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Friday, October 14, 2005
Fin-heads, fin-heads, rolly-polly fin-heads
Mr. Ellis, if you will (from a recent Bad Signal):
The New York Times arts section
today has a large feature on the
new DC, home of Grim Fin-Headed
Arserape. Rather than Mark Waid's
happy shiny take on it -- which is
essentially that once they get
through all this Dark Stuff things
will be lovely again -- grim fin-headed
Greg Rucka is heard to say that
when the fans call it too dark, it
means they're scared.
(And I'm sorry, Greg, but I cannot
resist the comedy of applying the
prefix "grim fin-headed" now.)
They're an odd mix, the four DC
guiding lights of the moment. Grant's
superhero stuff operates on what
he *thought* Silver Age comics
were like, not what they were
*actually* like. Waid talks a good
happy shiny game, but his work is
often remarkably bitter. Geoff
Johns comes off as the classic DC
"respectful" guy. Greg, as a
storyteller, is incredibly egoless --
it's almost impossible to find a
signature to his writing. It's a far
weirder mix than it looks at first
glance.
Rich Johnston's column has also speculated on the planning of this new DC. According to a recent Lying in the Gutters (which I would link to if CBR wasn't down) Morrison and Waid want to bring back that bygone sense of wonder, Greg Rucka wants to keep things dark and Geoff Johns is the man in the middle. I don't know how much credence we can attribute to these takes on where DC wants to go but it does add something interesting to the reading experience of these books.
I remember the glory days of 2004 when people were noticing a dichotomy between DC publishing the grim, deconstructing Identity Crisis as well as the celebratory The New Frontier. Perhaps Infinite Crisis wants to start in Identity Crisis territory and end up where The New Frontier was? Maybe that's too simple.
As to Ellis's take on Morrison's writing, as far as I can tell the magikal Scotsman sees Silver Age books as an outpouring of imagination wrapped up in twisted human affairs adhering (most of the time) to a dignified moral code leading up to a genuine positive outlook on life. I understand having a different idea of what Broome/Infantino or Lee/Kirby stories are about but if the preceding isn't seeing Silver Age books the way they actually are then I suppose I'm not either. Doesn't stop me from filling my bookshelf with reprints of the stuff.
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