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Thursday, October 13, 2005
"It's not a crisis if they know they're going to win."
I remember having a conversation with a very smarter writer who told me “I’m reading all of DC’s crossover stuff. I can’t defend it but I’m reading it.” It’s now after completing Infinite Crisis #1 do I totally get what he was saying.
I’ve written how not being schooled in DC’s sprawling continuity can be a hindrance when trying to follow along with some of their stories. I prefer reading the stories that happened before the 1986 Crisis on Infinite Earths house-cleaning event, and apparently they don’t matter anymore (or do they?). I actually haven’t read the first Crisis so I worried that I might be confused with what’s going on in this comic.
My fears were unfounded. Geoff Johns spells out everything the reader needs to know in this series. “The world is going to Hell” as Wonder Woman tells us but many of the superheroes who are there to protect the world are too busy squabbling amongst each other to get things done. Early in the book Superboy proves to be too much of a wimp to help anybody. The Quality Comics heroes like Uncle Sam and Phantom Lady try to do some good but get beat up by the likes of Reverse-Flash and even Bizarro. Everything seems to be getting worse until Earth-2 Superman, or as I prefer to call him “Classic Superman,” decides to smash the dimensional boundaries and help this world. It looks like he’ll show these whipper-snappers a thing or two about shutting the Hell up and actually getting stuff done.
While I may have been able to follow the events of the book they don’t have that weight of importance for me. Beyond reading Spoilt! I haven’t gotten caught up in the soap-opera DC’s built for themselves since reading and being unimpressed by Identity Crisis. These books sell like gangbusters because creators know exactly what buttons to push as to build anticipation in long time readers. A lot of what’s going on is some character unable to save the day and revealing that some bad shit is coming down because of it. If you’re not a long time reader then you’re not given as much of a reason to care why you’re not coming in with a vested interest in the wizard Sahazam or Rann and Thanagar battling it out.
There are quieter moments with the characters in between the superhero action that are meant to help us understand the toll this is taking on those who carry the world on their shoulders. Unfortunately the main one, the fights between the “Big Three,” seems shrill. Other moments of characterization worked better. The last page revelation was effective because it had a counter-example with the earlier sequence with Superboy, something that happened in the book and not some other series that ties-in to this.
Infinite Crisis still provides entertaining stuff in it for new readers. Phil Jimenez’s art creates some very impressive scenes. The OMAC stuff was great, leading up to a good-looking double page spread starring Nightwing. The Rann-Thanagar War could have been a confusing mess but Jimenez kept it clear enough. Both of the big superheroic fights were engaging and fun to read. Even though some of the quieter bits may not have worked, Johns does a good job of balancing between the big, loud fight scenes, never making the transitions between the two jarring.
This book doesn’t suffer from the pretentiousness and dour seriousness that Identity Crisis did. While dreadful narration sucked the energy out of that story, here Earth-2 Supes provides a somewhat skeptical and knowing take on what’s going on in Infinite Crisis. It makes what would have otherwise been a list of bad stuff happening into something quite readable.
The architects of this big events may talk about evolving DC’s properties for the 21st Century for a more sophisticated audience, but there’s nothing here that’s more evolved or sophisticated then anything you would find in a superhero comic from the past 25 years (to be fair neither Johns or Jimenez were quoted in the article). Dorian’s definition of this stuff I find more apt. That is its all "big dumb super-hero melodrama." Call me crazy, but that makes these books sound much more appealing than what Greg Rucka and Dan DiDio are selling to us in The New York Times.
Like the writer I quoted above, can I defend reading this stuff? No. It’s “big, dumb super-hero melodrama” done in an entertaining fashion and nothing else. By all accounts the cynicism on display will be subverted for a happier, kinder DC and that sounds appealing. Although why they have to have one event book after another to introduce such a concept instead of just writing happier, kinder books is beyond me. Still, if this is how they want to introduce such a thing it could be worse.
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Just a quick plug: The Comic Journal #271 came out yesterday, with your truly writing a lot of the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con coverage. I didn’t post much about the convention here because almost everything I did those three days (I skipped Sunday) turned into write-ups for the magazine. There were some interesting panels covered by myself and my colleagues so it’ll be interesting to read. In particular, I thought the one-two punch of the Bill Finger Award panel and the Jack Kirby Tribute panel gave you a good sense of what the industry was and, in a lot of ways still is, like for creators. I hope you enjoy the articles.
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If you want to hear the creators back then, including King Kirby, then you’d do good in reading Mark Evanier’s examination of MMMS records., complete with mp3’s of both recordings. Mike gave me a CD with the 1964 records on it and I was mesmerized. It’s both hilarious and cringe-worthy to hear guys like Kirby, Chic Stone and Wally Wood performing for Stan Lee. Hearing Flo Steinberg refer to “Vince Colleter” is simply great in itself. Go listen, it is fascinating stuff when you start to think what was going on in those guys’ heads the day they recorded that stuff
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