Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Superman

The Pull List: Batman, Brave and The Bold, Damnation, Maestros, Mighty Thor, Punks Not Dead, and more!

by

Doctor Strange: Damnation #1, art by Rod Reis

I know it seems impossible, but The Pull List has grown even bigger this week for the third week in a row! That’s because I finished catching up to present on a number of DC and Marvel books, plus I picked up five smaller press books.

  • DC Comics
    • Batman #41
    • Batman & the Signal #2
    • The Brave and The Bold #1
    • Damage #2
    • Deathbed #1 (Vertigo)
    • Justice League #39
    • Milk Wars – DC Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye / Swamp Thing Special
    • Super Sons #13
    • Superman #41
    • Trinity #18
  • Image Comics
    • The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson #2
    • Ice Cream Man #2
    • Maestros #5
    • Redlands #6
    • Twisted Romance #3
  • Marvel Comics
    • Astonishing X-Men #8
    • Avengers #681
    • Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #5
    • Doctor Strange – Damnation #1
    • Generation X #87
    • Infinity Countdown Prime
    • Mighty Thor #704
    • Tales of Suspense #102
    • The Incredible Hulk #713
    • Venom #162
    • X-Men Gold #22
  • Smaller Publishers: Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Vault Comics, Zenescope
    • Belle Beast Hunter #2, Zenescope
    • Heathen #6, Vault Comics
    • James Bond: The Body #1, Dynamite Comics
    • Mata Hari #1, Dark Horse / Berger Books
    • Musketeers #1, Zenescope
    • Punks Not Dead #1, IDW Publishing / Black Crown

Pick of the Pull

Big Two (Marvel/DC) Issue of the Week:
Mighty Thor (2016) #704

A bloody, thrilling, heart-rending comic. Aaron has somehow amped up the drama in each of the last three issues as we hasten towards a potential Ragnarok at the hands of the Mangog and Jane Foster’s death at her own hands if she takes up the mantle of Thor just one more time.

Yet, beyond those looming disasters there is still Makelith’s war on the Ten Realms. Mangog is just one facet of that. Even in the dimness and tragedy, Aaron finds shining moments – Jane with her friend in the cancer ward, a father and son joined in battle, and a mother casting aside a snake that has wounded her before.

All the while, Dauterman and Wilson are turning in a quality of artwork never seen before at Marvel comics – truly, one of the pinnacles of art at Marvel in over 75 years of publishing.

This story has officially become the best Thor story in my eyes, and it just might be Marvel’s best longform story of all time. I’d place it alongside Mark Gruenwald Captain America and Chris Claremont X-Men at this point.

Best Small-Pub Issue of the Week:
Punks Not Dead (2018) #1, IDW Publishing / Black Crown

An utterly madcap introduction to Punks Not Dead (and, for me, to Black Crown comics, which are edited by Shelly Bond distributed by IDW). This book is part Injection, part Sid and Nancy, and a little dash of the more lighthearted issues of Sandman.

It follows a teenage boy and his scam artist mom as the kid picks up some kind of supernatural echo of the deceased Sid Vicious in a dingy airport bathroom. Meanwhile, the beleaguered Department for Extra-Usual Affairs is busy putting minor demons out of the closet at 10 Downing Street with a staff of one.

This book is funny, unique, and looks freaking brilliant. Artist Martin Simmonds is simply incredible, drawing a real-seeming Britain with amped up color and clever use of cut-and-pasted patterns to ground it in real, textured reality. I am in love with this book, and will not only be keeping up with it, but also checking out other titles from Black Crown. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Batman, Brave and The Bold, Damnation, Maestros, Mighty Thor, Punks Not Dead, and more!

Review: Doomsday Clock #1 vs. Watchmen #1

by

It is 2017, and every classic work of art or commerce is just another chance to launch a new franchise. Everything old is flogged again.

The Handmaid’s Tale is now an Emmy-winning television show that has extended its universe both before and after the story in the classic novel. The long-running Archie comics have been turned into a nonsensical thirst-trap of a TV show about sex and murder where it is every season of the year on every day to allow for a full range of fashionable costuming.

Classic franchises are groaning under the weight of being re-franchised. It’s franchising squared. Disney is determined to pump out Star Wars movies almost as frequently as they used to release Star Wars novels back in the day and Warner Brothers has rushed a Justice League into the theatres before we’ve had a chance to care about most of the individual heroes who would form it.

There’s even news that Amazon is planning to make an ongoing series out of Lord of the Rings, ignoring the extended fart sound that was made by the bloated Hobbit trilogy and the fact that they could simply serialize the original film series across two entire seasons if it was carved into TV sized chunks.

I’m trembling in anticipation for the “long awaited” adaptations of some of my favorite TV commercials and magazine ads.

(That is only halfway a joke.)

And here we are, revisiting Watchmen, one of the comic medium’s true masterpieces, because we cannot leave well enough alone.

Yes, we already had a Watchmen movie and a Before Watchmen, but they were each one-time events. This is more than an event. It’s also a mash-up with DC’s ongoing universe that we never asked for but cannot help but watch like rubberneckers delighting in a gruesome accident. (Which says nothing for the ethical concerns, .)

If anything can be forgiven of being a retread of past ground, shouldn’t Watchmen? After all, it was Alan Moore’s original idea to take a dead comics universe and put its characters through a meat grinder of a final story. He might have wound up using his own original characters in the end, but he’s just as culpable of re-franchising as any of these modern examples. Moore’s career is full of these examples – MiracleMan, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and even Peter Pan. He loves digging up comics corpses to reanimate as much as films studios do!

And therein lies the truth of the matter. Moore always got a pass because his work was derivative but delightful. All of these franchise sins can be forgiven if the new extension of the franchise is good. The Handmaid’s Tale won that Emmy, after all, and everyone loves an Archie with abs.

Why not revive the Watchmen? Everybody’s doing it and they’ve been doing it forever – since long before Moore did it back in 1986.

Doomsday Clock #1  & Watchmen #1 4.5 stars

Doomsday Clock #1 written by Geoff Johns, drawn by Gary Frank, and colored by Brad Andersen. Watchmen #1 written by Alan Moore, drawn by Dave Gibbons, and colored by John Higgins.

Doomsday Clock is not meant to be a slavish, panel-by-panel homage to Watchmen, but the parallels are clear.

Both issues open with similar narration. Both are largely contained in a 3×3 nine-panel grid structure, and this first issue of Doomsday Clock employs a similar rhythm of breaking the grid to Watchmen #1. Both issues end with a sudden scene change punctuated by a historic quote that is followed by illuminating back matter.

There is an additional storytelling parallel that Doomsday Clock #1 ought to have picked up from Watchmen #1. Watchmen included several scene transitions throughout the issue, though each one turned out to be an extension of Rorschach’s journey through the narrative.

The first scene change in Watchmen is the most significant. On page nine, we cut from Rorschach looking at the Comedian’s photo of the old Watchmen to that same photo hanging above Hollis Mason as he enjoys a beer with Dan Dreiberg. Their conversation reveals they are the two Nite Owls, old and new.

The scene could have existed elsewhere, but the transition immediately lends it additional context: some of the Watchmen are still alive, and some of their mantles were handed down to others.

A page later, we realize this story is still the story of Rorschach, who shows up unexpectedly in Dreiberg’s house as he returns. The implication is that Rorschach, too, was a Watchman – which also tells us that the membership has changed over time, pre-explaining the upcoming scenes with Ozymandias, Dr. Manhattan, and Silk Spectre.

For all his withering critique of society in his journal, Rorschach was once involved in protecting it. We immediately realize that, in a way, his pessimism is him bemoaning his own failures. [Read more…] about Review: Doomsday Clock #1 vs. Watchmen #1

New Collecting Guides: DC Comics Rebirth & New 52 (plus: What is DC Rebirth, anyway?)

by

It’s a new year and with it comes something I never thought I’d be saying on Crushing Krisis:

Today I’m announcing the first pair of what will eventually be 52 DC Comics Guides coming to CK –DC Comics Rebirth and DC Comics New 52.

Yes, really. Each guide comprehensively covers the issues of their era, with every comic listed and every collection linked.They’re available thanks to my supporters on Patreon. If you find them useful, I’d love it if you’d chip in $1 a month.

Why DC? Why now? And, what is DC Rebirth, anyway?

That’s a slightly longer story.

I get a modest amount of reader mail. It’s always extremely generous and kind and makes me obscenely happy. I try to respond to every message.

The vast majority of the questions therein can be classified into two categories. One is “Will you extend your X-Men Reading Order into Marvel Now?” (The answer is: “I’d really love to, but it would take a very long time.”)

The other is, “Would you ever consider creating guides to DC Comics?” [Read more…] about New Collecting Guides: DC Comics Rebirth & New 52 (plus: What is DC Rebirth, anyway?)

Does the past matter after a reboot?

by

To be fair, I don’t know if any of us really wanted to see a fourth film of Maguire’s puffy prematurely-balding version of Peter Parker.

We are living in the age of the reboot.

Last week, Amazing Spider-Man relaunched the webhead’s cinematic universe while the body of the old Tobey Maguire series was still warm. There’s a new Dallas series on TV. Sherlock Holmes revisionist history movies are being released alongside a present-day version of the detective on BBC TV.

So do those older, original versions matter?

Alternate Future History

Think about your favorite TV show or series of books. It’s a serialized, ongoing story that builds with every installment and references its past. You love it. You watch every episode and buy every volume. You are a super-fan.

What if there was some prior series with the same characters and concepts, but it was not a part of the current story you love? Would you buy it? This is increasingly common in our age of reboots. If you loved the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movie – which departs from the traditional Trek timeline post-Enterprise – are the other TV series and films automatically a must-watch? What about past Spider-Man movies, original Dallas, Sherlock Holmes books, Charlie’s Angels, G.I. Joe, Inspector Gadget, or Battlestar Galactica?

To me, Garfield is the perfect embodiment of Peter Parker – thin, gangly, awkward, and genuine.

Probably not. All those past series are just an alternate reality to the present ones. You don’t need to watch both.

Case Study: DC’s Crisis of Collected Editions

DC Comics  is one year into their successful line-wide New 52 reboot. Now they’re faced with a major crisis: they have a huge back catalog of trade paperbacks and hardcovers that might not matter.

DC’s rich history of iconic characters stretches back to 1938. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman – these heroes emerged as pure archetypes and over many decades evolved into the rounder, more dynamic characters they are today. There are many hundreds of older issues of their exploits available to reprint and press into the hands of eager young fans of today.

Action Comics #1, 1938

Except, today’s characters are not the same people – and I don’t just mean their personalities. DC’s Crisis On Infinite Earths rebooted everyone back in 1984, making post-1984 books the equivalent of new-Trek. Some of the characters beneath the masks of Flash and Green Lantern weren’t even the same as before! Then, after many years of tweaking, DC rebooted again last fall – creating a new-new-Trek.

What wasn’t immediately evident from those #1 issues was that some characters survived more intact than others. Batman’s corner of the DC Universe? Seemingly mostly the same, even if Bruce is younger than before. Superman? Origin retold from scratch, parents now dead, never in a relationship with Lois. Wonder Woman? Major changes in the Amazonian status quo, right down to her parentage.

Which brings me to my titular question: do DC Comics Collections matter? Yes, there are the Watchmen and the Killing Joke, the indisputable evergreen classics of the comics medium that will move units regardless of if their stories still count for anything.

But what about DC Archives, their premium hardcover reprints of Golden and Silver Age comics? What about Wonder Woman #205? Action Comics #527? The 70s Green Arrow / Green Lantern series?

Action Comics #1, 2011

None of it counts in continuity, so does it matter anymore? These classic stories have little to nothing to do with the current state of my favorite heroine. They aren’t all prohibitive classics. So, is there any point in reprinting them?

(Marvel doesn’t have this problem. Aside from some isolated soft reboots of certain characters, everything still counts, all the way back to the 40s. Every issue of X-Men is acknowledged and in continuity.)

Does the alternate past matter? You decide.

I want to know what you think. Do older stories still have a place post-reboot? If you loved JJ Abrams’s Star Trek did you immediately jump back to rewatch the original series?

And, on our case study: Should DC even bother to reprint non-seminal stories of characters other than Batman if they don’t matter in current continuity?

What do you think?

DC New 52 Review: Superman #1

by

Superman has been dangled like a carrot over readers’ noses all through DC’s 52 debut month, from his hot-headed flashback appearances in Justice League and Action Comics to his benevolent present day cameos in Swamp Thing and Supergirl.

The promise was implicit: you’ll get your full dose of Superman in the title with his name on it. Not only that, but that his modern depiction would help to contextualize the superheroes that appeared throughout all 52 books.

Well, we’ve arrived. 51 books later and it’s time to unveil the boy in blue in the present tense – in the capable hands of comics veteran George Perez.

Superman #1

Script & breakdowns George Perez, pencils & inks by Jesus Merino

Rating: 2 of 5 – Uneven

In a Line: “Superman, however, was occupied with other matters.”

#140char Review: Superman #1 is all the reasons modern readers mock 80s comics. Perez way overdoes it on script in this tangled one-shot plot.

CK Says: Skip it

Superman #1 under-delivers, focusing on every possible detail except for Superman. Classic creator George Perez over-scripts this allegory about print media living past the digital wrecking ball. Despite keeping this plot confined to a one-shot and fitting in a super-brawl, this issue was a chore to read.

This issue is too obsessed with text. Do we really need to know all the ins and outs of the Daily Planet’s newfound home in a major media empire? Perez chooses to defray his heavy-handed narrative voice-over by assigning it to in-story speakers, but it just makes things worse.

From the mayor’s overbearing introductory speech to a nonsensical newspaper article that reads like a bad blog post fraught with grammatical errors, Perez presents an unfortunate example of why modern comic readers tend to mock the overly-narrated issues of the 70s and early 80s.

If there is one aspect of the issue safe from criticism, it’s the artwork. Perez’s breakdowns guide artist Jesus Merino to fine issue of art – where’s it’s not obscured by text balloons, that is. A Courtney Cox inspired Lois winds up the star of the issue, and like Cox she’s an ageless blend of leggy starlet and purring cougar.

A one page diversion that sets up Stormwatch makes no more sense here than it would in any other title, except this is the ostensible present-day super-flagship. It’s still awkward.

In a graphic design nitpick, center-aligned narration boxes that contain entire paragraphs are a bad move. Readers don’t want to drag their eyes down a ragged left margin of text in a box. It’s confusing.

Superman #1 is a disappointing delivery given the buildup we’ve seen all month. While I’d welcome a series of one-shot stories showing the Man of Steel in action, I don’t think Perez’s narrative style jibes with Metropolis – especially when the ultra-efficient Grant Morrison is the other scripter in town.