with Didio's permission (or at his insistence).  Didio's plan to replace the original and legacy characters beloved by Johns with creations from his own stable was struck down by a corporate thunderbolt. Johns has returned and is bringing back the Justice Society, which he was blocked from doing properly six years ago during Rebirth, his last big push to de-darken the Didioverse.  Really, the biggest target left would be to pry the Legion--DC's ultimate symbol of an optimistic future of heroic legacy--out of the cold dead literary hands of Didio's Granny Goodness, Brian Mumblecore Bendis.  

Yes. It seems increasingly clear who has won the war for The Soul of the DCU.

The Sensational Character Find of 2022

DCU History: Was there a Stonewall Riot in the DCU?

 Yes; yes, there was a Stonewall Riot in the DCU.

However, as usual in the DCU, it manifested itself differently.

"May God bless and keep Dan DiDio..."

In Fiddler on the Roof, the rabbi is challenged to give a proper blessing for the czar of Russia (who was no friend of their Jewish community), to which the rabbi archly replied, "Of course: 'May god bless and keep the czar... far away from us!"

Well, likewise, may the gods bless and keep the czar of DC Comics, Dan DiDio, who has presided for 10 years over a vibrant period of the DCU.  And I mean that in the same way real estate ads describe dangerous and distressed neighborhoods as 'vibrant'.

Vibrant, like Hub City. And we all know the source of this rot.
We've known it for years yet we don't do anything about it.

Some of that vibrancy is inherent to our times; although the intellectual properties owned by the comic book industry are now powerful currency, that doesn't always help the bottom line of comic book publishers. Some of it, however, lies squarely at DiDio's feet.  Not only do many DC readers feel this way, it appears DC's masters did, too. DiDio was posting on DC's behalf and meeting with creators Friday morning and "no longer with DC" by Friday evening, which doesn't sound like a conscious uncoupling to me.

Pictured: conscious uncoupling.

A lot of great things happened at DC during DiDio's tenure, such as the amazing work on Hanna-Barbera properties like the Flintstones, Snagglepuss, and Scooby-Doo.  Dan DiDio could have stopped lots of creators from doing interesting, innovative, thoughtful, and entertaining work, but he didn't.  The pattern of his decisions suggest that he was very receptive to change and experimentation.

Which was, perhaps, the problem.

Our flaws are often merely the flipside of our virtues and I suspect that was the case with DiDio.  In the same way that DiDio didn't stop good things from happening, he didn't stop bad things from happening, either.  By bad things, I mean things like:

• the Destruction AND THEN Befoulment of Wally West (I don't even LIKE Wally West and I know how very wrong that all was);
• nerfed Bart Allen's unique personality, aging him up to become the Flash, and then vanishing him 12 months later;
• Tom King and his Crimes Against Batman (does anyone REALLY need ME to expound on this, when the entire internet has it covered?);
• the unpardonable MESS of "52" and "Countdown", which really just should have been renumbered as continuations of 1985's DC Challenge;
• preventing Batwoman's wedding because "heroes aren't supposed to be happy";
• driving out steady professional types like Greg Rucka, Len Wein, Mark Waid, and Geoff Johns (writers interested in what they can do for a character) and handing flagship characters to idiosyncratic 'auteurs' like Brian Michael Bendis, Grant Morrison, Tom King, and Scott Snyder (writers interested in what they can do to a character).

People have been describing this as 'the end of an era', which it is. But that isn't the "DiDio Era"; it's the "DiDio versus Johns Era". Like some sort of real-life Anti-Monitor and Monitor, DiDio and Johns have been waging a barely disguised universe-threatening battle over whether the DCU would be positive or negative.

And you know which one you'd swipe right on.

You can trace it through nearly everything that's happened in the last 10 years. The New 52 versus Rebirth.  Wally West the symbol of hopefulness versus Wally West PTSD-crippled mass murderer.  Dark Multiverse versus the Metaverse. Eventually, Johns, realizing that his power over DC's characters in mass media gave him greater influence than DiDio's power over them in comics, left DC Comics for DC Entertainment.  And without Johns to counterbalance DiDio's negativity, DC Comics became sour enough that readers finally started to spit it out rather than swallow it.

Dan DiDio doesn't seem like a bad person who wants bad things to happen to damaged heroes.  But he does seem like a dumb person who thinks that is what makes comics interesting.  Like many (so, so many) creators at DC, he's infected with Marvel-Envy, thinking that DC's characters need to be overwhelmed, unhappy and put-upon, damaged, distressed, disturbed, and alienated to be, ya know, COOL and popular like Marvel heroes.  Totally blind to the fact that historically, DC's characters were cool in a different way; they were cool precisely because, despite personal adversities, they were NOT any of those things.

DiDio's not bad. He's not even bad at his job, I think. He simply doesn't get DC.  Here are a few examples.

He wanted to KILL Nightwing / Dick Grayson. Who thinks that way? Is there a more beloved character in DC comics?  Who even comes up with the IDEA of killing the Sensational Character Find of 1940, let alone pushes it so hard that Geoff Johns simply flat-out REFUSED to do it?   

Do NOT mess with Dick Grayson,
'cuz he'll make it look like an accident.

He wanted the Spectre to kill Shazam because Shazam "doesn't fit in with the rest of the DCU".  Is Shazam a unique and unusual property? Yes. But if you can't even imagine that he can be made to work in the DCU somehow then your view of the DCU is too narrow for you to be in charge of it. 

Well, Dan, Billy's still working within DC.
And you're not.

He gave the Phantom Stranger an origin. As Judas the Discipline. I can think of nothing that so clearly shows how deeply someone doesn't understand the DCU as that.  He managed to besmirch the Phantom Stranger, Western Civilization most awesome character, as a damaged, tortured, fuck-up tied to a particular religious system.  That's a tragic level of stupidity, right there.   

Dan DiDio not pictured.

At the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, DiDio showed how little he gets readers:

“We do these Facsimile Editions where we reprint older issues of comics including all the old ads and stuff…and in some cases these are selling more than the new comics with these characters. People are more interested in buying the stories from 30 or 40 years ago than the contemporary stories, and that’s a failure on us. We should be focused on moving things forward, always pushing the boundaries and finding new stories to tell. That’s how we’ll survive and grow this industry.”

DiDio assumes that people fall back to reading older stories because the new ones aren't "moving things forward, pushing boundaries, and finding new stories to tell."  What he really means is that people are reading old comics because we aren't forcing them to forget about continuity and the history of who the characters are and what they are like.  The perceived antidote is to wrest by force the idea of what those characters are from the dead claws of nostalgia.

You're too late, Dan; it's been done.

But the way to get people to focus on the tree's seasonal blossoms isn't by tearing up the roots.  People don't read comics starring characters who've been around for 80 years because they are aching to move things forward and push boundaries.  Nor do they read them simply out of nostalgia.  They want to read stories that depict familiar characters in familiar ways but in a new story or a new situation.  The value of character familiarity and consistency is that, for both the creator and the reader, the focus can be on the story and its plot.

Which often require a LOT of focus.

It seems like the modern assumption for why a comic book isn't more popular is that something is wrong with the character, so the character must be changed.  Does it ever occur to anyone that maybe your stories just suck?

Truth hurts.

Two of my favorite series this year have been Sholly Fisch's Scooby-Doo Team-Ups and Matt Fraction's Jimmy Olsen.  That's certainly not because Scooby-Doo or Jimmy Olsen are favorite characters of mine.  It's because those (really good) writers took those characters at their ridiculous face value and wrote stories that, rather than try to change the characters, actually take full advantage of who and what those characters are.  I wish more modern writers would give that a try and stop wasting everyone's time trying to put Their Stamp on the characters.

Sassy Sombrero Superman never really got the chance he deserved, though.

If you want to write comics where you can do anything you want with the characters, then create those characters.  But iconic, flagship characters are worth more than any individual creator; Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman are known much more broadly than anyone who writes or draws them. They always have been and always will be.  So preserving and cultivating the character should be the priority, rather than indulging the writer. Heck, you could probably pick one and switch it to on-spec writing. "Hey, everyone; submit us a story for Heroperson that colors between the lines of their existing world."  You would get 12 interesting stories a year, from different perspectives, memorably unique, none of which had to be part of an 'arc' or 'change the character forever', and it would probably show more continuity that DC can manage with its golden stable of auteurs.   The reason that doesn't happen is that DC is convinced the creator fame is what lures readers to buy comics. Well, I guarantee you anyone reading Superman or Legion now is doing so despite Bendis not because of him.

Although he was great in Human Centipede 2.

Not understanding such principles is at the core of DiDio's failure. DiDio's leadership at DC often went awry because it didn't combat these negative and chaotic tendencies.  I am no fan of Marvel's Stan Lee, god knows, but I like that Lee wasn't hampered by being a fan of comics; he simply published them.  He was enough of a realist to know that, in his own words, "comics survive not on change but on the illusion of change", something that DiDio wasn't woke enough to understand.

If I like Stan Lee more than I like thee, then,
it's fair to say I don't like thee very much.

I am told that Dan DiDio loved comics; but loving something doesn't mean you know how to do it well. Now that he's no longer in charge, a new era can begin.

My question is: will this new era (with or without the new '5G' timeline) be a repudiation or a repetition of DiDio's mistakes...?

The Silicon Age Theory

Has time sped up?

In the previous century there developed a fairly stable pattern to the DCU.  It wasn’t pre-planned but occurred as a natural outgrowth to the rhythms of society.  Roughly every 15 years, as generation of childhood readers “aged out” of comics’ readership, the DCU would be rebooted.

It wasn’t ever put that way, and there were always other ostensible reasons for the change.  The Silver Age started “when it was time to bring superheroes back” after their popularity fell during the post-War/Wertham  years. The Bronze Age started when “a more serious world needed less frivolous superheroes, ones more quote unquote relevant”.  The Iron Age started when “the DCU became too complicated for new readers”.  The subsequent Age (more on that later) started when “people wanted a brighter, larger universe”.  

Perhaps.  But more generally, DC comics move from one “Age” to another when:

• the initial readership for the current Age has suffered enough attrition  to make a change a worthwhile or necessary risk; and/or
• the zeitgeist has changed sufficiently that it demands a change in tone that’s difficult to accomplish in the current age.

In the Golden Age, heroes and villains shot and maimed and killed in Dick Tracy world of bright colored and wide-eyed corpses. Corpses EVERYWHERE, stinking up the streets like ginko fruit in the District of Columbia.  The Depression/War years were not for the squeamish, either in the real life or the comics.

Remember, kids; Captain Marvel fought zombies before your parents were born.

In the Silver Age, people had had enough of all that unpleasantness, and DC’s heroes and villains obligingly put down their guns and engaged in elaborate games of wits, one-up-manship, and thematic tomfoolery with an expanded cast of pets, pals, and gadgetry.  

Green Arrow and Speedy collect their wits? Jeez, how long IS this story?!

In the Bronze Age, faced with social unrest and societal self-doubt, readers found that all that ridiculous, so heroes and villains became relevant, disagreeable, and fallible.  Green Arrow’s heyday, for obvious reasons.

All sympathy, Bronze Age Batman lets you stay unconscious on the first date.

As a result, readers headed toward the Iron Age with a bunch of crabby, crappy heroes (I’m looking at you, Stupid Bronze Age Batman) who lived in a bizarre Silver Age wonderland of weirdness, and the tension between the two had grown laughable.  The time had come to clear the board completely, and the Iron Age eliminated all the previous piled up continuity for a total restart.  Except for Batman, really. Because he’s Batman.

But since then, readers have been hit with repeated reboots of the DCU. In DC’s first 47 years, it had, essentially two reboots; in the last 30 years it’s had at least five (depending on how you count them).  

Is time –and our comic book media cycle--speeding up?  Are reboots coming more frequently because readership is smaller and more volatile? Are attention spans shorter?  Has DC simply become addicted to reboots because, like a rat pushing a lever, they get the delicious cheese of a sales bump each time they do it? Are they just screwing up reboots because they've lost the ancient art of doing so correctly and comprehensively?

Well… all of those are true to at least some degree, no question.  And it does look bad if you look at it this way, assuming that each reboot heralds a new age:

But I currently look at it a different way.  One that is enabled by no longer equating a ‘reboot’ with a change of Age.  The shift from the Silver to the Bronze Age was dramatic; very dramatic.  But, technically, there was no ‘reboot’ (as they are now called) between the two.  In fact, though this will defy the expectations of many, I would make the case that, despite the huge change between the Golden and Silver Ages, there was no reboot between them either.  Yes, we got a new Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman; but they had all been discontinued for some time.  The characters that were still in print (Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow) pretty much continued their adventures without much of a hiccough. Were there a lot more gorillas and aliens on their dance cards? Of course.  But there was no clear break or repudiation with the past.  

If you think of it that way then the only changes of Age that really coincide with a reboot is pre/post-Crisis (from multiverse to universe) and pre/post-Infinite Crisis (from universe to multiverse).  The other ‘reboots’ are just continuity jiggering. And a lot of that is of the kind that used to be done without renumbering and fanfare (a new costume, a new status quo, a new city or supporting cast, or casually just forgetting stories that don’t fit any more).  This used to be done all the time (either out of necessity or apathy) and during the Hypertime period DC came out and said as much.  The DCU, they posited, was a Heraclitean river; you can’t step into the same version of it twice.  

I submit that the ‘real’ history of the DCU looks like this:

We are now approaching the second furniture-shuffling-style 'reboot' of what I now call the Silicon Age (characterized by the return of the multiverse and the rise of digital comics and superhero cinema) ... pretty much right on schedule.  I predict it will last for another 7 years, when the next real change of Age will come and comics will start to be written by and for people who don't remember a time before the internet.

Reboot? The Testimony of Aquaman

"Our next witness is the King of Seas, Aquaman.  Mr Curry, do you swear to--"

"I am SO HAPPY TO BE HERE."

"Uh...that's great, sir.  May I ask why?"

"Before the last reboot I was always dead, or disfigured, or demented. Now I'm HERE. And I'm AWESOME."

"I see. So you'd say, then, that you are faring well in the reboot?"

"Poseidon's beard, man!  I have a KINGDOM.  I have RESPECT. I am BADASS.  I have a HOT REDHEAD as a consort (I don't even have to be married).  I've got no Aqualad for baggage. I have ALL my body parts, and a shiny costume, and great hair! AND TWO BOOKS!"

"I see. So, you feel that this newfound respectful treatment--"

"TWO!"

"Yes, that's my favorite part, also, for obvious reasons.  There's talk that--"

"And a DOG. Salty the Aquadog! Wanna see a picture? I live in a cool lighthouse and everyone in town loves me!"

"So the--"

"I'm going to be in MOVIE, did you know that? A cameo, yeah, but with a BIGGER film down the road."

"If--"

"OH, and not only am I a badass, my VILLIANS are, too.  Ocean Master, Scavenger, Black Manta,  heck even VULKO is a badass.  Even the new Creature King!"

"Can--"

"OMG, do you think they'll bring back the Human Flying Fish? Only as a BADASS?!"

"YOUR MAJESTY!. there'stalkthatDCisgoingtoreboottheiruniverseagainnextyearandreversethingsorcreatea newstatusquohowwouldyoufeelaboutthat?"


"What?"

"I --"

"That's ...that's OUTRAGEOUS!!!"

"So you don't want to be removed from the New52 into some other context?"

"Whoever tries will be so full of trident holes that the sponges will pity him."

"No further questions."

First Witness: Superman

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the evidence has alreadybeen placed before you: it seems increasingly likely that DC will be rebooting its multiverse in the spring of next year.  The question being put to you is not whether it will… but whether it should. 

I call to the stand my first witness:  the Man of Steel, Superman.”

“Do you solemnly swear etc., so help you Rao?”
“I never lie.”

“Unless someone’s asking Clark Kent whether he’s Superman.”

“Superman never lies.  Clark Kent, however, is a lying sack of babootch poo.”

“Superman, can you tell the court how you feel you’ve fared in the New52 reboot?”

“World’s best known superhero loses parents, girlfriend, and job overnight.”

“You really are a reporter, aren’t  you? Please elaborate.”

“Well, my parents, universally credited as the source my unwavering moral compass, used to be alive before. Now they are dead.  No big reason for it. Just easier not to have to write them, I suppose.  I used to have two long-running love interests, Lana Lang and Lois Lane.  Curious—both have the initials—“

“And now?”

“Lana’s an engineer.  Lois has some other boyfriend.”

“Who’s secretly a supervillain or a longtime rival or your moral opposite?”

“No.  Anyway, now I have to date someone who grew up in a lesbian commune and has a bondage fetish.”

“Charming.  And work?”

“I think I work at some website that can’t possibly support me and is really the brainchild of Cat Grant.  I think maybe I still live with my pal Jimmy Olsen, who’s now a wealthy heir.”

“So…they’re supporting you?”

“I—well, they are my supporting cast.  Maybe I crush coal into diamonds and sell them, I don’t know, don’t ask me.”

“You seem uncomfortable with this line of questioning.”

“No….it’s …the collar. It’s itchy.”

“And that bothers YOU?”

“It’s super-itchy.  Besides, I’m no longer wearing underwear and that makes me feel a little self-conscious.  That’s not how I was raised.”

“How do you know?  Your parents have been dead since the reboot so you’ve never met them.”

“Anyway, I don’t think I’m faring very well since the reboot.  Ever since it happened I’ve been feeling short-temped and stand-offish.” 

“So you’d appreciate a chance to go back or start fresh?”

“That’d be super, yes.”

“No more questions.”

Rage of the Red Absorbascon....!

I’ve been slowing let the new DCU sink into my bones before I sink my fangs back into it (um… except for the two posts where I already did). For the record, I support DC’s decision, I think they are doing the right thing in principle, and in practice most of their continuity have the whiff of commonsense about them. Some decisions are certainly not consistent with my tastes (Darkseid? Deathstroke? Eyeroll.) But that’s to be expected. No version of the DCU is going to be entirely to any one fan’s taste; if it were, it would probably only have one fan, which is not a good business model.

That said, it’s time to comment on some of things I’m not liking, spewing forth my carmine bile like Dex-Starr the Red Lantern Cat.

Mr. Terrific. Gainluca Gugliotta: put down your pencil… step away from it slowly and keep your hands in the air; you are under arrest for crimes against art. Usually I’m not fussy about art (at least I do not think of myself as being fussy), but the art in Mister Terrific is, frankly, unacceptable. No one should be drawn with a neck that looks like I could personally crush it in one of my tiny little hands. How much worse is it when that person is Karen Starr? At times many of characters have an odd, warped look, something like those caricatures that street artists draw; I had to double check to make sure that this work was paid for by DC and not the WPA. It was as if the artist had been possessed by the ghost of Gene Colan, then fell down drunk with inspiration and drew everything from the perspective of someone who can’t get up off the floor. I thought Mr Terrific was supposed to be hip, not FULL OF HIPS. HIPS EVERYWHERE. Giant hips. Thrusting at you, shattering the Fourth Wall. Great Shades of Elvis! Of all of the art styles I might have encouraged to be used for Mr Terrific, Pelvic Transquartomuralism was not on the list.

Static Shock. Hey, the new Spider-Man is black! And by that I do not mean Miles Morales in the Ultimate Universe. I actually mean DC’s Static, who is so annoying with his” juvenile patter while fighting in the Manhattan (and not Dakota) skyline” routine that I wanted to jump into the comic and expose myself to some dangerous chemicals or radioactive experiment, just so I could become a supervillain long enough to punch him in the face. This saddens me. I liked the cartoon show a lot; I really wanted to like this new Static and his book (particularly if DC is sacrificing Black Lightning from continuity just to give this kid breathing room). But honestly, I do not anticipate continuing to play money to subject myself to this comic. Although recent developments suggest I may wish to delay that decision.

Suicide Squad. DC, I call you cowards: that is NOT Amanda Waller. Part of the reason I loved Amanda Waller was precisely because she wasn’t an aerobics instructor wrapped in spandex. As I’ve said before: there are fat people in the real world. Many of them are accomplished, powerful, interesting, influential; just like “normal” people. Once upon a time, DC had a place for those people in its world, too. But fat people must now be condemned and cannot serve as positive role models, because, well, gosh, any decent person simply doesn’t get fat. So long, Etta Candy the Solid! Good bye, Amanda Waller the Hefty! If we permit you to exist, it’s only after a trip to the same Fat Farm Alfred Pennyworth got sent to, all those years ago.

Stormwatch. I was so curious how the Wildstorm Universe characters would be come across as integral parts of the DC universe, rather than being stuck in their other dimensional shtetl . And now I know: BADLY. Suddenly, they all seem… ridiculous. Most of them have absurdist hypostatic powers that are pretty much just like the magick-y style powers of Golden Age heroes that let them do whatever the heck the writer wanted them to do. When J’onn J’onnz is most normal, realistic character in your book, your book has a problem. Or perhaps I should just say, “I have a problem with your book”, which is trying so hard to have been written by Grant Morrison I can see the strain on every page. It will be a shame if comics only gay-male couple + the freakin' Martian Manhunter isn't enough to keep me interested in a comic. But a shame it may have to be... .

Batwoman. Okay, I have nothing bad to say about Batwoman. So what if I can barely follow her zany backstory, even though I read all her previous issues and should know her backstory already? Batwoman is just … beautiful. It is what comic book art should be: it is stylish, uses the medium fully, and does so in service of the story. And Batwoman herself? Pretty much the best character design ever. Long after DC’s new found obsession with kneepads, functionality, and collars is forgotten, Batwoman will still look exactly as she does now: Red and Black and Fabulous all over.