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Final Crisis and also how to fix DC Comics
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I don't think I've gotten to it yet. Right now they are in Disco Hell with Supergirl.
This is something I always wondered. Is there a specific reason why DC well, sucks when it comes to their TPB output?
I think that was part of his idea behind Final Crisis (and also Batman R.I.P.): to tell a story about the grimmest, darkest thing ever, namely the literal end of existence, and by doing so render further grim darkness redundant. Unfortunately, I think he miscalculated - "redundant" doesn't exist in the modern superhero comics vocabulary, and there is no good idea that doesn't deserve six more just like it. :P
JSA is fun and quirky? I liked what I read of it (the first six or eight issues) but the opening story had so much dismemberment and grotesquerie that it almost turned me off the series completely.
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I think so. I don't want people to get the idea that I only consider "fun" books ones where Blue Beetle and Booster Gold open up lemonade stands on Mogo. Like I said before, I think fun books can still have serious consequences and themes. The first few issues of Young Justice had a teenage villain shot dead by his father, and JLI/E had a pretty considerable body count, along with depressing stuff like Beetle getting put into a coma, and imagining himself in Dan Garrett's clothes while unconcious.
While the first few issues of JSA did have a pretty dark tone, as it had a group of villains murdering heroes' families, it perked up considerably after that. The book is essentially all about family, legacy, community and making better good guys, while avoiding the pitfalls that plunged the Kingdom Come world into darkness. Though the JSA series that preceded Justice Society of America was more in the spirit of what I'm talking about.
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but hey
that's just me
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Which is exactly what superhero comics should be. There can be grim and dark stories, but it should be about overcoming that, not succumbing to it.
I'm reluctant to say what they should or should not be. A couple of my favorite books from back in the day were Suicide Squad and the Denny O'Neil/Denys Cowan The Question, both of which were just ridiculously grim, particularly the latter. The Question series ended with the main character deciding that Hub City was too corrupt to save and retreating into the forest to live a life of Zen solitude while his city rioted itself out of existence.
On the Marvel side, Ann Nocenti's Daredevil run and almost all of The New Mutants were quite depressing reads as well. For that matter, ROM: Spaceknight was pretty much eighty issues of the main character seeing all his friends and loved ones get killed. But they were great books all the same.
It's funny, right? I just said that the dismemberment in JSA almost turned me off it, but here I liked these books, where all sorts of horrible things happen. I guess the difference is context. The Question was a scrupulously realistic series that tried to say serious things about the eighties urban nightmare. The same is true to a lesser extent of Daredevil. New Mutants was a soap opera, and nothing bad happened without at least three issues of angst being devoted to it. And Suicide Squad was highly political and "adult", but even so a lot of the more objectionable stuff happened off-panel.
In fact, that's a good object example. the beginning scene of Suicide Squad #1 is a really nasty massacre scene, with superpowered Iraqi terrorists killing hundreds at an airport (well, actually a training camp made up to look like an airport, but the deaths were all real). It was harrowing stuff, but it was done in longshots and crowd scenes and so on. I contrast this with the picnic massacre in JSA, which seemed almost pornographically preoccupied with all the horrible things that superpowered murderers could do to defenseless humans.
So I guess my problem is not so much with grimness and brutality, taken on their own terms, as with how pervasive the attitude is these days. JSA is supposed to be a light book about family and legacy and so on but it felt really tainted to me by this unnecessary torture-porn approach to the storytelling (which I felt again in Rogues' Revenge). I don't know if I could enjoy that sort of thing in any context, but it would strike me as a lot less objectionable in a MAX or Vertigo-type book. At any rate it felt like a book that had been infected by the attitude of a company that would decide to base a major summer event around rape and murder.
Seriously, how lighthearted can his friends be?
Is Plastic Man's schtick really appropriate in that book? Of course not. Which is why they don't combine them. Yet, there he is with Batman in a JLA book, etc. It's weird, because it reminds us that the Batman in one comic is literally the same character, but not figuratively.
I think that was why it made so much sense for Vertigo to split off: the universe of stories it wanted to tell (grand, mythic and mystical arcs) didn't fit properly with what else was being said in D.C.
I'm curious if you read the issues after. B/C while it was a little overboard in that issue, it worked out pretty perfectly (as perfectly as you can get with an issue of graphic murder I guess). Also, I guess I found it pretty horrifying but that much more satisfying once it was resolved.
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Mantlo had a thing about that. Micronauts was about heroes who were first rebels, then criminals, all of whom lost loved ones along the way, either through death or just bad things happened.
And ROM really was bad. He's fighting this whole war to reclaim his humanity and halfway through, it's lost to him forever, and every time he thinks he's found a way to become human anyway, it gets fucked up (Quasimodo cloning him a new body that deteriorated while Quasimodo took over the cyborg body)
But still, those are two of my favorite books of all time because despite the shit that got thrown at them the heroes never gave up. Period. Just wasn't fathomable.
Terrible awful things happened to everyone in that book.
Funnybook Babylon's David Uzumeri also had some interesting thoughts on DC's failure to properly promote upcoming books at NYCC, which kind of ties into this situation.
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For comparison, new colorist v. old colorist.
Mark Waid also had some words to say regarding DC's treatment of Grant Morrison at NYCC. You know, the convention Grant missed because he was home with his sick mother.
DC the company is quickly becoming more entertaining than the comics they publish. Maybe they can tap Judd Winick to pen The Real World: DC.
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The only thing "interactive" about it was having to go online to find out what the fuck happened.
I'm all for experiments with prose and the medium you work in... but charging me 3.99 an issue, plus tie-ins, for an experiment with the written word just screams ego.
i really don't think it's morrison's ego that made him make FC hard for (some) people to understand. i think it was the creative drive of someone who's constantly experimenting and trying new and unexpecited writing techniques while trying to expand the vocabulary of comics storytelling as a medium. a cursory examination of his bibliography pretty much nails that one down.
is it ego for morrison to assume that his readers would be on board with a new style of mega-event storytelling? i mean, writing like grant morrison got him to the grant morrisonly position he currently occupies, so i don't know why he'd stop now.
and again, it's not like he had a gun in dan didio's face, forcing him to publish FC as it came out
The guy who writes it - who makes his living through writing, and has for twentysomething years, and wants to constantly hone and sharpen his skills so he can stay fresh and vital - he's the one taking it too seriously? Not the people who pronounced internet vendetta because Mary Marvel was wearing a different evil costume than the one she wore in Countdown?
BTW, this Mark Waid thread that Munch quoted from is good reading.
You don't see John Grischm releasing a Choose Your Own Adventure book, or Stephen King releasing a book told entirely in second person as a means of "trying something different."
actually, stephen king mixes up his style fairly routinely. not always successfully, but it's hard to argue that you're getting the exact same reading experience between cell, the dark tower saga, and 'salem's lot, for example.
i mean, i don't think he's nearly as successful at it as some other writers, but yeah, king tries new things.
but really, what point is there in comparing grant morrison to stephen king, or john grisham? that's like disliking a martin scorsese movie because he doesn't direct the same way as ron howard.
the creators aren't doing comparable things.
and yes, grant morrison has a clear history of stretching the bounds of comic book storytelling and of trying new and different things. remember buddy meeting his creator in animal man? or the all-text issue of batman? or the psychedelia and grime of the filth? or the painting that ate paris from the doom patrol?
And actually, I would rather him try something and fail then never try anything at all. But perhaps just not in the huge "universe changing" events...
So what book is Clark doing anyways?
There have been novels written in second person before, you know. Bestselling ones, even.
And as it happens, King wrote this:
And Grisham - who frankly could benefit from more experimentation - also did this:
So they clearly feel the same need that Grant did. If you think what Grant did in FC was so weird and bizarre, you need to check out the ACME! Novelty Library, or Art Spiegelman's RAW, or Clowes' Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron - Morrison gave linear storytelling a slight pinch on the butt, but there are plenty of books, books read by thousands and thousands of people, that burn it to the fucking ground.
why not, though? i mean, really, what does it matter, you know? if you didn't like it, if nobody liked it (which DC editorial may base their stance on this on), then poof they can change it all back just like magic because these characters aren't really real. it wouldn't even be hard. you just ignore all of final crisis. marvel learned that lesson pretty sharpish after morrison left x-men.
i guess i'd rather see a big "universe changing" event really be crazy and different and unlike anything i've read before (sort of what reading the FIRST crisis must have been like back when it first came out) rather than just another big ol' punch-em-up shebang.
was fc another big ol' punch-em-up shebang? yes, because that's what a big event comic is. but it was one that was told in a way that made me think about it and mull it over in my head later and was sometimes totally incomprehensible and sometimes totally amazing with snatches of phrase that (big gaymo alert!) still give me chills when i read them. i can't wait to sit down and reread the whole thing in a big hardcover (since i seem to have lost at least three issues), and that's something i haven't thought about any event comic in a good long time.
i think ultimately what i liked about it was that it was about the power of stories and i hear that everybody’s got a special kind of story. everybody finds a way to shine. it don’t matter that you got not a lot. so what, they’ll have theirs, and you’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine and together we’ll be fine
Doom Patrol. He was the one guy on the creative team (including the writer and artist for the Metal Men backup) that Didio didn't announce at NYCC.
Anyway, I loved Final Crisis and honestly think it's one of the best event books I've read (alongside Sinestro Corps War and No Mans Land).
I guess... I don't really know why, except maybe that it can turn off new readers... or perhaps people not as well versed in DC, like myself.
Honestly, I think my issues with Final Crisis (about which I am ultimately ambivalent) has less to do with his storytelling, and more to do with my failings in DC History 101.
I don't really think there's many new readers in the first place. Event comics sell because all the pre-existing readers decide that they have to buy the event comic, instead of maybe spending it on a different, less "important" comic.
And I don't really think you need to know DC History 101 to understand Final Crisis. You only really need to know what role a lot of the lower key characters play, rather than their entire life story. Anthro is a caveman, Turpin is a detective, etc.
And if you want to learn more about those characters, there are these things on the internets called google and wikipedia.
I can't find any other reference to this, but Comics Can Be Good is pretty reliable.
Honestly, I know nothing about the DCU, besides some Batman and Supes trivia, and I was able to follow FC just fine. I think a lot of comic book readers are a bit anal retentive, and need to over-analyze things a bit (eg.: who would win in a fight, or how much can colossus lift, type of debates), instead of going with the flow of the story.
when I was reading the book, I had no clue what checkmate was, but I was able to deduce fairly easily they were some sort of SHIELD-like organization. Same thing with Mr. Terrific: He seems to be super smart and has floating balls that do non-descript shit. Would it help if I knew more about those things? Probably, but they werent necessary to follow the story, and the books themselves explained all the things you needed to enjoy it.
Comic readers may over analyze, but seriously, there's no way to know what that vampire thing is at the end without Superman Beyond and a few minutes on Wikipedia (which is fine, but certainly not acceptable for a whole, good story). Maybe it's not that comics people are overly anal as much as you are completely withdrawn or disinterested in the story.
But hey, we can disagree. I didn't hate FC. I didn't enjoy it as much as Infinite Crisis though, and I knew even less about the DCU back then.